The Devil You Don't Know (American Praetorians Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  She nodded. “This is Mr. Patric,” she said, using one of my aliases for this operation, “and this is Mr. Fonseca. Mr. Patric is the team leader for the organization I told you about.”

  I held out my hand, and Alvarado shook it, studying me carefully. I returned the scrutiny. “So, Angel,” I said, “I’ve got to ask you the same question. Do you have actual information I can use, or are you just wasting our time?” I can be a blunt, forward bastard, too. Mia shot me a look, but I ignored it. He’d wanted to talk to the hitters, so I was affording him the chance.

  “Of course I have the information,” he said indignantly. “Have I not been punished for asking why the government will not act on it? The police have known for years about Olivarez’ activities, but they keep saying that, ‘Oh, there is not enough proof, she cannot be touched,’ or some bullshit like that.”

  I could tell he was starting to work up a head of steam, and decided to head him off. “Your indignation tells me nothing new, Angel. Clara has filled me in on all of that. I need the information you have on Olivarez. If you don’t have it, then our business is done.” Clara was Mia’s alias at the moment.

  He looked a little pissed; he must have been rehearsing his butthurt speech about the bullshit from above for hours. On the other hand, my directness might have been enough to convince him we meant business.

  “How do I know you are really who she says you are?” he asked. So much for convincing him we were serious. His paranoia was too deeply entrenched. First we had to convince him we weren’t a blind from the Honduran government out to trap him. Fuck.

  I leaned over the table toward him. I was done playing this game. Mia was giving me the evil eye, but fuck it, I wasn’t a case officer or a HUMINTer. I was a snooper and a door-kicker, and I was out of patience. This little fucking weasel had been stringing her along for days. It was time to change the approach, so I changed it. “You’ve got two choices right now, Angel. Produce the information, or go back to your basement and blog bitterly about how the government’s ignored you. Shit or get off the pot.” I stabbed a finger onto the table top. “Information, now, or this meeting is over.”

  He hesitated, and I put both hands on the table as if I was going to stand up and leave. Mia was struggling to keep a straight face over her anger and disappointment that I was about to throw out a week’s worth of hard work. Raoul just watched, leaning back in his chair with his eyes hooded.

  “Here,” Angel said, before I actually got my ass off the chair. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a thumb drive. “It’s all here. There’s a full dossier, a list of crimes she’s connected with, every house I’ve found that she stays in. She’s usually in the one in Cuyamel; she owns that town.” That fit with what we’d gotten from Reyes and what little else Renton’s people had scraped up. “There are also several email addresses she uses, as well as five cell phones. She has used those for the last three years without changing them; she is very confident.”

  I took the drive. If he was telling the truth, we had her. Even if the rest of the information was outdated or bogus, if those emails and cell phones were good, between Renton’s people and Derek, who was our team computer nerd, we’d get her pinned down. Granted, I didn’t think she’d be as easy a mark for interrogation as Reyes had been; her photos were of one hard bitch. She’d be tougher than the insulated industrialist.

  “Thank you, Angel,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mia had slumped a little, though she still was throwing me irritated little side glances. Raoul hadn’t moved a muscle or said a word. “So, what’s for dinner?”

  “Remind me never to bring you along on a meet with a source again,” Mia said. She was still mad.

  “It got the job done, didn’t it?” I said, watching the city go by outside the window. “Otherwise we’d either still be there listening to him rant and trying to convince him we’re legit, or we’d be waiting around another week for another meeting.”

  “And if you’d been wrong?” she demanded, as she stomped on the brake to avoid slamming into the Jeep that had pulled out in front of us. There weren’t any stop signs in Tegucigalpa, so the traffic was about as chaotic as Iraq. “We’d be back to square one.”

  “We were at square one as it was,” I replied. “How long were you working on him?”

  “Not long. Just under a week.” She swerved to avoid another car that had jumped out into traffic, missing our front bumper by inches. “That’s how this works; it takes time to build rapport and trust with the source.”

  “And had he changed his tune at all over that week?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. I looked over at her and she was staring over the steering wheel, tight-lipped. “No,” she finally answered.

  “There we go. It may have been a risk, but it paid off. Don’t worry; I’m not planning on turning spook anytime soon. That’s what I’ve got guys like Raoul for.”

  A week later, we were finally closing in on Olivarez.

  It hadn’t been hard; in addition to the location we’d gotten from Angel, which pinpointed Olivarez’ house as the big one backed up to the Rio Cuyamel, the emails and cell phones had been a goldmine. She had no worries about information security at all. She was comfortable enough in her little niche, doing business with Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel at will, and owning what sounded like it could be half the police forces in northern Honduras. Of course, she probably thought that having five cell phones and six email addresses would set hunters off the scent.

  Derek had actually cackled at that notion.

  I tapped Ben on the shoulder. It was 0305. We were crouched in the bushes on the southwest side of the Rio Cuyamel. Olivarez’ house was only about two hundred meters away. Without a sound, aside from the faint but unavoidable rustle of the thick vegetation, hopefully masked by the noise of the river, Ben got up and led out.

  Jim’s concerns about piranhas in the Rio Cuyamel had proven to be baseless. The river was barely knee-deep at its deepest, and where we were crossing it was only about ankle-deep. The real risk, made evident when Ben suddenly wobbled and almost fell, was the unsure footing on the rocky bottom. We’d have to take it slow, which meant crossing one small element at a time, while the rest of the team covered them from the thickly vegetated bank.

  Ben and I splashed across, trying to stay quiet, but the rocky, uneven river bottom was no more conducive to stealth than the bushes we’d been hiding in had been. Rocks turned underfoot or boots slid on the slime and algae that clung to them. Meanwhile, the current was tugging at our ankles, taxing our balance even more. We weren’t heavily loaded, but we were kitted up for a raid, so we were still a little top-heavy. I almost ate shit in the river at least three times in the less than thirty meters it took to cross, and practically fell onto the far bank. Ben hadn’t done much better, though his dismount onto the bank was a little more graceful than mine. Back on dry land, we split up and got down, weapons pointed toward the house.

  Eddie’s team had crossed further north, and was working their way down the bank to get into position to throw a cordon around the house. I couldn’t see any of them yet, but I could see the house; the lights were shining through the trees. Even with the thermal attachments on my PVS-15s, though, I couldn’t see any guards.

  Two by two, the rest of the team crossed and joined us in an increasingly tight circle on the far side of the river. When we were all up, I broke squelch on my radio twice, to let Eddie know we were moving, got up, and started toward the house.

  The fence was easy enough to climb. The steel bars across the top provided a good stabilizing handhold as we went over the concrete brick columns between sections. The rest of the team could cover the grounds through the steel bars at the same time, removing one of the nastiest parts of climbing over a wall. Nobody had to hang out on top of the wall to cover the courtyard.

  The grounds were empty. There was no sign of any security at all, aside from a couple of cameras. If somebody was
watching those, we were already blown, but there was no sound of alarms, no guards rushing out to intercept us. The lights were all on in the windows, but the place was dead quiet. The hackles started going up on the back of my neck.

  While I was still waiting for the rest of the team to get over the fence, I heard a whisper in my earpiece. “Team Geek is in position. No movement.” I broke squelch twice more to acknowledge.

  Once we were set, we got up and moved quickly toward the house. A brief pause at the back door, then it was flying inward with a splintery bang in front of Little Bob’s soggy boot, and we were flowing inside.

  It took less than five minutes to clear the whole house. It was empty. “Dry hole, dry hole,” I sent over the radio, though I was looking around curiously as I said it. Something definitely wasn’t right.

  The front door was shut, but the jamb was splintered, as if it had been breached the same way we’d gone in the back. Some of the furniture was noticeably out of position, and a couple of chairs looked like they were a little the worse for wear.

  The more we looked, the more it looked like someone had beaten us to the punch. There were bullet holes in a couple of walls, and a few brass casings kicked into corners. Two of the rooms had what looked a lot like bloodstains on the floors. “What the fuck?” Jim muttered.

  “Jeff? Jim?” Ben called. “You guys might want to take a look at this.”

  He was in the kitchen. When we came in, he was holding a piece of paper. He held it out. “This was on the counter.”

  It was a note. It was brief, and unsigned. It simply said, “Gentlemen, I have your target. She is alive and in reasonably good health. Meet me at La Trona in Panama City. We need to talk.”

  Chapter 18

  The La Trona restaurant was not my usual sort of place.

  First of all, it was in the middle of downtown Panama City. Panama City is not a violence-wracked Third World shithole. It’s a First World shithole of steel, concrete and glass. I was feeling closed-in and vulnerable as soon as we hit town. I kept trying to watch every window and balcony as we went past. Going into big cities after extensive urban combat experience can be a bit uncomfortable. Especially if you’re a country boy like me in the first place.

  The interior of the restaurant made me feel even more out of place. La Trona was not meant for the hoi polloi. Everything just looked expensive, from the tile on the floors to the dark wood everywhere to the ibex heads on the walls. And that was just one room.

  There didn’t seem to be that coherent a style to the place. When Jim and I showed up, dressed in what I guess you could call business casual, pistols once again carefully concealed, only this time underneath sport coats instead of cover shirts, the steward showed us past several salons, each done up in a different motif. There was one that had all dark furniture and red curtains; that was the room with the ibex heads. Another had mirrored checkerboards on the walls, and was centered on a gold-lit bar. Yet another one, the most garish yet, opened up on an outdoor terrace and had huge neo-classical paintings covering the other three walls. The chairs in there were gilt and cushioned in deep blue.

  The steward ushered us into a final salon. This one was smaller, with only one large table in the center, black chairs drawn up around it, and a chandelier hanging overhead. The walls were red brick and dark wood. One entire wall was an enormous wine rack, while the wet bar took up a good chunk of the far wall.

  I took in the room at a glance. My focus zoomed in on the only other man there.

  He wasn’t remarkable looking; he was short, his hair cropped close to his head and slightly receding. At a guess, he could be anywhere between forty and sixty. He wore glasses, and was dressed well, in a white shirt and black vest. When he stood up to greet us with a smile, I saw his suit coat draped over the back of his chair.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, coming around the table to offer his hand, “I’m so glad you could make it. Please, have a seat. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a few appetizers; I hope you won’t mind. I don’t suppose I could talk you into having a drink with me, under the circumstances, but at least you can still eat. You simply have to try the pistachio-crusted salmon, it is simply superb.”

  For all his cheerful demeanor and round-faced, non-threatening looks, his handshake was hard and firm, and there was something about his eyes that belied his rich yuppie act. He was examining us as thoroughly as we were sizing him up, and cataloging every bit of information he could glean from our appearance, our demeanor, and our reactions. This man was sharp, and I suspected, given that he was apparently the man we were here to see, extremely dangerous. He’d snatched Olivarez right under our noses, after all.

  “Your invitation was…compelling,” I said, “Mr…”

  He sat down and smiled again, taking his napkin off the table and spreading it over his lap. I briefly imagined that he had something else under it, but why go to this kind of trouble just to try to off two contractors in a very public place? “I’m usually known these days simply as ‘The Broker,’” he said, “but you can call me ‘Mr. Gray,’ if that rolls off the tongue more easily. I assume you are presently calling yourselves Mr. Patric and Mr. Scott.” He smiled widely at my raised eyebrow. “You and I both know just how dangerous it can be to throw around real names indiscriminately, so let’s just leave it at that for now.”

  Scanning the menu showed me a lot of options that I wasn’t familiar with. In most cases, the most intelligible part was the price tag, which was considerable. Like I said, this wasn’t my sort of place. I had the briefest thought that maybe we should have brought Mia along. She probably would have been able to tell me what half this stuff was. I shook off the thought. When the steward finally came back, I went ahead and took “Mr. Gray’s” recommendation and ordered the salmon, trying not to wince at the cost. I’d twist Renton’s arm to reimburse me later.

  “You said we needed to talk,” I ventured, once the steward had taken our orders and left. Mr. Gray raised a hand to stop me.

  “Now, this isn’t the time or the place to handle such business, Mr. Patric,” he said. “Enjoy your dinner. We can discuss other things until then. This is just the ‘making contact’ part. You should understand the need for patience in such things.” He looked me in the eye as he said it. The guy was giving the impression that he knew way, way more than I was comfortable with. He lifted his wine glass and took a sip. “So,” he said, as if nothing else had been mentioned, “is it your first time in Panama?”

  The meal went entirely too long, or at least it seemed that way. Mr. Gray went on at some length about the food scene in Panama City, certain places we simply had to see, and some local history. When I surreptitiously checked my watch as we were finally getting up to leave, I realized that we hadn’t actually been sitting there that long; it just felt that way.

  He led the way back downstairs to the front entrance. “Did you gentlemen come in a taxi or a rental?” he asked.

  “Taxi,” I said.

  “Excellent, that will make this much simpler. You can ride with me.” He nodded to the short, wiry man in a suit with a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken a lot, who opened the doors to the large luxury BMW SUV waiting by the curb. “Let’s go. We can talk business when we get there. I know you’re itching to get down to it.”

  We got in the back, he got in the passenger seat, and the little man pulled us away from the curb. He wove through the chaotic press of traffic with consummate skill; he was either one of the best drivers I’d ever seen, or he was just really used to Panama City traffic. I’d thought that Tegucigalpa was bad, but Panama City presented the same level of chaos with about two or three times as many vehicles. It still took a good fifteen minutes to get from La Trona to the Terramar towers, only a couple of miles away.

  The little man dropped us off at the entrance, and Mr. Gray led the way through the lobby to the elevators. The only security appeared to be a very bored uniformed security guard behind a desk, who barely acknowledged ou
r presence as we went past. Apparently, Mr. Gray was a regular.

  None of us had said more than a few words since we’d left the restaurant. Gray seemed determined not to discuss Olivarez or anything related until we got where we were going, and our monosyllabic responses to his tour guide impression had gotten old. It didn’t seem to bother him in the least; he kept an open, friendly look on his face, even as his eyes took in every detail of his surroundings and everyone in them.

  We got in the elevator, and Gray punched the number for floor 38. The doors slid closed and we started the long ride up. Gray still didn’t say anything, and neither Jim nor I were feeling like volunteering anything, either.

  Finally, the doors opened and Gray led the way out into the hallway. He found the right door, knocked on it, then opened it and led us inside.

  The apartment was fairly spacious, with the living room dominated by floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors opening onto a balcony. Everything was white or beige, from the tile floor to the walls to the furniture. But the surroundings rather quickly became irrelevant as Gray led us into the living room and sat down in an armchair against the wall, smiling up at us.

  Serena Olivarez was zip-tied to a white-painted metal kitchen chair, her mouth sealed with duct tape, her back to the balcony. Two hard-eyed men in dark suits were lurking near the back of the apartment, noticeably watching her instead of us. Both were Anglos; we sized each other up and I got the same vibe off of them that I’m sure they got off of us. “Professional soldier, American, probably used to be infantry or SOF.”

  Gray waved us toward the couch across the room from him. “Please, gentlemen, have a seat.” As we took him up on his offer, he pointed to Olivarez. “Since you were fairly eager to see her, there is Señora Olivarez. You’re welcome to her, though she won’t do you much of any good.”