Primary Valor

by Jack Mars

  She had to stay strong. But deep down, she knew she was weak. She wanted to go to the door, and bang on it.

  “Let me out! Let me into the sunlight!”

  Darwin could take her. He could have her, whatever he wanted, if they would just let her out of this horrible place.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  6:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Las Olas Boulevard

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  “The beautiful people are loose on the streets,” Luke said.

  “Beautiful is a word,” Ed said.

  Luke shrugged. “What’s another word?”

  Ed smiled. “Stupid.”

  Luke nearly laughed. That was something like the Ed that he knew.

  Luke and Ed were among the early evening throngs in the fabulous shopper’s paradise of Las Olas Boulevard, just as the sun began to set.

  During the last thirty minutes, the street had begun to fill with glittering, well-dressed specimens of humanity, almost as if a nearby dam had burst, and instead of water, these hip and lovely people had gushed forth. The restaurants and sidewalk cafes were filling up. Car traffic on the street tightened and slowed.

  Luke and Ed had flown down in the jet they had taken to Myrtle Beach. Trudy had couriered them both dossiers of the missing girl. Luke took the opportunity to look through it during the plane ride. He realized that up until now, he had known very little about her.

  He looked at the photos first, of course. There were half a dozen of them, provided to the FBI by the girl’s mother. One photo was of the girl and her mom. The mom was a young middle age, attractive but starting to get tired. The girl was wearing a blue and gold cheerleading uniform. She was very pretty, with straight blond hair, and wore a cheerleading uniform in most of the other photos as well. It seemed that she had been a cheerleader since about the age of eleven.

  Luke glanced through the rest of the documents. Father deceased. Mother a lawyer. Charlotte was a decent student, not exceptional. A’s and B’s. They used to have a thing called “the gentleman’s C.” If you really belonged, you didn’t want to get grades that were too good. Maybe this was the cheerleader’s B-plus.

  In addition to cheerleading, Charlotte spent two years on the dance squad, whatever that was. She had played lacrosse in junior high school, but apparently gave it up. She was on the student council her sophomore year in high school, and was on the activities committee. She made the morning announcements over the school intercom one day each week.

  So she was a joiner. Her mother’s testimony suggested she was a happy child and teen, and very popular among her peers. She was resilient, and had seemed to recover from both the divorce and her father’s death quickly.

  How did this happen? Why did it happen?

  Why would someone target this particular girl?

  The mother’s boyfriend came up again. Jeff Zorn. The local cops had checked out his computers, his phones, and his cars. They had swept the cars for DNA and hair fibers. They had restored deleted files from the computers, and gone back through years of emails. They had subpoenaed years of phone calls and text messages.

  Nothing. The man had barely mentioned the girl at all.

  Zorn was supposedly a publicist, but he had very few, if any, actual clients. Yes, his father had been a Wall Streeter. Was he living off an inheritance? Or was he doing something else for money? The dossier didn’t say.

  “What do you think of this boyfriend?” Luke said to Ed on the plane. Ed was thumbing through his own dossier, which contained all the same files.

  He shrugged. “I think it’s one thing to surrender all these devices to the cops with no trouble. But they were going to take them anyway. And just because he gives up two phones, doesn’t mean there isn’t a third. Just because he gives up two computers, doesn’t mean there isn’t another one somewhere. It’s fine, but it doesn’t prove anything.”

  That’s what it was. The guy was clean. He was too clean. He had handed everything over because he knew there was nothing incriminating to discover.

  “I’d consider picking him up, shaking his tree a little.”

  Luke pointed at him. “Good idea.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Ed said. “I’m full of good ideas.”

  Luke called Trudy as soon as they were on the ground.

  “If we can get a tail on the boyfriend, Jeff Zorn, I think we should do it.”

  There was a pause over the line. “The Wilmington PD talked to him for six hours,” Trudy said.

  “After we finish down here, Ed and I will bring him in for an hour, maybe two. I don’t think we’ll need any more than that.”

  “It’s official FBI business now,” Trudy said. “And he’s not a convicted felon out on parole like Louis Clare. You can’t treat him the same way.”

  “That’s fine,” Luke said. “We’ll be gentle. I just want someone to keep an eye on him until we get back up there. See what he does, see where he goes, see who else is around when he gets there.”

  “All right,” Trudy said. “I’ll talk to Don.”

  Now, Luke gazed out at the glowing night. If anything, the crowds had gotten even thicker in the last ten minutes. The lights seemed to put a haze around everything.

  A large man walked up the street. He was tall, nearly Ed’s height, big shoulders, wearing a well-tailored sports jacket and slacks. He had dark hair closely cropped, and a three-day growth of beard and mustache. He seemed very fit, like a guy who had just given up playing tight end for a professional football team. His eyes were sharp, like an eagle’s eyes, and dark.

  He came right up to them as if he had them memorized.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I’m Special Agent Bowles.”

  Ed reached out to shake the man’s hand. “Ed Newsam. You’re our partner from the Bureau proper, eh?”

  “Call me Henry,” the man said as he shook Ed’s hand. “Partner’s a little strong, I think. I prefer the term babysitter.”

  Luke smiled. Just what they needed, a wiseass. He shook the man’s hand. “Luke Stone. I guess I was expecting someone a little… older.”

  Henry Bowles shook his head. “Your reputation precedes you. Both of you. And to be honest, I’m the only one who would take this job. Guys with seniority in the Bureau don’t like to stay out all night.”

  The three men stood in a rough triangle as the crowds passed around them. Luke and Ed eyed each other.

  “And they don’t like it when things get messy.”

  “How about you?” Ed said. “Do you like it?”

  Bowles smiled. “I try not to let it come to that point.”

  There was a silence.

  “Well… are you ready to say hello to our friend the human trafficker, Felix Cienfuegos?”

  * * *

  “You understand this guy is dangerous, right?”

  Luke was talking to Bowles. They were sitting in a sedan half a block from the house. Until a moment ago, Bowles had been intending to walk up the front path and ring the doorbell.

  Bowles was still wearing his jacket and slacks. Certainly, he must have his service gun on him. Ed and Luke were suited up with Kevlar, helmets, visors, batons, shotguns, flashbangs, and Tasers. Luke also had a Glock 17 pistol. Ed had a Heckler and Koch MP5 strapped across his chest. He had loaded thirty-round magazines for the gun, stuffed in various pockets. They had brought all this stuff on the plane with them. They were ready to go in hot. Luke didn’t really see another way.

  “This isn’t a tumultuous entry,” Bowles said. “We have tactical teams for things like that. There are only just the three of us.”

  Ed shook his head. “Three of us who are going to get our asses blown off if we just stop by and say hello.”

  Bowles shrugged. “We don’t know if Cienfuegos lives here,” he said. “We don’t know if he’s even in the country. We don’t have accurate data about who lives here. We don’t have a warrant for his arrest, or for anyone’s arrest. We don’t have evidence that
anyone in that house committed a crime. We’re gathering information about a crime that took place eight hundred miles from here. We’re stopping by this house because a man on a video who rented a van might bear a passing resemblance to a person described by a convicted felon. The felon described this person during an interrogation which, if conducted by a different government, we might refer to as torture.”

  He was talking about the Louis Clare interview. Of course. The South Carolina cops had brought Clare in, and he had complained that someone worked him over a little bit. Bowles was privy to this fact. Bowles probably knew everything, not just about this case, but about Luke and Ed in general.

  “We did nothing to hurt that man,” Ed said.

  Luke didn’t say anything.

  “Mock executions count as torture,” Bowles said.

  Ed shook his head. “Didn’t happen.”

  “It was an extrajudicial arrest, by federal officers who invaded the interviewee’s home, bagged and disoriented him, locked him in the trunk of a car, took him to an isolated location, dangled him above live alligators, threatened him with a silenced gun, left him tied to a chair for hours, explicitly and repeatedly threatened to murder him, slapped him, banged his head on the floor, choked him, and refused to identify themselves the entire time. What does that sound like to you?”

  Ed looked at Luke.

  Luke shrugged. “We let him smoke cigarettes. Considering the circumstances, I thought that was—”

  “I read the report,” Bowles said. “Let’s leave the KGB stuff in the old Soviet Union where it belongs, shall we?”

  “The guy is a human trafficker,” Ed muttered under his breath.

  “Former human trafficker,” Bowles said. “Who has rights.”

  Ed sneered at Bowles. “That former human trafficker, who has rights, like the right to remain silent I suppose, told us the location of a warehouse where three dead children were found. If he had remained silent, he wouldn’t have told us about that and those kids would still…”

  Bowles shrugged. “Those kids were there a long time. They’re dead. They aren’t any less dead because you found them.”

  “All right,” Luke said. He raised a hand. “Okay? Enough.”

  This guy was about as straight-laced and matter-of-fact and by-the-book as they came. This was who the FBI wanted looking over the SRT’s shoulders? Okay. But there was going to have to be an accommodation to reality somewhere. Ed was passionate. Ed was big hearted. Ed would shred the rulebook to save lives, or even just to bring a dead child home. If they couldn’t live with that, this wasn’t going to work.

  “Let’s do this,” Luke said. “At the very least, let me and Ed knock on the door. We’ll do the good cop, bad cop.”

  Bowles shook his head. “We’re not here to play games.”

  “It’s just that I’d feel bad if you walked up there and got killed,” Luke said. “I’m starting to take a shine to you.”

  Bowles gave a half smile. “Knock away. I’ll hang back. When they open, I’ll follow you in to question whoever we find. I happen to be fluent in Spanish.”

  “Sounds fair,” Luke said. He looked at Ed. “You ready?”

  “Born ready,” Ed said.

  Ed and Luke left the car and walked up to the house. They moved slowly, Luke soaking it in as they moved.

  It was a typical Florida house, a low-slung one story place, maybe a little larger than most. There were palm trees on the property, and thick bushes. There were two cars in the driveway, a blue BMW and a black Acura. Both of the cars had small dents and scuffs. They were not new off the showroom floor. Behind the drawn blinds in one room of the house, there were flashes of light suggesting a large TV was on.

  Luke and Ed went up onto the small stone front porch of the house. It was under a hard plastic awning.

  Bowles was back behind them somewhere. It was a good place for him.

  Luke knocked on the door, then stepped briskly to the left. Ed stepped to the right. Luke half expected a ten-year-old boy to answer, say his uncle wasn’t home. Something along those lines. Even so, they were flanking the door now, on either side of it. It wasn’t a good way to be if someone checked the peephole. But it was a good way to be in case someone came out. They’d have the jump on him.

  It was also a good way to be in case…

  BOOOM.

  A gun blast ripped a wide hole through the wooden door. The hole was at chest and head level. It shredded the door like poorly made Swiss cheese—too much hole, not enough cheese. A shotgun did that. It would stop a large deer, or a large man.

  Instantly, Luke had one of the M84 stun grenades in his hand. He pulled the pin, let the spoon go, and tossed the grenade deep into the hole where the door had just been. He covered his ears, jamming a finger into each earhole. He closed his eyes and turned away.

  “Watch it!” he shouted. “Fire in the—”

  BANG!

  Inside the house, the ear-piercing sound came, with a blinding flash of light.

  Half a second later, Ed jumped into the breach. He did not hesitate at all. He stepped in front of the door and stuck the snout of his MP5 through the hole.

  DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.

  The sound was loud. LOUD.

  “Got him,” he said. “Got the shooter.”

  He raised one giant foot and delivered a monster kick to what remained of the door. The hinges held. The lock held. The door itself came apart. He kicked it again. Now the hole was huge, gaping. He turned sideways, put his shoulder to the shards of wood, and bulled his way through it.

  Luke, pistol out now, was one second behind him. He stepped through into the living room. The TV was playing. It took up one entire wall. A Mexican variety show was on, complete with crazed, balding, late-middle-aged male host, and the young female dancers in tight gowns, shaking their ample bodies everywhere.

  A dead man lay on his side on the dirty gray carpet. The carpet might have been white once. The man’s body was twisted, his arms splayed out above him. A pump shotgun lay on the floor behind him. The carpet near his head was red. The pool of blood was spreading like a halo.

  Ed moved up the hallway, Luke three steps behind him. Another man popped out of a room to their right. He had a gun, something big. Luke barely had time to see it. Ed opened up with his MP5.

  DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.

  The man’s head snapped back, his body jerked, and he went straight down.

  Ed was a killing machine.

  Now they moved through the house, one room at a time, closets. The place was barely decorated or furnished. There were narrow beds or mattresses in the bedrooms, piles of clothes on the floor, more clothes hanging in the closets. A few toiletry items in the bathroom. Cologne. Hair style goop.

  Like every drug and safe house before it, the place was spare, utilitarian. These people were all business, and didn’t bother much with personal effects.

  Luke and Ed stepped over the corpse on their way back down the hall. They came into the living room. The TV was a riot of colors and images, but the sound was all the way down. The first body lay on the living room floor, the rug becoming saturated with blood beneath it.

  They had entered the place maybe two minutes ago.

  “That was it?” Ed said. “Are either of these guys…”

  Luke put his hand up. STOP. He listened. He thought he heard a sound in the kitchen. He crept in there, light on his feet like a cat. There was a dingy white pantry door, which almost seemed to be trembling.

  Luke stepped to the side of it and whipped it open.

  A man was there. He was dark, short, with black hair. The man was young, barely more than a kid. His eyes said this was not what he wanted. He hadn’t signed up for sudden gunfights. But he did have a gun in his hand.

  Luke put his own gun to the man’s temple.

  “Policia. Drop it.”

  The man dropped the gun.

  “Tirate al suelo! On the floor. NOW!”

  Hands raised, the man c
ame out of the pantry and slowly went to the peeling linoleum floor. Luke pulled the man’s wrists back, took a zip tie from the loop of them on his own belt, and cuffed him. The guy gave him no resistance.

  “You speak English?”

  “Sí. Un poco. Little.”

  “Is there anyone else in the house?”

  The man shook his head. “No. Tres hombres. Three men. No más.”

  “Felix Ramirez Cienfuegos,” Luke said.

  The guy turned his head a little, as if to get a better look at the person asking him dumb questions. He gestured with his head across the living room at the man with the shotgun, the dead man who had blown away the front door and gotten cut down by Ed a second later.

  “There.”

  “That’s Cienfuegos?”

  “Sí. It’s him.”

  Luke and Ed looked at each other. The primary person of interest was dead. They had killed him. Actually, Ed had killed him.

  “I threw the flashbang to stun the guy,” Luke said.

  Ed shook his head. “No. No way. He fired on us.”

  “The kid in Newark nearly killed you. You didn’t shoot him.”

  “Different circumstances.”

  Luke nodded. “We didn’t need information from that kid.”

  Ed shrugged. “Let it go, man.”

  Okay. Okay, Luke would let it go. But he tucked it away in the back of his mind. It was something to think about, not now, but soon. He looked at the guy on the floor.

  “Ortiz?” he said. “El Tigre?”

  The young man looked at him strangely now. Luke could almost read his eyes. They know about El Tigre. El Tigre was a phantom, a legend, a ghost. You had to be careful answering questions about someone like that.

  “Se fue,” the guy said.

  He left.

  “He no live here now.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Jupiter, maybe.” The way he said it, the word sounded like Yoopiter. “I don’t know.”

  Ed moved toward the dead man on the floor, the one who was supposedly Cienfuegos. Luke got up, went over, and converged on the dead man from a different angle. The man was sideways, nearly face down, and Ed toed him to turn him over just a tiny bit. Ed had shot him the face several times. The man’s head was half demolished, stove in like someone strong had taken a steel pipe to it.