The Gift of the Dragon (12 page)

“So that’s why your father is hunting her.”

“Many are hunting her. But there are differences in what would be done if she were caught. You know I love debating with you, Ned, but I've got some calls to make, and you have a date with Ms. Parcy's lovely… smile.”

Blunt simply saluted and got out of the endless limo.

Trevor poured himself another shot of tequila and thoughtfully took a sip. Then another. Then he pulled his phone from his pocket and sent a text to his father, “Thy will be done.”

Franklin

“I am sorry to hear about your agent.” Franklin rocked back in his fake Recaro, his feet up on the polished desk. This scene he would not let anyone see; normally he cultivated a more serious image than he thought he portrayed now with his size-eleven Italian black calfskin loafers up on the desk where billion-dollar contracts came for their final signature.
 

“I understand he was a good agent. Old Sam taught the girl to be resourceful. She finds weak spots where no one else can.” Franklin winced as the voice on the other end shouted about sending a SWAT team after Alice Sangerman. Franklin hated having to deal with government functionaries. They were so sure of their own power and so strident when that surety turned out to be undercut by events.
And this one in his zeal almost dropped a monkey wrench in my plan!

“Better not to attack her so directly. We don’t need headlines about a woman wiping out a SWAT team. Do you have anyone who could befriend her? Bring her in… more gently?”

The voice stopped yammering, which pleased Franklin. Stoddard might be Director of the FBI, one of the most powerful law enforcement organizations in the world, but in Franklin’s world he was a poorly-paid, badly-dressed police officer who couldn’t afford decent grooming. Like a dog given enough treats that it perks up its ears and waits patiently when its master starts to speak, Stoddard seemed to be slowly learning his place.

“You have someone in mind? Good. Send me his information. I have an idea that will give you a high-profile bust. Including at least one name on your most-wanted list. You like those, right?”

Franklin listened to some more of the man’s noises and then said his goodbyes. He wiped off the phone with a handkerchief before replacing it in the cradle.
 

Not that the man’s odor could come through the phone—still, Franklin was sure he could detect the scent of a spray named after a sailor that men who thought little about what their smell told others, often slathered on after shaving.

Leave it to modern marketing to spend millions convincing people that old-time mariners smelled good!

Franklin sat thinking. His plan required him to trust his youngest son more than he had previously done. The boy meant well, but his half-formed body led him to be more sympathetic than Franklin would like. Members of the McAlister family had to do difficult things, things that went against the morals of lesser beings, of lesser families. A McAlister should not sympathize with the masses of half-evolved apes. For a McAlister, expanding the power and wealth of the family should be of paramount importance. That made it important to maintain a wide buffer between the McAlister skin and the hides of others. Trevor needed constant reminding of that simple principle, one which Ian and Ayn understood as if by instinct.
 

“All good things in all good time,” Franklin said to himself. His phone buzzed, indicating an incoming text. He frowned at the message. Then he raised the phone to his mouth and quietly said, “Call Ian.”
 

The phone's voice recognition beeped contentedly and then dialed.

His other son answered with a cheerful, “Hi, Dad!”

“Ian. What is the news?”

“We made it to Montana, Robert is drunk, and I'm on my way there.”

Franklin said, “And?”

“We’ll be going hunting in the morning. The guide has several likely bait piles where we should find a vicious bear or two.”

“Good.”

“Everything’s going fine, Dad. No probs.”

Franklin winced. Drunk, his son’s butchery of the language was even worse than usual. “Good to hear. Things are going as planned here also.”

“Great. Well, relax. The current CEO of Apple Creek’s in very good hands. Maybe I should say paws.”

Franklin did not laugh. “I'll relax when you are back here, Ian.”

“How’s my troublesome little brother doing?”

“Holding up his end, so far.”

“Excellent.”

“Good luck, Ian.”

“Luck? Hah! You know it’s not luck that I depend on.”

“Right. Good hunting.”

“Better.”

Franklin McAlister settled back into his chair and gazed out the window at the setting sun. Another day closer to the goal. So much of doing great deeds was in the waiting. Someone had once said waiting was the hardest part.
 

Chapter 8, A Hand in the Dark

Callan

She’s alive… Alice Ambrosine Sangerman is alive. She didn’t die when I shot her in the head on the banks of the Columbia, when I saw her standing with Sara. I should’ve shot her first! Used more bullets!

He looked at the photo he had just received from Franklin McAlister, surveillance footage from Tampa Airport. He looked at the picture on the very tablet that McAlister asked Callan for again in the message.
What is on this tablet?
 

Callan recognized the attempt at a deal. McAlister had let him know that Alice was still alive as an offering.
 

I’m not ready to make that deal yet.

After leaving Oregon, he had returned to a former Quickie Mart he leased as part of his Gulf Coast gunrunning operation. From here, Callan’s men ran boats loaded with guns down to Mexico, trading them for drugs and bringing those back in, landing at different spots along the impoverished Louisiana coast. The market was in Venice, a town about an hour’s drive from New Orleans. The person who had named it that had either a very strong sense of irony or unbelievable optimism. The town’s other name was The End of the World, as it lay at the southern tip of the Great River Road, where the pavement ended at the Gulf of Mexico. This Venice had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and was just beginning to recover when oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill had begun washing ashore, sending the value of the rebuilt homes and buildings falling back down toward zero.
 

The many empty buildings and the proximity to the water made it a good place for Callan’s arms dealing headquarters, and it also made a good place for him to gather his strength after the humiliating disaster in Klamath.
 

The isolation also made him feel more comfortable. If Thorn’s men came for him here, he was at the end of long road watched by loyal soldiers. If they came by boat, only a few channels were navigable, and his people also watched those.
 

In the relative security, Callan worked on two questions: What was on the tablet, and how had Thorn found his secret operation on Klamath Lake?
 

He had a strong feeling that they were related and that if he found the answer for one, it would lead to the answer for the second.
 

Faith

Faith looked at the envelope sitting on her kitchen counter for the hundredth time. Two days before, she had been dropped off at her apartment building by the man who called himself Trevor Martel. In the envelope lay a check from Apple Creek Corporation for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Not wanting to pay her bank for bouncing a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollar check, she called the number on it and verified its validity, not stolen, not fake, one hundred percent real, and one hundred percent cashable. Satisfied, she cashed it with the banking app on her phone. Then she went to bed and stayed there for twelve hours.

Upon waking, she fired up her laptop and searched for Laird Northwin. He looked older in the online photos than he had in person, and she could not find a very clear one. Being in the same industry, more or less, she knew of him, but Faith had never researched him the way she would a client or a target. “I know of him as a flea knows of a dog,” she said to herself aloud.
 

After popping a frozen Indian meal in the microwave and eating it like a robot while her mind whirled, she plugged in her cell phone and began calling in favors from her friends from the Gulfwatch project. Though she had been gone several months and the team had suffered a bloodbath of firing, forced retiring, and transfers under Stoddard, these were people she had trained and mentored for the difficult and dangerous job of infiltrating the various drug gangs operating in the Gulf.

Though the Cártel del Golfo, or CDG, gang dominated the Gulf region, with its main operation based in Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, there were splinter gangs, corrupt townships, and various ancillary operations all through eastern Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. Her people had their fingers on the pulses of most of the important players still. She had gone through firefights and hurricanes with these people. Many remained fiercely loyal to her.
 

Having planted her seeds, she had stayed up late into the night, planning how she would spend the money, on advertising and networking, and get her almost-dead, fledgling company back on its feet and ready to soar. Then, after midnight, unable to shut off her mind, she had taken two Ambiens and fallen into a dreamless sleep that had lasted until her automatic coffee machine had woken her up with the aroma of Chinatown Coffee Company’s French roast. She thanked the great indifferent heavens that her phone hadn't rung until she had managed to slurp down the first cup.

Soon, she had Miguel Osiel on the line. Osiel ran a boat out of Matamoros, mixing fishing with small-time smuggling of drugs and women to offshore oil rigs. Most of the rig operators performed random drug testing of the workers, so one of his current hot shipments consisted of bags of clean urine. In his mid-forties, Osiel dyed his hair gray and dressed to look like an old man. He had perfected the wavering voice and shaky hands of someone who had made a career testing various substances, both legal and illegal. Faith knew his hands were rock-steady whenever he needed them to be. He had an array of listening devices and sensors disguised as fishing equipment on his faded thirty-foot sport fisher, the
Vision Doble
.
 

Faith had sent Osiel a few of the photos Trevor had given her on a thumb drive the day before, as well as the description of her target as Trevor had described Callan to her. “Your man sounds like the boss of a gang of gun runners operating out of New Orleans, out on the delta. They have been trading guns for drugs for several years out there, but lately their boss showed up from somewhere out west. They have been stepping up operations, also. Very good products. Automatics, good quality, not that Norinco shit.”

Norinco, a Chinese arms manufacturer known for poor-quality guns,
Faith thought. “Sounds like a possible lead, then. I’ve already talked to Florida and Alabama. They haven’t seen anyone like him.”
 

“The boss of these men, Faith, he’s said to be a
fachero
. He goes to casinos in Alabama to look for ladies.”

“Do you know which ones?”

“I don’t, Faith, I’m sorry. He goes by boat is all I know. I heard it when some of his men were getting gas in Port Isabel. They were complaining that he took the better boat.”
 

“Ah, that’s great info, Miguel. So I just need to look at casinos that are a reasonable boat ride from the delta. They probably don’t go in and out of the city itself. Too visible.”

“That would be my bet. There are miles of empty buildings along Levee Road and the 23. Things still have not recovered from Katrina out there.”

“Yeah. Lots of places to hide. Thank you, Miguel. How is Maria?”

“Oh, Faith, she’s a sweet dream. I am in
la casa chica
all day long when I’m with her. I will owe you forever for introducing us!”

Faith had her first good laugh in what felt like months when he said that. Things were finally coming together after hours on the phone.
I know how to find my target!

“Hey, no problem, Miguel. Someday you do the same for me, okay?”

“Ah, my
cuate
, I will someday.” His voice grew more serious.
 

“Be careful on this one Faith. I got a bad feeling. His men were pissed he took the good boat, but they were saying his name like you say the devil’s name, you know?”
 

 
“I will, Miguel. You take care also. Don’t haul in a bull shark thinking it is a tuna!”

He laughed at that. “Ah, I will be careful, dear. Lately, I’ve been selling so much of this clean piss that I have to buy tuna to make it look like I’m really fishing.”

“Miguel Osiel buys fish? What has the world come to?” Faith laughed.
 

“Adios, friend.”

Alice
 

“So Ami, tell me about Miami.”

“I will paraphrase online sources if that is okay?”