Once More to Die

by Jim Johnson

  Linda pulled a pack of Marlboros out of a hidden pocket, snapped open the hard pack, took a deep sniff, and closed it back up. “Not as good as Luckys,” she said.

  “Lemme ask, Linda, what is the job we want done?”

  “I have been wondering that myself, Suze. First all we knew was somebody killed some of 13 de enero soldiers. Even though our guy Don Diego has not been very forthcoming. The old man’s gone. Then young Miss María Elena disappears—García’s wife. Then the Orlando International episode we witnessed. Then she and this Atkins guy are in Olde San Antone and we locate them and pass along the info and all of a sudden, you got five more dead guys.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, whose side are we on?” Linda asked.

  Suzie Q smiled. “The red, white, and blue. Don Diego is running 13 and has some agents in place on Cuban soil for us, Linda, for you and me, for this 13 JTF.”

  “JTF 13,” corrected Linda. “To be fair, we have received some innocuous reports from these agents in-place.”

  “Proving nothing.”

  “Sufficient, Suze, to continue our funding.”

  “There’s that.”

  “To be fair,” Linda pointed out, “we, you and I and this office, didn’t know what Don Diego was going to do with the info we gave them from San Antonio.”

  “We still don’t know.”

  “We posit he sent a hit team to kill them and the tables got turned.”

  “Now it’s happening out of Vegas,” said Suzie. “Lots of people want the woman and the guy dead.”

  “I don’t care about him, but it would be a waste for her to die so young and stunningly beautiful.”

  Suzie shook her head. “There’s that. But we got no stake in her death. Something stinks here. Since we’ve now figured out people want to kill her, we might have a stake in keeping her alive.”

  “You figure we’ve been used?”

  “We are always being used. It’s our job to turn that around and use them while letting them think they’re using us.”

  Linda gave a wide smile. “I even understand what you just said. Not only that, but I concur. It might be in our best interest to keep her alive until we can determine just exactly what the fuck is going on.”

  “And how we can use it.” Suzie leaned back thinking. “Although I will admit this Atkins fellow is doing a mighty fine job of it on his own.”

  “Don’t forget cover our ass, bureaucratically speaking.” Linda reached over and patted Suzie’s hand. “Put your Machiavellian mind to task, sweetie, and solve this shit. I kind of like our autonomy here; I’m not certain I can go back to either a desk job or being a field agent again.”

  “Yes, dear. My aforementioned giant intellect asks me if we can scare up a chopper, send it to those GPS coordinates and report back to us.”

  “Can do. We have the authority. Dunno if we got one available in Nogales, but I’ll dispatch a team from there if so. Likely can get one out of Tucson quicker.”

  “How far from Tucson?”

  “Beats me. Maybe sixty miles. Won’t take long.”

  “Do it now. It’s very early their time.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Linda left in a swirl of a long skirt.

  Susan Quantrell worked on obligatory paperwork for an hour then Linda returned smelling like she’d just had a smoke outside.

  “We should hear something soon.”

  “Project review,” said Suzie Q proudly.

  “Okay. Why?”

  Suzie pushed back in her chair and smiled. “We need to cover our ass. We need to reassess our goals, the reason for our existence. We need to insure we’re doing what we need to in accordance with our regulations and procedures.”

  “Bureaucratic horse shit,” said Linda.

  “Sure. Look, we suspect stuff we don’t have control over is going on which might or might not be antithetical to our mission. Not to mention your and my careers. Therefore, we perform a Program Review in which we actually review and document our findings and make recommendations.”

  “No kidding?” said Linda. “That’s brilliant, and covers our aforementioned ass.” She applauded lightly with her hands. “So, who performs this review?”

  “We do.”

  “Prince Machiavelli, stand aside.”

  “So whatever we do is covered,” Suzie said. “And we document. What’s our mission? Originally, we monitor and provide assistance within the law, ahem, to 13 de enero and, secondarily, acquire intel from the island of Cuba. Anything to put a thorn in those Castro sides. But now that they’re on the fast track out, the military option is dying. Our review must encompass these upcoming changes. Not only does it cover our ass and give us motive for doing what we’re gonna do, whatever that is, it allows us to change the mission and thus provide job security for me and you and your crew of pirates out there in the ops room.”

  Linda excitedly took up the thread. “If we can modify our mission to include getting in on the ground floor or having some control over international trade out of Cuba, we’d become instant legends.”

  “I’d see it as simply doing our jobs.”

  Sandy knocked on the door and stuck her head in. “Tucson agent on line two, radio relay as his cell doesn’t work down by Nogales.”

  Linda spun the phone around and hit line two and the speaker function. “Landover.”

  Static then the carrier wave with background noise of wind and people talking in the background. “Linda, this is Smitty. Listen, it ain’t pretty here. Over.”

  “What do you have, Smitty, over.”

  “A cabin tucked under a mesa overhang, deserted, nobody home. Oh, except for six bodies. Over.”

  Linda took a deep breath. “Have you seen the bodies, Smitty?”

  “Unfortunately. Over.”

  “I need to know if any of the six matches two descriptions. One, female, thirty years old, highly attractive, long black hair. Two, male Caucasian, don’t know much, but a big guy, curly hair, maybe six two. Over.”

  Suzie held up her hand and crossed her fingers.

  “Linda, that’s a negative. All white males, all shot to death—well, a couple look like they were smashed with a car and another had his head bashed in. We can tell there was a huge gunfight here, but there are no weapons and the dearly departed have no identification. Over.”

  “All right, thanks, Smitty. Call me if you turn up anything interesting. Over.”

  “Hard to get all worked up about a mob hit team,” said Smitty. “I’ll copy you on my report. This is gonna look good on my record. Over.”

  “You’re welcome, Smitty. Over.”

  “Linda, you ain’t gonna believe this one. Guess who’s landing a chopper here right now and right alongside ours? The U.S. Marshal Service.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” said Linda. “Over and out.”

  “Okay, Linda, thanks again. I’d be very pleased to buy you dinner next time I’m up there in Never Never land. Out.”

  “Is he married?” asked Suzie.

  “Yeah, but that fact ain’t never bothered him yet.” Linda killed the speaker and the line and swiveled the phone back toward Suzie Q.

  Suzie surprised herself by asking, “Does everybody hit on you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Another thing or two. How come Atkins and María Elena are still together?”

  Linda shook her head. “Convenience? True love? Money?” She paused. “Some variation of the Stockholm Syndrome.” She shrugged. “My insight on this one ain’t, Suze.” She thought for a moment. “We can safely rule out that he’s some kind of agent in place, not with that record. A hidden ally? An illicit lover? We need a clue and I don’t have one.” She laughed, the sound of smoky whisky. “Maybe it’s Reverse Stockholm Syndrome: he’s following her around like a puppy.”

  “Me neither.” Suzie applied Occam’s Razor, the principle that the answer lies with the solution which has the fewest assumptions. “We’re gonna go with coincidence. Maybe he was a
bystander and got caught up in this mess.”

  “Complicates things to a degree,” said Linda. “I note that immediately upon his entry onto the scene we have a plethora of dead people.”

  “Why does Hamilton guy want Atkins killed? What reward and from whom?”

  “I’ll try to get an enquiry through to the undercover guy. Might be touchy.”

  “Naah, it’s his job and he loves this kind of shit. Gets his name out there as the premier undercover op; it sets him apart.”

  “And we want to know why, Suze?”

  “My read of Mr. Atkins is that he doesn’t take kindly to people trying to kill him or the girl. My further guess is Mr. Hamilton and whatever that mob guy’s name is in Florida, is they’re now in jeopardy.”

  “Oh.” Linda sat back, obviously impressed.

  “And, if we need, that’s where we’ll find Atkins and your cute girl, and pretty soon at that.” Suzie Q had a long-developed sixth sense from administrative in-fighting and bureaucratic wrangling. Something odd was going on here. “And why are the marshals going independent on us?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: HIM

  Tommy drove the lonely desert road.

  María Elena drowsed. They were somewhere northwest of Nogales, but not to the California border. Both knew it was time they talked. She shook her head and sat up. She popped the seat belt and turned and leaned into the back seat. “Soda?”

  “A sip.”

  She retrieved a diet Coke and buckled herself back in. She twisted the top off the plastic bottle and drank deeply. She handed it to Tommy and he drank some.

  María Elena sipped again and settled back. “See, here it is in a nutshell. I was eighteen. My father needed help running 13 and this half Mexican half Cubano had helped out before with men sometimes and info, inside info from Cuba. He was some kind of landowner in southern Mexico but headquartered in Miami. Papá decided he had the political moxie and connections. My father’s sometimes partner was too involved in politics and earning money and was not as involved as he had been. I don’t know—now—if I was part of the deal or just to cement the deal or an anointment of Don Diego to establish his credibility with the men and women of 13. Perhaps I was there to maintain Papá’s linkage when he got too old and had to relinquish control. I think Papá envisioned 13 would go on long after his passing.” She shook her head sadly. “Some would call it an ‘arranged’ marriage.”

  “Well, he’s dead now.” He glanced at her. “Sorry, don’t mean to be insensitive.”

  She shook her head, distracted. “I am not addressing the politics right now, just me personally. We stayed together for maybe five years. During that time he was gone a lot, Mexico, Cuba, elsewhere. He used me as a toy—no, a trophy would better describe it. Our marriage gave him instant credibility and he reveled in that. Then he became more and more involved in 13 and spent a lot of his time and political capital gaining trust and control. Much of the time he ignored me. After the first few years, he was playing around with other women—or he did that at the start of our marriage and I didn’t realize it.”

  “Sounds like a circus.”

  “Sort of, Tommy. I was eighteen, twenty, what did I know about life? Papá protected me and I was not world-wise—“

  “You’re getting a lot better.”

  “In fact, during the first few years of our marriage, I went to college. Remember Hillsdale?”

  “Sure thing, college girl.”

  “I spent a lot of time up in Michigan. They’re pretty strict up there and I was married, so my party life was non-existent. Consequently, I studied all the time and my grades reflected it.” She thought for a moment. “That could have caused a schism in our marriage, now that I think of it.”

  Tommy shook his head and checked mirrors and the speedometer. “The man was using you and, through you, your father. If he had cared, he would have encouraged you go attend the University of Miami or someplace much closer.”

  María Elena shot him a grin. “Maybe that was me finding an escape.”

  “You’re pretty bright today, college girl, I guess it follows you might have had some semblance of intelligence even back then.”

  “Gee, thanks. Anyway, after five years of that, we no longer lived together nor did we maintain the traditional husband and wife relationship.”

  “So, you been estranged for seven years?”

  “More or less.”

  “That’s a long time, María Elena. Why not divorce?”

  “Religion. Tradition. Papá.”

  “Bull shit, Pocahontas. You and Papá were afraid divorce would split 13 or diminish it. Or some damn thing. Diego obviously wanted to keep the veneer of marriage as that was much of his power base.”

  “Pretty close. The apple cart was safe.” She shook her head. “Papá was getting too old to be operational all the time, and Don Diego was inheriting the leadership propped up by marriage to me.”

  “Fast forward, María Elena. You discovered a new layer to Diego’s duplicity. You found out he was doing illegal stuff.”

  She took up the story once again. “They were doing military exercises in that big area near where your cabin was. We’ve another where we are based, a couple of thousand acres the government lets us use, closer to Miami, but still in the boondocks. But this area is larger and you can live fire and use equipment and so on. I went to look up my father and brief him on what’d I’d discovered. Somehow Diego ferreted it out and here we are.”

  “By then he’d consolidated his hold on 13 so that he didn’t need you or your father.”

  “Exactly. It even wouldn’t surprise me if he were a big time drug dealer out of Mexico.”

  “More likely, María Elena, he wanted to be or wanted to be rich.”

  “Which would happen if the Castro regime disappeared.”

  “But Don Diego didn’t know when that thing would occur.”

  She finished the diet Coke. “Exactly.”

  “Where does the government fit in all this?”

  “A lot,” she said. “They provided the land, and some equipment, and training—not so much training any more as their money has been cut.” She twisted the cap onto the bottle and set it in a garbage bag.

  “Most of that’s obvious. Why would they help Don Diego?”

  María Elena shook her head sadly. “He’s the formal head of 13, the operations officer, too. Papá has been marginalized.”

  “They have to know 13 isn’t going to attack Cuba itself and take over.” He tweaked the steering wheel to miss a dead buzzard in the road. A motorcycle came up behind them and blew past them, the Doppler noise reverberating within the Jeep. Tommy was driving 75. At least that was an encouraging sign for their destination.

  “Very good, Tommy. There’s a watchdog agency up in Washington called JTF 13. Joint Task Force. Half CIA and half FBI. Their mission has evolved from strictly oversight into one of being able to take advantage for the U.S. when the Castro regime is gone. Nowadays, that means trade. Don Diego has sold them on that tantalizing goal. So they support 13 in the hopes of having major influence in the forthcoming new Cuban government.”

  “Well,” said Tommy, “it keeps them busy and maintains their budget. Are these bureaucrats aware Don Diego is trying his best to kill you? That he killed your father?”

  “I doubt it. How could they unless he tells them?”

  “So they’ve been inadvertently helping him find us to kill you?”

  “It could be, Tommy. Or, advertently. The CIA has backed plenty of bad guys, killers, whatever, to get what it wants. I think they think they own the 13 members who are underground in Cuba right now and do not want to jeopardize any of that.”

  “Still…real people, Americans, don’t want to contribute to murder and rape and whatever else Diego is doing.”

  “He is making a giant profit. But no, we don’t know what these faceless bureaucrats are up to.”

  “Do you know them personally? Have you met them?”

  �
�No. Papá refused to let me get involved in that end of 13. He was only trying to protect me. I didn’t protest because I had other things to do and had been excluded from the leadership of 13. Frankly, I was angry over this macho male oriented culture which Papá was part of, and which kept me out of leadership and operations.”

  “So you don’t have a clue who these Washington guys are?”

  “Nope. Would they believe us anyway?”

  “I don’t know, Pocahontas. I’m only looking for a way out. It looks like we might have to do it the hard way.” He sighed. “And I guess this JTF doesn’t know about rape, pillage, murder, plunder. Which brings me to this: I can see why Diego wants you dead. Fine. But what’s with the gang rape bit?”

  “Several things, but mostly the last seven or eight years, I’ve refused to submit to him. He has built up a lot of animus toward me because of that. It hurt his Latin macho pride and somewhat diminished his authority and his credibility. But mostly, it was to get even for me and my research causing things to come crashing down, likely pushing him to make his move earlier than he’d anticipated. Mother Mary, he was angry with me.”

  Tommy sat back. The road was straight. Heat boiled off the surface. Tiny mirages danced in the distance.

  “Here’s what I think, María Elena. If we need to, you can call up this JTF. They’ll take your call and we can meet with them someplace safe. But that would almost certainly prevent us from killing Diego, which needs to be done. They’d either protect him or scare him off. Not to mention, I got a major allergy towards feds of any kind or any kind of law enforcement whatsoever. That means we gotta solve our own problem.”

  She reached over and patted him on the knee and he liked her touch. “Nice transition, Mr. Atkins. Your turn: ’fess up. Prison, hiding out, mob reward for your death. Nice résumé.”

  “It’s embarrassing. It’s awkward.”

  “Try me.”

  Tommy watched another Harley catch up with them and go around passing. The driver slowed and rode alongside them for a moment, looking in the Jeep and checking them out. Tommy nodded to him amiably. Then the rider pulled away with a throaty roar. Tommy swallowed hard and savored the disappearing thunder. His palms atavistically spasmed and clutched around the steering wheel as if it were the handle bars of a Harley-Davidson.