Jet (6 page)

The dog eyed the passengers with the good-natured countenance of his breed and then went rigid when he turned in Alonso’s direction. The soldier handling him stopped talking to his partner and looked Alonso up and down as the dog stood frozen.

“Sir, are those your bags?” the second soldier asked.

“Um, yes. Why?” Alonso asked.

“Please come with us,” the first soldier said, patting the dog’s flank and handing it a treat. The dog refused to budge, and it took two tries to get him to waddle toward Alonso, whose heart was now pounding hard enough in his chest to be audible across the terminal.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just routine. We need to inspect your luggage.”

“Inspect? Why? I’ve been through security in two different airports, and I’ve been traveling for twenty hours. You can check my ticket. I’m about ready to drop…”

“This way, sir,” the first soldier said, and Alonso watched as the second murmured into a microphone clipped to his shoulder, its cord trailing down to a radio at his belt.

“I…can I use the bathroom first?”

“I’m afraid not. But there’s a bathroom in the inspection area you can use.”

Half an hour later Alonso was sitting in a holding cell, the twenty kilos of uncut cocaine that had been packed into the false bottom and sides of the suitcases easily discovered with the help of his canine nemesis, and his papers and personal effects confiscated as he waited for the narcotics squad to arrive.

As instructed by his paymasters, he refused to make any statement or answer questions, merely insisting that he wanted to speak to his attorney. He’d managed to thumb his cell phone when it had been obvious that he wouldn’t be able to talk his way through an inspection, and had gotten off a single short call to a number he’d been told never to dial unless something catastrophic happened.

Now he was waiting, facing decades in prison if convicted – which he surely would be, given the weight and the quality he’d been caught with red-handed.

The door to the holding cell opened. A heavyset man with thinning black hair slicked straight back, his face pockmarked and besmirched with the nose of a lifetime heavy drinker, entered and sat across from Alonso. Another cop stood inside the door and pushed it closed. The first man cleared his throat and leaned forward across the steel table, a tired expression on his face.

“You won the lottery on this one, huh, Alonso? Is that even your real name?”

Alonso didn’t answer or acknowledge the question.

The man tried again. “You know what the penalty is for smuggling twenty kilos of cocaine, Alonso? They bury you under the jail. And trust me, here, with budget problems, the prisons make the ones in Ecuador look like five-star hotels.”

Alonso swallowed hard, but maintained his silence.

“You’re a good-looking young man. You’ll be very popular. I read a study the other day about the AIDS infection rate in the prison population. I doubt you’ll live out your sentence, Alonso – not after you’ve been passed around the cell block like a pack of Marlboros a few thousand times.” The man looked over Alonso’s shoulder at his companion by the door. “My money says he’ll like it.” He cocked an eyebrow at Alonso. “Which is a shame, because we all know that you’re small fry. You don’t have what it takes to be trafficking serious weight. I can see that with one look at your shoes. Cheap. Worn. You’re just a mule who got caught. Which the courts will recognize if you make a statement and tell us who put you up to this.”

Alonso wiped sweat from his brow. “I want my lawyer.”

The big man laughed, the sound ugly and mean. “I see you’re confused. That’s not how it works around here. Did they tell you that would be your ticket out? Guess what, Alonso? They lied. I say the word and you’re going into the hole, and it will be a month before you talk to anyone. Your paperwork will get lost, and you’ll be doing hard time with the worst miscreants I can bunk you with – guys who’ll rape you till you need stitches just to hear you scream. Is that how you want to play this, tough guy? Because when I stand up, the party’s over, and I don’t care if you sing a confession at that point. So make up your mind. You going to cooperate, or throw your life away as the cell block punch?”

Alonso hated the perspiration that was now running freely from his hairline down his neck almost as much as the images that seemed placed in the Jetway to torment him. He was preparing to speak when a knock at the metal door interrupted him. The cop across from him threw his partner a dark look, and he opened it. Alonso could make out a hushed conversation, and then the cop rose and joined his partner at the doorway.

The room emptied, leaving Alonso to his thoughts. He blotted his forehead with the back of his arm, his shirtsleeve sour with the astringent tang of fear. By the time the door reopened, he’d decided what he was going to say, and was surprised when a different man approached him and unlocked his ankles from where they were chained to an eyelet in the floor.

“Come with me,” the man said.

“I want my lawyer,” Alonso replied stubbornly.

“I’m all the lawyer you need, kid,” the man answered, and led him to the door. He knocked on it twice and it opened. The fat cop and his partner were glowering down the hall, watching as the man sent Alonso in the opposite direction, to where two more figures in suits waited.

When the hall was empty except for the cop and his sidekick, the big man turned to the younger one and shook his head with closed eyes. “What the hell was that all about? Since when does headquarters send down a blanket release for a maggot like that?”

“A better question is why the Americans want him so badly.”

“The form said he’s part of an ongoing investigation. DEA.”

“Since when does the DEA have jurisdiction here?”

“You got me. But unfortunately, you know how this works. We’ll be lucky if we’re allowed to sign the dope into evidence. Want to bet they confiscate that too, as part of their investigation?”

The younger man sighed. “There’s nothing we can do?”

“Oh, we’ll fill out reports and file a formal complaint, which the commissioner will wipe his ass with.” The big cop checked the time. “I’d say it’s time for a long lunch. I’ve got a date with a bottle. You’re invited.”

“Thanks. I think I’ll take you up on it this time.”

The pair walked dejectedly to the security desk and retrieved their weapons, their faces glum at having their smuggler released to the Americans. Both suspected that nothing would ever come of the DEA investigation, and that Alonso would be winging his way back to whatever mud hole he’d crawled out of before nightfall. They’d heard of similar situations, and those had never ended well, remaining unresolved, the Americans mute when asked for status reports. It was one of the dirty secrets of being a cop on the dope beat – that certain perps were untouchable and, if arrested, walked within hours. It was unfair and clearly illegal, but they didn’t have the clout to fight it, and if the way the system worked was to allow high-volume traffickers to skate when students caught with a few ounces of opiated hash would do years of the hardest kind of time, well, it was an imperfect world, and beyond their abilities to change it.

“We going back to the office?” the younger man asked on the way to the parking structure.

“I don’t think so. You want to?”

“Not really. But what are we going to tell the captain?”

“Car problem.”

The younger man smiled sadly. “Sounds good to me.”

Pristina, Kosovo

Matt putted along the four-lane street toward the quaint downtown area of Pristina, dodging cars that changed lanes without signaling, as though by indicating their intentions they were showing weakness. He was used to the schizophrenic driving habits of the locals, and after Argentina, the natives’ high-speed near-suicide runs were almost relaxed in contrast. Rows of brightly painted two-story houses fronted the byway, harkening back to a time when knights astride horses paraded down the route.

He downshifted as he slowed for a light, never taking for granted that any of the other drivers were going to obey the signal. At that hour of the morning, it was unlikely that many of those on the road were drunk, but he’d learned to take no chances – not a day went by that the papers weren’t filled with accounts of horrific accidents caused by inebriants colliding with the unsuspecting, and it wasn’t impossible that at least a few of those behind the wheel were making their morning way home from all-night parties rather than heading to work.

He’d acquired the scooter from a young man who’d purchased his first new car, who’d been more than happy to accept Matt’s cash and leave the niggling details of papering the transaction for another time. The registration was still valid until the end of the year, and Matt had decided to worry about going legit with it then. His instinct was to stay out of any official systems, and vehicle registration was one that he knew was interconnected with other nations via Interpol, even if the amount of data was such that it was rarely accessed. But if he could avoid appearing in any databases, he would, just out of habit. His enemies had shown more than once that they were not only resourceful but held a grudge, and he was under no illusions that they’d given up on hunting him down.

That he’d wound up living with another clandestine operative whose adversaries made his look tame was an irony that occasionally came to him in the darkest hours of night. But he’d fallen in love with her, and the heart wanted what the heart wanted, regardless of whether it was prudent. He’d debated slipping away and leaving Jet to a safer future, but could never bring himself to do so. She didn’t agree that she’d be safer without him, and he’d learned to trust her judgment. He’d never met anyone like her, and the combination of exotic good looks, incredible athleticism, off-the-charts intelligence, and lethal competence had proven impossible to resist. He considered himself lucky to have found her, and some days he couldn’t imagine what she saw in an aging ex-spook with more scars than a bait dog.

The surprise for him was not that he’d fallen for her, but that he’d become so bonded to Hannah. His entire life he’d lived alone, with no thought of offspring, trained by his vocation to view people as useful assets or dangerous adversaries, automatically running equations to establish their value to him. The painful tug in his chest when he saw Hannah trot off to school was unexpected, but he’d grown to appreciate the ferocity with which a parent would fight to protect its young. The way she watched his every move, emulated both his and her mother’s gestures and expressions, was uncanny, and he’d late in life come to grasp why many believed the entire purpose of existence was the continuation of the species, raising children to take over from where adults dropped the ball.

All of which was alien to his worldview as a cynical, jaded field operative. It had taken considerable adjustment, and now he barely recognized the cold, calculating automaton that he’d been when working for the agency.

He rubbed his face with a gloved hand, his eyes heavy from the wood smoke that drifted across the city from the burning of the surrounding fields. The light changed, and he gunned the engine, the motor buzzing like a band saw as he coaxed the reluctant scooter forward. An impatient driver behind him honked at his inadequate acceleration and he pulled to the side of the road to allow those in a hurry to race to the next light, preferring to take his time to get to work.

He turned onto the familiar cobblestone street where his shop was located, and almost missed the vibration and warble of his cell phone from his shirt pocket, such was the jostling from the ride. Matt cursed silently as he coasted to a stop and checked his messages – nobody had his number but Jet, Hannah’s school, and…the auto-call of the security system he’d installed at the shop.

He read and then reread the short message, his eyes flat behind his sunglasses.

There had been a breach at the store. Five minutes ago.

In broad daylight.

In a relatively busy commercial district of town.

Which didn’t add up. Thieves didn’t operate that way, even if they could manage to get past the steel grid over the storefront or force their way through the rear exit. But that would be under cover of darkness, not at the beginning of a workday.

Which meant it was something else.

The timing troubled him for another reason. It implied that he might be under surveillance, and the entry was in anticipation of his imminent arrival.

Which was standard operating procedure for his ex-employer.

But if that was the case, why lie in wait at the store? Why not simply put a bullet in him as he rode to work?

The answer was obvious: they wanted to interrogate him. Which meant they needed to take him alive.

The entire sequence of thoughts ran through his mind in a blink, and to any observer he looked like he had just checked his messages and was heading back on his way. He rolled forward and, once up to speed, ducked down an alley that paralleled a larger street. He watched for following vehicles in his mirror, but there was nothing.

A part of him wanted to chance driving by the shop to see what, if any, evidence there was of a forced entry, but he dismissed the idea as too dangerous. If they knew his shop, they probably had a description of his motorbike, if not its license plate, even though it wasn’t in his name.

But what if it was a false alarm?
Little paranoid, old boy, aren’t we?

Paranoid was when you saw threats where none existed – which meant you were wrong. Matt had been many things in his life, but paranoid wasn’t one of them. As someone who had directed his share of dirty deeds on behalf of God and country, he understood more than most just how extensive the clandestine apparatus truly was, and what it was capable of.

But he had to know.

Five minutes later, he was seated in the back of a gypsy cab, an unmarked olive Renault sedan, cruising past his shop, one of a dozen similarly anonymous vehicles on the street.

The security awning was still in place. As he’d have left it if he’d been running an op. Because he’d have gone in through the back door.