Villains and Vixens

by Charles Dougherty

  "So we're supposed to go to George Town and look under every rock, huh?"

  "Something like that. We'll narrow the scope for you. We have the position of the tower that supported his call. We've put it at the center of a circle on a surveillance photo we hacked from the DEA. It's tedious work, but the folks are picking locations in the circle that look like they could host a small, private meeting. Then they dig up whatever's available on the possible sites. Once they finish their research, you should be able to just knock on a few doors and ask for him. When somebody shoots at you, you'll know you found the right place."

  "You do good work, Aaron," Mary said.

  "We try. That's all I have for you on Grissom so far. Glad you're having a nice sail. Wish I were with you guys."

  "One of these days, you'll have to join us on Island Girl," I said. "See how the other half lives. Anything else going on up your way?"

  "Yes, but we haven't figured out what. Turns out there's a modular data center tucked away in an outbuilding in Grissom's compound. The police didn't figure that out right away. The building looks like something to house landscaping equipment. It's screened from the main house by tall shrubbery — barely noticeable. It was locked from the outside, so the police knew nobody was in there. Or if they were locked inside, they weren't going anywhere. So they saved it for last.

  "The building's not that big; maybe the size of a triple garage. But when they got around to breaking in and checking it out, they didn't find much. Nothing but a lawn tractor and garden tools, until one of their people noticed the interior was smaller than the exterior. There was a false wall in the back that cut off eight feet in one dimension and the width of the building — maybe 30 feet — in the other. The only way into the hidden space was through the attic. You with me so far?"

  "Yes," I said. "There was a data center in there? But what about power, and cooling and everything?"

  "It turns out you can buy an eight-foot by twenty-foot standard shipping container all tricked out with everything you need for your own server farm. They even come with backup power and air-conditioning."

  "That doesn't sound very big," I said. "How much of a data center could that be?"

  "A powerful one, given how small all that stuff is nowadays. A thousand servers, give or take a few."

  "What were they doing with it? Keeping their books? Storing all their files?" Mary asked.

  "We can't tell. It was scrubbed clean. The servers were 'acid-washed,' as the geeks say. There's no data left."

  "So that's what the feds were doing," I said. "Making sure nobody found it before everything was erased."

  "You win the prize," Aaron said.

  "But you said the feds never set foot in the compound," I said.

  "That's right. And we didn't leave anybody alive in there. I checked the whole area inside the wall. Even checked the padlock on that outbuilding."

  "So was there evidence that somebody went inside the locked building?" Mary asked. "While the feds were there, I mean?"

  "No. Our bunch says the data was probably erased remotely. The feds just needed to make sure nobody got in there and shut things down before the servers were wiped."

  "So now we have more questions for our friend Grissom," I said.

  "You got it."

  "Can you tell anything about data traffic in and out of the server farm?" Mary asked.

  "Good for you, Mary," Aaron said. "Now that we know about it, we're trying to get some idea of the volume and the sources. The actual data in and out was no doubt encrypted, but we may learn something about who was communicating with the servers."

  "What could they have been doing?" I asked.

  "I told you, Finn. We don't know."

  "Yes, I understood that. I meant to ask if you could come up with a list of uses for that kind of computer power."

  "Well, yes," Aaron said, "but it could be almost anything. Record keeping, as Mary said, or hosting bots to manipulate social media. It could even be used for hacking into other people's databases. There's no end of mischief that you could get into with that much horsepower. That's why we need Grissom alive."

  "Once we find him, we'll keep that in mind," I said. "Anything else?"

  "No, not now. When do you think you'll get to George Town?"

  "We should be in the harbor with the anchor set by nine o'clock."

  "Okay. Call me before you anchor. Maybe we'll have more on Grissom's location by then. My guess is he won't be in George Town itself. Probably at a private island hideaway."

  "There are a lot of those down there," I said.

  "I'm getting that impression. Have a good sail, and we'll talk in the morning." With that, he disconnected the call.

  "A server farm," Mary said. "I wouldn't have pictured something called a server farm fitting in a shipping container. I thought it would be in a raised floor computer room, like the main data center on the University campus."

  "You're ahead of me. I don't know enough about it to even form an image. I've heard the term, and I know it has something to do with computer networks, but that's about it."

  "Why would a drug lord have his own data center?" Mary asked. "It's not making sense to me. Grissom took over from a guy named Joe Waters, remember? Lavrov put him in there after he got rid of Waters."

  "Right. Where are you going with this, Mary?"

  "Back to Dailey and O'Hanlon."

  When I met Mary a few months ago, she was on the run from a man named Rory O'Hanlon. O'Hanlon was the most powerful and best-connected criminal in the U.S. Francis X. Dailey, a big-time developer, kept O'Hanlon's books and laundered the profits from his drug empire. O'Hanlon discovered Dailey was skimming. He hired Mary to kill Dailey and recover the stolen money and the records he kept.

  Mary was on her way to turn over everything to O'Hanlon when he sent his people to kill her and recover his property. She knew too much for him to let her live. Mary didn't react well to being double-crossed, and that cost O'Hanlon his life.

  The records Mary recovered listed payoffs to corrupt government officials, many at the highest levels. To avoid exposure, those officials wanted Mary eliminated. Just as chaos began to develop, the Russian, Uri Lavrov, started rebuilding O'Hanlon's operation. By then, Mary and I were working for Phorcys.

  "What about Dailey and O'Hanlon?" I asked.

  "They built this whole operation, remember? This huge, corrupt empire."

  "Yes. So what's your point?"

  "I stole all their records from a safe in Dailey's bedroom; they were all on one thumb drive. Their books, who they were paying off, everything. They didn't have a data center. They didn't need one."

  "By damn, you're right. So whose data center is that? And why were the feds so eager to make sure nobody got the files from those servers?"

  "Exactly my questions, sailor. Should we call Aaron back? Share that with him?"

  "Right now, he's focused on tactical problems, like where Grissom is, and the sources and destinations of the traffic on those servers. That's how we'll find out who was using them and what for. Another phone call will just slow him down."

  "If you say so, Finn."

  "We'll mention it to him in the morning. Those questions won't change anything tonight."

  "Okay," she said.

  I slid into the narrow space behind the helm, my hip against hers. I nudged her with my elbow and put my hands on the rim of the helm.

  "And speaking of tonight, you should go below and try to get some sleep. We need to hit the ground running tomorrow."

  "Aye, aye, skipper. See you in four hours."

  She gave me a kiss, then went down the companionway ladder and disappeared into the shadows of the main cabin.

  23

  The repetitive flashes of light across my eyelids woke me up. Disoriented, I opened one eye just enough to get a look at my surroundings. On a boat — that much I could tell. The flash was sunlight coming through the porthole on the opposite side of the cabin.

  I was
stretched out on a settee, lying on my right side with my head toward the bow. As the boat rolled, the sunlight swept over my face.

  Then I focused on the sounds: the swish of the hull slicing through the water, the sighing of the wind in the rigging, and a recurring gurgle. A puff of wind through the companionway brought the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. That explained the gurgle — a percolator.

  I sat up and shook my head, rubbing my eyes and looking around. This was Mike Killington's boat, Isabella, I remembered. And Mary was with me. She must be on watch. But she should have awakened me an hour or two before sunup.

  Standing up and grasping the overhead handrail, I shuffled back to the galley. The color of the coffee bubbling through the glass knob on top of the percolator told me it was ready. I switched off the gas and turned to take a step up the companionway ladder. Peering out, I saw Mary sprawled behind the helm. Her head was tipped back, her gaze on a pair of frigate birds gliding along in our wind wake.

  "Good morning," I said.

  "Hey, sleepy-head," she said, looking down at me and grinning.

  "You were supposed to wake me after your four-hour watch."

  "I know. But I decided to let you sleep. I was doing okay, and you weren't recovered from the stress that vixen put you through."

  "Which vixen?"

  "Dixon's stripper girlfriend."

  "Oh, that vixen."

  "What vixen did you think I meant?"

  "I'll take the fifth on that one."

  "Pour us some coffee and get up here before you get yourself in more trouble than you can handle. I'll show you which vixen you should worry about."

  "Yes, ma'am. Err, I mean no, ma'am."

  "Shut up and get the coffee. I'm glad you're feeling well enough to be a smart-ass."

  I filled two mugs and set them on the bridge deck right outside the companionway. After pouring the rest of the coffee into a thermos, I climbed into the cockpit and handed Mary a mug. I stashed the thermos in a corner of the cockpit's footwell and picked up my mug, joining Mary on the narrow seat behind the helm.

  "Thanks for letting me sleep," I said. "I guess I needed it."

  "I would say so. I checked on you a few times to make sure you weren't going to roll off the settee. You were out cold. One time I tried to push you back from the edge, but it was like shoving a bag of wet sand. You didn't roll out of the berth, anyway. It was a calm night."

  "I didn't think to rig a lee cloth before I crashed. Too worn out, I guess. But I'm surprised you didn't do it earlier, when you took your nap."

  "I slept up in the forward berth — didn't need a lee cloth to hold me in. The ventilation is better up there and it was still hot when I went off watch."

  "Ah. I see." I took a sip of the steaming coffee. "How far are we from George Town?"

  "Two hours. We should make the harbor entrance about eight o'clock. I checked when I put the coffee on. When should we call Aaron?"

  "We may as well wait until we're a half-hour out. He just wants to give us their latest guess on where Grissom's meeting is. As crowded as it will be in Elizabeth Harbour, we won't have much choice about where we anchor. We'll just have to take the inflatable to wherever Grissom is."

  "Okay. Did you think any more about what we talked about?"

  "You mean about how they didn't need a data center to do what O'Hanlon and Dailey were doing?"

  "Yes," Mary said. "About that."

  "I did. What you said makes sense."

  "Then what are they up to?"

  "I don't have any evidence to support it, but one idea kept popping into my mind."

  "What idea?"

  "The Russians."

  "Lavrov?" Mary asked.

  "Or whatever his real name is. It doesn't matter. Suppose he's not just a gangster; suppose he's working for the Russian government?"

  "To smuggle drugs into the U.S.? I guess they would be happy enough to increase our problems."

  "That could be just a side benefit. Maybe what they really want is O'Hanlon's network of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Think about it. Once Lavrov completes his takeover of O'Hanlon's organization, he has control of a large segment of our government. Why fight a war when you can get what you want for a few dollars?"

  "You really think that could be his motive?"

  "Look at all the effort they put into trying to manipulate the last election, Mary."

  "But there's still a lot of debate over whether that really happened."

  "Well, there's a lot of debate, but most of it's about how effective the Russian's efforts were, not on whether they tried to mess up the process. Neither side is arguing that Russian intervention is a good thing."

  "So you think Lavrov's out to destabilize our government by paying off corrupt politicians?"

  "Paying them off or threatening them with exposure. He wouldn't need them to do anything different from what they were already doing for O'Hanlon, if you think about it. As long as they stay out of his way, he gets what he wants."

  "What do you think he wants, Finn?"

  "Unfettered access to social media and the news media. He can take it from there, as long as the people in authority keep quiet and don't oppose him."

  "You make Lavrov sound like an evil genius."

  "Not an evil genius," I said. "I think he's just a tactical operator. He's implementing somebody else's grand plan. There's probably an office in the Kremlin mapping out the strategy for Lavrov to follow."

  "What about those data centers?"

  "The people in the Kremlin could use them. They could do the things they tried out during the 2016 election, but on a broad scale. This way, all the bogus data would appear to be coming from inside our country. It would be that much more credible, and that much more difficult to blame on outside influence."

  "Scary. Not to change the subject, Finn, but I'm starving. You want breakfast?"

  "Sure. Am I cooking, or are you?"

  "I will. I picked up a half-dozen flying fish off the deck last night. How about scrambled eggs and grits with them?"

  "You bet. Nothing like a vixen who cooks."

  "Watch yourself; I'll do things to you that even Sylvie Skins wouldn't think of." She gave me a wink as she went down the companionway.

  24

  "Thanks," I said, taking Mary's dish. "Great job on the flying fish."

  "You're welcome. You doing the dishes?"

  "Well, it's not like there are many. I was going below for the satellite phone, anyway.

  "I made a mess frying the fish. Just put everything in the sink; I'll get it later. We need to call Aaron. I checked the GPS while I was cooking. We've had a favorable current; ETA at the harbor entrance is only 20 minutes from now."

  "Okay."

  Two minutes later, I was back in the cockpit with the satellite phone. As soon as it locked on a satellite, it rang, surprising us.

  "Aaron?"

  "Yeah, Finn. I've had this thing auto-dialing you for the last couple of hours."

  "Sorry we had the phone turned off. What's up?"

  "Mary with you?"

  "Hi, Aaron. I'm here."

  "Good. First, we narrowed the possibilities for their location down to two places. I'll send a text with the GPS coordinates when we hang up, but both are private islands. They're not too far apart; both in that string of barrier islands between the harbor and Exuma Sound, okay?"

  "Okay," I said. "Do they have names?"

  "Yeah. One is Fowl Cay. It's a high end, super-exclusive resort. They only book one party at a time. It's worth a look.

  "The other place is called Dogfish Cay. It's a little farther offshore from Great Exuma Island, and it's supposed to be uninhabited. It looks uninviting from the satellite images — some ruins from the 18th century, back when the loyalists escaped from what had been the Colonies. Some of them set up shop down there, with slaves, plantations, the whole works. They didn't exactly prosper, I guess, but they built big houses.

  "Dogfish Cay's not big enough t
o have supported agriculture, plus it's rough, craggy, coral rock. I'm not sure what the attraction was for the people who settled there. Maybe they were pirates; there were plenty of them down there. Dogfish Cay would have been easy to defend, too.

  "But here's the thing. There are signs of recent activity there. There are also heat signatures on the thermal surveys that don't belong there. Some from people, others from engines — like generators.

  "Word is out among the locals that there's been boat traffic around there at night recently. Not local boats. The local fishermen have started giving the place a wide berth; they think somebody's using it as a transshipment point for smuggling — drugs, weapons, maybe even human trafficking. They're scared to get too close. And to top it off, the Bahamian authorities deny that anything unusual is going on out there. That's a sure sign somebody's paying them to look the other way.

  "My bet is you'll find our targets on Dogfish Cay, but check out Fowl Cay first. It'll be easier to do, and since it's a business operation, you don't have to be overly sneaky about it. If you go near Dogfish Cay in daylight, everybody in the neighborhood will hear about it.

  "Once you've ruled out Fowl Cay, that only leaves Dogfish Cay. You need to wait for the cover of darkness to check it out any closer than binocular distance. Getting ashore will be tough, too. There's no beach; the entire perimeter is steep, with sharp, broken coral. There's a crumbling pier on the side close to Great Exuma, but it will be a swim and climb operation. If there's somebody there up to no good, they'll be watching that pier. Questions so far?"

  "Yes. We'll need wetsuits for that. Think you can get some to us in George Town? That kind of thing's hard to come by down there."

  "Everything you'll need is already in Isabella's lazarette. I should have told you; sorry. Guess I had too much on my mind."

  "That's okay; when we discovered there were no provisions aboard, we just assumed we were on our own for supplies in general."

  "Yeah. We ran out of time. Figured you could feed yourselves, but the other stuff would be harder to find. We stashed the wetsuits and snorkel gear there before you got to Nassau. There are a few other things that'll come in handy for your mission, too. Also, Mike said to tell you to open the inspection plates on the sides of the centerboard trunk. You'll want to do it with the board down, because there's not much clearance between the board and the trunk. He keeps stashes of weapons and ammo in flat neoprene envelopes fastened inside the trunk — two on each side of the board. You'll find them by reaching down into the trunk."