Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (28 page)

 
          
“Henri,
you’re insane,”
Lake
declared. “I don’t believe it. You want to
blow up
three major airports
in the
United States
?”

 
          
“What
I want is revenge on the
United States
government for chasing me like a scared
rabbit,” Cazaux said. “What I want is to see the people of this country tremble
when they hear my name. What I want is to see this country, this so-called
democracy, destroyed by its own military forces. They
shot
at me,
Lake
, they
dared shoot at
me!
I want to destroy
the American military by creating fear and distrust in them by their own
people. I want to show the world what kind of butchers and wild dogs they
really are.”

 
          
“Hey,
Henri, you want it, you got it,” Ysidro said, taking his first post-meeting
slug of bourbon from a bottle. “Man, this is gonna be awesome. We don’t just
take out one plane, we take out the whole airport, the whole fucking
airport! ”
He laughed.

 
          
“Why,
Henri?”
Lake
protested, ignoring Ysidro for the moment.
“Why are you doing this? You’ve already got half the federal government on your
tail. You’re already the most-wanted man in fifteen countries—”

 
          
“Shut
up, Drip, you asshole,” Ysidro hissed to drown out
Lake
’s voice.
Harold
Lake
shot an angry glance at Ysidro—he hated the
nickname “Drip,” but everyone there used it in fear and deference of Ysidro.
“The man gave us our orders, and now we march. You just need to bring us the
money, mule.”

           
“Three airports within thirty days,
all attacked by heavy cargo planes or commercial airliners filled with
explosives,” Gregory Townsend, the British-born chief of plans and operations,
mused. Townsend was a former British SAS commando, an expert in planning and
setting up all sorts of military operations all around the world. He had lost
an eye in a hostage-rescue situation in
Belfast
several years earlier, and after fifteen
illustrious years with the British Army, had been sent packing with only a
modest monthly stipend. When Cazaux invited him to join his organization, he
readily agreed. “Considering a one- or two- million-dollar deposit per plane,
plus a million for fuel, plus a million or two for explosives—we’re talking
eight to nine
million dollars for this operation, Henri,
ten million tops. As I recall, we had a balance of eleven million in the war
chest. This’ll tap us out. What sort of deal did you make with the client? I’d
say at least ten million per target struck would be reasonable.”

 
          
“No
client,” Cazaux said. “No fee. This I do for myself.” Many of the officers
around him averted their eyes, disappointed in Cazaux’s decision but fearful of
showing any hesitation or protest.
Lake
looked
stunned, and showed it; Ysidro looked immensely pleased.

 
          
“So,
Drip, you might as well close the bank accounts and convert the whole enchilada
into greenbacks,” Ysidro said. Townsend nodded his agreement. “We expect the
cash in three days. Towney, I want to review the aircraft list with you by
tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have to rig up a trainer system, get charts of the
targets, recruit some more flyboys, all that shit. There may be a way to get
our hands on some military hardware—imagine using a couple Harpoon missiles or
laser-guided bombs on O’Hare or LAX!”

 
          
Ysidro
took another swig, chuckling at Cazaux’s stem expression, noting with relief
that Cazaux’s anger seemed to be all directed at
Lake
. Ysidro was a good friend of Henri
Cazaux’s—at least, if Cazaux had a friend, it was Tomas Ysidro—but he still
didn’t want to show any weakness to his boss or to the other officers, ever. If
Cazaux ever failed to make it back from one of his missions, Ysidro and
Townsend would battle for control of the organization and its assets, and he
had to appear strong at all times. Townsend was smart and tough, but all those
years as a Brit officer gave him an air of superiority that made everyone
distrust him.

 
          
“Relax,
Henri, everything’s gonna be fine,” Ysidro said to Cazaux. “We got enough in
reserve to get started on the explosives payloads for the first couple
missions. Butcher and Faker can pick over that Seneschet warehouse in
Massachusetts and see what they got, but it’ll be no sweat—I think we can pick
up about seven or eight thousand kilos of ammonium nitrate from the
waste-storage area, and we got about a thousand kilos of TNT in storage for the
primer loads. The fuzing will be tougher—we may have to go out on the market
for the first few. I got a contact in a National Guard armory in
North Carolina
where we might get some fuzes.”

 
          
“I
have information on some military ordnance,” Townsend said. “Several Air
National Guard units recently returned from a European deployment, and much of
their ordnance is in warehouses right over at Stewart International awaiting
transportation to their home units. Their inventory counts never come out right
after a big deployment. We can get gravity bombs, incendiaries, night-vision
gear, the works. Drip, I’ll need some cash for earnest money.”

 
          
“The
name isn’t ‘Drip,’ you asshole, and there’s no fucking cash,”
Lake
finally snapped. All of the other officers
turned to him in horror—all but Henri Cazaux, who had been looking in
Lake
’s direction for most of the meeting.

 
          
Ysidro
cursed. “What the fuck are you talking about? We got eleven million fucking
dollars in the bank, Drip. The last meeting before the
Chico
mission was only eight days ago, and before
that we had twenty million.”

 
          
“That
was before Korhonen flew that transport plane into San Francisco International
and killed several hundred people,”
Lake
retorted angrily. “That was before three-quarters of the air traffic to the
west coast was shut down. That was before every investor in
Europe
told me to fuck off backwards.”

 
          
“You
telling us you blew eleven million dollars in the stock market just since
yesterday
. . . ?”

 
          
“I’m
telling you that I lost
one hundred
million dollars
yesterday, including this organization’s eleven million,
because
you
”—
Lake
jabbed a finger at Cazaux, who was still
staring at him—“decided to go on a joyride and blow up SFO. I lost everything I
have, damn you, everything! I’m broke! I’m worse than broke. I’m ruined ...”

 
          
Ysidro
was on him like a panther, and before
Lake
could
blink, Ysidro had him pressed up against the wall, a knife point pressed into
his throat. The other staff officers had surrounded the two to watch the
execution. “I think,” Ysidro said, his face pressed right up against Lake’s so
he could feel his last breath as it gushed from his lungs, “we are about to
need a new logistics officer.”

 
          
“No,”
Cazaux said evenly. “Let him speak.”

 
          
“This
fucker’s ripping us off, man.”

 
          
“Let
him
speak, ”
Cazaux ordered.

 
          
His
voice did not change, but the force behind Cazaux’s order seemed to everyone
several magnitudes higher than the first. Ysidro glared at Lake, then held his
head steady, gave him a cut on his neck about two inches long, licked the
rivulet of blood, then spit it back in Lake’s face. “Fucking bean-counter,” he
growled. “Unfortunately, you live for now.” The air in the room seemed to relax
as Ysidro backed away.

 
          
Lake
was shaking like a man possessed, but more
from anger than fear. He wiped blood from his eyes, put a handkerchief to the
cut on his neck, and said, “I’ve been laundering money for this organization
for three years, finding legitimate investments and creating legitimate business
fronts, and I’ve done a very good job,”
Lake
said. “I’ve done a good job because I have
been steering each mission, preparing the businesses beforehand.”

 
          
“You
haven’t done shit, Drip,” Ysidro said. “We hardly see you, and all you give us
is Jew banker’s mumbo- jumbo.”

 
          
“You
think you can just walk into a bank with your terrorist checkbook and write a
check for three or four million dollars?”
Lake
asked angrily. To Townsend he continued,
“You think you can take seven million pounds sterling that you just got from an
IRA bomber, convert it to dollars, and drop it in the automated teller machine
at the corner bank, Townsend? The money has to look clean, and that takes work.
The money has to be legitimately traceable down three dozen levels in the
United States
alone, and a dozen layers down in twenty
other countries, all at the same time. Plus, you want me to research the
financial on your targets, your clients, their governments, and their relations
and principals all the way to the highest levels. I do that, each and every
time, so when you make the deal or make the hit, we know exactly what all the
players are going to do or say all over the world.

 
          
“I
can get you what you want and keep the cash in this organization flowing, but
only if I call the shots,”
Lake
went
on. “I was fully exposed when that LET hit the terminal, Henri,
fully exposed.
I lost everything! Now
this damned psycho pulls a knife on me and tries to pin the blame on me. Well,
go ahead and fucking kill me, Henri, . because if you don’t do it, some
Japanese or South African investor’s hit squad is going to do it.”

 
          
“He
wants to die so bad, Henri, I will be glad to oblige him.” Ysidro laughed,
brandishing the knife again. “No bean-counter is going to tell me what to do.”

 
          
“You
broke faith with this organization, Harold,” Cazaux said in a low voice. “The
Army doesn’t wait for clearance from a banker before beginning operations. You
knew that. Your duty was to keep the funds safe and secure, not engage in wild
investment deals.”

           
“Henri, you can’t keep eleven
million dollars in cash in a shoe box under the bed,”
Lake
said. “You’re running an international
organization, and you can’t efficiently run it with cash. You wanted real
estate, business assets, licenses, government contracts, visas, letters of
introduction, legitimate tax returns—you can’t use bloody cash to pay for
legitimate stuff. You can launder a little bit of the stuff offshore in bank
accounts, but sure as shit, the FBI or Treasury will eventually track it down,
close down your
U.S.
operations and probably your overseas accounts. If you want legitimacy
in the
United States
you have to dive deeper, get more creative,
do more mainstream stuff. And you can’t do the same routine two years in a row,
or even two months in a row, because the government tracks that stuff
quarterly.”

 
          
“I
am tired of this sheep’s bleating, Captain,” Ysidro said. He reached out with
the speed of a cobra and grasped
Lake
around
the neck, digging his fingers deep into the financier’s flesh. “Allow me to put
an end to it.”

 
          
“Let
him go, Tomas,” Cazaux ordered. He pulled out his .45 caliber automatic. “If he
is to die, I will do it.” The sight of the gun pleased Ysidro, who released
Lake
and stepped back to watch. “Speak, Harold,”
Cazaux said. “Say your last words quickly. Tell me why you should not be
executed for what you have done.”

 
          
At
first
Lake
couldn’t breathe, which made him panic even
more, but the sight of the big pistol squeezed the air out of his lungs. “I got
one thing to say, Henri, and if you don’t like it, you might as well blow my
head off, because my career on the Street is dead anyway. I’ve got an eigh-
teen-million-dollar loan coming to me later today,”
Lake
said—not pleading, not whimpering, just
stating a fact. “I can turn that into fifty million dollars if you follow my—”
“You got our money?” Ysidro asked, grabbing
Lake
by the lapels instead of the neck this
time. “You better hand it over, bean-counter.”