“You seem to need to defend yourself a lot.”
“Hazards of dealing with assholes regularly.”
Whitaker rolled her eyes and started walking toward the back room when Taylor reached out and grabbed her arm. Whitaker spun back around with a steely expression.
“Pulling video of the truck and tracking them is going to take forever. They’ve had enough time to get to Florida and dump the truck. We need to stop being a week behind them.”
“How would you suggest we do that?”
“I know a guy in Florida who might give us a leg up. Let your guys follow procedure and do what you were planning on doing, just in case my thing’s a bust, but come with me to see him.”
“What kind of guy? Is this going to end with more bodies hitting the ground?”
“Well, he is a giant asshole, so there’s a chance. Just think, if you go with me you can keep me from shooting someone.”
“Fine. Let me talk to my people.”
“OK. I have to call the senator. I wanted to be sure this was what it looked like before I gave her the news, but now . . .” Taylor let the rest of the statement hang.
Whitaker’s expression softened as she patted Taylor on his arm. She’d made similar calls in the past, and they’d always been difficult.
When he dialed the senators number, he recognized the droning voice of Loren Dashel.
“Senator Caldwell’s office.”
“This is John Taylor, I need to speak with the senator.”
“I’m sorry Mr. Taylor, she is currently in constituent meeting and can’t be distur—”
“You need to go get her, Mr. Dashel. I have news about her daughter.”
“I see,” the assistant said, recognizing the seriousness in Taylor’s tone, “one moment.”
Taylor listened to Muzak while he waited, watching the FBI cart the still standing gamblers from the room to waiting cars and paramedics go the other direction to collect the wounded men.
“You found her,” the senator said when she came on the phone.
“I’m sorry, Senator, but your daughter wasn’t out partying. We’re still working through the details, but we know she was abducted Saturday night from a club she and a boyfriend had gone to.”
“Is she . . .”
“Everything we know right now, says she’s still alive,” Taylor said, interrupting the senator’s train of thought. “The men who grabbed your daughter are currently in FBI custody being questioned. We also know she was taken out of state as part of some larger criminal enterprise.”
“I’ll do whatever they want. I will pay anything to get her back,” the senator said.
“Mrs. Caldwell, I am nearly positive they do not know about your daughter's family, and this abduction doesn’t appear to be related to your wealth or position.”
“What?” she said, her voice raising in surprise.
“From initial statements, they were looking for girls estranged from their families who might not be missed. Somehow, her boyfriend was unaware of her connection to you.”
“Then why was she taken?”
“It’s best we don’t go there, Senator.”
“Tell me, Mr. Taylor,” she said, her normal pleasant voice now hard as granite, showing the steel that had allowed her to amass so much power in a man’s world.
“We haven’t learned specifics, but from what the requirements were for girls being grabbed, it seems likely they were taken for the sex trade.”
“Oh my God!” she said, the firmness in her voice replaced by a parent’s terror.
“The FBI is on the case now, and are following leads.”
“Mr. Taylor, I’ve heard you are a man who doesn’t let obstacles stand in his way,” she said, her trademarked surety coming back.
“I try to get the job done, Ma’am.”
“John, I want you to keep after her. I want my daughter back. Anything I can provide to help bring her back to me, you have. Anything you need to do to bring her home, I will back you with everything at my disposal,” she said. “Anything you have to do, John! Anything!”
“I’m not giving up on her, Senator. I’m headed to Florida as soon as I can get a flight out. We’ve been told that was where she was taken, and I have a possible contact there who might let us catch up with them.”
“I’ll have my jet standing by at Reagan for you when you get there.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
“John. Bring her back to me.”
“I’ll try, Senator.”
CHAPTER 5
Whitaker finished giving her orders just as Taylor hung up with the senator.
“She has her jet waiting to take us to Miami,” he said as she walked up.
“Fine,” she said. The look on her face told him she hadn’t forgiven Taylor yet for not letting the FBI deal with everything. “I rode with them out here, so I’ll ride with you.”
She headed to his car without waiting for an answer, and he followed in her wake. Taylor drove straight to the airport. There was a few minutes confusion as they were redirected to a separate area of the airport designated for private and corporate jets, which they quickly had sorted out. Less than two hours from hanging up with the senator they were sitting in plush leather seats of the sleek jet, taxiing off the runway. While Whitaker made a call from the phone set into the small table next to the couch she had chosen to sit on, Taylor watched as the plane parted the cloud layers that blanketed Washington, threatening to cover the city in another layer of snow.
Red and orange filled the sky as the sun made its way over the horizon. Taylor considered how far they were behind Mary Jane. Over the last year, he’d had a good run and successfully tracked down a good number of people, but there had been a small handful he’d been too far behind and reached too late. He was afraid this was going to be one of those, his mind going to a blond girl from Texas he and Whitaker had been too late to save.
“So who’s this contact,” Whitaker said, the phone back in its base and her eyes looking at him intently.
“A guy I met when I was in Miami, shortly after I got out of the service.”
“When you were chasing that Federal witness?”
“Yeah. She had been snatched, and I was trying to find this Russian named Yuri who ran women from Eastern Europe.”
“I read about him in your file.”
“Yeah, well, they managed to snatch her, and I was trying to track them down. I knew about this group of redneck skinheads who had done transportation work for him, and so I went and braced one of them.”
“Wait, your contact is Ronald Templeton?”
“I have no idea. I just know people call him Ronny.”
“He’s the one who told the feds you tortured him.”
“I may have been … overly exuberant in my questioning.”
“So when you said you had a contact . . .”
“I meant we’d go and convince Ronny to tell us what he knows. He was neck deep in smuggling girls from the port to work in the sex trade across the country, working with the Russians no less. I may have screwed up the crew who was doing it a year ago, but they were replaced by gangsters from overseas. Guaranteed they’re back in action. And if they have a pipeline for dealing with girls smuggled into the country, I bet they use it for American girls going the other way. Which is the only thing that makes sense for why they’d take her all the way to Florida.”
“I’m not going to let you torture anyone, John.”
Taylor just shrugged. It’s not like he went out planning on hurting people, but these guys were all directly involved in destroying lives. Ronny didn’t bother him any more than shooting Gregor in the feet, as he'd done several hours ago. These guys knew what kind of life they were getting into, and compared to how other criminals might deal with them, Taylor was using kid gloves.
“Hopefully he’ll cooperate,” was all Taylor said.
Whitaker looked at him dubiously, but let it drop. She wasn’t stupid. She knew how Tayl
or operated, but she had so far turned a blind eye to his more . . . extreme, methods of finding people. He knew that wouldn’t hold if he did it in front of her. He would just have to find another way to get Ronny to talk.
Miami, Florida
It was fully night when they landed. Whitaker had secured a dark Lincoln town car which was waiting for them by the plane’s hangar, courtesy of the Miami field office.
Taylor had to look at a map to reacquaint himself but had no trouble getting to Ronny’s house at the end of the long dirt road Taylor remembered. Before he’d left Washington, Taylor had made a few calls of his own, just to make sure Ronny still lived there. Everything Taylor found said he did.
The lights were on in the house, and two other cars were sitting out front when Taylor and Whitaker pulled up. As they got out of the car, Taylor put his weapon in hand, although he kept it tight against his leg, trying to seem innocuous. Considering the company Ronny kept, Taylor had thought it best to be prepared. Seeing him, Whitaker followed suit.
Trying the front door, Taylor found it was unlocked and pushed the door open, walking in. A man sitting on a couch facing the door had half a sandwich shoved in his mouth when he saw Taylor.
“What the hell,” he mumbled. Half-chewed pieces of sandwich fell onto his shirt.
“Ehh, don’t,” Taylor said, lifting his weapon as the man made a move to get up.
A second man walked into the room, carrying a plate of food that crashed to the floor as he saw Taylor.
“Holy shit!” Ronny said, frozen in place, eyes wide with fear.
“Ronny, my friend. How are you?”
“Dude. No. I . . .” Ronny babbled, holding up his hands defensively and starting to back away.
The guy in the chair remained seated, his eyes on Whitaker as she pointed her weapon at him while Taylor turned his attention to Ronny.
“Ronny, how’s that a way to greet an old friend? Why don’t you come and sit next to your buddy?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I haven’t asked you anything, yet.”
“I got out, man. I swear. Please don’t kill me.”
Ronny was visibly shaking, and his friend was eyeing him with a surprised look. Of course, I had promised if I had to come back and visit him, I would kill him. And I’d made sure he believed me.
“Just answer my questions, and we won’t have a problem. Of course, my promise still stands if you jerk my chain. Now, I know you haven’t shaken off your old occupation that easily.”
“No, really, I quit all that, man. The Russians were more pissed at me than you were. I’ve gone straight, I swear.”
He was sweating, looking at a stack of boxes against the front door. Taylor looked over at a stack of DVD players, all in identical boxes, still sealed, then back to Ronny.
“I don’t give a shit about that, Ronny," Taylor said, hooking a thumb at the boxes. "I already knew you were a lowlife. What I care about is a missing girl. She was in a truck, with a couple of other girls that came here from DC, last weekend. I know you have to still have some contacts with people involved in that.”
“Well,” he said, giving his friend the side-eye, “I’ve heard—”
“Shut the fuck up, Ronny,” the friend said, starting to stand.
Taylor hit the man in the face with the side of his gun. He collapsed back into the chair clutching his nose, trying to stem the blood flowing from it.
“Don’t do that,” Taylor said, then turned back to Ronny. “Go ahead.”
Ronny was silent, staring at his friend. Taylor tapped him on the leg with the muzzle of his pistol, causing him to jump.
“Ronny?” Taylor asked.
“I heard about a ship. It was supposed to leave tomorrow for Saint Petersburg. I heard they had a bunch of trucks coming in all this week and were going to load the girls in a shipping container or something. I swear I’m not involved in that at all. It’s just stuff I’ve heard around.”
“Do you know the name of the ship?” Whitaker asked.
“No idea. Just that it leaves tomorrow, and it’s going to Saint Petersburg, out of the port, here.”
“Ronny, if you want to stop getting visits from guys like me, you should get out of this shit entirely. Drop the skinhead bullshit, stop stealing shit, and go to a trade school or you’re going to end up dead.”
“Yeah, man . . . yeah,” he said, looking relieved as Taylor and Whitaker started backing out of the house.
The bleeding man just sat, glaring daggers at them. Taylor kept his weapon out until he got to the car and was backing along the driveway. Whitaker was on the phone when they turned out on the street.
“It’s Loretta. We have a possible line on her, but I need a list of all ships bound for Saint Petersburg scheduled to leave tomorrow out of the port of Miami. Yeah, I’ll wait.”
She switched the phone over to the speaker and waited while the guy on the other end accessed the information.
“OK, got it. Only one ship on the schedule for departing the port tomorrow. The Petrograd is a four-thousand-ton cargo ship listed as transporting industrial machinery.”
“We’re on the way there. Notify the port we want that ship held until we arrive. Inform the Coast Guard we have information the ship is being used for smuggling and get me a quick response team out of the Miami office to the port. We’re . . .” she paused and looked at Taylor.
“Forty minutes,” he said.
“Forty minutes out. Make sure the Coast Guard knows we want to sweep the ship for contraband.”
“Got it, boss,” he said and hung up.
It took them just over an hour. Even with the sirens, Taylor hadn’t realized were built into the car until Whitaker flicked them on, they could only do so much with traffic. It was still early in the evening, and they hit a combination of rush hour and people headed to Miami Beach.
They still managed to beat the FBI team, not that it mattered. They were directed to meet the dock master at one of the berths by the gate guard that checked trucks in and out of the shipyards. When they arrived, they found a harried looking man and no ship.
“Where the hell did it go?” Whitaker said as soon as she got out of the car.
“The captain changed their itinerary suddenly about three hours ago. They were already out of the port and miles offshore when your people called.”
“Dammit,” she said and headed back to the car.
“Did you see anything weird being loaded?” Taylor asked.
“I wasn’t supervising the loading, but who knows. We load cargo containers that have cleared customs and are all sealed. We never see inside the containers. We could be loading anything on these ships.”
“So nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I guess it was crewed heavier than normal, but not crazily so.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Taylor walked back to the car and found Whitaker on the phone talking to the Coast Guard.
“The ship is still in US waters, and the Coast Guard is going to intercept it. I turned our assault team around, they aren’t trained for taking a boat. We’re going to catch a helo out to the cutter that’s intercepting them. They've agreed to let us take part in the boarding. I just hope Ronny was right because this is a lot of manpower we’re burning. I’m going to look like an idiot if this is a wild goose chase.”
“Considering the sudden change of itinerary not long after Gregor ends up in custody, it seems like a pretty strong indication this ship is involved.”
“Or it’s just a coincidence.”
“I’m not a big fan of coincidences,” Taylor said, frowning.
She drove them to a landing pad not far behind the control center for the port. A handful of minutes after they had arrived, a red and white helicopter landed on the pad. A man wearing a red life preserver and a white helmet slid the large door on the side of the helicopter open and hopped out, waving them to get on board.
Taylor had a brief thought as he and Whitaker r
an toward the chopper, ducking as they got near the blades. He never understood why people did that since those blades were well above the height of either of them and yet it was something Taylor had done every time he’d boarded one.
“Ma’am,” the man said as he hopped back in the chopper once Whitaker and Taylor were on board. “We’re about twenty minutes out from the Cutter. It’s making good time toward the cargo ship and will slow down long enough for us to drop you off. The skipper thinks they can intercept in under forty minutes.”
The Wrong Girl (John Taylor Book 3) Page 7