Buzzard Bay (36 page)

July concurred that Lena was in a real jam. “But if we convince her to come and stay with us, will she help us?”

“I don’t think so. We’ve got two agents in the room across from her, and her room is wired, maybe it’s better to leave her. So far, she’s been a gold mine of information, thanks to the mike Bob put around her neck,” Ansly said, looking at July.

“What I’m worried about is that we shall probably need her testimony to link Waddell and this new guy to the people murdered in Canada,” July told the other agents around the table.

What July didn’t know was that Ansly didn’t really give a shit about the necklace other than it motivated Bob and July Green to play a part in his plan. So he played along, knowing in the grand scheme of things it would be of little consequence.

“We’ve got her pretty well-covered ,” Ansly told them. “I’m leaving today to join the ship. We got word this morning that the Colombians landed at the Andros farm. There will be a shipment coming through pretty quickly. Hopefully, we can intercept it. You all have your assignments here, just keep your eyes open and wish us luck.”

For two days, the Colombians held the farm on full alert, but nothing happened. On the third night, a plane landed and was quickly unloaded onto trucks for delivery at Buzzard Bay. The Colombians knew they would have to spread themselves thin, but they didn’t dare send all their men to guard the shipment.

“I can’t see having any trouble anyway,” their commandant told them. “We’ve checked out the island, whoever was here has definitely left.”

The trucks and their armed guard arrived at Buzzard Bay right around midnight. At the given signal, the two high-speed motorboats began moving in. They tied up beside the old barge as usual. The Colombians set up guards, and the rest started unloading the trucks.

The light from the flares was so bright that it lit up the entire area as well as blinding the Colombians. They made a run for it, but vicious gunfire from the surrounding trees cut them down. Their guards had already been taken care of, and within seconds they were decimated. The motorboats tried to take off but were trapped by two large motorboats blocking the only way out of the bay.

The drug runners’ boats were racked with machine gunfire and both quickly burst into flame and exploded sending sparks high into the sky. Armed men swarmed over the site, picking up bodies and the wounded.

This was only the first part of Ansly’s plan. He was already on his way to the farm project aboard one of two helicopters from the naval base. Ansly knew exactly how many Colombians had landed there and approximately where they were located on-site.

It was still dark when the first helicopter took out the renovated fighter plane on the runway. Ansly and his men then landed and took control of the area. The other helicopter unloaded its men on the only road into the farm. Two vehicles tried to escape, but they were quickly cut down by a heavy crossfire. The farm was sealed off. The remaining Colombians had no place to go but still fought viciously. A hectic firefight ensued lasting till dawn when the last of them were surrounded and rounded up.

Ansly counted the bodies. He decided there were still two missing. These were dug out after a manhunt with help from the helicopters tracking them down in the nearby trees. The helicopters returned to base, leaving only Ansly and his men to clean up and secure the site.

Henekie was asleep in his room when he heard an explosion. He looked out the window to see the sky to the east completely red. Other people were milling about outside. He pulled on his pants and joined them.

“What’s happening?” he asked one of the men he had met in the bar.

“It’s Buzzard Bay,” the man told him. “Very bad shit happens there.”

“Can we go down and see what’s happening?” he asked, finding his car keys.

“If you value your life, it would be best to stay away from there. That road will be very dangerous tonight.”

Henekie decided he was right. It would be too dark to see much and if no one would show him the way, there was no use chancing it tonight.

He was early for breakfast, so were the others. In the daylight, he had no problem finding people wanting a ride down to Buzzard Bay. There was little evidence that anything had happened really. There were some pieces of wood and metal floating near the dock. The only thing Henekie could see was the top of a boat or barge sunk in the small lagoon where the fishing boats came in to load, but it was impossible to know how long it had been there. The police were there towing the burned-out remains of a truck and leaving it parked back among the trees. What did remain, ominous though, was the sight of a big white ship anchored in the bay.

Henekie listened to the rumors spreading around him. Bertrand was the name on everyone’s lips. Looks like he won this round, Henekie thought. It would be interesting to see how the Colombians countered and even more interesting to see if Waddell would listen to his proposal now.

Henekie wasn’t ready to rush off to Nassau just yet. “If I play my cards right”, he thought, “I might just be able to bypass Waddell and go right to the top.” No longer was he going to offer his services to lieutenants who took all the money and glory. If he could put together a foolproof plan, they would listen to him, and he would never have to do the dirty work again. The real money was knowing the right people wanting the work done and knowing the ones who could do it. “Soon,” he thought to himself, “I’ll be in that position.”

His break soon came. For the next few days, he watched the activities around Buzzard Bay closely. One morning, he watched as a fuel truck pulled up beside an old fuel barge and began loading it with fuel. Two armed men watched the barge as the driver left and returned with another load. Then the old barge was towed out to Bertrand’s ship by a powerful looking patrol boat. The driver watched for a while then jumped in his truck to leave.

“Any chance of a ride?” Henekie asked the driver.

“Where you going?” asked the driver.

“Andros Hotel,” Henekie answered.

“Sure,” the driver replied, “I’m going right by there.”

As they drove away, Henekie said to the driver, “Good job,” he pointed back at the ship, “I imagine it uses a lot of fuel.”

“Yes, every second day, they will need two loads,” the driver answered. “They’ve got so much electronic shit on board. They have to keep the engines working all the time.”

“She’s a fuel hungry bitch,” Henekie said to himself as much as to the driver, his mind clicking on to something they had used once before.

Henekie made two calls from the Andros Hotel. One was to an engineer he knew in the States, the other was to Singapore, where Bertrand’s ship had been retrofitted. What he got back from these two phone calls excited him; he had his plan.

Waddell picked him up in his car again. Henekie noticed he was much friendlier this time.

“Needless to say, I can’t give you a million dollars just because you tell me you have information which may or may not be of value,” he told Henekie. “But if you give me something to go on, I can take your information to the right people and see what they think.”

“I know how to get to Bertrand,” Henekie told him, “but I want to deliver the information myself.”

Waddell laughed, “That’s impossible. My contacts do not wish to get personally involved in this type of work.”

“Just tell them what I told you, and we shall see what happens,” Henekie told Waddell.

“You realize if these people don’t like you,” Waddell snapped his fingers, “that’s it.”

“I have a feeling if you don’t come up with something pretty quick,” Henekie snapped his fingers, “that’s it for you too.”

Waddell gave him a long hard stare, “When can you leave?”

“Anytime,” Henekie told him. “The sooner the better.”

Waddell knew it was a long shot, but it was the only shot he had.

El Presidente was under extreme pressure from the Colombian government and the U.S. government agents. He was no longer able to sail his yacht wherever he wished for fear of attack. Now with his main supply route cut off, he was desperate. Waddell was expendable; in fact, now that Bertrand controlled the airstrip on Andros, Waddell was a dead man, unless he could come up with a way to gain control of his own backyard.

Waddell and Henekie flew into Colombia the next day, both knowing they might not come back. A car picked them up at the airport and took them out of the city. They traveled down a highway which turned into a gravel road leading to a small village. From here, a jeep with armed guards took them down a trail, through several checkpoints, finally arriving at a walled compound.

Henekie noticed the walls bristled with weapons of all kinds. Inside the compound, antiaircraft guns stood at the ready. Henekie was impressed; he hadn’t seen this many weapons in one place since the Civil War in Somalia.

They were searched and then led into a small room where were told to wait until the man would see them. Henekie was surprised to meet a small man with a big smile, not at all looking like a man who would hold their lives in his hands.

He exchanged pleasantries and got to the point. “We have a serious problem on our hands, Manly,” he said. “What do you propose to do about it?”

“Henekie here has some information which may help us resolve our problem,” Waddell answered for the first time, showing his nervousness.

El Presidente turned his attention to Henekie and indicated for him to proceed.

“I’ll start with some background,” Henekie said. “A while ago, there was a man named Green who, along with some other Canadians, were running the farm on Andros Island where your airstrip is located. I was with a group who had the job of eliminating any potential risks these people might have to your operation. Green somehow slipped away from us. I was on his trail when a Mr. Grundman, who was our contact man, called me back to Nassau saying the U.S. agents had picked up Green. The problem I had with this information was that I had a telephone conversation with Mr. Green after this was to have happened. He was on a ship when I talked to him. I believe he is on the same ship Bertrand is on.”

El Presidente sat digesting what Henekie had just told him. “You think Bertrand has Green?” El Presidente asked.

“I think something funny is going on all right,” Henekie told him. “It was definitely U.S. agents who took Green from Nassau, yet I talked to him on a boat. For whatever reason, I think the U.S. government has Bertrand working for them, and it’s actually their agents that have you tied up on Andros.”

ome of this was making sense to the reports El Presidente had been receiving. “Very interesting.” El Presidente told Henekie, “So what do you propose we do about it?”

“Bertrand’s ship is almost impregnable from the air and sea,” he said, “but I have a plan to make it vulnerable. However, I will need your help and a couple of million sent to a certain address before you can hear what I have to say.”

“You demand a lot for a man in your position.” El Presidente’s smile was gone now.

“My plan will work,” Henekie looked him right the eye. “We both know if you defeat the U.S. government here, they’ll go home with their tail between their legs, and the Bahamian government may not be so hasty to change course.”

“Where do you want the money sent?”

Henekie gave him an address in Munich, Germany. Rona would signal him when the money had been safely put away.

“I will need two armor-piercing rocket launchers of this type.” He handed El Presidente a letter with the information he needed to get the right ones. “I will also need a ship,” Henekie told him, “and some specialized electronic equipment.”

“Okay,” El Presidente sat back, “you’ve intrigued me enough to make you a deal. I’ll put the funds in trust in your bank. If and when I walk back in this door and that plan of yours has worked, the funds will be released in your name. If I don’t come back, you won’t get the money, which won’t matter because you’ll be dead anyway.”

“Does that mean you’re coming with us?” Waddell asked.

“My men are losing faith in me,” El Presidente told them. “If I go with them, it will boost their morale, plus, I think this is important enough for me to make sure it’s handled properly. Besides, it’s time I gained back a little respect.”

Waddell felt left out as he listened to the two men haggle over how the payment was to be handled, but when he was asked to leave the room while they discussed Henekie’s plan, it really made him feel left out.

TWENTY-ONE

T
HINGS DIDN’T GET
any better for Waddell. “Funny,” he thought, “I held the upper hand when we left Nassau, now on the way back, Henekie has control.” No matter what he had tried to find out, Henekie put him off, telling him that he had been told to say nothing. When they landed in Miami, Henekie told Waddell he was to continue on to Nassau alone.

“I have a message I want you to take to Lena,” Henekie told him.

“Take your own fucking messages. I’m not your messenger boy,” Waddell snarled back. Henekie shrugged and walked away not seeming to be at all disturbed.

When Waddell got back to his office in Nassau, he expected his desk to be covered with messages. It was, but all from the wrong people. He phoned his contacts reassuring them all he was still in control.

“There are rumors on the street that there’s a new boss in town,” one of his government men told him, “in fact, the word is it’s a woman,” the man told him sounding very nervous.

Waddell laughed, “Goes to show there’s no truth in the rumor, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” the man answered sounding unconvinced. A woman, Waddell thought feeling better, that would be the day the cartel would put a woman in charge.

Little did Waddell know this was exactly what Henekie had asked El Presidente to do. As Henekie explained his plan to the cartel boss, it became clear to both of them that Waddell would not be the person they wanted in Nassau.

“We greased a lot of wheels in Nassau,” El Presidente told Henekie. “There’s no reason we should be in this position if Waddell had done his job.”

Henekie just plain didn’t like Waddell or trust him. “I know a woman there,” Henekie told El Presidente, “who would be perfect for the job. She’s got good contacts. She’s smart, but most of all she’ll do anything for money.”

El Presidente didn’t laugh. He’d begun to respect this little guy with the funny Spanish accent, who would ever suspect a woman to be the cartel’s representative. “What about Waddell?” El Presidente asked.“Do you think he’s of any value to us?

We might need him as a decoy,” Henekie told him. “Don’t worry if he’s a problem, I’ll take care of it.”

El Presidente smiled; this was why he had asked and exactly what he wanted to hear. “This woman, does she have a name?”

“Lena,” Henekie answered. “When you meet her, you won’t be disappointed.”

El Presidente looked pleased. “Okay, set it up, Henekie. All you’ve got to lose is two million and your life.” Henekie failed to see the humor, “Just get me the stuff I asked for.”

“We’ve both got too much at stake in this thing to lose,” Henekie told him, not batting an eye.

It only took a few days for Waddell to find out that Lena was the cartel’s new person in Nassau. At first he wouldn’t believe it, but when he got his orders to do whatever she asked of him, he was livid. He also knew if he was to go on living, he would have to do something in a hurry.

Henekie couldn’t have done anything that could have affected him more. Waddell had no respect for women; they were good for one thing and one thing only. There was no way he was going to take orders from a woman, especially one who’s mouth he’d had his cock in only days before.

“If she ends up dead, they’ll know I won’t put up with any shit here,” Waddell thought. His mouth began to water; I’m going to fuck her to death, we’ll see who’s boss.

Waddell checked around; he was surprised to find she was still in the same building but had changed the locks. By dark that night, he had a key to fit her new locks and a scouting report on the building. He was told she still lived alone but that two men had rented a suite down the hall from her. His contact told him they were Americans, possibly CIA, but as far as he knew they hadn’t had any contact with Lena. So they’re on to her being boss already, he thought. It made things a little stickier, but the danger seemed to make him even more excited.

Waddell thought of all the ways he could kill her and what he would do to her first. These thoughts consumed his mind, driving him to take chances. The quicker I get to her, the less chance of her getting more security.

Lena was deadly afraid of Waddell and rightly so. When Henekie told her she was to become the new cartel boss, she had been skeptical. “Who in hell are you to appoint me the head of anything, and what if I don’t want the job? It sounds like a position with a short life span.”

Henekie reassured her that she’d be protected, and she had the job whether she wanted it or not. Then when two high officials in the government stopped by to confirm she was now the boss here in Nassau, she began to understand Henekie wasn’t lying and realized the potential that came with the job.

The trouble was the potential could be a two-headed coin. On one side was wealth and power, on the other, the chance she might not live to enjoy it. Her love of money and the fact that Henekie told her she had no choice in the matter made her decision relatively easy. She did lay down some conditions, one being she be given more security.

Henekie balked at that telling her that for the time being, they didn’t want to any attention drawn to her. “Don’t worry, I will look after you,” he told her.

This was the second night she’d been alone, and she hadn’t slept a wink nor had she seen Henekie. Now she was sure they all wanted her dead. “I know Waddell’s going to come after me,” she thought, “and this time, he’ll do more than screw me.”

he’d taken to sleeping what little she did sleep, curled up in a blanket in the corner of the bedroom. Although she didn’t know it, Henekie was watching out for her. He too figured it would be Waddell himself who would come after her and followed him everywhere he went, finding out who his contacts were that could cause him problems in the future.

It was after midnight when Henekie heard the gates to Waddell’s walled estate open. He’d been dozing, dreaming Rona’s body was beside him. The sight of Waddell’s Porsche turning on to the street brought him back to reality instantly. Since it was Manly’s sports car, it would mean he was driving it himself. When this happened, Manly was either off to meet a woman or to visit some people of great interest to Henekie.

He followed the Porsche, keeping his distance until he realized they had circled the block around Lena’s apartment twice. Henekie’s mind began to race; “Damn, he’s going after her tonight.”

This surprised Henekie; he knew two American agents had moved into the building to keep an eye on the comings and goings in Lena’s suite. He didn’t think Waddell would try anything with them there,but just in case he’d paid the doorman to tell him if anything out of the ordinary went on.

Waddell pulled his Porsche over and parked on the street directly behind Lena’s apartment complex. Henekie turned into a parking lot a block back, totally perplexed as to how Waddell was going to get into Lena’s apartment without being detected.

Henekie didn’t want to find out; “I’ll get him now,” he thought. He hurried down the alley behind the parking lot till he was close to Waddell’s car. He looked from behind a hedge row seeing that Waddell was still behind the wheel of his car. Perfect, he thought, and was about to walk up to Waddell’s car when out of the corner of his eye, he saw two figures come out of the shadows and come toward him walking up the street.

Waddell got out of his car and hurriedly walked across the grass toward Lena’s apartment. Henekie now saw that the figures were of two men; they stood in the middle of the street talking, making it hard for Henekie to cross the street undetected. Slowly, he dropped to his belly and slithered to the far end of the hedge, and then in the deeper shadows, he slipped from shrub to shrub heading in the same direction Waddell had.

He had almost made the first courtyard when the lights went out. The emergency lights flickered on, and then they too went out, leaving Henekie in total blackness. “Son of a bitch,” Henekie said under his breath, beginning to panic.

He now realized Waddell could make Lena’s apartment undetected, but the doorman should see him, and the men across from Lena had her apartment under surveillance. “How would he get out? Maybe he doesn’t care,” Henekie’s mind raced. “I should have been better prepared.” He had to take chances now and stumbled through the darkness to the front door. The power failure had locked it. He began knocking loudly, hoping to at least attract the attention of the doorman.

Henekie stepped back frustrated; no one opened the doors, and they were too heavy for him to break down. “Take a deep breath and think,” he told himself; it was then that the heard the gunshots.

A cold grin set Manly’s jaw as he hurried toward Lena’s building. His men had told him that they’d taken care of the night security guard. They’d watch if anyone followed him back from the apartment to his car, they’d take care of it. He entered the apartment by the front door looking to make sure the security camera had been rendered useless. He smiled as he turned and climbed the stairs. The camera had been turned to face the wall.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he pulled out his cellular and spoke the word “Now” and almost instantly the lights went out, then flickered, and went out again, leaving him blinded. His ability to see, however, did not slow his forward progress down the hall. A penlight helped him locate Lena’s apartment.

Other doors began to open up and down the hallway as people checked to see if it had lights or not. There was no reason to think that Waddell wasn’t one of them, as he opened Lena’s door and then quietly closed it behind him. He knew she was alone, but he had to remain quiet because of the men across the hall monitoring the suite. He didn’t want them interfering before he was done. He shone his penlight around probing the darkness looking for any movement.

It was a large suite, very expensive. “Bertrand had good taste,” Waddell thought as he walked through the room. Lena’s bedroom door was closed; it was the only place she could be. Manly tried the knob, but it was locked. He felt the key in his pocket.

“No problem,” he murmured under his breath, but first he opened the patio door. He took a knotted rope from the bag he carried and secured it to the balcony railing throwing the other end over. Satisfied, he returned to Lena’s bedroom door, shining the light on the rumpled pile covering the bed. Somewhere among them, Lena was hiding. He felt an erection coming on just thinking of what was coming next.

Lena thought she heard her apartment door open and close. Her ears strained to hear; yes, now she could hear someone moving around in her suite. Fear caught in her throat choking back a scream. She heard her patio door being opened, and then it was quiet. Maybe they left, she began to breathe again.

“No,” her brain screamed; someone was at her door.

Then like a cornered cat, her back stiffened, and her claws came out, the fear replaced by hate. The feel of cold steel in her hands gave her the ability to lash out. She pointed the revolver at the dark shape in the doorway and pulled the trigger. A strange sense of power came over her as she pulled the trigger again and again.

Manly’s mind was so involved with his own intentions, it took a second for him to comprehend that something had hit the door frame just above his head. He saw the flame from the muzzle blast come toward him, and then the deafening sound filled his ears.

“The bitch has a gun,” he heard himself say. He dived as he heard the gun go off again and had almost cleared the doorway when he felt a severe pain somewhere in his backside. “Fuck, she shot me.” He was more astonished than anything. For some reason he could not fathom Lena doing something like that to him. He had no idea how bad he was hurt; his only intention was to get out of there. A searing pain drove up his back as he grabbed the rope and lowered himself over the balcony railing. The shots still rang in his ears; he was sure people would be swarming all over the place in minutes.

He reached the ground and turned to run, but somehow the rope was around his neck; he felt himself becoming weak as he struggled to release it. Then someone lifted his head, cold smiling eyes looked into his as everything went black.

When Henekie first heard the gunshots, he wasn’t sure where they came from or why he could hear them. These were luxury apartments, very soundproof. The balcony door had to be open. He hurried around the building just in time to see Waddell coming down. Henekie calmly waited for Waddell to reach the ground and just as he let go of the rope, Henekie chopped at his neck, stunning him. As Waddell began to drop, Henekie in a flash wrapped the rope around his neck using the big man’s own weight to strangle himself.

Waddell was indeed a big man; it was all Henekie could do to hold on to the loose end of the rope and keep it tight. Finally, Henekie had to kick Waddell in the nuts to calm him down and gradually Waddell began to sag more and more, his own weight attributing to his strangulation. Henekie moved in close; he lifted Waddell’s head and saw exactly what he wanted to see—the fear in his eyes before he died.

o simple, Henekie surmised; he couldn’t figure out why all the problems in the world weren’t solved this way. It was so final; if you have a problem, eliminate it. He couldn’t understand why people wasted time negotiating and arguing. He took a deep breath; he felt the air was clear.

“What was this on his hands?”

“Blood.”

Curiously, he turned Waddell’s hanging body around; his ass was covered in blood.

“Gunshot.”

Henekie assessed the situation; until now he had assumed Lena to be dead but maybe not. As he went through Waddell’s pants, he found a phone fastened to his belt. He’d heard the government had set up a tower so government officials could use these phones supposedly for government use only. Well, let’s see if they work; he dialed Lena’s number.

The phone in Lena’s apartment rang, startling her. The first instinct was to not answer it, but she desperately needed to talk to someone. She was still huddled up in the corner of her bedroom ready to take on anyone, but everything had been quiet for a while; maybe she should go out and see if she had killed her intruder. She was disappointed there was no sign of anyone in her living room, and then she spoke quietly into the phone.