Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1)

by Menard, Jayne

  "How much danger will you be in when you go after the perp?"

  "There will be agents all around me."

  "That is not what I asked," Ivy said, using her firm business tone.

  "Ivy, I am a federal agent. I go after major perps. There’s always danger. However I have been doing this for more than 35 years and I'm still here. FBI actions are different than police cases. Our mortality rate is much lower."

  "Like how low?"

  "Less than sixty agents killed in the line of duty."

  "Annually?" she asked.

  "No, that is less than 60 agents killed ever. Check our website. Their names are listed there as an honorarium. My teams do everything possible to reduce risk. We stay fit and do target practice. We wear protective gear. We plan extensively. Often a SWAT team skilled in approaching explosive situations goes in ahead of us. We are careful and methodical. We do make a federal case out of it."

  She had to smile at his little twist of humor and then reached over to squeeze his hand, wishing she had some extra-human power to give him to repel bullets. How had this man attached himself to her heart so quickly? Their long Thanksgiving weekend had her wondering how she could handle their sporadically developing relationship. She had such a deep passion for Steve. He was so tender, so loving, and so gentle that the desire came from deep inside of her to flow out to him. Never had lovemaking been like this for her. He was an unselfish lover, seeming happy to lead or be led, but Steve was much more than the passion. Ivy delighted in the warmth, the romance, the conversation, the emotional exhilaration and the plain fun of being with him. Tomorrow she would have to deal with his long absence and the worry. For these next hours, he was hers to enjoy.

  His car came at four the next morning for his flight back to D.C. and to the drug lord case. He made no promises, except that he would be back, as soon and as often as he could.

  "My Ivy Vine," he whispered, holding her in the front doorway while his driver took his suitcase to the car in the pre-morning light. "Can I trust falling this much in love this fast?"

  She nodded against his shoulder, gripping him tighter, and whispered. "With me, you can."

  "Then how are we going to handle these long separations?"

  PART II

  Chapter 8

  Secure Email from Steve Nielsen November 30, 2012

  Ivy my Ivy, staying with you, talking with you, making love with you is so heavenly, that compared to my regular life, it is as if I have changed galaxies, especially during times like these when the days on a case threaten to stretch out into weeks. Every time you turn, every time you speak, I discover something new about you. I may hear a different tone in your voice, or learn your point of view on a topic. I see even the smallest things about you, like the way your left eye crinkles a little more than your right when you smile. I take mental snapshots of each observation to imprint them in my memory and play them back when I dare to let my mind wander to you, which happens far more often than it should.

  I am so torn now between my work for the Bureau and spending more time with you that I resent how my work will keep me away so much. This case we are concentrating on started when we traced a money laundering scheme that led us to a suspected drug ring. Sometime in the upcoming weeks, when we have enough intelligence to be effective, we will make our move.

  Please believe me when I tell you that I want so much to be with you, especially over the holidays. I will break away if I can, but the stakes are high on this one. For my teams and me, they always are. We are working as much of the 24/7 schedule as our bodies can handle to position ourselves to nail these traffickers. Times like these, I feel as if my career has been in Dante's nine levels of hell, where, no matter how much we battle or how successful we are, we only are able to clean-up some anterooms.

  Ivy, while we talk most days or nights and email and text, nothing replaces being with you. I miss seeing you. I miss touching you. I miss our banter and playful moments. Until I can be with you again, you will be in my heart. Yes, I know things are moving quickly between us in terms of hours spent together, but still in all, the word "us" has become very special to me -- I never appreciated that it could be.

  Your loving Steve

  ***

  Early the next day Steve and Mathew left for Houston to work out of the local FBI office with a team from the DEA. Steve had Brian and Moll handling follow-up on the child trafficking case where they would finish organizing the evidence and work with the legats on preparing the FBI's case against Matka and the other arrested perps, both domestically and internationally.

  The DEA located a warehouse a few miles south of the international airport in Mexico City which they suspected housed one of Astuto's drug repackaging plants. At the site, they understood that the perps were taking in bales of cocaine from Colombia, then breaking them down into small packets for street distribution and boxing those up for shipment. Steve estimated that each 55-pound bale had a street price of $2.5 million, once it was cut and repackaged for sale. The warehouse could contain tens of millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine, potentially making it one of the bigger busts in history. However he would only consider it a victory if they also apprehended the head of the drug ring.

  Their limited knowledge of the physical layout of the building made planning the sting challenging. From the outside, it appeared to be a long, flat warehouse, with a loading dock and a small parking lot, all surrounded by a chain link fence. Using photogrammetry software with satellite and aerial photographs, FBI HQ derived the dimensions of the building. From the surveillance team's observations, they were aware that the operation ran over three shifts. In their understanding, El Zorro Astuto made unannounced trips to inspect the facility, arriving on any day at any time of day. The DEA claimed that their undercovers had recently sighted Astuto several times in Bogota, but he always managed to give them the slip when they went to follow him. They did have more success in tailing his pilot. For now, they were waiting for the DEA operatives in Colombia to receive word that Astuto's pilot had filed a flight plan from Bogota to the target city in Mexico. They would track the flight and prepare to catch Astuto at the cocaine-repackaging warehouse.

  Additional agents were assigned to Steve in Houston from the local FBI office and the DEA, including the same leader from the DEA who they had dealt with on the last operation in Mexico. Having relied on bad DEA info once, Steve was suspicious of any insights brought forward by them that his FBI agents could not verify as factual. That weekend, they poured through the DEA case files on the drug operation in Mexico, its location, the estimated volumes of drugs, how the logistics worked to move the cocaine from Colombia to Mexico and from there, packaged now for street distribution, to various locales in the United States. They could have moved in to shut down the operation at any time, but Steve’s goal was to catch this suspected El Zorro Astuto red-handed. He wanted a visit confirmed and then he wanted to apprehend him at the site.

  On Monday Steve was waking up from his usual short night sleep when his cell phone rang. He checked the incoming number and saw it was the leader from the DEA.

  "Yeah," he said, forcing himself to sound wide awake and a bit grouchy.

  "The subject's plane just filed a flight plan to Mexico City." The DEA lead spoke in an overly aggressive tone as his defense about the mistake in Mexico.

  "You're sure this time." Steve was careful to make it a statement to be refuted and not a question.

  "His creds check out. You know we had the perp under observation for the last six weeks."

  "And yet, all you know is that he calls himself 'Astuto'?"

  "We've been all through this. Are you joining us or what?"

  Steve was in a corner. If he did not go and Astuto showed, it would end his career in a very sour way. If he and his FBI team went and Astuto was again an actor, they would have egg on their face, however they would also have commandeered a warehouse with cocaine and shut the operation down.

  "At the airport and i
n the Bubird at 04:00 hours," he said tersely, clicking off his phone. That gave him an hour to get the Bubird crew alerted, their flight plan activated and the plane warmed up. His team had just enough time to be armed, ready and on board. While the timing would be tight, they could do it. He hit the speed dial key to alert Mathew and then they would each make a bevy of other calls.

  Their flight landed in Mexico City well before dawn, giving them cover of darkness. Once they were taxiing on the runway, they confirmed that Astuto's plane had landed on schedule. They took a fast drive south from the airport to the cocaine repackaging plant. Fearful of a tipoff, Steve only alerted them about the actual sting when their cars pulled up near the site housing the suspected operation.

  With the agents all packed into two vans, they stopped around the corner from the warehouse. Their undercover jogged over and confirmed that a limo had entered the site about five minutes before, carrying only a driver and one man. He was fairly certain there were less than ten people inside the target site but several would be armed.

  Two Houston-based agents quickly and quietly overcame the gate guard who was left gagged and bound with the undercover. Steve then led the team at a run across the parking lot to a small side door. He stepped back to allow a skilled agent to blast open the door lock. Then Steve barged through and shot the first armed man he saw. Mathew flew by his right side, leading two agents. Shots started coming from several directions, including from above. Running across the warehouse, Mathew was taken down by shots to his left hip and thigh, spinning around and landing hard on his stomach. The two agents with him dove behind a worktable, leaving Mathew stranded on the warehouse floor. He started crawling crabwise towards cover dragging his damaged leg.

  Steve fired his submachine gun upwards in an arcing motion aiming for the guards who unexpectedly patrolled a catwalk from 12 feet above that circled the warehouse. He kept shooting back and forth. Mathew managed to scrabble his way about five feet when another shot creased his forehead. He flattened himself on the floor. Steve ran over, still firing upwards, swinging his gun in a wide arc. With his left arm, he grabbed Mathew around the chest, and still firing, pulled him to cover behind a metal worktable that he upended to serve as a shield. He ripped off his tie and bound it around Mathew's upper thigh as a tourniquet, while yelling for a medic. Blood was streaming from Mathew's hip, which he was trying to staunch himself by pressing his hands against the wound. More blood dripped down from his eyebrow from where a bullet had skimmed under the edge of his helmet. A medic ran in and started to tend Mathew's wounds. One of the DEA agents had taken a bullet to his upper right arm. Luckily he was now behind cover. Steve jumped over to him, ripped the sleeve off his shirt and bound up the wound. He glanced around, assessing the situation. Another DEA agent lay sprawled on the floor. Steve was certain he was dead.

  Steve jumped back out, blasting away with his weapon and took out the remaining guard on the catwalk, freeing up a couple of agents who had been pinned down behind a worktable. Shots rang out from the back of the warehouse where two agents slid down the wall behind some heavy racks of shelves to corner a pair of armed men.

  For the next minute, shots kept ringing out and bullets were flying. Local forces arrived and the two remaining perps surrendered. The man they believed to be Astuto, four armed guards and one DEA agent were dead. Two agents were wounded, along with a worker hit in the crossfire. Steve's gaze swept the warehouse. Only one partial bale of cocaine was visible. He ran to the back of the building, checked behind some racking and a forklift. Aside from that bale, the place only contained packaging materials. Either they were expecting a big shipment that day or Astuto had been tipped off again. The DEA leader went through the pockets of the dead perp they believed to be Astuto. Again what surfaced was a passport for an American with the occupation of an actor. By phone he verified the dead man's identity, with a more detailed check to be run back in the office. Steve stopped and snapped a photo with his iPhone. Something about the dead actor was off. Steve leaned down and tugged at the mustache, which came off in his hand. None of passport photos that they had for the sham company officers in the money laundering scheme had mustaches. Apparently, this perp did not have one either. Was the heavy dark mustache on this actor a ploy to make him seem familiar to the guards or workers? Still, the dead man closely resembled the perp/actor on the yacht in Mexico, although his hairline was higher and he had a small cleft in his chin.

  Again it appeared as if the DEA and the FBI had been setup. Did Astuto hire these actors to impersonate him and handle the inspections of his operations or had he learned that the warehouse would be hit and sacrificed the actor? Was the entire warehouse a sham setup? Outside of arranging the plane and alerting the other agencies at the last minute, no one should have been aware of their plans. That left certain possibilities, across the DEA, the Bureau and Border Patrol making Steve again wonder if they had a mole at the FBI or the DEA serving as an informant to the real El Astuto.

  Madder than hell at being foiled, possibly by his own government's staff, he ran back to check on Mathew. The medic had stopped the worst of the bleeding and was giving him oxygen and fluids. After conferring with the medic, Steve pulled out his cell phone and forcefully gave commands to have the Bubird ready for a medical evacuation to D.C. Steve would have Mathew airlifted out for treatment along with the Washington-based DEA agent who had taken a bullet in the right arm. Given that the mission was again a failure, Steve decided to take the plane with the two wounded men and a medic, appointing the DEA leader to oversee the cleanup. The wounded worker would be treated locally, held and charged along with the others they captured. The agents would also stick around to try and nab anyone who showed up for the next shift.

  The team had taken over what might or might not be a major drug re-packaging plant. The amount of coke at the facility was minimal. Even more, Steve wanted El Zorro Astuto either dead or alive. After that they could shut down his operations. As it was, two good agents had incapacitating wounds and one was dead. He was upset about Mathew whose injuries were serious. Steve worried that the best agent he ever worked with, and maybe the best man he knew, would never walk right again. Standing there as the medic worked on Mathew, Steve realized that he had become more of a son to him than his birth son from his misfit marriage had ever been. This was his time for him to be there for Mathew.

  He thought then of Ivy and her concerns about his safety when they were last together. For the first time since his parents passed away, he had someone who worried about him. He had to watch out for her too. It was time to report the incidents of the tail in D.C. For now he would keep his suspicions about a mole at the Bureau or the DEA to himself. Someone was out to make them appear incompetent by laying false trails and offering up hired actors as bait. The whole setup stunk, making Steve more determined to hunt this Astuto character down, no matter how long it took.

  ***

  For Ivy, December started out bleak and lonely with no visits from Steve. With the dark, wet days of winter, the nights seemed long. She kept busy at home by decorating for Christmas, putting up her trees and bringing out the greens, candles and other wonders of the season she had collected over the years. She had fresh spruce wreaths on the doors decorated with red ribbon with gold backing that flipped merrily in the wind.

  Her new replacement at work had been identified and would start on January 2nd, allowing Ivy to move to part-time and then become redundant. While this had been her choice, years of commitment made it hard to step away. Even so, despite the exhilaration from her times with Steve, she continued to feel worn out. She had to retire, regain her health and move on. Her phone began to ring.

  "Steve?" Ivy said into the phone, seeing his cell number and lighting up inside.

  "Ivy, I'm back in D.C."

  "Can you come out?"

  "Not right yet."

  To Ivy, his voice sounded strained, "Is something wrong? Are you hurt?"

  "No."

  Ivy hear
d a long intake of breath.

  "Mathew is. He took three bullets, one creased his forehead, one went into his hip, right below his protective vest, and chipped the bone. The third bullet tore up his thigh, shattering his left femur. Ivy, I can't leave him."

  "Is he in a hospital in D.C.?"

  "Airlifted him here. Haven't been able to reach his mother. She must be off on one of her travels. Mathew is conscious, but his leg, oh god, his leg. I'm so afraid he will never walk right again. He came out of his second surgery about an hour ago. I'm taking time off to be with him."

  "Do you want me to come out?"

  "This perp could turn vengeful. I don't want you close to us here; it might become dangerous, even in D.C." His voice carried a lacing of the menace he felt. “I was thinking of taking an apartment in Portland when Mathew can be transported there. That way I could take care of him and see you too.”

  After hearing how upset Steve was over the shooting, Ivy wanted to help him and Mathew. At least she could handle the local logistics. “Give me an idea of what you want to spend and I’ll check out places in the Pearl District or downtown so you can be within walking distance of shops, restaurants and the Max line for rapid transit.”

  "Can I get a bus or something to your house?"

  "Steve, do you really not drive?”

  “I can, but I don’t. While I have a license, unless I am totally absorbed in a high speed car chase, I get to thinking about something and oops, I’m a ticking time bomb behind the wheel.”

  “At least you’re smart about it. No wonder you’re a city boy. Once we have the location of the apartment, we can check bus schedules. They run at least hourly and stop a couple of blocks away from here.”

  "I'll arrange medical transport for Mathew. Don't worry about us getting out there, but I sure appreciate you screening the apartments. It’ll need to be furnished. The Bureau will pay for this as a kind of safe house. Two bedrooms and a study, as I will work part-time from there. No stairs for Mathew – elevator okay. Also good security on the building. Month to month lease.”