Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  “Which we can talk about over steaks,” Josh said. He seemed to be enjoying the role of magnanimous host immensely, thought Crane. As if he was playing dress-up on his toy boat.

  They seated themselves around the table, and the rich smell of grilled steaks preceded the waiters.

  “Melissa calls her project a census,” Josh said as the waiters served lunch. “As I see it, it’s a gene bank. That area’s threatened by development, by climate change, and we have no idea what lives there. Melissa’s identifying species and preserving them before they’re lost forever.”

  “At least we were,” she said, “but we’ve run into a snag. That’s why I’ve come to Mr. Sulenski—”

  “Josh. Come on.”

  “That’s why I turned to Josh for help.”

  “What’s the problem?” Crane asked.

  “Someone’s tampering with our equipment,” said Melissa. “We set up all kinds of equipment out in the field. Insect traps, timed water sample collectors, pH recorders. We never had a problem until a couple months ago. Then things started disappearing.”

  “Stolen?”

  Melissa nodded. “If it was just once in a while, I’d think the wind, or maybe an animal got something. But it was a dozen instruments in a night. It was very deliberate.”

  “Is this equipment valuable?” Crane asked. “Could someone resell it?”

  Not really. I mean, they cost money, of course, a lot of it. But there’s nobody around there who would pay for them. They’re really only useful to us. After the first couple times, a thief would have figured that out. But we looked anyway. We checked local flea markets. I even sent a couple people to canvass pawn shops in San Juan. But we never found anything. Then it escalated.”

  “Escalated how?” Crane said over the clicking of Josh’s silverware against his plate.

  “They started destroying things. Just trampling everything and leaving the wreckage behind. We lost a fifteen-thousand-dollar gas analyzer once. They had to break a padlock to get into it. Then they even smashed the data cards.”

  “That’s not greed, then,” said Crane. “That’s malice. Someone objects to what you’re doing.”

  “Who has a problem with a gene bank?” said Josh. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Nobody’s ever complained to us,” said Melissa. “The land isn’t contested. It was set aside by the king of Spain! It’s been forest preserve for more than a century. We reached out to local environmental groups. They were as upset as we are. They all think we’re doing important work that will help Puerto Rico.”

  “And the police?”

  Melissa shook her head and sighed. “They haven’t been much help. They just think it’s bored kids. And they’re not going to put officers out in the rainforest all night to watch over some insect traps.”

  “Tell him about the cameras,” said Josh.

  “Right. We tried putting out game cameras to catch them in the act. That didn’t work. They stole the cameras.”

  “How many cameras?” Crane asked.

  “Two the first time. Four the second. They got all of them.”

  “All of them?” Crane’s instincts were flaring. That didn’t fit. “You never got a single camera through the night?”

  “Not a one. This is putting the whole project at risk,” Melissa said. “We’ve got a backlog of samples we’re still processing. But we haven’t collected any new material for more than a month. We’re dead in the water. Josh is our primary backer, so I turned to him.”

  “And here we are,” said Josh. “I explained to Melissa that you have a strong background providing security for government installations.”

  “And I’d appreciate any insights you can offer,” said Melissa. Crane could hear the diplomatic “but” in her voice. He wasn’t what she wanted from Josh.

  “I want to send John back with you,” Josh said quickly, nipping whatever objection she planned to raise in the bud. “I want to know what he thinks once he’s seen the situation on the ground. John, I’d like to put you on retainer to Myria Group to help Melissa out any way you can. This project’s important to me.”

  Crane hesitated. He quickly added up the pros and cons. Josh clearly liked his toys, and Crane had no interest in becoming one of them. On the other hand, Josh had money to burn, and Crane would run out of cash in another few months. He’d rejected the golden parachute and let himself fall. Well, here was someone throwing him a rope. He’d already rejected one. How many more could he expect the world to toss him?

  Also, there was the beautiful woman in distress angle. He wasn’t doing anything at the moment except letting his skills degrade. He wanted to feel like he was doing something helpful. And he’d never been to Puerto Rico.

  Crane gave Josh and Melissa a smile. “I’ll be happy to see what I can do.”

  ###

  After lunch, they left Melissa sunning on the rear deck and went forward to work out the details of his employment. Then Josh walked Crane back down to the tender. It would take him back to Key West where he’d pack his bag, check out of the B&B, and meet Josh’s Gulfstream at Key West’s airport in a few hours. Josh had promised he’d have them both back to San Juan in time for dinner.

  “She doesn’t really want me there,” said Crane as they descended the steps to the tender’s launch bay.

  “I know,” said Josh. “She wants to hire locals to guard the site. She thinks that will protect her equipment and make her local friends as well. But I’ve got reasons for sending you instead.”

  “You mean the cameras?” said Crane.

  Josh stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “What about the cameras?”

  “They got all of them. Those cameras are built for concealment. They’re meant to be tucked out of the way where they won’t be noticed. But they found every one of them. In the dark. That’s not bored teenagers with flashlights and hammers. And it’s not someone who resents all that money being spent studying bugs while they’re broke. Whoever you’re up against went looking for cameras, and they brought specialized gear to find them.”

  “Huh.” Josh exhaled. “I’m going to like you. I can tell.” Then he glanced back up the stairway to the closed door. “But that’s not it. There’s something else I haven’t told Melissa because I don’t want to freak her out, but there’s more to it than vandalism in the forest.” He led Crane slowly toward the door to the dry dock. “A few months ago, we had a fake reporter sniffing around my foundation asking about this project. She pestered us for interviews, but her background didn’t check out. Then she tried to social engineer her way around my gatekeepers. After that, someone tried to hack into the project’s cloud servers. We traced that as far as Eastern Europe before the trail went cold.”

  So the interest wasn’t just local. “Is there anything you want to tell me about this project before I head out there? Is it a front for something?”

  “No!” said Josh. “That’s what’s so weird. It’s just what it looks like. And they put all their data on the net under a creative commons license. Trying to hack it doesn’t make any sense. It’s all right there, for free.”

  Josh opened the door and gestured Crane through. Two crewmen were already prepping the boat.

  “I need to know who’s messing with this project and why,” he said as Crane boarded the tender, and the bay doors slid open to the sea. “But be careful. So far nobody’s gotten hurt. I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “I will,” said Crane.

  But he was troubled as the tender left the Normandy and sped back toward Key West. The reasons for the attacks might not make sense to Melissa, but they made sense to whoever was behind them. And that meant they knew something about her project that she didn’t. If he was going to help her, Crane needed to find out what that was.

  Chapter 4

  Brno, Czech Republic

  Anton Kucera swept into the lobby with his two best men, Vladan and Lubor, at either side. The building was some government heap from the old days.
Kucera was too young to remember the communists, or their stitched-together state of Czechoslovakia, but there was no mistaking the flat ugliness of their buildings, despite the attempts to pretty it up with lights and wood panels.

  Kucera took off his sunglasses and slipped them into his jacket. It was a brown leather recreation of a World War II flyer’s jacket, complete with a sheepskin lining and a pinup girl straddling a bomb on the back. He strode through the metal detector, and it went off like a car alarm. Kucera locked eyes with the nearest of the guards. He waited until the man looked down at his shoes, and then gestured Vladan and Lubor through. The metal detector bleated its warning two more times. The guards stood like statues.

  There was a pretty girl at the main counter. She looked up from her PC and smiled.

  “I’m here to see the old man,” said Kucera, leaning against the counter and checking out her cleavage.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, her voice steady. “Mr. Skala is expecting you.” She gestured to the elevators. “You can go up.”

  He winked at her and led his entourage away. She was afraid, of course, but she played it cool, kept her composure. Kucera respected that. He’d probably keep her on. Unlike the guards. Useless. They’d have to go.

  This was a historic day, he thought as the elevator hummed upward. Branislav Skala ran everything in Brno: hookers, gambling, liquor and cigarettes, stolen cars. Everything. It had been that way since the communist days. He was always going on about it. How tough it was back then. How he got started smuggling out old family gravestones for rich Jews in the West. It was all StB agents and SNB national police and government snitches, and none of it meant a damn thing to Kucera. Nobody had seen a communist since before he was born.

  Skala got rich purchasing state assets when the new government privatized them. A bribe here, a broken leg there, and Skala bought up half a dozen factories, a brewery, a hotel, this hideous office building, and more, all for a song. So now he was rich. But that was ancient history and so was Skala. Being rich made him soft. Both of his sons were in America. They said one of them was a veterinarian in Minnesota. A fucking veterinarian!

  Kucera had clawed his way out of the gutters. From street wars with other gangs, he’d moved up to challenging Skala himself, and he’d won. He’d demanded this meeting, and Skala had accepted. Maybe the old man could see it was time to surrender and leave the field. If he was that smart, then Kucera would be happy to let him retire to his country estate and grow his stupid grapes. If not, then he could die right here today.

  The elevator opened to a well-furnished foyer. There were no soldiers here. Just a pair of glass doors with Skala’s name. Kucera strode in like a general ready to receive his vanquished enemy’s sword.

  ###

  Skala’s spacious office was furnished in steel and leather. The old man sat behind a broad, angular desk. Behind him was a sweep of glass with a panoramic view of an empty apartment tower slowly crumbling away in the weather.

  “Come in,” he said. “It’s good to see you, Anton.”

  Kucera sat in one of the old man’s fancy chairs, and Vladan and Lubor stood behind him on either side. Their jackets were open to show off their shoulder holsters. The old man tried to make small talk, like they were old friends catching up. But Kucera got right to the point. He told the old man that his operations were in tatters. He’d already taken over some of his operations, and Skala’s men had failed to push him out. He could take what he wanted.

  “You’re old and soft,” Kucera said. “Maybe you were something back in your precious communist days, but that was a long time ago.”

  Skala acknowledged this with a shrug.

  “It’s time for a new boss,” said Kucera. “One who knows the streets. Who has the guts to fight.”

  “And that’s you?”

  Kucera laughed and Vladan and Lubor laughed with him. “You see anybody else sitting here in your nice office telling you how it is?”

  “No,” said Skala. “No one else would dare. And you’re right, Anton, about a lot of things. But there’s one thing you’re wrong about. I took your meeting because I think you might be smart enough to see that.”

  “I know you have a shit view from your office,” said Kucera, waving at the empty tower across the way with its empty windows and crumbling, naked balconies. “I’m smart enough to know if you put it on the other side of the building, you’d have a nice view of the river.”

  “Yes, you’re clever,” said Skala. “And tough. I watch the street gangs. You let nothing stop you. You’re ruthless when it’s called for. This is good. You’re like I was before I got old and soft, as you say. I wanted a better life for my sons, and I gave it to them. But doing that, I lost them. They’re in America now, and they aren’t coming back. It’s been three years since I saw my grandchildren. Eh.” He shrugged again. “Everything comes at a price.”

  Kucera paused for a moment. He’d expected more bluster. He came here to win a fight, but it looked like all the fight was gone from the old man.

  “You did very well to get here,” said Skala. “But you made mistakes, too. You killed Miloslav Babic. He was a good man. Loyal. We went way back.”

  Kucera shrugged. “I killed a bunch of your guys.”

  “Yes, but I’d already agreed to meet you when you shot poor Miloslav. You killed him for nothing. We have to settle that before we finish our business.”

  Kucera tensed his shoulders slightly. Behind him, Vladan and Lubor would pick that up. They’d be ready to gun the old man down if he decided it was necessary.

  “So you brought your two favorite soldiers with you,” said Skala. “I’ll leave it to you. Which one can you do without? Maybe you like one more?”

  Kucera laughed, and Vladan and Lubor echoed him a beat behind.

  “Shit, I don’t know. They’re both stone-cold killers.” He turned, grinning. “Which one of you is the better shot?”

  “That’s him, boss,” said Lubor, and he cocked his head toward Vladan. “But I’m better looking.”

  They all laughed again. Skala sat patiently behind his desk and said nothing.

  “He is better looking,” said Kucera. “The girls like him. But he sucks his teeth. Drives me crazy.”

  “Very well,” said Skala. “The one on the left, then.” Kucera’s ears perked at the faint chink of breaking glass. What was—he saw the tiny hole in the window. Then Lubor fell over backward and hit the floor. A neat hole in his forehead was edged with blood.

  Shit! Kucera dove to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vladan whip out his pistol. “Boss!” Vladan shouted.

  “Get down!” Kucera yelled.

  Kucera sprang to the edge of the desk and popped up just enough to level his own gun at Skala’s impassive face. A moment later, Vladan slid into place beside him.

  “You bastard! I’ll kill you right here!”

  “You see now,” said Skala, “the reason I have my office on this side instead of over there with the nice view of the river is because I own that building behind us.”

  Kucera’s eyes swept the building, looking for the shooter but finding only dark window frames.

  “And indeed, you could surely kill me,” said Skala, “but then you’d never leave this office alive. Wouldn’t you rather be the king of Brno’s underworld?”

  Kucera slowed his breathing, tried to calm the tide of adrenaline. But he kept his pistol trained on the old man’s forehead.

  “One of my sons told me about something he learned in college in America,” said Skala. “It’s called game theory.” Skala’s tongue worked its way hesitantly through the unfamiliar words. “There’s a clever strategy they call ‘tit for tat.’ They proved it works with computers, but I learned it long ago the hard way. If a man hits you, you knock him down. Then you help him up and offer to buy him a drink. If he takes it, fine. If he hits you again, you knock him down. Then you offer him a drink. You keep doing this until he gets the idea, and then you can be friends.”
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  “You want to be my friend?” Kucera said, stalling for time while he looked for a way out.

  “I think we can help each other. Put that away and have a seat.”

  There was no way out, he realized. Skala’s sniper could hit anything in the office. He glanced at the door. Too far. He’d never make it. He was screwed. He nodded to Vladan. Then, slowly, carefully, he put away his gun and edged back into his chair. Unsure what else to do, Vladan resumed his post, glancing down at Lubor’s corpse.

  “It’s very important that you understand, Anton. You’re not taking my throne from me. I’m giving it to you. I’m making you my heir because you have what it takes to run things. So you’ll take over. I’ll pass the word down the line, to everyone. They’ll accept you.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “I want to move up to the next level. You think this is the top of the heap, don’t you? I used to. But there’s another game out there. It’s bigger than cops, politicians, judges. There’s more money and power than you can dream of. That’s where I’m going. But I’ll need someone with your talents and with an eye on the street.”

  Skala opened a desk drawer and Vladan flinched, but Kucera waved him back. Skala produced a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

  “So you’ll be the new king of the hill in Brno,” he said as he poured one shot and then another. “And I’ll be your mentor. I’ll smooth things out for you with my connections. And sometimes I’ll need you to do some work for me—for which you’ll be very well paid. So what do you think, Anton? Can I buy you a drink?”

  Kucera took a deep breath. Did it really matter who had “won” this meeting if he got what he wanted? Especially given the alternative.

  “I don’t need to get hit twice to see how things work,” he said as he leaned forward and accepted the glass.