Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  “We’ve got some of them around,” said Arias, “but the Ñetas control the drug action here. They don’t leave a lot of room for competition.”

  “Would they work with cops?”

  “Doubt it. Anything’s possible, though.”

  Crane waved at a taxi, and it pulled up to the curb. “I’m glad you came by when you did, Agent Arias. I’ve got your card. Sorry I can’t give you one of mine in return. But if I find anything that will help nail your dirty cops, I’ll give you a call.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  They shook hands, and then Crane got into the cab, and it slid smoothly away.

  In the back seat, Crane closed his eyes, let out a long breath. That could have gone very badly. He’d underestimated his enemy, and he’d failed to adjust to his new reality. He was a lone wolf now. If Arias hadn’t been on the case, he might not have made it out of there. As it was, if Arias pushed hard enough to confirm that Crane was really the government presence he’d let him believe…

  Crane had the feeling he was wearing out his welcome in Puerto Rico.

  Chapter 21

  Emil was going to interrogate the man from Team Kilo, and Skala was very eager to hear what he had learned. But that was a short-term issue. His meeting with the Moravian Development Bank was a key part of his longer term strategy for growing the estate, commercializing the vineyards, and ultimately for raising his profile. So rather than postpone it, he took his laptop with him. He carried it into the bank and held it tightly against his body as they escorted him up to the top floor and into a wood and glass conference room.

  There were four people on the bank’s team. The older man was clearly the one in charge, with his graying temples and the more expensive suit. He wore diamond cufflinks, and his card called him the Director of Strategic Partnerships. Then there were two younger men and a slender woman with blonde hair and a pencil skirt. Skala sat across from them with a hard copy of their PowerPoint slides and a notepad with the bank logo. His laptop blinked silently beside him.

  One of the junior men presented the details of a financial package that would enable him to build his estate from a small, regional vineyard into one of the leading wine producers in Central Europe. Skala liked what he was hearing.

  Then the laptop pinged softly beside him, and Skala raised a hand to stop the young banker. Everyone around the table turned their eyes toward him, but Skala’s world had shrunk down to the size and shape of his laptop.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “Do you have someplace I can take this?”

  “Of course, Mr. Skala, of course,” said the Director of Strategic Partnerships. “Anuska, show Mr. Skala to one of the guest offices.”

  “Come with me, Mr. Skala,” the woman said. She led him down the hall. He watched her calves flex with each step of her high heels. She took him to a small office with a desk and a bookcase and a nice leather chair. A secretary brought a glass and a pitcher of cold water on a metal and leather tray. Then they left him alone, and the woman closed the door. He sat looking out the glass panel beside the door. Across the hallway was a maze of cubicles. He saw heads above the dividers, with telephone earpieces, their lips moving noiselessly.

  He opened the laptop, keyed in his passwords, and brought up Emil’s channel.

  WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR ME? he typed.

  BAD NEWS, Zajic sent back. HE GOT AWAY.

  Skala took in a sharp breath and forgot to exhale. He had escaped? How could that be?

  HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? I THOUGHT COPS ARRESTED HIM.

  Zajic quickly related the highlights of what had happened. The cops had brought the man in. They’d given him to Zajic, who had been doing what he’d been told to do. Then someone new arrived, someone who brought the cops to heel in short order and pulled the man out of the cell before Emil could get much of anything out of him.

  THIS MAN WHO RESCUED HIM, WHO WAS HE?

  THEY SAID HE WAS SIB.

  What the hell did that mean?

  WHAT IS SIB?

  LIKE GIBS.

  The GIBS was the government watchdog agency that investigated police corruption. This was bad, Skala realized with growing horror. This was very bad, indeed. He had turned out every cop on the island to find the stranger, and they’d done it! They had put him in a cell with Emil. Emil would have pried the truth out of him, and then the cops would have made him vanish forever. But within minutes, an agent from the fucking state security police swooped in and plucked him out of the cell. Only Team Kilo would have that kind of pull. This was even worse than he’d feared.

  “Fuck,” he said out loud. His anger and fear fed off each other and grew. “Fuck!” His voice grew louder as he rose out of the chair until he was shouting, “Mother fucking son of a bitch!”

  He swept the pitcher and water glass off the desk in a rage. They shattered against the near wall and sprayed water everywhere. Outside in the cube farm, worried faces turned toward the window.

  DOES HE KNOW WHO YOU ARE? he typed, trembling with rage to the point that he was barely able to find the keys.

  NO.

  Maybe Emil was right about that, Skala thought. But maybe he wasn’t. So far, Team Kilo seemed to know everything. If they connected Emil to him…

  The door opened, and the woman leaned in. “Sir, is everything all right?”

  Behind her, the cube workers had risen and formed a group in the hallway, looking on like they’d look at a wrecked train.

  “No, it’s not fucking all right!” Skala bellowed, advancing to the door and driving her back in alarm. “Get the fuck out!” She turned and fled down the hall. He glared at the knot of junior employees gawping at him.

  “Get back to work!” he shouted. “Get the hell away from me, or you’ll find your fucking kids in the river.”

  Then he slammed the door so the glass rattled in its frame.

  I’M PULLING THE PLUG. NO MORE. IF YOU SEE HIM AGAIN, KILL HIM.

  He typed quickly and waited for Emil’s reply, watching his fingertips shake above the keyboard.

  UNDERSTOOD.

  MIGHT HAVE TO BRING YOU HOME. STAND BY.

  Then he closed the laptop and gathered it up. When he stepped out into the hallway, the Director of Strategic Partnerships was striding toward him with his two junior executives in his wake.

  “Mr. Skala, you’re very upset. Let me—”

  “You’ve never seen me upset!” he snapped as he brushed by them. “Meeting is cancelled.”

  They followed after him as he hurried out to the elevators and punched for a car.

  “Yes, I think it’s best if we reschedule for a time when you’re calmer,” said the Director of Strategic Partnerships. “We owe our employees a professional en—”

  “Where is the fucking elevator!” he screamed in the man’s face. All three of them recoiled.

  A moment later, the elevator chimed, and the doors slid open. Skala stepped in by himself and punched for the lobby without a word.

  This was a disaster, he thought as the doors slid closed. All he’d done was focus Team Kilo’s attention on himself. He needed to think. He needed time to think. About what to do and how to defend himself if they managed to follow the trail back to Brno. He needed to get back where he was safe, out of the city.

  He would go back to his estate. And if anything moved that he didn’t like the look of, it would get its goddamn head blown off.

  Chapter 22

  Crane sat on his bed in a cheap motel outside Carolina. It was a significant step down from the Vanderbilt, where he’d checked out as soon as he got back from jail. It was best all around. The hotel was relieved to get rid of him without the unpleasantness of evicting him, and Crane wanted to drop off the grid. Agent Arias had said he’d keep the cops off his back, but Crane couldn’t rely on that. Arias’ job was dealing with cops who didn’t do what they were told.

  So he’d found a struggling motel on a side road off the main highway. He’d changed rental cars again and parked the new on
e behind the building, out of sight from the road. He’d identified a couple of the ubiquitous roadside bars called chinchorros within walking distance that offered good food and cheap beer, and he’d gone to ground.

  But now it was Tuesday, the sun was setting, and it was almost time to move. Crane had spent the last couple days in ratty cargo shorts and T-shirts, walking down the highway in flip flops for meals, and generally blending in. But now he’d changed into his operations gear. Black, plenty of pockets. He looked like a Hurricane Group agent again. He let that brief moment of nostalgic regret wash over him. He’d worked incredibly hard to become a field agent, but Hurricane was gone now. It wasn’t his fault, and there was nothing he could do about it. But he could still do good here, with Hurricane or on his own.

  He’d set an alarm on his tablet to alert him if Trace PV-1—Acevedo’s F-150 pickup—moved. Now it was beeping insistently. He watched the truck roll out of its local neighborhood and onto a crosstown expressway, headed in his direction.

  It was time to go.

  Crane doubted he’d be coming back here. He’d already packed his duffel bag, and now he loaded it into the trunk. He re-checked his mission gear, just as they’d taught him at Hurricane. He dropped the room key on the nightstand and left the room behind. Five minutes later, he was driving east on 66 in the twilight, moving slow in the right-hand lane and watching his tablet as the F-150 gradually overtook him on Highway 3 to the north.

  It passed him near Bartolo, just before 66 merged into 3 and deposited Crane onto the same road, a couple miles behind the truck. This would do, he thought, and maintained speed to keep his distance as they headed east into the night.

  Crane had concluded they were going to Fajardo well before the F-150 exited the highway and took to side roads. Fajardo was at the very northeastern tip of the island. From his reading, Crane remembered there were some tourist spots there, a lagoon, and some high-end resorts with private beaches.

  He followed the truck through a small town called Soroco and on toward the coast. He had the truck in sight now. His headlights would be visible in Acevedo’s rearview. At some point, he expected the truck to go somewhere where a vehicle following would become obvious. He zoomed in the tablet’s map. They were running out of roads, fast. There was a small cluster of winding side streets coming up on his right, pressed against the south end of a nature preserve. In the middle of the preserve was a large, round body of water. The map called it Laguna Grande, or large lagoon. That seemed a bit literal to Crane. On the other hand, along the lagoon’s western edge, a narrow spit of sand separated it from the Bahia las Cabezas, or Bay of Heads. Crane had no idea where that name had come from. Perhaps less imagination was better in this case.

  A narrow dirt road cut off to the left and headed up into the park along the narrow strip of land between the lagoon and the sea. The F-150 braked and turned down that road as Crane suspected it would. Crane had followed as far as he could. He continued on past the turn and passed a trio of cars parked on the narrow shoulder. He’d seen two of them before, the Charger and the silver Mustang.

  “The gang’s all here,” he murmured. He took it slow into the neighborhood and found signs telling him where to park for the “Bioluminescent Bay.” He passed a truck pulling out, towing a trailer stacked high with plastic kayaks. Ideas started forming in Crane’s mind. He had thought he would need to walk down the road after Acevedo, but perhaps there was a better way to approach the scene.

  He parked in a nearly empty lot and got out. The place looked like it would be packed during the day, but it was well after midnight now. Most of the food stalls and souvenir shacks were closed, but there was still a party atmosphere about the place. Lights were strung between the palm trees. Salsa music drifted on the cool night breeze off the water. Small knots of tourists stood around wearing life jackets or carrying backpacks. Across the lot, a group was lining up to board a shuttle bus back to one of the area resorts. Near a still-operating food truck, a couple danced to the music while others talked animatedly about the adventure they’d just had.

  Crane checked his GPS, confirmed where he needed to go. He strolled down the beach that circled around an inlet shielded from the open sea. The water was studded with the ghostly white hulls of anchored sailboats. Beyond them was darkness so deep it looked almost solid. The nature preserve. Even in the middle of this developed, crowded tourist area, it offered a nearly impenetrable veil of trees and vines that could hide nearly anything.

  The beach was lined with clusters of kayaks belonging to the various tour companies that worked the lagoon. A few guides lingered about, making sure to collect all the life jackets they’d handed out, or picking up discarded glow sticks. But farther down, Crane found a group of a dozen or so unattended kayaks roped together into a line.

  Crane looked around, made sure no one was looking his way. Then he quickly cut one of them loose and pushed it out into the gentle surf. He moved his pack around to his chest, climbed into the kayak, and set out across the small bay.

  In almost no time, he was well away from the beach, paddling among the darkened sailboats that rocked gently in the swells. On the other side of the bay was a small channel through the mangroves that let the lagoon drain into the sea. There was no moon, and Crane could barely make out the treeline against the sky. He had no idea where the channel mouth was. But between his GPS and the night vision goggles in his pack, he would find it.

  He paddled on through the flotilla of sailboats and headed into the wall of utter darkness ahead.

  He didn’t see a figure lying on the deck of one boat, watching him as he passed. After he left the boat behind, Crane was looking intently for the mouth of the channel up ahead, and didn’t notice the glow of a smartphone screen.

  ###

  Acevedo pulled his truck off the road, as far back into the belt of trees as he could without getting stuck, and killed the lights. The engine slowly ticked as he got out and let his eyes gradually adjust to the dark. There was water on both sides of him. The lagoon was just away to his right through the trees, the beach and the Bahia las Cabezas across the road to his left. It was a place Acevedo always found foreboding, even with its beauty.

  “Over here,” came Sosa’s soft voice from the trees. The others had parked down on the paved road and walked up. They’d be at the lagoon to meet the Little Russian. Zajic lived aboard one of the boats on the other side of the lagoon—Acevedo supposed he wanted to be close to where his business took place. And he always insisted on taking his dinghy up the channel and across the lagoon. Whatever. As long as he was here.

  And he was, Acevedo saw as his eyes adjusted. Zajic was pulling the dinghy out of the lagoon, up onto the sandy spit. Then he took a canvas bag out of the small boat and walked toward them. Acevedo’s men clustered around him. One less this time. The Little Russian looked grim, Acevedo thought. The omens were not good for this deal.

  “Everything ready?” Zajic asked gruffly.

  “Sure. We’re fine,” he said. “What happened with the guy who killed Hector? Did you deal with him?”

  “Shut up about that,” said Zajic. “Nothing to the Colombians, either.”

  Acevedo wasn’t stupid. Of course he wasn’t going to tell the Colombians his problems. But he could tell it had gone badly. Zajic was being even more of a prick than usual. That meant things weren’t going to plan, and it was gnawing at him.

  They walked back up to the treeline, maybe twenty yards ahead of the truck, and looked out across the bay. He couldn’t see anything in this darkness, but he knew the Colombians’ boat would be out there somewhere. It would be running without lights, moving dark and quiet, swerving in close to shore, but ready to vanish like a ghost if things went wrong.

  Zajic opened his bag and took out a tripod and a battered directional antenna. He used a compass to orient the antenna out to sea, and then plugged in a little Motorola Family Radio handset, like the ones the tourists used to keep track of their kids at the beaches. Bo
osting it with an external antenna that way was illegal, of course, but that hardly mattered under the circumstances.

  “Here, hold this where I can see it,” Zajic said to the nearest man, Fat Rodriguez. He handed him a notepad and then held a penlight so he could read it. He thumbed the mic on the little Motorola and read off a sequence of numbers.

  They waited. The handset hissed with static. Zajic swore under his breath. He keyed the mic and repeated the numbers. A moment later, the handset crackled, and a voice read back another sequence. Zajic didn’t bother to check it, Acevedo noticed. That made sense, he thought. Who else would be out here reading off numbers on the Family Radio Service band in the dead of night?

  Zajic snatched the notepad back from Rodriguez, put it and his penlight back into his pocket, and started to break down the antenna.

  Somewhere out there in the darkness, Acevedo knew a black zodiac was being lowered into the water, loaded with armed men and illegal narcotics. He always had a wild fantasy of arresting the Colombians when they came ashore. It would be a huge bust. He’d be in the papers. He’d be a hero.

  He smiled to himself. Well, until they killed him, anyway. No, that path was closed to him now. Nothing to do but wait for the zodiac to hit the beach, load the drugs into the back of his truck, let the Little Russian sign off on everything and pay everyone.

  Except the Little Russian was looking at his phone.

  “Fuck me,” he said. He looked out to sea nervously and then back at his phone.

  “What’s wrong?” Acevedo asked.

  “I have to go.”

  “What the hell?” Acevedo hissed. “Now? You got somewhere else to be now?”

  “Trouble. Stall them. Tell them I’m getting the money or something. Shit, shit, shit.”

  Zajic dropped the antenna. He reached into his bag and pulled out an assault rifle. Then he was running down to his dinghy in the lagoon and dragging it out into the water.