True Honor (30 page)

“Where did she come from?” Darcy asked.

“She walked coming from the north.” Gabe queued his radio and alerted one of the CIA officers watching from the street to follow her into the bank. “With whom did she travel?”

Darcy searched every face on the street. She backtracked several times as she came up against several maybes for Luther, but none that held up to a longer scrutiny. “There! Vladimir. He’s at the end of the block sitting in the outdoor cafe. He’s wearing a hat, sunglasses, but you can’t disguise that build.”

She searched the area around him, turned, and searched the other end of the block to see if they had someone watching from both directions. “He looks to be alone. No sign of Luther, no sign of Jerry.” She picked up the backup camera and used the zoom lens to get several photographs of Vladimir.

“There goes four million of the money in the account,” Gabriel said, monitoring the U.S. Treasury real-time Web site.

“Four million is an expensive check to hand a lady who loves to shop. Renee is here. Is Luther also on this island? Did Renee fly in to pick up the money? Did they come in by boat?”

“Great questions. It’s clear she came with Vladimir to provide her security. How do you want to handle tailing the two of them?” Gabe asked.

“I want to tag her with a transmitter. I can get to her as she comes out of the bank and she’ll never think twice about getting bumped.”

“The odds are good she’s seen your picture.”

“I’ll wear that floppy straw hat and I’ll be passing her as she emerges. She’ll never see my face. If we’re going to avoid Vladimir’s attention, we need to be able to tail from a distance, and the only way to do that is with a transmitter,” Darcy said.

“If they split up?”

“Vladimir is your problem. With two agents and yourself, you might be able to keep a general sense of where he’s going—the docks, the airport, staying in the city. I’ll stay with Renee.”

“Get the hat.”

Darcy nodded and rushed back to her room. She had worried if Gabriel would hesitate to let her go back out in the field after having slipped away from the agreed upon plan for meeting with Sergey. She was going to earn his trust back with this one. She came back and took the transmitter Gabe had checked. She left the hotel and walked across the street toward the bank, just one of many tourists using the bank for her currency needs. She reached the glass doors as Renee emerged.

AUGUST 2

Friday, 11:07 a.m.

USS
H
AILEY
/ Caribbean Sea

There was more room to bunk down aboard the USS
Hailey
than a submarine; the SEALs shared four staterooms. There was still an upper and lower bunk, and having lost the coin toss Sam had settled on the top bunk to get some sleep. Feet against the underside of his bunk pushed his mattress up. “Cougar, you awake?”

“I am now,” Sam assured Wolf, pushing aside the pillow over his face. They were going back on duty at sundown, and he had been looking forward to the rack time to get some sleep.

“Did you see my letter from Jill?”

“You showed everyone the letter from your wife. I saw her mention that Darcy hadn’t returned her message. Dar’s probably in the field somewhere.” Darcy said she had a promising lead she was trailing. Maybe it had panned out.

“Is that good or bad?”

“I know she wasn’t enjoying being stuck in the office.” Sam wasn’t sure what to think about her being back on the front lines. He’d gotten involved with an intelligence officer. He had to trust her job skills just as she had to trust his. But it didn’t make it any less hard not to worry though.

A tap sounded at the cabin door and then it opened. The red light, used in the room letting some men sleep while others moved around in something better than the darkness, gave way to the brighter light from the hall. Bear leaned in.

“Chief, Wolf, DIA needs us in Nassau. Grab your gear; there’s a transport flight we can catch. They may have found the buyer for this shipment.”

“We’re on the way, boss,” Wolf assured.

The door closed.

Sam leaned over to look at the bunk below. “You volunteered us again?”

“It beats staying here doing maintenance checks on diving equipment.”

“I was looking forward to sleeping today,” Sam protested mildly. Several hours on a noisy plane was not what he’d had in mind.

“A minor problem.” Wolf laughed as Sam nearly stepped on him as he came down from the upper bunk.

AUGUST 2

Friday, 3:45 p.m.

Nassau, New Providence Island, Bahamas

The car they were using to navigate the Nassau streets was more than small; it was tiny. Darcy had to turn sideways to lean across the backseat to see around Gabriel. “Where is she going now?” The transponder Darcy had slipped in the side pocket of Renee’s purse was working beautifully. Since Vladimir was still with her, she and Gabe were only making occasional visual contact as they trailed her around Nassau.

“Another jewelry store.”

“She’s carrying around a four-million-dollar check while she shops. It makes you wonder what she’s thinking.”

“At least it ensures she keeps her purse close to her.”

Renee’s numerous purchases were being handed off to couriers to deliver for her. Gabe had the other CIA agent trying to follow one of those deliveries to locate where Renee was staying on the island or if the packages were being delivered to the harbor.

“Gabe, the way she’s shopping—designer dresses, shoes, jewelry— I don’t think she’s been in Nassau for long. We need flight manifests and harbormaster reports for the last few days. If we find out how she arrived, maybe we can backtrack where she came from.”

“The CIA station chief is working his contacts to get the lists now. And the Department of Defense is trying to get a pickup team in place. Jerry is high on their list, not to mention Luther.” Gabe’s phone rang. “Hello.” He smiled. “Excellent. Get rooms there; sit tight. We’ll join you shortly.”

Gabe hung up the phone. “Renee sent her packages to the Pierre Hotel, a fact that suggests she’s staying local for at least one more day.”

Darcy tugged out her copy of the city map to determine where the hotel was located. If Renee was staying there, it would be in the expensive part of town. “A fact providing the one thing we need most right now: time.”

* * *

The Pierre Hotel was a vast step up from the hotel they had stayed at the night before. Darcy was grateful she didn’t have to check in, for she was woefully underdressed for such a hotel. A CIA agent had arranged a block of rooms on the seventh floor, and their team went upstairs by the back stairway, avoiding the public areas and the elevators. It was dangerous to set up surveillance in the same hotel as the target but there were no good vantage points around the hotel. And should the decision be made to act, taking Renee and Vladimir inside the hotel would at least contain the problem to a particular floor and room.

Darcy set her bag down on the bed and walked into the bathroom to wash her face. She had her choice of three different colors of plush hand towels, designer soaps, lotions, and shampoo. She hoped Renee settled in for a long visit. A few days staying here would be a vacation while at work.

Three distinctive knocks on the hotel door told her it was Gabriel. She opened without checking the security view hole. “Do we have a room number for her yet?”

Gabe pulled out the chair at the small table and glanced at the notes he had made. “Renee is four floors above us on the penthouse level. She’s traveling under the name Karen Norvost. It doesn’t look like Luther’s here. There is talk at the front desk that the entire penthouse level was booked for the next month. It contains two large suites and four luxury rooms. Vladimir took the room across from the elevators. The other rooms are unoccupied.”

Darcy finally started connecting the dots. “Her birthday.”

“What?”

“Renee’s birthday is this month, the sixteenth. She will want to celebrate it in style with a few of her friends coming to see her.”

“She has been known in the past for some lavish birthday parties,” Gabe said.

“Luther isn’t here yet, but he’s coming,” Darcy speculated. “Renee is settling in early to enjoy herself.” She added ice to her glass of water. “What do you think Renee is going to do with four million dollars?”

“You can bet she wasn’t shopping those jewelry stores for their counter display items. Do you want to set up the surveillance equipment in here?”

“Might as well. It’s a corner room; we can cover the approach to the hotel entrance from here as well as a piece of the marina. We need to arrange to have someone else at the airport watching for Luther’s arrival.”

“I’ll make sure it’s covered. Now if we can just get enough time to get a snatch team assembled,” Gabe said, getting slowly to his feet.

“It sounds like we have a few days.” The biggest problem would be Luther showing up and leaving before they were ready to execute a safe takedown. Rushing a plan in this situation meant someone could get killed. “We want him, Gabriel. This time it feels like we may have him.”

“Sergey is the big unknown.”

“Do we call him?” Darcy asked, ambivalent about it.

“If a sweep of the harbor turns up the boat, we’ll call him,” Gabe proposed.

“How hard are we going to look?”

Gabe smiled. “You know me too well.”

Twenty-Five

* * *

AUGUST 2

Friday, 11:37 p.m.

Pierre Hotel / Nassau, New Providence Island, Bahamas

Darcy shifted her stool to the side of the small table so she could reach the piece of paper she had taped to the picture frame. For a temporary place to stick important notes, it did the job.

“Darcy, can I borrow your luggage? I need to get the security monitor off the floor,” Gabe asked.

She pushed back her earphones and the muted refrains from
Carmen
so she could turn. “Sure.” She turned to point out where she had pushed it under the bed.

Gabriel, with the help of two technicians, was turning the room into a command center. Good video surveillance of the lobby was set up through a tap on the hotel security cameras. Views from their hotel suite windows were now appearing on monitors. The logistics for the next seventy-two hours of surveillance were a nightmare. She pulled over the blueprints to see how food and housekeeping went back and forth to the penthouse level. With Luther reserving the entire floor, Vladimir had good physical control of the layout.

She heard Gabe open the door in answer to a soft knock and invite in more guests. “Make yourselves comfortable wherever you can find room; we’re going to brief in twenty minutes. We’ve got a problem to sort out with the satellite link to get the video feed with Defense Intelligence up, but otherwise we’re ready to go.”

Darcy added a note to check on what kind of helicopter transportation the hotel arranged for its special guests. Luther would want quick ways to leave the hotel if needed.

“Guess who?” Hands slid across her eyes from behind. Darcy instinctively brought her elbow straight back, hitting solid muscle and causing her fingers to momentarily go numb from the collision. The hands across her eyes fell away.

Sam coughed. “You do have a habit of hitting the good guys in your life.”

“Sam!” She turned on the stool. “I am so sorry.” She reached toward his stomach to soothe the place she had struck, her hand covering his.

“I’ll learn not to interrupt you when you are working.” His hand turned and captured hers. “Want to try this again? Hi, beautiful.”

She surged to her feet to wrap him in a hug; his embrace felt so wonderful. She laughed. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you, but what are you doing here?”

He chuckled. “Tracking a shipment of explosives. I hear you may know who bought it.”

“You actually saw the shipment?”

“Twenty cases of deadly explosives, enough to take out something very big.”

She winced at the image. “We’re pretty sure Luther is behind it; we saw the cash transfer. His wife, Renee, is upstairs.”

“That close?” He shook his head. “Details can wait; I don’t want to talk about work at the moment.” He picked her up a few inches and kissed her, then slowly released her. “I thought you might have a bit of a tan as you’re in the Bahamas but alas, no.”

“Gabriel isn’t letting me out of this corner room.”

He looked around the crowded room. “Captive again, huh?”

“I’m afraid so.” Privacy was virtually nonexistent in this stakeout.

“This is going to be a problem.”

Tom wrapped his arm around Sam’s shoulder and leaned around his partner. “Who’s this? Darcy—I thought I heard your voice. Small world.”

“Hi, Tom. Keeping Sam out of trouble for me?”

“I volunteered Cougar for this briefing.”

She grinned at him. “Good job.”

“Now is it worth the lack of sleep, buddy?” Tom teased.

“Don’t tell me you knew she was here.”

Sam’s boss entered the room. Sam reluctantly released her.

Gabriel called the planning meeting to order. Sam and Tom took up station leaning against the wall on either side of her chair. Gabe began the discussion. “We’re dealing with two topics tonight: the location and capture of Luther Genault and laying plans to deal with a shipment of explosives we believe he arranged to purchase for someone else. Since the two are intricately linked in their timing, tonight we figure out how to make both operations happen successfully and safely. Let’s talk about the explosives first. Joe, you have the floor.”

Sam’s boss unrolled a large satellite photo taken hours before and taped it to the wall for all to see. “The explosives are currently being stored on Razor Reef Island, somewhere near this south inlet. There are radio burst transmissions happening at regular intervals, suggesting there is at least some real-time monitoring of the shipment.”

“We can block that monitoring and blow up the shipment,” the defense analyst suggested.

“We want the guys who plan to use those explosives; otherwise they’ll just find more to buy,” Gabriel replied.

“Which means we can’t take Luther until after we pick up the people coming for the explosives,” Darcy pointed out. “And as soon as there’s trouble with the shipment, Luther runs. We’ll have to be prepared to grab them simultaneously. Right now we don’t know where he is. If we are forced to choose, which has priority? Luther or the shipment?”