by Noel Hynd
Alex leaned back in her chair, unhappy.
“How do you know so much about this Perez?” she asked.
They looked at each other. There was a long pause.
“We trained him,” MacPhail said.
“He’s U.S. Army, retired,” Ramirez added. “We know everything about him – except where he lives.”
“The thing is,” said MacPhail, “we have a wonderful opportunity here to bring several cases together at once – as long as he doesn’t shoot you first.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m happy about that.” She looked back and forth at them.
“If the marshals start tomorrow,” she said, “what am I supposed to do tonight?”
Ramirez smiled. “That’s why we’re here,” he said. “Consider us your escort service for the rest of the day.”
“I’m honored,” she said.
SIXTEEN
MacPhail and Ramirez led Alex from the elevator to the parking garage beneath her office building. It was past six in the evening, but the garage was still busy. Her bodyguards walked her to a Lincoln Navigator. Black. Tinted windows. Bulletproof. Alex slid into the backseat. MacPhail took the wheel; Ramirez slid in beside Alex.
“Tough day, huh?” MacPhail said.
“I’ve had worse,” she said.
“We all have, I guess,” he said. “You okay, Jorge?” he asked.
Ramirez gave a thumbs-up gesture.
“Hey, look, Alex,” Ramirez said. “I can call you ‘Alex,’ right?”
“Sure,” she said.
“We got this,” he said. “Gets us through more than a few days.” He motioned to a small compact cabinet between the seats. He opened it to reveal a compact mini bar as the SUV started to move. “We can’t join you; we’re on duty. But you can unwind.”
“Have one on the taxpayers,” MacPhail said. “They’ll never know.”
Ramirez was helpful, pulling some ice out of a small chest. There was an array of half-size liquor bottles – Irish, Scotch, Canadian, Vodka, and gin – and soft drinks, water, and mixer.
“Mineral water would be fine,” she said.
Ramirez poured her a glass.
“Taxpayers’ money?” she asked, motioning to the bar.
“Sure. But they don’t know,” Ramirez said.
Then the vehicle left the ramp and crept into the Wall Street traffic. Alex drew a breath and eased back. She looked out the window and longed to be one of the normal people, with a normal job, not someone with a target on her head.
The SUV accessed West Side Highway and began the crawl uptown through the rush-hour traffic. If she could choose, she thought to herself, she would have donned a pair of walking shoes and hiked. The exercise would have done her good. But not today, she told herself. What about tomorrow? How long was she going to be under informal house arrest?
She opened her laptop to distract herself. More documents from work. Various agencies from South and Central America were sending her information that she already knew. She clicked the first one open and scanned.
The Government of Panama should continue implementing the reforms it has undertaken to its anti-money-laundering regime in order to reduce the vulnerability of Panama’s financial sector and to enhance Panama’s ability to investigate and prosecute financial crimes, including money laundering and potential terrorist financing.
She moaned. She went on to the next. More bureaucratic claptrap:
Colombian narco-traffickers are perhaps the most adapted and prepared for work in Panama. They thrive on the ability to constantly change routes, members of their network, and technology, such as cell phones and other communication devices.
“Really, Einstein?” she grumbled silently. “I never would have known.”
At a red light, she glanced out the window. They were on Eighth Avenue at 45th Street, west of the Broadway theater district. Down 45th she could see the glowing marquees of the theaters. She realized that what she really wanted to do more than anything was to tell her driver to pull over so she could jump out and run over to the TKTS booth on Broadway and score a ticket to anything.
Another thought. Two million clams in the bank. Did she really need a job where she could get zipped any minute? She tried to go back to work, bury herself. More bull from some South American police agency:While Panama offers a wide range of options for smugglers, geography is only a fringe benefit. Colombian boats that pass through Panama must stop along the route to refuel or transport the shipment from one boat to another. This practice invariably requires that individuals in other Central American countries become involved in the race to move drugs from Colombia north and money and guns south.
Man’s greed and nefarious nature could always trump the good that other men and women were trying to do. Two centuries earlier, over the same routes, it was slaves, rum, and molasses. Now it’s coke, guns, and contraband currency. Maybe she was just being a fool to think she could make a difference. A fool, a fool, a fool.Nicaragua is the next stop for drug shipments moving north along the coast and has a plethora of guns left over from a lengthy civil war. Guns make for perfect currency. And like Panama, much of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast is a semi-autonomous area with little to no government presence. Small towns like Bluefields, Nicaragua, have become perfect stop-off points for Colombian traffickers, who bring with them not only the bounty of what local fishermen have begun to call the “white lobster,” but also the devastation of addiction that comes with it.
Great. And indicting the Senora and Senor Dosi was going to stop that? Whatever had possessed her to go into law enforcement? She smelled career change. It’s not like she needed to work for a few years, maybe a decade. Federov had seen to that. But what would God have her do? Mission work? Where? The answers didn’t come easy.
Traffic ground to a halt near Columbus Circle. On impulse, she grabbed her cell phone. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt like talking to Paul Guarneri. Not Ben, but Paul. Maybe because he had grown up around violence and greed. Maybe because she sensed, in a funny sort of way, that he grasped the world better than she did.
Older? Wiser? More cynical? All of the above? None of the above? Who knew?
As the car broke free from congestion, Alex dialed Paul’s cell phone. Two rings, three. Then it kicked to voicemail.
“We’re here, Alex,” Ramirez said.
She looked up and saw the canopy of her building. She cut off her phone call and left no message. She dropped the phone back into her purse.
SEVENTEEN
Unlike Alex, Paul Guarneri had had an excellent day.
He had used his contacts at the New York Police Department to find a woman to accompany him to Cuba. She was a city detective on leave, named Ramona Galvez, Puerto Rican by ancestry, fluent in Spanish, adept with weapons. She could easily pose as his wife. He had interviewed her that day and was inclined to make an offer. Ramona was tough. Five-eight, a hundred and fifty pounds, much of it brawn. She looked like she could throw people through walls and that could be an asset for this kind of trip. So Guarneri was pleased.
Alex remained his first choice, but it was evident that that wasn’t going to happen. So all that remained was for Guarneri to phone Alex, withdraw his offer, and explore things further with Ramona. Sometimes, he told himself, second choices work out well. Sometimes even better. Anyway, he mused, you have to play the cards life deals you. His father, the casino guy and occasional philosopher, used to tell him that.
At his home on Long Island, sitting in his den, he wanted to give it a few more minutes of thought. He glanced at his watch. Normally, Alex worked late. Should he call her at her office or at home?
Home might be better, he figured. Or, for that matter, her cell. His housekeeper would be serving dinner soon. Better make the call sooner rather than later.
He reached for his cell phone and realized it was turned off. When he clicked it back on and allowed it to boot up, he looked at the calls he had missed and recognized Alex’s n
umber. Strange, he pondered. What did she want?
EIGHTEEN
Eleven stories above 62nd Street, Alex unlocked her apartment door and then stepped aside. Special Agent Ramirez drew his weapon and entered. She waited in the corridor.
Ramirez threw on the light, stopped, and listened. He went to the bedroom and looked. No one. He checked the closets. He returned to the living room, moved swiftly through the dining and kitchen area, then moved to the extra bedroom that Alex used as a study and guest room.
He checked every closet and any other place someone might be hiding. He looked for any signs of tampering or disruption. He saw none. It was a quick eyeball search, but he was good at it. He placed his gun back in its holster and went back to the front door.
“All clear,” he said. “Welcome home.”
Alex and Special Agent MacPhail stepped in. MacPhail looked toward the window. “Nice view of Manhattan,” he said, “but I need to drop the blinds. Can never be too sure.”
Alex had too much reading to keep her mind off work, but at least the ride home had relaxed her. “Right,” she muttered. Then, “Hey,” Alex said, “those blinds are tricky. I’ll get them.”
“No, no,” MacPhail said. “You stay back. I’ll get them.”
She put down her purse and her laptop. She cut off MacPhail and walked to the window.
NINETEEN
Three hundred meters away, across several Manhattan rooftops, Manuel Perez stiffened and frowned. He could not believe his eyes. The light that had just gone on in Alex’s apartment was the first signal that his moment was at hand. But then someone, a man who looked like a bodyguard, had come in first and gone from room to room, as if looking for something. Pieces of a puzzle flew apart and scrambled in his head. If police were searching her apartment, and if she was right there – as he could see she was several seconds later – then somehow the secrecy of his assignment had been compromised. Somehow the Americans had found out about the hit and were taking steps to prevent it. That being the case, and he quickly surmised that it was, he either took his shot now or he might never get another chance.
There seemed to be some discussion at the doorway. One of the agents was pointing at the window. His target, the woman, was already approaching. Quickly he realized that if a security ring was being dropped around her, this would be his only shot.
He cursed. He had never had a development quite like this before. But he stayed calm. He was good at quick shots and could launch a barrage if he had to.
His eye went back to the friendly O of the scope, and he moved the crosshairs and the little laser dot toward its target.
Head shot? Body shot? Body, he decided. Upper torso.
Then, at the last second, he decided he had more confidence than that. He would go for the head. Get any piece of it and he would have a kill.
Ancillary question: What about the bodyguards? He pondered for a second. Get them too?
Yes, he would. Seal the room with three dead people in it. It would give him more time to get away from his perch. He smiled. He had never missed. As he squinted, aligning the rifle perfectly, he could even see the color of her lipstick, the hoop earrings she wore. Pretty, he thought. What a shame. Well, nothing personal. She had her job and he had his.
He ran the crosshairs around the room, came back and found Alex. The nose of the rifle came up a millimeter. Head shot. She made things easy for him, walking toward the window. He eased his breathing down and prepared for his first shot.
TWENTY
In his study on Long Island, Paul Guarneri pressed the last two digits of Alex’s cell number with his thumb and hit Send. There was a moment’s delay as the signals shot around cyberspace, then beamed back down to earth on the west side of Manhattan.
On the other end of the line, the phone rang. Once, twice, three times …
TWENTY-ONE
Alex remained jumpy. When her cell phone rang, she jerked her head to the left. Almost simultaneously, she heard a deafening explosion as half of the plate glass window that overlooked Seventh Avenue shattered. Shards, like little knives, flew everywhere, followed by the whack of several follow-up slugs hitting the floor behind her and then ricocheting up against the wall.
It took less than a second for the situation to sink in, but when she looked back toward the open space where her window had been, there was no question. And the noise was drowned out by the voices of the men behind her.
“Down!” MacPhail screamed.
Alex was already on the floor, hard and flat. Ramirez hurtled across the room to push her flush against the wall beneath the window. Then he snaked to the side and reached upward, caught the blinds cord with a sharp yank, and dropped them.
MacPhail called out. “Anyone hit?”
Alex answered. “I’m all right!”
Ramirez followed. “I’m good.”
By then the unseen attacker poured shot after shot into the room, hoping to claim a victim in the chaos and in the dark. Five, six, and then seven more shots came in until the remaining bits of plate glass had been blown out and collapsed in a flood of shards and splinters. Alex heard most of it hit the floor but knew that much of it fell outside the building, raining down eleven flights onto the sidewalk below, onto anyone who had the misfortune to be passing by.
TWENTY-TWO
The next afternoon, Andrew De Salvo sat at the head of the conference table, waiting, a glass of water in front of him on the twenty-seventh floor room at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, FBI Headquarters. The blinds were always drawn.
De Salvo stood when Alex came in, escorted by George Ramirez and Walter MacPhail. She had stayed in a midtown hotel overnight. De Salvo reached to her and gave her an embrace. “Good to see you up and around,” he said.
“Good to be up and around,” she answered. “Good thing that guy can’t shoot straight. Must have missed by a combined three inches with two of those shots.”
“Good thing the phone rang,” Ramirez said, “or we’d be using the word homicide this morning.”
De Salvo returned to the head of the table. Alex sat to her boss’s left, two empty chairs between them. MacPhail and Ramirez sat across from her. It was after lunch and Alex had spent the morning with the New York City police, detailing what had happened.
“Okay, the first problem,” MacPhail said, “is simply to keep Alex out of the crosshairs. That means keeping her out of her Fin Cen office for a while – and maybe out of the city completely. How’s that for starters?”
“Brutal but understandable,” De Salvo said.
“For how long?” Alex asked. “Away from everything?”
“Until we know the threats against you have been negated,” Ramirez said.
“Are we talking years?” Alex asked, her indignation rising. “Someone takes a shot at me and misses, and it puts me out of business? Then the other side has succeeded? I don’t like it.”
“They haven’t succeeded,” De Salvo said with sudden defensiveness. “The arrests are continuing, the investigations as well, the indictments …” He paused. “Someone else will pick up your files and not miss a beat.”
“What about the Dosis?” Alex asked. “Anything new this morning?”
“Still fugitives,” De Salvo said. “We’re checking all flights to Israel as well as nontraditional venues in South America.”
“Do we know what passports they’d be traveling on?” Alex asked.
Silence around the room, which meant no.
“Alex,” De Salvo said. “You’re going to have to let go for a time. Your safety is the paramount issue now.”
“They nearly kill me and I’m supposed to let it go?” she snapped.
“No,” De Salvo said, “but you’re better off letting other people handle it.”
She turned to MacPhail, who spoke before she could. “We approach these things thirty days at a time,” he said. “We get you out of this office, hopefully this city, for a month. After that, we’ll see where we are.”
�
��You make it sound simple.”
“We’ve never lost anyone in our custody yet,” Ramirez said.
Alex couldn’t resist. “You nearly did last night.”
MacPhail sighed. “Look, not to separate the flea feces from the pepper, but you weren’t technically in administrative custody yet. You were in – “
“My own home and my head nearly got blown off,” she said, “because you guys were a few days behind the guy assigned to whack me! That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, gentlemen. I don’t feel myself bonding here.”
“Look, I can put Alex on protective administrative leave,” De Salvo said. “This happened one other time in my memory. That’s what we did and it worked.”
“But where do I go?” asked Alex. “I’m not sure I have faith in the system you’re presenting to me.”
“Where would you like to go?” Ramirez asked. “Within reason.”
She considered it. “What are we talking about? Short-term witness protection?” she asked. “Something ‘flyover’? Arizona? New Mexico? Grand Rapids, Michigan?”
“Something like that. There’s a lot of latitude.”
“I’m not buying into this, gentlemen,” Alex said. “Part of me says I could go underground by myself and survive just as well.” She thought of the two million dollars in the bank. “Maybe even better.”
“Than what?” MacPhail asked. “We can’t help without your cooperation.”
Silence rolled around the room like a fog. Finally, “Well, maybe you should make that trip to Cuba, after all,” De Salvo said as a joke.
“Maybe I should,” Alex answered, not as a joke.
MacPhail and Ramirez glanced at each other. “What trip?” MacPhail asked.
“One that’s not going to happen,” Alex said.
Another uneasy silence rolled around the room. Then, “If you have something good, we need to hear about it, okay?” MacPhail said. “Cuba? Can you talk about this?”
