Shadows of Deceit (A Series of Shadows) (40 page)

Lou frowned. “I appreciate that.”

“This bottle is called Siberian Summer Cuvee and on the back it basically gives a romanticized description of the source and how the blood was harvested.” Callahan was having trouble reading the words aloud. “It literally says: A delicate maiden flower chilled for months in the Siberian summer. Her nectar flowed thick like honey. The unique manner in which this elixir was harvested is clearly felt on the palate as it is warmed on one’s tongue.”

Lou wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Are you freaking kidding me?” She knew she needed to expand her vocabulary but it was all too shocking.

Callahan set the bottle back into the crate. “I wish I were.”

“So some poor girls were strapped down, frozen, while some sick bastard drained them of two-hundred and fifty bottles of their blood like a human slurpee machine?” She could barely comprehend the depravity. “Do we know where in Russia this came from or who the hell is selling it? Where is this going?”

“Those are all things we need to figure out but there is more you need to see.” Callahan motioned for them to follow him again.

He led them around to the far side of the warehouse and through the sliding door of a storage hold. As they approached, Lou could smell coffee and her heart began to race. When she hobbled around the door, Lou saw the back of the large storage area was piled to the rafters with jute sacks of coffee just like the ones Dillon had said Arcano packed their coffee beans in. Lou knew this was where those cargo containers of coffee ended up when she got a good look at the sheer volume of sacks packed tight against the walls and up to the ceiling.

“Look here.” Callahan said and walked over to a cluster of bags they had pulled out. A few of them were opened and spilling beans on the floor. “See what we found inside?”

Dillon and Lou approached the sacks and saw that buried within the beans was what appeared to be cellophane wrapped brown bricks, the size of loaves of bread. There appeared to be five of them in each sack.

“Is that heroin?” Lou looked at Callahan with excitement.

“That is exactly what it is.” He nodded. “Each brick appears to be four kilos so that’s twenty kilos in each sack.”

“Forty kilos of coffee, twenty of heroin.” Dillon muttered. “If that’s pure, we are talking around four million dollars a sack, street value.”

“Holy shit!” Lou was starting to freak out. “There is no way in hell we can cover this up! This is like the largest drug seizure in freaking history! I worked narcotics! I know! How do we cover up the blood? What the hell are we going to do?”

“Lou, I hate to break this to you but...” Callahan was chuckling. “This is your call. You are the Principate.”

“Oh for crap’s sake!” Lou hobbled out of the storage room cursing under her breath. “My first freaking week out and you think I could get a simple fang flasher? No! I get a multibillion dollar blood and heroin smuggling ring! Nice! Real nice!” She leaned up against one of the crates and waved her new crutch around as she continued to rant. “We need to get all this blood out of here regardless of what we do. Do we have some sort of storage facility for crap like this? Where we can stash it and figure out where all of it came from and where it was supposed to go later?”

Callahan smiled. “We do.” Now she was thinking like a Principate.

“Then do it.” Lou went to scratch her head but winced, forgetting her multiple injuries. “Shit! Ow. OK...” She tried to hoist herself up onto a crate but only succeeded in dropping her crutch. “Dammit.” Dillon raced and grabbed it for her then carefully picked her up and sat her down on the crate. “Thanks.” She grumbled. “Alright, is that the only room we have to deal with or is there more?”

“That’s the only one.” Callahan grimaced. “Which means we have no idea where the contents of the other Arcano containers went. The reason we were late getting to you was because we were at the original address you gave me, down the road. Those are the eight containers you were looking for but they are all empty now. That camera trained on them is offline too. There is nothing in either of those warehouses and it doesn’t look like there has been for a few years.”

“So they were offloaded here, possibly one container at a time. This crap looks like the contents of maybe two of the Odium containers. One and a half by the size of these crates.” Lou was guessing and she hated math. “They boated the crates from the other cargo containers out to sea, then had the helicopters offload them?” She looked at Dillon. “Maybe load up cargo vans or smaller trucks then head off to make deliveries to their warped clients.”

“It’s possible there was heroin only in one container.” Dillon suggested. “The rest may have just been coffee. With a three out of four chance of getting inspected, having only one hold the drugs gives them better odds.”

“Pretty damn smart.” Lou nodded. “The heroin funds the black blood project.”

“Black blood.” Callahan echoed her words. “That’s a brilliant name for it.”

“Well that’s what I’ll put on my report then.” Lou smirked. “How hot does it have to burn for there to be no trace of heroin in there? Hypothetically, of course.”

“I have no idea but with our resources we can certainly rig it and burn it hot enough that no one will bother sifting through the ruins.” Callahan was picking up on her train of thought.

“We need to separate the heroin out of the coffee. Leave only a few sacks with some left up here, once we get all these blood crates out. Do we have people that can set up a contained burn?” She looked at Dillon.

He looked at her sheepishly. “I’m as much a newbie as you Lou. I suggest you talk to Abby about that.”

“I can check with my guys too.” Callahan offered.

“Gimme your phone again.” Lou held her hand out. “I need our agents at ATF. They can do this, I’m sure.”

“We will need DEA as well.” Dillon suggested.

When Abby answered the call, Lou explained everything that they had found since she spoke to her last. Once the initial shock had passed, Abby asked what she needed and Lou was all too happy to tell her. It took forty-five minutes to get the ball rolling but Lou’s first major plan as Principate was in action and all the players needed were on their way. It was close to 10 p.m. when the last crate of black blood was driven away and the ATF agents began setting up the burn portion of things. Dillon and some of Callahan’s men had staged the open sacks of coffee with the heroin tucked back inside at the front of the main warehouse. They had located the sources of the motors Dillon heard when they broke in. They were small generators that were powering refrigerating units that had been set up around the main warehouse to assist in keeping the crates cold. Those units had been removed along with the crates due to the fact that there was no real way of explaining them. The generators were kept in place and Callahan had some crappy flood lights, a couple of hot plates and an old rusted refrigerator brought in. He also staged a few cots and ratty sleeping bags so that it appeared someone had been living there. All the items were untraceable and perfect props to sell the official story they were coming up with.

Shortly after 11 p.m. everything was in place. The jury-rigged electrical that was fed into the building was a serious boon to their plan and the ATF guys set up a controlled ignition source that would start the fire in the storage room with the bulk of the smuggled coffee and heroin. They had packed the room with as much untraceable accelerant as possible and even piped in oxygen so that it would burn hotter and faster, destroying anything in there. Pinholes had been drilled into the walls so that the fire would spread to the rest of the building at a consistent rate. The front of the warehouse, where they staged the drugs, was set up so it would sustain minimal damage. To the relevant first responders, it would look like an electrical fire was triggered by the cables that were siphoning power into the building. Investigators would discover the small staged quantity of heroin and hopefully it would lead them to Arcano and subsequently to Lou and her team. With all the information they had collected thus far that was meant for public consumption, it would appear that all of the murders were a part of a cover-up for a drug smuggling operation. If they could just find Ernesto Vargas, with his tenuous connection to the Jacinto Cartel, they could hang him out to dry and it would be perfect.

“They connect these sacks to Arcano and we have our warrant.” Dillon reminded her as they watched everyone do a final sweep of the warehouse.

“We should get a call from the locals just about the same time we are watching the park being dedicated.” Lou was calculating the scenario carefully. “Which will be brilliant because the call will go to Vinny first and he will haul us out of there.”

“Provided everything goes according to plan.” Dillon said as he raised an eyebrow. “The fly in that ointment is our missing assailant.”

“He won’t dare pull anything to make anyone think different.” She was absolutely certain of it. “He is screwed six ways to Sunday no matter what. Whoever he is, he knows we’re on to him. If anything, he will be shocked that we covered up the bulk of the heroin. He’ll feel cocky and safe.”

“Think we are missing something?” Dillon asked.

Lou looked at him curiously “Him? Or in general?

Dillon rephrased the question. “Will he think we missed something? Like we are not connecting the dots between Arcano, the murders, the blood, all our dead bad guys?”

“I’m counting on it.” Lou turned and hobbled out of the warehouse through one of the open bay doors. “He’s arrogant and he thinks he’s invincible. We need to get an I.D. on him right away.”

Agent Callahan, the DEA agents and the ATF crew all walked up to Lou in the middle of the street. They were the only souls around until you hit the transport terminal up the road. It was so dark and obscured by the big-rigs that Callahan had brought in to block off the area that there was no way they had drawn any attention to the scene. Everything was working out despite how disastrously Lou had started the night off.

“We’re all good to go.” Callahan told her, the other men and women nodding in agreement. “We just need to get you long gone of this place before we hit the button.”

Lou thought it was silly but she understood their insistence that she have plausible deniability if it ever came back on her or Dillon. As far as anyone knew, they never got the warehouse address from Lou’s step-father and they never stepped foot into that warehouse. Callahan had been the one set with the task of getting an address from the trucking company, not Lou or Dillon. The story would be that someone at the trucking company tipped off their suspects and they cleared out of the warehouse before they were raided. Convenient and believable as far as everyone was concerned.

“Alright.” Lou looked at the building that would soon be a charred mess then back at the half a dozen agents that had worked their asses off to help clean up her mess.

“You didn’t make a mess, ma’am.” Mike Harper, one of their ATF agents spoke, apparently having read her thoughts. “Fate led you here so that we could clean up someone else’s mess. If you hadn’t come here tonight, who knows what would have happened! Some dumb-ass security guard or random two-bit thug could have stumbled on those crates and what kind of a disaster would that have been for us?” Harper shook his head. “This was a huge win. You need to know that.”

There were echoes of Harper’s sentiments among the group but Lou didn’t see it like that. Maybe she would some day but for now she felt like she had failed as Principate in a big way.

“Yeah yeah, rah rah, whatever.” Lou smirked. “Thanks but we will all have to agree to disagree on this.” She adjusted herself on her crutch and looked at all their faces. “Thank you. All of you. If you are the standard for who I have to look forward to working with as Principate, I am lucky as hell.” Lou could see that her words, although hardly eloquent, meant something to them. “You’re all exceptional agents and I am honored to be working with each and every one of you. Thanks.” Lou’s heartfelt gratitude was not lost on anyone there. They all beamed proudly and took turns saluting her as Lou had seen people do to Max. Lou knew this was a profound showing of respect for the Sanguinostri. She was floored and at a loss on how to respond. “OK cut it out and get this finished. I’m going home and taking drugs.” She made light of the situation, flapping a hand at them, waving them away. Her sincere humility did her immense justice in their eyes as they all watched their new Principate hobble off down the darkened street towards Dillon’s SUV. “You OK to drive now?” It suddenly occurred to her to ask.

“Oh yeah.” He smirked as he followed along side of her. “Although if it weren’t an automatic transmission I might think twice.”

Lou smiled up at him as he opened the passenger door for her and despite her protest, lifted her in and buckled her up. “I am not a child you know?” She said with a scowl.

“That is debatable.” He smirked at her. “Watch your fingers.” He warned as he closed the door before she could yell at him. There was enough time for that during the ride home.

Juan Rojas finally opened his eyes. He was disoriented, groggy and his
head lolled about as he tried set it upright, with little success. Unable to account for where he was or how he got there, he struggled to make sense of things. It smelled cold and dank but he didn’t feel chilled or wet. In fact, he felt nothing at all. He blinked and blinked but his vision was still blurred. Everything appear like a glowing, greasy smudge. Despite being out of sorts, he sensed he wasn’t alone and though he tried to move, he simply could not. Juan Rojas soon realized there would be no escape from wherever he was.

Max and Niko had debated for nearly an hour on where they would conduct this interview but it was Yuri that finally came up with a solution. Frank had made the arrangements so with just a small detour from the airport, Niko now stood in an abandoned meat locker somewhere in the northeast section of the valley, waiting for Max to arrive so they could began. Niko watched as the sedation wore off on Rojas but he said nothing. He stayed silent. Slowing his breathing and holding perfectly still as he leaned against the insulated stainless steel wall of the locker. He wanted nothing more than to pluck Rojas’ head right off his shoulders, like a rotten grape from the vine. What he had seen in the past several hours that the man sitting in front of him was responsible for, sent pure rage pumping through Niko’s veins. Anyone that knew Niko at all knew that the angrier he got, the more placid and quiet he appeared. Mistaking that particular characteristic for calm had proven fatal for more than one individual in the past.

The Rojas family tree once boasted four generations of loyal Sanguinostri Stewards that had been handsomely compensated for their service over the centuries. To the uninitiated, the Rojas family was affluent, wealthy and highly regarded in Colombia, right up until Salvatore Rojas threw it all away out of spite and greed. In the late 1950’s Salvatore, the last descendant of the Sanguinostri Stewards baring the Rojas name, tried to pass himself off as a distant relative of then Colombian president Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Not only was there no relation, the president had no clue of Salvatore’s existence. It was a difficult time in Colombian history and a long period of violence in Bogota was coming to an end. Salvatore’s overt actions became too much and were in direct conflict with Sanguinostri interests in the region. He was drawing too much attention to himself with his fraud, trying to gain prestige and power he had no legitimate rights to. The South American Aegis Council took appropriate steps to censure the man and reign him in. For all intents and purposes, they believed they had been successful. Immediately after his reprimand, Salvatore and his family quickly and quietly moved from Bogota to Cartagena to quell the scandal. He used his considerable wealth to establish what appeared to be a legitimate import/export business while keeping a low profile for a change.

All seemed well until a new Sanguinostri agent was assigned to the area without Salvatore’s knowledge. The agent was placed within the local law enforcement agency in Cartagena was his primary agenda being the monitoring of his people. Not long after his assignment, while conducting a routine investigation, the agent discovered that an alarming number of young people had been disappearing from the region. The disappearances were all spread out in different principalities and jurisdictions which made it nearly impossible to make a connection if you were not really looking. Local police almost always filed the cases away as them being runaways. With so much fighting and civil unrest in the country during that time, the cases were put on a shelf and never followed up on. With their considerable network, extensive resources and secret gifts, it didn’t take too long for the agent and the Aegis Council to track all the disappearances back to Salvatore Rojas. They ultimately conducted a raid on his home, an old Spanish slave trader’s estate just outside the city that Salvatore had renovated. There, in what was once a dungeon the man used to hold slaves, they found a dozen young boys and girls shackled to the stone walls, emaciated and nearly bled dry. The bones and rotting remains of what they concluded to be the first wave of missing children were found in an old well that had been sealed off fifty years prior. At least it was supposed to have been. It was a horrific and a mortal offense against humankind to which, according to Sanguinostri law, there was only one penalty. The Senatus agreed unanimously and without hesitation that Salvatore Rojas be executed immediately by decapitation and buried in an undisclosed location without stone or marker upon his grave.

Salvatore’s wife and three children were deemed by to have been oblivious to what the man had been up to. After speaking to the Senatus on their behalf, the Dominor had the family relocated, along with all their wealth, to Costa Rica. However, their Stewardship and all rights and privileges that accompanied it was terminated forever. It was believed that the children were properly washed of all knowledge of the Sanguinostri and the mother spilled her own blood in oath to never speak of the Sanguinostri ever again. It appeared to everyone concerned that the matter had long since passed and become just a dark spot in Sanguinostri history. At least until now.

Juan Rojas sat in an aluminum lawn chair, nearly encased in duct tape, in the middle of the abandoned meat locker. Niko could tell that Rojas hadn’t regained full control of his body yet and the drops that they had put in his eyes during the flight would keep his vision obscured for a bit longer. They didn’t really need him to see so whether it wore off by the time Max got there or not, Niko could have cared less.

“Who’s there?” Rojas spoke in English rather than his native Spanish. Niko figured he had heard them talking in English during the trip home. It seemed logical. “I know someone is there. Who are you?”

Niko said nothing. He watched the man for a little while longer without moving but boredom and impatience won out. He fished his antique silver cigarette case out of his pocket and retrieved one of his signature black cigarettes. The rustle of Niko’s jacket drew Rojas’ attention and the snap of the case may as well have been a gunshot given the way the man jerked in his chair. Niko lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply, purposely exhaling in Rojas’ direction. It was a form of torture, the silence, and Niko was enjoying watching Rojas twitch and struggle as the paralytic wore off. Niko heard Max’s footfalls long before Rojas did. The steady thunk of heavy boots that Max opted for rather than a pair of his soft soled loafers or wing tips sent a clear signal to Niko that the man was not dressed for civilized negotiations, but to kick some ass.

The door to the locker had been ajar so when Max swung it wide and looked directly at Niko, he could see that his first lieutenant was close to the edge. It wasn’t surprising after everything they had uncovered in Cuba. What was surprising, however, was the fact that Niko had yet to lay a hand on the man. Max wasn’t sure he would have been able to show that amount of restraint, especially being stuck on a plane with the him for hours. He already decided that Niko would have the honors in dealing with the man in the end. Max received unanimous approval to deal with Juan Rojas just as his father had been almost exactly fifty years ago to the day. Before they got to that point though, they needed to extract any and all information he had on the logistics of the blood trade. They needed names, dates and details. Anyone and everyone that had a hand in the operation was going to be hunted down and brought to justice. Until they knew all the players, Juan Rojas was going to have a very unpleasant and painful time of it.

“Hello Doctor Rojas.” Max spoke after giving the man a careful once over.

“Who are you?!” Rojas demanded, trying to turn towards Max’s voice but unable to do so because of his restraints. “Where am I? You have no right...”

“I have every right!” Max bellowed before Rojas could utter another word. “Unless you are a pathetic fraud just like your father and not truly a doctor, then you have half a brain in your head. If that’s the case, you know exactly why you are here.” Max knew they had put the vision obscuring drops in Rojas’ eyes during the flight so he fished a small bottle out of his pocket and tossed it to Niko. He didn’t have to explain himself.

Niko walked over to Rojas and kicked the back of the chair so that the man fell backwards, the back of his head bouncing on the ground being a bonus. He forced Rojas’ eyes open with little care or concern for the discomfort then squeezed several drops of the fluid in to each. When he saw Rojas blink several times and his pupils return to normal, Niko yanked him by the hair, placing his chair upright. Ignoring the yelps and protests, Niko walked back and took his place leaning against the wall. Max gave Rojas a few minutes for his eyes to regain normalcy and his adrenaline to stop pumping long enough for it to register where he was and who his captors were. While he waited, Max took his jacket off and hung it from one of the rusted meat hooks dangling from the ceiling. He pushed the sleeves of his henley up and slowly walked towards Rojas.

“You know, you were just a boy when your father was sentenced but I am certain that your mother raised you better.” Max cocked his head and glared down at him. “We are going to take this slow and methodically so we can get to the bottom of this.” Max took a wide stance and crossed his arms across his chest, taking a deep breath to calm his rage. “First, let’s make sure you know who we are and why you are here.” Max watched as Rojas”s face filled with anger and arrogance, yet opted not to respond. “That was a question Juan. When I ask you a question I expect you to answer truthfully and immediately, do you understand?”

“Go screw yourself!” Rojas tried to spit at Max but the spittle landed on his own lap, making Max grin.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Max took another breath. “Do you know who we are and why you are here? It’s not a difficult question, but I’ll give you a minute to think about your answer. I suggest you use that minute wisely.” Max turned from Rojas and began walking around him in a wide circle. When he got back to where he started he looked at Rojas again. “Well?”

Rojas narrowed his glance and gave a half grin. “You are Sanguinostri filth, parasites.” He spit again but this time he put a little effort into it and it landed on Max’s boot. “I don’t give a shit why I am here. I do not answer to you!”

“Oh but you do answer to me, Doctor Rojas. You answer to me because we got our hands on you first. Lucky you!” Max smiled then kicked Rojas in the side of the head with the boot he spit on, sending him flying and slamming against the wall. “Now let me explain how this is going to work so that we don’t waste any more of each others time...” Max walked over to the whimpering man who was flailing on his side. His face mashed up against the stainless steel wall and blood dribbling out of his ear. Taking a cue from Niko, he grabbed Rojas by the hair, righted him in the chair, then dragged him back to the center of the locker. Rojas screamed like a little girl. “You can be the piece of shit cowardice prick that we all know you are and prolong this discussion, or you can answer my questions quickly and honestly so we can end this before the sun rises. It is entirely up to you.”

Niko had been a little surprised by Max’s roundhouse to Rojas’ head this early on. Normally Max kept his cool until he just couldn’t contain himself any longer. This was a refreshing change of pace. Niko fished out another cigarette and took a seat on the floor, getting comfortable so he could enjoy the show. He regretted he hadn’t stopped for snacks.

Rojas spit blood from his mouth before he tried to speak. “Why the hell should I make anything easy for you parasites? You made my family’s life a living hell!” He spit more blood and Niko had to grin when he saw that Max had knocked at least two teeth out with his kick. “You want quick and easy? After you ruined my parent’s lives? Screw you I say!”

Max was truly amazed that the man sitting in front of him could assert his family had been the victims. “Juan, I know you were just a boy but you were there. I know that you snuck in during the raid and saw those people your father had in that dungeon. I even believe you may have seen them, and many others, long before the night your father was stopped. Now I want you to think, and think hard on this. Your father was sucking those children dry, just like you were sucking those people at your clinic dry. Who is the parasite here?”

“He had no choice! You people made him no more than your slave! He did whatever he had to do for his family! To keep a roof over our heads and keep us from starving in the streets!” Rojas truly believed what he was saying. “As for me, I just took advantage of your own depraved weakness for my own profit. I will never apologize for that.”

“Are you for real?” Niko hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“I am very much for real!” Rojas’ voice squeaked with anger. “You people murdered my father, sent my mother and her three children to the jungle to fend for herself! I feel nothing but disgust and hatred for all of you!”

Max looked over at Niko as if looking for some reassurance that he was hearing the same things. The man was sick and delusional. “Your family never wanted for anything a day of their lives! You lived on nobleman’s estates in Columbia! Your mother was given a successful business in Costa Rica, complete with a staff at her disposal. She was allowed to keep every penny from your estate! Millions of dollars, probably billions in that economy and you are going to sit here and tell me you foraged in the jungle as a child? That’s why your pissed and murdering innocent people now? Are you quite serious?”