Danger Point

by Douglas J Bourg

  “We have a major problem, sir,” she opens the wallet again to confirm her nightmare. “I just shot Bill Conners. He used to work for DEA and his last assignment was in Mexico. He was the one who got Webber involved with John Gomez and The General. He just tried to kill me.” She listened for a moment. “No, he’s not dead, but I got him pretty good. What do you want me to do?”

  She listens for a while longer and finally says, “Yes, sir,” and disconnects.

  Alexis allows herself a big sigh before getting up off the bed and heading back into the hall. She can see Conners is starting to come around. She checks the leg wound and see the bleeding is under control. She had just grazed him, really, the big baby. Her boss is sending a ‘clean-up-team’ to remove Conner and any evidence left behind. She reaches into his side pocket and removes his car keys. She backs away from him and into the bedroom to pull on her clothes and leave the house.

  She walks purposefully up the street, pushing the trunk release on the keys until, about halfway up the block, the trunk of a brand new Black Lexis sedan pops open. Bad guys don’t deserve nice cars, she thinks. This one will be confiscated. She might even add it to the collection of cars she drives. Inside the trunk she finds a laptop and a briefcase, which she picks up, carries into the house and sets on the kitchen table. The briefcase has a combination lock. So much for opening that up. It’ll take too much time to try and figure out the combination herself. She turns on the laptop and sees the DEA logo appear on the screen. When the clean-up crew shows up to haul this clown away, she’ll have them deliver the computer and briefcase to the tech guys at the agency.

  A couple of minutes later, Alexis hears the garage door open and Bobby and DJ walk into the kitchen, hair still wet from surfing.

  “Hey, what’s up, girl? You look upset.” DJ says.

  “Yeah, I’ve had a rough morning. Somebody broke in while you two were surfing and tried to kill me. Not my favorite way to start the day. I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”

  “What?!” DJ shouts, “Who? What happened? Are you okay?”

  She holds up her hand to stop him. “I’m fine, but it’s definitely not cool. It’s a rogue DEA agent—we’ve had dealings in the past. He’s upstairs, bleeding away on your hall floor. Relax. He’s not dead, but I did wound him. I duct taped him up and even patched his wound—not that he deserved it—but until my boss and extraction guys show up to haul his ass out of here, he stays where he is, okay?”

  ◆◆◆

  DJ and I stare at Alexis then we both look up toward the second floor of DJ’s house. We look at each other and I see DJ’s mouth open to say something, when my phone rings. What else could possibly happen?

  “Hello? Oh, hello, Chako,” I say into the phone. “Ah, yes. Sure. I’ve kind of had some stuff going on, too. We can meet you later today. What time? Okay, see you then, and thanks.”

  I disconnect and look at DJ and Alexis. “Jeannie’s mom wants to meet with us at the hotel restaurant. Murph, too.” I dial Murphy’s cell number. When he answers, I tell him that Chako wants him to be at the meeting when she tries to open the box. “We can meet you in the restaurant of the Hilton at five-thirty; that’s the time that Chako is available. Okay, see you soon.” I say and hang up.

  I look at Alexis. “What’s going to happen when your team gets here?”

  “They’ll arrest Conners and confiscate all of his gear, including his car. Then they’ll take him to be interrogated by the people at our agency who specialize in this sort of thing. They’ll also need to debrief me, but probably at our offices, not here. They may want to grab you guys, too, for questioning. My advice is to get out of here before they arrive. I’ll meet up with you later at the hotel, okay? Five-thirty, right? I’ll make sure that the house is locked up when we leave.”

  DJ says, “Let’s get down to the boat, Bobby. We can hang out there for a while.” He turns toward Alexis. “Will everything be cleaned up? Will Maria be able to tell any of this shit happened here? What about the neighbors? Is your team going to come in here with sirens blaring?”

  Alexis shakes her head as she gets up to walk us out to the garage. “These guys are pros. They’ll come in a van marked for carpet cleaning or something like that and I’ll get them to pull into the garage. The neighbors won’t know a thing. My gun has a silencer and he didn’t get a shot off. The house will be so clean Maria will think her mother’s been here. Now you guys get out of here. They’ll be here any minute.”

  I open the passenger door to the truck and get in.

  “Bobby, I have to be there at the opening of the puzzle box,” Alexis says, closing the truck door. “If I’m late don’t open it without me, understand? DJ, don’t look so worried. I’ll look after everything.”

  DJ presses the button on his visor, opens the garage door and backs out of the driveway. As we drive down the street, a cleaning company’s van passes us. I look into the side mirror to see the van pulling up in front of DJ’s house.

  “We got out of there just in time, bro.” I say.

  DJ’s jaw is set in a firm line. “I am just not cut out for this cloak and dagger shit, Bobby. My wife and kids are stashed in Oregon at her parent’s house, and I have a guy bleeding on the carpet in my upstairs hallway—this sucks on so many different levels. A few weeks ago I had nothing more to worry about than drywall shipments. Now I have to get out of my own house while some mystery clean-up crew removes blood and a bad guy.” He presses the cigarette lighter.

  “We’ve got Murph and now Alexis on our side.” I say. “We’ll get through this— hopefully in one piece.” The lighter pops and he shakes a cigarette out of a pack he has on the dashboard. He fires it up and inhales deeply.

  We pull into the harbor parking lot and notice a crowd around the boat, then see Harbor Patrol and Orange County Sherriff’s uniforms.

  “Shit,” says DJ under his breath. “Now what?”

  “Should we just turn around and get the hell out of here, too?” I ask.

  “No. No point in that. Let’s see what’s going on. Shit.”

  He unlocks the gate and we walk down the dock to the boat. DJ walks up to one of the sheriffs. “Excuse me. I’m the owner of this boat. Is there some sort of problem?”

  The sheriff lifts her sunglasses and gives DJ the once-over. She says, “May I see some ID, please?”

  “Sure.” DJ pulls out his wallet and opens it to his driver’s license. “Here you go.”

  “Mr. Frasier, would you step over here, please?”

  She motions me to stand back and takes DJ closer to the boat. Two of the harbor patrol deputies are escorting a hand-cuffed man down from the deck of the boat. He’s about five foot eight, maybe mid-forties, scrawny with too-long, thinning hair.

  “Do you know this person, Mr. Frasier?” she asks.

  “No. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  “Your neighbor noticed him trying to break into your boat and called us. He has no ID on him and won’t say anything to us.”

  “What the hell was he doing on my boat?”

  “We don’t know. We’ll know more once we get him to the station and run his prints. For now we can charge him with breaking and entering.”

  She turns to the other sheriff, “Let’s get ICE involved and see if they can find out who this loser is, okay?”

  He leads the man up the dock and toward one of the squad cars.

  She turns back to DJ. “We found no damage to your boat, Mr. Frasier, but would you please take a closer look and see if anything is missing?”

  DJ boards the boat and after about ten minutes comes back onto the dock.

  “It looks like everything is here,” he says.

  “Do you need any further assistance from us, sir?” she asks.

  “No. I don’t think so. Thank you for your quick response.”

  She pulls apart the paperwork she’s been writing up and gives him a copy. She fishes a business card out of her top pocket and hands it to him.

/>   “If you notice anything missing, please give me a call. We’ll be in touch. It’s a good thing your neighbor was paying attention.”

  She turns and follows her colleagues up the dock. DJ looks at the card in his hand. He looks over at his nosy neighbor, who’s been watching the whole drama play out from his own boat. As much as he hates to, DJ says, “Thanks for keeping an eye on my boat, Herb.”

  “No problem, DJ. We neighbors have to stick together, right?”

  This guy is such a jerk, but I know DJ is very grateful that he called the cops. DJ nods at his neighbor as we board the boat, open the cabin door and step down into the salon.

  “You told her everything was okay DJ, but it’s not. That guy obviously has searched the boat.”

  The searching had been done very professionally. It wouldn’t have been apparent to anyone who didn’t know the inside of the boat as well as DJ and I do.

  “That guy wasn’t trying to get into the boat. He was locking it up when Herb called the Harbor Patrol. He was trying to get out. Luckily they were nearby or he would have just taken off and no one would have stopped him.” DJ says, “Where did you stash the puzzle box, Bobby? Do you think he got it?”

  “Not a chance, bro,” I say with a grin, “I put it in a waterproof container, weighted the whole thing down and tied it to one of the fenders. It’s buried in the silt down there. You could be right on top of it and never see it.”

  DJ sits down. “That’s a relief. I’d hate to be going through all this shit for nothing. You’d better get that thing up to the surface before someone else comes after it. You’ll need to have it with you when we meet Chako this afternoon. You might as well get it up off the bottom and we’ll keep it safe until the meeting.”

  “Good idea. I don’t think that anyone else is going to try to take it away from us today. If Chako can open the puzzle box, and we turn over the information to Alexis, we should be done. Then we’ll get our lives back.”

  “Yeah, right. I’ll believe that when it happens. You get the box, then we’d better call Alexis and tell her what just happened.”

  “Don’t bother,” says a voice from the dock. “Permission to come aboard?”

  “Come on down, Alexis,” DJ yells up. He turns to me and says under his breath, “Jesus, she’s like a blood hound, Bobby, always sniffing around.”

  “I hear that a lot, DJ.” she says smiling. “The clean-up crew will be finished with your house within the hour. You’ll never know they were there. I’m so sorry I had to shoot that guy in your house, but he pulled a gun on me. Hell, he pulled three guns on me. If he hadn’t been wearing body armor, it would have been a lot worse. Now tell me, what happened here?”

  “Thank you for that, Alexis,” DJ says sarcastically. “I’m so stoked that you didn’t blow that guy away in my house. Bobby, go get that box and I’ll explain what was happening when we pulled up to the dock.”

  “Is this about someone found on the boat again?” She asks as she steps aside to let me pass.

  DJ fills her in as I pull the fishline that brings the box up out of the water, still safe in its waterproof container.

  “I took his picture with my cell phone,” I say, coming around. “Have a look and see if you know him, Alexis.”

  I call up the picture on my phone and hand it to Alexis. “Uh, oh, I know this guy. His name is Captain Julio Castillo. He’s one of the top operators in the Mexican Navy. He can fly anything: jets, planes, helicopters, ultra-lights. He went through the Navy SEAL program. He’s never been linked to General Sandoval - until now.” She says, studying the picture. “I’m surprised he didn’t put up some kind of a fight. He’s a real bad ass. Send that picture to my phone, will you? I need to let my boss know right away. This could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for.”

  She hands me back my phone and reaches into her purse for her own. While she’s at it, she grabs her pack of cigarettes and lights up. She takes a deep drag and dials her boss while she exhales the smoke from her lungs.

  As Alexis makes her call, I walk back down into the salon with the waterproof bag that holds a clear watertight box. I set the bag in the sink and carefully unzip it, open the container and gently remove the puzzle box. Alexis comes back below. I set it on the table, between the three of us. We all look at it in silence for a while as DJ and Alexis finish their cigarettes.

  Finally I say, “We have to get going.”

  “I don’t think that I’m going to go Bobby,” DJ says. He looks tired. “I want to stay here on the boat, if you guys don’t mind.”

  Alexis looks at her watch, “That’s fine. If there’s traffic it’ll take us longer to get there and we don’t want to keep Mrs. Francis waiting. DJ, let me know if you find anything left behind by the good Captain, okay? Listening devices or maybe a wireless camera?”

  “Sure, Alexis,” says DJ. “I’ll take a good look.”

  I pick up the box, wrap it in a clean, dry towel and put it in my backpack. I motion Alexis to go up the stairs ahead of me.

  “I’ll call Detective Murphy to tell him about Castillo, too,” she says, “I have to let Murphy know what a risk Castillo is to the sheriff’s department.”

  I look back at DJ as we start up the stairs. He sits with his hands on his knees, looking around his beautiful boat. Then he sighs, stands up and starts to carefully search. I hope he’ll know a listening device if he sees one.

  Chapter 36

  Murphy’s rushing to get to the Hilton on time when he sees the bulletin for Julio Castillo’s intake. He calls Captain Sprague to relay what Alexis has told him, without telling the Captain how he knows. The deputies transporting Castillo have to take every

  precaution when handling him.

  Murphy thinks maybe that Castillo is the asshole responsible for killing the ATF agents at the hotel. He has to get to the jail quickly. He needs to question Castillo before the Feds show up and take him away.

  He can’t stop thinking how close they had come to catching General Sandoval yesterday. By the time The General’s image was found on the tape, the bastard had already disappeared, leaving nothing behind in the hotel room. It had been wiped clean better than any housekeeping staff could do. Right now there was no direct evidence linking The General to any of the murders. Sooner or later he would fuck up and Murphy would be there to arrest him.

  He reaches for his phone to call Bobby just as a call 911 flashes on the phone display. He calls the Captain, who fills him in. It just gets worse and worse. He calls Bobby. “I can’t meet you and Mrs. Francis,” he says. “The guy they arrested at DJ’s boat has escaped. Somehow Castillo unlocked his cuffs and beat the shit out of the deputy; took his radio, his gun, cuffed him and stuffed him into the trunk of the cruiser. By the time anyone realized what had happened, Castillo was long gone. I’ll catch up with you later. Call me when you get the puzzle box open. I don’t care what time.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Murphy ends the call, lights up the car, pulls a U-turn, and speeds back south.

  ◆◆◆

  I hang up from my call with Murph just as we pull into the Hilton parking structure. When I tell Alexis what’s just happened, she slams the heel of her hand on the steering wheel. “Shit! I knew it! My agency should have assisted the Sherriff’s Department when they were transporting Castillo.”

  As we pull into a parking space on the second floor Alexis removes a cigarette from her bag. It takes her a couple of tries to light it. We get out of the car and start to walk toward the hotel lobby.

  “It’s not your fault, Alexis,” I say, “You did your job. You called your boss and we called Murphy. They didn’t take this guy as seriously as they should have and now we’re all in trouble.”

  Alexis stops in front of the lobby doors and finishes her cigarette.

  “Those things are going to kill you, you know.”

  “Castillo being on the loose scares me more the than a few cigarettes,” she replies, putting the cigarette in the sand-filled bowl
outside the revolving doors. “If he does kill us, it’ll save me the trouble of quitting."

  We walk into the hotel lobby. I glance over at the lounge, and see Chako. Then I notice she’s not alone. I take Alexis by the elbow and lead her to where Chako is sitting. What the hell is John G. doing here?

  “Good afternoon, Chako,” I say. “I would like to introduce you to my friend Alexis, Alexis this is Jeannie’s mother, Mrs. Chako Francis.”

  “So pleased to meet you, Alexis,” Chako stands and bows slightly. Alexis returns the bow, but hesitates when she turns toward John. I can see she’s as confused about his presence here as I am.

  “Bobby, Alexis, thank you so much for joining us,” John G. says. “They’re holding a quiet table for us. Follow me. We have a lot to discuss, so please bear with me.”

  He speaks to the hostess, who leads us into the hotel lounge, to a dark banquet at the back. A server comes to take drink orders and Chako orders tea, John G. a Pellegrino and Alexis just shakes her head. I’d like nothing more than a beer right now, but I don’t trust myself. I have the feeling I’d better stay clear-headed, so I just ask for a glass of water. Once she’s gone, John G. gets right down to business.

  “I need whatever is in that puzzle box and I know you have it, Bobby,” he says. “Chako and I have talked about it and she’s relatively certain she can open it. Hopefully the contents inside are complete and undamaged. If what I think is in it, I plan to use those documents to stop a terrorist attack.”

  “But, I don’t understand,” Alexis finally finds her voice.

  He smiles at her, “I know you just thought I was your rich, eccentric boss.” He slides a small leather case towards her and she opens it. It’s some sort of ID I don’t recognize.