The Complete Donavan Adventure Series

by Tom Haase

  “Shots fired on the third floor. Get police and medical people up here now.”

  She left the nurse’s station and headed to Matt’s room. She heard the ping from the elevator’s arrival on the floor and two men in suits exited. On seeing the carnage in the hall they pulled their weapons and shouted. “Freeze, FBI.”

  Bridget dropped her weapon and raised her hands. The cell still in her left hand, she looked up at the phone and said, “Liz, your men finally arrived.”

  38

  Savannah, Georgia

  8:30 a.m.

  The weather in the southern Georgia city, with its palm trees and Spanish moss hanging from the Live Oaks, felt balmy. The sun shone brightly at eight o’clock in the morning, and the temperature already approached eighty degrees. Gerti wiped the sweat from her brow as she and Scott searched for their prey.

  After they arrived in Savannah the previous evening, they used the Internet to find out more about Mike Alexandro and discovered he ran an import export business delivering Russian dolls. The listing in the phone book gave an address.

  “Not really a smart move for someone who’s engaged in arms trafficking,” Scott said.

  “True, but to maintain legitimacy he has to have a public image and demonstrate a business presence. I admit I would never have thought of importing Russian dolls as a cover,” Gerti said.

  They arrived at the address at eight, which turned out to be an apartment house located in one of the many squares the city contained from the original plan for the city laid out in 1733. The building displayed a keypad for entry.

  “Let’s go over to that church across the street and wait a little. It’s too early for a business to open, even if it’s in his apartment,” Scott suggested.

  They ascended the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist that provided a perfect place to watch the entrance of the apartment house.

  “There he is,” Gerti said a half hour later. She watched as the man moved down Abercorn Street and turned left on Liberty Street.

  “Let’s go. I’ll take one side of the street and you take the other,” Scott said.

  Gerti nodded agreement.

  After a few blocks, they observed Mike enter a coffee shop on another one of the numerous squares in Savannah. He took a position at a small table that had two chairs and sat near a large pane window. The man pulled out his newspaper and read.

  Scott and Gerti joined up in the park area in the square. They sat on a bench that provided a clear line of vision to the coffee shop.

  “This could be a wild goose chase,” Scott said.

  “It’s the only lead we have. Everything else has proved useless or worse.” As nine o’clock approached, Gerti got out her cell to call Bridget.

  “Look,” Scott said. “Another man is joining him.”

  Gerti stood up and pretended to take pictures with her phone. She rotated around in various directions taking pictures and ended up focused on the coffee shop. She zoomed in on the two sitting by the window. In the time it took her to engage in this maneuver, the new man got up and headed for the door. When he exited, Gerti got a good frontal picture of him and then quickly continued to take pictures of other things in the square.

  “Stop taking pictures. Our man is now leaving. Do you see that package? I think it was the man he met with who gave it to him,” Scott said.

  “You’re probably right. Let’s go.”

  Alexandro retraced his steps to his apartment. At the cathedral, they again mounted the steps and conferred.

  “Let’s send the pictures to Bridget and get them caught up on what we just saw,” Gerti said.

  “Do it,” Scott agreed.

  * * *

  Bridget sat in Matt’s room and answered the call from Scott. Matt slept most of the day with medicine and he seemed to be steadily improving. The moans almost completely disappeared now and some color even returned to his face.

  “You have something already?” She hadn’t expected anything from them for a day or two at the earliest.

  “Yes. We trailed the target and Gerti is sending you pictures of him and the man he met. Something changed hands, but we don’t know what. We can’t keep following this guy all the time. There just isn’t enough cover for us to do that in this city,” Scott said. He went on to explain the local situation and the difficulty of trailing someone with only two people over a long period of time. “Also he doesn’t seem to be taking any counter surveillance measures. He acts like everything is normal. Perhaps this is a wild goose chase and he’s simply a legitimate import exporter.”

  “I think it’s too early to tell. Let’s keep after it for a little while. You know where he lives. Stay on him without being there all the time. Do it periodically and in shifts. Let me get this to Liz and see if she can help. Maybe she can augment you with some watchers. I’ll have to bring her up to date on this and she might not be too happy with me. I’ll get back to you in a little bit.” Bridget ended the conversation and dialed Liz. She wasn’t looking forward to the conversation as she proceeded with her plan to send Scott and Gerti to Savannah without informing Matt’s liaison at the FBI.

  When she finished updating Liz, the only comment she received a hostile, “You did what?”

  39

  Washington, D.C.

  In the FBI headquarters building, the director sat at his desk. He listened to Liz bring him up to date on events. After she concluded, he took some time to think. In a minute he made up his mind.

  “I want you to get some of our people on the surveillance of Mr. Alexandro. Low key, no reasons given on the real purpose. We don’t have enough to really go after him.”

  Liz’s phone rang. She ignored it and let it go to voicemail. It rang again. She looked at the caller ID and saw it was Bridget. She signaled the director she needed to take the call. He nodded.

  “Liz, you’re not going to believe it. The guy Alexandro met, our friend Karim. I just saw him in the pictures Gerti sent. I’ll forward you the pictures from Savannah.”

  “Thanks, I’m with the director now. This changes a few things. I’ll get back to you later.” Liz disconnected and in a few seconds the pictures arrived. She held her phone in front of the director.

  “The man in the sport coat is Alexandro and the other one is Karim. Now we have a direct connection between Mr. Alexandro and the terrorists,” Liz concluded.

  “This does provide us with a much better platform to operate from. Get a warrant to tap Alexandro’s phones. Send men to take over the surveillance on him. This Scott and Gerti aren’t pros and I don’t want them to get in the way.”

  “Director, may I suggest we keep them in the loop down there? They may not be law enforcement, but they do seem to get things done,” Liz suggested.

  “No way. Get them out of there. They aren’t to be part of any official FBI operation. Keep me posted on Matt’s progress. I want him back in operations as soon as he is able.”

  Liz nodded.

  “Also, I want you to find out why the protection detail got pulled from Matt’s room,” the director ordered.

  * * *

  Matt sat up and smiled at Bridget, who looked like she’d spent the night in the chair next to his bed. Every time he’d become conscious over his stay, she’d been there. He remembered short conversations with her about what happened in the pursuit of Karim. He quietly got out of bed and walked over to the window. His ass gave him little pain, mostly stiffness from non-movement. The sun shone brightly and it appeared to be a beautiful day in the making. He bent over to see how that felt and felt surprise at the lack of any pain.

  Good to go.

  “That’s it. I’m leaving. Four days in this hospital and I’m going nuts,” Matt said when Bridget opened her eyes.

  “You’re up, and your attitude has definitely improved.”

  “Get me my clothes and let’s get out of here. You can bring me up to date over breakfast. I need to eat somewhere that doesn’t stink of hospital.”

&n
bsp; “Definitely better. While you dress, I’ll tell Liz what’s going on and she may want to join us.”

  A half an hour passed before they got out of the hospital due to all the papers he needed to sign. Bridget drove down Route One toward Washington. She picked a pancake house and parked.

  “Great, real food,” Matt said.

  Matt ate two helpings of pancakes and downed multiple cups of coffee. As they finished their breakfast, Liz walked in to join them.

  “You look fit,” she said.

  “Feel great. I need to get back in the game. Bridget waited till you got here. She hasn’t brought me up to date. So fire away.”

  Liz took a few minutes to bring them both up to date on what the FBI was doing. Bridget then told him about the efforts of Scott and Gerti in discovering Karim’s contact with Alexandro.

  “So, what do we do now?” Matt asked.

  “Legally, we don’t have much we can do. There has been no contact between those two again. We are continuing to monitor the phones, but so far there’s been nothing out of the ordinary,” Liz said.

  “We need to find out when and where the next shipment of weapons is going to be delivered.” Matt looked at Bridget and received a definite nod from her. “Let’s go get packed.”

  “Exactly where are you going?” Liz asked.

  “The only place there’s any action, Savannah.”

  40

  Alexandria, Virginia

  Bridget stood on the sidewalk in front of Scott’s building, waiting for Matt to drive off to get his things at his apartment. He would be back in one hour and then they had a FBI aircraft to fly them to Savannah. Liz arranged for the plane.

  Bridget remained on the sidewalk for a few seconds and watched Matt’s car disappear in the distance. Without warning a bullet whizzed by her head at what she sensed might be less than an inch from her right ear. Almost instantaneously a second round passed on the left side of her neck. Bridget dove for the ground. Her hands went out to break the fall and before she could move, a bullet ricocheted off the concrete next to her right hand. She started to move, but another bullet sliced barely an inch from her left hand.

  Whoever is shooting isn’t trying to kill me.

  She froze, not wanting to move to indicate she received the message to stay in place. Her phone started ringing. With a measured slow movement, she retrieved it from her pocket. No more shots came near her. She slowly rose to her feet as she answered the phone and heard the voice she dreaded.

  “Miss Donavan, this is a reminder I am watching you. I can find you anywhere, any time, any place. Your time is running out. Do not fail to deliver me my money or the next time there will be no warning shots.” Schultz ended the call.

  That bastard. He did this to scare the hell out of me. She rushed into the building. She didn’t need this right now. It was going to be hard enough to get the icon without this added intimidation.

  “I won’t let you win,” she said aloud to bolster her spirits and to allow the adrenalin to wane. She thought it would be better to keep this to herself. Telling Matt wouldn’t help. Telling Gerti at this time would certainly not be the best course of action because she couldn’t predict the girl’s reaction to what her father had done. She decided to query Gerti on what she told her father about their activities. Somehow he knew her movements. The shooter, she concluded, wasn’t Schultz but one of his hirelings. That explained the delay from the time of the shots to the phone call. The shooter would have told Schultz when to call her. Besides, Shultz wouldn't do his own dirty work. Too much of a rich asshole for that.

  There existed only one hope of getting Schultz off her tail, get that icon and then to force Jonathan to deliver the payment she demanded. But first, she had to get it.

  * * *

  Karim arrived back at the camp late that afternoon. He called the men together for a meeting. Now that he had taken command, he needed to get his plan in place and he had to do it quickly. On the drive back from Savannah, he formulated his course of action. When the men gathered in front of the commander’s shack, Karim walked out and stood on the porch.

  He surveyed his new dominion. The vast spaces of the Blue Ridge Mountains provided a superb place to stay unnoticed and to conduct training. Over the last week the size of the camp had diminished considerably. Two men lost at Higgins’s apartment, three lost at that safe house, and one commander permanently retired. This left only six in camp and two of them were out of action due to broken limbs suffered in training.

  “I am assuming command of this unit. Ashil has been removed. Does anyone have an objection?” He waited, surveying the eyes of the men standing in front of him. He heard nothing.

  “Tomorrow we have a critical mission. The weapons are coming into the port of Savannah. Our contact, a Mike Alexandro, says he will deliver them to us the next day somewhere around Jacksonville. That is not how we want it to go down.”

  Karim indicated the men were to gather round in a circle and sit down.

  “What are we going to do?” asked one man.

  “We are going to take the weapons tomorrow at the port. We are no longer going to do business with the Russian gangster. He is ripping us off for more and more money on each shipment and providing less weapons. I made arrangements with our sponsor to get the weapons from another source in the future at a considerable savings. It won’t be from a Russian.”

  Karim sat down on the steps. He again examined the face of each man to determine if there lurked any hidden danger from anyone there. Satisfied there wasn’t, he continued, “There are four of us able to go on this mission. We will take control of the truck when the container is loaded on it. We’ll be able to tell the correct one because I’ll see Alexandro either in or at the truck. He’ll want to ensure his goods are there. Tewfik, you can drive an eighteen-wheeler so you get to take out the driver and get control of the vehicle. I will take out anyone in the passenger side.”

  “We’ll have to pull to the side somewhere after taking control and before going out the gate to get rid of the bodies,” Tewfik said. “They will want the custom clearance papers from the driver. We can’t go through the gate with the bodies in the cab. The guard might climb up on the running board to collect the papers.”

  “Good point. We’ll do that. You two,”—Karim pointed at the two men next to Tewfik—“take the pickup. One drive and the other in the rear with an automatic to cover us on the road. Stick close to us in case we run into any trouble. Any questions?”

  “Will you come back with us?” the truck driver asked.

  “No, I won’t. We’ll leave tomorrow to go to Savannah and stay in a hotel on I-95 for one night. In the morning, I’ll drive Tewfik to the port and park a mile away. After we drive out of the port and all is going as planned, I’ll get my car and head to Mr. Alexandro’s place. He may still have our money in his possession and I’d like to recover it. Once I search his place, I’ll head back here.”

  As he waited, each man nodded his head in agreement.

  “Let’s get ready to move out.”

  41

  Savannah, Georgia

  Gerti walked hand-in-hand with Scott on River Street in the heart of downtown Savannah. From a book in their hotel room, they learned that this old cobblestone street had seen much history since General Oglethorpe landed in 1733 to found the colony of Georgia. Sherman in his march to the sea had spared Savannah from destruction at the end of the American Civil War and the modern-day city maintained much of its historic décor.

  “I’m really pissed off at the FBI for cutting us out,” Gerti said. “After all, we did the leg work. Then they move in and threaten us with obstruction if we don’t bugger off.” She recalled the phone conversation with Bridget telling her about the FBI’s decision. She also learned that Bridget and Matt would arrive in Savannah tomorrow.

  “I agree.” Scott pulled up her hand and kissed it. “So we can’t follow our man. Let’s do something else.” He winked at her in a conspiratorial manne
r.

  “Like what?” Gerti asked.

  “I’ve been thinking. All this talk about an icon and Alexandro seems a little bit premature to me. Sure Bridget says the terrorist link is definitely there, but the icon link is weak. We don’t even know if the icon is in Alexandro’s possession. Right?”

  “So, what are you suggesting?” Gerti asked.

  They continued to walk on River Street and grazed on the calamari offered as a tasty treat outside the Olympia restaurant. They then went across the street to the river walk area and watched an oceangoing container ship pass through the center of the city on the Savannah River.

  “We can assume the FBI will be following him everywhere he goes. We saw him go for coffee this morning. I wonder if he goes every morning. If so, they will be trailing him. So I suggest we go visit his place and see if the icon actually is there and perhaps purloin it.”

  “You crafty conniving…” She stopped. “I think you’re starting to think like my father taught me. Maybe that’s what he sees in you. I’m impressed that you beat me to this one.” Gerti squeezed his hand.

  “Let’s make a plan,” he said.

  The next morning, before Bridget and Matt arrived, Gerti and Scott waited at the corner on Liberty to see if their plan would work. They didn’t want to be in the immediate area of Alexandro’s apartment, as the FBI would pick them out. Their location didn’t permit direct line of sight to the apartment building but would allow them to observe him when and if he headed for the coffee shop.

  Shortly after nine, Alexandro turned the corner and headed toward the coffee shop he visited the prior day. Half a minute later, two FBI men followed him.