The Candidate (Romantic Suspense) (The Candidate Series) (13 page)

What had Digits called Padilla? Oh yeah, a
puppet
.

Now they wanted him to be their puppet, too.

Ben patted his mouth with his napkin. When he was done, he looked Paul right in the eye. 

“Forget it. Ain’t happening. But thanks for lunch.” He stood up to leave. “Oh, and by the way, don’t doubt that I will be telling Andy about this little conversation.”

Paul turned white. For a second a fog enveloped his eyes. Finally he closed them, fatigue and failure heavy on his lids. “Yeah, okay. Your integrity in regard to your client is duly noted. To be honest with you, it was only out of concern for Abby that I’m asking.” Paul’s eyes softened as he spoke of her. “You know, I introduced the two of them. I was the best man at their wedding. And I—I dated her before he did. I only wished she had fallen for me instead.” 

“Seems to me she made the right choice. It’s always nice when your spouse can stand on his own two feet. But to do that, you need a spine.” 

Ben’s insult hit its mark. He could tell by the way Paul sat upright. 

Frowning, Paul signaled for the check. “She’s known these people all of her life. She grew up with them. But if he continues on this path, they’ll drop her and never look back. She’ll have to go back with him to his daddy’s pig farm and learn to love it.” 

If that’s your Hail Mary play, it sucks. It’s a piss poor reason to sell out your friend. 

“Your loyalty to Abby is touching, Paul. When this is all over and Abby is First Lady, I’m sure you’ll get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. As will the rest of her loyal friends. So tell them to hang in there. It’ll be worth the wait.” 

Ben walked away without a backward glance. 

Chapter 27

 “You’ve fucked up. Again.” 

No hello, what’s happening, lay it on me, nothing. Smith hadn’t expected warm fuzzies from Talbot, but the least the bastard could do was hear him out. 

Since the Jorge Leon debacle, Ghost Squad activities in Venezuela had been unsuccessful at best, and fatal at worst. Padilla’s personal chef sacrificed his beloved
abuela
rather than poison the leader’s favorite dessert:
arroz con leche
. And the operative who threatened to expose one of Padilla’s generals as a bathhouse regular in Caracas’s gay underground had been found in a trunk, chopped up into little pieces. Attached to a forlorn middle finger was a note that read
“Cochinos gringos, coño e madre!”

 So yeah, no matter how much lipstick Smith slapped on that pig of an operation, bottom line was that he’d fucked it up, royally. 

“The latest polls show Mansfield right on my heels, no thanks to your incompetence. Hell, your men couldn’t even bug his campaign offices properly!” 

Smith winced. It stuck in his craw that the electronic surveillance had somehow been stymied. “Didn’t you say you have someone on the inside? What kind of recon are you getting?”

“It sucks. Hasn’t been the intel windfall we were hoping for.”

“Perhaps I should be handling the asset.” It was a sore point with Smith that he wasn’t being given full control of the mission.

“Why? So you can fuck that up, too?” Talbot ran his hand through his few thin hairs. “I’m surrounded by incompetents! In the meantime Mansfield’s numbers—and his online donations—are through the damn roof! Everyone loves him: College kids, soccer moms, Joe Sixpacks. Hell, the Lipstick Lobby wants to date him.” 

Smith started to point out to Talbot that he still had the Evangelicals on his side, now that photos of Clyde Dooley’s crossdressing had been leaked to the public, but he bit his tongue. Talbot wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Well then, that leaves the door open to innuendo. We can always rustle up an old girlfriend or two who’d be willing to vouch that he still sees her, on the sly. That would shred his credibility.” 

Talbot shifted his bulk uncomfortably. “It’s not that easy. At least not in this case. The old men don’t want another salacious Republican scandal. And time is getting short—”

For once Talbot was right about that. At this point, only a Hail Mary pass would do, but Talbot had already balked at the one thing that would put him over the top.

 Bastard just didn’t have the stomach for it.

 Oh, well. Early retirement wouldn’t be so bad. All of Smith’s money was already offshore. All he had to do was find a warm, sandy beach somewhere, preferably topless—

“—How many times is it, now? You’re becoming a liability. To everyone,” Talbot hissed. “A vote was taken last night, and you don’t want to know how close you came to...Well, never mind—”

Don’t threaten me, you overstuffed bag of wind, Smith thought.  I can crush your larynx with my thumb, and be in Bangkok before they find your bloated corpse in the Chesapeake—

“—happy to hear that I’ve reconsidered your previous proposal.”

The palm trees faded against the new reality of the situation. “Come again?”

“I got the old men to agree to your Plan B.”

Smith adjusted his rearview mirror carefully. “You’re saying, you’ve gotten approval for the fake attack, here in the US?”

“What, do I have to draw you a picture?” Talbot’s smirked. “It’s a go. But there are some preconditions.”

“Such as?”

Talbot pulled a folded paper from his pocket. Smith glanced over the typed list.

“These cities have to be exempted. They are too important as business centers. And besides, the real estate is too expensive.”

You mean, the old men have too many investments in them, Smith thought. He tried hard to keep a straight face. “You can rest easy. Even I can’t envision Padilla invading Aspen.”

Talbot’s look of relief was evidence he missed the joke. No surprise there. “Great. So, what would be a viable target, in your opinion?”

“Las Vegas. On New Year’s Eve. Big crowds, lots of news coverage already.”

Talbot sniffed. “Works for me.”

Smith had never doubted it. Downscale and fly-over. Filled with drunk tourists in polyester. And conventioneers. Nope, not Talbot’s kind of town, at all. 

Smith went in for the kill. “We only have ten weeks, so we have to work fast. It will require some serious resources. Will the old men be up for it?”

“At this point they’ll do anything to save those oil revenues. Just don’t skim so much that it’s too obvious. Now then, what’s your idea?”

Gotcha, thought Smith. “Let’s call it, oh, I don’t know...say, ‘Operation Flamingo.’ Here’s what I’m thinking–”  

Even as he laid out his plans, Smith made a mental note to stop back through Vegas in the second week in January. On the bright side, right after the incident, there’d be a dearth of johns roaming through the local cathouses. The price of pussy would drop to an all-time low. 

Chapter 28

“Miss Guerrero, in your twenty years as a customs official here in the Port of Miami, you’ve built quite an impressive record for spotting illegals.”

 As Mr. Smith of the White House’s Special Terrorism Task Force took her plump dimpled hand into his firm handshake, Rosa Guerrero felt she was going to burst with pride. Well, now the one her papa called
mi pequeña solterona
–“my little spinster¬”–was finally getting her due!

Mr. Smith had arranged to meet her right before she started her shift. They rendezvoused at a Starbucks in South Beach, right near Pier Park. There out beyond the shore, large ocean liners could be seen cruising languidly in or out of port. It was the perfect place to make his point: how she would be her adopted country’s first line of defense for a new wave of terrorists, not from the Middle East—or even Cuba, the country she had left as a boat person—but from an even bigger threat: 

Cuba’s wealthier neighbor, Venezuela. 

“You’ve seen how it has become a rogue nation,” Mr. Smith declared. “How, for years, it’s been propping up the dictator of your native land.” 

 Just the thought of Padilla, that Castro wannabe, made Rosa’s blood boil. She envisioned the boatloads that would soon be washing up along Miami’s shores. 

Boats carrying little girls and their parents—the best and the brightest, destitute and having to start their lives over again from scratch.

“This is a very special assignment, one that requires your total discretion.” Mr. Smith lowered his voice and leaned in. The way he placed his hand on her shoulder encouraged her to do the same. “Our success depends on how well you do your job. At this point, no one–not even your direct supervisor, Mr. Cameron, will know your role in Operation Flamingo.”

Rosa nodded. That was fine with her. Cameron was an idiot, just counting down the days until his retirement. If anything,
El Stupido
chastised her for the number of shifty characters she pulled over. Worse yet, if the aliens raised a fuss, he sided with them, not her. Once she caught him calling her a frustrated old maid behind her back. When she turned him in, all he learned in the mandatory two-week sensitivity training session was to ignore her, and to schedule her for even worse shifts. Yes, she was ready for the challenge of Operation Flamingo. Anything to get her out from under the thumb of that
cerdo machista.

“We anticipate you’ll find at least three or four a week, over the next four weeks,” Mr. Smith continued. “Their M.O. is this: single males, mid-twenties to mid-thirties. All have blue or green eyes. All hail from small villages. You are to determine whether they have any family to speak of, either stateside or back home. If not, then they may be the men we are looking for. They will be working menial jobs, most likely on cruise ships. You should take the papers of anyone who fits this description, and keep them dockside. Then dial this special number and our interrogators will come to assist you. It’s as simple as that.” 

Noting Rosa’s wariness, Smith smiled and murmured, “Needless to say, with your extra duties will come additional compensation. Your salary is $42,000 a year, am I right? We will pay you a bonus of $2,000 for each bona fide terrorist you ID.”

Four a week, at $2,000 a pop? That condo she longed to buy right there in South Beach would finally be within reach...

Suddenly Rosa frowned. As much as she wanted to help, a few too many inquisitions would have Cameron questioning her motives. She could just imagine his smirks, or some disgraceful utterance, just loud enough for her and her coworkers to hear, about how her time of the month was now in its third consecutive week. That filthy
pingita
.

 “Of course I will do whatever my country needs. My boss, though, he can be—well, let’s just say he’s less patriotic.
¿Entiendes, Señor Smith?
”

“
Si, entiendo perfectamente
.” Smith’s smile was reassuring. “All the more reason for Mr. Cameron’s retirement to take place as soon as possible. It is all too obvious to my superiors that he is out of touch with the reality of our terrorist situation.” He gave Rosa’s hand a gentle pat. “And I can’t imagine a better, more patriotic replacement than you.” 

Rosa couldn’t contain herself. A spontaneous genuflection was followed by a bear hug that caught Smith totally off guard. 

His first impulse was to reach for his gun. His second was to brush his hand across her nipple to determine if the rumors that Rosa Guerrero was still a virgin were true. Her gasp, followed by a shameful smile, told him it was.

Perfect. A fifty-year-old virgin. Playing her during the coming weeks would be a piece of cake. 

After she delivered the goods, he’d thank her properly. Then he’d exterminate her afterward, of course.

No doubt about it, the last night of her life would end with a bang. 

Chapter 29

Mr. Smith’s raid on Titus Wainwright’s two-hundred-acre compound off of State Highway 89 in the middle of the Arizona Strip took place during the wee hours in the morning of his honeymoon night with Tina, the newest and youngest of his sister wives. 

The prophet, a renegade even within the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints sect, had just mounted the thirteen-year-old girl for the second time when the door to the bedroom was blown off its hinges, and a SWAT team of eight men rushed in. Waving their high-powered rifles and shouting orders, they dragged Prophet Titus off the bed then pistol-whipped him in front of the shocked, whimpering girl. One of the men was thoughtful enough to toss the blood-smeared bed sheet to Tina before shuttling them both out of the room, through the family barracks, and out to join Titus’s eight other wives and his twenty-six children on the bus that would carry them out of the compound.

Whereas the rest of the trespassers were dressed in heavy black body armor, helmets, and night vision goggles, the one waiting by the bus was dressed neatly in a dark suit and tie. The name on his wallet badge said SMITH. 

Smith’s satellite reconnaissance of the compound had intimated that it would make an ideal base in which to carry out Operation Flamingo. Now that he was on the ground there, he saw for himself that it was perfect. The large barracks were centered deep inside the two-hundred-acre spread so far off the two-lane road that it almost didn’t exist. If it weren’t for the barbed wire fence that went all the way around the property, no one would even know that the land wasn’t part of the national park that bounded the desert on the southeast side.

 “You got yourself quite a little kingdom of heaven out here in the middle of the bumfuck boonies, now don’t you, Prophet?” Mr. Smith smirked at Tina in her bed sheet. Like most nonbelievers, this one was unable to comprehend Titus’s hold over so many women, particularly the young ones. “Too bad you’ll be stuck in a living hell for the rest of your life, and never be able to use it. Let’s see now: We’ve got you on tax fraud. Hell, the income you’ve made from that call center boiler room you’ve been running out here in this godforsaken desert will put you away for a long time, say twenty or so years. There are also the multiple child rape charges to take into consideration. But if we put you away in Maximum, that’s an automatic death sentence, you know, what with the way the general prison population feels about child molesters—”