Pine Island Coast Florida Box Set, page 60
part #1 of Pine Island Coast Florida Series
“Yes,” Andrés replied.
“How?”
“A tunnel from what I understand.”
“You tell Aldrich I want to meet with him. Yesterday. He has a lot of explaining to do. The wrong people could have gotten hurt. Or worse. It’s unacceptable.”
“I will tell him when we speak next,” Andrés said. “He said he was going dark for the next several days. He also said that he was having problems with the detonator and had intended to do it the day before but that the timing worked out better anyway, at least in his opinion.”
Ringo clenched his teeth, and a muscle stood out along his jawline.
“It was foolish, Jefe. The timing.”
“Yes.” He changed the topic. “What is Yolanda reporting?”
“Only good things. Mr. Armstrong has become...what is the word?” It came to him. “Amenable. I am not sure if it had anything to do with the picture we gave him of his children getting on the school bus, but he has not been griping as much.”
Ringo adjusted his fedora. “He’s a smart man and has built a good business for himself. In time he may come to see that we have done a good thing for him. He’s going to make it a long way in the distillery business.”
Ten minutes later Andrés pulled up to a small brick building occupied by separate organizations. On the right was the local chapter of the American Heart Association and on the left was the Harry Miles Cancer Research Center.
“After this, do you want to get some shrimp for lunch?” Ringo asked.
“Sure, Jefe. You know I am always good for shrimp.”
Ringo stepped into the warm, humid afternoon air, cooled slightly by a breeze blowing across the massive Caloosahatchee River just beyond. Ringo took the door on the left and was greeted warmly before he made it to the receptionist’s desk.
“Well, there he is. It’s always so good to see you.” The plump lady had a sweet face and graying hair that curled naturally at the ends. She wore pearls and a shade of lipstick that complemented her complexion. She was classy. Ringo liked classy.
He offered up a charming grin. “That’s because I help pay your salary. Hello, Margaret.”
“You should pay for my dinner one of these days.”
He handed her the envelope.
She took it and stared at it for a while before looking up at him. “You don’t know how many lives you’re changing,” she said softly. “How many you’ve changed already.”
“And I don’t need to.”
“You need to take it easy,” she said. “With all these businesses you have running, you need to take time for a rest. Don’t overdo it.”
“You keep on sounding like my mother and you’ll have to wait a long time for that dinner.” He winked down on her.
“Don’t tease me now,” she blushed.
He looked at the envelope. “There’s a little extra in there this time.”
“More? How...can—I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s not my business. You just do so much.”
He couldn’t tell her the truth, so he said, “I’ve cashed out of some investments that came due.”
“Molly isn’t here. I’m sure she would want to thank you in person, as always.”
“No need. Maybe next time. Give her my hellos.”
“Of course.”
“And as usual—”
“We keep your name out of it all.”
He smiled. “You found it under the doormat.”
“You should come see me someday when you don’t have anything to drop off.”
“One day I will. That’s a promise.”
“Don’t break my heart now,” she smiled.
“I’ll see you again in a couple weeks, Margaret. You’re getting away from this storm, right?”
“Leaving in an hour.”
He nodded approvingly. “Be good.” He walked back out to the car and, as Andrés pulled away, said, “You and Chewy both need to get out of here and head north. That storm is getting bigger. I know you don’t get a lot of hurricanes in Juárez, so I’ll tell you that they’re nothing to mess around with.” He turned and looked out the window, looking past the tint but not really looking at anything.
“We will.” Andrés could see that Ringo was more contemplative than before he had gone in to drop off the gift. He always was when he came out of there. Andrés knew what he had done, what he had given them. Andrés had gotten the cashier's check himself. He kept his eyes on the road and turned south onto McGregor Boulevard. “You are a good man, Ringo. There are no men in Mexico who work in drugs and then go do what you do. Not unless they are seeking more power. It is honorable.”
Ringo didn’t answer, just continued staring thoughtfully out the window, an uneasiness crawling through him. One he couldn’t quite pin down.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ellie hated paperwork more than anything. She couldn’t think of what might be worse. Cleaning Porta Potties perhaps, but right now she was thinking that even that wouldn’t be so bad.
The raid had ended with one suspect getting two of his fingers blasted off by a close range shot from Ellie’s rifle. Forensics had later shown that the man had been high on mushrooms when the raid occurred, and after the medics got him back to the van to care for his hand he started bellowing about the ostrich that was munching on his hands and kept letting off horrific screams as though someone were eating him alive. But the reason forensics had been brought in for this particular individual was that, as he was screaming and as the medics were trying to hold him down, he had managed to unholster one of their sidearms and blew his brains out.
And then there was the explosion that left seven dead, and with Eli and Curtis escaping there was no one to question, no one to put pressure on. So the pressure was coming from inside. She had spent all morning in the conference room with a team from the DEA’s Inspection Division, answering questions about the raid and her decision-making process. It was standard procedure, but the team from Virginia may as well have told Ellie that they thought she had set the bomb herself. They were just doing their jobs, being objective, but that didn't mean she had to like the way they went about it. In addition, it all meant hours of reports, thousands of words.
By everyone’s standards, the raid had been fully unsuccessful. They ended up with three wounded agents, one still in critical condition, seven prisoners that had been ripped tooth to toenail, and another who had executed himself with an agency-issued firearm, because of, you know, the ostriches. The explosive used in the blast had been identified as Semtex, a hard to acquire explosive that was still available on some parts of the black market. Early on, Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, had kept storehouses of Semtex and then in the late 1970s sold tons of it to the Irish Republican Army, among other worldwide factions. After his death the remainder was broken up and pressed into the unpredictable hands of the black market. It appeared that Oswald and Smith had not only escaped but had literally cleared the bases, setting the explosives in an attempt to ensure that no one was left to squeal on them. They had gotten lucky. Eli Oswald had just batted a thousand.
And yet, those reasons weren’t the biggest failure of all, in Ellie’s opinion. Letting Oswald and his buddy escape was bad all right, but it didn’t touch the fact that they hadn’t located Dawson Montgomery, and no one remained to tell them where he was, whether he was still alive. That fact alone, accompanied by the image of that open box on Jean Oglesby's counter, had left Ellie with very little sleep last night.
Ellie’s desk phone rang. She typed out a few more words and grabbed up the receiver. “Hey, Garrett.”
“Ellie, can you put a pause on what you’re doing for a minute? Come see me in my office.” His voice was strained.
“Sure. Give me a minute.” She returned the phone to its cradle and clicked away at the keyboard, finishing her paragraph. She saved the internal document, shut the lid to her laptop, and walked across the room.
Before she could knock on Garrett’s glass office door, he motioned for her to come in. “Have a seat.” His face was taut. A tiny butterfly bandage clung to his upper cheek where he had gotten nicked in the blast the day before.
“What’s up?” she asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“Ah, I’ll be all right. Listen, we need to have a hard chat.”
Ellie shifted in her chair. “Okay. Let’s have it.”
“You’ve done a hell of a job since you’ve come on my team. It’s been what, nearly three months?”
“Something like that.”
“I invited you over here on a whim because I was frustrated that we weren't getting the right people locked up. But as you also know I haven’t been given much of a budget to do that. Then I ended up pulling Mark off his primary directive and putting him with you.”
“What are you trying to say, Garrett?”
He tried to smile, failed, and then said. “I’ve got to let you go. For now,” he added quickly.
His words scraped against her. “Like, leave the agency?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Honestly? Ellie, the casualties have mounted so high I can’t talk my way around them.”
“But this is the line of work we’re in, Garrett. I haven’t stepped out of line. Not once.”
“I know you haven't. But think about it. We’ve got two dead Mexicans and five wounded from when you were escorting Victor Calderon back to prison. Then we’ve got Special Agent Sanchez getting shot in the arm when we raided the stash house over at Ridgeside. And then,” he tossed out his hands.
“The compound.”
He nodded.
“But why me?” Ellie asked. “The raid was executed properly. By everyone involved. We couldn't have known about the Semtex. Bringing dogs in on a raid like that isn’t standard. To search for drugs, sure, but not explosives. Who would have known that Oswald would be the kind of guy willing to nuke his own people? On top of that, the shootout at the barn and the raids on the stash house and the compound were all because of what I brought to the table.”
He threw his hands out. “You’re preaching to the choir, old friend. But you’re the one who shot those men at the barn, and,” he paused briefly, “that makes you an easy target. There’s just too much politics involved right now. You know as well as I do that raiding a stash house here and there gives up enough kilos to hold up in front of the camera. That looks good for the higher ups. All these deaths? Not so much. I have to answer for them, and my superiors have to answer for them. You know as well as I do that it gets really hard to explain away almost ten deaths in three months. Had we actually come away with someone we could lock up and question, that might be one thing. But Oswald’s gone, Smith is gone, and”—he tossed his hands out—“who even knows about the Montgomery guy? He’s not even part of our MO anyway.”
“Unbelievable,” Ellie said. She knew how these things went. Someone had to take the fall. Why not her? Administratively, she was on the fringes—part time, a contractor. She sighed. “Okay. When?” She already knew the answer.
Garrett folded his arms. “As soon as you’re done with your reports,” he said flatly.
“That will be this afternoon.”
He stared at her blankly, sighed.
“Garrett. I’ve been around the block enough to know that it’s politics that drowns out good people and good decisions. You know that all we’ve done these last few months will be for nothing unless we can go the final push. If we don’t, the wrong people will just surge into the hole we made and fill the vacuum.”
“I know.”
“What about Mark? Will you keep him on it?”
“Where I can, yes. He’ll need to wrap up loose ends.”
The office door opened, and a lady in a gray pantsuit entered, clutching a leather notepad holder, her black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her face impassive. Sheila Davis with the Inspection Division. Sheila and her team had flown down from Virginia before the sun came up this morning, and Ellie had spent half the morning with her all the while feeling a little like a lamb to the slaughter.
Garrett motioned for Sheila to take a chair. She shook her head. “Miss O’Conner, thank you for your time earlier this morning. I’m sure we’ll have additional questions for you, so please leave a good phone number with SAIC Cage here.”
Without replying, Ellie asked, “Do you know the FBI’s plan? I brought this case forward. Can you at least give me that?”
“Of course,” Sheila said. “From what I understand they have a local team working on it and are bringing in support personnel after this hurricane passes. It’s set to make landfall here late tomorrow night, so there isn’t much they can do for putting feet on the ground until it passes.”
“After the storm passes? You're kidding, right?” She came to her feet. “This isn’t just a missing person. He’s going to be in awful shape. Please tell me they’re not dragging their feet trying to locate him.”
“I don’t think they are dragging their feet at all. As I said, they’re flying in a team to help.”
“In two days,” she snapped.
“Ellie,” Garrett said, “you’ve got to let Quantico do this their way.”
Sheila scribbled a few notes on her pad, tore the page off, and handed it to Garrett. “Ms. O’Conner,” she said curtly, and left the office.
“What a jewel,” Ellie said, and then asked the question still weighing on her the most.
“What about Ringo? He’s out there somewhere.”
“Ellie...I just don’t have any answers right now. What I do have is a conference room full of Sheilas who won’t be getting off my tail anytime soon.”
Ellie walked over to the window. From here she could see the north part of the city: strip malls, George H. Walker Elementary School, Scott’s Scuba Shop, Putt-Putt Palace. This community was so full of life. She thought back to her initial reluctance to jump on board with Garrett's offer to come work for the DEA. Now, she wished she would have started sooner. “I’m glad you brought me on,” she said, still staring out the glass. This was all surreal. It would pass, she knew, but for now this entire conversation felt like some kind of warped dream. “We got some things accomplished.”
“Me too, Ellie. I’m still hopeful that I can get a role like yours back on the budget come early next year. You’ll be the first person I come to when that happens.” He stood up, and Ellie turned around. She stepped in and gave her old friend a hug.
“If it’s all right, I’ll go get everything sorted out on my desk and computer. There’s still a few mental loose ends I’d like to tie up before I shut this down.”
“Sure thing. I’ll have Sandra stop by your desk with your exit paperwork. I may need you to come back in over the next week or so to answer a few more questions from team FUN in the conference room. Turn in your laptop to Glitch when you’re done and drop your badge off with security on your way out.”
“Okay.”
“Ellie.”
She looked over at him.
“I’m sorry. I really am.”
She tried to smile. “No worries.”
When Ellie got back to her desk, she slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes, replaying the conversation over and over. It didn’t really matter where you were—CIA, DEA, Washington, Wall Street—politics and bureaucracy were sure to follow. It was the way of the world. So that wasn’t what was really bothering her. What was making her fidget with her pen, what was causing her to gnaw hard on her bottom lip, was that she was leaving here with so much left undone. Where had Eli Oswald and Curtis Smith run off to? Who had been supplying their drugs? Who exactly was Ringo? And currently the most pressing, where was Dawson Montgomery?
She had not yet found Adam Stark’s killer. With everything she had accomplished up to this point, she had still come up empty on that. She’d be damned if she was going to let Dawson Montgomery elude her too.
Chapter Forty
“I can’t believe I came back a week before a major hurricane,” Katie grumbled. She zipped up the suitcase and slid it against the wall. “We just finished unpacking these. Chloe! You about ready?”
“Just a minute, Mommy!” Chloe called from her room down the hall.
Ellie had come over to see her family off. Katie was meeting Sharla and Gary Potter in North Fort Myers where she would park her car farther away from the effects of a possible storm surge. From there she and Chloe would ride with the Potters to a vacation home they kept up in Jacksonville.
Hurricane Josephine was now a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds hovering at one hundred and thirty-two miles an hour and was set to start bludgeoning the Keys within the next few hours. A second U.S. landfall had been forecasted for Lee County less than twenty-four hours from now.
“I probably don’t need to tell you this,” Ellie said, “but don’t expect Major to join you. I know he said he would, but he’ll be securing boats until the last second.”
“I know. I hate that he does that. That’s what insurance is for.” Katie set a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know.” An ice chest sat on the kitchen table. She turned around and started organizing the food inside it. “This whole thing about the DEA letting you go. It’s ridiculous.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“What about Garrett? He can’t work some magic or something?”
“He already did that just bringing me on. I’m not going to worry about it. It is what it is, as Major likes to say.”
Katie shut the lid and looked around the kitchen, making sure they weren’t forgetting something. “Well, speaking of Major, I’m going to be helping out at The Salty Mangrove, if it’s even there after this storm.”
“So you’re mad that I’m out of a job, and you’re going to take the last one I have?” Ellie laughed.
“Hey, he’s paying me. I need it. He told me he’s offered to pay you a hundred times and you won’t have it.”
