A Touch of Malice (27 page)

“They’ll use him as a negotiating tool,” Walt said, addressing the anxious notion that Merrick could be dead already.

“Sure,” Riggs said. “That’s what I would do.”

But everyone in the room knew that was wishful thinking at best.

They watched the team use a battering ram against one of the back doors. One good swing and they were all inside. The perimeter was filling in with a combination of Secret Service agents and Marines.

Walt took a large drink from a bottle of water, his mouth drying up the second he swallowed.

The computer screen blinked a couple of times. On. Off. On. Off. Then it stayed off. A black screen stared back at them.

Stevie slammed his fist on the top of Walt’s desk and got up. He paced around in a tight circle while Walt, Riggs and Dutton stared at him.

“It’s the batteries,” Stevie declared. “The camera works off batteries. They’re dead.”

“Why didn’t you tell us—”

“Because,” Stevie snapped at them, “I didn’t want to add any more pressure to the operation. I knew it would be close, but didn’t anticipate this.” Stevie waved his arms around the computer system. “I mean, we’re in Bogota freakin’ Colombia with a freakin’ army full of Secret Service and Marines. How much of this is really necessary . . . I mean, for crying out—”

Walt grabbed Stevie around the shoulders and placed him down in a chair. He knew the kind of stress they were under and the young analyst had just lost visual with the president of the United States. The FBI was the lead agency on this operation. There may never be a more important mission in any of their lifetimes.

Stevie was hunched over looking down at the floor, his left hand holding his glasses while his right hand pulled on his hair.

Walt crouched down next to the young analyst. “Relax. They’re on the verge of rescuing him. You already did your job. You found the getaway car. There’s nothing more we could’ve done anyway.”

Stevie looked like he was mouthing words, but nothing came out. He murmured something under his breath.

“What?” Walt asked.

Suddenly Fisk’s voice came out of the speakerphone. “They’re in,” he said with a tinge of enthusiasm. “We’ll know in just a moment.”

Now everyone in the room crowded the speaker on Walt’s desk. Everyone but Stevie who remained stooped over his knees, his arm covering his eyes.

There was a commotion over the phone. Someone was screaming from a distance, shouting something urgently and receiving no response back.

“What is it, Sam?” Walt asked.

There was complete dejection in Fisk’s voice. He couldn’t possibly hide the misery he was suddenly dealing with. “It’s not them,” Fisk said. “It’s a decoy.”

The three department heads turned to Stevie and watched him point to the speaker without ever looking up. “That,” he said, fighting off a complete breakdown, “that’s what I said. They drove like maniacs on purpose. They wanted us to follow them while the real car got away.”

Reality settled into Walt’s chest like an anchor. They had lost their eyes in the sky and the Camenos had at least a twenty-minute head start. This was a calculated maneuver with strategic decoys and probably backup plans as well. Walt nibbled on a loose cuticle while Stevie sobbed quietly by himself, already grieving the loss of their president.

Riggs pulled up the shades and stared out the large bulletproof window with his hands behind his back.

A steady stream of static came from the speakerphone withoutlying shouts, sporadic cries of expletives.

Finally, Fisk’s voice came over the speaker, loud and dejected all at once. “Well, gentlemen. I suggest we devise a plan to get our president back, before I go back to Santoro’s mansion and strangle him with my bare hands.”

Stevie rose from his chair and returned to his seat behind Walt’s desk. He pulled a tissue from his pocket, blew his nose, then clicked his mouse a couple of times and rewound the digital video recording of the drone’s trip over Bogota. Cars moving backwards at lightning speed and pedestrians race-walking in the wrong direction.

“You have an idea?” Walt asked.

Stevie’s voice cracked under the one word he could muster. “Nick.”

Chapter 33

President Merrick sat in the backseat of the Mercedes sedan with a Cameno cartel guerilla on each side of him and their pistols digging into his ribs. Pablo Moreno had told him on the phone he would be taken to see his brother. He knew there was a ninety percent chance his brother was already dead. He also knew there was a ninety percent chance he himself would soon be dead. That was okay with him. If Merrick had to attend the funeral of another brother, he wasn’t going to be alive much longer anyway. He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with such a burden. In some morbid way, all he really wanted was to see his brother’s body one more time. Just touch his skin. Say good-bye.

The Mercedes had slowed down a side street and pulled up a bumpy driveway into an open two-car garage. Now the Camenos were pulling him from the arm and forcing him into the backseat of a second car in the garage. A beige Nissan Tiida hatchback which blended well with every other car on the road. Small and ordinary. One of the most popular cars in Colombia.

There was a driver already in the Nissan waiting for them, engine running. He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap low on his head to avoid detection. As soon as they made the switch, the driver of the first car remained in the garage and waited for them to back out before closing the door behind them.

The car pulled out of the driveway and accelerated quickly down the side street. One of the Camenos in the backseat began barking out orders to the driver in Spanish. Merrick understood one of the words. “Pausado.” Slow down.

The car slowed as they moved onto a busier street heading away from President Santoro’s residence.

“How far are we going?” Merrick asked.

The one to his right dug his pistol into Merrick’s side a little harder. “Shut up,” he said in a slight accent.

With the tinted windows and different make of car, Merrick knew he was on his own now. There would be no Secret Service agents en route to save him. With just a four-minute head start, they would be far enough away to avoid any detection. Bogota was a large city, over seven million people. Merrick never felt more alone in his life among those millions.

A phone rang and the Cameno next to him put a cell phone to his ear. After a few harsh words, he handed the phone to Merrick.

“Yes,” Merrick answered.

“Do you wish to see your brother alive?” Pablo Moreno said with a soft, sinister voice.

Merrick had been through enough diplomatic and interrogation training seminars to know exactly how to deal with such a luring question.

“Fuck you,” Merrick spat into the phone.

“That is not a good way to start this journey, Mr. President.”

“How far away are we?” Merrick said.

“Not far,” Moreno said, smooth, almost too smooth. As if he were trying too hard. “All you need to do is transfer the money into my account and you’ll be there in a matter of minutes.”

“Ha. That’s funny, Pablo. I see my brother alive and you’ll get your money just as promised.”

“Mr. President, I am not a bluffing sort of man. Please have the money wired and you will not only see your brother, but you will both be released into the nearby woods. You will be within a mile of a well-traveled road where you can flag down someone to help you get back home safely.”

“You’re a very concerned citizen, aren’t you,” Merrick said, his sarcasm getting thicker as he recognized the same building for the third time. The driver was simply driving in circles.

“I am a practical man. Give me what I want and you will receive what you so desperately want.”

There it was. Moreno was picking up on the desperation in Merrick’s tone, knowing exactly how far he’d come to participate in this deadly game.

“The answer is no,” Merrick said. “Go ahead and have me killed right now.”

“As you wish, Mr. President.”

* * *

When they watched the replay in Walt’s office, it became apparent how the Secret Service followed the wrong black sedan. As soon as it left the grounds, it maneuvered wildly through traffic accelerating at twice the normal speed and hitting cars and street signs with impunity.

Walt’s fist was tightly wound around his cell phone, while watching the scene repeat again. There were three black sedans which left President Santoro’s complex within minutes of each other. The Colombian guards inspected the vehicles before they exited, but that was part of the problem. They were Santoro’s men who were in on the plan from the beginning.

“Can you zoom in any more?” Walt asked Stevie.

“Every time I do we lose clarity. Right now I can tell these are three black sedans which all left the complex at the same time President Merrick left. But watch when I zoom.”

The picture became so blurry the cars began to blend in with the ground and the trees. Walt returned his attention to the current image. If those people were decoys, then the entire operation was a premeditated scam. Which meant Santoro and Moreno had time to devise a plan to fool the security team and capture the president without any protection.

Stevie seemed to do some calculating in his head. “Nick’s less than ten minutes from Bogota,” Stevie said with a little excitement now growing in his voice. “We can split up the helicopter team into two or three groups and have them canvas the route where we last saw the cars traveling. It’s possible they’ve got a safe house somewhere within the city. They knew we’d have aerial coverage so they must’ve known the exiting highways would make them easier targets.”

“Okay,” Walt said, not quite convinced this was a panacea. At least he had the wisdom to recommend Nick’s team go through Bogota before leaving the country.

Stevie must’ve sensed the ambivalence in Walt’s tone. He turned to Walt and said, “A minute ago the president was dead. Now I’d say we have a five percent chance of finding him before he’s killed. That’s not bad.”

Walt looked down at his phone and realized there was an incoming call. He picked it up and had a sad smile on his face when he said, “Hey Nick."

Chapter 34

The helicopter flew low and fast, practically bouncing off the treetops, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough for Matt. He could see Bogota on the horizon, the large city sprawling below the Andes, home to Pablo Moreno, South America’s most vicious cartel leader. A man who had just coerced the president of the United States into leaving the safety of his security staff in the hopes of saving his brother’s life. Matt understood the sentiment. He probably would’ve done the same thing himself.

Now he and Nick examined the urban landscape and searched for a place to drop down and exit the chopper.

“There,” Nick pointed to an open patch of grass just before the asphalt streets took hold of the city. “Drop us off right there, then move north and drop off the others on the streets Stevie designated.” He looked at Kalinikov and Olson. “You two split up and move parallel to each other. The roadblocks are already set up on the main roads, we have to assume they’re still in Bogota somewhere.”

“And if they’re not?” asked Olson.

Nick looked out the window, the helicopter hovering over their landing point. “If not, then we’ll just have to wait for a ransom call.”

Even as he said the words, Matt knew there would be no ransom call. The president would be rescued or dead. There were no other options. And dead was leading in the polls by a landslide.

Nick and Matt jumped out of the chopper and immediately ran from the powerful gusts of wind as the helicopter took off and headed north. They finally slowed as the terrain went from grass to asphalt.

Matt checked the name of the street they were on and pulled out his phone. When it was answered, Matt said, “Hey, Stevie, I’m on Calle 12. Is that where you last saw the black sedan?”

“Yes, Twelfth Street,” Stevie said. “On the replay, we diverted the camera towards the decoy car, that car began to slow down around Carrera 6, just a couple of blocks from where you are right now. I couldn’t tell if the car was about to make a turn onto a street, or just slowing down for the intersection. I’d check Calle 11 as well.”

“All right,” Matt said, then shut his phone.

Matt gestured to the street south of them and said, “Stevie said the car slowed down at the intersection. Maybe we should split up and cover more territory.”

“Okay,” Nick said, his head swiveling side to side. “I’ll cut over to the next street and head this same direction. We make visual contact at every intersection though.”

“Got it.”

Nick looked at his partner. “Let me know the second you see something.”

“Will do,” Matt said, then took a stick of gum from his pocket and began a slow chew.

The street was narrow and the houses close to the curb. Most of the homes were a little older and run down. The front yards were a mixture of grass and dirt and littered with kids’ toys and soccer balls. As Matt walked down the street, a pair of stray dogs scurried past him, on their toes, their tongues hanging out as they searched for their next meal.

Matt kept a quick pace, but wanted to be sure not to miss anything. A homeless man shuffled along the sidewalk toward him, the guy examining Matt as if deciding whether to try to assault him. The man chose to continue his slow hobble, dragging his feet as he went.

In five minutes, Matt made it to the next intersection and turned to his left to see Nick crossing the road at exactly the same pace. Nick nodded, admonishing him with his expression, letting Matt know he didn’t want his partner taking unnecessary chances.

The next stretch of road was similar to the first, but some commercial buildings were mixed in with the residential. There was a Bistro on the opposite side of the street, a green canopy over the entrance.

Matt was beginning to think this was a waste of manpower when he spotted a small house on his right with three young men standing around on a small porch, two of them holding rifles right out in the open like it was hunting season. The third guy wore jeans and a brown leather jacket with a Lebron James jersey underneath. He began walking down the path on an intersecting course toward Matt.