The door to the motel office was locked, and David hit the buzzer a half-dozen times before a light snapped on. His eyes swept the street continually for any sign of Humvees from the base.
“Morning,” a man in a red bathrobe greeted sleepily.
“I need a room,” David said as calmly as he could manage, his numb, dripping hand hidden from sight.
“I figured that much. Come on in.”
As he staggered into the office, David managed to work a pair of twenties into his good hand and told the clerk to keep the change. He’d cleanse and wrap the bad one as best he could in the room. Maybe even ring up the clerk for some alcohol and bandages in exchange for another twenty. But first the phone. Reach his sister Kristen, then do something about the pain.
David locked and chained the door to Room 7 behind him. The room had a bed, a desk, a chair, a television, and a bureau. That was all, besides a bathroom. God, how he needed a shower. The stench of fear and blood formed a thick coat over his flesh. What remained of his shirt was soaked through with sweat. His long hair was wet and matted.
But the shower could wait. The telephone was on the desk, and he turned on the small lamp over it before dialing Kristen’s number. Eyes perched on the drawn blinds in search of stray headlights, he willed it to ring, his sister to
answer. He let his torn hand dangle and blood from it dripped freely onto the carpet.
One ring. Two.
“Come on,” he urged. “Come on.”
Three rings. Then a click.
Thank God!
“Kristen,” David started.
“Hi, this is Kristen Kurcell. I’m not home right now, but at the tone leave—”
“Damn!”
Five o’clock in the fucking morning and she wasn’t home. Or maybe she was home and just had the machine on so the phone wouldn’t wake her. The message ended. The beep sounded.
“Kristen, are you there? Kristen, it’s David. If you’re there, please pick up. Pick up!”
He was almost shouting in the end, realizing either she wasn’t home or couldn’t hear him.
“Okay,” he continued, settling himself. “I’m in trouble, Kris, big trouble. You’re not gonna believe this, but about an hour ago I saw—”
The door to the motel room smashed inward. The chain rattled. Splinters and shards of wood flew everywhere.
“No,” David muttered, then screamed, “No!”
The big man in black with the ill-fitting straw-colored hair from the base emerged through the remnants of the door. David’s mouth had dropped for a scream when the gun the man was holding coughed twice. The bullets felt like kicks to his chest, pushing his shoulders back against the wall. The telephone slid out of his grasp. His feet weren’t his anymore. He felt himself sliding downward, eyes locking at the last on the receiver floating above the patch of blood that had oozed from his hand.
Then the big man loomed over him, something shiny sweeping down toward David’s head, about to dig in when the darkness swallowed everything.
CIA HEADQUARTERS:
THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 1994; 10:00 P.M.
Clifton Jardine, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, looked up from the final page of the report before him.
“How many copies of this are there, Mr. Daniels?”
“You’re reading the only one,” Tom Daniels replied, his voice high and slightly strained. “I typed it myself.”
“On disk?”
“By Olivetti. Sorry for the typos.”
Daniels was forty and had joined the Company straight out of college. Since then he had served effectively in a number of foreign bureaus before returning home to assume the mundane role of assistant deputy director of intelligence. It was a token promotion and one that would allow the Company to bury him in the bureaucracy he seemed best suited for. Nothing about him bode well for future advancement, especially his appearance. Tall and lanky, his plain suits were invariably ill-fitting. He wore his hair slicked down against its natural wave; his glasses were the photosensitive variety, but they never seemed to lighten sufficiently indoors, cloaking any expression his eyes might have shown. His voice was high and squeaky. Clifton Jardine could never recall meeting a man of less charisma. Daniels inspired no degree of confidence whatsoever, but the report the director was shuffling through again now spoke for itself.
“You’ll note that the appendix details the specific travel itineraries of the subjects, sir.”
Jardine looked up from the pages. “Subjects or suspects, Mr. Daniels?”
“The latter, by my interpretation.”
Jardine found the proper page in the appendix and spoke as he studied it. “For men like this, extensive travel is hardly unusual.”
“Again, sir, you should note that each of them visited the
same
eight countries over a six-month period. And the people they met with there …”
“By your own admission, you’re not certain of that. No hard data.”
“I wouldn’t expect there would be. The point is, we can place them together
in this country
five times over the past six months.” Daniels paused. “My report includes their backgrounds, their dossiers, what they had been a part of.”
“Emphasis on
had
, Mr. Daniels. Tense becomes crucial here.”
“It never stopped, sir. It redefined itself and kept pursuing its agenda underground.”
“And suddenly it resurfaces. Why now, Mr. Daniels?”
“Dodd, sir. He was the missing variable and the most important one.”
“An assertion totally lacking in hard evidence.”
“No, only indications. But they’re strong, irrefutable.” Daniels took a deep breath. “Dodd’s the one who will finally allow them to bring this off.”
“Bring
what
off exactly?” the director charged without giving him a chance to answer. “Your report seems to skirt that issue.”
Tom Daniels took a deep breath. “The overthrow of the United States government.”
The room became heavy with silence. Clifton Jardine’s eyes blazed across his desk, all at once uncertain.
“Then those foreign meetings—”
“The same agenda, by all indications, is being pursued across the globe. Maybe the United States isn’t enough for them anymore. Maybe watching events unfold dramatically in other countries is what finally brought them back.” Daniels
paused and removed his glasses to let his eyes meet the director’s. “Maybe, in fact, they caused those events.”
“And you’re confident the timetable you suggest is accurate?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
Jardine digested this information, then rose, a clear signal for Daniels to take his leave. “You were right to bring this to me, Mr. Daniels. When the response team is in place, I’ll make sure you liase.”
Daniels stood up, but made no move for the door. “Sir, if I may …”
“Please.”
“The fact is that the individuals mentioned in my report have been around longer than we have, longer than anyone in government has. We have no idea of how far or deep their sphere of influence extends.”
Jardine’s features flared. The notion that an underling with a token title could intimate such a thing was unthinkable. “Mr. Daniels, are you suggesting that my own people are not to be trusted?”
“I’m suggesting only that an operation of this scale involves too many people to be certain of them all, and under the circumstances, I’m sure you agree we must be certain.”
“You have something to propose as an alternative, I assume,” Jardine responded grudgingly.
“The smaller we keep the scale of our response, the better our chances of finding out how the subjects of my report intend to accomplish their goal.”
“How small, Mr. Daniels?”
“One man.”
Jardine fanned the report’s pages. “I see no inclusion of names of possible candidates in this.”
“Because there’s only one who is suitable, and I didn’t want to be logged pulling his file from the flagged pile.”
“Who are we talking about, Mr. Daniels?”
“Blaine McCracken, sir.”
Jardine’s response was to sit back in his chair and
squeeze its arms. “A strange choice, considering your past history with him.”
“Not when you consider McCracken is expendable, denounceable, and highly mobile.”
“Mobile?”
“You know his background. Nobody’s fought for this country harder than McCracken. No one’s proven himself more often in situations comparable to the one we’re facing now.”
“Your analysis, Mr. Daniels, would seem to indicate there is
nothing
comparable.”
“Granted, sir. McCracken has faced his share of madmen and psychopaths, but never anything like this. We could be talking about the end of government as we have come to know it in the United States. And it’s already begun. The indications are there.”
“You really believe they can pull this off, don’t you?”
“
They
think they can.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“But that’s the answer that matters. Because by all rights, what they’re planning to do is impossible. The mechanisms, the levels, the built-in protections of our government—they know about them as clearly as we do, clearer even. That can only mean they’ve found a way to transcend all of that.”
“An awful lot to transcend.”
“They’re planning something that makes it all possible, sir, something that we aren’t considering because we can’t. And unless we find out what it is, how they intend to pull this off, we won’t be able to stop them.”
“But McCracken will …”
“It’s what he does, sir.”
“ … because he’s highly mobile.”
“If he uncovers the how, that might be enough.”
Jardine tapped his fingers atop the lone copy of Daniels’s report. “Given your past dealings with him, what makes you think he’ll listen to you?”
“He won’t be able to pass up the meeting, sir, for that very reason.”
“You’ll want to run him yourself, then.”
“No one runs Blaine McCracken, sir. But if you mean liase, yes. As I said, the fewer people involved in this, the better.”
“He won’t trust you, Mr. Daniels.”
“That’s what I’m counting on, sir. I don’t want him to trust me or anyone else totally. It’ll be enough if he believes.”
Jardine lifted the report from his desk uneasily, as if portions of it were hot. “I’ll want to be kept informed of every step,” he said finally.
“Of course, sir.”
“When you reach McCracken, I’ll want to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When the meet is set, I’ll want to know.”
“I understand, sir.”
“And one more thing, Tom. Knock off the sir business. It’s Cliff from now on.” Jardine tried for a smile and failed. “With the secret the two of us are sharing, we should at least be on a first-name basis.”
“Throw him the fuck out the window!” Vincente Ventanna ordered.
The ferret-faced man in the baggy floral shirt sank to his knees pleadingly. “Please, Mr. Ventanna, it won’t happen again. I promise!”
Ventanna snorted a line of coke right off his fingertip. “You’re right, Hector. It won’t happen again because you’re gonna go splat eight stories down.” His glassy eyes climbed to the muscle-bound shapes looming over the drug dealer who had tried to cheat him. “Luis, Jesus.”
“Please,” Hector moaned, stinking of sweat and yesterday’s cologne. “Please!”
By then, though, Jesus and Luis had already dragged him out onto the balcony overlooking the ocean. Worst thing about tonight, Ventanna figured, was that he’d never be able to return to this, his favorite residence. Located off the Rickenbacker Causeway in the heart of Key Biscayne, Key Colony was one of Miami’s most fashionable condominium developments. Ventanna had owned this penthouse in the Tidemark building for a couple years now. Threw lots of good parties and did lots of good shit. Place brought him luck. But everything comes to an end, and shit, the Key hadn’t been the same since Hurricane Andrew gobbled up all the trees.
He reached the balcony just as Jesus finished prying Hector’s right hand off the railing. “Have a safe flight,
amigo
.”
Ventanna blew the remnants of the white powder off his fingertip. It caught in the wind and swirled about.
Jesus and Luis hurled Hector out into the night air.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Hector’s scream tailed off as he dropped. Ventanna reached the railing after he had landed with a thud on the cement between the building and the pool.
Ventanna began laughing hysterically. “Throw ’im the fuck out the window,” he wheezed between guffaws, an arm slapped around the shoulder of each of his henchmen. “Throw ’im the fuck out the window!”
His eyes had teared up from the laughing fit and he dabbed them with his sleeve as he stumbled back into the living room. “Okay, Marco, who we got next?”
A man in a peach-colored suit moved away from a door leading into one of the condo’s bedrooms. “Dude that’s been asking about you around South Beach. We picked him up at Strumpet’s.”
The smile vanished from Ventanna’s face. “A fag joint?”
Marco shrugged.
“You’re telling me this dude was looking for
Vincente Ventanna
. at a fag joint?”
Marco nodded.
Ventanna started laughing again. “I’m gonna throw him the fuck out the window, too.”
Hysterical, Ventanna dropped back into his chair and waved for the man to be brought out into the living room. He emerged between a pair of hulks who might have been twins of Jesus and Luis, Uzi submachine guns slung from their shoulders. Dude was a big man himself, upper body layered in a muscular V. He had a scruffy close-trimmed beard, curly hair, and the darkest eyes Ventanna had ever seen. His arms were tied in front of him, the sleeves pulled up to reveal a pair of thick, sinewy forearms. Dude had a hard face that didn’t waste an expression, angular with thin furrows cut out of his brow and lots of shadows to hide his secrets. Ventanna had the man dead to rights, but look at him and it seemed like he was in charge.
Ventanna settled himself down and took a sip from his hefty glass of iced vodka on the rocks. “Hey, amigo, what you doing looking for me in a fag joint?”
Those black eyes didn’t blink. “Seemed the best place to find the biggest asshole in Miami.”
Ventanna spit out a mouthful of vodka. “Hey, you got a sense of humor. You a funny dude.” He pulled himself to his feet and noticed a jagged scar that ran through the big man’s left eyebrow. “I like that. So you know what I’m gonna do?”
“Can’t wait to hear.”
“I’m gonna throw you the fuck out the window.”
Ventanna had barely got the sentence finished before collapsing in another fit of laughter. He looked up to see that, surprisingly, the bearded man had joined in.
“You think that’s funny,
amigo
?”
“No, I think you are.”
Jesus and Luis touched the Glock nine-millimeter pistols
wedged uncomfortably in their belts. Ventanna shook them off.
“You got balls, eh? You a reaaaaaaal tough guy.”
“A couple questions, then I leave.” The man’s dark eyes drifted to the balcony, empty like glass. Maybe the muscles in his forearms flexed a little. The shadows on his face seemed to spread outward, threatening to swallow it. “I’ll even forget about unscheduled Flight Hector.”
Ventanna climbed back to his feet. “Hey, thanks ever so much, maahn. I guess I owe you big time.”
“Your choice, Ventanna. Easy or hard.”
Ventanna tapped his finger against the air. “You know I mighta let you go if you hadn’t looked for me in a fag joint. I could overlook everything else except that. Now you know what I gotta do?”
“Throw me the fuck out the window?”
“You catch on fast,
amigo
.” His drug-glazed stare struggled to stay fixed on the black eyes of the big man. “Jesus, Luis!”
The two monsters came forward and grabbed the captive at either arm. The two who had been holding him backed off submissively.
“Throw him the fuck out the window!”
Jesus smashed the big man in the stomach, doubling him over. Luis followed with an elbow to the back of his head, which sent him to the marble floor.
“Hard, maahn,” Ventanna taunted. “I choose hard.”
They dragged the big man onto the balcony. Ventanna reached the sliding glass door just as they hoisted him back to his feet. His head had slumped over the rail.
“Bye-bye.”
Ventanna flapped his hand childishly, laughing as his monsters started pulling the big man forward.
Then something happened.
Because of the mind-dulling drugs he’d been downing all night, Ventanna saw it unfold in slow, surreal motion. First the big man’s arms, suddenly not bound at all, came up behind
the monsters’ heads. Then his whole frame was behind them, yanking the hulks brutally backwards by the collars and then shoving with equal force forward.
The monsters flew over the balcony screaming. The Glocks that had been wedged through their belts were now in the big man’s hands. They came up as Ventanna stood there, his feet melting into the marble.
The two other hulks back in the living room fought to get their Uzis unslung, and Blaine McCracken shot them both before either had touched his trigger. The man in the peach-colored suit had managed to free his pistol and aim it. But McCracken ducked behind the cover provided by the rigid Ventanna. When the man hesitated, McCracken put two nine-millimeter bullets in his chest. His peach suit turned red.
Blaine grabbed the still-stunned Ventanna and slammed him against the balcony. “You should have chosen easy.”
“Wh-wh-who are you?”
“The man who’s gonna throw you the fuck out the window.”
“No, maahn! Please! Just tell me what you want.”
“Might be too late for that,” Blaine said and shoved Ventanna’s head farther over the top rail.
“Please,
amigo
!”
Blaine pulled him back. “One chance, Ventanna.”
“Yes! Anything!
Anything!
”
“That’s good.”
Cassas stood on the corner of Florida Avenue and Mayfair Boulevard in Miami’s Coconut Grove, hating what he saw around him and loving what was about to become of it. Any night of the week will find Miami’s Coconut Grove cluttered with people into the early hours of the morning. Sidewalk and bar space is staked out and held fast to. Moving anywhere without jostling or being jostled becomes impossible. Salsa and rock music from jam-packed bars pour into the streets, lyrics warring to form little more than babble.
Teenagers cluster by the doors eyeing the mostly college-age patrons enviously, waiting for the proper moment to duck through. It all makes for an experiment in chaos.
No one in the Grove paid any attention to Cassas. He had spent a good part of his life blending in, and it was especially easy to blend in here among those who cared nothing for those they did not recognize. For all intents and purposes, he was invisible.
The cellular phone made a slight bulge in his inside jacket pocket, and Cassas kept his eyes directed toward the Cocowalk mall diagonally across the street. Pounding chords of rock music drifted from within it, courtesy of a live concert that had begun at midnight. A new song had begun; “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, Cassas noted. How fitting.
In the sky above him, a helicopter swooped lower to better direct its spotlight upon this cluttered mass of decadent humanity. To Cassas it seemed like one of those old war movies where the searchlight cuts back and forth across the prison camp through the long night in search of potential escapees. Well, this, too, was a prison, except no one was going to escape.
Cassas turned his gaze upward again. The chopper continued its sweep, cutting neat patterns out of the sky.
Not long now, he thought as he nearly collided with a big, bearded man in a white suit. Not long at all.
McCracken had first thought the man was drunk, then realized he was just staring up at the helicopter that was carving up the darkness with its spotlight. Blaine turned off Florida Avenue onto Mayfair Boulevard toward the centerpiece of Coconut Grove: Cocowalk, a four-story indoor/ outdoor mall complex formed of retail stores squeezed amidst sprawling nightclubs. He had left Vincente Ventanna bound and gagged in a garage storeroom of the Tidemark back at Key Colony just two hours before. It was closing on
one A.M. now, and the night in the Grove was still heating up. Blistering guitar riffs battled a Mick Jagger wanna-be for control of the air as “Sympathy for the Devil” continued.
“I’m looking for a gunrunner,” McCracken had said to Ventanna back on the penthouse balcony, the sound of approaching sirens drifting through the night. “Calls himself Manuel Alvarez. I believe you’ve made his acquaintance.”
“Yes, but he is little more than a strang—”
McCracken shoved Ventanna’s upper body over the edge. “You’ve decided to get into guns, Ventanna, and Alvarez has agreed to become your connection. In fact, he’s half of South Florida’s connection. Big market in the schools now, I understand. I want him.”
Ventanna looked in Blaine’s eyes fearfully. “I don’t know who you are,
amigo
, but you cannot get close to Alvarez.”
“No, Vincente. But you can. In fact you’ve got a meeting set with him for tonight. You’re going to tell me where.” McCracken eased back on the pressure and straightened Ventanna’s lapels. “And you’re going to lend me a suit.”
Since Ventanna wore his clothes long and oversized, the fit was acceptable. So, too, was the drug lord’s confirmation of the fact that tonight would mark the first time he would ever actually be meeting the mysterious Alvarez. He was to enter the Baja Beach Club in Cocowalk through the nightclub’s second-floor entrance wearing a white suit with a rose pinned to the right lapel. Alvarez would have people waiting.
Stepping into the palm-lined courtyard center of Cocowalk, McCracken was instantly aware of how much he stood out. There were few adults, certainly none his age, and his manner of dress was all wrong. No one else in view was wearing a suit, which would make it all the easier for Alvarez’s people to spot the man they thought was Ventanna once he entered the Baja Beach Club. Overhead the helicopter’s spotlight poured through Cocowalk’s roofless structure and caught him briefly. The crowd was cheering and hooting.
“Sympathy for the Devil” was finished and the bandleader announced a tune by Led Zeppelin was next.
The concert had been set up on a makeshift stage erected at the base of a second-floor mezzanine. The top of the Cocowalk complex was rimmed with gold inlay, but the dominant shades of the lower levels were chic pastels of mauve and cream. Salesmen who didn’t rate a glass-covered storefront like the Gap, The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, or B. Dalton hawked their T-shirts or costume jewelry from pushcarts and kiosks set up anywhere they could squeeze them.
McCracken climbed to the second-floor veranda level. He passed by a bar called Fat Tuesday’s and approached the entrance to the Baja Beach Club on the right next to a restaurant called Big City Fish. There was a line to get in, but Blaine flashed Ventanna’s gray private membership card and went right on through.
His ears were instantly assaulted by a screeching rasp of a voice singing lyrics to the accompaniment of a karaoke machine. The words slid down a screen on the wall of a large inner room as a balding patron fought to match the Bob Dylan classic “Tangled Up in Blue.” Few of the Baja Beach Club’s young patrons seemed to be familiar with what he was singing. Bikini-clad waitresses loped across the floor toting trays of multicolored drinks.
“Body shots!” one advertised above the din. “Body shots!”