PRECIPICE (35 page)

Ortiz scrolled through his contacts and found the number for the bank in the Bahamas where he’d opened Moore’s secret account. He read the account number and access codes to a representative and then asked to open another account to transfer the money into. After an interminable twenty minutes on the phone, he had the two million dollars safely moved to the new account. He noted the account number and passcode on a slip of paper that he crammed into a pocket of his slacks. It was too bad he wouldn’t get the whole seven million, but he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Things were about to get very hot around here.

He stuffed several sets of clothes into a rolling suitcase that was small enough to fit in most overhead airplane bins. It killed him to wrinkle some of the beautiful suits that he’d collected, but he couldn’t afford to be slowed down by a hanging bag. He was almost finished packing when his cell phone rang. His relief at seeing his cousin’s satellite number on the caller ID was tempered by frustration that Héctor had once again called him on his personal phone. At least maybe this meant that he could get his hands on the other five million dollars, and at the very least it meant that his cousin was still alive. A surge of hope shot through him that maybe his dreams weren’t shattered after all. He answered the phone.

Chip slowly rolled down Belmont Road in the trendy Adams Morgan neighborhood of northern DC. The residential street was lined with shoulder-to-shoulder apartment buildings that butted up fairly close to the pavement, separated from the sidewalk only by a few raised bricked-in gardens. Leafless trees thrust up like grim sentinels from evenly spaced gaps in the concrete along the edge of the street. He peered through the darkened window of his rented Cadillac CTS, looking carefully for the proper address. His eyes also scanned the parked cars, searching for a 2009 Sahara-Silver-Metallic Audi A5. It was almost too easy. The car was parked one house over from the address on the side of the street. Chip was surprised to find the car here at 4:30 on a weekday, but maybe Ortiz used public transit to get to work. Parking his rented Cadillac nearby proved to be a bit more challenging than finding the Audi. He ended up having to turn around to find a spot fifty feet away from the Audi on the opposite side of the street.

He sat and watched for a few minutes, but at this hour on a Monday there wasn’t much happening along the residential street. He rifled through the brown envelope that Sutherland had given him. He removed the Sig Sauer pistol and screwed on the suppressor, mentally noting that the width of the suppressor meant he wouldn’t be able to use the gun’s sights. They weren’t tall enough to look over the fat metal tube. He had trained to shoot with this setup at The Woods, but he wasn’t as proficient as he would like yet. Hopefully he wouldn’t need to fire the gun at all. He pulled the slide back to chamber a round and flipped the decocking lever. Then he lifted himself up off the driver’s seat enough to stuff the pistol in the waistband of his pants, and pulled his shirt down to cover it. He wished he still had the shoulder holster he’d used on the mission, but he had abandoned it in Mexico when he’d changed out of his fatigues. It was too warm today to wear a jacket over the holster without being conspicuous anyway.

Next he pulled out the satellite phone and turned it on then scrolled through the call history to locate the DC number for Senator Moore’s chief of staff. Hopefully he could stir the man up a little bit and get him to head for the car before work let out and the streets filled up with people. He pressed the call button on the phone and waited while it rang.

“Hola, Héctor. ¿Dónde chingatos te metes?!”
Where the fuck have you been?
The voice sounded frustrated on the other end of the line.

The Spanish startled chip, although he realized he should have expected this. He paused for a minute and tried to figure out how to handle this turn of events.

“Héctor?” the guy asked again, his frustration growing.

“No, not Héctor,” Chip finally broke the silence with a grim answer.

“Who the fuck is this?! Where is my cousin?”

At least the answer was in English. Time to rattle the guy’s cage a little, Chip thought.

“Your cousin is rotting in a pit in Mexico. I shot him in the head. You’re next, Mr. Ortiz.” Chip listened to the nervous breathing on the other end of the line as it sunk in that he knew the man’s name. He waited a few seconds then disconnected the line.

Less than a minute later the man from the picture in the brown envelope came out of the house. He looked around frantically as he walked to his parked car, towing a small rolling suitcase behind him. The guy was going to split town. How had he possibly packed so fast? Chip realized that his plan of calling the target might not have been the best idea. He hoped he would still be able to intercept Ortiz before he got on a plane. He noted in the back of his mind that next time he should think things through more carefully before he acted.

When Ortiz pulled away from the curb, Chip almost panicked as he realized his next mistake. His car was parked facing the wrong way. He pulled out and headed down the street in the opposite direction from Ortiz, looking desperately in the rear-view mirror to see which way the Audi was turning. His view was partially occluded by an old maroon Chevy Malibu that had pulled down the street behind the Audi. The cheap car looked out of place in the upscale neighborhood. He circled the block and tried to catch up, and was relieved when he finally located the Audi about a block ahead of him on Columbia Road. He followed as Ortiz took a left onto Connecticut Avenue and headed south.

As the traffic thickened with the onset of rush hour, it was tricky keeping up with the silver Audi in the fading light. It was fully dark and over an hour later when they finally pulled into a parking deck at Dulles. When the car came to a stop in a parking space, Chip took the next spot over and swiftly stepped from the Cadillac. He pulled on a black zip-up Patagonia down sweater. Although the day had been warm, the November night would be too chilly for a t-shirt. He looked around to make sure nobody was nearby then discreetly pulled the silenced Sig from the front of his jeans. He stepped around to the back of the car. Ortiz was still wrestling his suitcase out of the small trunk opening of his Audi when Chip poked the Sig’s silencer into his ribs. The man froze.

“Put it back. Close the trunk.”

Ortiz did as he was told.

Chip prodded him around to the passenger side of the Audi with the extended end of the gun and told Ortiz to climb inside. He kept the gun trained on his target and instructed the other man to climb over into the driver’s seat. It took an awkward few seconds for Ortiz to struggle around the gearshift in the small car, then Chip climbed in as well with the gun’s aim never erring from his new prisoner.

“Drive,” he said.

Chip kept the gun down and his head turned as Ortiz paid for the parking, hoping to avoid any security cameras that might be stationed at the airport’s exit. He indicated the way as Ortiz drove onto 287 back toward town. Traffic was lighter in this direction, and it only took a little over thirty minutes before they pulled into the lot on the Virginia side of the Potomac at Great Falls. Chip had Ortiz park the Audi in the back corner of the lot, far from other cars.

“Call your boss,” he instructed in a quiet voice as soon as the engine was off. “Tell him that his daughter will be brought to him in Alabama, and that he should wait for her there.”

Although he was relieved to hear that the girl had survived, Ortiz’s mind scrambled for some reason why he couldn’t make the call. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Senator Moore right now. He had betrayed the man and was running away with his two million dollars. Then he was struck with a small ray of hope. Maybe it was only his boss that this young blond stranger was after. Maybe if he helped the guy get to Moore, Ortiz would be let go. He hadn’t really done anything, after all. He had only lined up a political and financial deal—it wasn’t like he had killed anybody. Ortiz was grasping at straws, but it was all that he had left.

“Do you want me to tell him anything else?” Ortiz asked, sounding a bit more hopeful now as he stalled for time. Maybe he could still talk his way out of this.

Chip pondered this for a moment. Once again, his plan only went so far. He had thought ahead only to getting the senator to leave DC so that he could find the man and see what his involvement was in all of this. There was no way he wanted to go after such an important public figure here in the middle of a strange city. Then it hit him. He had the solution. But first, he needed to know what else Juan Ortiz’s knew.

“What was the deal? What was he supposed to get out of this?” he asked his prisoner.

“Five million dollars.” Ortiz was suddenly more than happy to spill the beans. He would cooperate, and maybe he would live. He was just the messenger, after all. He had to convince this grim stranger that he was really after someone else,
anyone
else except for Ortiz.

“How was he supposed to receive it?”

“Two million when the bill cleared his committee, and the other three million when it passed.”

Chip had no idea what bill Ortiz was referring to, but he didn’t let on. “Did it pass?”

“Yeah,” Ortiz replied cautiously. “It passed today.”

It suddenly made sense to Chip why Ortiz had been packed up and fleeing when he arrived. The guy must be splitting with the cash. “Where’s the money?”

The moment that it took for Ortiz to compose himself before he replied alerted Chip that he was probably hearing a lie.

“There is no money. I haven’t been able to get in touch with my cousin,” Ortiz protested, glaring angrily at the man who he now knew had killed his flesh and blood.

“What about the two million?”

“You’ll have to ask Moore about that. The money was transferred to him. I was just the messenger. I don’t know where the money is.” Ortiz could feel things closing in on him and was trying desperately to say whatever he could to save himself. It was a fine line he was walking, but there was no turning back now.

Chip raised the gun and pressed the fat business end of the suppressor against the other man’s forehead. He gently pushed until Ortiz’s head was against the driver’s side window, held there by steady pressure from Chip’s hand on the other end of the gun. The man’s eyes darted nervously back and forth, and his breathing sounded unhealthily fast and shallow. Chip let off the pressure just a touch until Ortiz’s head moved a half-inch from the window then pressed again quickly, banging the man’s head against the cold glass. He wanted to kill this sniveling piece of shit now, but it wasn’t quite time. Sutherland’s advice about not using bullets also still lingered in the back of his mind.

Ortiz saw the killing look in the other man’s eyes. This guy was really going to shoot him. It was time to do anything he could to save himself. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the slip of paper with the new account number and passcode for the Bahamian bank. He handed it over. Chip glanced at it and noted that it looked much like the information that Sutherland had given him for his own account earlier in the day. He stuffed it into a pocket of his jeans.

“OK, now call Senator Moore. Tell him that his daughter will be delivered to him in Alabama tomorrow. Tell him you’re leaving town until things blow over.”

This time there was no hesitation as Ortiz pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the senator’s cell number. Moore picked up before the second ring.

“Where’s my daughter you son of a bitch?!”

The man’s voice roared so loudly through the phone that Chip could hear him slurring through the tiny speaker from across the car. Ortiz winced and moved the phone a few inches away from his ear. As Ortiz hesitated to answer, Chip pressed the end of the suppressor against his head again.

“Your daughter is fine,” Ortiz said in an exasperated tone. He could barely contain his contempt for the man. “You should go to Alabama, and she will be delivered to you there tomorrow.”

The senator’s voice was quieter for the rest of the call, and Chip couldn’t hear what he said. The expression on Juan Ortiz’s face was a cross between irritation and fear as he disconnected the phone, and Chip only assumed that the conversation had not gone well for Senator Moore’s chief of staff. Things were about to get a whole lot worse for the man, Chip thought.

“Samantha Moore is dead,” Chip told his prisoner in a soft but deadly tone.

Despite his contempt for the senator, Ortiz was stricken by the news of the girl’s demise. Kidnapping Sam had been his idea, and it slowly sunk in that he was, in fact, at least partially responsible for her death. He had never intended for innocents to be harmed in this deal. Money for passing a bill had seemed so harmless. He couldn’t figure out how it had come to this, how there was suddenly a man in his car, here in the United States, holding a gun to his head. How could things have gone so wrong?

“Leave the phone here and the keys in the ignition,” Chip instructed. With any luck, the car would be stolen before it sat here for very long. “Get out.”

They both climbed out of the Audi, and Chip stepped around behind Ortiz to keep the gun trained on him from behind at close range. They walked across the parking lot and into the woods where they stepped over a split rail fence with the rumble of the river growing louder as they went. It was tough to find their way through the shadowy forest in the dark moonless night, but they finally emerged on the rocky bank just upstream of the thundering falls. Chip kept prodding the end of the silencer into Ortiz’s ribs with one hand and shining a red-lensed flashlight ahead with the other as they scrambled down the uneven, rugged rocks to the water’s edge. It was a struggle for Ortiz to make the scramble in his slick-soled dress shoes, but fear of the grim man with the gun trained on him helped him to make good time. The temperature had dropped, and Ortiz shivered a bit in the cold mist. He was still dressed in a light suit, while Chip was wearing his cozy down-filled sweater.