Chapter 10

The first couple of days seemed to creep by, but a phone call on Wednesday from Hank Osman, saying he was in town, made him almost forget why he was so antsy.

“Yo, Big Dog! Meet me at Versailles in an hour. I’ll let you buy me a cup of that sludge you Cubans call coffee.”

He was out the door, Carol in tow, in five minutes.

Versailles was the quintessential Cuban coffee destination for tourists in Miami. It was featured in several movies, in news casts, and hosted more diplomats than the White House. It was not a place Doug liked to go; the tourist draw made it hit or miss on the actual service, but it was a landmark, easy to find.

It was only about twenty to thirty minutes away, depending on time of day and traffic, but Doug wanted to get there early and scope out the place first. He hadn’t seen Hank in years, and though they had been close during training, that didn’t mean they were still close.

The building was easy to spot, situated on the corner of Calle Ocho (the infamous Eighth Street) and SW Thirty-sixth Avenue; it’s crenellated top and building-spanning red awning gave it a bit of old world charm. Doug slowly cruised around the block, turned back, and parked across the street near a building advertising ‘Tapiceria De Autos!’ in ten foot tall letters.

Less than five minutes before the meet time; Doug sat forward, his eyes tracking a man walking casually across Eighth street, a high and tight haircut not disguising the flaming red hair.

“Hank,” he said quietly, just a few minutes later. Osman was standing near the outside ordering window, waiting his turn when Doug rolled up. Carol had stepped back a couple of paces, not making it obvious that they were together, but Doug could see that she was on alert, her eyes scanning the light crowd around the building.

“Big Dog! Damn man, you look like shit.” Osman said, looking over the wheelchair. “Nice wheels though,” He raised a finger, telling Doug to wait a second, then ordered two Cafe Cubanos from the counter and dropping a couple of dollar bills in exchange. Glancing back at Doug and his chair, he carried both and indicated with his head that they should grab one of the outdoor tables.

He carried both cups to the table, setting his own down and carefully handing the other to Doug.

Doug almost spilled it when he realized he had been passed more than just a paper cup of coffee. Hank had palmed a thumb drive, handing it over with the coffee and Doug careful dropped it into his lap, letting it fall between his stumps where it would be hidden from prying eyes.

“So, tell me about Kandahar, stumpy.” Osman said with an unrepentant smile. Doug didn’t take offense, preferring Hank’s direct, if insulting approach, to the tip-toeing round that so many others felt necessary.

They spent the next hour exchanging war stories, talking about people they knew, men who had died, and those who had gotten out before it was too late. It was bitter-sweet, but Doug relished it, feeling like he was back with friends again, discussing things with another soldier. He could almost forget he was stuck in a wheelchair for a little while. They never discussed anything about the thumb drive and never approached the topic of Ramon Sousa. After getting the handoff, he hadn’t really expected to.

Two hours after he left the penthouse, Doug and Carol were back. Doug went straight to his office and booted up a laptop that he kept around, having bought it for the days he had been spending in rehab after he moved back to Miami. He quickly isolated the USB ports in a sandbox, a kind of computer quarantine, and scanned the thumb drive with everything he could think of. No virus issues, no malware or spyware, no key loggers ... it all looked harmless.

Better safe than sorry, he opened the file explorer and looked at the contents of the USB device, seeing it contained one document and a dozen jpg files.

The document had no header or footer, no indication of where the information had come from. It was a simple word doc, and if he had to guess, someone had taken the time to transcribe the information from the original source to a fresh document to disguise the origin.

The document was a transcribed interview with an agent, though the identity of the person being interviewed was either redacted or never mentioned in the first place. As he read through the questions and answers, he got more and more uneasy.

According to the interviewee, several US agencies conspired to sell weapons and munitions to the insurgents in exchange for easily liquidated cultural icons, art, jewels, and gold. The booty was being smuggled out on MAC, Military Airlift Command flights bound for the US. This was not a new racket; the same type of scam had been run in Korea, in Viet Nam and even more recently, with official sanction, under President Reagan in the Iran-Contra scandal. Oliver North took a bullet for the president in that mess.

What was different about this one was two-fold. Firstly, the agencies in question were knowingly feeding arms to the very people that topped the most-wanted terrorist list; and secondly, it had not been extremist moles among the indigenous workers who blew his op, and several others. It had been three-letter agency men embedded with the troops.

If this was all true, they had deliberately sacrificed his team to fill their own pockets.

The attached photos showed multiple shots of three men, each one of them in the company with recognizable figures from the hit list, the most-wanted terrorists in the world.

Doug sat there, lost in thought until Carol came to check on him a couple of hours later. His mind was awash with data, memories of encounters he had with agency assets in country, wondering if he had missed some clue, some slip that might have saved the lives of his team.

The following day, he made up his mind that he had to share the data. He made copies of the files, securing several under pseudonyms, using anonymous online routers, and storing them in the cloud. Then, wiping the thumb drive carefully to make sure that there were no clues as to its origin, he crushed it into small bits and fed it through his garbage disposal. It made a hell of a racket, but no one was going to rebuild that sucker.

Last, but not least, he used the same techniques to create a pair of single-use email addresses, based in Dubai, and emailed the files to Agents Allen and Monroe from the hospital team, and another set to Agents Dunleavy and Moore from the house-sitting detail, just as insurance. He wasn’t sure about the hospital guys, but he had a better feeling for the Agents who had sat on his house and been unhappy about the orders.

On a whim, he repeated those steps, sending a copy to his senator and congress critters as well. Maybe a little posturing on Capitol Hill would make this harder to sweep under the rug. In the meantime, while he waited, he decided that a little insurance wouldn’t be a bad thing.

He spent an hour outlining everything he knew, gathering everything he had, including the video footage of his surveillance teams, photos of the business cards he had been given by both teams. And, of course, the documents he had gotten from Hank Osman, and had two sets couriered to James Dunmore and to Leo Iglesias, with notes saying that these should be held and not opened unless something happened to him.

Melodramatic? Sure, but it made him feel better.

Having done something constructive, he was famished! Rolling out of his office again, he found Carol sitting in the living room, the television on but muted, watching an MMA, mixed martial arts bout. He paused, curious, and saw that it was two women going at it on screen, hammering each other into submission. His attention was split between Carol and the screen, more fascinated by her reactions to the fight than by the fight itself. When one of the fighters would throw a kick or connect with a punch, Carol would actually flinch, as if she was the one delivering the blow.

“Ever done anything like that?” he asked into the silence.

To Carol’s credit, she didn’t even flinch at discovering he was there. She either already knew he was watching from behind her, or she had stronger nerves than he did. He absolutely hated people sneaking up on him.

“I used to train at an MMA gym in DC, back when I was with the Secret Service.” She said, not turning to look at him. “That’s Rhonda Rousey up there, met her one time. Tough broad, good fighter, and smoking hot.”

Doug just grinned, rolling forward and paying more attention to the screen. The blond fighter delivered a devastating kick, snapping the brunette’s head back and dropping her to the mat. The referee stepped in and separated the two women, then obviously called the match. The blond, bleeding from the nose and a small cut over her left eye, was all smiles around her mouthpiece and the banner on the screen read “Winner and still Bantam Weight Champion, Rhonda Rousey!”

He shook his head. Maybe if she wasn’t bleeding and sweating up a storm...

“So ... dinner. You going home? If you are staying, I’m going to order something delivered.” He asked, his attention, mostly on the television still.

When there was not an immediate response, he turned to find Carol looking at him, a thoughtful look on her face. They had been getting closer over the last couple of weeks. Spending a lot of time with another person, you almost had to become friends or enemies. He could tell she had something on her mind, but knew already that she would bring it up when she was ready, or not. Asking wouldn’t hurry the process.

“Stella said to bring you by some night for dinner.” She said, her eyes searching Doug’s face. “I know I said that I didn’t like to get her mixed up in my job, but I was telling her about you, she’s curious.” Carol looked faintly embarrassed, but didn’t look away.

Doug was torn. He was flattered at the invitation, and that Carol would consider breaking her rule and introduce a client to her spouse, but the information he had just sent out to the world was on his mind as well. He didn’t think that there were more assassins lurking in every shadow, but there were people out there that would like to see him dead and buried. He didn’t have any right involving innocent bystanders.

On the other hand, he really liked Carol and could sense that this unusual invitation was a big step out of her comfort zone. Turning her down could have unintended consequences for his professional relationship with the woman, and his personal relationship as well.

“Carol, I would love to meet Stella, but let me tell you what I learned at my meet with Hank today.”

When he had finished relating the whole story, and what he had done about it all, he sat back and watched. Carol was staring at the wall, her eyes unfocused, and her mind obviously mulling over what he had told her. It was just as obvious that she was weighing the pro and cons and assessing the threats. Then she shrugged.

“I can’t see that it makes things worse, and might even make things better. They obviously thought that your team was a threat, somehow. They have already tried to kill you, and now that the information they were afraid of is out there, in the hands of both the FBI and the politicos; you can’t be the top priority, or won’t be once they find out what you have done. Revenge later? Maybe, but more likely they will be too busy scrambling to cover their asses.”

She was quiet for a moment, then nodded at him. “I appreciate you telling me this though. I can’t work in a vacuum; I have to know what is going on, and I really don’t want Stella involved, but I don’t think that I am specifically a target, other than as a speed bump on the way to you.”

When she grinned at him, a sly, calculating smirk, Doug raised his eyebrows.

“Besides, Stella gets ... um, frisky, when I tell her about stuff like this.” Now she blushed, her smile broadening. “So ... invitation is still on, if you are interested.”

“I should shower then; I want to make a good impression.”

Carol’s house was in Coral Gables, an upscale neighborhood famed for its tree-lined streets, million-dollar homes, and ultra-strict standards for residents. The rules for residents were so strict, the city wanting to maintain the visual appeal of the area, that residents couldn’t park vehicles on the street, were not allowed to park trucks of any kind where they would be visible, and had to get permission, and color approval, before they could even paint a room, much less the exterior of the house. Still, it made for a very attractive neighborhood, and Carol’s house was no exception.

Doug had reason again to bless the designers of his chair. Not only were there half a dozen wide steps leading up to the front door, which his chair handled with ease, but the narrow footprint allowed him to maneuver through the front door without a problem.

Standing just inside was a breathtaking woman who was easily three inches taller than Carol, raven haired and with the brightest blue eyes, he had ever seen. She was also the most physically imposing woman whom Doug had ever seen. She was what female body builders aspire to be, and probably the poster child for those who thought that women shouldn’t go there.

Her shoulders were wider than Doug’s at his fittest, the sculpted muscles standing in stark relief against the tanned skin. Her biceps were bigger too, with prominent veins that curled and wandered down her arms, standing proud on her wide forearms. The v-neck of her blouse displayed the tell-tale striations of her pectorals and her breasts, small and conical, pushed out against the thin silk of the blouse, her barbell piercings in each nipple outlined clearly.

Somehow, she had managed to avoid the overly masculine, square-jawed look that many female body builders seemed to have, maintaining the softer cheeks and full lips of a beautiful woman. Her smile was wide and welcoming, her brilliantly white teeth gleaming and her mesmerizing eyes bright.

She stepped forward and in a soft, sultry voice, welcomed him to their home.

“Doug, I’m so happy to meet you finally. Carol seems very taken with you, and that is saying something. She sometimes has a very, hmm, dim view of clients, especially those who think that because she is a woman, she is part of the entertainment. She has nothing but good things to say about you!”