by Ridge King
When he thought about it objectively, he wasn’t losing as much as some others.
Norwalk looked up and realized Slanetti hadn’t left.
“Was there anything else, Mr. President?”
Norwalk reached out for an apple and tossed it to Slanetti.
“Yeah. You might as well take an apple—they’re paid for.”
Chapter 2
RIPPED OFF
Vlad and Derek spent most of the trip back to Key West comparing the half empty bundles they recovered from the Mirta with the photos Vlad’s divers took the day before when the money was still in the narco-sub.
“You said you had $20 million on this sub,” Vlad said.
“That’s right,” said Derek. “Duarte was crewing on the sub as part of his undercover DEA assignment. When they dropped their load of coke off north of Big Pine Key—I think they use that empty shoreline along Bahia Honda State Park—they loaded up with our money.”
“Maybe they loaded up with someone else’s money, too.”
“Well, why not? We’re not the only ones who want to get bulk cash offshore.”
“Comparing these pictures with what we have here in the boat, it looks like there was at least $50 million in the sub, don’t you think?”
“That’s what it looks like to me,” said Derek.
“Tell me about Duarte again.”
“The Mirta sinks—why I don’t know—and Duarte is the only survivor, but of course he didn’t tell me he survived, he told Flores, and that’s when they got together to fuck me out of my money.”
“And the other people’s money, too,” Vlad added.
“Yeah.”
“Definitely the Sinaloa Cartel’s money, the extra on board.”
“It figures,” said Derek.
“And that’s when you and Howard Rothman came to me and Napoleon to give you men to follow these guys, Flores and Duarte.”
“Exactly.”
Kucherov got up and stretched, looking ahead as Key West loomed on the horizon, its white houses and hotels sparkling in a turquoise sea beneath puffy white clouds. They’d be in port within the half hour.
“It looks like somebody was watching us while we were watching Flores and Duarte. How else can you explain the money disappearing like that, overnight?”
“There is no explanation. But if Duarte was the only survivor, who else could’ve known about the money, as well as where it was located?”
“Somebody had to follow us, or follow them. They had to,” said Kucherov. “What was it Flores was going to do for you?”
“Before you shot him?” Derek said with a sneer.
Kucherov walked over to Derek and leaned down, his hands on his knees, so he was face to face with Derek.
“If you remind me one more time that I shot these asshole Cubans, I might just decide you should join them. That would sadden me because we’d never get to work together again.”
Derek stood up, just to get a little air between him and Kucherov.
“He was going to help some friends of mine get $25 million over to the Bahamas next week.”
“For how much?”
“A substantial fee, shall we say?”
“We can discuss that deal later.”
When they returned to port, Vlad climbed out of the fishing boat.
“The trip wasn’t a total loss,” he said to Derek.
“No, we ended up with maybe $400,000, give or take. Still, it’s not $20 million.”
“Or $50 million,” said Vlad.
“Yeah,” said Derek.
“Gregor, come here,” Vlad called out.
The hulking Gregor moved closer, his shaved head revealing his Cossack ancestry.
“Yes, Vlad?”
Vlad put a hand on Gregor’s shoulder.
“I want you to go to a store and find an RF detector, all right?”
“OK.”
“Bring it to the marina where we rented the Cigarette boat we used yesterday. We’re going there now.”
Gregor nodded and was off.
“What’s an RF detector?” asked Derek.
“It’s a ‘radio frequency’ detector. I have a hunch.”
An hour later, when they were all at the marina, Vlad talked to the boat owner and got permission to go down to the boat.
“Gregor, scan it.”
“It took less than a minute for Gregor to find what Vlad was looking for. It was attached under the gunwale far forward. Gregor pulled it off and handed it to Vlad.
“What’s that?” asked Derek.
“That, my friend, is a GPS-RT1,” said Vlad, turning it over in his hand, “a self-contained waterproof magnetic-mounted tracker that sends an updated location every five seconds to a satellite and reports this information to whoever installed the device.”
“So that’s how they knew where the sub was.”
“Not exactly. That’s how they knew where we were,” said Vlad.
“They knew we were going after the sub, following Flores and Duarte,” said Derek, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Yes, but these guys were not sitting in an office in Miami following our path. They had to be out on the water near the site at the same time we were because otherwise how could they have moved in so fast—and with the proper equipment—to get the money out of the sub and onto their boats?”
“That makes sense,” said Derek.
“We left the sub around noon. We didn’t have time to go back, bring out the fishing boats and haul the money up. They moved in when we came back to Key West. They had all afternoon, about six or seven hours of daylight, to do the work.”
“And we show up the next day bright and early,” said Derek.
“Yes,” said Vlad.
“And it’s all gone.”
“Exactly.”
“But who? Who could it be?” asked Derek.
“I don’t know,” said Vlad with a devilish smile, repetitively tossing the GPS device up in his hand and catching it again, “but when I find the motherfucker, I’m going to shoot him right between the eyes.”
Vlad smiled a cocky smile and turned to walk away.
“Something you really are good at,” Derek said under his breath when Vlad was out of earshot.
* * *
The steward in the Learjet 35 came over to Jack and Babe sitting side-by-side in the rear of the plane.
“We’re on final approach, Mr. St. Clair.”
“OK, thanks.”
“How much longer?” Babe moaned, half asleep, her beautiful head resting uncomfortably on Jack’s shoulder, her thick dark hair spread out behind her.
“Fifteen or twenty minutes,” said the steward.
“I’ll have another Bloody Mary then.”
“Oh, what the hell. Me, too,” said Jack. “Extra spicy.”
“Right you are,” the steward smiled, returning to the galley.
Jack looked at his cell phone.
“A text from Gargrave.”
“What about?” she asked.
“Rafael and Antonia rode out with him in the chopper to meet us.”
“Oh, great,” said Babe, rolling her eyes. “I’m surprised Raven isn’t there as well—with a shotgun.”
In fact, they’d talked of little else on the trip back from Washington but Rafael and Antonia. Ever since the girls’ older sister Raven had discovered Antonia was sleeping with Jack’s younger brother, there had been turmoil in the Fuentes family.
“How’s your mother handling all this?”
Babe laughed.
“She’s a former Federal judge, a big-time lawyer. She knows when to keep her mouth shut. What can she say? ‘Oh, little Antonia, you shouldn’t be sleeping with Rafael. Just because Raven is Jack’s ex-girlfriend and Jack is now sleeping with Babe, and Raven is sleeping with the captain of Rafael’s Coast Guard cutter, who hates Rafael’s guts, I think we’ve had just about all we can take from the St. Clair family, don’t you, sweetie?’ Is that what she’s supposed to say? W
hat can she say?”
“Yeah. Nothing, I guess.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. Nothing. Good luck to both of them. I hope they’re happy.”
“Well, me, too,” said Jack. “That’s what I say about life. It’s all about being happy.”
Jack felt a relief when the landing gear went down.
* * *
“I tell you, Derek, I’m not going to be happy till I look these guys in the face before I kill them,” Vlad said as he put a fraternal arm around Derek’s shoulder.
“And how do you think you’re going to be able to do that since you have no idea who these people are?”
“Is this the place you talked about?” Vlad nodded toward a food truck with a couple of umbrellas in front of it next to some shade trees on Greene Street.
“Yeah. Garbo’s Grill. You said you liked fish tacos. This is the place.”
Vlad got a couple of fish tacos and Derek got a Korean pork taco and a shrimp taco, lathering both of them with a spicy mustard sauce. They took their food to a bench under a tree and sat down.
“To answer your question, Derek, I don’t have to find these people. They will find us.”
Derek laughed, his mouth full of Korean pork.
“You think we’ll ever see these guys again?”
“I do,” said Vlad. Derek is so stupid sometimes I want to slap him across his pretty white face. “I think they’ll try to hit us when we move that money to the Bahamas.”
Derek sat up straight and looked at Vlad, his expression suddenly very serious.
“Why would I have you handle that job? Look what happened on this one.”
Vlad shook his head. Such a child.
“These people are following you, Derek, not me. I just happened to be along for the ride when they stole the money. If they knew about Flores and Duarte and the sub, I would bet a lot of money that they know about this job in the Bahamas, don’t you think?”
Derek had to admit this made a lot of sense.
“Yes.”
“The only difference is this time we can prepare for them.”
Derek ate the last of his shrimp taco and wiped his greasy mouth with a paper napkin. He took a long swallow of Gatorade and began.
“Howard has been handling some money—a lot of money—for a couple of Cubans in Hialeah that are into several things. They have some clinics that process Medicare claims, mostly false. Once the money comes through from the government, they write checks that they cash at a chain of check cashing stores, Cambio Xtra, that they also own. Howard has been transferring a lot of this money out through the banking system, but it piles up faster than they can get it out through wire transfers because of the high volume, not to mention the reporting requirements slow things down.”
“So they want to get rid of some of it by moving it over to the Bahamas.”
“Correct. And they want to do this on a regular basis.”
“Just as the Sinaloa Cartel was moving some of its money back using the sub.”
“And we were doing with our $20 million.”
“That was all drug money, but this Bahamas job involves Medicare money.”
“Right. The couple, the Oyebanjos, Aricela and Severo—they aren’t into drugs. They work the Federal agencies: IRS, Medicare, things like that.”
“Money’s money,” said Vlad, wiping his hands on his shorts.
“Yeah.”
“How many times have you met the Oyebanjos?”
“Only once. When Howard brought them to the place where I always met Flores.”
“Where’s that?”
“A little sandwich shop called Enriqueta’s in Wynwood. That’s where I met him so your people could pick up his tail.”
“Then that’s most likely where our mysterious friend found out about the Mirta and its sunken treasure,” said Vlad slowly, thinking.
“Maybe so.”
“I think the best thing to do is to meet the Oyebanjos in the same place to finalize the Bahamas job. We’ll set a trap and see if we catch something in it.”
“What about the Oyebanjos? I don’t want to fuck with them. They have a lot more business to send our way.”
“Oh, we’re not going to fuck with the Oyebanjos. We want to do a very good job to please them so we get future business. But we don’t have to tell them what happened down here in the Keys.”
“No, we don’t want them to know about any of this.”
“We want no one to know about this. Now let’s get to the airport and take that chopper back to Miami.”
* * *
About the time Vlad and Derek landed in a helicopter at Mobile Marine Helipad in Bayside Marketplace in downtown Miami, Jack’s Learjet touched down at Opa-locka Executive Airport northwest of Miami.
The plane taxied to the squat terminal building and the steward lowered the gangway.
“Have a good day, Ms. Fuentes, Mr. St. Clair.”
“Thanks very much.”
Jack shook hands with the pilot and co-pilot and thanked them before following Babe down the gangway.
Getting off the plane into a brilliantly clear and sunny December day, they saw Gargrave waiting for them with Rafael and Antonia, all of them standing in front of Jack’s Bell 206L-4 LongRanger. The steward aboard the Learjet brought their bags down and took them over to the chopper.
“Hello, Gargrave,” said Babe.
“Miss Fuentes,” he replied.
“Hi, Antonia,” Babe said, kissing her sister on the cheek. She quickly gave Rafael a kiss as well. “Hello, stud.”
“Welcome to the family,” said Jack, kissing Antonia on the cheek.
Rafael laughed as he shook hands with Jack.
“Just following in my brother’s footsteps,” said Rafael.
“Too bad you couldn’t have been at that party last night in Washington,” said Babe.
“I wanted to come up, but Rafael was at sea,” said Antonia.
“Yeah, we just pulled in this morning,” said Rafael.
“You guys missed some kind of party, didn’t they, Jack?”
Jack thought about everything that had happened last night at Patricia Vaughan’s party.
President Norwalk’s aide for congressional liaison, Phil Slanetti, had told him that Congressman-elect Matt Hawkins of Wyoming was looking like he might be one of the crucial votes Jack’s dad needed to win the vote in the House of Representatives to be the next President when the new Congress convened in January. Slanetti wanted Jack to use “whatever influence” he could to bring Matt over, as he now supported the Democratic candidate, Senator Frederick Thurston, over Jack’s dad. All this because Jack had befriended the newly arrived congressman-elect and played handball with him.
Quite by accident, he’d also found out that Matt was sleeping with their hostess, Patricia Vaughan, and that Matt’s wife Sue knew nothing about it.
Before he knew that Matt was sleeping with Patricia, Jack had nonchalantly invited Matt to visit Flagler Hall sometime in what he thought would be the far-distant future. But when Bedelia Vaughan, Patricia’s mother-in-law, had said she wanted to visit Jack’s step-mother, Sofia, ill with cancer, Jack offered to give her a ride to Miami in his dad’s plane, Matt had suggested that would be a good time for him to take up Jack’s offer to visit St. Clair Island as well. So it looked like all roads were leading to Miami.
He wondered what else had happened at the party that he didn’t know about. It was scary to contemplate.
“Yeah, they missed quite a party, all right.”
“Let’s get going,” said Babe. “I want to go for a swim.”
“I’ll ride in the front with Gargrave. Got a couple of things to go over with him.”
Jack was glad Rafael and Antonia had come out. They would keep Babe diverted so he could talk to Gargrave.
It had only been yesterday morning when he and Gargrave had been in the Keys following Derek Gilbertson and Vlad Kucherov as they tailed the ill-fated Omer Flores and Laurencio
Duarte down to the site of the sunken Mirta off Fort Jefferson and waited for them to leave the scene before moving in with three fishing boats to haul up the money before the bad guys came back the next day.
Jack climbed into the front seat and put on his headset. He caught Gargrave’s eye as Gargrave powered up the chopper. He nodded to the rear cabin and pointed to his headset. Gargrave flipped a switch and then spoke into his headset as the whirring blade made anything they said inaudible except through the headsets.
“They can’t hear us, but I can here them if they use their headsets,” said Gargrave.
“Good. Give me a full report.”
“After you left to go to Washington for the party, we got most of the money and made it back to Big Pine Key a little after sunset. Everything went like clockwork. Camilo will oversee a team that will inventory the money and have his men guard it till you decide what to do with it. It takes up a lot of space.”
“Yeah. I’m not even sure who owns the money, legally, I mean.”
“I’ll do the research. I suppose the government has some kind of claim.”
“I’m not recognizing the Federal government’s claim to this money. It’s illegal drug money. They don’t have any more right to it than we do.”
“Part of the money was Derek’s.”
“Yeah—$20 million, either drug money or Medicare money or whatever the hell. I don’t recognize his claim, either.”