Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel (43 page)

He didn’t know what the alarm was, but he figured there was a good chance Bruno or someone else had discovered him missing from his room.

He watched through the louvered vent as the man at the desk below him stood up and listened for a moment. First the guy turned and looked at the locked door to the hallway outside. When he turned to glance at the open safe, Liquida moved. The guy started gathering up his papers and books on the desk.

Using the stiletto, Liquida quickly popped the catch on the register cover. He allowed the vent cover to swing open and pushed the filter out of the way.

The thin flat filter floated toward the floor like a leaf. As it brushed past the man’s shoulder, the accountant looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of Liquida’s sinister smile. The Mexicutioner descended on him headfirst with his arms straight out as if to embrace his victim with the point of the stiletto.

The bookkeeper threw up a hand to ward it off, but he was too late.

Liquida fell on him. The needle-sharp tip of the blade slipped smoothly into the right side of the man’s neck as if the wound were a ready-made sheath. With all of Liquida’s weight behind it, the stiletto buried itself to the handle in the victim’s upper chest just inside the clavicle.

The shocked man broke Liquida’s fall, and they both collapsed onto the floor. The two of them lay sprawled, the bookkeeper pulsing a river of blood as Liquida wiggled the blade in the wound. The tip had either punctured the upper chamber of the heart or severed the aorta. Either way the man would be dead within seconds.

Liquida waited a few counts for the convulsing body to become still. Then he got to his knees, stood, and pulled the stiletto from the deep wound. Liquida wiped the blade and his bloodied hand on an unsoiled portion of the victim’s pant leg.

Without another thought, he turned his attention to the open safe behind him. For the first time Liquida realized that the stacked wall of greenbacks inside the two yawning steel doors was nearly as tall as he was and four times as wide.

He walked across the room and grabbed one of the enclosed bundles from the top shelf. They were five-dollar U.S. banknotes, all of them vacuum packed in plastic. Liquida could tell from the way it was packaged, as well as from the residue of white film on the shrink-fitted wrapper, that it was cash from one of the cartels. No one else in the world bundled bills like that. They had to protect their money from seawater, chemicals, and fuel during storage and transit. To Liquida the narco seal of approval was better than a certificate from the U.S. Treasury. He knew it wasn’t counterfeit and no one would have a list of the serial numbers.

What better way to launder it than to transfer the narco dollars to Bruno’s clients, who in turn would wire excess oil revenues into a cartel account overseas. In the meantime, Bruno’s clients could use the narco bills to meet their payroll in the jungle. It was the perfect symbiotic relationship.

The second shelf was stacked with tens. The shelf below it held twenties.

Liquida worked his way to the floor of the safe. It was stacked at least three feet high with bundles of hundred-dollar banknotes, each one a tight plastic brick. The safe was at least two feet deep and four feet wide. If true to form, each plastic-wrapped brick of hundreds would contain ten thousand dollars.

Just like the post office, the cartels had to weigh everything for transport. Otherwise overloaded planes would nose into the jungle and their jury-rigged diesel-powered semisubs would be littering the seafloor. Liquida knew from his work with the cartels that a million dollars in hundreds would weigh just under twenty pounds. He had no idea how much money was in the bottom of the safe, but it was more than he could carry without wheels.

His worst enemy now was time. Keeping one eye on the door to the hallway outside, Liquida searched the cabinets under the counter. He found a stack of heavy canvas bags, each one the size of a twenty-five-pound sack of flour. They were cash bags without lettering on the outside. Each one had a tie string stitched near the open top of the bag.

Liquida quickly filled four of the bags with hundred-dollar bills and tied them closed with double knots. He lifted each by the tie string until he was satisfied that the thick canvas tie would hold the weight of the bag without breaking.

He went back to the cadaver on the floor and stripped the dead man’s belt from his pants. The alarm outside was still blaring. Liquida fished for the guy’s electronic key card and found it in his pants pocket.

He went back to the money bags and made a separate loop from the remaining ends of the ties on each of the bags. He threaded the leather belt through the loops and then buckled it. He hoisted the load over his shoulders so that the bags were evenly balanced, two in front, two behind, roughly eighty pounds total. It was heavy. The weight swayed as he moved, but Liquida could handle it.

What he couldn’t do was take his eyes off the safe. He had barely made a dent in the bottom stack of bills. He set the load down and grabbed two more canvas bags.

Chapter
Fifty-Nine

A
s they came in low over the trees, wheels and flaps down, the pilot could almost feel branches scraping the belly of the plane. He feathered the engines to try and keep the noise down.

Suddenly a flock of birds flew up in front of him. Several hit the windshield, feathers and blood flying. Fortunately the plane wasn’t going fast enough to break glass. A few of the birds went through the props. The pilot pushed the throttles forward for more power. The four large Allison engines roared as the plane nosed up.

“Shit!” The pilot shook his head. “If they didn’t know we were coming, they know it now.” He eased back on the throttles once more. He could see the runway ahead of them now. It was paved and long. At least that was good news.

He glided in over the last set of trees, goosed the engines, and aimed for the end of the runway. The plan was to hit the ground as quickly as possible, reverse the props, gun the engines, and stand on the brakes while the loadmaster in the back was lowering the ramp. If they hit it right, the drop-down door on the second container would fall at the same time. The Jeep with its recoilless rifle would be on the runway before anyone knew it. Adin, with two of the commandos riding in the back, would open fire on anything that moved. Ben Rabin and the other men would push the ammo trailer onto the ramp and allow gravity to do the rest. In the meantime, two of the commandos would drop out through the forward cargo door on the port side while the plane was still moving, cross the runway, and set up two squad machine guns for covering fire.

The plane passed over the first threshold markings on the runway. The pilot pushed the yoke forward. Suddenly the portside window on the flight deck exploded. Pebbles of glass sprayed the pilot’s face as bullets whizzed past his nose, punching holes and blowing out dials in the instrument panel above his head.

A second burst of fire riveted the side of the plane, thumping the metal. The screen in front of the navigator exploded as the twenty-millimeter rounds sliced through the plane, blowing the man out of his chair and cutting him in half. Electrical shorts ignited flames in the wooden panel behind the screen. The aluminum in the plane began to burn as the flight engineer grabbed a fire extinguisher and began to spray.

“Keep it out of my eyes!” screamed the pilot. He struggled to control the plane as he tried to wipe blood from his face using his shoulder. The wheels on the undercarriage hit the ground hard, jamming the pilot’s lower back into the seat. It threw the flight engineer to the floor.

The pilot reached over and reversed the props, then pushed the throttle controls all the way forward. The plane nearly stood on its nose as it slowed. The pilot pressed on the brakes, his gaze fixed on the runway, when suddenly his eyes widened in horror. Coming head-on, the propellants’ exhaust was almost invisible as the rocket-propelled grenade smashed through the windshield and exploded inside.

The plane veered to the right. The guard with his rocket launcher still at his shoulder stood at the edge of the runway smiling for almost a second before the windmilling prop on the outboard engine sprayed him like chum into the open air.

The plane’s forward wheel rolled into a swale at the edge of the runway, then ran off the pavement. It buried itself in the deep gravel at the edge of the concrete.

The plane came to an abrupt stop with the four Allison engines racing in reverse. Ground fire, including tracers, poured into the two starboard engines from the buildings along the right side of the runway. One of the engines started to smoke, then sputtered and died.

“Could have warned him ’bout that,” said Herman. He grabbed Sarah by the arm and tried to pull her along behind him as they crawled low in the center aisle. She was anchored by the dog next to her. Bullets rattled against the plane, punching holes in the aluminum fuselage. Herman could hear them hitting the other side of the steel container, but none of them seemed to come through.

Up at the top of the ladder, the aluminum bulkhead to the flight deck was perforated with so many holes that it looked like lacework. The exploding grenade had peppered it with shrapnel.

Sarah jumped and Bugsy barked at the jarring clang as the heavy steel door on the second container dropped onto the deck of the cargo bay. A second later, the Jeep, its engine revving, shot out of the container and down the plane’s rear ramp.

The Hercules was stopped with its nose pitched down at an angle. This set the bottom of the ramp at a sharp angle to the concrete runway. The Jeep went airborne before it hit the ground. When it did, one of the commandos was jolted off the back of the vehicle. Sarah saw him go flying. She held her breath. He bounced and rolled like a rubber ball, landed on his feet, and started to run.

At the same instant two of the other commandos dropped out of the forward cargo door on the other side of the plane and disappeared.

Sarah looked back for the commando who had fallen from the Jeep. She watched as he took three strides before he was spun around and cut down by a swarm of bullets that sparked and chipped the concrete all around him. Sarah lay staring in shock as the man’s body continued to take hits, his life snuffed out in front of her eyes.

“Son of a bitch!” Just as Herman said it, a stitch of bullets penetrated the side of the plane in the gap between the two steel containers. Instantly four neat holes appeared in the stainless-steel fuel tank. Three of them started hemorrhaging high-octane aviation fuel into the cargo bay. “Time to go,” said Herman. “Stay with me and stay low.” Crouching down, he moved toward the open cargo door on the other side of the plane. When he looked back, Sarah was still lying on her stomach staring out the back of the plane at the dead man on the tarmac. Herman skidded across the aisle on one knee and grabbed her arm as if in a steel vise.

The pain broke her trance. Sarah shot him a glance.

“It’s too late to help him,” said Herman. He jerked her up onto her knees.

“Ow!”

“Sorry, but you gotta stay alive.” Herman gave her a look to kill.

Suddenly she smelled the aviation fuel. Sarah nodded. “Go. I’m right behind you.”

Herman got to the open door. A second later, Sarah and the dog were huddled up close behind him. Herman pulled one of the pistols from inside his belt under his shirt and cycled the slide to chamber a round. He looked out the door. He could see no incoming fire on this side of the plane. All of the rounds seemed to be coming from the buildings on the other side.

Every few seconds a tracer flashed by overhead and disappeared into the jungle in the distance. Rounds ricocheted off the concrete in the narrow gap under the belly toward the rear of the plane.

The reversed propellers created a virtual wind machine, all of it blowing in their direction, ahead of the wings. Herman was getting ready to jump when he looked down to his right and saw the body crumpled on the concrete a few feet away. The commando’s squad automatic weapon, the SAW machine gun, lay beside the man. One of the commandos made it, at least far enough to get away from the plane. The other one didn’t. He had gone to the rear where the belly of the plane had lifted up because of its nose-down position. At that location, there was no defilade behind the plane. It made him an easy target.

“As soon as you get out, move toward the front of the plane but stay flat on the ground,” Herman yelled over the roar of the engines. “Keep the plane between you and those buildings. And keep your head down.” As soon as he said it, Herman dropped out from the door. He landed on his feet, turned back, and grabbed Sarah by the waist as she crouched in the door. She jumped and he eased her out onto the ground.

Bugsy jumped from the plane. The noise of the engine and the sudden wind from the whirling prop scared him. He jerked on the leash and ripped it from her hand. Instantly he was gone.

Sarah looked over Herman’s shoulder and yelled: “Bugsy!” But her voice was swallowed in the din of the engine. She watched as the dog raced across the runway ahead of the ricocheting bullets. She couldn’t believe that they were actually shooting at him. For the first time she wanted a gun, something with which to strike back.

Herman tried to push her to the ground. Sarah would have none of it until she saw the dog disappear into the trees at the edge of the jungle. For a moment Sarah thought she might cry. Then she remembered the dead man on the tarmac.