Fatal Decree (28 page)

“No.”

“How did you get your cash?”

“In an envelope sent to the bar.”

“Were you ever given a reason why your employer wanted Alexander dead?”

“No. And I didn’t ask. It didn’t matter.”

“How did you find your target?”

“I was given detailed instructions on where he lived, and there was a picture of the man I was supposed to kill. In the envelope with the cash. I was told to make it look like a suicide.”

“But no name?”

“No.”

“What’s your connection to the Guatemalan gangbangers?”

“I’m sort of on retainer to them. They pay me every month and sometimes they ask me to eliminate somebody.”

“Is that what brought you here?”

“No. Like I said, I got a contract.”

“Then why are you hanging out with the gangbangers?”

“It’s a safe place to hang out until I hear back from the man in New Orleans. Or, at least, I thought it was.”

“Are you sure the man who hired you is in New Orleans?”

“I think so. The letters I get from him always have a New Orleans postmark.”

“Are you Guatemalan?”

“I was born there, but I came to this country when I was twelve years old.”

“What happened to your ear?”

“Nothing. I was born without it.”

“Were you told to get Alexander’s laptop?”

“Yes.”

“The satellite phone too?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do with them?”

“My instructions were to give them to a man who’d meet me in Sarasota.”

“And?”

“That’s what I did.”

“Who was this man?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you handle the meet?”

“I was given a cell phone along with the money. It could only be used to call one number. I was to call that number and say simply, ‘I have the merchandise.’ The man would tell me where to meet him.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Downtown Sarasota. The corner of Main Street and Highway 301, the northwest corner.”

“You gave him the laptop and the satellite phone?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the cell phone you’d been given?”

“I gave that to him as well.”

“Describe the man you met.”

“He was about five-feet-eight-inches tall, dark skin, black hair, and he spoke Spanish with a Mexican accent.”

“When did you meet the man?”

“Saturday, a couple of hours after I killed the man on Longboat Key.”

“Mr. Alexander,” Jock said, his voice low and tight, menacing.

“What?”

“His name was Mr. Alexander and he was a patriot and a friend of mine. You speak of him with respect, you bastard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” said Jock. “You got anything, Matt?”

I was quiet for a minute. “I’m Matt Royal. Do you know why the gangbangers would be after me?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Who are the guys who drive that lowrider parked in the compound?”

“Different people use it at different times.”

“Why are you still here? Why didn’t you go back to New Orleans after you killed Alexander?”

“The man who hired me told me to stay in place. That he might have some more work for me in Florida.”

“How was he going to get hold of you?”

“He’ll send a letter to the bar in New Orleans and the bartender will forward it to me here.”

I looked at Jock. “One more question,” he said. “What is the bartender’s name?”

“Mack Stout.”

“You trust him?”

“Not really.”

“Then why do you deal with him?” Jock asked, “He’s never done anything to make me not trust him. Yet.”

“What’s your leverage? Do you pay him?”

“Sort of. I supply him with coke.”

“That can get pretty expensive,” Jock said Cantreras smiled. “I get it wholesale.”

“From the Guatemalans?”

“Yes.”

“What if your supply runs out? You can’t get the coke for him?”

“Won’t matter. He knows if he screws up, I’ll kill him.”

“Okay,” said Jock. “Sit tight.”

Cantreras laughed. “Thought I would,” he said. And he moaned again.

Jock walked off a few feet and activated his cell phone. After a short conversation, he returned to the car. “Pedro,” he said, “in a few minutes some men are going to come and take you away. They’ll want a lot more information than you’ve given me, and they won’t waste a lot of time getting it. If you value your skin even a little bit, you’ll cooperate.”

“What now?” I asked. We had walked away from the car and were talking quietly.

“The agency guys will bleed him dry,” Jock said.

“Then what?”

“I think Mr. Cantreras will disappear.”

“He seemed kind of resigned to it,” I said.

“These guys go through life killing people, never thinking too much about what they’re doing, how the death of one effects so many others, family, friends, associates. But they also seem to have a fatalistic attitude. Death isn’t a big deal. They don’t expect to make it to retirement age, so they’re not really surprised when somebody comes along to take them out. If it wasn’t me, the gangbangers would get him sooner or later. As soon as he was a threat to them, or they didn’t need him anymore, somebody would put a bullet in his head.”

“I guess that’s why he was talking so freely.”

“Yeah. A few busted ribs let him know I was serious. He’s probably already dead in his own mind. When my guys pick him up, they’ll take him somewhere for a few days, give him plenty to eat, fix his ribs, and get every morsel of information he has. Then, sayonara, baby.”

Jock had arranged for a retrieval team from his agency to be standing by just off the interstate ramp about five miles away. I saw headlights turn into the grove track and Jock and I pulled our pistols and took up positions that put the rental car between us and the oncoming vehicle. It stopped as soon as the headlights picked us up. A door opened and a man got out, standing beside what I could now make out as a black SUV. “Spooky place for a spook,” he said.

The recognition code. “Beats Budapest,” said Jock, giving the agreed response. “Who’re you?”

“Jim Austin, Jock,” the man said.

“Damn,” said Jock, walking toward the man who was now standing in the headlights. “I told them to send me somebody competent.”

“Screw you, Algren. I brought a rookie with me. I think he’s minimally competent.”

Jock had reached the man and they embraced. “Damn, it’s good to see you, Jim,” Jock said. “Last I heard you were somewhere in North Africa.”

“Just got back,” the man said. “I was enjoying a little down time in Tampa when the old man called and said I needed to pull your nuts out of the fire. Again.”

Jock laughed. “Matt, this shadow of the man he once was, is Jim Austin. We went through training together. A long time ago. Jim, this is Matt Royal. He has clearance on everything. Directly from the old man.”

I assumed the old man they were talking about was Dave Kendall, their agency director. I shook hands with Jim, and Jock went to get our prisoner. A young man, the minimally competent rookie I guessed, was standing by the passenger side of the SUV, pistol in his hand hanging down by his leg. Austin waved him over as Jock walked up with his left hand clamped around Cantreras’s bicep. “I want you to meet the legend,” said Austin. “Jock Algren. And this is Matt Royal.”

“Glad to meet you, sir,” said the rookie. “I’ve been hearing about you since I started my training.”

“I made a lot of that stuff up,” said Jock. “Looks good in the reports.”

The rookie laughed and took control of Cantreras, leading him back to the SUV. Jock handed Austin the digital recorder on which he’d taped his interrogation of Cantreras.

“This all of it?” Austin asked.

“Yeah. You going to do the follow-up?”

“Probably. Somebody’s coming down from D.C. to help out.”

“Let me know what you find out.”

“No sweat,” said Austin. “Got to hit the road. Great seeing you, Jock.” He nodded in my direction. “Matt.”

Austin backed the vehicle between some trees, made a three-point turn, and followed the track back to the highway. Jock and I got back in the rental, and he started the same maneuver that Austin had used. He backed up into a row between the trees, dropped the gear shift into drive, and an automatic rifle let go, bullets stitching the passenger side of the car. The shooter had fired low or I would have gotten a head full of lead. Adrenalin surged and took over. We both bailed, hitting the ground, pulling our pistols. I rolled under the car and came out on the driver’s side next to Jock. I thought if there were other shooters taking aim at the left side of the car, he’d have let go at the same time as the guy who fired.

“What the hell?” asked Jock, his voice low, tense.

“Got to be gangbangers,” I said.

“How did they find us?”

“They probably followed your buddies in the SUV. Those things might as well have ‘cops’ written all over them.”

The shooter let go with another burst. We heard bullets hitting metal, but none came close to us. “I hope you got the extra insurance when you rented this car,” I said.

“Maybe I can get Jim Austin back here,” he said, dialing his cell. He closed it. “No answer.”

“Somebody’s going to be circling around behind us,” I said. “We can’t stay here.”

“I’m open to any ideas.”

“Let’s move back into the trees,” I said. “If someone’s trying to get behind us, we’ll have as good a chance of seeing them as they will of seeing us.”

Jock nodded and we started moving backward, crouching, scanning all around us, trying to see the gangbangers before they saw us. Another burst of fire dinged off the rental. “They’re trying to keep us occupied,” said Jock. “Somebody’s got to be coming from the other side.”

“Let’s separate,” I said. “Get some space between us. If they’re as stupid as I think they are, they’ll come straight in. Maybe we can get them in the middle.”

We moved through the trees on our bellies. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, but my field of vision was very limited. The overcast sky still
blocked any available light from stars and moon. The citrus trees loomed in the darkness, their trunks and low-hanging branches adding a sinister touch to the landscape. I heard another fusillade rip from the automatic rifle. No other sounds, the animals that lived in the grove scared silent by the sounds of gunfire and humans slithering through the dead leaves that covered the ground.

The trees were heavy with green fruit that would ripen and be ready for picking in the next month or so. I reached up and twisted a hard orange from its limb and tossed it to my left, the side away from Jock. I wanted to see if the movement would draw fire. It didn’t. I waited a few minutes while making my way farther into the grove. I picked another orange and heaved it. The sound of the fruit hitting the limbs of the trees in the distance drew fire this time. Pistol fire. I saw the muzzle flash about twenty yards to my left.

I crawled toward the sounds of a person thrashing around in the leaves. I was quiet, barely disturbing the ground cover. Jock was silent. If I was dead, a shout from him wouldn’t do any good, and if I was moving toward our shooters, any noise he made might serve as a warning to the bad guys.

I heard the sounds of footsteps on the leaves. They were close, maybe only a few feet away. I lay still, listening. More footsteps. Coming my way. I aimed my nine millimeter in front of me. Silence. A minute passed, two. Then the sound of footsteps, approaching closer. They stopped. Whoever he was, he was nervous, not sure of what awaited him. Another step, two, three. I saw a person, really just a black spot in my field of vision, a little darker than the surroundings. He moved again, took a couple of steps and stopped. He was still coming my way, slipping toward the rental. He’d have to step right over me to get there. I lay there in the leaves, stock-still, like a big cat crouched downwind of its intended prey, waiting for the moment to pounce.

The man came closer. I could see him better now. He was a small man, a large pistol in his hand, pointing toward the ground. He was taking it slow, creeping up on what he thought were two unsuspecting gringos hiding behind the car.

The little man was two steps from me when I heard the loud report of
a shotgun blast coming from the direction of the rental. The man in front of me flinched and I shot him in the knee. He screamed and dropped his gun, falling to the ground, writhing in pain. I scratched around among the leaves until I touched his pistol. I threw it into the grove and stood over him, my pistol pointed at his head. I don’t think he was even aware of me. He squirmed and moaned and bled.

“Jock, are you okay?” It was Jim Austin, his voice coming from near the car we’d abandoned.

“I’m fine, Jim,” said Jock, shouting to be heard. “Matt?”

“I’m here, Jock. I’ve got one of the little bastards.”

“There were only two of them,” said Jim. “I’m coming toward you. Don’t shoot.”

I saw a flashlight coming through the trees. “Over here, Jim,” I said.

Jim came into view carrying a shotgun, Jock right behind him. “What’ve we got here?” Jim asked.

“This one was trying to sneak up on us,” I said.

Jim shined the flashlight on the little man on the ground. I recognized him. He was the one who had been driving the lowrider on Longboat Key earlier in the day. “I’ll be damned,” I said.

Jock took a closer look. “We know this pissant, Jim. He was threatening Matt this morning on Longboat Key. What about the one you took out?”

“My rookie’s over there with the body, or what’s left of it.” He patted his shotgun. “This baby does a lot of damage at close range.”

“Where’s Cantreras?” I asked.

“He’s parked out on the highway, locked up in our car.”

“What brought you back here?” asked Jock.

“We saw the lowrider parked on the berm of the highway when we were leaving. Looked like gangbangers, so we decided to sneak back for a look. When I saw Jock’s caller ID on my phone, I figured there must be trouble.”

“Thanks for answering,” Jock said, sarcastically.

“Didn’t want to get into a conversation,” said Jim. “By the time you called, we were parked just out on the highway and had heard the gunshots. I thought a little stealth might be in order.”