Black Onyx Duology (4 page)

7

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dana Gladstone sat in her well-lit office at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s field office in El Paso. Special Agent Michael Cobb, one of the men under her command, sat across from her as they listened to the tapes of El Sacerdote’s meeting with Jim Park.

“I don’t know who the hell you are and you want me to risk my business, everything I’ve worked for, smuggling your shit into my country. Well, fine, but I need assurances. And a larger piece of the pie.”

“How large?”

“Forty-five percent of any load.”

“Deal. Now see, was that so difficult?”

“That’s it? You’re just going to accept the first figure I give you?”

“I don’t argue over pennies. Forty-five percent is fine. Miguel will see to all the details.”

She shook her head as she paused the media player on her
desktop. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Forty-five percent for shipments? He’ll barely make a profit.”

“New market,” Cobb said. “Maybe he just wants to hook a lot of people up north and then renegotiate?”

“Maybe. His product isn’t any better than anyone else’s though. He doesn’t have any competitive advantage. This just doesn’t make any sense.”

“They’re drug dealers, Dana. Since when do they have to make sense?”

“You haven’t done this as long as I have. These guys are smart. Not typically in the way some turd at Harvard Law is smart, these guys have the scariest type of intelligence. They can read people and understand when a profit is being made and when it’s not. El Sacerdote’s increased the cartel’s profits by almost two hundred percent in four years. That’s unheard of. He wouldn’t be making this move lightly unless there was a big upside for him.”

“Well, do we have any of his men in custody we could talk to?”

“They don’t talk. There was a young guy once, Adrian I think his name was, he cooperated with us in exchange for witness protection. His entire family was murdered the next day. Not after the trial or years down the line, the next day. That means someone in our office informed El Sacerdote about it the moment it happened.”

“Shit. He’s got that much pull?”

“You have no idea.” She leaned back in her wheelchair, tapping a pencil on the desk. “John Larson is in charge of the El Sacerdote investigation. Why’d you bring this to me?”

“Jim Park. He’s a shipping magnate, Park Shipping and Towing. He’s a new player in this we haven’t seen before so I thought I’d run it by you. You’ve got the experience…sorry, that came out wrong.”

“Why? Cause I got shot by these assholes I’m now an expert?”

They looked to each other a moment in silence.

“Mike, I’m kidding.”

“Oh, man, sorry
.”

“
It’s fine. No, this is a big move for the Priest. You were right to bring it to me.” She glanced outside her door to the cubicles outside. “Mike, can you shut my door?”

He stood up and closed it before sitting back down.
“What’s up?”

“This field office is compromised. I think John’s a big part of it. I went to the SAC and he told me to keep my allegations to myself unless I have any proof. I don’t know if he’s in on it too or if he just
wants to remain willfully blind, but you can’t trust anyone with El Sacerdote.”

“What should I do?”

“Nothing for now. Follow it up and file it. You won’t get the authorization for any more wiretaps. In fact, I bet once they find out about this one they’ll close it down. Why was the conference room bugged anyway?”

“ICE was investigating Park for immigration violations of his employees. They sent this little tidbit over this morning.”

She thought a moment. “Do me a favor, huh? Don’t tell anyone about this just yet. File your reports in a few days.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m gonna pay a little visit to a friend of ours.”

8

Dillon sat on the plane flying over the Falkland Islands. They would soon be landing and then have half an hour to get to Port Stanley, the jumping point to Antarctica. You have to travel by ship to Antarctica as there were almost no landing spots this time of year. The best season to go was between November and March, and considering that it was now June, they would be there utterly alone. Even most of the wildlife had gone out to sea.

They landed and Dillon took out his iPhone earbuds, blaring Nine Inch Nails, and looked to
James who was asleep, his fingers intertwined with Niles in the next seat.

“Wake up love birds.”

James stirred and opened his eyes. He glanced out the window just as the wheels made contact with the tarmac and the plane jarred and began slowing. They gathered their things and stepped off and found a man with a sign that read, ANTARCTICA. Climbing into the car, Dillon could see the man clearly didn’t speak any English so they listened to the radio as they drove to Port Stanley.

Port Stanley, though the capital of the
Falklands, had only two thousand people. Dillon had read the Wikipedia entry and found that when cruise ships docked the tourists in the town frequently outnumbered the residents.

Driven right to the docks, they found their ship waiting for them. A sixty-five foot yacht named the
Laban
.

“That ship looks rather luxurious for its context,” Niles said.

“It’s our last adventure,” James said. “I spared no expense. Or I should say I had Henry spare no expense.”

Dillon rolled his eyes. “You guys are worse than teenagers.”

“Don’t be jealous, Dillon. You’ll find the love of your life one day too.”

“I don’t need a love of my life.”

“Ah yes,” James said, “the ‘I can stand alone’ theory. Well, you may change later on and when you do you will see that there is absolutely nothing wrong with love, Dillon. It’s a rare enough commodity in the world as it is without you attacking it. But I’ll tell you this: you cannot survive without other people. No one stands on their own, no one.”

The car came to a stop and they took their bags and walked up the ramp onto the yacht. A muscular man with a beard and a thick blue coat came up to them.

“You James?”

“Yes.”

He put out his hand and James shook it. “George Anston. Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you for having us.”

“Pleasure’s mine. Henry put up the money for this little expedition and you three were the exchange.”

“Well
, we’re pleased just the same.”

Dillon noticed the hot tub. “You got a hot tub?”

George smiled. “It’s the little things. And at night, when the moon’s out over the ocean, there’s nowhere better to be. I’ll show you to your cabins.”

Dillon foll
owed him and was shown an eight-foot-by-eight-foot steel cabin with a metal bunk used as a bed. He sat down and put his bag on the floor. He looked around and wondered why the exterior of the yacht was so nice and the cabin was something out of an oil liner. He unpacked, which consisted of taking some of his toiletries out of the canvas gym bag he’d brought with him, and then headed up to the main deck.

The town looked quaint. The houses were multicolored and usually no more than two floors. The roofs were a mix of red and blue and green
, and the most prominent building was the church. It looked like a fishing village out of the eighteenth century.

Before long they drew anchor and the yacht began pulling out to sea. Dillon watched the foam at the stern. This would be the last time he would travel like this with
James. He looked back and saw James and Niles at starboard, laughing and pointing things out at the town, taking photos on their phone.

Dillon turned away, a gray feeling coming over him that a period of his life was ending and he wasn’t sure what it would be replaced with. His cell phone buzzed. Amazed he was still getting service, he checked who it was. It was a text from Jaime:

Hey big explorer, just wanted to wish you luck. And guess what? I actually do miss you a little

Dillon smiled as he replaced the phone in his pocket and looked out over the vast expanse of water.

9

El Paso was dark and there was a section of the town, on the northern-most end, where tourists never went and the locals left at night. Only a small handful of people were there and of those, none of them wanted to see or hear what anybody else was doing. It was the best place in the city to meet when you didn’t want other people butting their noses into your business.

Dana had her van parked on the curb when the door opened and Miguel Almanza hopped in. She put it in drive
and pressed the accelerator button on the steering wheel. She was, every single time she drove, grateful she lived in a time when her disability didn’t make her immobile.

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Miguel said.

“Did anyone follow you?”

“No.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

He looked out the window. “I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

“That’s fine, Miguel. You don’t have to. I’ll just have a couple of agents pick you up for the distribution charge and we’ll let word slip that you’ve been feeding us information for the past couple years but that now that relationship is over. I’m sure your boss will be more than pleased that you’ve been speaking to me so much.”

“It would be death. You would kill me because I didn’t want to help you?”

“I’m not the one killing you, my conscience would be clear.”

He shook his head. “What do you want?”

“El Sacerdote met with a man named Jim Park recently. Do you know anything about it?”

“No.”

“Miguel, you are a really bad liar. Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll drop you off at your car and that’ll be that. You won’t see me again.”

“Until you want something else.”

“Well, we can’t predict the future, but for right now all I want to know is why your boss is meeting with Jim Park.”

“I don’t know. He sending something
to Canada on one of that man’s trucks.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fine, I’ll just drop you off in the middle
of Old Town and wave bye to you with my badge around my neck.”

“I swear, I don’t know nothing.
He wouldn’t tell me. He just said it was death.”

“De
ath?”

“Yeah, that’s what he say
.”

She looped back around to where she had picked him up and parked in an alleyway. “Anything else?”

“No, I know nothing else.”

“When you find out which shipment it’s going to be on, I want you to call me.”

He rubbed his lips.

“Miguel, I’m not kidding.
One phone call. Just tell me what shipment it’s going to be on and where it’s going. That’s it. And then I promise I will leave you alone.”

He scoffed. “You cops are a lot like the dealers you know. You lie to get what you want and think it is not a problem.”

Miguel jumped out of the van and walked down the alleyway before disappearing. Dana watched him go and then backed up and drove away.

10

Antarctica. From the deck of the ship, it looked like a translucent hallucination. The ice was mostly blue, not transparent. The weather was good right now, about twenty degrees, and it wasn’t snowing.

After the yacht had docked
, a crew of three had begun unloading their equipment. The location they were hiking to was two and a half miles away. Snowmobiles couldn’t help, George had assured them, because it would be uphill and some of the terrain was rocky.

Everyone checked and rechecked their packs before George put on his beanie and smiled, and turned to begin walking. Dillon looked to
James who slapped his shoulder and he began trekking behind George.

In some spots, the landscape wasn’t all that foreign. An open valley surrounded by small hills of snow and ice. But in others, it appeared like a foreign planet. Huge monoliths of blue ice tor
e out of the ground and towered above them, like guardians holding some secret they couldn’t know.

In other places, you could see actual trees. They were frozen stiff and pure white, but the comfort of something familiar in an alien landscape was inescapable. Dillon could feel it. At one point they had to put on crampon
s and get out their ski poles as they were now traversing pure ice directly up a large mountain. George stopped for a moment at the base.

“It
’s up here,” he said. “Now look, I’m not stupid. You’re here because if there’s any treasure you want a piece. Well that’s fine, but keep in mind this is my find. Anything you guys want to take has to be cleared by me. We’re not here to spend a ton of time. I’m here to document what there is and what there isn’t and I’m coming back with men I trust later in the year. But for now, you can have some trinkets as long as it’s cleared by me. Do we understand each other?”

“Perfectly,”
James said.

“Good. If I catch you guys stealing anything that wasn’t cleared with me first, I’ll leave you here. I’m not kidding. I have no obligation to take you back on my yacht.”

“We understand, Mr. Anston,” James said. “We’re not here to step on anybody’s toes. Anything we wish to possess will be cleared by you first.”

George looked to Dillon. “What about you
, hotshot? Do you understand?”

“
Don’t take anything unless you say so.”

George nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

Dillon looked back to James and held up his hand, which had his gloved fingers crossed. James smiled as they continued up the blue mountain.

Near the top of the mou
ntain they stopped and drank hot tea from canteens. It was snowing now and the weather was gray. They had hiked for nearly three hours, and Dillon couldn’t see anything but ice and snow in every direction. Even the sea was out of view now.

George pointed out a
hole the size of a manhole cover.

“This is it,” he said.

“This is what?” Dillon asked, out of breath from the hike and the altitude.

“This is where we enter.”

The three crewmen began bolting cables and rope into the ice. They threw the cables down the hole and got out repelling equipment. Dillon strapped in as George and James did the same. Niles and the three crewmen would be staying up here.

“It’s an easy repel,” George said. “Just take it slow.”

Dillon waited for George to go down first and then he climbed into the hole feet first. He slid at first and then had to catch himself on the rope. He began to gently push back with his legs and slid down a couple feet at a time.

They were in a cavern of
sapphire ice. The hole opened up and he could see the massive space. On one side was the chaotic aftermath of an avalanche. That must’ve been how George discovered this place. On the other side was what looked like a narrow pathway.

Down below, maybe fifty feet, George was already unbuckling his harness.

Dillon reached bottom and unbuckled before helping James down. They looked around. The cavern went on toward the east and seemed to grow larger and larger. George lit an electric lamp and began walking without a word, his crampons crunching the ice beneath his feet.

Dillon followed
, making sure James was okay. He was breathing heavily and his face looked flush.

“Why don’t you hang back,” Dillon said.

“Surely you’re joking. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Riches aside, I am an explorer at heart. Don’t forget I began as an archaeologist.” He looked to George. “Something’s not right though, Dillon.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“He knows more than he’s telling. There’s too much confidence in his steps. He’s been here several times before.”

Dillon followed
George slowly, hanging back to ensure James wasn’t pushing himself too hard. Eventually, George’s lamp just became a pinpoint of light up in the distance. James pulled out a flashlight and illuminated an area about twelve feet in front of them.

The cavern grew so wide and
tall, Dillon thought you could fit skyscrapers in here. And then it began to shrink. It narrowed down to a corridor about ten feet high as they climbed a path that went slightly up and then fell in a steep decline. George was waiting for them at the end of the decline.

“It goes down now about half a mile. Stay close. I’m not sure what’s all down here.”