Cayman Crackdown (Coastal Fury Book 18)

by Matt Lincoln

  “Yeah,” I replied as I crossed my arms over my chest. “They were crazy. I could hear them banging and slamming against it from the stairwell as I was chasing them.”

  “All that over a potential drug charge?” Chapman raised an eyebrow at me. “It’s unbelievable.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t just because of the drugs,” Hills grunted. “No, I’d bet anything these guys have done a lot worse than just smuggle a few opioids. They didn’t have any qualms about cutting me up and attacking innocent civilians that posed no threat to them. These men have killed before.”

  Hills was sitting in the chair next to me, completely calm as he spoke. He’d told me earlier that he’d shot one of the suspects in the stairwell and apprehended the other one as he attempted to take a confused patient hostage. If that was true, he was right about them not being afraid to use other people to get their way.

  “Regardless,” Diane sighed, “we have two suspects here in the office currently. The one that Agent Marston shot got into a fight with the police officer who attempted to take him into custody and ended up earning himself another two bullet wounds, so he’ll be in the hospital for the foreseeable future. For now, I want you to focus on seeing what you can get out of the two we have right now.”

  “Do we know anything about them?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not.” She pursed her lips. “Their prints didn’t pull up anything, which isn’t surprising. I put in a request to retrieve any records they might have in China, but… the process will probably take some time. Until we get that, we’re likely going to have to rely on old-fashioned questioning.”

  “Oh, uh, actually…” Chapman muttered nervously as he pulled his tablet out of his bag. “We have their records. We have a manifest of the crew that was on the ship, too, as well as their photos. We’ve managed to determine the identities of the two men we have in custody now.”

  Diane blinked at him in surprise before narrowing her eyes at him shrewdly.

  “That’s great,” she replied. “And impressive. How did you manage to come across all that information?”

  “Um, we...” Chapman muttered awkwardly before Hills cut him off.

  “Our intelligence analyst,” Agent Hills stated matter-of-factly. “She’s a pro at getting information. We asked her to look into the manifest a few hours ago before we left for the hospital. She went above and beyond and managed to source photos of most of the crewmen, including our two suspects. From there, it was just a little extra effort for her to find their records.”

  “I see,” Diane replied, seemingly satisfied by that explanation. I could tell that she was still a bit skeptical, though. “Well, that certainly makes things easier. So, who are they?”

  “Zhang Wei and Peter Li,” Chapman replied as he looked through his tablet. “Both were lower-ranking officers on board the cargo ship. Peter Li was born in Britain and immigrated to China about ten years ago. Neither had a criminal record in China, though Peter did have two priors in Britain for domestic assault and arson.”

  “Sounds like a great guy,” I remarked sarcastically.

  “He’s the one you fought with on the roof,” Chapman added, which only made my impression of him sink lower. “Anyway, we also managed to pull a manifest of the goods on the boat, and there weren’t any drugs anywhere on it. That’s not surprising, of course. We were already operating under the assumption that they were being transported illegally, but at least now we have proof. There’s no way for them to claim otherwise.”

  “That’s a good start.” Diane nodded. “Okay, see what you can get out of the two of them, then. Let me know what you find out.”

  “Will do,” I replied as I got up and stretched. Chapman, Hills, and I stepped out of the office and into the bullpen.

  “It’s lucky your data analyst managed to find that information,” I noted as we walked through the office back toward where the holding cells were. “That was pretty impressive, considering Diane thought it would take a while.”

  “Yeah,” Hills snickered quietly. “She might have bent the rules a little in her pursuit to obtain that information.”

  “What do you mean?” I frowned at him.

  “What are you guys whispering about?” Chapman asked us suspiciously.

  “You,” Hills replied flatly. “We were discussing how annoying you are.”

  “Stop being dumb and focus on the case,” Chapman replied without missing a beat, apparently satisfied by that answer or otherwise uninterested in looking any more deeply into it.

  As I pondered over the odd exchange, it occurred to me why Chapman had seemed so awkward and nervous when he had first revealed to Diane that he and Hills actually had the information over the men’s identities already. If by “bending the rules,” Hills had meant that their data analyst had broken the law to retrieve the documents in question, then that would explain why Chapman had seemed so skittish about talking.

  As we made it to the interrogation room, I wondered just what the hell kind of branch the Vegas one was.

  “I’ll go get the suspect,” I offered. “You two can wait here.”

  “Okay,” Chapman replied as I took off toward the holding cells to retrieve Peter. It was probably personal bias, but I wanted to interrogate him first. That little weasel had been a nightmare to chase all around the hospital, and after the awful thing he’d done to that poor nurse, I wanted to strike some fear into him as well.

  I could see him through the small glass window set into the door as I approached the cell he was in. He sat huddled on the cot at the end of the room like a cornered animal, his hair askew and his shoulders rising and falling rapidly as he breathed erratically. His eyes darted around the room wildly as though searching desperately for an escape route.

  He froze, tense as I opened the door to the cell. His face twisted in a vicious glare as he recognized me, and he was on his feet in an instant.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I spat coldly. “I will shoot you, and believe me, you won’t get far inside a building full of federal agents.”

  He clenched his jaw at me before relaxing, though his hands remained balled into fists at his sides.

  “What do you want?” He sneered angrily at me.

  “Put your hands behind your back, for starters,” I replied.

  “What?” he growled, his shoulders rising defensively.

  “Just put your hands behind your back,” I sighed impatiently. “We’re going to have a talk. No, I’m not asking you if you want to or not. It’s happening, so why don’t you just make life easier for both of us and put your hands behind your back so we can get to it?”

  I could see various conflicting emotions flashing across his face as he struggled to decide whether he should obey. Finally, thankfully, he relented and turned toward the back wall of the cell before moving his hands to his back.

  I moved in at once and clicked the handcuffs around his wrists before he could try anything. Even he didn’t seem dumb enough to pull something funny while inside the MBLIS station, but one could never be too sure what a cornered suspect might do in a fit of panic.

  Once his hands were secured, I marched him out of the cell and down the short hallway to the interrogation room. I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and guided him to sit in the single chair facing the two-way glass. Once his hands were cuffed to the table, I motioned for Hills and Chapman, who I knew were waiting on the other side of the glass.

  The door leading to the adjoining room opened just a moment later, and Agent Chapman strode inside before closing it behind him.

  I raised an eyebrow at him in silent question.

  “He said he’ll get the next one.” He shrugged before sitting down calmly across from the suspect. As he did, Li sneered at him, flaring his nostrils and puffing his chest out in what I assumed was some kind of effort at intimidating him.

  Chapman, however, didn’t even flinch and just stared back at Li like a scientist observing a curious experiment.

  “Alright,” C
hapman hummed as I took a seat in the chair next to him. “You’re… Peter Li, right? Thirty-seven years old, mother and father are Evan Wells and Fei Li. You were born ‘Peter Wells’ in Bristol, England, but you started going by your mother’s maiden name when you immigrated to China ten years ago.”

  As Chapman calmly read through the information on the tablet, Li’s face quickly drained of color. Suddenly, he seemed less like a rabid dog and a lot more like a scared deer.

  “What?” he choked out, his eyes bulging out of his head in shock. “I… how did you—?”

  “Please don’t interrupt,” Chapman replied simply before continuing. “You were quite the delinquent back home before you moved, weren’t you, Peter? Not one but six separate reports of domestic abuse against your girlfriend. And then there was the fire. A little old to be playing with matches, don’t you think, Peter? Though I guess I’m not surprised. You don’t seem like the brightest bulb, after all.”

  “S-shut up!” he croaked, though there was barely any bite to his words.

  “And then, after all that, you decided to just run away.” Chapman shook his head at Li like a disappointed parent. “You didn’t just flee. You left the entire country altogether. It takes a real sack of crap to just run away from your problems like that.”

  “I said, shut up!” Li yelled as he lunged at Chapman in frustration, though he didn’t get very far, considering his hands were still cuffed to the table.

  “And still you couldn’t stay out of trouble,” Chapman scoffed as he leaned back in his chair, totally unaffected by Li’s aggressive display. “Most people don’t get a chance at a fresh start like you did, but you? You got one, and you threw it away. Bravo.”

  Li just clenched his teeth together and stared down at the table. He was shaking and looking decidedly everywhere but back at Chapman. Honestly, I was a little surprised. Up till now, the kid beside me had seemed so soft-spoken and timid that I hadn’t imagined he’d be so ruthless during an interrogation, but it seemed like Li was falling for every one of Chapman’s taunts.

  “Now, I don’t know very much about China, to be honest,” Chapman sighed. “But I do know that they had an intensely strict criminal justice system. So severe, in fact, that they’ve come under fire by the United Nations on several occasions over it. But I’m sure you know all about that, right, Peter?”

  Li’s face had gone white again, and he was still shaking, though now it seemed to be more out of fear than anger.

  “I can’t imagine what the authorities would have to say,” Chapman murmured as he leaned down close to Li, “if they were to find out that someone with a criminal history had managed to slip into their country, and that, even worse, that person had continued to engage in criminal behavior while on Chinese soil, and against American citizens to boot. They really don’t like those kinds of negative international incidents, do they? Not when it involves their biggest economic trading partner.”

  Li looked like he was about to throw up or maybe burst into tears. Either way, I had a feeling he was about to break and tell us what we wanted to know.

  “What do you want?” he grumbled just a moment later, his voice barely audible.

  “Why don’t we start with what you and your buddies were up to on that ship?” Chapman replied. “And we’ll see about making sure you wind up in an American prison instead of in one back home. I think we both know whatever happens to you here will be far preferable to the punishment you’ll face back home.”

  The kid was bluffing. Not about the sentence being worse since it was fairly common knowledge that the Chinese Communist Party wasn’t exactly lenient when it came to handling crime, but about the fact that he might end up back there at all. The moment he committed a crime on U.S. soil, he’d pretty much sealed his own fate. There was no way the United States was going to let a dangerous, violent criminal who had attacked several federal agents and innocent American citizens go anywhere.

  Li didn’t need to know that, though, and Chapman was using that bit of information to his full advantage.

  “We were transporting a special shipment,” Li admitted reluctantly. “A container full of valuable drugs. That one container alone was worth as much on the black market as the whole rest of the cargo on the boat combined.” He shook his head bitterly as he spoke. “What a waste…”

  “We know about the drugs,” I replied flatly. “I saw them myself, actually. I want to know more about the group that attacked you. You know why they came after you, right?”

  I deliberately kept my question vague. Marco had said that his boss, Viper, had ordered the mission in retaliation after some of the Chinese smugglers had attacked their men. I had my doubts about the veracity of that story, and Li’s response now would help clear that up.

  “Oh, you mean those Cubans?” Li sneered hatefully.

  “Colombian, you mean?” Chapman corrected him.

  “Whatever!” Li spat. “Filthy mongrels, whatever they are! Acting like they owned the entire eastern coast! This was our trading route! The captain fixed it up himself to where we had a contact that would let us import the goods. We had to go down through South America to get to Miami instead of stopping at California like we normally would! We had a good thing going, and then they had to show up and mess everything up!”

  “So, you did kill them?” I asked, careful to suppress the surprise I felt. I’d been certain that Viper had just been lying to get Marco and the rest of the gullible men to bend to his will.

  “Not right away,” Li retorted. “We’re not monsters. We just… roughed them up a little. Made sure they knew whose turf they were on. It would have all been fine and settled if they hadn’t come after us the next day.”

  “They retaliated?” I pressed him to continue.

  “They did,” he grunted. “Came after us in some puny little boat. Nothing like that thing they attacked us with the other day. Anyway, we picked them off easily enough and managed to sink their boat. Can’t believe they’d dare to come after us again…”

  “How many of the men on the crew are involved in this?” I asked. “No one was alarmed when you started shooting down the people on another boat?”

  “About ten.” He shrugged. “The captain and most of the officers. The rest of the men do what they’re told and keep their heads down, as they should. If any of them have ever seen anything, they’ve been smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it.”

  “And you said the captain was involved as well?” I asked as I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Involved?” Li scoffed. “He was the one running the whole operation. Well, part of it, anyway. In the grand scheme of things, he was probably just another pawn himself. The ones actually at the top are the rich bastards sitting in their high-rise apartments drinking champagne while the rest of us do all the hard work. They’re probably pissed now that their money’s at the bottom of the ocean. Ha! Serves them right.”

  He smiled gleefully at the thought, and I couldn’t completely keep the disgust out of my expression as I looked down at the small, bitter man in front of me.

  “Right,” I replied curtly. “You wouldn’t happen to know the names of any of those ‘rich bastards,’ would you?”

  “How would I know that?” he scoffed. “Anyway, I already told you everything I do know, and I don’t know anything about those imbeciles that attacked us. What I do know is that they’re going to get theirs. They’re going to pay for what they did.”

  “And who exactly is going to make them pay?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you said you didn’t know any of the people in charge.”

  “Just because I don’t know them doesn’t mean I don’t know what they’re capable of,” he snarled. “Our crew may have fallen, but the group is still strong. Like I said, the ones at the top will be angry that they lost so much merchandise. They aren’t going to take it lying down. Those Cubans or whoever are going to wish they’d never crossed us.”

  He was beginning to sound like a
hokey villain straight out of a kids’ cartoon, but something in his voice made me worry. There was truth in what he was saying, or at the very least, he believed it to be true. I felt disappointed that Li had turned out to be another dead lead, but at the same time, there was a small seed of concern in the back of my mind about this mysterious Chinese group.

  For now, though, I needed to focus on the case at hand. Maybe our other suspect would be able to provide us with more answers.

  13

  Ethan

  Unfortunately, the other suspect did not provide us with any more answers. He didn’t provide us with anything at all, actually. Even though so far, all the men we’d determined were involved with the smuggling had been able to speak English, Zhang Wei, the other suspect we still had in custody, had refused to say anything we could actually understand.

  He’d spent the first few minutes of the interrogation screaming at us in what I presumed was Chinese until we managed to locate an interpreter, at which point he’d gone completely silent. Whether he really couldn’t speak English or was merely pretending not to be able to, there wasn’t much we could do.

  After several hours of attempting to squeeze blood from a stone, we’d decided to call it a night. It was late, the three of us were exhausted, and Wei showed no signs of breaking any time soon. I would have been impressed if I wasn’t so annoyed.

  “We should look into the captain tomorrow,” Hills suggested as the three of us stepped out of the building to head home. “If he really was the leader of their little group, then it’s likely he’ll know more than the lower-ranking members did. Even though he’s probably dead now, something in his records might point us in the right direction.”

  “Okay,” I replied as I split off to head to my car. It was frustrating that we kept running into dead ends. It seemed like most of the people who actually knew anything useful had perished when the ship had gone down. All that remained were the lackeys who were proving to be almost useless. After chasing that idiot all over the hospital and up several flights of stairs, we’d barely learned anything new.