Choke Points

by Trevor Scott

  Finally, Jake said, “Fly back to Dublin. Carlos will want us to fill that security position also. I’ll meet you there in a couple of days.”

  “Where should I stay?”

  “Pick somewhere nice.”

  She smiled. “I’ll bill it to Carlos Gomez.”

  “Obviously.” He gave her another hug and a kiss.

  Then Jake wandered toward the cabin door.

  “You’re not going with us?” the female flight attendant asked.

  “Not this time,” Jake said. Then he told her to fly to Dublin.

  She nodded.

  Jake wandered out of the jet and walked with purpose toward the operations building. When he paused to look back at the jet taxi away, he saw Sirena with her hand on the window. This was the first time he had even partially lied to her. While it was true that he would have to interview candidates for the security posts, that wasn’t his true reason for staying behind. He hoped Sirena would understand.

  33

  A few days had passed since Jake put Sirena on the jet to Dublin. He had spoken with her a couple of times. She was happily drinking stout and lounging in spa treatments at a posh hotel in downtown Dublin.

  Jake had actually interviewed a few candidates for the chief security job at the Lisbon Gomez operation, hiring a man who had recently retired from Portuguese SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, which was the FBI equivalent of Portugal. The man was over-qualified and could easily bring in a deputy to handle the day-to-day routine.

  The remainder of Jake’s time had been conducting private surveillance at the hotel where he was staying. He had selected this hotel based on intel from his man in Porto, Sancho Eneko.

  Now, Jake sat sipping a beer in the hotel bar, watching three Chinese men drink themselves stupid. Jake lifted his chin and gave the bartender a smile, before he got up and left a third of his beer behind.

  Then Jake turned on his comm link to Sancho, which connected via his SAT phone.

  On the way to the top floor of the hotel, Jake said into his comm, “Is the target in place?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sancho said. “Locked in, lights out, and snoring.”

  Jake smiled. He had gotten close enough to the target yesterday to clone the man’s phone. Now Sancho could listen to the guy’s calls and even hear conversations when the phone wasn’t on. Just like they had done to the billionaire in Panama.

  He got off on the top level and wandered down the corridor toward the target’s room, adjusting his tight leather gloves onto his fingers. “Approaching now,” Jake said.

  “Opening the door now,” Sancho said.

  Jake saw the green light come on and he swiveled the handle. Then he quietly entered the hotel room and let his eyes adjust to the dark. The occupant had left the curtains open about six inches, which allowed the city lights to give him a view of the room.

  The target snored like a drunken lumberjack sawing logs. Jake found a chair at a desk, which he brought next to the bed. He sat down and stared at the man, trying to figure out what he needed to do. He could have simply let the man go and carry on his business. But the status quo didn’t seem like a logical ending to this scenario.

  Without further thought, Jake switched on the table lamp next to the bed.

  The Chinese man, disoriented and shocked, sat up straight in his bed. He was about to say something, when Jake punched the man in the face, knocking him out.

  “Everything alright?” Sancho asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  “It sounded like. I don’t know. You punched something.”

  “Shut up and record from this point forward,” Jake said.

  “Roger that.”

  Jake grabbed the man and slapped him a couple of times in the face. Finally, the Chinese man woke up and tried to move away from Jake.

  “Is this the way a former general in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army acts?” Jake asked. “And I know you speak fluent English, having gone to undergraduate school at UCLA.”

  The Chinese man wiped the blood from his lip and then used his tongue to close the wound. “What do you want?”

  “Do you know me?”

  Nothing.

  “This will go much faster if you simply answer a few of my questions,” Jake said calmly.

  “If I simply raise my voice, my security detail will be here in seconds,” the man said.

  Jake shook his head. “Your men are preoccupied right now. You could scream like a little girl and nobody would come.”

  “What do you want?” the man repeated.

  “Answers.”

  “What answers.”

  “Do you know me?”

  Reluctantly, the man said, “By reputation.”

  “Then you know what I’m capable of doing to you?”

  “Yes. You will kill me like you did on Pico Island, in Ireland and here in Lisbon.”

  Jake wasn’t about to cop to all of those deaths, even though the man was spot on. Instead, he continued with his questions. “Why did you send men to kill me on Pico?”

  The man said nothing.

  So, Jake said, “Let’s back up a moment. Say your name.”

  “Wu Li Jin,” the man said. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Of course. You’re a dirtbag who got rich because of your relationship to the Chinese president and others high up in the government.”

  “I am a simple businessman,” Wu said.

  “Back to my questions,” Jake said. Then he grabbed the man’s arm and yanked him from the bed, placing him in the desk chair wearing only his tight, white underwear.

  Now Jake loomed over the much smaller man, like a teacher over his pupil.

  “You will answer my questions,” Jake said.

  “Or what?”

  Jake simply glanced at the balcony. This was the second time in less than a week that he would threaten a man with Earth’s gravity.

  “You can’t kill me,” Wu said.

  “I told you. I just want answers. Did you order the hits on our security officers here in Lisbon, in Dublin, and against me personally in the Azores?”

  “What do you think?”

  Jake said nothing. He waited.

  “We made a perfectly good offer to buy the Gomez organization,” Wu said. “He laughed at our offer.”

  “So, you organized protests at his plants in Portugal, Spain and Ireland?”

  “It is not a crime to protest.”

  “It is in China,” Jake reminded the man.

  “In a free society, you use their laws against them.”

  “Did your orders come from the president himself?” Jake asked.

  “That’s absurd,” Wu said. “I acted on my own to benefit my companies. There, now I’ve answered your questions and you can go back to screwing that Jewish whore of yours.”

  Jake had considered letting the man go back to his business, but now he had crossed the line.

  “End recording,” Jake said, which brought a strange look from the Chinese man. Then to Wu, he said, “Stand up and turn around.”

  Wu sat in place, crossing his arms over his flaccid chest.

  Jake kicked the man in the stomach, taking his breath away. He rolled to his knees on the low-pile carpet. With one swift motion, Jake grasped the man by the neck with both hands and lifted him off the ground. Then he quickly put the guy into a sleeper hold.

  Wu struggled in Jake’s grasp, but Jake didn’t let go. He could have simply snapped the man’s neck and killed him instantly. But Wu had not given Jake’s people that same courtesy. He had ordered his security people to make a point. It was his own damn fault for what was about to happen.

  Lifting the man across the room by the neck, Jake opened the sliding glass door to the balcony. The smaller man tried to grasp the railing at the edge of the balcony, but Jake simply lifted him higher and twisted his own body so his back was to the edge.

  Jake whispered, “Since you don’t believe in God, this won’t matter to you. But you will soon hav
e a discussion with Satan. Say hello for me.”

  Then, without further thought, Jake twisted his body to the left and flung the man over the rail into the abyss of the night.

  Without remorse or any further thought, Jake went back into the room and picked up the man’s phone. He went back onto the balcony just long enough to drop the phone over the edge.

  Then Jake went to the stairwell and walked down a few floors to his own level. He went to bed and slept like a baby.

  34

  County Wicklow, Ireland

  For the first time in a couple of years, Jake flew commercial from Lisbon to Dublin. Since he had no guns on him, this wasn’t a problem. From the airport, he transferred to a train that carried him south of Dublin to the Wicklow city train station.

  Jake wandered out to the street and saw Sirena leaning against a new Ford sedan. He went to her and greeted her with a hug and a kiss.

  “How was the trip?” she asked.

  “Not too bad. I prefer traveling on one of the Gomez jets, though.”

  “No doubt. Sorry they couldn’t pick you up.”

  They could have, but Jake had decided not to bother with them for such a short trip. He got in to the front passenger seat and Sirena slid behind the wheel.

  She pulled out from the curb and within a few minutes was on an outer ring road of the small seaside town.

  “What made you pick the Wicklow area?” Jake asked.

  “Dublin is nice, but drunken tourists got old fast.”

  “What did you find us?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She drove south past a golf course by the sea and plush green fields sectioned off by stone walls. In a short while, she turned left and headed to the coast. Here the estates were larger, with enough land between houses to ensure privacy. Finally, she pulled into a single-story white house that sat on a precipice above the sea.

  Jake got out and felt a tinge of familiarity. Although the trees and shrubs were different, he couldn’t help drawing a comparison to the place he had owned on the Mediterranean in Italy along the Calabrian coast. The cliff in Italy was much higher, though. His mind flashed to the fire that had consumed Alexandra and nearly killed his daughter Emma.

  He stood at the edge of the green yard and gazed at the low shrubs, which led to a sandy beach. A loose fog rolled in on them, along with a mist in the air.

  “The house isn’t too elaborate,” Sirena said. “But it’s cozy. I have a fire going in the living room.”

  “I’m not complaining, but it seems like a good place to drink yourself to death.”

  “We only have the place for a week,” she assured him. “So, if you plan on doing that, you should start now.”

  “That’s not what I have planned,” he said, turning to her. “It’s a perfect place to get my head straight.”

  She started to say something, but hesitated, as if searching for the right words. Reluctantly, she said, “What happened in Lisbon?”

  “I hired a new security chief there,” Jake said.

  “After that.”

  He guessed that she already knew what he had done. “What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “I got a call from John Bradford.”

  “What did the CIA director want?”

  “The Chinese put in a back-channel complaint with the U.S. government because of the death of their people in the safe house.”

  “And?”

  “Our people had no comment.”

  “That’s why they went with independent contractors,” Jake said. “Complete deniability.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest for self-comfort or warmth.

  “Is something bothering you?” he asked.

  “Bradford also mentioned something about the Chinese president’s cousin dying in Lisbon.”

  “I don’t recall seeing that man at the safe house.”

  “He wasn’t there,” she agreed. “Wu Li Jin did a swan dive out of his penthouse suite hotel room.”

  Jake thought for a moment, unsure what he should tell Sirena. They didn’t really have known secrets. But he guessed there were always omissions of facts between them.

  “Is that why you stayed behind in Lisbon?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Do you really want to know everything?”

  “I just wished you had included me.”

  “The Chinese government will have to assume that Wu Li Jin committed suicide after the failures he had encountered with the men at the safe house. Also, with the four they lost on Pico and those here in Ireland. That’s a lot of failure.”

  She nodded her head slightly. “Did the man admit what he had done?”

  “The man was set to come after us again,” Jake said. “He called you a Jewish whore.”

  “Bastard. Why did he have to bring my religion into this?”

  Jake took her into his arms and held her tight against his body, kissing her forehead. Then he whispered, “Sometimes you have to punch the bully in the face to get his attention.”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “The Chinese won’t forget this.”

  “Neither will I,” he said.