Hostage in Havana - Noel Hynd

Ramirez picked up the narrative.

“Now put that in the back of your mind, Alex, and consider a more recent case when a similar sniper fired on a motorcade driving Ramon Inezia, the chief of Colombia’s national anti-narcotics squad, to the airport. Inezia’s car was armor plated and thought to be bulletproof. But the sniper had a new bullet that was ahead of the glass technology used by Mercedes Benz. Three bullets hit the car. One got Inezia in the neck. The other got him in the head. The third hit the vehicle’s fuel line and killed the driver when the vehicle exploded. Quite an efficient bit of shooting from about four hundred meters at a fast-moving car. There’s television footage available. Sort of Zapruder-style. You can see the Mercedes speeding along, first with an impact point and then the whole back window blows apart, as does the late Sr. Inezia’s head a nanosecond later. We can arrange a viewing if you like.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Alex said.

“Then take our word for the rest of it too,” Ramirez said. “We have staff people who get paid to correlate these things. There’s one smart girl who works with a computer in the Miami office; whenever there’s a hit of any notoriety in the world, she throws all the possible links into it. Then we play back all the links, things of substance, rumors, whatever. In both of the above cases, as well as several older ones, we believe this Manuel Perez was the gunman.”

“Only a few people in the world can work a rifle like that,” MacPhail said.

“Now, both Sanchez and Inezia had a lot of enemies,” Ramirez said, taking up the dialogue. “But both of them had locked horns with the Dosi organization and both were involved in preparing indictments against them and their empire.”

Alex listened carefully.

“Perez is someone we track as best we can. We tend to know where he’s been and try to have a projection about where he’ll be. We have several hundred high-profile shooters in our files. Most are Russian or Middle Eastern these days, but the ones associated with the Colombian and Mexican gangs are in our database too.”

“Plus a few of our own, I’m sure,” Alex added.

“We know Perez was in Colombia the week of the Inezia hit. And he was in Mexico for Sanchez.” He paused. “Do you think Senora and Senor Dosi knew that your operation was on the verge of striking against them?” he asked.

“I’m certain they were aware of Parajo,” Alex said. “We speeded things up and made arrests sooner than we’d hoped. Word was getting around, and we were worried that the Dosis were going to travel to Israel to get beyond extradition.”

“True enough,” MacPhail said. “Our source in Panama told us that last week and added that Senora Dosi had interviewed a professional shooter in Belize. Big man, spoke Spanish. Arrived by private plane with his family, left the same way. Our surveillance film got the visit. Physical stature works for Perez, but we didn’t get a face. Anyway, the rumor gets better. Said she paid him a big-time sum of money and that he was on a new assignment. The assignment’s in New York. And the target’s a woman.”

“So,” said Ramirez, “put it all together. The bottom line is, you organized a massive operation against the Dosis, and your work is costing them millions of dollars and, if you’re successful, their freedom.”

She fingered the photo and stared into the black eyes of her would-be killer.

“So is he in New York?” Alex asked.

“We doubt it,” MacPhail said. “Our spotters think he went to Mexico City first. But then there’s the issue of our borders with Mexico. Fact is, he could be anywhere.”

“Do you have a security system at home?” Ramirez asked.

“No. I can take a hint. I’ll get one.”

De Salvo leaned forward. “We’ll have it in place by tomorrow, Alex,” he said. “We’ll take it out of our Rodent Fund. Also, we’ll need to put some interior bullet proof glass in as quickly as possible, unless you’re willing to move very quickly, which is actually what we’d prefer. Temporarily, of course.”

Alex sighed.

“You have a gun?” MacPhail asked.

She reached to her hip and showed off the baby Glock. “Of course, I do,” she said. “Several if you want to know.”

“The FBI doesn’t have enough free personnel to protect you,” MacPhail said, “but we’ve spoken with the U.S. Marshal Service. They can put a few agents on this to act as support for us, at least until we get Perez – or at least neutralize him. Would that work? The marshals have already been assigned and should be in your building by midnight. And until we get Perez, you don’t ride the subway, you don’t walk anywhere, and you don’t run in Central Park. While you’re at it, you don’t leave your window shades up either.”

“He’s a long-range sniper, Alex,” Ramirez said. “Or at least that’s how he usually works. This isn’t something to take too lightly.”

“Why aren’t the marshals in place already?” De Salvo asked. “What’s the delay? “

“Just logistics,” said Ramirez. “Getting agents off one assignment and onto another. It has to happen in the real world, not cyber space. Listen, we just came in on this a few hours ago.”

Alex leaned back in her chair, unhappy.

“How do you know so much about this Perez?” she asked.

They looked at each other. There was a long pause.

“We trained him,” MacPhail said.

“He’s U.S. Army, retired,” Ramirez added. “We know everything about him – except where he lives.”

“The thing is,” said MacPhail, “we have a wonderful opportunity here to bring several cases together at once – as long as he doesn’t shoot you first.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m happy about that.” She looked back and forth at them.

“If the marshals start tomorrow,” she said, “what am I supposed to do tonight?”

Ramirez smiled. “That’s why we’re here,” he said. “Consider us your escort service for the rest of the day.”

“I’m honored,” she said.

SIXTEEN

MacPhail and Ramirez led Alex from the elevator to the parking garage beneath her office building. It was past six in the evening, but the garage was still busy. Her bodyguards walked her to a Lincoln Navigator. Black. Tinted windows. Bulletproof. Alex slid into the backseat. MacPhail took the wheel; Ramirez slid in beside Alex.

“Tough day, huh?” MacPhail said.

“I’ve had worse,” she said.

“We all have, I guess,” he said. “You okay, Jorge?” he asked.

Ramirez gave a thumbs-up gesture.

“Hey, look, Alex,” Ramirez said. “I can call you ‘Alex,’ right?”

“Sure,” she said.

“We got this,” he said. “Gets us through more than a few days.” He motioned to a small compact cabinet between the seats. He opened it to reveal a compact mini bar as the SUV started to move. “We can’t join you; we’re on duty. But you can unwind.”

“Have one on the taxpayers,” MacPhail said. “They’ll never know.”

Ramirez was helpful, pulling some ice out of a small chest. There was an array of half-size liquor bottles – Irish, Scotch, Canadian, Vodka, and gin – and soft drinks, water, and mixer.

“Mineral water would be fine,” she said.

Ramirez poured her a glass.

“Taxpayers’ money?” she asked, motioning to the bar.

“Sure. But they don’t know,” Ramirez said.

Then the vehicle left the ramp and crept into the Wall Street traffic. Alex drew a breath and eased back. She looked out the window and longed to be one of the normal people, with a normal job, not someone with a target on her head.

The SUV accessed West Side Highway and began the crawl uptown through the rush-hour traffic. If she could choose, she thought to herself, she would have donned a pair of walking shoes and hiked. The exercise would have done her good. But not today, she told herself. What about tomorrow? How long was she going to be under informal house arrest?

She opened her laptop to distract herself. More documents from work. Various agencies from South and Central America were sending her information that she already knew. She clicked the first one open and scanned.

The Government of Panama should continue implementing the reforms it has undertaken to its anti-money-laundering regime in order to reduce the vulnerability of Panama’s financial sector and to enhance Panama’s ability to investigate and prosecute financial crimes, including money laundering and potential terrorist financing.

She moaned. She went on to the next. More bureaucratic claptrap:

Colombian narco-traffickers are perhaps the most adapted and prepared for work in Panama. They thrive on the ability to constantly change routes, members of their network, and technology, such as cell phones and other communication devices.

“Really, Einstein?” she grumbled silently. “I never would have known.”

At a red light, she glanced out the window. They were on Eighth Avenue at 45th Street, west of the Broadway theater district. Down 45th she could see the glowing marquees of the theaters. She realized that what she really wanted to do more than anything was to tell her driver to pull over so she could jump out and run over to the TKTS booth on Broadway and score a ticket to anything.

Another thought. Two million clams in the bank. Did she really need a job where she could get zipped any minute? She tried to go back to work, bury herself. More bull from some South American police agency:While Panama offers a wide range of options for smugglers, geography is only a fringe benefit. Colombian boats that pass through Panama must stop along the route to refuel or transport the shipment from one boat to another. This practice invariably requires that individuals in other Central American countries become involved in the race to move drugs from Colombia north and money and guns south.

Man’s greed and nefarious nature could always trump the good that other men and women were trying to do. Two centuries earlier, over the same routes, it was slaves, rum, and molasses. Now it’s coke, guns, and contraband currency. Maybe she was just being a fool to think she could make a difference. A fool, a fool, a fool.Nicaragua is the next stop for drug shipments moving north along the coast and has a plethora of guns left over from a lengthy civil war. Guns make for perfect currency. And like Panama, much of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast is a semi-autonomous area with little to no government presence. Small towns like Bluefields, Nicaragua, have become perfect stop-off points for Colombian traffickers, who bring with them not only the bounty of what local fishermen have begun to call the “white lobster,” but also the devastation of addiction that comes with it.

Great. And indicting the Senora and Senor Dosi was going to stop that? Whatever had possessed her to go into law enforcement? She smelled career change. It’s not like she needed to work for a few years, maybe a decade. Federov had seen to that. But what would God have her do? Mission work? Where? The answers didn’t come easy.

Traffic ground to a halt near Columbus Circle. On impulse, she grabbed her cell phone. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt like talking to Paul Guarneri. Not Ben, but Paul. Maybe because he had grown up around violence and greed. Maybe because she sensed, in a funny sort of way, that he grasped the world better than she did.

Older? Wiser? More cynical? All of the above? None of the above? Who knew?

As the car broke free from congestion, Alex dialed Paul’s cell phone. Two rings, three. Then it kicked to voicemail.

“We’re here, Alex,” Ramirez said.

She looked up and saw the canopy of her building. She cut off her phone call and left no message. She dropped the phone back into her purse.

SEVENTEEN

Unlike Alex, Paul Guarneri had had an excellent day.

He had used his contacts at the New York Police Department to find a woman to accompany him to Cuba. She was a city detective on leave, named Ramona Galvez, Puerto Rican by ancestry, fluent in Spanish, adept with weapons. She could easily pose as his wife. He had interviewed her that day and was inclined to make an offer. Ramona was tough. Five-eight, a hundred and fifty pounds, much of it brawn. She looked like she could throw people through walls and that could be an asset for this kind of trip. So Guarneri was pleased.

Alex remained his first choice, but it was evident that that wasn’t going to happen. So all that remained was for Guarneri to phone Alex, withdraw his offer, and explore things further with Ramona. Sometimes, he told himself, second choices work out well. Sometimes even better. Anyway, he mused, you have to play the cards life deals you. His father, the casino guy and occasional philosopher, used to tell him that.

At his home on Long Island, sitting in his den, he wanted to give it a few more minutes of thought. He glanced at his watch. Normally, Alex worked late. Should he call her at her office or at home?

Home might be better, he figured. Or, for that matter, her cell. His housekeeper would be serving dinner soon. Better make the call sooner rather than later.

He reached for his cell phone and realized it was turned off. When he clicked it back on and allowed it to boot up, he looked at the calls he had missed and recognized Alex’s number. Strange, he pondered. What did she want?

EIGHTEEN

Eleven stories above 62nd Street, Alex unlocked her apartment door and then stepped aside. Special Agent Ramirez drew his weapon and entered. She waited in the corridor.

Ramirez threw on the light, stopped, and listened. He went to the bedroom and looked. No one. He checked the closets. He returned to the living room, moved swiftly through the dining and kitchen area, then moved to the extra bedroom that Alex used as a study and guest room.

He checked every closet and any other place someone might be hiding. He looked for any signs of tampering or disruption. He saw none. It was a quick eyeball search, but he was good at it. He placed his gun back in its holster and went back to the front door.

“All clear,” he said. “Welcome home.”

Alex and Special Agent MacPhail stepped in. MacPhail looked toward the window. “Nice view of Manhattan,” he said, “but I need to drop the blinds. Can never be too sure.”

Alex had too much reading to keep her mind off work, but at least the ride home had relaxed her. “Right,” she muttered. Then, “Hey,” Alex said, “those blinds are tricky. I’ll get them.”

“No, no,” MacPhail said. “You stay back. I’ll get them.”

She put down her purse and her laptop. She cut off MacPhail and walked to the window.

NINETEEN

Three hundred meters away, across several Manhattan rooftops, Manuel Perez stiffened and frowned. He could not believe his eyes. The light that had just gone on in Alex’s apartment was the first signal that his moment was at hand. But then someone, a man who looked like a bodyguard, had come in first and gone from room to room, as if looking for something. Pieces of a puzzle flew apart and scrambled in his head. If police were searching her apartment, and if she was right there – as he could see she was several seconds later – then somehow the secrecy of his assignment had been compromised. Somehow the Americans had found out about the hit and were taking steps to prevent it. That being the case, and he quickly surmised that it was, he either took his shot now or he might never get another chance.