Broken Stern_An Ellie O'Conner Novel

by Jack Hardin

  The doorbell rang across the front portion of the house. Footsteps traversed the tile and stopped at the door. It opened, and Andrés greeted Ringo’s guest with a nod. “Come in,” he said. “He’s expecting you.”

  “Gracias.” The visitor - Hector Lomas - wore black ostrich skin boots that created an echo as their heels struck the Spanish terracotta floor. His dress slacks were a couple inches too long at the ankle, gathering at his feet, and his pudgy stomach pushed at the lower buttons of his light blue dress shirt. His long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail that swayed on his back as he made his way into the living room. Ringo stood to greet him.

  “Ringo,” Hector said. “How are you, my friend?”

  Ringo pulled the cigar from his lips and tossed his hands away from his body in a showing of hospitality. “Hector. My faithful engineer. Good to see you.” He stepped in and gave the man a kiss on the cheek. “Come have a seat, please. I hope we’re making progress.”

  “Yes.” Hector settled into a white couch cushion. “Much progress.” He took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and dabbed at his forehead. He knew he had done well. It had been two months since Ringo commissioned the new items, and he would be pleased. But there was always the lingering question of just how pleased he would be. Hector was a technology gopher that, given enough time and resources, could make almost anything, do almost anything. He set a small suitcase on the hickory coffee table, unsnapped it, and brought out a laptop. He opened it, typed in a password, and performed a few clicks on the trackpad. He turned the laptop toward his boss.

  “Okay. Here are the pictures taken at the lab. I will explain them as I go.”

  The first picture showed the inside of a speedboat, fit with a metal contraption. A metal cylinder half the size of an oil drum. A lid opened on hinges showing a cavern within the container.

  “This is where the product goes if necessary,” Hector began. “As you requested, the machine is small enough not to take up much room. It is also made from high-strength aluminum alloys to lighten it without sacrificing utility.”

  He glanced quickly at Ringo to gauge a reaction, got none, then continued. “In the event that the shipment is being pursued by authorities, three kilos can be inserted at a time.”

  “Three?” Ringo said.

  “Yes.” Hector couldn’t tell if he was impressed or disappointed, so he quickly said, “As you know, go-fast shipments carry one to one-and-a-half tons, so they have nine hundred packages to deal with, give or take. This can handle three kilos at a time and receive new ones almost every thirty seconds. With two of these on a boat the crew can be rid of it all very quickly, relatively speaking.”

  Ringo asked, “How does it work?”

  “The machine - I’m calling it The Growler - it━”

  Ringo put a hand up. “Let’s...forgo a pet name and continue with the explanation.”

  Hector dabbed his forehead with the handkerchief again and nodded. “Of course.” He put his hand back on the keyboard and moved to the next image. This one showed a framed metal skeleton atop a hollow cylinder. “Here is what the inside looks like,” Hector said, “once the outer cover is removed.” He touched the screen where it showed a rectangular mouth. “The product is fed into here and sent into the cylinder where these tubes feed in the solution. It mixes, and then ten seconds later it is pumped out of the boat through a customized exit port in the hull. The mixture is a solution of dythanerum and ammonia that dissolves the cocaine and allows it to sink beneath the surface of the water leaving no traces at all. As you can see from this image, the system is built directly into the modified transom. So now if one of your boats is apprehended, there will be many questions as to why the boat is outfitted in such a way, and I am sure they will quickly come to the correct conclusion. However, there will be no trace of any illegal product. Now,” he smiled broadly, “this is the best part. On a molecular level━”

  “I don’t need to know the science. Just the mechanics.”

  “Of course.” He switched pictures and zoomed in. “The dythanerum surrounds the material - the cocaine - and does two separate things over the course of several seconds. It fully encapsulates it and then begins to eat away at it. Once it’s blown into the ocean, it sinks.” He flicked his fingers away from his hand. “It’s gone. Just like that. No residue in the waters, no samples for the feds to recover.”

  “If this is such an easy solution, why hasn’t it been done before by someone else?” Ringo asked.

  “Because it’s not just the dythanerum. It’s a cocktail, more or less, that my chemist has spent months trying to perfect.” Hector beamed, pleased with himself. “He finally has. Once all the product has been pushed through, a mild bleach is pumped through the system and flushes out any trace of the drugs. It’s a closed system with each package being dissolved before you can push in another. This prevents the product from blowing out while the boat is moving at sixty or eighty knots. The worst that can happen upon engagement is the feds see the boat has been modified. But no traces of specific cargo.” He changed images again. “Here is a metal frame that can be erected within a minute and canvas sheets drawn over it. This will keep all eyes off what is transpiring at the back of the boat. And video footage made by a pursuing authority will not see what is being done.”

  “You say it will take three kilos at a time. How long does it take to dispose of them and be ready for more?”

  “Right now we have it at thirty-four seconds per every three kilos,” Hector answered. “What I call a batch.”

  Ringo stared at the computer screen, took a long draw off his cigar, and blew out. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  Hector thought his boss was joking, laughed too early, stopped when he realized he was serious, and swallowed hard. “Ringo, we have worked very long on this. What is it you do not like?”

  “Hector. You have done well. Exactly what I asked.”

  Hector’s shoulders relaxed.

  “I need it to happen faster. You said we can fit two of these contraptions on the boat. That mean six kilos spit out every thirty-four seconds. If there are nine hundred packages on board that translates into…” Ringo paused, stared toward the computer but looked through it, and five seconds later said, “Eighty-five minutes. Almost an hour-and-a-half.”

  Hector lifted his brows and raised a finger. “Yes, but remember that when a boat is found and pursued - which is becoming more rare - it can take up to a couple hours for them to be caught or stopped.”

  Ringo smiled patiently. “My friend. Think with me. If my crew spends an hour discharging almost a thousand kilos of cocaine into the Gulf of Mexico, only to be caught with two hundred kilos, how does this help anyone? They still end up incarcerated.”

  Hector nodded. His boss was right. He would need to find a way to speed things up. He wanted to sigh but didn’t. This whole endeavour was a mystery to him. Here Ringo was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on R&D for the sole purpose of disposing of millions of dollars worth of product. All to save the necks of a couple runners should they even get caught. He had never seen or heard of anything like this. No one cared for runners. They were the dust on the warehouse floor, the cockroaches that could be introduced to the sole of a boot and be replaced before the boot retreated. As if divining his thoughts, Ringo spoke up.

  “Hector, what if those running my boats know that if they get caught by the U.S. Coast Guard or Border Patrol - with no drugs - they will get extradited back to Mexico instead of tied up in the defunct American prison and legal system? Do you think they will want to run my boats over another?”

  “Yes. But they will then serve time in a Mexican prison.” Which is far worse, he wanted to say.

  “César gets them out,” Ringo corrected. “Either by greasing palms or breaking through concrete. You see, my men are like family. You know this. I’m willing to risk millions of dollars being lost to the waters of the Gulf in just one run for the sake of loyalty. In this business you don
’t earn loyalty as much as you invest in it.”

  Hector nodded. Ringo was right. To the last, everyone that worked for Ringo respected him. They knew he would take care of them. It was only when someone broke one of his few rules that things went very bad. And his rules were clear and easy to follow. And yet there was an underlying violence within him. A pool of darkness that you couldn’t even see in his eyes but could feel radiating from him like an icy breeze that chilled every vertebra down your spinal column. There was an evil unrest embodied behind his physical exterior, and it teetered on the edge between loving others and ripping out their Adam’s apple if they stepped outside the lines.

  Ringo continued, “You have not been on the Mexican side of things for a long time. If you were running boats across the Gulf and you knew that you would be taken care of no matter what...who would you want to work for?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I have their trust, I have their heart, and I can assume a certain level of loyalty that most people in my position leave to chance. So find a way to cut forty-five minutes off without adding a third machine, and we’ll be good.”

  “Yes, Ringo. We will get it right.” A faint buzz pulsed in Hector’s bag. He reached in and took out his phone. He looked at the number glaring off the screen. “It’s César.”

  Ringo nodded his approval. Hector answered it, spoke in Spanish for the next two minutes. He hung up. “He would like to meet with you in person, Ringo.”

  El Toto was Mexico's most successful and notorious drug lord, at the helm of the country’s most ruthless and arguably, most successful cartel, Ángeles Negros. César Solorzano was one of only four associates in his inner circle and headed up the cartel’s U.S. maritime operations. Ringo took a long draw off his shortening cigar, blew out, and shook his head. “That man has too many meetings. I guess you have lots of meetings to look busy when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Hector’s brows raised in surprise and did not go unnoticed. Hector worked for Ringo because César suggested that Hector do so. Hector didn’t have much of a say so in the matter. In the decade he had known César, Hector had never heard someone speak of him in the way Ringo just had. At least, not above a whisper.

  Ringo continued. “César is full of fear. And when you’re full of fear, you make decisions based on the premise of maintaining control. But that is no way to live. How can you gain more control when you are only trying to keep from losing that which you have?” Hector struggled with his question, coughed. Ringo set a reassuring hand on Hector’s knee. “You tell César that I will meet with him.”

  “Yes, Ringo.”

  Ringo stood up. Hector shut the laptop, zipped up the bag, and came to his feet. “Hector, you’re a good man.” Ringo looked at Chewy who was still standing against the wall, motionless. He jutted his thumb toward Hector. “This guy. He puts the ‘can’ in “Mex-i-can.”

  Hector smiled. Ringo smiled. Chewy did not. Because Chewy never smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ellie flipped open the top of the Keurig. She grabbed the edge of the used coffee pod and tossed it in the trash. “You sure you don’t want one?” she asked Mark.

  He kept his eyes on his laptop screen. “I’m good.”

  She peeled the foil lid back on two Mini Moos and poured the contents into her cup before walking back to the conference table and sitting down. “Okay, listen to this,” Mark said. “Hawkwing’s regional office is based out of Tampa and oversees all private security for clients in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. Their Regional Vice President has been in his position for two years now. Paul Greenberg. Looks like he moved over from Johnson & Johnson and had been on the Board of Directors over at Brinks. Twenty years ago...get this,” he raised a finger. “Twenty years ago he spent thirty months as an economic liaison in República de Colombia.”

  “No kidding,” Ellie said.

  “Yeah.” Continuing his summary, he said, “Greenberg worked with their Ministry of the Public Service on creating more efficient logistics to get vaccinations into the countryside. Once he left there he ended up at Yale for a stint as an adjunct professor in applied economics.” He slid a small stack of paperwork in her direction. “This is everything Sandra pulled on their Tampa office, leadership, and their area managers like Arnold Niebuhr.”

  The name struck Ellie’s curiosity. “What’s his story?” she asked.

  Mark leaned back in and shuffled a few pages around. “Let’s see...came stateside from Norway three years ago. Looks like he worked for the Norwegian Army for seven years, spending all his time with the Bardufoss Battalion. Apparently, that group is equivalent to our Signal Corps.”

  “What’s he doing over here?”

  “Not a clue. Haven’t dug that far. Don’t know that we have that much on him.”

  “And how long has he been at Hawkwing?”

  “Three years, which matches what he told us. I don’t see anything domestic before that.”

  Ellie sipped her coffee and said, “So this Greenberg guy. He spent some time in Colombia. That’s something but could be nothing. Greenberg's a VP. These billion-dollar security companies have stockholders and politicians to answer to and to make happy. Hard to believe they would have a shady VP caught up in drugs or letting it happen under his watch. Guys in his position typically go south, when they do, in other directions. Like I said before, these people are vetted and audited up to their hairlines. But either way, if that Smith guy is part of what’s happening over at the old boat on that tiny key at the Mondongos, then someone higher up has to be in on this. A guy this low wouldn’t just slip through the cracks by accident.”

  The glass door to the conference room opened, and a dark-skinned lady wearing a gray skirt suit and her hair clipped up neatly behind her head walked over to Ellie and handed her a folder. “This is what I’ve found on your Mr. Smith,” she said. “His real name is Eric Cardoza.”

  “Thanks, Sandra,” Ellie and Mark said in unison.

  “Sure.” Sandra turned to leave. “I’ll keep looking and see what else I can pull.”

  Ellie thumbed through the folder’s contents. “Eric Cardoza...just who are you?” The scanned the contents, quickly and skillfully noting what was pertinent to the immediate. “He grew up in Iowa, got his bachelor's degree at Michigan State, and entered the Air Force. After finishing basic at Lackland in San Antonio, his first station was at Buckley in Colorado and then he was shipped off to Germany with the 86th Airlift Wing. He was honorably discharged and moved out here.”

  “Discharged? Why?”

  “Doesn’t say. His record is clean though.”

  “I wonder why he chose Florida,” she wondered out loud. “Any family associations here?” She kept scanning.

  Mark flipped through a few more papers. “None that I can see. Father is deceased. Mother lives in Colorado. No siblings or cousins according to this.”

  She looked up. Her mind was whirling, seeking associations and connections. “We need to be aggressive on how we handle this. Let’s see where this Hawkwing angle goes. Maybe it will lead us to whoever this Ringo guy is.”

  “How do you want to play this?” Mark asked.

  “I’ll go up there and talk with Greenberg.”

  “What? You mean, ‘Hello, Mr. Greenberg. I’m with the DEA and would like to know if you or anyone in your company is currently co-opting your clients’ properties for the movement of illegal drugs’?”

  Ellie looked at him flatly. “Yes, Mark. That’s exactly why Garrett brought me in. To do smart things like that.”

  He laughed. “Well, shoot. I could have figured that out on my own.”

  Ellie stood up and walked to the window. She looked out. “I am rich, Mark. Did I ever tell you that?” Her voice curved into a southern drawl. “I...am from a little ol’ town in...North Gaw-jah, and I inherited a large sum of wealth from my aristocratic father. Bless the old man’s heart.”

  “What...” Mark stopped and smiled as it registered. “Ye
s. You did, didn't you? I had forgotten about that.”

  “I’ll work on my name,” Ellie said, bringing her voice back to normal. “But I’ll need to look the part when I go up there.”

  “I’ll get all that set up. You can work with Sandra on it. She’s worked with plenty of agents on undercover operations.” He picked up a pen and jotted a note. “When?”

  “Next week. I’ll come in as a potential client in need of what they offer. Create a narrative for me and get the minimal loaded onto the internet and backdated where you can. Whoever I come to them as, they’ll do their research on me.”

  Mark’s eyes sparkled. He nodded. He grinned. “Now we’re talking.”

  Ellie stood up. “You coming?”

  “Where?”

  “Garrett’s office. We need to update him on what we’ve found.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ellie parked the El Camino under the shade of the awning. She turned it off and stepped outside before she changed her mind and tore away from the building. It was time, she knew, but that didn’t mean she had to want to. She reluctantly walked to the large, heavy wooden door, pulled it open, and walked inside. The smell of too much potpourri hit her nostrils, so strong she knew it would embed itself into the fibers of her clothing and stick to her skin the rest of the day. She made her way to the open receptionist's window on her left and tapped the tip of the silver bell.

  Ten seconds later a tiny lady came into view, looking three hundred years old and as many millimeters tall. She wore a long burgundy dress complete with shoulder pads and a white lace pattern around her neck. Her small feet shuffled toward the receptionist's window.