by Tom Fugate
Out of habit I listened a moment longer to see if there was another click that might signify a wire tap. That bit of tradecraft was not really necessary on a secure line but you do the routine stuff every time so that you will be doing it when it does matter. I had been there done that and damn near got killed even with the warning the click gave me. Gathering up the roll of output from the fax I began to cut it into page sized pieces. These went into a folder and we started to the car. Jacob drove and I read the fax pages. As I read the material I realized that Simmons was smart but not nearly as smart as he thought he was. The things that he had done to hide money and cover his tracks were good as long as no one suspected you of anything. He had kept his personal accounts clean with only legitimate money in them. The ways that he had moved and tried to hide the other money would stand a casual examination, but if anyone with any forensic accounting ability got on the scent it was over. Now it was over! Jacob and I took my car back to Collier County. I drove because I needed to go fast.
Chapter 34
We wheeled into the parking lot at the Sheriff’s office and parked in the nearest empty slot. It was marked police only and someone started to say something and then remembered us. It was the young deputy who had said something to us before. We both kept our sunglasses on. It just seemed in keeping with the Federal agent thing. You never get to see the eyes of the G-men in the movies. We walked up to the office at the front desk. He was the same one who had been there on our previous visit.
“How can I help you today gentlemen?” His accent was pure back country native Floridian.
“We need the use of an interrogation room,” I told him.
“Do you have a prisoner that you need assistance with?”
I grinned, “Not yet. We also need to speak with your Chief of Detectives. I believe his name in Kevin Simmons.”
“Really?” He grinned as realization dawned on him. He turned and motioned to another deputy sitting at a desk behind him. “Sam can you take the desk for a while I need to help these gentlemen?” The other officer nodded and started for the desk. The desk officer, whose name tag said Blackburn, stepped from behind the desk and motioned for us to follow. “We will go and get Simmons first.” His look was a smug ‘I knew it’.
“You don’t like him do you?” Jacob asked the question that was also in my head.
“Sir, he is an asshole. He is the kind of cop that gives all of us a bad name. I don’t know how he got the job, but I have never trusted him. I have to see the look on his face when he gets taken to an interrogation room as a suspect.”
“How do you know he is a suspect in anything?” I was being a smart ass.
“When Feds from two agencies want an interrogation room, don’t have a prisoner and ask to speak with a cop it’s not rocket science to figure out the situation. Does the Sheriff know yet?”
“No he does not. Someone is going to drop by and see him very soon, someone he knows and who is high enough up the food chain that the sheriff won’t say a word. We also have warrants on the way. The stack of them should weigh several pounds.”
“How do you gentlemen want to handle this?” His grin was deliciously vicious. Obviously he really disliked this guy.
“Jacob you go to the interrogation room and I will accompany Deputy Nelson. I think you waiting on him in the room will be ever so much fun.” I knew that Simmons was white and probably enough of an asshole to grate at the thought of a black man asking him anything much less interrogating him.
Nelson was nodding his head with enthusiasm, “He is going to hate that. He doesn’t even like his coffee black.”
“If that is the case this should be fun.” Jacob was licking his chops at the thought.
“Use room three,” Nelson pointed down a hall to the left as we passed it. Jacob went down the hall as we walked on.
Nelson got to the door that was marked “Chief of Detectives” and started to knock. I shook my head at him. He braced himself and went straight into the room. I was a couple of steps behind him when we walked through the door. The pager on my belt vibrated and the display showed all sevens. Yuri had met the man.
“What in the hell do you think you are doing Nelson? You know better than to barge in here and who the hell is he?” He was almost yelling and he pointed at me.
“I am the man who is here to ask you to go to interrogation room three. Oh, by the way you are going to that room if I have to drag your unconscious body there. I was the guy standing beside Fred when he got shot.” The blood drained from his face. He actually reached for a gun but I was expecting that and had a big .45 pointed at his head. The hole in the end of the barrel probably looked about a foot across from that vantage point. “You dead means that you can’t answer questions but aside from the paper work for having shot you I can live with that. Not having you around to question would be an inconvenience, but again I can live with that.” He fell in on himself like a deflating balloon. “Stand up and put your hands flat on the desk. Officer, would you cuff the suspect?”
“Happy to sir,” Nelson said as he stepped behind Simmons and cuffed first one hand and then the other behind his back. We perp walked him down to the interrogation room. The only things missing were the orange jumpsuit and TV crews. We got him into the room and Nelson undid the cuffs.
“Have a seat,” Jacob said as he smiled at Simmons.
“I want a lawyer,” Simmons said. He had recovered enough to try some bluster. “I know my rights.”
I stepped around to Jacob and showed him the pager display. His grin grew even wider and he said, “Yes, you do have rights but not right now. You are going to be arrested for bribery, malfeasance, conspiracy, conspiracy to commit murder, smuggling, capital murder, tax evasion and the big one, Treason. We can throw you in a really deep hole for a while on that one. We have enough evidence that Clarence Darrow would not take your case except to take a plea deal.”
“I didn’t kill anyone. Treason?”
“You are responsible for an operation that failed and resulted in several deaths. You also consorted with a known Soviet agent. In fact even being in the location where the Soviet agent was is a felony. Cuba is off limits. White boy, life as you know it has ended.” The angry black man at the end was a nice touch from Jacob.
“I, I want a lawyer.” He was almost stuttering.
Jacob laughed at him, “Eventually you will get a lawyer, but first let me explain the facts of life to you. We want Melvin Robertson. You will cooperate with everyone who asks you a question. Failure to do so will be very bad for you.”
“I want a deal first.”
“Jacob, the man has no comprehension of what shit he is in and just how deep it is does he?” Jacob chuckled and shook his head. “You have no earthly idea of who we are.”
“The two of us could shoot you full of holes and your death would be ruled natural causes. Of course I guess death from stupidity is a natural cause.” I looked at Jacob and he nodded his head. “We are spooks. No offense Jacob.” I said the last words as Iturned to look at my partner. I was about to go on a roll and the joke would confuse Simmons.
“None taken.” He said through a broad grin. I turned back to Simmons.
“We do not exist. We can make you disappear. We can probably make it as if you never existed. You cooperate and you live. I will let you think about the alternative. I only want you to answer one question for me. Do you know where to find Melvin Robertson right now?” He did not speak an answer he only shook his head. I opened the door and asked the deputy to come back in. “Process this suspect and place him into a holding cell. Put him on suicide watch.” He walked the suddenly much older man out of the room.
“If I knew where he was I would tell you.” Simmons had paused and turned his head back to us. He sounded small and beaten.
When Jacob and I went into the hallway a certain silver haired gentleman was coming out of the observation room that looked into the interrogation room through a two way mirror. The General ha
d his arm around the shoulder of a man in his late thirties or early forties. I think I heard something comforting coming from General Fleming. He saw me and turned his head to look me square in the eye and then he just gave me a nod. No smile no words just a short motion of his head. The man could pass along more information with a simple movement than most politicians can with a two hour speech. I had just been told good job, atta boy, keep up the good work and probably some things that I had missed. General Fleming walked the sheriff back to his office. There was something nagging at me that there was more to his Florida trip than schmoozing the sheriff, even if he did know the man. Maybe our Russian friend was involved in some way. As I thought about it I was pretty sure that Yuri being the reason for the trip was a better than even money bet.
The man was smart enough to cooperate with a lot of different people. He did disappear but it was into witness protection. He was actually serving jail time under a false identity. The information he gave us on Robertson and his organization was useful in helping us to track the fugitive. The problem was that even with knowing places he might hide and where he had assets it took several months to find our quarry. Still it made me feel good to have taken down a man who had tried to have another cop killed. It felt even better to put away someone who almost got me killed.
Simmons turned out to be a gold mine. He had collected information on Robertson and his operation as if he was investigating them. I think he was trying to collect enough information to get him a get out of jail free card. He did not get the card but his help in rolling up the network that had been built up did get him solitary at a less than maximum security. Solitary was good for him since it gave him lots of time to think and kept him away from the prison dating scene.
The end of the matter
At about 8 o’clock, I had just looked at my watch for about the thousandth time, he came into the Freeport casino. Robertson had two men with him and they did not look like peers of his. They looked like hired help. They were stereotypical goons, muscle hired to be as bodyguards. They looked scary and were probably capable enough. If they were working for him they either were desperate for money or had no scruples, probably a bit of both. Drug kingpins tend to pay very well to those willing to forget everything their momma ever taught them about right and wrong. The goons did not worry me. The aura they projected was of men grown too used to being scary as their main weapon. Their reaction would be a fraction of a second slower than a determined adversary intent on serious mayhem and there were three men like that inside the casino and a few more outside.
The bodyguards were not targeted for death, but if they were stupid enough to fight pain was their reward. A man named Bolan once told me that if you were fighting fair you were losing. I later heard a quote from Colonel Jeff Cooper, one of the deans of modern combat pistol craft, he said: “If you are in a fair fight your tactics suck.” I think those two may have known each other or had some of the same teachers.
We had called in a lot of favors to have a chance at him before official action was taken. I guess that a lot of people also thought that we had earned the right to try first. Even some of the official channels wanted us to succeed. A successful snatch and grab takes much less time and paperwork than extradition from a possibly corrupt legal system outside of the United States.
We were planning on spooking him and making the snatch outside. Spooking him would be easy; I was going to walk up to him. He probably thought that I was dead or at least seriously wounded but he did know that I was bad news for him and he would recognize me. As far as I knew that cover identity was still intact with most of the people involved. Robertson, that bastard, had shot me at almost point blank range with a .357 revolver. My shirt had burned from the powder. Truth was that if not for my own and more specifically the paranoia of my favorite retired Army Sergeant-Major I probably would be dead.
My approach would have to be carefully done so that I could have some sort of control over the exit he used. I had other warm bodies outside to help corral him. Most of the outside team was people who had worked with us before, but several of them were friends of Father Garcia and a few were officers who were friends of Jenkins. Fred Jenkins was the officer who almost lost his leg. This was a case where the letter of the law and procedures were detrimental to getting justice. We were going for the spirit and intent of the law. Maybe it was a bit vigilante but it would work. We had missed him by mere minutes in Cuba. We were not going to miss him this time.
None of our team, except for John, was an employee of the GIA, the agency that I work for, but I knew several of them. Jacob was like my friend and pilot Hank, a contract employee who worked for no specific agency. Special and Clandestine Operations was still a small world then. Plus I had also done undercover work with some police agencies. Jacob had been working this operation since I got the boat. With any luck things would go down smoothly. However, no combat plan survives first contact with the enemy, which is one of Murphy’s Laws of Combat. Clandestine operations are like comedy and romance, timing is everything. We had a couple of cars waiting to get us to the boat for egress from the Bahamas, hopefully with Robertson hogtied for the trip. I knew that my people on the outside had spotted him and would be moving into positions near the doors. The plan was to flush him out of one specific door, but you never know with Mr. Murphy.
The crowd was filtering in. This casino was mostly tourists who were staying on the island. Many of them were staying in the timeshares that had begun to spring up in vacation spots in the 80’s. I was trying hard to be just part of the background of the room, trying to be almost invisible. I had not been this nervous on an operation since a spring trip to Paris the year before. Of course I had been even more nervous on a trip into Libya, the one where Jacob and I had met. Being part of the background is a skill that can be honed but not really be taught. You can either disappear into the background like an extra on the street in a movie or you can’t. I was usually very good at not being noticed, but something went wrong this time. Maybe I was too keyed up or maybe Robertson was just too paranoid on this occasion. Whatever the cause was, he spotted me or maybe something else had spooked him and he was on the run. I could only hope that someone from my small crew was covering the exit he chose. We were not using any kind of communications gear. Casinos frown on two-way radios on their premises unless they are the ones with them.
Jacob, John and I headed for an exit, the one nearest our transportation at the fastest pace that would not draw attention inside the casino and even then we got some odd looks. Three men moving quickly and purposefully tends to draw eyeballs in their direction. Our guys outside did have radios and one of the Miami cops was at our car.
“They dragged a cabbie out of his cab and took off. No one could get there in time to intervene. One of the guys talked to the driver who brought them here right after they arrived and found out which marina their boat is in. It’s not where your boat is.” He looked frustrated but continued, “I figured that someone should head to that location to watch in case anything went wrong. He should have been there before they got back unless they broke some speed records. He is going to radio us when he knows which boat and what direction they are headed. I already told him that things went south here.” We were all getting into the car as he finished speaking. He made pretty good time to my boat considering he was driving on the left hand side of the road.
“Here you might need this,” he said as he handed me the radio. “Will should call in as soon as he knows which boat and what direction. That marina is on the same side of the island as this one, but a few miles east.”
“Take care of the marina manager. We have to leave in a hurry,” I handed him a stack of bills. “Use the rest for drinks for the team. Don’t worry about saving any of it to help Jenkins out. I already have that covered courtesy of our friend Robertson.” I was practically running for the boat as I finished speaking. He waved at us.
“Good Hunting, get the son of a bitch.”
&nbs
p; I jumped into the big maroon offshore racer, put the key in the ignition and turned the big turbo charged diesel engines over. Jake and John took care of the lines mooring the boat to the slip. As they piled into the boat I reversed the props and backed the boat out. I handed the radio to John. Over the course of the last few months I had gotten very good at maneuvering boats. When the bow cleared the slip I returned the props to forward thrust and headed for the channel to the Atlantic. I had to keep the speed down to avoid drawing attention from the authorities and because the channel was not that big. The three crew stations had chairs but were also set up to be used standing. High speed over rough water could be absorbed better by flexible knees than chair padding. I was handling the throttles but John would take over that job as we got up to any real turn of speed. I could concentrate on guiding our pursuit and he would cut the throttles back if we left the water so that the engines would not over rev. Jake would watch the water ahead and help to keep an eye on the engine gauges. We had not needed to do anything like that on the trip over from the marina in West Palm Beach but now we were in full hell-bent-for-leather mode.
When I passed the last channel marker, the one that indicated we were past the reef I turned east and pushed the throttles forward. We were nowhere near top speed that would wait for deep water well past the coral reefs. The moon was rising into the sky as the sun was well down in the west. That moon was nowhere near full but the sky was cloudless and the moonlight would end up making our wake seem to glow. The two-way radio broke squelch and John held it up close to his head to listen. The engine noise was not deafening but it was loud. He said something into the radio which the wind and engine noise kept me from hearing.
“Will, says that Robertson got out of the channel and has headed west. Only one of the body guards got on the boat. Will said that the other man tried to argue with Melvin and got gut shot for his trouble. He will live, but he was carrying a gun in violation of Bahamian law and is probably going to spend time in jail. The boat is Neon Yellow. It should almost glow in this moonlight.” He put the radio into a pocket. We began to scan the water in front of us, straining to see our quarry. If we did not see him soon we would turn on the radar unit that this boat was equipped with.