by Tom Barber
‘The same as Isabel,’ Archer said.
Vargas nodded. ‘The Commander wanted me out of Florida. As I said, these cops had some powerful connections, including guys still on the force. The Commander had some himself, including Dalton, who was a former Miami PD Master Sergeant and an old friend of his. Given what I’d done, they asked me where I wanted to go, and the Commander suggested the US Marshals. He’d spoken to Dalton about the situation and provided I passed the training, Dalton said I could join his office here in New York.’
‘So they accepted.’
She nodded.
‘Two days later, I was at the training academy in Glynco for seventeen weeks, laying low, living in camp, far from Florida and blending in with all the other recruits,’ she said. ‘Then I was assigned to Foster’s team under Dalton’s orders.’
‘They didn’t tell John who you really were?’
She shook her head.
‘It was almost like witness protection for me; teams like Foster’s live off the grid and always expect trouble. Although they thought they were protecting someone else, I’d have a three-man security escort wherever I went and no-one would know my story. For the past eight days, we’ve been laying low with Isabel, staying at DOJ safe-houses all over the State. It was killing two birds with one stone. I’d be part of Foster’s crew protecting Isabel, yet they had no idea that they were also protecting me.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘So these men are all cops?’
She nodded. ‘Miami-Dade PD. Special Response Team. Including the sniper, that makes eleven men.’
‘That explains their moves and obvious training. These guys know what they’re doing.’
‘Right now, they’re all suspended as the investigation continues. The trial is set to start in eleven days. And guess who’s due to testify against them.’
Archer considered the situation, mapping it out from the start to that very moment.
‘They hired the street team to put you away. They’re also in the area, but not on the trigger, wanting to lay low and away from suspicion but there in case anything went wrong. When the ambush didn’t work, they came in themselves to take you out. Make sure you die so they walk.’
‘Yes. These guys are cops; they know the drill. Their alibis will already be bought and paid for. They’ll be able to prove they were nowhere near New York this weekend.’
She thought back in the evening.
‘I don’t know how the hell they found me. But however they did, they must have figured Barlow would be the weakest link on our team. Made him an offer. He must have told them everything; me, Foster, Carson. Who Isabel was. Our moves and location today. They set up an ambush to get me.’
Archer nodded.
‘They knew any attack would appear to come from Mike Lombardi,’ he said. ‘And it would look like you got caught in the crossfire trying to protect her. The perfect plan.’
He paused.
‘Jesus. These guys are supposed to be on our side.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Taking it all in, Archer thought back to the gunfight on the 22 floor. He remembered Vargas removing the man’s balaclava and staring down at him when he grabbed her and said they had to go.
‘Who was the guy you killed upstairs?’
‘His name was Taylor. First Team’s point man when they went in through the door. Real asshole.’
‘You knew right then what this is really about.’
She nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘So why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I’ve been sworn to secrecy and I was shocked. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference if they were after me or Isabel; we’d all still be in this situation. And I thought back up would get to us before I’d have to explain.’ She saw the look on his face. ‘Try to understand, Archer. I’ve spent the last thirteen months keeping a huge part of my life a secret; it’s hard to shake that habit. Especially when there are a group of highly trained men searching for you and wanting to kill you.’
He thought for a moment.
‘Well now we know for a fact who they are, we need to tell the people outside,’ he said. ‘This changes everything. They’re wearing those balaclavas and using code-names for a damn good reason. Without them, their alibis count for shit.’
He grunted and rose, pulling the bloodied towel from his torso and pushing himself back to his feet. She joined him.
‘So how do we contact them? The phones are down and they’ll be guarding the lobby.’
‘One phone isn’t dead.’
She realised what he was thinking. ‘The emergency line on 22.’
He nodded. ‘We need to get back up there.’
THIRTY THREE
Downstairs, King, Bishop, Spades, Knight and Diamonds had reconvened on the 1 floor, near some sort of manager’s office, having come back down from the laundry room on 6. Braeten had joined them, two of his guys elsewhere in the building hunting for Vargas. The man armed with the AK-47 was holding the front door.
Standing in the corridor with the surviving members of his team, King leant against the wall, his mood thunderous, going over the events of the evening in his head and wondering just how the hell everything that could have gone wrong, had.
His real name and rank was Master Sergeant Seth Calvin. Born and raised on South Beach and thirty three years old, he’d been a member of Miami-Dade Police Department for eleven years.
He’d been dirty for ten years and eleven months of them.
Most people in the United States didn’t fully comprehend the amount of narcotics that flowed through the Florida Keys every day. Those old enough to remember Reagan’s speech declaring war on the cartels figured the US Coastguard, Miami PD and the DEA had immediately leapt on the issue and had crushed the illegal trafficking in the thirty five or so years since that declaration. Back in the 1970s, Miami had become the drug gateway to the entire country. Pilots had flown in fresh product from Colombia and Cuba every day, huge quantities of cocaine and heroin that would sell for absurd amounts of cash. Once the cops wised up and started lying in wait, the pilots improvised, dropping the cargo in floatable bags into the sea. Runner speedboats would follow the flight path, scooping up the coke, and get it out of the water before the Coastguard showed up. South Florida had 8,000 miles of coastline; no matter how big the security operation or bold Reagan’s statements had been, there were always cracks in the system and opportunities for drug cartels. To this day, they still ruthlessly exploited them.
The drugs flowed onto the streets to the dealers and junkies. Out of the Academy all those years back, Calvin and his partner Denton had been assigned a beat in West Grove, a rough part of town that offered way more in the way of risk than it did reward for a rookie police officer just starting out. Cop shootings in Miami were common, especially by drug dealers. One month into their partnership, the two men had answered a neighbour complaint call and ended up finding a man shot dead inside a house, two rounds in his forehead and the sitting room torn to pieces, the killer obviously searching for something. Checking the rest of the house, they’d found three keys of dope and ten thousand dollars taped to the inside of a shelf in the kitchen. Neither of them had ever held that much money in their hands in their entire lives.
It was at that very moment that the two men realised they could make this work to their advantage. When back-up arrived, the body was removed and the drugs and cash were booked, three keys and eight thousand dollars of drug money. Calvin and Denton had given their reports and left the scene with a stack of bills tucked inside their waistband under their uniform. The two cops had popped their cherries.
And they liked the way it felt.
They’d started out small and subtle, keeping their records and their reputations clean whilst learning the ropes and working the beat, familiarising themselves with the players and the drug trade. Detectives and officers on busts all over the city would seize large quantities of powder and all of it ended up going through the M
iami PD lock up, the money eventually parlayed back into circulation, the drugs taken to a lab and destroyed. Calvin got to know two of the guys running a shift down there, Markowski and Fowler, two men who had millions of dollars worth of dope within arm’s reach and who, Calvin soon discovered, shared his and Denton’s sentiments on capitalising on their privileged position. They couldn’t touch the money that had been booked, but they sure as hell could go after the powder. The four men started to take a key here or there and replace it with a substitute, selling it back on the street at a jacked up price. No-one around them was ever the wiser; they had so much of the shit going through the cages at the Department that none of their superior officers ever noticed.
They also knew for a fact that they weren’t the only ones doing it.
That was almost eleven years ago. Since then, Calvin and Denton had done their time in West Grove then applied, trained and been accepted to SRT, joining one of their entry teams and getting a slight rise in pay. Despite their secret doings, both men were proficient, intelligent officers and had quickly risen through the ranks, Calvin making Master Sergeant in the First Team of SRT three years ago and Denton Sergeant below him. They kept up their racket along the way but they’d had to be ever more subtle and on their toes, scores of clean officers around them who could never be swayed and were therefore treated with utmost caution. On occasion, after clearing a residence during a bust, the two men had found dope or cash and left it where it was hidden. If it was discovered by any detectives or CSU, no-one would know they were aware of it. If it wasn’t, they would come back for it later.
As Calvin grew more senior in SRT, so did his influence on who made his team. Markowski and Fowler had applied and joined the task force, followed by more guys whom Markowski had recommended, assuring them they were reliable and up to extracurricular activities outside of official police business. Each man was pissed off watching the criminals they were trying to bust living movie-star lifestyles whilst they put their lives on the line for little reward, and they all wanted a share of it, any good intentions they’d ever had as cops erased like chalk on an old school blackboard. Calvin developed a system. Whenever one of the older guys moved on or retired, he would handpick a carefully vetted newbie from the candidates who he knew he and his men could trust.
Slowly and surely, the percentage of officers on the First Team who were corrupt grew from 20 per cent to 40, from 60 to 80. Soon, it was all but one man. Being SRT, they were the smash and grab teams that came in through the front door, fully armed and with warrants to search wherever the hell they wanted before any detectives and forensic teams got there. Many of the police seizures and drug busts were monumental. Miami was still ground zero for most of the cocaine coming into the United States, and Calvin and his peers constantly had the shit running through their fingers, like putting their hands under a huge tap of powder that never stopped flowing. They stole large amounts of cash and product, finding fifty keys and only reporting forty, discovering half a million dollars and handing over four hundred thousand, taking vast quantities of blow and selling it back to the cartels or dealers at a hiked-up price. If anyone the other side threatened to talk, they were taken care of. Police raids were as common as knocks on front doors in Miami and not all of them went peacefully.
Calvin had joined the force at 22; by the time he was 26, he was on his way to becoming wealthy. By his 28 birthday, he was a secret millionaire. And the whole time, he covered his tracks and made sure all his guys did the same. Amongst all the dirty activity, the team also performed some legitimate high-profile busts and provided security for VIPs visiting the city as part of their responsibilities as an SRT team, mixing the lawful operations in with all the scamming, to keep their reputations clean and avoid any unwelcome attention or suspicion. It worked. The newspapers, the city, the Mayor and the rest of the Department viewed them as loyal public servants. Men of honour. Although money laundering was now illegal, if a man was smart with the stolen cash and either banked it off-shore or invested it the right way, the funds could never be traced.
The war on drugs had spoils, just like any other conflict. The same as the soldiers who raided Hitler’s retreat once World War Two was over, Calvin and his men were making the most of a highly profitable situation. It was ideal. Collectively they had millions of dollars stored away from years of skimming. You make a few legit busts and take down a few collars, the Department superiors and the press applauded you for doing a great job. No one would ever think you were dirty.
It had worked like a dream. In the almost eleven years Calvin had been a cop, he’d earned close to four million dollars in illegal drug money.
And that was just his share, not including the cash the rest of his guys had taken.
Although the vast majority of the cops in Miami-Dade PD were clean, Calvin and his team weren’t the only ones abusing the system. Some of these other officers were about as intelligent as third graders. They didn’t take sufficient precautions, got careless about paying off the right people, left a trail that a child in the woods could follow. Internal Affairs were always hanging around the Keys on the hunt for these guys and it was like sharks with blood in the water when they found them. They knew how tempting all that money and coke could be to someone with a gun and authority. They were always on the prowl.
The Department tried to keep quiet about guys who got popped for corruption; most of them were shunted into retirement and threatened with severe consequences if they talked. Others were made an example of and ended up in the State pen, sharing a cell with the same people they used to bust.
But Calvin and his team were smart. He had an instinct for those who would never take a cut, and he could sense the SRT Commander had some reservations about him and his team. In eighteen months they successfully worked around a handful of officers who’d been assigned to his squad as definite marks and from whom they needed to keep their activities well hidden.
But then they screwed up.
They got comfortable.
And Officer Alice Vargas joined the First Team of SRT.
Inside an NYPD safe house downtown on Remington Street, Hendricks finished cuffing Mike Lombardi to a chair. It was a single room in a Lower East Side apartment, often used for meet-ups with undercover cops or as protection for anyone laying low in wit sec, not for working over mob bosses and extracting information. This was definitely a first. The place had one window, which had been covered over and the two men were alone.
Hendricks pulled a bag off the man’s head, tossing it to the floor.
In the seat, the Mob leader blinked as his eyes readjusted to the light, filling with defiance as he looked up at Hendricks, who drew his pistol and pulled the slide.
‘You realise what you’re doing?’ Lombardi said, without fear. ‘You know who I am?’
Hendricks leaned in close.
‘These walls are soundproof. That means no-one will hear you scream.’
Reaching into Lombardi’s pocket, Hendricks pulled out a cell phone and held it up.
‘You’re gonna call your team right now and tell them to come out of the building. Weapons thrown out of the door first, followed by all of them, hands on their heads, fingers interlaced, walking slow.’
Lombardi frowned.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Hendricks’s face darkened. He put his gun against Lombardi’s groin, burying the barrel into the fabric of his jeans.
‘Make the call, asshole.’
‘Whoa! Wait! Wait! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘Yes, you do!’ Hendricks shouted, pushing the gun down. ‘Make the call!’
‘What people? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The building. The Marshals!’
‘What Marshals? That thing uptown?’
‘Yes!’
Hendricks dragged back the hammer of the pistol, the barrel buried in Lombardi’s groin.
‘Last chance. Don’t think I�
�m joking.’
‘I don’t know anything about that!’ Mike shouted. ‘Why the hell would I want to kill some people in some building?’
His finger halfway down the trigger, Hendricks looked in the man’s eyes. They were as wide as dinner plates but there was an honesty there that only a gun to the balls could bring.
This wasn’t the first time he’d used this particular interrogation method; it had a knack of cutting right to the truth.
‘The girl,’ he said, quieter and slower. ‘In the building.’
‘What girl?’ Mike shouted back.
Hendricks’s stared into the Mob leader’s wide eyes. There was a long moment, filled by panicked breaths from Lombardi. Then Hendricks withdrew the gun from the man’s groin, easing the hammer down. He looked away, thinking fast.
Then he turned and started walking away towards the door.
‘Hey!’ Lombardi said, jerking his arms, the handcuffs rattling and locking him in place. ‘Hey! Uncuff me! Hey!’
Hendricks ignored him, walking out of the safe house and slamming the door shut behind him, heading for his car.
THIRTY FOUR
Taking a seat inside the maintenance office on the 1 floor of the tenement building, his M4A1 still in his hands, Calvin cursed himself at his stupidity, thinking back to the beginning of last year when he’d let Vargas join his squad. He’d fallen for a well-planned set-up, taken the bait and that was all it had taken for over a decade of work to completely fall apart.
