Old Growth & Ivy (The Spook Hills Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

She felt she had no reserves left to
continue working.  She could feel an all too familiar clutch of hot pain
at the top of her throat, spreading from her jaw down into the muscles of her
neck, tensing the already tight ligaments into bowstrings.  She raised her
head, swallowing to relieve the grip her muscles had on her windpipe.  The
room around her jumped the way her surroundings did sometimes, giving her a
feeling of unreality as if for a few seconds, she had not been there and the
world had moved on without her.  Ivy grappled for the glass beside her,
desperate for a drink of water, which she learned could calm these
episodes. 

She sipped some water and pulled Druid
closer, holding him the way a child might hold onto a teddy bear for
security.  She thought about all the people at the office who were
dependent on her company for their livelihoods, their careers and even their
self-respect.  She could not leave them adrift.  They would function
well for a month or two.  Then the lack of local leadership would allow
the painstakingly built bonds between them to erode.  Jealousies,
resentments and ambitions, never far from the surface, would break loose and
the business she had single-mindedly worked to foster would start to crack and
crumble. 

Ivy could see that she owed the people
six months to see them through the executive transition.  She had to leave
knowing she fulfilled her duty. Somewhere she had the grit to hold herself
together until the end of March 2013.  Her depleted reserves had sunk
below strength, resilience and fortitude.  She only had the elemental grit
that she envisioned as a layer under the marrow in her bones. She leaned back
on the couch, drained the glass of spring water and made of mental list of how
to handle the delay in her retirement.  After all she was Ivy
Littleton.  She had pulled herself up by her bootstraps her whole
life.  She could and would scrape together enough vestiges of herself to struggle
through.

Resolutely she stood up and for about
the tenth time that day, squared her shoulders, forcing them down and into
place.   She sent a quick text to her boss, telling him she would
sign on for another six months so they could find a new replacement.  
Now it was time to make a late dinner, have a glass of calming wine and sink
into whatever degree of sleep would come to her. 

Much further south in Guadalajara at
3.00 a.m. on Thursday, Steve was already showered, shaved and dressed for the
day.  He was reviewing his team's plans for the arrest of a major
Colombian drug lord.  He went over the evidence again from the FBI's money
laundering case that led them to this perpetrator, along with their proof of drug-related
activities from the Drug Enforcement Agency.  Steve’s team had the meaty
evidence, although it bugged him that they lacked a real name for this drug
lord.  All they uncovered was a nickname and a number of fictitious
names.  El Zorro Astuto, or the Sly Fox, was his self-given
designation.  The DEA claimed on Monday to have located him proceeding on
his yacht to Manzanillo, less than 200 miles to the south on the western coast
of Mexico.  Steve had flown into Guadalajara via Mexico City, meeting up
with his agent Mathew Heylen on the way.  They planned to fly down to
Manzanillo by helicopter if all was ready for the sting.

Other than having to trust another
agency's work, their evidence was reasonable.  Steve already knew that it
was.  However before each sting, he had a punch down list that he
methodically went through.  Thus far in his 35-year career, he had never
an issue over insufficient or faulty evidence when he brought perpetrators, or
perps as they called them, to justice.  He expected that record to remain
unbroken.

He shifted his six and a half foot
frame uneasily in the undersized hotel desk chair, and proceeded to review
their plans for the sting operation, including each identified scenario of how
it could go down.  This process took nearly an hour, even though he had
all the details in his head.  He wanted to be certain that the action
would go as smoothly as possible. 

With that step done, he stood up,
stretched, straightened the creases in his trousers, walked over to his
nightstand, took a long drink from a bottle of water and checked the time --
just after four in the morning.  He stepped out on the small balcony
overlooking an internal courtyard filled with plush plantings in many shades of
green and scented with aromatic tropical flowers.  He breathed in deeply
and leaned against the railing.  The air floated against his cheeks like a
whispered caress, bringing the scents of the small city laced with a whiff of
flowered perfume.  He inhaled to draw the early morning air deep into his
lungs.  Five years ago the subtle scents would have been lost on
him.  Outside of his work for the FBI, he failed to notice much of
anything back then.

Beyond the hotel, it sounded as if the
city lay in predawn tranquility below him.  He wanted to learn more about
the places he flew into and their histories, but he wanted that knowledge to
come from experiencing it and not as it did now, from books or websites. 
Even though he was committed to his work at the Bureau, he found as he grew
older he wanted more in his life and he wanted to stop living it alone. 

That Ivy Littleton was sure a
firecracker – full of fight yet alluring too.  She was intelligent and
capable, and she was simply lovely to look at.  On the other hand, he bet
life with her would be a roller coaster ride.  If he was going to risk his
heart at this late date, he wanted someone level-headed, didn’t he?

He shook his head at himself.  He
had to stay focused on the upcoming operation.  This was not the time to
let his thoughts wander.  He inhaled the scented air once more, pushed the
dreamy thoughts away and went back to the desk.  For the next hour, Steve
reviewed the details of logistics, equipment and schedule, and then he closed
his laptop.  He checked his watch.  It was nearly 5:15.  He
tapped his forefinger on the desk as he quickly ran through the preparations
once more in his mind.  Then he unplugged his cell phone from the charger
and pressed a shorthand number to call his second in command.

"Harvard?"  Although
Steve spoke quietly into the phone, his low voice carried authority and a sense
of urgency.  "Get the team ready.  Be in the lobby before
six.  We are going in now.  Can't risk having this perp sail out of
here.  Next call is to the DEA."

As abruptly as he had dialed Senior
Special Agent Mathew Heylen who Steve nicknamed "Harvard" after where
he earned his law degree, he dialed the head of the DEA team.

"You up?  We're going in
now.  Get your guys ready."  He listened to some grumbling, but
he was used to hearing himself called various names.  Steve cared about
results -- ending crime, catching perps, making charges stick and keeping his
teams and the public as safe as possible.  "Six at the
heliport.  Get the lead out."

Steve hung up, checked his gear and
pulled on his lightweight suit jacket.  No matter what the temperature
was, Steve had his standards for how an FBI agent should appear just as the
Bureau did.  He checked his appearance in the mirror, straightened his
tie, smoothed down his white shirt and shook out the creases in his
trousers.  While not a vain man, he did believe he should be presentable
and in his mind that meant crisp, neat and clean.  He rechecked his gun,
or roscoe in FBI lingo, felt for his cell phone in his pocket, grabbed his
protective vest and exited the hotel room, striding down to the elevator to
meet his team in the lobby.  From there, they would jump into a waiting
car and head to the heliport.  He had that familiar tightening in his abs
that always happened before an operation.  Everything checked out.  It
was time.

His core squad, or team as he
preferred to think of them, were Mathew, Brian and Moll.  With the other
two agents combing through the data up in Portland on the child trafficking
case, he and Mathew were working with a couple of agents out of Los
Angeles.  He was glad to see that they were already in the lobby. 
Each one was on his cell phone re-verifying last minute
arrangements.   The call to Harvard put a whole procedure in
motion.  He nodded, acknowledging Mathew and the two LA agents, and hustled
out to the waiting car, not wanting to waste time getting to the
helicopters. 

Luckily Manzanillo was large enough to
have its own heliport and conducted tourist flights.  Having a chopper or
two coming in from Guadalajara would not be out of the ordinary to the
perps.  Steve planned to alert their surveillance agent on the ground only
when they arrived at the docks so as not to risk a tip off.    

Once they were heading to the
heliport, he watched the agents.  They looked sharp and ready to go. 
Each of them climbed quickly into the chopper, settled in, pulled on the seat
harnesses and positioned their headsets.  A full fifteen minutes behind
them, the DEA team piled into the second, larger helicopter, along with a six
member Mexican SWAT team.  Each one of these international operations or
ops was different, depending on how the local authorities wanted to
participate.  The Mexicans agreed to supply a SWAT team, which had
performed well when they observed them
running drills the afternoon before. 

They took off and rose quickly above
Guadalajara.  As they flew south to southwest, the small city lay below
them imbued with a rich glow from the slanted rays of the early morning sun,
reminding Steve again of his longing to see the world as a tourist.  He
would like to learn about regional histories, appreciate each country's
culture, and taste more of their local foods and drinks.  
  

"Hey Mathew, any words of wisdom
applicable to today?"  Steve asked, knowing that Mathew was keen on
quoting Latin phrases to sum up his thoughts or recap a discussion or argument.

"
Audaces Fortuna Iuvat
,"
Mathew quoted quickly.

"Fortune
favors the bold," Steve muttered.  “Jeez Mathew.  You get that
out of a fortune cookie?"

Even
the pilot laughed.  About fifteen minutes later, the chopper started
descending as they neared the Manzanillo Heliport.  From there they would
drive down to waiting police boats not far from where the perp’s yacht was
docked in the sheltered harbor.  The plan was for the SWAT team to go in
first, followed by Steve's team, then the DEA.  Holding back was always
hard.  He liked to lead, but sometimes he had to work in joint actions
like this one.  However this was his case and he intended to make the
arrest, no matter how bristling the DEA team leader was.  While they may
have located the perp, the FBI's research made up the bulk of the
evidence. 

After
quietly boarding the police boats, the three teams squatted on the deck in
silence as they made their way into the harbor of
Bahia de Manzanillo
,
one police boat heading towards the bow of the suspect yacht and the other to
the stern to cutoff any sudden moves to escape.  The Bay shone a
remarkable deep blue in the early morning sunlight, serving as a benign
backdrop to their grim operation.  

The
SWAT team boarded the yacht first, moving soundlessly from one boat to the
other.  Steve and his team halted.  He signaled for the DEA agents to
hold where they were on the other police boat.  The SWAT team ran
stealthily across the deserted deck towards the stairs to head below. 
Some shouts came as the team made their way into the cabin.  No gunshots
rang out.  Steve and his team stepped cautiously onto the yacht, moving
towards the stairs to the lower cabin.  Four men filed onto the deck,
hands on their heads, eyes wide with surprise and fear.  Two appeared to
be crewmembers, one was a cook, judging by his apron, and the last one might be
the perp, still chewing his breakfast like cud that refused to be
swallowed. 

The
SWAT team located identification for each man.  The crew was from the
Veracruz area on the Caribbean side of Mexico.  The fourth man carried a
U. S. passport and claimed to be an actor hired to impersonate a man he knew
only as El Zorro Astuto.  Only the actor had been armed.  They would
verify his identity and they might hold him for minor charges, but Steve
doubted that this man was the big money laundering and drug-dealing perp they
were after.

He
glowered at the DEA team leader, who had turned red in the face and stood
shaking his head in disbelief as he examined the actor’s passport.  They
might learn a little more during the interrogation of the actor and the crew,
but likely the DEA would have a black eye on this operation for leading the FBI
here based on misinformation.   Steve turned away, signaling his team
that he was leaving.  He left the two LA agents to stay with the DEA and
the perps.  He would not bother to point out the obvious botch-up to the
DEA leader.  His immediate departure with Mathew would deliver the message
he wanted.

This
failure by the DEA to have accurate information was one of the reasons that
Steve disliked joint operations.  He was annoyed at the waste of time and
resources.   They would take the four men back to Guadalajara for
questioning, however the sting itself was a flop.  El Zorro Astuto had
named himself well.  He was a clever and elusive fox of the drug
world.    

Once
they were heading back to the heliport, Steve exchanged a look with Mathew, who
appeared as taken aback as he was.  The facts of the day were clear
enough.  They had been duped and they felt foolish.  On the return
trip to Guadalajara, they would devise their interrogation strategy for the
four men from the yacht.  Steve doubted they would learn much but he had
never missed apprehending a perp in his career.  He would run this Astuto
character to ground.  It might take some time, but Steve had no intention
of letting a major drug dealer and money launderer evade the FBI for very long.

Once
back in Guadalajara, he would leave Mathew in charge and head back to
Portland.  He wanted a thorough briefing on the data analysis that London
and Stanford were doing on the child trafficking case and he would get another
chance to see the lovely but prickly, Ivy Littleton. 

***

As her eighth meeting of the day finished up
just before four, Ivy took advantage of the break to stop in and make sure the
two FBI agents, Brian and Moll, were doing okay.  While they were
easy-going guys, they were so motivated, focused and intelligent as they worked
methodically through the data that she would be glad to have them as
employees.  Brian would be a wonder with clients, while Moll was one of
those half technical/half data guys who would be a real asset to her analytical
team. 

“Hey
you two – checking to make sure you don’t have any questions.”

Brian
glanced up and smiled.  The agent was tall and slender, with a
delightfully friendly personality and he was altogether good-looking enough to
be a male model.  Instead he was an attorney, an FBI agent and a data
hound.  Ivy thought of him as an aspen, a tall and attractive tree with
year round interest in its nearly white bark and whispery leaves that turned
brilliantly yellow in the autumn.

“I
think we are progressing along nicely – should soon have this nailed. 
Thank goodness too.  The big guy is due back tomorrow.”

Ivy was
curious to learn more about Steve Nielsen.  “Isn’t he a bit old to be an
agent?”

“Steve’s
not really an agent.  He’s an FBI HBO.”

“A
what?”

“High
Bureau Official.  Only one level between him and the Director of the
Bureau and that doesn’t really count because Steve has the Director’s ear.”

“And he
is here, working on this case?”