Caribbean's Keeper

by Boland, Brian;

  After 20 minutes, Tony walked over to Cole and pointed again back at all the monitors. “This is because of you, Cole. Your guy David is a big deal, and we’re now networked into the inner workings of a major cartel. Our aircraft are on top of every one of his boats right now.”

  Cole asked, “So you’re going to bust them?”

  Tony shook his head, saying, “No, not all of them. We don’t want to tip David off just yet that we’re on to him. We’ll make it hurt, but he’d ditch the phone if we blew our cover like that. For now, we’re just watching, trying to learn his movements.”

  “So why not just shut him down now?”

  “This is the big leagues, Cole. We play for keeps and we aim for the top. David’s not the top.”

  Cole was quiet for a moment, before asking, “So you willingly let drugs slip through?”

  Tony exhaled and replied, “Yeah, for the greater good, sometimes you gotta let one slide.” He patted Cole on the shoulder and went back to work.

  g

  Over the next week, Cole was in the command center almost daily. Twice he called David to ensure they were still tracking the right guy, and both times they were spot on, tracking David’s phone as he made his way in and around Panama City. It was like a game of chess and Tony was lining up his plays. Cole admired the steel resolve Tony showed with the other agents. He led them, but in a subtle way that commanded respect and at the same time created an open dialogue among the agents in the room. Cole admired him for it.

  Some of the other agents ignored Cole. One or two of them showed outright disdain for his presence, but most just went about their work with a shared determination to slow the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. Looking at the array of equipment and realizing the magnitude of the operation, Cole was amazed he’d gotten away with so much. Underneath the sunshine, the palm trees, the beaches, and the blue water, the Caribbean was a modern battlefield.

  Tony asked Cole questions every now and then, but mostly he followed the monitors’ activity and jotted things down on a notepad. On the second day, he sat down and asked Cole about David’s phone calls.

  “Do you know who David works with?”

  Cole shook his head and answered, “No, I never met many guys outside of David.”

  Tony thought for a moment and explained a bit more of the game to Cole. “He calls a few numbers, most of which we can track to Panama, Bolivia, and Colombia, but there’s one number he’s dialed three times that is encrypted beyond anything we can track. I think it’s encrypted on the other end. Do you have any idea who that might be?”

  Cole again shook his head and answered, “No, sorry.”

  “No problem, but that guy is our target from here on out.”

  g

  On the third day, Cole was restless for some action and when the opportunity arose, he pointed out the small river where he ran back and forth from in Nicaragua, explaining to Tony and the other agents the frequency of the runs and the types of pangas used. Seemingly on a whim, Tony moved a U.S. Navy ship to monitor the river mouth, and by the next morning when Cole walked in, the ship had busted a load of cocaine during the night. Cole smiled a bit, thinking that perhaps he’d bought some rest for the older couple that had always taken care of him. With a ship off the mouth of the river, David would have to find a new hideout. It felt like a win and Cole was happy.

  That night, Tony invited Cole out to dinner to celebrate the bust. In high spirits, Tony offered to buy at El Siboney and Cole wasn’t about to refuse the offer. Ordering the same plate of grouper he’d eaten so many other times, Cole bid his time and made idle chatter with Tony.

  He finally asked, “So, Mickey is one of your guys?”

  Tony laughed, replying, “Yeah, he’s been with us for years. He used to run dope like you and something scared the crap out of him. He ran north and ended up caught up in some low-budget dope ring. I got my hands on him and he turned pretty quick. We pay him a bit, just enough to get by, and he keeps up on some connections that help us from time to time.”

  Cole smiled briefly, then fought back the urge to let Tony in on Mickey’s little secret. Cole remembered how Mickey dressed and lived, well below his means as a Cuban migrant smuggler. Even if Mickey had turned to the right side of the law when it came to drugs, he kept up his skills organizing the runs to Cuba and back. If Mickey could run a migrant network under Tony’s nose, Cole was that much more impressed with the short little man with greying hair. Cole wasn’t mad at him. It was, after all, purely business once Cole had headed south. Hell, Mickey warned me, Cole thought before he took another sip of his beer.

  Tony asked, “Are you surprised about Mickey?”

  Cole grinned, took a longer sip from his beer, swallowed, and replied, ‘Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  After each had put down a few more beers, Cole laid out his cards. “Tony, I need to get back to Martinique.”

  Tony almost spit out his beer, before putting the bottle back on the table and shaking his head. “Not a chance Cole. You’re a flight risk.”

  Cole pleaded with him and explained the entire situation with Isabella, offering to do whatever it took to get back down to Fort-De-France to check on her. Tony shook his head each time.

  Cole finally threw his hail mary, saying, “If I don’t have my head on straight for going back to Panama, this isn’t going to work, Tony.”

  Cole thought he made a good argument, as Tony was quiet for a minute. Taking another sip of his beer, Tony stared into Cole’s eyes.

  After a pause, he changed his previous tone, and said to Cole, “If, and it’s a big if, I let you go down there, I’ll go with you. But for now we’ve got work to do.”

  Cole hid the smile he felt and nodded to affirm that he understood everything Tony said. The two finished dinner with lighter conversation and parted ways outside of Truman Annex.

  g

  The following morning, Cole again was in the comms room at JIATF-S. An aircraft was pushing a video feed of the river mouth where the ship had made their bust the day before. There was a bit of commotion amongst the agents and Cole stared at the video, trying to figure out what they were seeing. Tony came over and put his hand on Cole’s shoulder, saying, “It looks like they burned the place.”

  Cole asked, “What place? What are you talking about?”

  Tony pointed back at the monitor, saying, “The camp you guys were using, someone went in last night and burned it all to the dirt, probably to send a message or something. Go pack your bag; we are going to go take a look for ourselves.”

  Cole asked, “What about the people living there?”

  Tony just solemnly shook his head, saying, “We don’t know, but it doesn’t look good.”

  Chapter 16 - Payback

  COLE HURRIED BACK to his room and packed the few things he had with him. Meeting Tony back at the command center, they climbed into a waiting SUV and sped over to the Naval Air Station in Key West. This time, a King Air, one not unlike Murph’s, was waiting for them. Tony and Cole climbed in and the plane taxied out to the runway, turned around at the end, and the propellers spun up. The plane shook and after a momentary pause, the pilots released the brakes and it surged down the runway, lifted off, and pointed to the south. The familiar thud of the landing gear caused a lump in Cole’s throat. It reminded him of Murph and brought with it a somber reality. Cole looked out the window at Key West below. He dreaded a plane ride south and longed for the quiet side streets of a Key West morning. Going south was the last thing he wanted to do, but Tony was calling the shots at this point, and Cole was something between a prisoner and a free man.

  The plane droned over the Bahamas for what seemed like an eternity. Tony sat patiently across from Cole and combed through a folder with a red ‘Secret’ sticker on the front cover. At times, he showed Cole a map, and asked vague questions about routes Cole had taken or people he’d interacted with. But for most of the flight, Cole sat silently an
d stared down at the hundreds of barren rocks that made up the bulk of the Bahamas island chain. It was nothing like the palm-lined beaches one would see in a travel brochure. Cole shook his head softly, thinking, This damn Caribbean.

  The majority of the Bahamas, like most of the Caribbean, was a far cry from what Cole had thought years before. Each island they flew over looked much like the one before—large and shallow lagoons surrounding brown rocky outcroppings. Beyond each reef line was the deep and dark blue water and white caps from the sea breeze that stood out even from 20,000 feet above. On every few islands, there would be a runway or a few stuctures, but few had any signs of life on them. It was as inhospitable as another planet. After nearly two hours, the plane banked back around to the west and a larger land mass jutted up from the sea.

  Tony looked up for a moment and out the window, then nodded back to Cole, saying “Gitmo.”

  Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo, as the military referred to it, was a familiar place to Cole. Delaney had made many port calls there and Cole remembered it from his former life. Gitmo was hot and desolate, sitting on the dry side of Cuba and lacking water for much of the year. It resembled a desert in more ways than one would think. Surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, with armed guards in watch towers, and a minefield that separated America from communist Cuba, Cole was less than ecstatic to stop there.

  “How long are we staying?” Cole asked.

  Tony, without looking up, replied, “Not long, just enough to get some gas I suppose.”

  Cole didn’t ask any more questions and instead sat back as the pilots banked around to land into the stiff winds that almost always blew in hard from the east. It forced pilots to come in with a steep turn, directly over the minefield to avoid Cuban airspace. The pilots did a good job of it as they fought to keep the wings level and touched down without much fanfare, taxiing in to an abandoned ramp. Once shut down, Cole and Tony stepped out and waited in the empty terminal while the crew fueled the plane.

  It was a spartan waiting area with a few rows of seats, worn tile floors, and a few sailors mulling about. Plaques and framed pictures lined the wall from one end to the other, documenting the history of one of America’s last southern bastions from a bygone era. As Cole walked, there were black and white photos of old planes and their crews from the height of the Cold War along with more recent pictures, all telling the story of Guantanamo Bay. Much of it made the base seem outdated, but Gitmo had strategic importance if things ever heated up in the tropics. On the far end, ornate wooden boards listed the bases’ past Commanding Officers and Cole paused to peruse the names that dated back to beginning of the 20th century.

  He stared at the names of admirals and captains, then reflected on his own service, or lack thereof. In his worn shorts, running shoes, and linen shirt, Cole looked nothing like the spit-polished officer he’d once hoped to be. His hair was a ragged mess and his still-black eye only accentuated the gritty self-induced homeless-esque persona that he’d embraced. At least for now, he was again on the right side of the law, but staring at the names of a century’s worth of naval leaders, Cole could not help but feel some shame overtaking his conscience. The Caribbean Cole knew was a far cry from what these names on the wall had known over the past century, yet somehow Cole’s kind and that of the names on the board were intertwined in the fabric of the islands and the waters of the Caribbean.

  Before Cole’s mind could wander much further into the past, Tony called for him and they stepped back out onto the ramp, into the stiff easterly breeze, and up into the King Air. With engines running, the pilots again taxied to the runway and lifted off, flying up and over the small bay and back to the south, away from Cuba.

  g

  It was late afternoon when Cole saw land again through his window. The plane descended low, perhaps 1,000 feet over the shore line, and circled a runway tucked against the coast. Without any sort of air traffic control to speak of, the pilots banked and weaved a meandering circuitous course around the field, to check it out before lining up on a short final. Their improvised approach reminded him of Murph landing his own plane back in Martinique. Touching down firmly, the pilots were quick on the brakes and brought the plane to a stop, shutting down on the bleached and cracked runway. Looking around, Cole could see that jungle more or less extended right up to the edge of the concrete. They were, by any account, in the middle of nowhere.

  Tony stood up and advised Cole to let him do the talking. When they stepped out, two trucks pulled up to the plane, each loaded with local men in green uniforms with rifles in various positions across their shoulders or in their arms. They stood silently in the truck bed waiting for Tony or Cole to make a move. Cole looked back to see both pilots leaning against the wing in their best attempt to look calm.

  Cole could feel the tension, though. He’d been in enough encounters such as this to know that one wrong move would end poorly for those with the least amount of firepower. Clearly, Cole and Tony were the minority. Tony waved casually and approached the closest truck. A young man jumped out from the back and met Tony half way. The two shook hands and Cole felt the tension break just a bit. Tony passed the man an envelope from his back pocket and Cole could see that Tony had a pistol tucked in the small of his back.

  The soldier opened the enveloped and played with its contents for just a moment before waving Cole over. By the time Cole shook his hand, the man was smiling. Cole and Tony climbed in the back of one of the trucks then set off down a dusty and rutted road into the jungle that surrounded the airfield. Cole looked around at his new travel companions who did little to even acknowledge Cole’s presence.

  “Was that a bribe?” Cole asked as the truck bounced and shook down the dirt road.

  Tony smiled and replied, “Just buying us some security, that’s all. Nicaraguan Army. We’re on good terms with them for the moment.”

  Almost a half an hour later, Cole recognized the burned-out remains of the old folks’ compound as the trucks approached. Both trucks pulled up and circled the smoldering pile of ash before coming to an abrupt stop. The men in green uniforms hopped out and formed a loose perimeter around the complex. None of them talked much, but they all held their rifles—mostly derivatives of AKs—at the ready. Disputed turf, Cole thought. Just as David had told him when Cole ran the money back to Panama.

  Tony motioned for Cole to follow him around to the back. Once there, Cole saw the burned bodies of what must have been the man and the woman. Smoke still rose from their shack a few feet away and its smell did a merciful job of hiding the stench of the old couples’ burnt flesh.

  Tony crouched down and examined both of the remains. They were charred black beyond recognition and were contorted from the immense heat that had burned their flesh. Cole did not want to believe what he saw. Tony looked closer at the back of their heads and moved the bodies slightly with a stick.

  From his crouched position, Tony spoke. “Both had bullets to the back of their heads.”

  Cole said nothing, but stood motionless as the guilt burned at him even more than the Central American heat. Cole had been the one to point out the river mouth, and now the couple was dead because of it.

  Tony looked back up to Cole and could see the remorse on Cole’s face.

  “They were shot first, Cole.” Tony said it as if that made it any more bearable.

  Cole shook his head. “Tony, they suffered more than you know.”

  Tony then nodded in solemn agreement and looked away, knowing that Cole was not looking for anything to dull the pain.

  “Does anyone ever get anything right with this shit?” Cole was mad and ran his fingers through his matted hair.

  Tony replied, “It’s a nasty business. I won’t argue that with you.” There was a pause before Tony continued. “Someone has to fight these guys, Cole. If we don’t fight them, they win.”

  Cole thought for a second, looked down at the bodies, and asked, “Is this winning?”

  With tha
t, Cole walked back to the remnants of the shack where the woman had done her cooking and the man had sold his assorted goods. He fought back a tear, and kicked through the ash and charred debris. Cole took a few minutes before he crouched down in the black and grey dust and picked up the framed picture he was looking for. Wiping away the smoke stains from the glass, he could see it was indeed the picture of the boy whose parents now laid dead only feet away. The entire family was gone.

  Las Drogas, Cole thought.

  Cole walked back over to the remains of the mother and father, laying the picture down in between them. From the truck, two soldiers brought shovels and proceeded to dig a grave in a far corner of their plot of land. Tony continued to look around and he put a few bits and pieces of debris in evidence bags. Cole walked over to the soldiers and extended his hand, asking for one of the shovels. One soldier was more than happy to oblige and Cole helped dig a grave for the two most recent victims of a silent war that Cole now wished more than ever to have never known from either side of the law.

  g

  As sunset approached, Cole and the soldiers buried the remains. Cole had placed the photo on top before helping to fill in the dirt. None of the soldiers seemed to show much remorse, and it occurred to Cole that it was not for a lack of compassion, but rather a more normal occurrence for this part of the world than Cole knew. Driving back to the airstrip in the twilight, Cole and Tony talked more.

  “Was this a message to them, or to us?” Cole asked.

  Tony shook his head, saying, “I don’t know. It was a message to someone. I think your boy David has gone off the reservation. This isn’t standard cartel stuff anymore.”