“Hoy, al mediodía.”
She grabbed a notepad and jotted down an address.
“Gracias, señor.” She waited to hang up the phone completely before speaking. Her strictly-business tone returned. “We need ten thousand dollars,” she said. “And we have forty-five minutes.”
“Did he say there was any problem?” Roger asked.
She shook her head.
Roger turned to Jess. “I’ve got the money in my accounts, but I doubt a foreign bank will let me do a wire transfer for that much, that quickly.”
“I can answer this one, Lieutenant Canter,” Paul Kleindorf said. “The Department of Justice has released funds for this operation.”
Roger looked at Jess, who shrugged.
“First I’ve heard of it. How much, Paul?”
“In the grand scheme of government spending, chicken feed. One hundred thousand plus a special account in case ransom enters into it.”
He produced an all-black Visa card with a tiny U.S. flag in the corner.
Roger appeared to be holding back emotion. “You’ll have to thank your dad for me, son. This is just . . . there’s just no words.”
“Souvenirs,” Paul said, flicking the card between his fingers.
“Can we get cash out of that thing?” Chuck asked.
“Pretty sure,” Paul replied.
* * *
After loading up the rental SUV, they went to the Banco Central, the largest bank in Havana, where they spent two hours obtaining the requisite approvals from what seemed like every employee in the building. At last, they walked out with twelve thousand Cuban pesos, which, apparently, had roughly the same value as U.S. dollars.
Núñez found the supplier’s address on a map and navigated while Chuck drove. They found the house: a small duplex with crackled white paint and wide-open windows. They passed it without slowing and turned right at the next street, then right again into a dirt alley. The house looked about the same in the back but with a low chain-link fence enclosing a yard full of weeds, some old cinder blocks, and an ancient wringer washing machine.
Chuck parked and turned around in his seat. “How do we want to do this?”
Jess looked at Roger, who had done his share of undercover drug and weapons buys in the past. “What do you think, Rog?”
“Núñez and me at the door, you at the gate, and everyone else in the car. Doors unlocked and windows open so you can hear anything that goes down.”
“You’re not going inside, are you?” Chuck asked. “Looks dodgy . . .”
“Not if we can help it, but he might not accept cash out in the open like this. We’ll play it by ear. Núñez, I take it you can be counted on if the situation should get physical?”
She shrugged modestly. “Yes, sir.”
A wiry, dark man in a white tank top and cut-off denim shorts opened the security screen before they made it to the steps.
“Hola, hola. ¡Bienvenidos, mis amigos!” he called out, smiling. Most of his teeth were capped with silver. “Call me Larry!”
Jess watched from the gate as Núñez shook Larry’s hand. He grimaced and made a show of acting as though her grip had hurt his hand, then laughed uproariously. Then, leaning out, he waved to Jess, gazed at the SUV, and waved to Chuck, beaming the same sunshiny smile. He gestured for Núñez and Roger to come inside, but they stayed on the porch. Larry made a melodramatic pout and then laughed again, holding his belly with one hand as he laughed.
He disappeared inside as Roger held the security-screen door open. Núñez and Larry spoke back and forth, and Larry could be heard laughing from inside the house. He returned to the front door with two large duffel bags and set them down on the floor, just inside. There was a rapping on the security screen at the front of the house.
“Un momento, un momento . . . Don’t go anywhere, okay?” he said as Núñez inspected the contents of the duffels.
Roger leaned into the doorway. The front door was exactly opposite the back, with no walls obstructing the view. He could see Larry conversing with a tall, muscular man in sunglasses, jeans, and a tight gray T-shirt. They shook hands, and Larry did his wincing-with-pain-and-buckling-at-the-knees routine. Laughter. He pointed a thumb behind him and motioned out front, as if to tell the man that he was busy and to wait outside. Muscles gazed past Larry to Núñez and Roger, said “No problema,” and walked down the steps and went away.
“So sorry,” Larry said as he came back. “The money, por favor. Let’s finish this up. Busy day today.”
“Are they good?” Roger asked Núñez.
“I opened up two of the forty-fives; they’re good. This shotgun needs oil, but it appears to be solid. Who knows about the two bolt-actions, but otherwise I think we’re good.” She looked up at Larry. “You don’t have buckshot? Preferably, double-ought.”
Larry smiled and shrugged and shook his head.
Roger signaled to Paul, who appeared from the backseat of the SUV.
“Another one!” Larry said, and laughed. “This is like a Cuban family reunion!”
Paul handed the envelope to Jess, who then walked it to Roger, who handed it to Larry. Larry fingered through the tops of the notes, then looked up and said, “Gracias, come again! Bring the whole family next time!” and closed the screen door. It locked with a metallic thunk as Núñez and Roger each lugged a duffel back to the SUV.
Inside the car, they pulled out everything and laid it on the third-row seat to begin inventorying.
“I’d like the Mossberg,” Chuck said. “That’s a police edition.”
“What’s with the museum pieces?” Paul asked, referring to the two aging rifles.
“Those are American M-fourteens,” Núñez said. “Good for long range.”
“How much ammo we got?” Roger asked.
“Looks like a hundred shells . . . birdshot, though. Fifty rounds for the fourteens,” Núñez replied. “Three of the pistols are forty-fives. We have one . . . two . . . three . . . four—two hundred rounds for those. The other two are nine-millimeters—a hundred rounds of nine.”
“That should do us, right?” Chuck asked from the driver’s seat.
“I don’t think we’ll be getting into any prolonged firefights,” Jess said. “We have two targets that are actually dangerous, and as long as Matty’s with them, we shouldn’t be shooting anyway. These are really more of a show of strength—”
A gunshot rang out, and the SUV shook.
“What the fu . . . ?” yelled Chuck.
“Who’s shooting?” Roger barked.
Another three shots, rapid-fire.
“Everybody down!” Jess yelled. “Load up, load up!”
“Anyone see the shooter?” said Núñez. “Is it from the house?”
Roger poked his head up and took a fast glance around. At the end of the alley, he spotted a muscular man in a tight gray T-shirt, aiming a scoped rifle at them from behind a utility pole.
“Oh, shit, stay down!”
Automatic fire riddled the front of the SUV, sending windshield fragments flying everywhere and blasting the eardrums of those inside.
“Shoot back, somebody!” Jess shouted. “Let ’em know we’re armed!”
“I’m trying to load this thing, hang on,” Núñez said. “Five seconds.”
She slammed a magazine into a Colt Government model .45, chambered a round, and fired three shots out through a ten-inch hole in the windshield. She handed the pistol to Paul, in front of her, and started thumbing rounds into another .45 mag. No more shots had been fired at them for several seconds, but they couldn’t see through the shattered glass of the windshield.
“How many are there?” Paul shouted.
“Someone kick that goddamn window out!” yelled Roger. “We can’t see jack!”
Chuck kicked twice with his boot, and the shattered glass fell out in big sections. Núñez handed Roger one of the .45’s, and he poked his head up just in time to see Muscles walking away with rifle in hand. A silver van screeched
to a stop beside him, and he climbed in, sliding the door shut as the van sped away.
“Silver van! Silver van!” Roger shouted. “Go, go! Follow ’em!”
“I saw it, too,” Jess said. “Let’s go!”
Chuck turned the engine over, and horrible clanking sounds emanated from under the hood. He put it in gear anyway, and the SUV lurched forward. The steering wheel vibrated erratically in his hands, and he realized he had no control over their direction.
“I think the tires are all blown, guys. God damn it.”
Roger screamed a curse and slammed a fist against his door. “Right there in front of us! He was right there!”
They sat there stunned for a moment until Roger got out and looked around. Faces stared from the surrounding houses. All four tires were indeed shot out. Those were probably the first four shots, he guessed.
Jess stepped out, then Núñez and Paul.
Roger had a look of despair; then his face suddenly lit up, and he slapped Jess on the arm.
“Larry!”
“Wha—?” Jess began, but Núñez was already following Roger back to the gate.
Larry met them at his screen door with an AR-15 assault rifle. For once, he was not smiling.
Roger had his gun up before Larry’s, and snapped, “Drop the gun, God damn it! Put it down!”
¡Suéltelo!” Núñez barked.
But Larry swung the screen shut, then slammed a door behind it. Roger pointed her right, then ran left around the house, toward the front. The rest of the team made it to the gate just in time to see Núñez jump up and dive through a high open window.
“Holy crap! You see that?” Chuck gasped.
Two gunshots rang out inside, and those outside could hear a screen door swing shut in the front. Jess tried the back door but found it had automatically locked. Chuck and Paul took positions at the windows, Chuck with the shotgun. Inside, Roger barked, “On the ground!” Núñez called, “All clear in here!”
The rest of the team ran around and entered through the front door. Roger had a foot on Larry’s back, and a .45 pointed at his head. Núñez was covering a frightened woman in a very messy kitchen. At their feet, a pool of blood was spreading from the head of a young man with a revolver still clutched in his dead hand.
Larry was moaning, “Rolando . . . he never did nothing.”
Roger motioned Núñez over.
“Tell him he has two minutes to tell us everything or he joins Rolando in hell.”
“I am not going to say that, sir,” Núñez said. “But I’ll get him to tell us what he knows.”
TWENTY-ONE
Abel Turay stepped out of the hotel bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist. Drying his ear with a hand towel, he said, “Your turn if you like, miss.”
Tuni looked up from the map Oliver was showing her, and her eyes widened in surprise. Abel had the physique of an Olympic decathlete. The suit he had been wearing did nothing for him. She looked away too quickly, and Isaiah elbowed Oliver and snickered.
“Sure—thanks,” she said, and grabbed her suitcase, dragging it quickly into the suite’s luxurious bathroom. The resort was obviously a pricey one. From behind the locked door, she said, “Are we going anywhere tonight?”
“I don’t believe so,” Abel called back. “I’m waiting on some information from headquarters. Besides, not a good idea to leave tourist areas after dark.”
“Very well, I’m just throwing on some PJ’s, then,” she said.
Isaiah raised his eyebrows, smiled, and made an “Mmm” sound. Abel, in sweatpants now, strode right up to him and grabbed his face by the chin, as one might a misbehaving child.
“Respectful,” Abel hissed.
Isaiah gave a sharp nod and tried to say “Sorry, sah,” but it came out garbled. Abel released him and smiled gently. He turned to Oliver.
“Would you please empty the closet safe? The code is one-nine-seven-three.”
Oliver hopped up and went to the large wall safe and punched in the code. The door popped open a little. He swung the door wide and found six black Sig Sauer pistols. Three were full-size .40-calibers; the other three were little backup-size nine-millimeters with two-inch barrels and clip-on holsters. He grabbed one of each and brought them out to Abel.
“In my pack for now, please,” Abel said. “And be discreet with yours, as well.”
Abel pulled on a tight white T-shirt, grabbed his cell phone, and went to the attached bedroom, where he dropped onto one of the two queen-size beds. The room had been decorated in elegant, bright whites, contrasted with cobalt blues. He shoved the throw pillows aside and shifted into a casual pose, one hand behind his head.
The shower shut off, and a hair dryer blew. Then came toothbrushing sounds. The bathroom door swung open, and Tuni walked out in thin pajama pants and a big T-shirt with elephants on it. As she stuffed her clothes into her suitcase, she looked up at Oliver and Isaiah, intent on their game of Kalah.
“Where’d Abel go?” she asked.
Oliver nodded toward the bedroom without looking at her. She stepped into the doorway and saw Abel on top of his still-made bed, staring off at nothing as he listened to someone on his phone.
“Yes sir,” he said. “We’re all checked in and just waiting for word . . . Yes.” He glanced at Tuni, smiled absently, and then returned his gaze to the wall. “Are we certain of their numbers? . . . And do we know if the subject is safe? . . . Good. And we have a support team on standby? . . . Good, thank you. I’m going to sleep now but will have my phone close if there are any changes. Thank you, sir.”
He hung up and plugged in his phone before setting it on the nightstand beside him. Tuni had already climbed into her bed and had her back to him.
“They say Matthew is still all right?” she asked.
“That is the information we have, yes. We just received word on where they are headed: a town called Viñales. We will get on the road first thing tomorrow morning.
“What is this support team you mentioned?”
“It’s never wise to meet your opponents with equal numbers, if avoidable. In our case, tomorrow, it’s avoidable. We’ll meet them on the way.”
Tuni was silent.
“Will you be able to sleep, miss?”
“I don’t know. This all sounds exceedingly dangerous. I’m glad someone like you is handling it, that’s all I’ve to say. Tell me a bloody story or something. Where are you from, exactly? You’re obviously not ethnically Kenyan.”
Abel chuckled. “I was born in Nairobi, my mother Kenyan, but my father was Lebanese.”
“Ah, that makes sense. And why is your English so good? You hardly have any accent.”
“Well, thank you. I suppose, though, if you heard me talking to my mother, you would not say the same. I attended a boarding school in Leicester for a few years and later spent two semesters at Cornell in New York.”
“And you still returned to Africa. Very noble—that’s typically a one-way trip.”
“It’s my home. And there’s so much work to be done. If all the good people leave, how will it ever be fixed?”
She twisted her head around to look at him. “Sorry all the selfish ones like me keep abandoning ship.”
“That isn’t what I meant, Tuni.”
“Of course it is. And it’s true.” She turned away again, and silence filled the room for a moment. “You having much success fixing things over there?”
He laughed quietly and said, “It’s a work in progress.” He looked pensive for a moment. “Do you mind a personal question? Off the topic.”
“Not at all,” she said, gazing out the window at the darkening Havana sky. Thinly-spread clouds stretched infinitely out toward the horizon.
“What is it you see in this Matthew?”
She turned over in her bed and faced him. “That wasn’t quite what I expected. But, um . . . well, sure, I can answer that. He’s bloody hilarious, and he’s smart—very smart. I think he speaks somewhere around eightee
n languages that I know of. And he’s not exactly a disaster to look at, and . . .”
“Ah, okay, good,” Abel said, and flicked off the light.
“What do you mean by that?” she said. “What did you think it was?”
“No, nothing, I didn’t think anything. Was just wondering.”
“That’s a bloody lie. You said, ‘Ah, okay, good,’ as in ‘Phew, that’s a relief!’ Tell me what you thought. Don’t be a coward.”
She heard him sigh in the dark.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean for anything . . . I just thought perhaps, you know, with his vulnerability and his previous victimization by Dr. Rheese . . . the hospitals and everything . . .”
“Yeah, what about them?”
“I don’t know . . . that it would be some sort of maternal thing.” Talking faster now. “There’s nothing wrong with it, mind you. It was just a thought. As in, I could see that happening, what with him being so much younger than you.”
“So much younger? He’s twenty-six! I’m only thirty-two.”
“Eh . . . never mind. Forget I mentioned it, please! Go to sleep. We’ll rescue your practically-same-aged boyfriend tomorrow, all right?”
Tuni huffed and flipped back over in her bed. Maternal! she thought, then muttered it aloud. She tried to push it out of her head, but the word stuck, and she actually found herself wondering whether there might be some element of nurturing going on there. And if so, it would have nothing to do with their age difference. The only thing that really affected was the old “settling down” notion. She needed to get cracking on kids, and Matthew had always seemed to deflate at the very mention. In that sense, she supposed, a thirty-two year old woman was in a somewhat different place than a twenty-six year old man who saw years of freedom ahead of him. But who the hell was Abel to judge or question, anyway? Her mind flipped through recent interactions with Matthew, all of them healthy and equal. Besides, she thought, he needs me. And she needed him, too.
But as she tried to sleep, her head remained busy with thoughts and memories of Matthew. Her feelings for him were more intense than ever, but was she idealizing their relationship due to the circumstances, as one can often do in such situations or after being dumped? No. She listed his wonderful qualities and looked back on all the joyous times they’d shared. But what about the negatives? There were plenty, but why did she need to think about those right now? To be fair? Fair to whom? It was Abel’s fault, getting her spinning like this. The man probably wasn’t used to women showing no interest in him, that’s all. For all his confidence and charm and good looks, how could she possibly still be thinking about her kidnapped boyfriend? Arsehole.
The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series) Page 15
