by Lincoln Matt
And with that, she disappeared again behind her office door.
Holm’s eyes twinkled at me.
“Man, she can be something sometimes, can’t she?” he asked with a grin.
“She can,” I agreed, watching after her.
Diane and I had always been on decent terms, but I got the sense that I’d crossed a line. But I wasn’t about to apologize for being passionate about my case, not when there was so much at stake.
It took some time, but Diane got what she needed out of the pencil pusher.
“That easy, huh?” Holm asked when she gave us the news. “Seems like they could’ve been giving us stuff to do this whole time then if they really wanted to.”
“Well, just be grateful for the time off,” Diane said. “After all, most of you used up your vacation time gallivanting around New York instead of resting up.”
That was true, not that I’d take it back. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing trip, though. Well, except for those last few days with Tessa, that is.
“What convinced ‘em?” I asked.
“A dead American is never something to mess around with, especially on foreign soil,” Diane said. “This could get messy. Just make sure it doesn’t.”
“Let’s hope he actually is an American, then,” Holm said, and Diane gave us each a sharp look.
“I thought you said he was,” she said.
“Well, that’s what the Dominicans think,” I explained. “Based on his appearance and some stuff they found on him. But no ID yet.”
“Just get to the bottom of it then,” Diane sighed, clearly not happy that this information had been left out before. “And make sure to come back in one piece.” She eyed Holm on this last part. He did have a knack for getting himself beat up on these missions.
“I’ll take good care of him,” I assured her.
“Why is it always drugs?” Diane sighed. “Just once, I’d like to get a straight-up murder case. None of this other funny business involved.”
“That would be simpler,” I chuckled.
Diane’s phone dinged again.
“Very well,” she said, reading the notification. “I’m sending your tickets over now. You’d best head over to the airport.”
“Don’t tell me we’re flying commercial again,” Holm complained, and I grinned.
“Don’t push it,” Diane warned. “We were lucky enough to get this mission approved in the first place. You’ll fly on whatever they put you on and be happy about it.”
“They’d better at least have peanuts,” Holm grumbled.
“Did President García give you any more information about what’s been going on down there?” I asked Diane. “My conversation with Alejandra was a little rushed.”
“He’ll explain more when you get to Santo Domingo, but it seems to me that there’s been a particular influx of drugs into the Dominican side of the island lately,” Diane explained. “There’s been a lot of amped-up activity, which is surprising after the beat down the cartel got after they took the president’s son. It’s gotten to the point where there’s so much border traffic on the island that the Dominican side can’t keep up with it.”
“Alejandra did say something about that,” I said. “That’s why she was near the crime scene. She was down there on a diplomatic mission trying to figure the whole thing out.”
“Well, if they’ve gotten Americans involved, who knows what they’re up to,” Holm said.
“Then go find out,” Diane said. “And enjoy your flight.” She gave us a pleasant little smirk on her way out.
CHAPTER 4
Ethan
On top of flying commercial, Holm and I got stuck on a cramped flight with narrow seats, and the stench of a crowd who had just come out of the hot sun filled the recycled air. I pressed myself up against the window to avoid feeling claustrophobic. I was looking forward to this whole funding thing being sorted out so we could get our private planes back. But the flight wasn’t long, and along the way, I reviewed my case files on my tablet from our last mission that involved this drug cartel.
Haitian drug smuggling was a nasty business, and though Haiti had always been the lesser of the two nations on the island of Hispaniola both socially and economically, since the 2010 earthquake, things had just been going downhill faster and faster.
President García had been trying to help with new policies to help the Haitians since the increased crime and desire to immigrate to the Dominican side of the border had made the situation a dire problem for both countries. But he’d just drawn the ire of pretty much everyone on the island.
The Haitians didn’t like the Dominicans meddling in their affairs, especially the crime lords like the drug cartel. These people liked the way things were since they could exploit the vulnerable position that so many Haitians were in. And the Dominicans associated much of what had gone wrong in their own country with the influx of Haitians from the earthquake in the first place, so the idea of trying to help them any more wasn’t exactly popular.
“Volatile situation, isn’t it?” Holm commented, peering over my shoulder from the seat to my right as he chomped on some in-flight peanuts.
“You can say that again,” I said. “I don’t like what we’re walking into. And I don’t like what Alejandra’s gotten herself caught up in anymore. If we throw Americans into the mix, well, let’s just say Diane’s not wrong to be worried.”
“Why do you think things have gotten so much worse all of a sudden?” Holm asked. “When we last saw the Garcías, it seems to me like things were looking up. He got to keep his position at least.”
“Yes, well, it seems like we won that battle and made the mistake of thinking we won the war,” I said. “And if this guy is an American….”
“Then they could be working on getting these drugs into the states,” Holm finished for me.
Sometimes, I really missed the SEALS. This job sometimes hit even closer to home.
“Yeah,” I said. “Though it’s not like we don’t already have a lot of drugs floating around already. I don’t know, something about all this just isn’t quite adding up. A Haitian drug cartel seems to be a bit small-time for the American market to me. There’s a reason we haven’t been down here before on a mission.”
“That’s true,” Holm considered. “This García guy struck me as a good one, though. He’ll be able to point us in the right direction.”
“I just hope Alejandra hasn’t gotten herself in any more trouble,” I said, compulsively checking my phone for the millionth time. I hadn’t heard from her since we spoke last. I hoped that meant she was holed up in a hotel room somewhere, waiting for our arrival.
“Either way, I’ve heard Santo Domingo’s pretty nice,” Holm said, popping another peanut in his mouth. “It’s always good to see another pocket of the ocean.”
I pulled out my laptop and checked for any incoming messages from MBLIS or anyone in the Dominican Republic. There wasn’t anything for the case, but I was happy to find that I had something from Tessa Bleu, that old flame of mine who had helped me track down the whereabouts of Grendel’s journal.
Thinking back to my search for the old pirate ship, the Dragon’s Rogue, was a happy distraction from all the trouble with Alejandra and the Haitian drug cartel. It was my grandfather’s life’s work to find that ship and its treasure, and he’d passed the passion project on to me when he died. I’d happily taken it. My grandfather had raised me after my parents died and carrying on this part of his legacy was the least that I could do in return. Besides, what wasn’t to love about pirate’s treasure?
When Tessa and I had found that old skeleton and some old gold coins buried in a cave off the coast of Miami, she’d become embroiled in the whole search herself. Since then, she’d been beside me the whole way, even making me promise her that she’d be there when I finally found the Dragon’s Rogue.
To my disappointment, Tessa’s message didn’t contain anything about a brilliant new discovery in our search for the ship.
But she did say that she’d done some complaining and needling with the museum in Virginia and that she thought they’d make a point to send the journal my way some time in the near future.
I grinned as I read her words. You could always leave it to Tessa to put a smile on my face. And to put the fear of God in some poor museum clerk.
I hoped she was right. I’d been itching to get my hands on that journal for as long as I could remember. The hope was that it held the key to deciphering the strange map doodled in the margins of the few pages I did possess. I couldn’t make much of it alone, but paired with something else, I just might be able to figure out where the Dragon’s Rogue was hiding.
“Any big news?” Holm asked, noticing that I was reading an email.
“Nothing on the case,” I said. “Might be getting my hands on that journal soon, though.”
“Buried treasure,” Holm said, his eyes wide with excitement. “What’ll you do if you ever find it? Think you’ll finally retire?”
“Are you kidding?” I chuckled. “I could never quit this game, could you?”
“I’d have more time for fishing,” Holm shrugged.
“You didn’t even want to go fishing when you had a free afternoon,” I laughed.
“Ah, well, maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “It’s in our blood, this work. We can’t quit.”
I thought back to how slow things had been at the office lately. Tensions had been running high.
“I hope I didn’t piss off Diane too much today,” I said. “I was just trying to help.”
“Ah, she knows that,” Holm said dismissively. “You were just doing your job, and so was she. There’s no harm, no foul. I hope things pick up again now that we’ve got one mission under our belt.”
“If there’s anything I’ve learned lately, it’s that those pencil pushers will always find a new way to screw us over,” I said.
“You could say that again,” Holm laughed.
I still had a bad taste in my mouth from all the events in New York surrounding our funding difficulties. A Florida senator had gotten caught up with a mafia group up there that we’d managed to piss off. And then our whole operation just about went poof. I’d lost a lot of respect for bureaucracy as of late, not that I’d had much to begin with.
I turned my attention back to Tessa’s email and then went to the Virginia museum’s website for what felt like the millionth time in the past few weeks. I’d had a lot of time to kill, after all, and not much to kill it with since my search for the Dragon’s Rogue was at a standstill until I got my hands on that journal.
The journal was at a nautical museum located in the southern corner of Chesapeake Bay. From the sporadic conversations I’d had with the director, I’d learned that the place had gotten ahold of Grendel’s journal a while back. The nephew of some old guy turned his collection of various nautical artifacts from the area into the museum when he moved him into a nursing home.
They didn’t give me any more than that, and once I’d accumulated some more time off, I intended to head up there and take a look around. I needed to see if I could get to the bottom of where the journal came from in the first place, provided that I had it in my possession by then.
I was hoping my genetic connection to the Dragon’s Rogue would be enough for them to hand it over to me. When Tessa and I had found the remains of Lord Jonathan Finch-Hatton in that cave, we’d discovered through DNA testing that he was a distant ancestor of mine. This came as a shock to me, but I supposed it explained why my grandfather was so obsessed with finding the old ship.
The question was whether he knew we were related to Finch-Hatton or not, and furthermore how the ship had fallen out of Finch-Hatton’s hands and into Grendel’s in the first place. Either my grandfather had known, and he’d chosen to hide this fact from me for some reason even as we searched for the Dragon’s Rogue, or he hadn’t known and had inherited the search for the ship from someone else in our family. Either way, I hadn’t gotten the full picture while he was still alive. Something about that bothered me.
I was wasting time buried in the museum’s website. There was nothing there that I hadn’t already combed over a thousand times with all the downtime I’d had lately. I flipped back over to my email to find that I had a message waiting for me from Diane.
“Be wary of a possible new drug in circulation on the island of Hispaniola,” it read. “Nothing concrete has turned up, just rumors. It would explain the increased cartel activity and the rising stakes, as well as any American or other foreign involvement.”
“Interesting,” I murmured.
“What?” Holm asked.
“Message from Diane,” I explained. “She said there’s the possibility of a new drug the Haitian cartel’s putting into circulation on the island.”
“Ugh, another one,” Holm scoffed, shaking his head. “Don’t these kids have enough new stuff to keep them busy these days? They’re just trying to make our jobs even harder.”
“And to make money, and keep power,” I said. “It would explain why things aren’t quite adding up. When we last saw President García and Alejandra, things were going well, as you said. But now… well, it would make sense that a new drug would cause all these problems, even when nothing’s changed politically.”
“Do you think they’re trying to introduce it to the States?” Holm asked.
“Could be,” I said. “Or, more likely, someone from the States has provided them with the drug or helped them streamline its production. It’s not unheard of for something like that to happen. A vulnerable country like Haiti would be a great place to test something like this out.”
“That’s not a happy thought,” Holm murmured, finishing the last of his peanuts as the captain announced our descent into the Santo Domingo airport.
“No,” I agreed, “but our jobs have never been easy. It’s why we’re here.”
“It’s why we’re still here,” Holm pointed out.
“Right,” I said. “This could be a good chance to prove ourselves to whoever’s calling the shots in Congress now.”
“So we’d better not mess it up,” Holm said in his best impression of Diane.
I chuckled. “No, we’d better not,” I agreed.
The descent was quick, and we grabbed our bags. There was a surprising amount of security at the Santo Domingo airport. Usually, other countries had nothing on the United States’ TSA measures post-9/11.
There were several suited men waiting for us by the gate, holding a sign with our names on it and sporting guns at their hips.
“You’re from MBLIS?” one of them asked me. I nodded.
“I’m Agent Marston, and this is my partner Agent Holm,” I said. “Our director spoke with President García earlier.”
“Of course,” the man said, nodding to Holm and me each in turn. “We’ll take you to him now. The capitol building isn’t far. We’ll serve as your guards during your stay here in the city.”
“Thank you,” I said, and we followed the men outside.
CHAPTER 5
Ethan
Holm was right, Santo Domingo was beautiful. The weather was amazing, the skies were blue, and colorful buildings abounded.
We were taken in a car to the capitol building, a long off-white building that somewhat reassembled the White House, where we were then escorted down a dimly lit hallway to a dark room in the back of the building. We seemed to take the long way around the building, along back hallways without much in them, and we didn’t run into anyone along the way. I imagined that if anyone found out we were there, it could give away just how much in trouble the Dominican government was with this thing.
Alejandra’s father and several other men who I did not recognize were waiting for us sitting around a conference table in the dark room.
“Agent Marston,” he said, rising to greet us when we entered. “Agent Holm. It’s good to see you again, though I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
“Likewise,”
I said, shaking his outstretched hand. “Has anything else happened since you spoke with our director? Is Alejandra all right?”
“Ah, yes, my daughter is fine, though she still refuses to leave the border,” President García said, retaking his seat and indicating that Holm and I should do the same. Our escorts and their weapons waited outside in the hall.
“That sounds about right,” I chuckled, taking my seat next to Holm. “Now, we understand that things have become more difficult since we last saw each other. Can you tell us a little more about that?”
“Absolutely,” the President said, his expression grim. “I’m afraid to say that while things were better for some weeks after the recovery of my son Miguel, things have taken a turn for the worse as of late. And the past couple of weeks have been truly awful. A flood of migrants and gang activity at the border. Drug overdoses all over the island. And now this murder of an American. It’s truly been overwhelming.”
“We’re sorry to hear that,” I said honestly. “What would you attribute this recent activity to? Do you think it’s all related?”
“Oh yes,” the President said, and I noticed that he appeared to have aged far more than he should have in the time since I’d seen him last. “These recent overdoses have all been linked back to the same circle of dealers. We’ve been doing our best to lock them all up, but more keep popping up in their place.”
“What drug is this? Are there more than one?” Holm asked.
“That’s the strangest part,” the President said. “Our forensics people have been unable to determine the source of the overdoses. We know based on the symptoms, the way they died, and the victims’ activity before death that they were overdoses, but the drug is nothing we have seen before.”
“That tracks with what Diane said,” Holm remarked, exchanging a look with me. “Our director said there might be a new drug floating around here.”
“Whatever it is, it’s deadly,” one of the President’s associates said. “And no one involved is talking about it.”