by Jace Killan
“I’m sure.”
“So Joaquin’s good?”
Good, no. Joaquin was in love, Jared could tell. And he was coming to grips with the thought of losing his girl. Not as dramatically as Jared had lost his, not by any measure, but still painful. Maybe that’s why Jared hadn’t told Spencer about the million dollars given to Joaquin by Guzman. Maybe it would get found out, but as far as he could surmise, Jared was the only one at the FBI that knew about it. “I think he’s struggling with letting Kristin go.”
“He really likes her,” Spencer said, “doesn’t he?”
Guzman reread the email, saved for him by Joaquin. He hadn’t doubted Joaquin would come through for him. He felt bad for the kid—a little, his hard life. He’d spent a quarter of it in prison. And now would spend the rest of it there, probably, when the feds caught up with him. But he had come through for Guzman.
Somehow he’d managed to stash half a billion in several accounts in Antigua, away from the feds and that traitor Junior. Of course, Joaquin did have sufficient motivation to do so. The cartel had secured Joaquin’s mom. They were probably dead in a ditch somewhere now—that would be the cartel way. Poor Joaquin. Guzman owed him more than pity, but pity was all he’d get. Well that and the million dollars. Money always helped the healing process. Joaquin would be fine, if he could outrun the feds.
Guzman had vetted Joaquin’s information to ensure it wasn’t some sort of trap. It was real. He’d accessed some of the funds by wire to another off shore account in one of his many companies.
The rest he’d move to several new accounts. Ericson had taught him how to layer his money through shell companies. It helped with anonymity and the laundering.
Guzman nodded at the teller, dark complexion, familiar, but Guzman couldn’t place him. Had it been here at the bank? No. He’d only been one time. This man he knew more than that, from somewhere else. Prison? No. The cartel? It hit him, his head feeling as though it’d bounced off the marble countertop. “Marco.”
The teller smiled. “Me conoce, Señor.” You recognize me.
Guzman did. He’d known Marco for years, trained him to be a soldier for the cartel when Guzman first made capo. But Marco had gone rogue sometime while Guzman served his sentence in prison. He half suspected Marco helped put him there.
Marco was the only one of Espinosa’s crew to get away. Word from the Mexican military suggested he’d received help from the Americans.
“CIA?” Guzman said.
“Si.”
He breathed deep, detesting what would follow. Prison. He’d be cooped up another decade or more. Maybe this time he’d get one of those fancy white-collar places. The other jefes wouldn’t like him going away. They’d probably replace him now.
Marco pulled out a pistol and leveled it at Guzman’s head. The other tellers, customers, everyone had left. This wasn’t an arrest. They wouldn’t have to hassle with extradition from Antigua. This was an assassination. A soldier he’d trained personally would kill him.
“If you kill me, the cartel will just find someone to replace me.”
Marco smiled. “With who? Guero?”
No. Not Guero. He’d been a good soldier but certifiable. And there’d been a rumor circulating that he’d slept with another Jefe’s wife.
As if reading his mind Marco continued, “No. Not Guero. He’s a dead man. No, you’ll be replaced by Casalaspro.”
That would be Guzman’s guess also.
“Did you think I was the only chavo working for the CIA?” Marco pulled the trigger.
51
When Northern closed its doors it didn’t receive so much as a shrug from the passersby. Most probably didn’t even know what the firm did. The murder of Mayhew, reported as a suicide, had all been forgotten four months later. Those that worked for the firm found other employment doing the same thing, following directions they didn’t care to understand for a wealthy few who pulled their strings.
Yet in several people, Northern left an unimaginable wake across their lives. Jared, now widowed, had moved his family to DC, and signed on fulltime with the FBI White-Collar Division, while Joaquin sat in a jail cell with ten other accused.
It was about to go down. He received a nod from one Hispanic across the cell. The door buzzed and they all stood, trained like Pavlov’s dog. Joaquin slipped to the back of the line, the Hispanic man to his front. From under his shirt, the Hispanic man presented a sack of dark red liquid—a pint of Joaquin’s blood. Joaquin covered it with the base of his prison shirt.
They followed, single file, out of the cell to the chow hall. When those in front turned the corner, Joaquin popped the sack, cold liquid covering his side.
The Hispanic man brandished a shiv and punched it through Joaquin’s shirt. Joaquin screamed.
The Hispanic man grabbed the soaked shirt and squeezed blood onto his other hand, allowing the mess to spread.
Joaquin fell to the floor, just as prisoner guards threw the Hispanic man to his stomach, hands then strapped behind his back.
The charade had gone off as expected. Joaquin was hauled to the infirmary on a stretcher where he was pronounced dead. The Hispanic man was transferred to another facility but never made it there.
A few days later, Joaquin waited in the lobby of a nondescript building in a mostly vacant office complex. He’d shown up as Joaquin Maxwell, son of Jim and Viola, brother to Jorge. He’d leave as someone else. He’d still have his mother, and in some way would continue to have his brother and father, but he would lose Kristin. He wrestled with the thought for weeks. He’d come to the conclusion in prison that he’d get over her and she’d move on. To her and the rest of the world, he was a criminal, an attaché for the cartel. He’d robbed pensions from little old ladies, and college accounts from kids. He’d participated in the deaths of several from his sabotaging automobiles. Others grew sick from E. coli poisoning. Joaquin was a louse. To her, he’d done terrible things, unforgivable things. But she knew of Brina. She’d known of his meth addiction, and the accident. And she hadn’t cared.
He’d determined it best to leave her alone, for her own safety. She’d be under scrutiny by the cartel and maybe NIS. They’d want to know where the money went.
The FBI said they’d keep an eye on her. That offered a little reassurance.
He’d felt it best to not give her the choice. Chances were, she wouldn’t be willing to abandon her life for a guy that had essentially lied to her since they’d met. Or would she?
Now, sitting in the lobby, his mind couldn’t shake one haunting question. Why not ask her? The answer seemed easier. If she knew of the feds’ plan to put him into witness protection, that knowledge might be leveraged by some powerful people asking her questions. It would be best if she didn’t know the answers. He couldn’t put her into that position of choosing between loyalty to him or pain.
And when the interrogators found out, she’d be of no use to them. All the efforts to make him appear dead would be for naught.
Then he saw Brina’s face from a distant memory. She’d chosen him, in his worst hour. She’d climbed in the car, for him. She’d tried to help him. She’d shown him love. Joaquin had made her choices for her by using and driving while high. He took her life away.
In some twisted screwed up way, this felt the same. His decision not to tell Kristin felt similar to what he’d done to Brina. She had to know. He had to tell her. He couldn’t make that decision for her. He didn’t want to.
He breathed deep, stood, and bolted from the office door.
The thunder roared, but no lightning preceded it. Askari tried to calm down. He longed for those times in prison when he’d pray with Jones. He missed the feeling of peace he’d found there. Why had Allah forsaken him? He’d sought to do His will. He’d been led to Jones and his faith. Following that, he’d been introduced to Guzman and Joaquin Maxwell. The lightning had flashed then, but not now.
He’d done so much for Allah. He’d destroyed the better part of the Wh
ite House, but that story now seemed a distant memory on the news. For a while it seemed as if Russia and the US would end each other in World War III. But now, in the light of the NIS, both had joined forces to end radical Islam instead.
All of his efforts, the planning, the work left undone had now unraveled. Even the fires that ignited the Southwest had calmed. The recent rains allowed the firefighters to take control of them. In some ways things were worse than before, as if some unforeseen force had taken all of his efforts and used them against Askari.
The NIS cells in the US had been dismantled. The world knew Askari as Chris Ericson. His children thought their father a terrorist, not a soldier of God. This irked him more than he’d admit. He wanted to find his wife’s current lover and end the man’s life, but he knew that would only exacerbate his already high chance of getting caught.
The thunder roared again. Perhaps this was a final test of loyalty to Allah. Success wasn’t meant to come easy as it had to Ericson before prison. He could continue. He could rebuild. Osama hadn’t downed the towers on his first attack. Askari could find another way. But he needed the money Joaquin stole from him.
Askari didn’t believe Joaquin had died in lockup. Maybe he’d paid some higher-ups to stage the attack and then he’d make his way to some deserted island somewhere. Once upon a time that had been Ericson’s plan. Or he’d struck a deal with the feds and headed for witness protection. The biggest tell for that theory came from the fact that Joaquin’s mother had also disappeared. Of course, before Junior went missing, he’d mentioned that the cartel had nabbed her, so she could also be dead.
At any rate, Joaquin had stolen a lot of money and chances were, his girlfriend knew about it. So he spent the week watching Kristin, Joaquin’s girlfriend, from an apartment complex across the street. He’d bugged her place. She’d spent a couple long phone calls with a friend where she lamented the scandal and arrest of her boyfriend. She couldn’t believe he’d do anything like that. As the conversations progressed, she seemed to advance from denial to acceptance. So she probably hadn’t known about the money. But Askari didn’t stop watching.
Yesterday a pizza delivery van showed up down the street. The feds were watching Kristin, too. Which emboldened Askari. He was definitely getting warmer. They hadn’t found Askari’s bugs as he still had ears in her place.
Thunder roared again. The rain had stopped briefly and the wind picked up.
“Askari.” His man, sitting at the desk nodded and unplugged his earphones. “She’s got a phone call.”
A familiar voice came from the speakers. “Don’t say my name.”
“Okay,” Kristin said.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“I need to see you.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Askari thanked Allah while contemplating his plan. He sent the two men with him to take out the feds in the pizza van, then join him in the girlfriend’s apartment.
On his thirty-minute cab ride to Harlem, Joaquin phoned his friend Andrew Colter.
“Did you get it all taken care of?”
“Yes. I set up an actual company, after running ownership through some foreign trusts and back into a Delaware company. The policy will be issued by them. Essentially, you’ve purchased a million dollar policy for $1,042,361.”
“Great. But it won’t show the figure, correct?”
“Just the million. The rest of the policy will be confidential.”
“And the owner is Jared?”
“That’s right.” There came a pause. “I get you want to help this guy, Jacky, but wouldn’t a half a million help him just as much as a million? I mean, don’t you need something to fall back on?”
“Probably, but I doubt the Feds would let me keep it anyway.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Andrew said. “I’ll text you the account and routing number for the wire.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll send it out first thing in the morning.”
His phone chimed shortly after he hung up. “Here’s the account. Everything’s set,” followed by a series of numbers, the routing, account and swift code.
Joaquin arrived at the apartment building and paid the cab to hangout for ten minutes. “If I’m not out by then, you can take off.”
He stepped out of the car and hurried through the rain to the six story, salmon colored building and rang the buzzer. Lightning flashed and thunder followed. The front door opened allowing him to step into the hallway, still cold, but nowhere as chilly as outside.
On the third floor, he found Kristin’s door. She’d marked the front with a cute homemade craft reading “Home Sweet Home.”
Joaquin knocked. He heard motion inside, even talking, the television maybe. After another minute, he knocked again.
Kristin cracked the door.
“Hey, beautiful.”
“What do you want?” Her tone sounded deeper than expected, more stern.
“Can we talk?”
She looked to her right. “It’s not a good time.”
Something was off. Her eyes were puffy, lip swollen. “Everything okay?” He pushed the door.
“Run, Jaqui!”
The door swung open before he could respond. Kristin crouched, her hands shielding her face. Beside her stood Ericson though he wore a scraggly beard and his hairline had receded since the last time Joaquin had seen him.
“Joaquin Maxwell. I’ll be damned.” Ericson leveled a pistol at his gut. “We were just talking about you.”
Joaquin held up his hands. “Easy, Ericson. This is between you and me, let her go.”
Ericson laughed. “That’s a line right out of movie, Jaqui boy. Surely you’re joking. This is between me and you and her.”
“What do you want Ericson? Whatever it is, I can get it.”
He laughed again. “Another movie line. Is that all you two lovebirds do? Watch movies? Oh, and Jaqui, the name’s Askari now. Ericson died in prison.”
Joaquin didn’t know what to say. Ericson closed the door and ushered the two back into the bedrooms, she in one and he in the other. In all of this she’d tried to save him. She’d warned him. She did love him. And he, the idiot, loved her too, so much that he’d probably gotten her killed.
Askari told Joaquin to face the far wall, hands high above his head, spread out like a preacher praising God.
“Well, you landed a winner Jaqui boy. She’s cute and fiery and stubborn. Don’t worry. You two might even live through this, assuming you give me what I want.”
“What’s that?”
“My money.”
Now Joaquin laughed. Of course this was all about money. The feds had taken millions from Guzman and the NIS when it all shut down. He’d heard through Marco that Jared had found another patsy in Europe doing the same as Northern. They shut them down, too.
“Okay, Ericson. You want your money, I can get it, Guzman’s money, too.” He lowered his hands and turned around. “But kill me and you get nothing. Hurt her, kill her, and I also give you nothing.”
Lightning flashed outside. A second later thunder roared. In it sounded the crackle of gunfire.
Ericson smiled. “Jaqui, I don’t want to fight with you. You were a good soldier for the cause, whether you knew it or not. I’m not trying to make an enemy here. Just tell me where it is and we’ll go our separate ways.”
Joaquin didn’t know what to do. They were too high up to try and escape out the window. He could rush Ericson, sacrifice himself for his girl. But what if he failed and Ericson killed Kristin out of spite. Without Joaquin she’d be of no use to him.
So he shouldn’t fail. He couldn’t fail. He’d make sure of it. It would take more than one shot to drop him. And he’d fight to the death to take Ericson with him.
“Okay, okay. You win. The account info is in my phone.”
Joaquin stepped around the pink twin bed, hand in his pocket.
“Stay there
and move slow.” Ericson waved the gun.
Joaquin withdrew the cell phone and opened it. “It’s right here.” He held it up, knowing that it was too far away for Ericson to see.
“Give it here,” Ericson said, holding out his left hand.
Joaquin eyed the right hand holding the pistol. Now was his chance. He tossed the phone up. Ericson followed it instinctively with his gaze. The gun lifted too. Joaquin lowered his shoulder and charged. A shot roared across the room, leaving a ringing in Joaquin’s ears. But he continued on, hitting Ericson in the side and throwing him to the ground.
Ericson had Joaquin beat by about sixty pounds, but Joaquin was quick. He hadn’t scrapped since prison, but the skill remained with him and instinct took over. He fought for his life and he fought for Kristin’s.
Pinning Ericson’s arm back he wrestled to keep the man down, punching him in the face when he could to disorient him. Ericson got off another shot, this one at the ceiling.
Hopefully neighbors would be calling the cops, but this was New York.
Joaquin focused on the gun hand, a mistake in that Ericson used his free hand to send a disorienting left hook across Joaquin’s nose. His vision blurred and his face throbbed in pain.
Blindly he held up his right hand expecting another blow. That gave Ericson enough leverage to release his gun hand, sending a much stronger right hook baring metal across Joaquin’s face. The punch threw him from on top and he held his face wanting to stop the pain.
Ericson, now on top lowered the pistol at Joaquin’s head. With his free hand he reached for the phone and opened it.
“Is this text from Andrew Colter the one you were talking about?” Ericson breathed heavily.
“Yeah.” Joaquin said. “You got what you wanted. Now let her go. You still have me.”
“Has that line ever worked in the movies? Sorry Jaqui,” he smiled, “not going to happen.”
A shot echoed in the room.
Ericson dropped the gun and slumped over to the side. Joaquin rolled out from underneath and turned toward the doorway. Marco stood there, pistol still raised to the room. Ericson was dead.
