Caribbean's Keeper (33 page)

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The following morning, Cole walked to Blue Heaven for breakfast. Along the way, he picked up a disposable cell phone and charged it up at the bar while he ate, figuring that Tony could trace every call Cole made with the other phone. Walking back to Truman Annex, he pulled Murph’s number from his wallet. The paper still wet, Cole carefully peeled it apart, and dialed.

When someone answered on the other end, it was not Murph.

“Who is this?” Cole asked as he stopped walking.

On the other end of the line, a man cleared his throat and replied, saying, “This is Scott’s brother.”

Cole had never known Murph as anything other than Murph. The first name threw him off and Cole asked, “Where’s Murph at?”

Murph’s brother paused before saying bluntly, “Murph is dead.”

“What?” Cole asked.

Murph’s brother explained that the State Department had visited him two weeks ago with what was left of Murph’s belongings. Apparently, he’d been shot down flying out of Venezuela on suspicion of carrying drugs. The Venezuelans had turned over what they collected from the crash site to the U.S. Embassy, and Murph’s phone was one of the only things left.

Cole’s mind raced back to his last conversation when Murph was leaving Martinique. He’d mentioned the trip for David and Venezuela specifically. Cole struggled to swallow with his mouth completely dry and realized that Murph’s flyby of the Bakoua was perhaps his last stunt before being killed. With the phone pressed to his ear and his other hand against his forehead, Cole apologized to Murph’s brother and hung up.

After that, he tried to call the Hotel Bakoua, worried even more now about Isabella, but between a poor connection and the language barrier, he couldn’t get through to anyone speaking English. Cole was lost between anger and fear, feeling himself slip into a panic. He knew it was time again for action.

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Back at his room, Cole sat once more at the foot of the bed. It took time for Murph’s death to sink in. Cole knew that it was more than unfortunate. With his friend dead and Cole set up to rot in prison, it seemed all-the-more plausible that David was cleaning house. If David knew Cole had been in Martinique, that meant Isabella wasn’t safe either.

Cole dialed Tony and when he answered, Cole said, “I’m in, Tony. If I was on the fence before, I’m not anymore. I’m onboard to bring these assholes down.”

Tony laughed at Cole’s enthusiasm before inviting him down to the JIATF-S building to get acquainted with some of the team. With that, Cole moved quickly down the road and Tony met him by a door leading into a windowless and nondescript building. After clearing a few more checkpoints, Cole found himself in yet another secure comms room littered with computers, video screens, televisions, and about a dozen men and women working at a hurried pace. Tony had Cole sit against a wall and instructed him to watch the show.

On the screens in front of Cole, he watched streaming video from aircraft like the ones that had chased him off of Panama. There were real-time feeds from both the Caribbean and Pacific coming from what must have been six or more planes. Radios crackled with chatter from across the Caribbean basin. On another screen were the positions of aircraft as they conducted their searches, and on yet another screen, was a satellite map of Panama City. Tony motioned for Cole to pay attention to that screen more than the others as a blip moved around overlaid on the city grid.

After 20 minutes, Tony walked over to Cole and pointed again back at all the monitors. “This is because of you, Cole. Your guy David is a big deal, and we’re now networked into the inner workings of a major cartel. Our aircraft are on top of every one of his boats right now.”

Cole asked, “So you’re going to bust them?”

Tony shook his head, saying, “No, not all of them. We don’t want to tip David off just yet that we’re on to him. We’ll make it hurt, but he’d ditch the phone if we blew our cover like that. For now, we’re just watching, trying to learn his movements.”

“So why not just shut him down now?”

“This is the big leagues, Cole. We play for keeps and we aim for the top. David’s not the top.”

Cole was quiet for a moment, before asking, “So you willingly let drugs slip through?”

Tony exhaled and replied, “Yeah, for the greater good, sometimes you gotta let one slide.” He patted Cole on the shoulder and went back to work.

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Over the next week, Cole was in the command center almost daily. Twice he called David to ensure they were still tracking the right guy, and both times they were spot on, tracking David’s phone as he made his way in and around Panama City. It was like a game of chess and Tony was lining up his plays. Cole admired the steel resolve Tony showed with the other agents. He led them, but in a subtle way that commanded respect and at the same time created an open dialogue among the agents in the room. Cole admired him for it.

Some of the other agents ignored Cole. One or two of them showed outright disdain for his presence, but most just went about their work with a shared determination to slow the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. Looking at the array of equipment and realizing the magnitude of the operation, Cole was amazed he’d gotten away with so much. Underneath the sunshine, the palm trees, the beaches, and the blue water, the Caribbean was a modern battlefield.

Tony asked Cole questions every now and then, but mostly he followed the monitors’ activity and jotted things down on a notepad. On the second day, he sat down and asked Cole about David’s phone calls.

“Do you know who David works with?”

Cole shook his head and answered, “No, I never met many guys outside of David.”

Tony thought for a moment and explained a bit more of the game to Cole. “He calls a few numbers, most of which we can track to Panama, Bolivia, and Colombia, but there’s one number he’s dialed three times that is encrypted beyond anything we can track. I think it’s encrypted on the other end. Do you have any idea who that might be?”

Cole again shook his head and answered, “No, sorry.”

“No problem, but that guy is our target from here on out.”

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On the third day, Cole was restless for some action and when the opportunity arose, he pointed out the small river where he ran back and forth from in Nicaragua, explaining to Tony and the other agents the frequency of the runs and the types of pangas used. Seemingly on a whim, Tony moved a U.S. Navy ship to monitor the river mouth, and by the next morning when Cole walked in, the ship had busted a load of cocaine during the night. Cole smiled a bit, thinking that perhaps he’d bought some rest for the older couple that had always taken care of him. With a ship off the mouth of the river, David would have to find a new hideout. It felt like a win and Cole was happy.

That night, Tony invited Cole out to dinner to celebrate the bust. In high spirits, Tony offered to buy at El Siboney and Cole wasn’t about to refuse the offer. Ordering the same plate of grouper he’d eaten so many other times, Cole bid his time and made idle chatter with Tony.

He finally asked, “So, Mickey is one of your guys?”

Tony laughed, replying, “Yeah, he’s been with us for years. He used to run dope like you and something scared the crap out of him. He ran north and ended up caught up in some low-budget dope ring. I got my hands on him and he turned pretty quick. We pay him a bit, just enough to get by, and he keeps up on some connections that help us from time to time.”

Cole smiled briefly, then fought back the urge to let Tony in on Mickey’s little secret. Cole remembered how Mickey dressed and lived, well below his means as a Cuban migrant smuggler. Even if Mickey had turned to the right side of the law when it came to drugs, he kept up his skills organizing the runs to Cuba and back. If Mickey could run a migrant network under Tony’s nose, Cole was that much more impressed with the short little man with greying hair. Cole wasn’t mad at him. It was, after all, purely business once Cole had headed south.
Hell, Mickey warned me
, Cole thought before he took another sip of his beer.

Tony asked, “Are you surprised about Mickey?”

Cole grinned, took a longer sip from his beer, swallowed, and replied, ‘Nothing surprises me anymore.”

After each had put down a few more beers, Cole laid out his cards. “Tony, I need to get back to Martinique.”

Tony almost spit out his beer, before putting the bottle back on the table and shaking his head. “Not a chance Cole. You’re a flight risk.”

Cole pleaded with him and explained the entire situation with Isabella, offering to do whatever it took to get back down to Fort-De-France to check on her. Tony shook his head each time.

Cole finally threw his hail mary, saying, “If I don’t have my head on straight for going back to Panama, this isn’t going to work, Tony.”

Cole thought he made a good argument, as Tony was quiet for a minute. Taking another sip of his beer, Tony stared into Cole’s eyes.

After a pause, he changed his previous tone, and said to Cole, “If, and it’s a big if, I let you go down there, I’ll go with you. But for now we’ve got work to do.”

Cole hid the smile he felt and nodded to affirm that he understood everything Tony said. The two finished dinner with lighter conversation and parted ways outside of Truman Annex.

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The following morning, Cole again was in the comms room at JIATF-S. An aircraft was pushing a video feed of the river mouth where the ship had made their bust the day before. There was a bit of commotion amongst the agents and Cole stared at the video, trying to figure out what they were seeing. Tony came over and put his hand on Cole’s shoulder, saying, “It looks like they burned the place.”

Cole asked, “What place? What are you talking about?”

Tony pointed back at the monitor, saying, “The camp you guys were using, someone went in last night and burned it all to the dirt, probably to send a message or something. Go pack your bag; we are going to go take a look for ourselves.”

Cole asked, “What about the people living there?”

Tony just solemnly shook his head, saying, “We don’t know, but it doesn’t look good.”

Chapter 16 - Payback

COLE HURRIED BACK to his room and packed the few things he had with him. Meeting Tony back at the command center, they climbed into a waiting SUV and sped over to the Naval Air Station in Key West. This time, a King Air, one not unlike Murph’s, was waiting for them. Tony and Cole climbed in and the plane taxied out to the runway, turned around at the end, and the propellers spun up. The plane shook and after a momentary pause, the pilots released the brakes and it surged down the runway, lifted off, and pointed to the south. The familiar thud of the landing gear caused a lump in Cole’s throat. It reminded him of Murph and brought with it a somber reality. Cole looked out the window at Key West below. He dreaded a plane ride south and longed for the quiet side streets of a Key West morning. Going south was the last thing he wanted to do, but Tony was calling the shots at this point, and Cole was something between a prisoner and a free man.

The plane droned over the Bahamas for what seemed like an eternity. Tony sat patiently across from Cole and combed through a folder with a red ‘Secret’ sticker on the front cover. At times, he showed Cole a map, and asked vague questions about routes Cole had taken or people he’d interacted with. But for most of the flight, Cole sat silently and stared down at the hundreds of barren rocks that made up the bulk of the Bahamas island chain. It was nothing like the palm-lined beaches one would see in a travel brochure. Cole shook his head softly, thinking,
This damn Caribbean.

The majority of the Bahamas, like most of the Caribbean, was a far cry from what Cole had thought years before. Each island they flew over looked much like the one before—large and shallow lagoons surrounding brown rocky outcroppings. Beyond each reef line was the deep and dark blue water and white caps from the sea breeze that stood out even from 20,000 feet above. On every few islands, there would be a runway or a few stuctures, but few had any signs of life on them. It was as inhospitable as another planet. After nearly two hours, the plane banked back around to the west and a larger land mass jutted up from the sea.

Tony looked up for a moment and out the window, then nodded back to Cole, saying “Gitmo.”

Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo, as the military referred to it, was a familiar place to Cole.
Delaney
had made many port calls there and Cole remembered it from his former life. Gitmo was hot and desolate, sitting on the dry side of Cuba and lacking water for much of the year. It resembled a desert in more ways than one would think. Surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, with armed guards in watch towers, and a minefield that separated America from communist Cuba, Cole was less than ecstatic to stop there.

“How long are we staying?” Cole asked.

Tony, without looking up, replied, “Not long, just enough to get some gas I suppose.”

Cole didn’t ask any more questions and instead sat back as the pilots banked around to land into the stiff winds that almost always blew in hard from the east. It forced pilots to come in with a steep turn, directly over the minefield to avoid Cuban airspace. The pilots did a good job of it as they fought to keep the wings level and touched down without much fanfare, taxiing in to an abandoned ramp. Once shut down, Cole and Tony stepped out and waited in the empty terminal while the crew fueled the plane.

It was a spartan waiting area with a few rows of seats, worn tile floors, and a few sailors mulling about. Plaques and framed pictures lined the wall from one end to the other, documenting the history of one of America’s last southern bastions from a bygone era. As Cole walked, there were black and white photos of old planes and their crews from the height of the Cold War along with more recent pictures, all telling the story of Guantanamo Bay. Much of it made the base seem outdated, but Gitmo had strategic importance if things ever heated up in the tropics. On the far end, ornate wooden boards listed the bases’ past Commanding Officers and Cole paused to peruse the names that dated back to beginning of the 20
^th
century.