Oath to Defend

by Scott Matthews

  “Marco, may I join you?” Drake pulled out a chair without waiting for an answer. “We need to talk.”

  “A gentleman does not interrupt a lady when she is talking,” Vazquez said without looking at him. “Please go away.”

  “Sorry Marco, not today. Not until I know why you had a man outside your room who tried to kill me.”

  Now Vazquez looked at him. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I have no one at my room.” He started to stand up, but Drake put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down in his chair. The look in his eyes said, Liz, let me handle this.

  He looked at Vazquez again. “Remember when I bought you a drink out here and asked you about the men who were grooming your ponies? The ones I saw at Wyler Ranch who spoke Arabic? One of them, or one of their buddies, tried to knife me outside your room a couple minutes ago. I want to know who those men are and why they’re working for you.”

  “I told you, they are not working for me.” Vazquez’s voice was rising. “They are with the transport company my father hired to bring my ponies here.”

  “Marco,” Liz leaned in toward him, “don’t make a scene, okay? You need to tell us what you know about these men.”

  The polo player looked back and forth. “Who are you? Are you with him?”

  “I’m with the Department of Homeland Security,” she said. “Mr. Drake is helping me with a matter vital to our government.”

  Before he said anything else, Vazquez looked around to see if anyone nearby was listening. Then, “Could we have a drink? People are watching us. I don’t want them to think I’m in trouble or something. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Drake waved a pool waiter over. He took their orders and left.

  “Did someone really try to kill you?” Vazquez asked Drake.

  “There was a man standing at the elevator when I came to see if you were in your room. He tried to stick a knife in my back and wound up dead. He looked like one of the men I saw at the ranch.”

  “Do I need to go and see what’s being done?” Liz asked.

  “I don’t know if anyone’s found him yet,” Drake said. “He fell from the second floor and broke his neck. It’ll look like an accident, and I don’t want to get mixed up with the police again. It’ll be okay.”

  When their drinks arrived and the waiter had left, Liz took over questioning Vazquez.

  “Tell us about the men your father hired.”

  “They were waiting in San Diego to bring my ponies here. I don’t know much about them.”

  “Have they worked for you before?”

  “No, I usually bring my men from Argentina. But Papa didn’t want them to come this time. He said he owed someone a favor.”

  “Did he say who he owed the favor?”

  “No,” Vazquez said quickly. “It might have been someone from his bank. A man came to our estancia just before this tour. Papa told me when he left that my guys couldn’t come with me.”

  Drake looked at Liz. She was watching the young man’s expressions intently.

  He assumed her role as interrogator and began asking rapid-fire questions. “Where did you meet the men who came with you from San Diego?”

  “They met me at the polo club there,” Vazquez explained, “after my match. We loaded my ponies in my horse trailer and they left to drive up here. I flew here the next day.”

  “How many men brought your horses here?”

  “Four men, two who drove off with the trailer and two more who followed in another truck.”

  “Are these four men the ones at the ranch here?”

  “Yes, and one other man who came later.”

  Drake leaned in closer. “What does he look like?”

  “He is younger, maybe twenty five. Handsome like me, but I think he’s American.”

  “How do you know he’s an American?”

  “He talks like you. They call him Sal. That’s American, no?”

  Drake nodded. “You’re a smart man, Marco. Have you seen anything at the ranch that looks like these guys are doing something illegal?”

  “You mean like being here illegally?”

  “No. I mean do they look like they’re doing things that might be illegal or criminal?”

  “They just take care of my ponies,” Vazquez said with frustration, “How should I know what they do when I’m not around.”

  Liz started to ask a question when Drake held up his hand and turned to look at someone talking excitedly with their waiter.

  “I think they’ve found the body,” he said. “Marco, when they ask you about the man found dead on the ground in front of your unit, tell them the truth. You don’t know him and you didn’t see him fall. Don’t tell them about me, or that you talked to someone from the government. Understand? This will get you in a lot of trouble if you do. You won’t be allowed to leave the country. Maybe never get to play polo again.”

  “We’re going to leave now,” Liz said. “If you think of anything else we should know, call me. Here’s my card. My cell phone number is on it. Remember, I’m counting on you to keep our talk a secret.”

  She stood and kissed Vazquez lightly on the cheek. As she walked away with Drake, she saw the poolside waiter heading for the young polo player’s table.

  “He’s not telling us everything,” Liz said.

  “I got that, too. It’s not his father’s banker that’s behind this.”

  36

  Marco Vazquez tried to remain calm as he walked back to his suite. The waiter had said a man from resort security needed to see him and could he return to his unit immediately. He knew what they needed to see him about. He thought he probably knew the dead man.

  From the time he had checked into the resort, he’d noticed a man watching him. He wasn’t one of the men he’d seen at the ranch, but he looked like them. Ever since the other man had come and threatened his family, the watcher had made his presence obvious.

  He knew who his father was taking orders from, just as he knew that telling the woman from the government about him would mean his family would be killed. There was no mistaking the danger he was in. The eyes of the man who would come for him had burned with hate. The things he’d said he would do, he would do.

  When he got to his unit, he found men gathered around a body lying on the cart path. Two men had patches on their khaki shirts that identified them as resort security, and another man who introduced himself as the resort manager. He answered the questions the security men asked and told them he didn’t know the dead man and hadn’t seen him before. After agreeing to give a statement to the deputy sheriff when he arrived, the manager was allowed to go. But Vazquez could not go to his room just yet, they said. The area in front of his unit was being secured as a possible crime scene.

  He walked to the Trailhead Grill and stood at the bar, while another Long Island iced tea was being prepared for him. When the drink was in his hand, he took a seat at the small table farthest from the bar and took out his iPhone. It was time to have a word with his father.

  “Yes,” his father answered.

  “It’s me, Papa. We’re in trouble.”

  “What now?”

  “That favor you owe someone. A man visited me here and threatened to kill our family.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he was worried they’d find out about him.”

  “Who would find out?”

  “Probably the government, a woman from the Department of Homeland Security came to talk with me just now. The man she had with her just killed a man who’s been watching me. What do I do now?”

  “Do what I told you to do, son. Behave, don’t talk to anyone and ride well. You are there to play polo, nothing else. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Vazquez waved to the bartender for another round. He would stay here a little longer and then go swimming. When he finished swimming, he thought he might try to arrange for another suite for the rest of his stay.

  ~~~

  In an exclu
sive neighborhood of Asuncion, Paraguay, the man who called himself Ryan sat in the shade of a covered terrace next to a swimming pool with two magnificent waterfalls. The old mansion the Alliance had purchased for its young leader had once belonged to his grandfather, Rainer Walkur.

  Rainer Walkur had worked with Martin Bormann in the last years of World War II to move capital, mainly gold, out of Germany to build a new empire. The gold had been the spoils of a war that Germany had unfortunately lost, but it had also allowed his grandfather and other Nazi leaders to lay the foundation for a new financial and industrial empire. Beginning in the early 1950s, banks were bought, hundreds of new front companies and corporations were started, and new alliances developed.

  Rainer Walkur had hidden in plain sight as a banker in Asuncion from 1944 until his death in 1973. A Jew assassination team had followed him to Brazil on a business trip and shot him as he walked to his hotel after a dinner with friends. His estate and home had been sold, and Ryan’s father, Rolf Walkur, who was attending college in the United States at the time, had inherited the leadership position for the Alliance. After his graduation, Rolf Walkur had changed his last name to a more American-looking Walker and returned to South America to continue to grow the underground empire.

  From a ranch in Argentina, he had brought together several of the powerful drug cartels operating from Columbia, a couple of criminal syndicates from Europe, and fledgling terrorist organizations from around the world. These were the basis of the Alliance. Its purpose was to launder drug money through Alliance banks and develop its own paramilitary arm to carry out and enforce Alliance operations.

  The drug cartels had been an easy sell. They were sophisticated in many ways, but international finance wasn’t their specialty. The terrorist organizations were harder to convince. They were much more suspicious than the South American drug lords, but they had ultimately become comfortable using the Alliance to move their money around the world. In exchange for services rendered, they had agreed to kill people for the Alliance, especially Jews. That was the bond they shared, their mutual hatred of the Jews.

  Ryan Walker was proud of the progress the Alliance had made and the power it now possessed. Following his father, his postgraduate work in the States had earned him a master of science degree in financial economics (MSFE) from Columbia University. His education gave him both the knowledge and the experience to run a financial empire that was now valued at five hundred billion dollars.

  The Alliance had started with the gold smuggled out of Europe and the Far East. There was more gold hidden that had not been recovered, but what they had was enough, Ryan believed. It was his mastery of all things financial that allowed the Alliance to add to its holdings.

  But he was growing more and more concerned about the risks they were taking on behalf of the Brotherhood. The failed assassination of the Secretary of Homeland Security in the United States that had been planned and carried out by the Brotherhood’s man, David Barak, had been a disaster. Now it appeared there might be another disaster on the horizon.

  Ryan had just received a call from his communications center, which was hidden deep in the jungle in the Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. The young polo player Barak had used to smuggle the demolition nuke into the United States had panicked and called his father in Argentina. His own people, of course, monitored all of the calls to and from the boy’s father. It was just good business, as their bank in Argentina had loaned the old man the money that had saved his estancia. That was just good business as well. But now that they were more directly involved with the Brotherhood, he couldn’t take a risk that any link to the Alliance might be discovered.

  His decision made, Ryan picked up the encrypted satellite phone on the small table at his right elbow. The number he called belonged to the top lieutenant of the Mexican cartel in Tijuana that had lost its leader, the brother of the Architect who had been assassinated by Barak and his men.

  “Hector, do you know who this is?”

  “Not many men have this number.”

  “Not many men know the name of the assassin who killed your boss, either. I do.”

  “Why would I believe you?”

  “Because, Hector, I know you were the one who told us where Ramon was going to be to celebrate his birthday in Tijuana.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to repay the favor, Hector. To give you a reason to say you should be the one to lead your cartel. And because you need us as partners.”

  “How would you repay the favor?”

  “By telling you where the assassin is.”

  After telling Hector where Barak was and how he should be revenged, Ryan ended the call and signaled for his peon to bring him another iced yerba mate.

  37

  Drake and Liz Strobel left the Pronghorn resort and drove for several miles without talking. For the second day in a row, someone had tried to kill him. He was having trouble controlling his anger. It wasn’t that he’d been attacked, per se, although the possible damage to his car had pissed him off when the hay bales were flying over its roof, and it wasn’t that someone had tried to knife him in the back. The coward had gotten what he deserved. He was angry because he was itching to water board young Marco Vazquez and discover who his father was fronting for. He was itching to lead an attack on the lefty Hollywood producer’s ranch, take no prisoners, and then go home. But he knew the woman beside him would either turn him in or talk him out of it.

  “Well?” Liz broke the silence.

  “Well what?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He still wasn’t looking at her. “Depends on how far you’re prepared to go.”

  “Excuse me? Eva Marie Saint’s line from North by Northwest—‘I never discuss love on an empty stomach’ for some reason comes to mind.”

  “Be serious,” he said. “Vazquez could be made to talk, but I doubt you would let that happen.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she replied. “We both know enhanced interrogation works. But I’m not convinced we need to use it on him. What about those guys you say are at that ranch where he keeps his polo ponies? Wouldn’t they be a better source of information?”

  Drake looked at her to see if she was baiting him. It appeared that she wasn’t. “You sure you want to be involved in something like that?” he asked.

  “I think we’re running out of time,” she said. “If a nuclear device of some sort is here in Oregon, it may be our best shot at finding it. The polo match is the day after tomorrow. Vazquez will be gone when it’s over. The men taking care of his ponies will leave with him.”

  Drake had to concede her point. “All right, if you’re sure about this, we’ll talk it over with Mike and the guys tonight. If you want out, you need to decide before then. You’ll be a coconspirator once we start planning something.”

  “Drake, I have a law degree, too. I’m aware of the consequences.” It was time to change the subject. “Why don’t we stop somewhere and get those things you need for dinner? I wouldn’t want you cowboys making plans on empty stomachs.”

  “Or discussing love, right?” Drake said with a laugh, relieved that she had decided to mount up with his posse.

  They stopped at the Sunriver Country Store and bought extra steaks, baking potatoes, and items Liz needed for a salad. When they arrived at the cabin, they saw that both of the white Yukons were parked in front. Inside, Casey and his team were pouring bags of ice in the kitchen sink and poking a case of beer into it.

  Casey heard them coming and turned around. “Thought we should get ourselves in the proper frame of mind for those steaks I hope are in that bag you’re carrying,” he said.

  “Seven of the biggest rib eyes I could find,” Drake answered, “delivered as promised. Liz picked out the greens for a salad, so it looks like it’s up to you now. But before you get started at the grill, I’d like to hear what you learned today.”

  “Not much about the guy from Las Vegas who rente
d the Escalades,” Casey reported. “He told the rental agent friends of his were flying in and they were going camping for a week. There’s no local address listed on the rental agreement. It just says Sunriver, so he could be anywhere. Larry checked a couple of the area outfitters. None of them rented or sold gear to a Timothy O’Neil.”

  “Clever. We know he’s here,” Drake said, “or at least one of the Escalades is here, because it followed me from Pronghorn. And he knew we’d be looking for him, so he said he’d be off the grid camping with friends. Ricardo, what did you and Billy find at the ranch?”

  “Same thing you found, for the most part. The guys taking care of the polo ponies don’t look like Mexicans, and they keep to themselves. We hiked in from a country road and found a spot on the rimrock above the stable and bunkhouse area. They spent more time working on their Harley-Davidsons than they did taking care of those ponies.”

  Drake nodded. “How many men did you see?”

  “Four men grooming horses and a fifth man who seemed to be supervising them,” Ricardo said. “There were other ranch hands doing other things away from the stable area, but they kept their distance from these five.”

  “What about their Harleys?” Liz asked. “Do they all have Harleys?”

  “Yep, four that look new or are at least very well cared for. One had a trailer hitched to it that had flames and a skull and crossbones painted on it. Made me think they might belong to a motorcycle gang.”

  “Harleys aren’t cheap,” Liz said. “I once had a boyfriend who owned one. So how do four ranch hands afford Harleys?”

  “Maybe they’re well paid,” Billy Montgomery said. “If they travel around taking care of a big polo star’s ponies, he might pay them pretty well. Those horses are pampered like you wouldn’t believe. My dad used to take me to polo matches out on Long Island.”

  “I think we’re missing the point here,” Drake said. “Why are they working on their Harleys when they probably have grooming work they should be doing? Mike, you grew up on a ranch. Do ranch hands have that much free time during the day?”