Stealth Attack

by John Gilstrap

  “The Charlie in my head doesn’t have anything like those kinds of assets.”

  Gail winced. “This is where the bail business gets uncomfortable. Charlie might not have anything, but I bet his gramma loves him. She’s probably got a life insurance policy with cash value. Maybe his sister has equity in her home. Maybe his brother can pull the kids out of private school and write a check to hold in escrow.”

  “So, if Charlie runs, the bondsman screws his whole family.”

  “No, that’s not fair. Everybody knows what the rules are. Charlie’s the one who would be screwing his own family. And the collateral will naturally have to be more than the actual amount, right? Because it costs money to repossess all those things.”

  “So, the bondsman gets to keep the overflow?”

  “That I don’t know,” Gail said. “I don’t think so. Generally, that ten percent fee is the only money the bondsman makes, but that’s nonrefundable. Seriously, where is this all going?”

  Venice held up her hand. “Just a little more. Suppose the bail is set not at ten thousand dollars but at one million dollars?”

  Gail puffed out a laugh. “Then Charlie’s probably going to rot in jail until his court date.”

  “No, play the game. Suppose the bond is a million.”

  Gail ran the scenario through her head. “It’s the same thing. The bondsman gets a hundred grand up front, nonrefundable, and then he figures out a way to collateralize the rest of the money. Which is why Charlie is likely going to rot in jail.”

  “One last question. Is the bondsman on the hook if the collateral turns out to be fraudulent?”

  “I would think so. There are insurance policies for those kinds of events, but not at that amount. I mean, seriously, million-dollar bonds just don’t happen. Those amounts are intended specifically to keep suspects in jail.”

  Venice’s lips pressed together as she considered it all. “Then I know what happened,” she said. “Look back at the screen.”

  * * *

  Roman hadn’t seen Ciara since they were gathered in that filthy office near the water park. Nor had he heard a word of English spoken in his presence.

  Whatever they had injected into his arm had knocked him out cold. When he woke up, he was inside an airplane, he thought, but then he fell asleep again. When he finally woke up for real, the airplane turned out to be an SUV and the surroundings were completely unfamiliar.

  Hours ago, they’d cuffed his hands to the kind of belt he’d seen prisoners wear. His arms weren’t bound behind his back. They just sort of dangled in front of him, near enough to his fly if he needed to pee, but with chains too short to let him scratch his nose.

  Guzman was in the backseat with Roman, and when he noticed that he was awake, he wrapped duct tape around Roman’s eyes and his mouth, but cut a slit in the mouth part so that he could breathe.

  “For now, consider breathing to be a privilege,” Guzman had told him as he cut that slit. “If you try to use that opening to shout out or cause trouble, I will tape it up and seal your nose.” To prove his point, he clipped what felt like a wooden clothespin over his nostrils. The jaws squeezed hard, but Guzman removed them after a few seconds.

  When Guzman finished taping him, he dropped something cold and heavy onto Roman’s bare thigh.

  “Go ahead and feel it,” Guzman said. “Your chains are long enough. Tell me what you think it might be.”

  Roman got it right away. “That’s a sledgehammer.”

  “Exactamente. So you know I was not bluffing. I love breaking bones, and I am very good at it.”

  Roman didn’t say anything because he wasn’t asked, but the weight and size of the steel head scared the crap out of him.

  And those were the last words that had been addressed to him in what must have been five hours or more. Maybe twelve. How could he know?

  After a while, the SUV stopped, and he felt himself being lifted and then shoved into what turned out to be another vehicle. In his mind, it was an ambulance, just because of all the moving parts, but again, how could he know?

  They drove forever. For the most part, the roads were smooth, but the road sounds changed dozens of times. He heard regular pavement and then the gallump-gallump of expansion joints on concrete roads. At one point, they came to a stop and the driver spoke to someone, though Roman couldn’t make out the words. Even if he had, he figured that he wouldn’t have understood them. At another point, he thought he’d even fallen back to sleep.

  Then at the end—for the last half hour or so, the roads got pretty awful. Lots of bumping and bouncing. The sound of gravel. Through it all, the air conditioning where he was stayed on, and he couldn’t say that he was ever in pain or even horribly uncomfortable.

  Still, the thought of that sledgehammer never fully went away. Combined with the empty look he’d seen in Guzman’s eyes, Roman had no doubt that the man would follow through with his promise to break bones and enjoy every second while he was doing it.

  When they finally came to a stop, the vehicle’s doors opened again. The blast of heat startled him. He smelled horse shit. Or, maybe it was cow shit. They smelled the same, didn’t they? People held his biceps on both sides as they escorted him across what felt like rough grass under his bare feet.

  He wished he’d been counting steps so he’d have some notion of how far he’d walked. After several minutes of shuffling, the light beyond his blindfold dimmed and the walking surface changed to what felt like dirt.

  The smell of shit intensified.

  In the near distance, he heard the sound of chains being manipulated, and his heart rate tripled. There was no possible scenario where chains could be good. If fact, every scenario he could think of meant pain.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” he said. If they heard him—if they understood him—they didn’t answer.

  They pushed him along the dirt for thirty-two steps before pulling him to a stop.

  A man’s voice said something to him in Spanish, and hands pushed him forward again. Still unable to see, he tried to move with baby steps to keep from stepping on something. And as he shuffled along, stuff that felt like hay gathered between his toes. Combined with the smell of animal shit, he decided that he had to be in a barn somewhere.

  “Alto,” the man said after only five or six additional steps, and he pulled Roman to a stop. While that man’s hands kept a grip on his shoulders, someone else fastened what felt like handcuffs around his ankles.

  When that was done, the hands pressed down on his shoulders, and he carefully folded himself down into a sitting position.

  Five seconds later, the duct tape was pulled roughly from his mouth, yanking what his mom called his practice whiskers from his upper lip and chin. He yelped, but upon his first inhalation, he realized how much he’d missed taking a full breath.

  When they pulled the tape from his eyes, he wondered if they left any lashes or brows behind. As he blinked, he wondered if maybe he’d gone blind. The difference between being blindfolded and not was barely discernable.

  The bright round beam of a powerful flashlight surrounded a five-gallon plastic paint bucket with a loose-fitting lid, with a roll of toilet paper on the ground next to it.

  “El baño,” one of the captors said. Roman still hadn’t gotten a look at them, but bathroom was one of the few Spanish words that he did know.

  Behind him, he could hear at least two men leaving. Curiosity notwithstanding, Roman forced himself not to look. If it was important to them for him to not see what they were doing, then who was he to do otherwise?

  When the doors closed, the darkness became nearly absolute. Straining as best as he could against the short chains attaching his wrists to his belt, he tried to feel the shackles around his ankles, but there wasn’t enough play. By scooting his butt against the floor, though, he could draw his feet in closer to his body till they were essentially crossed in front of him.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see thin slivers of lig
hter darkness through horizontal stripes in the walls. It was enough light to outline the silhouette of the piss bucket, and if he used his imagination, he thought he could see the outlines of his legs and hands, too.

  The cuffs around his ankles were attached to chains that ran to someplace along the floor. He thought maybe he was facing a thick pillar. In this light, all it was, was a black stripe in the darkness.

  This was bad. Really, really bad.

  But the police had to be looking for him, right? And Mr. Jonathan was a very rich man. Roman didn’t know what kind of ransom his captors were going to ask for, but Mr. Jonathan wouldn’t in a million years let anything happen to him.

  Mr. Jonathan was like part of his family.

  * * *

  In the War Room, an image of a well-groomed young man blinked into the left-hand side of the screen. Late twenties, early thirties, the image could have been that of a fashion model. High cheekbones, thin but solid jaw, piercing brown eyes. The height chart in the background and the lack of a smile marked this as an arrest photo.

  “Meet Fernando Pérez,” Venice said. “Deep and long history of petty drug stuff, but recently arrested for drug trafficking. I didn’t delve into the details of the charges, but I figure that means he went from selling a little to selling a lot.” She looked to Gail for validation.

  “Generally, you’re right,” Gail said. “Sometimes the nature of the substance itself can elevate dealing to trafficking, but the point is the same. Do you think he had something to do with Roman’s disappearance?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  It was a quirk of Venice’s personality that irrespective of the ticking clock or the direness of circumstances, she loved to build to a big reveal. You could fight it, or you could learn to live with it. Either way, Venice was Venice, and she’d deal her hand at her own pace.

  The screen blinked, and a new face appeared in the right-hand screen. This one looked more like a surveillance photo. A tall, thin Latino man climbing into the back of a Mercedes sedan.

  “This picture comes from Mexico City,” Venice explained. “This is Santiago Pérez, the father of our friend Fernando.”

  “Why do I recognize that name?”

  “From a thousand classified reports that have flowed our way. Santiago is a senior lieutenant of some sort within the Cortez drug cartel. The U.S. has multiple warrants out for his arrest, on everything from drug trafficking to human trafficking to murder and arson. Not a nice man.”

  Gail thought she might see the dots beginning to connect. “So, Santiago has something to do with Roman’s disappearance.”

  “Sort of.”

  Gail groaned and leaned back in her chair, determined just to remain quiet until the details were revealed.

  “When Fernando was arrested, his bail was set at one million dollars,” Venice explained. “He was released the following day. Toby Jackson Bail Bonding Company put up the money for the bond. That was three days ago. Now, look at this.”

  Venice tapped her keys, and numbers appeared on the screen. It looked like a bank statement.

  “This is Toby Jackson Bail Bonding Company’s bank account. What do you see?”

  According to the statement, the company ran kind of lean, with only forty thousand dollars in cash on hand.

  “What am I looking for?” Gail asked.

  “What don’t you see?”

  “I really don’t enjoy this game.”

  “Where’s the hundred grand? The ten percent nonrefundable money?”

  “I have no idea. Certainly not in the account, but maybe in a safe. Maybe he got the money in cash. I’m sure daddy the drug dealer could scare up a hundred thousand.”

  Venice made her eyebrows bounce a little. “Or, maybe he just made a phone call. Think about it. Toby Jackson has built an okay business out of backing minor bonds. Look, I did a search. It’s amazing what you can find once you know where to look.”

  More clicking, and the screen changed again, this time to an official-looking list of names, charges, and case numbers.

  “These are the cases Toby Jackson has been involved with over the past two years. Look at them. One thousand. Twenty-five hundred. Fifty-two hundred.” She looked to Gail and scowled. “I wonder why such a random number?”

  Gail didn’t bother to answer.

  “I could scroll through all of these, but I won’t. If I did, you’d see a maximum bond amount of fifteen thousand dollars—only two of those—and about a dozen at ten grand. This guy doesn’t do million-dollar bonds.”

  Venice paused in a way that gave Gail the sense that she was supposed to understand everything now. “Tell me you’re not done.”

  “Come on, think about it, Gail. Patrick Kelly owns a ton of companies that appear to have little business and pay no taxes. The bail bond company isn’t even in his name, and it has a record of petty, small-size bonds. Yet, when the time comes that the son of a drug kingpin needs a whole lot of cash, Patrick Kelly produces it. Or Toby Jackson does. Same person.”

  At last, Gail thought she saw the big picture. “All those companies exist to do work on this side of the border on behalf of the cartels?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Gail held up a hand for silence. She needed a minute or two to force the pieces of the puzzle together. “What does this have to do with Roman?”

  “I don’t think it does,” Gail said. “I think Digger might have been right. I think Roman was not the target of whatever happened. I think the target was Ciara Kelly.”

  “The cartel kidnapped Ciara Kelly?”

  “The Cortez Cartel is the only constant through all of this,” Venice said. “The guys who stopped the driver, Fernando and Santiago Pérez, and now Toby Jackson. Now, throw in the fact that they were snatched in El Paso, just an easy hike or wade from the border. That has to be it.”

  Gail thought it didn’t have to be anything, but those pieces fell together pretty easily.

  “Now, the question is why,” Venice said.

  “We’ve walked that road a thousand times,” Gail said. “There are only a few reasons to kidnap someone. I think we can rule out random act of violence or the act of some serial killer. That leaves ransom or leverage.”

  “Santiago Pérez is a rich man.”

  “Yes, he is. So that leaves leverage.”

  “They’re holding the kids till Patrick Kelly does something for them.”

  “That’s what I think,” Gail agreed.

  “How do we find out what that something is?”

  “I don’t know,” Gail confessed. “More to the point, I’m not sure we need to know that. It’d be nice, but only in the sense that knowing more is better than knowing less.”

  “I need to find out,” Venice said.

  “Then I’ll help you.”

  Venice started to type again, but her fingers froze over the keyboard. When she pivoted her head around to face Gail, her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “What is it?”

  “This is about Ciara Kelly,” Venice said, her voice catching in her throat. “I don’t care about Ciara Kelly. I only care about Roman.”

  Gail was confused again.

  “The cartel leaders are bad, bad people. God only knows what they’ll do to that poor girl while she’s in captivity, but at the very least, they’ll have to keep her alive.”

  Gail saw it, but she didn’t want to say it. Her stomach tightened, as if preparing to be punched.

  “There’s no reason to keep my little boy alive, is there?”

  “You can’t think that way, and you know it.” Gail stood.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to pay a visit to Patrick Kelly and Toby Jackson.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you won’t. You stay here and find that car. If we can pinpoint that location, we’ll be halfway to bringing Roman home.”

  Venice clearly didn’t like it, but she remained seated.

  “And Ven? We
are going to bring him home, and he is going to be healthy.”

  Venice chewed her lip and turned back to her computer screen.

  Chapter Twelve

  Daytime had arrived while Roman wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but clearly, he had. As he lay on his back, looking up at a complex assortment of timbers fifteen or twenty feet overhead, he realized that his guess about being in a barn had been correct, as had his suspicion that he’d been tied to a heavy pillar. It was the tallest one, the one that went from the floor all the way to the highest peak of the roof.

  Bright sunshine spilled through cracks in the walls and the ceiling to paint a complex matrix of stripes over everything.

  As he sat up, he twisted his back to the left and right to crack out the stiffness. Now that he had some light, he could see that the three feet of chain that spanned the cuffs on his ankles had been attached to a longer, heavier chain that had been fastened to the pillar in such a way that he was stuck facing it. He had enough chain to travel to the piss bucket, but not enough to find a comfortable position that would allow him to lean up against the pillar unless he sat on the ankle cuffs, which would hurt like hell. Effectively, his choices were to sit up straight or to lie flat on his back. He could cross his ankles if we wanted, but that likewise put a lot of pressure on the metal rings. Overnight, they’d already worn rough, inflamed spots into the anklebone on his left leg and the Achilles tendon on his right.

  Where the hell was Ciara? Was she somehow involved in all of this? Clearly, she knew the guy who’d confronted them on the street, but how? Equally clearly, Guzman’s presence had unnerved her. She’d been surprised and she’d been frightened.

  Roman wondered if he himself had made everything worse. He’d tried to protect her by fighting, but that was when everything went to shit, right? If he had just stayed out of the way, would everything have gone down with less violence? Should he be feeling guilty now?

  He ran the conversation—if that’s what you could call it—from the office through his head for the hundredth time, trying to figure out what was going on.

  What was it that Cristos Silva had said to him? They were going to kill him and dump his body before Ciara saved his life by mentioning Mr. Jonathan.