Jet

Chapter 28

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Terry stared at the memo in his hand, fresh from his Central America analyst.

He re-read it, then moved to his encrypted phone and made a call.

Half an hour later, Terry watched Sloan approach the barista and order tea, then stiffly mount the stairs to where Terry was already sitting in the Starbucks lounge area.

“I heard,” he said by way of greeting to Terry.

Terry reclined in his overstuffed lounge chair and toasted Sloan with his beverage.

“Amazing, don’t you think?”

Sloane nodded. “That’s why you want to spread your bets around. You can never be sure how things will turn out. A smart man has a foot in all camps and positions himself to prosper no matter what the outcome.”

“That sounds like something from a fortune cookie,” Terry said. “How the hell did they take out, what, sixteen men? Maybe I should hire them.”

“I have a feeling they aren’t available.” Sloan took a sip of his tea, rolling it around in his mouth before setting the cup down on the small table between them.

“So what now?” Terry asked.

“We move to plan B. We still have the new governor general coming into office. Once he’s situated, he’ll suggest to the prime minister that the government look hard at the oil prospecting rights that have been assigned, and terminate any outstanding prospecting licenses that have passed their mandated end date. So far they’ve just let them sort of drift along, hoping something good happens. Ending the licenses is a reasonable step, and within the government’s power. He will then propose that Belize find a strategic partner for its oil exploration moving forward — a group with clout.”

“Responsible adults,” Terry agreed.

“That’s right. A few weeks later, our group will go in and make the administration an offer they can’t refuse. The find is still a secret, and the only ones who know about it are Grigenko and us, so the price should be a relative bargain — remember, they have no idea what they’re sitting on. Grigenko can’t say anything or word of his terrorist attempt will leak, and then even his pull with the Russian government won’t be enough to stop international prosecution. Putting a group of killers in place to execute a sovereign government qualifies as terrorism, and there will be no place for him to hide. My hunch is he’ll stay quiet. So we’ll ink a deal and make the discovery a few months later, and everyone will win — except, of course, Grigenko. Check and mate.”

“You think he’ll just walk away?” Terry asked skeptically.

“The man is already filthy rich. This won’t change anything for him long term. True, he would have been filthier and richer, but it’s not worth losing his empire over. He’ll drop it, but he won’t be happy.”

“What about Belize? I can’t believe that’s all there is to it.”

“There’s more going on here than meets the eye, Terry. You don’t really want to know the rest. Suffice it to say that you’ll get a nice bonus and life will go on. Some things are best left alone. Trust me on that.”

“And the girl? The Israeli — David?”

“They’ve served their purpose, haven’t they? Let Grigenko hunt them down. It’s not our concern.”

Terry nodded. “And if they touch base again? Need more help?”

“Bring me any requests. As you’ve pointed out, they’re uniquely effective. It might be valuable to have them as allies down the road. Especially the woman. We both know an operative like that is worth her weight in platinum.” Sloan took a sip of his tea, then studied the cup like it had bitten him and frowned at it. “Remember, Terry. Always spread your bets out. You never know when that rainy day you’ve been saving up for will come. Nobody does.”

Sloan stood and looked around the empty area.

“Always nice to see you, Terry. Enjoy your coffee.”

Mikhail Grigenko slammed the telephone handset down in fury and paced around his expansive office, rage threatening to completely overtake him.

His plot to get the exclusive on the Belize find had disintegrated. Reports of bodies in the jungle were surfacing, and Yuri was nowhere to be found — he hadn’t answered his satellite phone in twenty-four hours.

He had to assume the worst — that somehow, some way, his plan had been compromised and parties unknown had taken on his men. Successfully, from all indications.

The early news was sporadic and vague. The Belizean government had issued a terse statement alluding to Guatemalan separatists, or drug cartels, or smugglers who had fought it out with another faction. Commitments to get to the bottom of things, along with reassurances that all was well were the customary boilerplate and meant nothing.

Grigenko could do the math, and it wasn’t in his favor.

As he paced, the dawning sense that his force couldn’t have been eliminated without a serious security breach crept into his consciousness, eventually staking a claim.

Yuri’s men were as good as they came. For them to be wiped out smacked of government intervention. Had Belize somehow learned of his plot and moved against him before he could follow through? Superior force was the only possibility, as unlikely as it sounded. But a superior force to a well-equipped team of Spetsnaz commandoes was hard to envision in a nation where the power went out several times a day.

There was no obvious answer, and that made Grigenko nervous.

Struggling to contain his anger, he sat behind his desk and stared out the window. He had faced adversity before, been tested, and prevailed. He just needed to think his way through the current situation and craft a new solution.

Grigenko swiveled his chair and rose. He went to the marble-topped bar and poured himself two fingers of vodka, swallowing it in a single gulp. The familiar burn warmed his throat, and he felt himself calming.

In his favor, there was still no sign that anyone knew about the oil find. That put him far in front of anyone else in the region. Information was power, and he had all of it at present. The current administration had rebuffed his tentative explorations to buy favor, but that could well have been a price issue — in truth, he had been cheap, figuring that there was no reason to leave money on the table if the locals didn’t know about what they had. Perhaps it was time to push a few more chips into the pot and raise the stakes. The clock wasn’t his friend on this, and every day that he didn’t have a deal in place was another day that one of his competitors could slip in ahead of him and eat his lunch.

He’d considered a number of scenarios before deciding that a bold strike to take out the current government would be his most promising. One of the possibilities had been to lobby for the government to sign his group to act as the de facto national oil company, winding down its arrangements with any prospecting groups. That kind of unilateral action from the government would encounter a number of significant hurdles, not the least of which would come from the American companies that would want a shot at earning that business, so he had erred on the side of stealthy violence and subterfuge.

Perhaps that had been a strategic mistake.

Yuri had been gung ho about the military strike, arguing that destabilizing the country would result in a more pliant administration moving forward. Once he had his deal in place, they could trumpet the find, and the government would be heroes — it would add billions to the balance sheet over just a matter of a few years, wiping out the entire national debt and rendering the little banana republic relatively prosperous. Of course, Grigenko would see eighty cents on every dollar for his role in providing the necessary infrastructure and support, but then again, he was doing all the heavy lifting. There would be plenty of money to go around, and his company would go from being a virtual non-player in the Americas to a heavyweight, overnight.

He poured another jolt of spirit into his glass and swallowed it, swishing it around in his mouth to better appreciate its nuance.

This was a setback, but one he could recover from. He just had to keep his head and be clever.

The first thing he would need to do was hire a new security group. Whatever had happened with Yuri, these kinds of mistakes couldn’t be tolerated — first the debacle in Trinidad, then the failed execution in Israel…Yuri had obviously either gotten sloppy or had lost his touch. It didn’t really matter which. Grigenko couldn’t afford to have second-rate talent working for him. Yuri had been the best at one point, but no longer, and it was time to retire him. If he surfaced, a bullet to the back of the head in a Moscow alley would permanently terminate their relationship.

He sat down heavily and sighed.

What should have been a week of triumph had culminated in his greatest defeat.

That couldn’t stand.

It was time to get off the mat and start swinging again. He had delegated too much responsibility to Yuri, and the man had failed him. There was an important lesson in that. If he wanted something important done right, he needed to attend to it himself and not hand it off to underlings. There were no shortcuts.

Thinking through his next steps, he flipped open his rolodex and pulled out a card, then put his feet up on his desk and leaned back as he dialed a number.

“Andrei. It’s Mikhail Grigenko. Yes, yes. It has been too long. My friend, I think today is your lucky day. Can you come over for lunch?”

~ ~ ~

Tom wiped sweat off his face as he rounded the bend to the single lane bridge in the optimistically-named town of Hopeville, just north of Punta Gorda. The damned Nissan was running rough again, either because of the crap gas he’d been getting or something wrong with the fuel system. It coughed and protested as he crept over the water, and he mentally committed to changing the fuel filter tomorrow no matter how unpleasant the weather was.

He made a left onto the dirt road that led to his tiny house, and the old truck shuddered, wheezing like an asthmatic in a dust storm.

“Come on, baby. Just a little farther,” he coaxed, stroking the dash hopefully, as though his encouragement would make the difference in the vehicle making it or not.

The engine died with a gasp, and the headlights dimmed as it continued rolling from the momentum. He pulled onto the grass at the side of the road and cursed, then got out and began walking to his house, just a hundred yards up the road.

Even at ten at night, the heat was oppressive, and he swatted at mosquitoes that quickly found him as he wearily trudged home.

The single silenced bullet caught him in the back of the head as he passed his front porch. He tumbled face forward, dead even as he dropped.

His killer approached from behind. Nudging Tom’s inert form with his foot, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made a call.

“Problem solved. Get someone to drop him into the ocean — let the sharks take care of him. We don’t need any questions being asked.”

“Five minutes.”

“I’m out of here.”