by Ridge King
NO
EXCUSES
A St. Clair Thriller - Book 2
Ridge King
Series Reading Order
https://www.ridgeking.com/
Chapter 1 - Back in Miami
Chapter 2 - Invitation to Horizon
Chapter 3 – Debriefed
Chapter 4 - A Game Plan
Chapter 5 - Congressman Scott
Chapter 6 - Coffee at Enriquetta’s
Chapter 7 - Mr. Vaughan
Chapter 8 - Boxing In the Governor
Chapter 9 - Client Relations
Chapter 10 - Two Couples
Chapter 11 - Slanetti and Nesbitt
Chapter 12 - Thurston’s Magic Number
Chapter 13 - Hawkins Meets Slanetti
Chapter 14 - Power Lunch
Chapter 15 - A Booth at Balducci’s
Chapter 16 - The Other Kremlin
Chapter 17 - Jonathan and Rolando
Chapter 18 - “The keystone fits the arch”
Chapter 19 - White House Lunch
Chapter 20 - Flight To Miami
Chapter 21 - Lucy’s Confidential Files
Chapter 22 - Table Twelve
Chapter 23 - The President’s Waltz
Chapter 24 - In a Dark Room
Chapter 25 - Do As You’re Told
* * *
Chapter 1
Back in Miami
Lieutenant Rafael St. Clair and Laurencio Duarte stood side by side as USCGC Fearless entered Government Cut leading to the Coast Guard station in the Port of Miami.
St. Clair saw Duarte’s gaze linger on Smith & Wollensky, the famous steakhouse that had a prime waterfront location on the Cut at the southern end of South Beach.
“Bet you can’t wait to get a good steak, huh?” said St. Clair.
Duarte smiled.
“You got that right, amigo. You got that right. I haven’t had a Porterhouse in a year.”
“Then my advice is to skip Smith and Wollensky. Go to Prime 112. They have a 48-ounze Porterhouse. It costs $88 and it’s worth every penny.” St. Clair looked around him and waved at the Caribbean. “I don’t think you’ll miss the water view from Smith and Wollensky.”
“No. I’ve seen enough of the ocean to last me a lifetime.”
“I’ll bet,” said St. Clair, still mulling over the mysterious bloody Zodiac they’d left to the park rangers at Fort Jefferson where they’d picked up Duarte.
Duarte moved away toward the bow to get a better view of the port.
After confirming Duarte’s identity with DEA officials in Miami, Captain Billings had removed his restraints and given him the run of the ship. Billings had been instructed to bring Duarte back to Miami with the ship.
After transferring the Cuban rafters (picked up the same time they took Duarte on board) to USS Runnymeade to be repatriated to Cuba, Fearless stopped in Key West to take on fuel and headed for Miami. Though they’d had Duarte on board for almost a full day, he hadn’t been in a mood to chat, even though both Billings and St. Clair had tried separately to talk to him.
St. Clair was convinced Duarte had been involved in some kind of drug deal gone terribly wrong. How else could anyone explain what he was doing out in the middle of the Florida Straits in a Zodiac with three full tanks of gas? Whatever had happened, it had happened not very far from Fort Jefferson.
If he’d been captain of Fearless, St. Clair would have taken a little extra time to patrol the waters away from Fort Jefferson in the direction where Duarte was intercepted by the patrol boat. There might have been debris from a sunken vessel, there might have been the vessel itself, there might have been bodies. There certainly had been blood.
But he wasn’t captain, and given the sour relationship between him and Billings, he’d just kept his mouth shut.
After watching Duarte as he leaned on the gunwale on the starboard bow, Rafael slipped below decks to his cabin where he retrieved his cell phone and called his girlfriend, Antonia Fuentes.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said as soon as the call went through and he closed the door.
“Are you back?”
Rafael loved the sound of excitement in her voice. He pictured her tossing her luxuriant brown hair over her shoulder. Though he was still miles away from her, he could feel her close to him, as if he were already holding her in his arms.
“Yeah. We’re just coming into port right now.”
“Oh, God! When can I see you?”
“Let us get tied up and I’ll call you as soon as we get everything shipshape. You free to see me later.”
“Of course I’m free. I was going out to dinner with my mother and one of her friends, but I’ll cancel that. Let me know when you’re free and I’ll meet you at your place.”
“Sounds good. Did you ever tell your mom about us?”
“I did. I told her when we had lunch last week at Le Zoo. She practically ordered me to keep it a secret.”
“We have to tell people someday.”
“I know we do, but we have to keep it quiet for a while. I don’t like the idea of you being on that ship with that prick Skye Billings.”
“Yeah.”
“Can’t wait to see you.”
“Me, too. I love you, Antonia.”
“I love you more!” she said. “Call me when you’re out of there.”
“You got it.”
She giggled and hung up.
He couldn’t really blame Antonia’s mother, Ramona Fuentes, from discouraging their relationship.
The St. Clair and Fuentes families had had a tortuous relationship ever since Rafael’s older brother Jack started sleeping with Antonia’s older sister Raven, who, as the evil gods would have it, was now sleeping with Rafael’s captain, Skye Billings. The already bad blood between them could only be expected to get worse in the extreme once he found out about Antonia.
Raven, the most jealous woman anyone had ever met, drove Jack out of her life with her temper tantrums and outrageous emotional demands, into the arms of her other younger sister, Babylon Fuentes, creating all sorts of additional tensions that nobody needed but everybody was stuck with.
At this stage, except for her mother, no one knew about his relationship with Antonia. Billings didn’t know. Brother Jack didn’t know. His mother didn’t know. His dad didn’t know. Maybe it was a good idea to keep things quiet. He could just imagine the violent reaction he’d get from Billings once he discovered his first officer was sleeping with his girlfriend’s baby sister.
Rafael shook away the cobwebs clouding his brain and hurried back on deck.
* * *
From the bridge, Captain Billings saw St. Clair talking to Duarte. As soon as Duarte moved toward the bow to lean on the rail, St. Clair disappeared below decks. The ship was coming into port easily. Billings took his cell phone from his pocket and texted his girlfriend: “Docking soon. Will call soon as I can. Meet you Palm Bay Club later?”
Skye heaved a sigh of relief, not because he was finally back in Miami, but because he had been able to get back on Raven’s birthday. She had made it very clear she wanted him back. If terrorists had invaded the country and Skye had been called to take his ship out, Raven would still throw a fit.
And yes, though everybody in Miami knew what a high maintenance bitch Raven could be, there was also plenty of evidence explaining her special allure for men. When he was in her arms, he lost all thought of everything else. He didn’t know where his affair with Raven would lead, but he knew he was man enough to follow the trail to the end.
When they tied up at the Miami station, three DEA agents were at the base of the gangway ready to board. Billings met them and after a few preliminaries, they took Duarte with them after Duarte thanked Billings and St. Clair for treating him so well.
But St. Clair, standing there and listening, wasn’t so sure Laurencio Duarte was one of the good guys, even if he was “one of us.”
Chapter 2
Invitation to Horizon
That afternoon the announcement came in a special bulletin over the TV that President Norwalk had flown to Camp David for a strategy session with his top foreign affairs team.
Later, Wyoming Congressman-elect Matt Hawkins heard about the Chinese threat to attack Moscow with nuclear weapons, and the subsequent action by the President of putting all American armed forces worldwide on full alert. With the frantic pace of events at the Security Council resulting in the unusually fast and unanimous ceasefire, he couldn’t believe all that was happening around him.
The next morning, just a few days after the deadlocked election, Norwalk called off the alert of U.S. forces, as did the other countries that had begun to mobilize.
As U.N. peacekeeping troops arrived on both fronts in the Far East, the international situation looked like it would settle down for a while until a firmer peace was hammered out at the U.N., but no one was sure how long it would last because each side was waiting to see who the next President would be.
That afternoon an engraved invitation was delivered to Matt’s hotel to attend a party at Horizon Thanksgiving night, given by Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Vaughan. As he read it, he suddenly remembered that Thanksgiving Day was his birthday; he hadn’t thought of it all this time, hadn’t thought that Sue might not be with him or that he’d be spending it in Washington. He would be thirty.
“And on your birthday, too,” said Liz.
“Well, I don’t know who they are—send my regrets.”
He might have gone if he knew Sue would be in town, but there was a good chance she might not be in Washington by then. Thanksgiving was only a couple of weeks away. But then, January the third wasn’t too far beyond Thanksgiving. A lot was happening—fast.
Chapter 3
Debriefed
Duarte’s debriefing had gone like a dream. They’d put him up against a six-man team, but since there were no witnesses to what had happened aboard Mirta, it was his word and his word only that the debriefing team had to analyze. And his story had been deceptively simple, just as he’d worked it out in the short time he had before the Fort Jefferson patrol boat intercepted him.
He’d made sure to pad the number of hours he’d been in the boat, adding that he’d pushed the Zodiac at full speed for several hours till reaching the shallow waters off Fort Jefferson. If he’d been asked about the full backup tanks of gas, he was going to say he’d had more, but discarded the empty cans as they were used. But no one asked about the gas cans, so it never came up.
The team knew all about Mirta, of course, from his previous reports. And they were sincerely interested in where she went down, but based on the uncertain number of hours Duarte had spent in the Zodiac and his complete lack of specificity about the direction he’d come from, there was no way to tell where the ship had sunk. Duarte could tell that the team wouldn’t recommend a salvage effort because he’d given them so little useful information that the truth was they had no information at all. And what little information he had given them would have taken them away from Mirta, not towards her.
They also didn’t know about the $65 million in cash that went down with her—all they knew was that the crew was making the return trip to Colombia after dropping tons of cocaine off in the Middle Keys the night before.
He was given plenty of money and told to take a full month off, reporting in casually until he could recover his strength. He knew they would probably give him another month off if he asked for it. Then the plan was for him to return to undercover work under a different assumed name in a different part of the world. There was also talk about retiring him, because if the Sinaloa Cartel ever ran into him again, there would be hell to pay when it came time to answer their questions. Given that reality, Duarte was already a liability, a time bomb waiting to explode.
He was free to return to his home base in Fort Lee, across the Hudson from Manhattan.
“You want us to book a flight to Newark?” asked one of the assistants.
“First, I want a few days on South Beach. To unwind, you know?” he said.
“Yeah, who doesn’t?” said the head of the debriefing team. Everybody laughed.
It took another two hours for them to take photos and give him a new identity with credit cards, driver’s license, passport and other papers, a cell phone, cash. While they processed all the paperwork, he took a shower, cleaned up, shaved and got into a new wardrobe, a pair of designer jeans, new pair of shoes and an Armani shirt.
Two agents drove him to South Beach and dropped him off at the Delano, promising to call him in a couple of days to get together for drinks or dinner.
“Sure,” he said. But he knew he’d never see those guys again.
He watched the unmarked Navy blue sedan pull away down Collins Avenue and take a right on 17th Street, turning then to look up at the Delano’s Art Deco tower, bathed in a blinding white light against the deep blue night sky.
He’d have to deal with accelerating his retirement, but that could wait till he ran low on his free time, before they called him back. For now, they’d leave him alone in peace.
He walked up and into the lobby, pausing at reception to check in. “No. No luggage.” He took his card key and put it in his pocket, moving deeper into the lobby until he came to the Rose Bar where he had two Stoli martinis.
The vodka hit him quickly. He hadn’t had anything to drink but the rum aboard Mirta, and José had been stingy when doling it out to his ever-thirsty crew. He was glad he’d shot the son of a bitch.
He charged the drinks to his room and made his way out through Bianca, the fancy restaurant next to the Rose Bar, and out to the pool area with its lavish cabanas—all in pristine white—lining the walkway leading to the pool bar and the beach beyond.
He stopped at the pool bar and had two more Stolis, this time on the rocks. He looked up and saw a half moon rising over the water and in the distance he heard the faint sound of waves crashing ashore. Taking his drink, he walked down the sandy path toward the beach. Coming to the top of the sand dune, he saw the moonlight bouncing off the incoming waves, a ghostly freighter steaming south and a cruise liner all ablaze leaving the Port as it sailed past the jetty through Government Cut.
He turned his gaze back to the freighter heading south.
That’s where he would have to go, south to the coordinates he kept repeating in his mind like a monk’s mantra, a memorized prayer never to be forgot.
Yes, the money was all his, all $65 million of it. All he had to do was put together a crew and go get it. And then disappear forever. In his line of work, that was the easy part. He knew all the tricks.
To everyone except a few guys at DEA, he was a dead man. The Cartel would think he went down with Mirta. He had no family but a brother he’d lost track of years before. He had no romantic interests, having subsisted off the easy women in the tropics for so long.
He thought it would be wise to have a partner he could trust in order to assemble the crew he needed to salvage the cargo from Mirta. And his trusted friend Omer Flores was the only one he could think of to turn to for a job like this.
The situation would be delicate for Omer. Both of them were involved with Derek Gilbertson in the vast money-laundering scheme they’d been working on for over two years. Both of them were traitors to the U.S., their adopted country.
Omer would hear through the DEA that he had lived and was now basically a non-person. Gilbertson would think he’d died with the rest of the crew when he found out Mirta never showed up at the other end of her journey. He’d be furious about losing his part of the cash on board, but he’d shrug it off soon enough. In this business, there was always more money. The next week, the next month, you could always count on a
steady flow of cash.
The question was: how to handle Gilbertson if suddenly Duarte appeared again. And, the further question: should Larry and Omer cut Gilbertson in on the $65 million windfall?
Duarte took a deep breath and felt the salt air fill his lungs. This was the deep breath of a free man. He looked again at the cruise ship clearing the jetty and thought about Smith & Wollensky, and then remembered what Lieutenant St. Clair had said about Prime 112 and that 48-ounce Porterhouse.
That’s what he’d do. Grab a taxi and head down to Prime 112. He’d never been there before but he’d heard plenty about it, being the place where all the Heat basketball players and big star athletes like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter went to gorge on big meals after a game.
After he got his money, if he wanted to, he’d be able to buy Prime 112 and hang with the stars.
He’d find a place at the bar and eat by himself. Even so, it would be good, he thought, refreshing, to be around a room full of lively people.
Even if he couldn’t talk to any of them.
But that didn’t matter to him very much.
The only person he wanted to talk to was Omer Flores.
Chapter 4
A Game Plan
Phil Slanetti was thinking, too, how little time there was until Thanksgiving, and, more important, January third. He had about six weeks in which to sway his targets to vote for Governor St. Clair. It averaged out to two days per individual on his nearly completed list. It would be tight at best, he thought.
At his desk in the White House, he was looking over the revised list, thinking about the group as a whole and comparing his list to the one cranked out by St. Clair’s people given to him by the President. The two lists were quite different, he thought, revealing precisely how little, in his opinion, St. Clair’s people knew about the members of the House. The only interesting names on the list were those added by Duncan Olcott.
