Caribbean Capers

by Dan Kelly

  “What’s up?”

  “This Fuentes guy is starting to play hardball with mom. She’s been getting threatening phone calls demanding that she get Bob Trumball to drop the law suit against him or pay the consequences. He’s also made the connection between you and mom and includes references to you in his threats as well.”

  “This guy has no idea just how big a hornets nest he’s messing with. Mom won’t be bullied. Mom’s been threatened before. She’s won a lot of cases where the people she’s given a legal shellacking have vowed to get even, but none have had the guts to carry out their threats.”

  “Mom’s never messed with a guy like Fuentes before either. From what I’ve learned about this guy, I think he’ll do his damndest to carry out his threat if he doesn’t get his way.”

  “Fuentes is definitely a multi-tasker. I don’t see how he found the time to go after mom with all the pressure we’ve been putting him under lately. I agree with you, Paul. She’s ticked Fuentes off big time and by not playing ball with him she’s put herself in a lot of danger. Since I haven’t heard from you, I assume that Phil came through on providing protection for her.”

  “That he did, big time. Mom complained about it at first, but when these threats mentioning you in them started to come her way she acquiesced and has been bugging me relentlessly about how you got mixed up with Fuentes. Knowing how secret Sea Wasp is, I’ve had to lie my head off and say I don’t have a clue. She’s not buying it and keeps trying to catch me in an unguarded moment, hoping that I’ll let something slip out. You know how good she is at that.”

  “Oh yeah. By the way, were you able to find the rest of the guys that ambushed Abby and me before we left for Bogota?”

  “The wounded guy spilled his guts about the other three, but he didn’t know who hired them to take you guys out. We didn’t find out who that was until we tracked down his playmates and had at them in separate interrogation rooms. At first, they lied to us and we lied to them about what their buddies were saying. After several hours of this tit for tat, we told the whopper about the sweet deal we could give them if they cooperated and they started to rat each other out. Believe it or not, Fuentes had nothing directly to do with the attempt on your lives here in Miami. It was some local hood by the name of Pedro Pargas who had heard about the rewards on your heads, had pictures of you two, and ordered his men to make the hit on you. They’re all now the guests of the city of Miami, awaiting their court date to be tried for attempted murder of government agents and screaming their heads off that they were lied to and shouldn’t be in jail.”

  “What kind of deal did you offer them?”

  Smiling, Paul said, “They must have misunderstood something that was said. No deal was offered to them. They either misunderstood or are trying to find a legal way out of their predicament.”

  Smiling back, Pete said, “Some guys just never learn to pay attention when someone is speaking to them do they?”

  Abby brought them back to the more serious issue which was the continued longevity of their mother. “Paul, considering the most recent events involving our seriously hampering Fuentes’s operations, do you think the protection that Phil’s providing is sufficient to keep your mom out of harms’ way?”

  “That’s why I wanted to speak with Pete. I’m not sure if it is, but I don’t know what else we can do.”

  Pete said, “There isn’t anything else we can do short of locking her up somewhere until we nail the bastard. I wonder why he’s not going after Trumball to get him to drop the law suit.”

  Abby said, “I think he realizes that Trumball is beyond intimidation after his kidnapping experience and living with the realization that he was eventually going to be killed. This is payback time for Trumball and he’s not going to give an inch and I think Fuentes knows it.”

  Holding his hand up for silence Pete said, “I just thought of something that just might work if Fuentes starts getting nastier. We did it when we went to Bogota. It worked for us, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for mom, at least for a little while.”

  Abby knew immediately what he was talking about. “You’re suggesting we put her in some kind of disguise right?”

  “Yeah, we could let word get out that she had to go to someplace in South America to interview somebody regarding a case she’s preparing for trial. The word would be deliberately vague, something to drive Fuentes up the wall about where she went and who she was going to interview. Mom could continue to work out of her office, her home or somewhere else as long as when she’s outside her home she wears the disguise.”

  Nodding her head in approval Abby said, “I think it would work, Brody, how about you Paul?”

  “I like it, but the fly in the ointment is going to be getting mom to go along with it. She’ll view using a disguise as cowardly. You know mom, Pete. She’s a scrapper. She’s going to fight us on this.”

  “I know, Paul, but that’s one fight you’re going to have to win or she could wind up in a hospital or a morgue.”

  “Why me? Why do I have to face the epitome of a 21st century version of Lozen alone?”

  Pete asked, “Who the hell is Lozen?”

  “Pete, you’ve got to read more. She’s a famous woman Chiricahua Apache warrior who along with Geronimo and fifteen other warriors resisted the combined forces of the United States and Mexican armies and the heavily armed civilian populations of New Mexico and Arizona territories. She and the sixteen other warriors along with a small group of women and children held out against a total of about nine thousand men.”

  “Man, whatever happened to reading the sports pages?”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Why me?”

  Sighing Pete replied with, “Abby and I may be leaving Miami again before the day is out. That depends on how a conference call goes when we get back to Morrison’s Dive Shop after we finish up here.”

  “I thought you would be done with Abby and her friends when you got back here in Miami. No offense, Abby.”

  “None taken.”

  Pete said, “I can walk away any time I want, but I agreed to stay on until after the mission in Bogota and now I want to stick around until I see how our pursuit of Fuentes and Damien turns out.”

  “Damien?”

  “Oh shit! I thought Dave would have clued him in.”

  “I’ve got some bad news, bro.” Pete proceeded to tell him everything that had transpired involving Damien along with the conclusions that had been drawn. When he was finished the look on his brother’s face went through a metamorphosis that wasn’t pleasant to watch. It was a mixture of disbelief, sadness and lastly anger. His face had become beet red and he got up and stomped out of the restaurant without saying a word.

  For a few minutes neither Pete nor Abby said anything. They just poked at the pancakes on their plates, but none of it reached their mouths. Finally, Pete said, “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Me too. We’d better get a move on anyway. We should have been at the shop by now. I’m sure Paul will deal with this, Pete. He’s boiling mad now, but he’ll cool down.”

  “I hope you’re right, Abby. I’ve never seen him so mad. He and Damien were buddies for a long time. Finding out that he’s become one of the bad apples, rotten to the core, is not something that Paul is going to find easy to swallow.”

  Pete paid the bill and they headed for Morrison’s.

  Chapter 46

  - Miami, FL and Maracaibo, Venezuela -

  When they got to the shop, Dave was on the phone with somebody, so he waved them into his office. Whomever he was talking to was giving him a lot of information because he was taking notes. Five minutes later after a bunch of uh huhs he hung up.

  “That was one of our people in Venezuela. When we got the word that Fuentes might be heading for Maracaibo, we had him get his butt there as quickly as he could haul it. We sent him pictures of both Fuentes and Christensen and as soon as he hit town he began to circulate and today he got lucky.

&
nbsp; “A man answering the description of Fuentes was picked up at a private airfield outside the city by a taxi driver a few days ago and was taken to a clothing store in the city. So far, there’s no sign of Christensen. My man says he’s going to need some help in finding where Fuentes is staying. According to him, there are dozens of hotels in the city, which is the second largest in Venezuela, and countless places he could be hold up around Lake Maracaibo which is the largest lake in Venezuela and one of the biggest in the world. There’s just too much ground for one person to cover and do it quickly before Fuentes can move on to someplace else. He might just be staying in Maracaibo until Christensen shows up and then the two of them will head out to another city in another country. This is where the two of you come into play again.”

  Abby asked, “What do you want us to do? Even if Pete and I go down there to help canvas the city, three of us aren’t going to be enough to do the job either”

  “There may be a lot of hotels in Maracaibo, but if we limit the search to just the four and five star hotels the task will become much easier to handle. Fuentes is the type of guy who likes to go first class all the time no matter what, so if he’s staying in one of those hotels we’ve got a decent chance to find him. Something else you can do to increase our chances of finding him is to enlist the help of that newspaper guy you’ve been working with, Julio Mendoza. He seems to have contacts all over the Caribbean. He might have just what we need in Maracaibo, especially if Fuentes is not staying in a hotel but in a residential rental.

  “Abby, you speak Spanish like a native, so that will make it easier to blend in with the locals and ask questions without appearing to be someone with a hidden agenda. Be careful and remember Fuentes has people everywhere from all walks of life eager to please him by passing on useful information. Any one of them could put you into a heap of trouble. Pete, you and Abby have made a good team since you came on board with Sea Wasp. You can watch her back and assist with the questioning, posing as her fiancé, step brother, whatever, as long as it’s believable. You two know what Fuentes and Christensen look like. You’ve seen them up close, so it’ll be easier for you to spot them than someone who is just using a picture as a reference.

  “I want you two on the next plane out of here for Maracaibo. Go home, pack for a week’s stay and call me when you arrive in Maracaibo so I know you’ve arrived without any hang ups.”

  “Okay, I’ll call Julio on my way home. Dave will you make our reservations for us and give us a ring to let us know what they are. That will save us some time. Pete, I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  Pete asked, “Dave, aren’t we going to have that conference call with Phil?”

  “I’m going to hold off on that until you two get to Maracaibo and assess the situation on site. If you can’t locate Fuentes, then it will be time to bring him into the picture to discuss how best to proceed. If you do find him, then we’ll get his input regarding the best way to take him down, dead or alive. Good luck you two.”

  It turned out that there was a flight leaving Miami International for Maracaibo at 11:30 a.m. and Abby and Pete were on it. Three hours later they touched down in Maracaibo. Dave had made reservations for them at the Crowne Plaza Maruma Hotel and Casino, so they grabbed a cab and were checked in an hour later.

  While they were eating dinner in one of the hotel’s restaurants, Abby got a call from Julio Mendoza on her cell. She put it on speaker so Pete could hear what Julio was saying and said, “I hope you have some good news for us.”

  “I may have. I’ll let you be the judge. Abby, one of my sources might have picked up a lead as to where Fuentes might be staying in Maracaibo. My source is a realtor who works out of an office catering to wealthy individuals and she heard one of her colleagues say she had recently rented with an option to buy a beach house on Lake Maracaibo sight unseen to some company for its management personnel to use as a vacation get away. Everything was done over the phone and six months’ rent was wired into the real estate firm’s account at Banco Provincial in Maracaibo. Now get this. The name of the company is Exquisite Fountains Ltd. with an address in Bogota, Colombia.”

  Abby said, “Julio, a lot of companies do that for their top executives and what’s the big deal with the name?”

  “Abby, the way the rental was arranged makes the transaction stand out all by itself, but the clincher is the company name.”

  “Julio, you’re not making any sense to me.”

  Suddenly, it was like someone hit him in the head. Pete got it. “Abby, fountains in Spanish is Fuentes and the company having an address in Bogota where Fuentes’s farm is located is a little too coincidental.”

  Looking like someone had just stomped on her toes she said, “Damn! I should have picked up on that. I’m sorry I was so dense, Julio. Do you have an address for this rental? ”

  “I do.” He gave it to her and then asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  “I think Pete and I will take a little ride around the lake and take in the scenery. I’d like to see how much of the house can be observed from a secure hiding place and if it can be quickly and easily accessed from that hiding place. I don’t want to make a move on Fuentes if he’s staying there until Christensen shows up if in fact he does. I’m beginning to think that he might not. It would’ve made sense for them to split up and agree to make contact again when they felt it was safe to do so. Having two trails to follow would make it a lot harder for us. One thing I’ve been saying right along is these guys aren’t stupid.”

  “Okay then, I’ll let you get to it.”

  “Thanks, Julio. If you hear anything else, no matter how trivial you might think it is, please call me right away. These guys are like eels, hard to catch and they are always looking for ways to zap you into oblivion if you get on their wrong side and Pete and I are definitely on Fuentes’s wrong side.”

  They finished their dinner, rented a car and took off for Lake Maracaibo. It was a beautiful evening for a drive, but they were too preoccupied with their quarry to really enjoy it. Pete said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said to Julio about Damien temporarily splitting up with Juan. Do you really think he won’t show up here in Maracaibo?”

  “I think it’s a strong possibility, one we should be prepared to deal with if he doesn’t show up here before the week is out. I’ve been thinking that it would be a smart move for him to flee back to the States before his passport is voided and go to ground there, maybe even in Miami where he knows his way around. The fact that he’s up and flown the coop is a sure indicator that he knows he’s suspected of wrong doing, something he can’t talk his way out of with his superiors, Phil, Dave or anyone else with an ounce of brains for that matter.”

  “Then why don’t we plan on grabbing Fuentes if and when he shows up at this house and clear out of here before someone in the know sees us and decides to take a shot at the rewards on our heads.”

  “Fuentes is not going to be traveling alone. He’s going to be surrounded by body guards, discreetly, on a low key basis to avoid attracting attention, but there will be a wall around him at all times. It’s going to take more than the two of us to take him into custody or kill him. We’re going to need back up. If we spot Fuentes at this house, I’ll call Dave and have him arrange for some assistance. I think death would be Phil’s second choice as to Fuentes’s fate at our hands, so he’ll try to come up with something to haul him in alive.”

  “I think I should let Paul know that Damien might be headed for Miami. No one knows that city better than he does and if Damien has really gone off the cliff and joined Fuentes in everything he’s involved with he just might get it into his head to go after our mother and settle Fuentes’s score with her.”

  “I could be all wet where Damien is concerned, but I don’t think we should take any chances with your mom’s life. Call him and I’ll call Dave and give him an update on Julio’s info, our thoughts and what we’re planning to do.”

  When they get to the house, i
t’s dark with a full moon and very little else to light up the yard surrounding the house. There is a large vacant wooded lot next to the house, so they take up positions behind some trees and squat down to watch and listen. There are no dogs barking announcing their arrival which has them breathing a little easier, but there’s a party going on someplace close by and the noise makes it difficult to overhear anybody talking or moving about if they are out in the yard somewhere. Pete suggests that they move closer to the house behind an RV parked in the long driveway leading to the back of the house to get a better look at what is out back and look for other places to hide along the lake’s beaches.