Aruban Nights (Coastal Fury Book 19)

by Matt Lincoln

  “It wasn’t a date,” I replied dismissively, “and she had plans with her friends last night, so I decided not to overstay my welcome.”

  Of course, Monica and I had ended up spending several hours together, mostly at her behest. It wasn’t until her friend Olive had come pounding on her door, threatening to break in, that we’d finally decided I should probably go. I’d been reluctant to leave, considering we had such a good time up to then, but I needed to get back myself, anyway. Ultimately, it hadn’t been a bad way to spend my last evening in Aruba.

  “Is that right?” Holm asked skeptically. I braced myself for him to push the subject, maybe tease me a little more about it, but to my surprise, he just accepted my response without comment, his expression serious. It seemed he was really focused on the case today.

  Our first stop was the Caracas police station. Diane had already been in touch with them and organized most of it, but we still needed to meet with the officers we’d be working with and go over the plan. After that, we would head straight to the hideout where Sandoval and his men were.

  “You good?” I asked as we walked out of the airport to flag down a taxi. If everything went according to plan, we wouldn’t be spending all that much time in Venezuela, so there was no need for us to rent a car. Our goal was simple. Go on, apprehend Sandoval and his men, and pull the case to a close.

  “Yeah,” Holm muttered vaguely as we walked past all the drivers standing directly outside the airport.

  Experience had taught me that it usually wasn’t a good idea to go with the pushiest drivers, since they tended to overcharge or try to rig the meter. It was especially prudent for us to be careful while in Venezuela, which had a big, fat “DO NOT TRAVEL” advisory on the United States Department of the State website. Violent crimes, kidnapping, car-jacking, breakdown of economic and societal infrastructure, even the illegal detainment of American citizens. Venezuela was, in short, not a particularly great place to be.

  Of course, as fully trained former SEALS and active federal agents, I was certain that Holm and I could fend for ourselves. Still, it was better not to push our luck if we didn’t have to.

  “I’m fine,” Holm continued. “I’m just waiting for something to go wrong, I guess.”

  “What?” I asked as I looked at him in confusion. “Why?”

  “This just feels too easy,” Holm muttered. “Maybe I’m just used to things going wrong, or maybe I just don’t trust that lunatic Maduro, but don’t you think this is a bit too straightforward? We get here, grab Sandoval, and it’s all just over?”

  “Do you want it to be harder?” I chucked as I elbowed him in the side.

  “No,” he grumbled. “Maybe I’m just used to things going wrong. Nothing’s ever easy when it comes to our cases.”

  “You’re not wrong about that,” I replied, “but don’t jinx it by expecting something bad to happen.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Holm replied.

  After finding a taxi driver that seemed reputable, Holm and I headed down to the Policía del Municipio Libertador, where we would meet with Captain Ivan Jacinto. The station, which was located in the Capital District, was the largest in Caracas. The building itself was tall, made of red brick, and lined with shuttered windows. Its imposing presence reminded me a little of the station at Oranjestad, and I wondered vaguely if this one used to be a prison as well.

  “Thanks,” I said to the taxi driver as I paid him the fare before climbing out of the back of the car. A row of police motorcycles was parked in a neat line in front of the building, and a bright red fence encircled a small garden of trees and flowers just in front of the station that helped to mitigate its intimidating appearance.

  As Holm and I walked into the station, I was hit by how stuffy it felt inside. The air was humid and heavy, despite the several fans that were whirring rapidly overhead. A few people sat in the reception area. Just next to the door, a middle-aged woman wearing a long skirt and a tank top was fanning herself with a large fan. A few feet away, a pair of children were playing on the ground with a set of jacks.

  As Holm and I walked up to the reception desk manned by two officers, I caught a glimpse of the area behind them. An officer was walking by with a suspect, who was struggling despite having his hands cuffed behind his back. The officer leaned in and hissed something at the man in Spanish before jerking on the suspect’s arm.

  “¿Necesitan algo?” the officer at the desk muttered at Holm and me. His gaze was flitting between the two of us, and he looked annoyed that we were even standing in front of him.

  “Si,” I replied. My Spanish was a bit rusty, but having worked in Miami for so many years, I knew enough to understand and communicate simple words. I pulled my badge out of my pocket and showed it to him. “El Capitan Jacinto.”

  “Un momento,” the man replied as he grabbed a phone off the front desk before pushing a few buttons. It seemed that seeing my ID and hearing the captain’s name was all he needed to understand my request. After speaking into the phone for a moment, the officer suddenly hung up before pointing his thumb back over his shoulder. “You can enter.”

  There wasn’t a door or a gate of any kind blocking the way into the rest of the station, so I just nodded in thanks and walked down the hallway past the front desk.

  “So, where do we go now?” Holm asked as we walked past a bullpen full of desks.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. The officer had let us through, but no one had actually told us where to go. “I’ll ask someone.”

  To the left was the bullpen, and to the right was a breakroom. Up ahead was a large staircase. The station was busy, and every few seconds, an officer or a person in plain clothes would walk past us.

  “Excuse me.” I stopped the next uniformed officer that happened to pass by. “Could you tell me where Captain Jacinto’s office is?”

  The man looked back at me in confusion as I spoke, his expression only changing at my mention of the captain’s name.

  “Capitan Jacinto?” he repeated.

  “Yeah,” I replied as I tried to recall how to say office in Spanish. “Su oficina.”

  “Sigueme,” the man replied, gesturing for us to follow him with his hand. He led Holm and me up the set of stairs at the back of the station and up to the second floor. There was another bullpen up here, and this one was divided into smaller clusters that were separated by large partitions. Doors that led into private offices lined three walls of the upper floor. The officer led us to one located in the rear left corner before pointing at it.

  “Es esa.” He smiled at us cheerfully.

  “Thanks,” I replied before catching myself. “Uh, gracias.”

  The officer nodded before turning and walking away, back toward the stairs.

  “He was nice,” Holm remarked as I turned to knock on the door.

  “Pasen!” a low, muffled voice called from inside.

  “Does that mean to come in?” Holm frowned.

  “I thought ‘come in’ was ‘entren,’” I replied as I looked back at the door with some uncertainty. I didn’t want to barge in if the captain had said something other than enter, but I wasn’t about to just wait out here either, not when we had work to do.

  “He’s expecting us, right?” I looked at Holm as I put my hand on the door handle. “So it’s fine.” I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  The office was tastefully furnished. The bulk of the room was taken up by a large oak desk that wrapped around the plush leather chair in the center on three sides. Shelves lined the back, upon which awards, certificates, and medals were displayed. A small leather couch pressed against the left wall, and mounted over that was a monitor that displayed a security feed of several other parts of the station. Sitting in the chair behind the large desk was a man with gray hair. He had broad shoulders and a stern, confident look in his eyes.

  “Hello,” he greeted us as he set down the pen he was holding and stood up. “You must be the American agents.” He was a
lot shorter than he seemed when he was sitting, but somehow he still came off as imposing. I was also relieved to hear him speaking in English, as it would certainly make cooperating much easier.

  “I’m Agent Marston,” I replied as I reached forward to shake his hand.

  “Agent Holm,” Holm added as he did the same.

  “Welcome to Caracas,” Jacinto replied as he sat back down in his seat. “Of course, it’s not under the best circumstances, is it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I replied as Holm and I sat down as well, in a set of chairs set just in front of the desk.

  “That is too bad.” He sighed sadly. “I hate to think that your only impression of Caracas is of something so negative. In any case, let’s discuss the details of what will happen from here. I’ve already spoken to your boss, and I’ve sent a pair of officers out to look at the location.”

  “You did?” I asked a little nervously.

  That could either be helpful or very, very harmful. It would be good for us to know exactly where the base was so we could head straight there, but at the same time, if the officers hadn’t been careful, they might have given away our arrival prematurely and ruined our plan before we even got a chance to implement it.

  “Yes,” Jacinto replied. “I had them go out in street clothes and an unmarked car. They managed to locate the sign with the horse that your boss described. After that, they followed the road up for some time but then decided to turn back.”

  “Why is that?” I asked, my heart rate skyrocketing in an instant. “Were they spotted?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Jacinto replied. “They just realized that they were on a steep incline and that the house was probably located at the top. As a result, it would be impossible for them to sneak up without being detected. If any of these criminals you are seeking happened to come by, my men would be spotted instantly.”

  “That was smart,” I noted with dismay. “Establishing their base at the top of a hill so they’d be able to see anyone coming.”

  “Which means we won’t be able to sneak up on them either,” Holm added.

  “It’s alright,” I replied. “It’s not ideal, but we’ve dealt with that before. We weren’t able to sneak up on that beach house where Maduro was hiding either, but we still managed to pull that off.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Jacinto noted. “I was worried that it might be a problem, but if you have experience in that area, I feel more confident. Because of the geography of the location, we will have to go for a full offensive attack. That area can only be traversed by off-road vehicles, which are not exactly quiet. The criminals will hear you coming before you get there.”

  “So we’ll only have one shot at this,” I surmised. It was risky and not the kind of carefully crafted operation I preferred, but it was doable if we had the right equipment and men with us. “How many men will come with us?”

  “Ten,” Jacinto replied. “All members of la Fuerza De Accion. They are similar to… what is it called in the States?... a SWAT team. They are specially trained police we typically assign to handle terrorist threats and serious crimes. They are the most highly trained in Venezuela.”

  “That’s great to hear,” I replied. It was certainly a relief to hear that we’d have such skilled men covering our backs. “So when do we move out?”

  “As soon as you are ready,” Jacinto replied. “Then we will have a briefing to assure that everyone is on the same page and ensure the men understand that you are the ones in charge here.”

  I frowned, a little caught off guard by the way he’d said that. Was our authority about to be questioned by these men?

  “Well, let’s go,” Jacinto grunted as he stood up before I could voice my concerns.

  I brushed them aside, in any case. Despite how fluent he was, maybe there was just something lost in translation in what Jacinto had said. Holm and I got up and followed him out of the office, down past the bullpen, and into one of the other rooms against the wall of the building. By the looks of it, it was a conference room. It was mostly empty, save for a large, round table and about a dozen chairs.

  “I’ll go gather everyone,” Captain Jacinto said before leaving the room again. Once he was gone, I turned to Holm.

  “Did that seem weird to you? What he said about making sure the special forces knew that we were the ones in charge?” I asked him quietly. The door was still slightly ajar, and I didn’t want our conversation to be overheard.

  “I thought it was weird,” he confirmed, his voice low as well. “Then again, maybe not all that strange. Venezuela has one of the highest rates of police corruption in the world.”

  “You think they’re going to give us problems?” I muttered.

  “I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “Jacinto’s comment didn’t give me a whole lot of confidence, to be honest. At least he seems like a decent enough guy.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to keep our guards up,” I replied.

  It was always a little nerve-wracking having to cooperate with unfamiliar law enforcement officers in an unfamiliar place, and that was without the added stress of knowing you were dealing with law enforcement known worldwide for violating human rights. Honestly, the quicker we solved this case and got back home, the happier I would feel.

  I was on edge by the time Jacinto returned with the group of men.

  “Agents, these are the men you’ll be working with,” the captain stated as he introduced the men one by one. I kept my expression neutral as I regarded each of them in turn. A few seemed fine, though I could tell just by looking at the expressions on some of their faces that they didn’t seem all that pleased to be working with us.

  One man, in particular, stared at me with a surprising amount of hostility. He was muscular and had shortly cropped, dark, curly hair. He continued to glare at me all throughout Captain Jacinto’s instructions, and even as he went over the plan, looking at me like I was a bug he wanted to squash. I was going to have to be careful of him.

  He leaned over and muttered something in one of the other men’s ears when the captain was finishing going over the plan for a second time.

  “Diego!” Jacinto snapped at the man, his voice suddenly icy. “¿Te estoy aburriendo? Qué demonios es tan chistoso como para que me interrumpes?!”

  The man clamped his mouth shut, his face flushing with humiliation. “Nada, Capitan,” he mumbled.

  “Entonces callate,” Jacinto snapped back before continuing his explanation.

  The man, Diego, glared back up at me with renewed fury, as though it was somehow my fault that he got yelled at for being a clown during a meeting.

  “Alright,” Jacinto turned to speak to us. “I’ve drilled it into them that you two are in charge and that if anything changes with the plan, they’re to follow your orders. Most of them don’t speak much English, so try to keep anything you say simple.”

  “Wait,” I replied with alarm. “How will we communicate if something goes wrong?” Was he really planning on sending us out with a bunch of men who literally could not understand what we said?

  “You’ll be fine,” Captain Jacinto replied dismissively. “I’ll be on standby near the base. If anything goes wrong, I’ll step in.”

  On standby, I repeated inside my head. That obviously meant Jacinto didn’t plan on actually participating in the mission. There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with that, necessarily, but it still seemed incredibly irresponsible to me, given that his men wouldn’t have a way to communicate with us without him.

  “Alright,” Jacinto declared a moment later. “Let’s go get suited up.”

  He led out of the room and into a small armory a few doors down. The left wall was decked out with firearms, while the right held two racks of bullet-proof vests. The soldiers all outfitted themselves in relative silence, and I noticed that they avoided making eye contact anytime I happened to glance their way. Once everyone was ready for the attack, Jacinto led the march back out of the station.

/>   “You jinxed us,” I muttered to Holm as we followed the rest of the group out at a distance, through the bullpen and down the stairs to the ground floor.

  “What?” he retorted. “What are you talking about?”

  “You were asking for something bad to happen,” I accused. “Now, look.”

  “I was not!” he protested as we stepped back out into the sun. It felt less stuffy out here but no less hot, and the strong sunlight pricked unpleasantly against my skin. “And besides, it’s fine. So they seem a little… unfriendly. We’ve had to cooperate with worse people.”

  The moment he said that, the man who’d been mean-mugging me before, Diego, suddenly spat at our feet, his face twisted into a snarl as he walked past us.

  “Are you sure about that?” I scoffed. “Come on, let’s finish this and get the hell out of here.”

  Holm and I elected to ride in one of the cars that didn’t have Diego in it. I didn’t necessarily trust any of the other officers, but at least no one else was behaving aggressively toward us. The car we were in contained three other officers, two in the front, who seemed surprised when we got into the car but didn’t say anything, and one in the back.

  “Hi,” the one sitting in the back greeted us as the driver started the car and began to drive. “You are… agents, right?” He had to pause for a moment mid-sentence as though searching for the right word.

  “That’s right,” I replied, careful to keep both my response and expression neutral. I wasn’t sure why he was asking or what his intentions were.

  “I am Officer Ramos,” he spoke slowly and clearly. His pronunciation was pretty good, but it was clear that he was thinking carefully before speaking. “Sorry about Ortega.”

  “Ortega?” I frowned at him in confusion.

  “Diego,” he clarified, and I realized he must have seen the other man’s childishly antagonistic display earlier. “He is a… bad person.”

  “No kidding,” I muttered in response. Diego hadn’t said a single word to me, but I could still tell he wasn’t someone I wanted to get to know better.