Blood Lies - 15

by Richard Marcinko

  There was the assistant, as pimple-faced as ever.

  “I missed you at breakfast,” he said.

  “You must have overslept.”

  He was holding up the line. Readers at a Rogue Warrior signing can get a bit ornery—a good portion are packing—and things would have been nasty if I didn’t get rid of him. So I promised to talk to him as soon as the signing was over. Hell, I didn’t have anything to do until the show anyway, and that was several hours away.

  He waited. When I was done, we repaired to a thinking emporium down the street, where I ordered a small sarsaparilla and he got a Diet Coke. Our discussion started out badly and went from there.

  “Have you ever heard of Hezbollah?”

  “Gesundheit,” I replied.

  “No, no—the organization. Hezbollah. Do you know who they are?”

  “Is that the Chinese company that took over the warranty claims on my truck?”

  He crossed his brow. I’ll give him credit: he gave an almost accurate explanation, saying that they were a “Shi’a militant group and political party with Iranian backing in command of a good portion of Lebanon and looking to expand their influence in an international dimension.”

  “That so?” I signaled the waiter for more sarsaparilla. If the secretary of State insisted I listen to this sort of drivel, I was going to make it worth my while. “Haven’t heard of them.”

  “I think you’re pulling my leg,” said Pinstriped Suit. “I think.”

  That was the smartest thing he’d said since I met him, and I rewarded him by tipping my glass. He got to the point: the State Department had heard rumors that Hezbollah was working with Venezuela and trying to set up camps in Mexico.

  “A few weeks ago, we heard additional rumors that Hezbollah was working with a Mexican drug cartel south of the border,” he told me. “The rumors are bullshit, I’m sure, but—”

  “Hold on just a second there. How do you know they’re bullshit?”

  “Do you really think terrorists would be working with Mexican drug cartels? Not going to happen.”

  Such is the caliber of the people going to work at the Foggy Bottom these days. Though I suppose I should take this more as an indication of what his boss thought than what he thought—in his defense, I doubt he was capable of thought.

  I ordered another round of drinks.

  “We want to hire you to check out the rumors,” he told me.

  “You can’t check them out yourself?”

  “We have. So has the CIA. Everyone has said they’re unfounded. But no one believes us.”

  The rest of the conversation was just as inane. I did mention the Customs and Border Protection Service, which I believe had issued some of those “rumors”—known as intelligence briefs in some circles.

  I’ll spare you the blah-blah-blah: the bottom line was that State wanted to hire me to say that there were no terror camps in Mexico.

  Not that my drinking companion said that in so many words. His tongue twisted into a square knot trying to find ways to avoid saying it quite that clearly.

  “What if I find out there are camps?” I asked finally. “Would you do anything about them?”

  “Well, of course, if, of course, in that case, that possibility, if there were evidence of activity backing up the potential of the hypothesis, then we would take it under advisement.”

  Pretty much what I figured he’d say.

  “Well then I’ll take this under advisement myself,” I told him, getting up.

  He frowned, probably realizing that was a fancy way of saying go shit on a stick. Getting involved with the State Department was about as winning a proposition as being Lindsay Lohan’s parole officer.

  I will say one thing, though—Pin-striped Suit promised a good payday. An appropriately prepared report would net Red Cell International $250,000, plus expenses.

  That’s a lot of food for the hounds. It’s more than a few coats of paint for Rogue Manor. The work would truly not be onerous, even if I actually did it right: truck across the border, check for falafel sales, get a GPS position, and come home with a nice tan.

  But let’s face it: what the secretary was really trying to buy here was Yours Truly’s seal of approval. She didn’t want me to find anything. I could hear her in Congress now: “If Dick Marcinko says there are no terror camps down there, then damn it, who am I to disagree?”

  As far as I’m concerned, my imprimatur on serious matters like counterterror is not for sale. Let me be clear: I don’t mind endorsing beer or helping put a video game together; those things are good for you in the first place, and fun in the second. (And vice versa.) Knives? Watches? Necessary equipment.

  But you can’t screw around with national security. And for all the fun and games I have in my books, Red Cell International itself is very serious business.

  I definitely believed the rumors, even if I had no evidence to back them up. But more importantly, I knew that if I actually spotted a terror camp, I would feel obliged to do something about it. While I’d be happy to do that if authorized (and compensated), I had no plans to go south of the border on a raiding mission. I’d also been recently lectured by both my lawyers and my accountants not to look for trouble unless it paid very well.8

  * * *

  Our tea over, I went about my business, preparing myself in mind and body for the MMA event, at which a good brawl was had by all. It was so absorbing that I had completely forgotten about the State Department and terror camps when a long black limo drove past me after the event. The rear window rolled down, and a man in a cowboy hat leaned out.

  “Y’all need a lift?”

  “Just going for my cab,” I told the man. “I have some business to attend to. Thanks.”

  “Well now,” he said. “I know you SEALs always get down to business after hours. But I would venture to say that my business may just prove worth your while—even better than whatever business you have in mind. And look here: plenty of Sapphire Bombay sitting right in the ice bucket—no need to water it down with ice.”

  Ah, the siren song of Dr. Bombay. No gin sweeter, no elixir more potent. The cure for all that ails you.

  “I have my own supply, thanks,” I replied.

  The limo kept pace as I walked to the cab. I lost track of it in the jumble of vehicles leaving the civic center and promptly forgot about him, checking the BlackBerry for messages and the next day’s schedule. So I was a little startled when I arrived at the hotel and found Cowboy Hat standing between me and the door.

  “Y’all took your time getting here,” he said.

  “I didn’t realize it was a race,” I said.

  My first thought was that he was another State Department official, but a closer examination showed that couldn’t be the case. It wasn’t just the ten-gallon hat or the custom handmade cowboy boots that would have taken a lifetime of tuna-fish lunches to afford on a government salary, even these days. He had a confident, lean-toward-you stance, exactly the opposite of the stay-back diplomatic posture they implant in the spine of every diplomat-to-be. He was tall, though with a bit of a paunch that his bespoke suit couldn’t quite conceal.

  “Maybe you’ll let me buy you a drink in the bar,” he said. “Name’s Jordan Macleish. And I have a business proposition for you.”

  “If you’re buying,” I told him, “I’m listening.”

  And so I did, for the next half hour, in a private room off the bar. Macleish gave me his whole life story, which included wildcat oil drilling and assorted misadventures in the home building trades, all of which led to a position as board president and CEO of several corporations. There was a large ranch, and a private plane. Companies in Michigan, partnerships in Oregon: all mentioned to indicate that he was more than a little rich.

  But no hint of what it was he wanted with me.

  “Well, it’s been very nice to meet you,” I said finally, draining the last of my drink.

  “We haven’t discussed business,” he said.

&nbs
p; “Was there business?”

  Macleish gave me a little squint, as if he were looking through a glass at a diamond, then smiled. “They told me you were particular,” he said. “But things might change if I mentioned Bill Reynolds.”

  I drew a blank at the name—Reynolds is not exactly uncommon, and it didn’t bring any special association to mind.

  “You know him?” Macleish asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

  “Hmmm.” Macleish reached into the pocket of his jacket. “Take a look at this gal and tell me you’ve seen one more beautiful.”

  He laid down an eight-by-ten computer image. I have seen more beautiful women—Karen Fairchild came immediately to mind—but the woman in the photo would have won ninety-nine of one hundred beauty contests she entered. The picture was just a head shot, but the blond hair, the perfectly spaced blue eyes, the million-watt smile—this was a girl who could get your attention. And other things.

  “She has a body to match,” said Macleish. He took out another photo, this time of her in a short skirt with a clinging top. Think Angela Jolie as a blonde, only a little prettier.

  And younger. The woman in the picture was in her very early twenties.

  “Ms. Reynolds and I have a special relationship,” Macleish told me. He didn’t wink, but he might just as well have—and at the same time, he nervously turned the wedding ring on his finger. “I’m very concerned about her welfare.”

  I could see where this was going: middle-aged rich guy plays sugar daddy; girl takes him for a ride. She gets tired and hops off the train. It was sad in a way, pathetic even, though looking at Macleish I couldn’t help but think he was getting what he deserved.

  “I was wondering…” His voice trailed off as he glanced down at his hands. Belatedly, he seemed to recognize the tacky symbolism fiddling with his wedding ring implied. He folded his hands together. “I wonder if your company, Red Cell International—”

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t do missing persons cases,” I told him. “We’re not a detective agency.”

  “She’s not missing, actually. She’s been kidnapped. When I told Bill Reynolds, he suggested you might be able to help. I think you know him better as Greenie. Bill is her father.”

  Greenie—ah, now I knew who he was talking about: a stout, balding retired SEAL whom I met at a reunion a few years past. He’d served in the teams after I left, and our paths had never crossed in the service. Still, the fact that he was a SEAL meant that he was part of the brotherhood, and had a certain call on my loyalties. If his daughter was in trouble, then I had to help.

  I glanced at the photo. If this was his daughter, she took after her mother. As I recalled, Greenie had a thicker, far uglier face, with brown eyes and black hair, what was left of it.

  I sat back down and listened as Macleish told me the rest of the story. There wasn’t all that much: the kidnappers had made contact with Ms. Reynolds’s boss, who hadn’t actually realized she was missing because she had a no-show job, supplied of course by Macleish, who was duly informed.

  According to Macleish, Reynolds was bent out of shape, naturally, and vowed vengeance not just on the kidnappers but on all mankind if his daughter was harmed. He was, unfortunately, working as a security guard aboard a ship in the Arabian Sea, part of a force hired to protect against pirates. Macleish had arranged for him to be picked up as soon as the ship made port, and planned on flying him home.

  “In the meantime, he mentioned you. I must confess,” added Macleish, “I hadn’t realized the extent of your post-navy accomplishments. I’m not much of a reader. I don’t think I’ve read a book in the past twenty years.”

  I’m never sure why people brag about that, but I let it pass.

  Macleish told me a few other things, the most important of which was an offer to pay Red Cell International twenty-five percent of the three-million-dollar ransom if Ms. Reynolds was recovered unharmed.

  “Or, if you advise that a ransom be paid, expenses and one hundred thousand dollars. Plus whatever you can recover from the kidnappers yourself,” added Macleish.

  I know what you’re thinking. From a purely business point of view, it would have made sense to advise that the ransom be paid, get the girl back, then go and get the money. But if the operation was fairly sophisticated—and with a ransom that high it ought to be—the money would undoubtedly be difficult to trace.

  Not that we couldn’t take a good shot at it. Between Junior and Shunt, I have two of the best hackers on the planet on my team. Excuse me. The term they prefer is “computer security analysts.”

  Slackers has been proposed as well, though it has yet to stick.

  (Junior is Matthew Loring, called Junior because he is literally a chip off the old block, that block being me. And Shunt is Paul Guido Falcone, our number one geek and all-around weird egg. He’s called Shunt because he has some metal in his head. He’s also from New York—enough said.)

  But I had a serious problem with that approach. Bluntly, paying off kidnappers and blackmailers is an invitation to get screwed again, and again and again. Look at the pirate situation off Somalia. Has paying ransoms to the pirates there decreased or increased piracy? It’s now the biggest industry in northeastern Africa—maybe the only industry in northeastern Africa.

  Of course, the real way to deal with that is to cut off the piracy at its source. Yes, that means attacking the pirates before they get out to sea. But it also means attacking the financiers who are bankrolling them from Europe: the Russian, Ukrainian, and, dare I mention, Western individuals who put up money to fund the syndicates in the first place.

  But I digress.

  Our meeting broke up without me making a firm commitment one way or the other. Upstairs, I called Doc and asked him about Greenie. He verified the basic facts of Greenie’s existence and the fact that he had a daughter. By morning, he had confirmed that he was aboard a ship and incommunicado.

  And so I agreed to work for Macleish. And since it was obvious that I was now going to be spending at least some time in Mexico, I had Doc call up the secretary of State and work out an arrangement for her little assignment, making sure to include a provision stating that we would be paid “no matter what evidence was produced.”

  Adding the words “whether you like it or not” would have just been rubbing it in.

  * * *

  I’ll skip the grunt work of setting up surveillance, bugging phones, and doing various background research—all critical, but frankly not exactly exciting. There are only so many ways to tap into a phone line, so many ways to check case histories, so many ways to find a halfway decent restaurant on the Mexican side of the border.

  Our research led us to believe that Ms. Reynolds had been snatched by the Archuleta group, named after the man who ran the operation. They were a small subset of criminals working for the Tabasco cartel, with Archuleta himself a midranking slime bag in the organization.

  The cartel had no relation to the sauce of the same name, but there was a definite historical connection to the area of Mexico where the sauce comes from. It was there that the cartel’s early leaders formed their syndicate to smuggle drugs from places like Colombia north to the U.S. Drugs were still the cartel’s number one commodity, but like any international conglomerate, it had recently decided to branch out in search of greater profits. Among its big moneymakers were a people smuggling business—in other words, transporting illegals to and from the U.S. for various purposes—and a number of semilegal interests, including exporting flowers. Kidnapping Americans and well-off Mexican-Americans was a recent sideline, and small burritos as far as their profit margins were concerned.

  But let me not get too far ahead. Background finished. Let’s return to our normally scheduled mayhem.

  * * *

  Following my attempted kidnapping, we debriefed at a small bar named Negra, a place as dumpy as it was politically incorrect. We filtered into the place one at a time, trying not to look too suspicious, though s
ince we were the only gringos we undoubtedly stood out. I had to assume that my cover story about being a rich hippie-gringo looking to set up a pottery business was probably now blown, since hippies rarely do well against machine guns and grenades. But we kept up the pretenses for inquisitive ears.

  I’ll spare you the recriminations that accompanied the debrief, not so much because they were pointed and bitter, but because I made a personal pledge to my publisher to cut down on the number of curse words used in my books. I felt pretty bad about the whole situation and frankly had to shoulder the blame. We’d had our asses kicked by a bunch of Mexican gangsters and none of us was very happy about it.

  True, they paid a pretty good price for screwing up my plans. But that wasn’t the idea of the operation. The whole reason I’d tried to get myself kidnapped in the first place was our lack of intel on where she was being kept; without that information, I couldn’t protect her.

  “Best thing now is to pay the ransom,” suggested Doc. “Kick the negotiations into high gear. Tell Macleish to stop stalling.”

  I couldn’t disagree. Nor could I answer Trace’s question, which as usual was exact and to the point.

  “Why did they change their business model?” she asked. “Why come after you with guns and grenades, rather than just grabbing you? Assuming they didn’t know who you were.”

  “Maybe we’re too close to figuring it out,” suggested Mongoose. As a retired SEAL, he tends to be relatively quiet, but to the point. “But we’re too stupid to realize that.”

  “The second half of that is possible,” said Doc. “But I think we’d have more information if the first was.”

  There was some more general discussion. Eventually things settled down into a heated debate on the merits of tequila versus vodka—the default discussion topic when the team was done talking business for the night. We all recognized we needed to take a fresh approach in the A.M. There was no use talking the problem to death.

  Somewhere around there I decided to head back to my hotel down the block to get some rest. Doc had pretty much convinced me that paying the ransom was the only logical next step, but before we did that I’d have to get Shunt to infiltrate the banks the cartel used. After hacking his way past their security—easier than you think—he would insert a handy little program he called “Tell Me Your Secrets,” which would allow him to easily trace the wired payment and then divert it to one of our accounts. (He has threatened to make it commercially available if I don’t give him a raise next fall; watch the iPad ap store for the latest version.)