Is that what I really wanted?
I pushed out an annoyed breath. “Where’s your top-secret passcode that gives you access to your CIA handler?”
“If I told you that, I’d have to kill you,” he said, monotone.
I shifted my eyes his way.
“I’m just kidding ya, Booker. Dude, lighten up.” He reached up and flicked his fingers against my bicep.
“You got my bag around this dump? I need to make a call, have someone pick me up, and get back to work on finding that boy. His dad would do anything for him.”
“Ooh. Shot across the bow,” he said, readjusting his position in the chair, his eyes still studying weather patterns and barometer pressure—shit that didn’t matter. “Sure, I got your backpack. I hid it, just to be safe. Never know when someone might bust in unannounced.”
I shook my head without him seeing me. I felt like I was playing pretend with my plastic army figures as a kid. What’s next, him firing off Uzi rounds with his finger?
This guy must think I’m either naïve as hell or the dumbest guy in the Caribbean.
“Look…” I paused, trying to pull back my pulse just a tad. “I don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing the last three decades, acting in two-bit plays, running from the law, knocking up women in every port and abandoning them and their kids. Who knows? Right now, I don’t give a shit about your make-believe stories. Give me my bag, and I’m gone.”
Placing two hands on his scarred desk, he pushed his metal chair back, scraping concrete. He lifted from the chair, flipped the curtain to the side, and walked toward the kitchen corner.
Maybe he’d hidden my bag right next to the bowl of fruit.
He bent down shuffled some things around, then stood upright, turning on his heels. He held a thick metal beam, about six-feet long. He gave me a quick glance, pushed one end up. That sucker must weight fifty pounds, if not more.
He walked to the front door and rested the beam inside two supports on either side of the door. I’d not noticed those before.
Was this guy a psycho? Maybe he wasn’t my father after all, just some lonely pervert.
“Dude…” I put my hands in front of me—an automatic self-defense mechanism.
“Follow me,” he said, brushing my shoulder.
I considered running to the door, lifting the steel pole, and bolting out the door. My curiosity won out.
I closed the distance between us in a couple of quick steps as he reentered the tiny back room. Walking past the computer setup, he approached a built-in bookcase. On the third shelf up, he shifted a stack of magazines to his right, then pressed two fingers into the side of the wood frame. I heard a soft knocking sound.
Then he pushed forward, and the entire bookcase swung inward. He flipped a light switch as I stretched my neck to look inside.
“Come on in,” he said with a wave.
I paused at the askew bookcase, my eyes still processing what I was seeing on top of the conclusions I’d made about Sean the last few minutes.
“This is my safe room. Secure computer, a sixty-inch flat screen. Access to almost any information I need, either through what I can personally touch or my handler.”
“Don’t tell me you have a code name,” I said, not believing the words escaped my mouth.
His lips drew a straight line. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to share his deepest secrets—if all of this wasn’t the greatest ruse since The Sting.
The space wasn’t that large, maybe eight-by-ten. Organization was the major theme. Anchored under a narrow, polished metal stand-up desk sat a laptop, another twenty-four inch monitor just to the right. From my angle, I could just make out images on the screen.
“Are you playing a loop of Jack Ryan movies? What’s that one where they go back in time when he’s young and start kicking everyone’s ass?” I took a couple of steps into the room, my head on swivel.
“Shadow Recruit. It’s pure fiction, but not a bad watch if you just want a good laugh,” Sean said.
Eyeing the monitor on the narrow desk, I could see the screen divided into six boxes.
“Those are real people on there. Do you have cameras feeding video into your…safe haven?”
“I call it Bermuda. It allows me to think about retirement some day in the future.” His eyes drifted, and mine did as well. The lighting seemed like it was installed by a designer. A soft glow illuminated the area just above the cabinets, bouncing off the ceiling, making the room feel a little less restricted.
“I’ve got eight cameras set up; that’s why you see the screens rotating. Three are positioned around this house, mainly for safety.” He pointed to the box in the lower left corner. “That’s a truck driving just to the north of our place here. If he turns into our alley, then I know he’s either visiting the two older ladies that live next door, he’s got to take a piss, or he’s looking for something. Or someone.”
My eyes didn’t blink as I watched the truck turn right and putter down the alley toward the camera. A guy wearing a baseball cap threw the truck into park, slid out the door, glancing all around. Then he stood facing a wall, right next to a rusted garage door with vines growing all over it.
“He’s a pisser,” Sean said. “Just to give you some perspective, that garage is on the other side of this wall.” He leaned back and smacked wooden board on the wall behind him. “Reinforced steel around the room.”
“But if he or someone wanted to get in here, couldn’t they just open the garage and see a room at the other end, with all this steel and fiber-optic cables?”
“If they could see it, yes. Inside the garage is a 1977 Monte Carlo, chocolate brown, with tan vinyl seats. The tires are missing. The car is up on blocks, covered with an inch of grime. I think small animals are living inside. The place is a dump. This room blends in with the back end of the garage. It looks perfectly normal. We’re safer in here than the president is in the White House. Because we’re basically invisible.”
“You mean your boss.” I raised an eyebrow.
He gave me a quizzical look.
“You know, the Commander In Chief, the head of the armed forces of the free world. That guy.”
He chuckled, placing both hands on the desk as if it were a lectern and he was giving a political speech. “I really never thought of it that way. The CIA isn’t in the policy business, despite what many have read or seen. But I’m an employee of no one. Remember, I’m a contractor.”
“A contractor.” I tapped my foot, letting that sink in a bit, my eyes still doing the room tour. My head popped back a few inches. A rack of clothes hung from the wall bordering the garage. Some of the items were normal Army-issued T-shirts, fatigue green and black the dominant colors. I touched a blue, tattered coat.
“The pay is that bad?”
He shook his head. “I have a number of disguises I can use, depending on what I’m trying to accomplish. Usually, it’s a lot of surveillance.”
“I’ve done some of that in my PI gig. But my main outfit is an old gray sweatshirt”
“In those two drawers under the rack, you’ll find makeup, fake noses, ears, hair coloring—”
“Is that why part of your hair is almost as dark as mine?” I touched my tight fro.
“Yep.” He coughed into his fist, his eyes shutting briefly, then he pointed back to the monitor on his desk. “I’ve got three more cameras positioned near a house in a nicer section of western Santo Domingo.”
“Is that your mission here?”
“Hardly. The CIA wouldn’t pick up the bill for all this if I was only doing recon on a single house.”
“So what—”
He jumped in before I could repeat my question. “This is kind of cool over here.”
Pushing a button that blended in with the metal frame of his desk, a cot unfolded from the wall, about waist high, all metal.
“So this is where you sleep if you don’t feel safe in the main room.”
He nodded as I held up a finger. “The
mattress. Yes, I use a mattress, but this cot serves two purposes. I organize my travel bags, clean, assemble and load my weapons, and even apply makeup.” He pulled a small lever above the cot and a foam mattress plopped down, revealing a small mirror.
“What about food or water if you’re stuck in here a while?”
He pointed to the far corner. I went over and opened an eight-foot door, revealing a cache of handguns, rifles, knives, rope, ammo.
“Damn.”
“I meant the other cabinet.”
“You expecting to fight a war?”
Shifting his eyes away from me, he walked back around to the computer. “Thanks to the rest of the world catching up to our technology, I’m able to stream in video off the satellite. Here you go, a nice afternoon game between the Cubs and Cardinals.”
The big screen lit up, showing a slow-motion replay of the Cubs’ centerfielder frantically searching for the baseball hidden in the labyrinth of the infamous ivy-covered brick wall.
“This proves I don’t work twenty-four hours a day. It’s my only chance to kick back and lose myself in something meaningless. Sometimes I find myself talking to the TV, as if the players or coaches can hear me.”
“Or if you’re a Cowboys fan, you’d be screaming at the owner.”
He laughed, snuffing out a cough before it materialized into a full-fledged typhoon.
Taking in a breath, I padded around the room, my brain finally breaking free of the mental fog from my forced sedation. “You’ve been dodging my question.”
“Which one is that?”
I glanced over my shoulder at him, then turned and counted the boxes of ammo on a shelf inside the weapon cabinet.
“Okay, okay. I told you I’m an open book, and I meant it. But you need to know this is not just highly classified; it’s dangerous as hell. You mention this to anyone, especially in the middle of my zone, it could get you killed. Me too. Maybe others, like your new friends.”
I turned and widened my stance, flipping my hand in a circular motion, essentially asking him to spill it already. “I’m a big boy.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, shifting his eyes between me and his computer screen. “For some reason, this is difficult for me.”
I didn’t flinch, and I could hear his breath exhale in patterned bursts.
“My mission is to take out the leader of the group who is training South American terrorists.”
I nodded, realizing Sean had probably killed people in his life.
“I guess this isn’t your first assignment of this type?”
Two quick head shakes. “While I’ve had a lot of different missions, many turn out to be…this type.”
“So essentially, you’re a CIA assassin?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, for at least a couple of reasons,” he said. “I have a conscience. I’m not a robot. They don’t ask me to eliminate the head of the PTA at Samantha’s school.”
A breath caught in my throat. “You know her name?”
“Of course. That’s what I really want us to talk about. Back to the job first,” he said. “And just to be transparent, I have done work for other governments.”
“Anti-US?”
“No, nothing like that. I think the agency actually prefers I’m a contractor. Less to clean up, so to speak. But they can also recommend me to carry out missions that might align with their goals. I’ve worked with the Israeli Mossad, the Saudi GIP, the Jordanian GID, the French DRM, and the British MI6. I guess I’m pretty good at what I do. At least they keep telling me that.”
“Damn. Not sure what to say.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in, Booker. Hell, we just got reintroduced to each other after twelve years or so.”
Staring at the floor, I let all the information swirl in my mind. A few minutes earlier, I had concluded that Sean Adams was a fraud, possibly delusional. Now, I was supposed to believe he was an international spy who specialized in the art of assassination.
I massaged one of my temples. Sean took a couple of steps in my direction, then placed his hand on my shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to stress you out,” he said quietly.
I twisted my neck, staring at his hand. He pulled it away.
“I got a lot on my mind, and that doesn’t include everything that’s happened to me since you ambushed me in the forest.”
“The boy.”
“Yeah. Esteban and the person who hired me. She…it’s a long story.”
“It might help if you share with me more details about Esteban’s kidnapping,” he said. “I might have some experience to share.”
Was he doing all of this to bond with me? I couldn’t even go there.
“Okay. Whatever. I haven’t made a great deal of progress, though. Hunches and theories right now. I was just trying to prove out one of those theories when you grabbed me.”
“Before a bed of nails plowed into your brain.”
“Yeah, then.” A smirk crossed my face. “I guess I should say thanks for saving my ass.”
“I guess I should say that’s what fathers are for. But I know I haven’t earned that title. So, I’ll just say, no problem, any time. And you owe me one.”
He glanced at his computer screen.
“What’s up?”
“I need to check in with my handler in two minutes. Just watching the time,” he said. “So, you were saying earlier this contact of yours believes the cartel kidnapped the boy. Why?”
“It was bold. They took him right off the street. The kid was coming home from his baseball game. He plays baseball just like his dad.”
His eyes narrowed. “His dad play in the big leagues?”
“I thought I’d told you. Esteban’s dad is Juan Ortiz.”
“The Yankees pitcher. He made millions. What’s the ransom?”
“That was my first thought too. But they haven’t asked…according to my client.”
“You sound skeptical.”
“Part of the bigger story,” I said. “Do you know another way I can get information out of the cartel?”
He huffed out a breath, which unplugged two gurgling coughs. “There was one piece of my mission I didn’t share earlier.”
“We got distracted by…all of this,” I said looking around. “You’ve got my attention now. Does it connect to Esteban’s kidnapping?”
“Not sure.”
“What am I missing?”
“The leader of the group training South American terrorists is Miguel Amador. The man who runs the drug cartel.”
10
A procession of kids shot through the swinging door, screaming at a decibel level that must have rivaled a jet on takeoff.
Valdez, in the middle of readjusting his glasses, nearly poked himself in the eye at the sudden entry. Within seconds, the brownstone’s dining room turned into a battlefield, girls on one side of our rectangular wooden table, boys on the other, all of whom were slinging spitballs—wadded up pieces of paper that they were throwing in their mouths, then hurling at their enemies.
Apparently, the quality of their shots wasn’t nearly as important as the quantity. Aided by a cache of what appeared to be homemade slingshots, the kids propelled spitballs at a rate equal to semi-automatic weapons.
Splat!
A massive wet wad smacked Valdez in the forehead, sticking like it had suction cups.
Valdez opened his mouth, his face a wrinkled ball of torment. Just then, a pebble-sized wad slung on a rope pinged the side of his oversized schnoz, and he instantly covered his face with both hands while yelling something undecipherable, at least to me.
A booming thud and I lifted my eyes to see Lupe standing at the door, hands at her considerable hips. The kids must have felt her scowl, and they ran out of there faster than the blink of an eye. All but one.
Valdez jumped out from his position on the other side of the table, darting around the man with the gray ponytail in pursuit of the munchkin. Lupe marched around the other side. They h
ad the boy cut off, as the rest of us sat motionless.
Just as the two agitated adults launched for the kid, he dropped to the floor and scooted under the table quicker than a jackrabbit. Popping up on the other side, the kid turned his head—a grin closing off access to his eyes—and stuck out his tongue. Then he ran out of the room.
“That kid will be washing dishes for the next five years of his life,” Lupe said, raising a finger to the ceiling as she walked out of the room.
Back in his seat, Valdez grabbed a paper towel and wiped off his head and face, then stroked his mustache like it was a pet. I could see how kids might get creeped out.
“Wild hooligans,” Valdez muttered.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try to put the entertainment aside and focus on our main problem. Finding Esteban Ortiz.”
I glanced over at Bolt, whose eyes were scanning the room, mostly finding the man in the ponytail.
“Do I have everyone’s attention?” Two heads nodded, but Bolt was too busy glaring at the opposite end of the table to hear me.
“What?” he asked, his eyes still looking straight ahead. He leaned closer to me.
“Your friend hasn’t said a word since he showed up. He hardly budged when the little brats were firing spit wads all over the room. Is he a little…coo-coo?”
“No more than you,” I whispered with a serious look. “Just joking. He’s a little shy. He’ll warm up; just give him a minute.”
Turning back around, I could see Sean shift a dark pair of eyes in my direction. Earlier, at his humble shack, he’d convinced me that he wanted to do anything within his power to help bring Esteban home safely. I assumed a guilty conscience played a significant part in his decision, but I kept that comment to myself—one of the few I’d withheld since my reintroduction to him.
Sean had his own set of issues to deal with as a CIA contractor, specifically “eliminating” one of the most dangerous men in this hemisphere. That’s where our worlds overlapped. He had an assignment that he couldn’t ignore, and saving Juan Ortiz’s kid’s life was my top priority. Even though Esteban’s life would be used as a bargaining chip to bring Britney back to the states to face prosecution on three murder charges, the teenager wasn’t a pawn in this game, at least not to me.
BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6 Page 35
