Chapter 12

The next day, Dean and I could sit down and talk about this calmly. I think he had needed that release as much as I did. I told Dean about waking up, tied hand and foot, in the darkness of the bilge. I told him everything, sparing no detail, about my terror and the flashbacks. Then we went through every detail for the entire time I was gone.

Dean was a relentless interrogator. He knew me like no one else, so he knew if I was holding back. He was pissed about the range of the beacon in my belt, and even more pissed that he hadn’t had the proper gear to track the chip in my shoes. He critiqued my attack on the guards and my treatment of the Saudis.

While he simply nodded when I told him about how and why I shot Catriona, he seemed to forget that I knew him almost as well as he knew me. I could see the satisfaction that she was dead mixed with regret that he wasn’t the one to pull the trigger.

The third day I spent in the room with Lisa. She asked politely, as if afraid I would yell at her, if I wanted to get it all on paper while it was fresh. No, I didn’t, but over the course of her being the scribe for my story, I had found the whole thing a bit more cathartic than I had expected. This would probably, hopefully, be the same.

When I was done, poor Lisa had cried several times. She wept along with me when I relived waking up on the fishing boat. She cried again, though admitted it was for her when I told her about how Catriona had died. She had liked Catriona and spent quite a bit of time with the woman during our trip. She felt bad that she had misjudged the woman and that let her almost get away with this scheme.

The third time was when I described my epic battle with Dean. Hell, the limps we both had, not to mention the bruises we were treating with hot tubs and saunas, were mute evidence of the blows we had exchanged.

On the plus side, the investigatory delay did mean I got my pistol back. One of the men who had accompanied the fisherman was also the driver of the delivery van who hit me with a sap. He had kept the pistol and my wallet, the moron. My cash was gone, but my license, credit cards and all the rest of it was still there!

When it was time to go home, Martin joined us. He had originally planned to stay for a vacation, Phillipe was going to fly over, but this whole thing cast a pall on the island and its allure had faded. Thankfully for Martin, he had already been paid for the yacht.

In a fit of insanity, I bought Dean and me first class tickets so we could fly with Martin. I could have chartered a jet if I wanted to stay for two more days, but I wanted out of there.

Let me drop a little spoiled boy wisdom on you. Once you have gotten used to chartered jets and personalized service, not to mention the room to move around and the room to relax? You will never, ever, be happy with mere first class on a commercial airline. No sir.

Back in LA again, the house had closed while I was gone. Since it technically belonged to the company, not me personally, Erin had been there to sign on behalf of the corporate entity. She was the COO, after all!

Dean scheduled a security company to come in and do the standard refits we would insist on at every place I stayed for more than a visit. This house, since I thought we would be here for a while, would include a safe room refit and an armory. We would have to wait a couple more weeks to move in, but that was fine by me, I had shit to do.

I was done being passive. So, what if I had rescued a few people? So, what if I brought down some bad guys? I had stumbled on them or they had come to me. It was time to quit playing rich boy, thinking of myself as some hero, and get down to business.

My first call after we landed was to Burt.

He had just arrived at the office and was bubbling over with good news. He was taking to this like a fish to water, and was raving about how much easier it was to do good work without bureaucratic bullshit and red tape around every corner! He wanted something done, he ordered it done and funded it from the account Terry had set up for him.

I asked him to drop whatever he was doing and come to LA. It was time for a come-to-Jesus meeting and, speaking of Terry, I did the same thing with him. I needed updates and I would need funding, but this was something I wanted done face to face. I wanted no electronic trail for anyone to find, if such a thing was possible in this day and age.

Burt had to clean up a couple of things first, some small ops he had started in San Diego to close off a minor pipeline for young girls being brought up from South America. Terry arrived first and, after lunch, we got down to business.

“Terry, I need you to create a new legal entity. Call it something innocuous and get it incorporated someplace loose, Caymans, something offshore. I want to immediately funnel some of that cartel money into it, we have a bunch of that left, right?”

Terry nodded his head, taking notes. “Sure. I have been integrating it, slowly but surely, into the rest of your funds so there weren’t any flags thrown or government interest. That shipping company you set up in Portugal is already bringing in more than you invested, so I put that back into growth and bought into, or bought out several of the smaller competitors.

“Which reminds me, Paolo Iglesias asked that you call him when you get some free time, he has some ideas about how to improve things. Anyway, you still have half a billion sitting offshore. It is in gold for the moment.”

“Good, put half of that into the coffers of our new corporation. I’ll provide you with a list of authorized signatories and limits, if any, as soon as I get them. I need to find an office or a headquarters for them, also offshore. I want someplace where they aren’t subject to US law. Preferably not European Union laws either.”

“Okay, no problem, boss. You want approval on the name before I do the paperwork or...” he trailed off.

“No, I don’t need approval. Just keep in mind that I want to misdirect people. If I am being blunt, this company is going to fund mercenaries. They are going to be my attack arm. I will send them wherever they need to go, Somalia, even Saudi Arabia. The name shouldn’t reflect that, but we don’t want to get too cute with it either, I am not building an evil empire.”

Terry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, cute. What else you got?”

“Not me, you. Talk to me about the lawsuit. Those fuckers sent muscle down here to try and scare me. One of them said they had been hired to convince me to drop the suit. I want answers.”

“They are throwing motion after motion, but so are we. I think it will take time to actually get them to court, but as best we can tell, they will be bankrupt long before you even feel the pinch, so I am doing what you asked.” Terry supplied. He showed me the list of court motions that Global had tried to date, anything to delay the actual court date on this lawsuit. This was a common tactic, to try and make it too expensive, but Terry was right. My pockets were deeper than theirs.

“Keep those investigators busy too. I want them watched. I want to know everything those assholes are doing, every skeleton, every backroom deal they make. They pissed me off and damn near killed us.” I reminded him.

Terry was Austin bound before dinner, promising that he would forward the particulars on the new corporate structure as soon as the paperwork was done. In the meantime, he had, with a phone call, had a hundred million shuffled into a Cayman Islands bank, a working capital account.

Burt arrived just after breakfast the next day and I laid it out the same way for him, but there was more he could do.

“Terry is working on the paperwork now. I need a headquarters out in some banana republic, maybe a Caribbean island, someplace where we can come and go without being noticed. What I want from the people in this new company, Burt, is not always going to be clean. If I hear about a Somali warlord selling slaves, they will go in and take him out. I plan on putting a contract on the head of the Saudi Prince, dead or alive.

“If you don’t want to be involved in this, I totally get it, but I wanted you to know how some of the intelligence developed by your company is going to be used. I owe you that, Burt. You can step down and take over just the domestic side of things or even just SoCal if that is what you want, no hard feelings, no recriminations.”

Burt looked a little pale, his eyes on the floor. I could almost hear the gears turning over there as he weighed his conscience.

“I understand and even sympathize with you, Jack, you know that. Hell, I admire you too, but I have been a law enforcement officer all my adult life. Thirty-eight years total, most of that with the FBI. I just can’t be involved with some of that, I hope you understand. I don’t have a problem with any intelligence we dig up being used, but I don’t want to be in the chain of command for the action part.”

“I totally understand, Burt. You will be domestic only and turn your information over to a clearing house. I am going to set up an office in the European Union to farm data as well, so everything will go to a central clearing house where any of my corporate entities can access the take. I appreciate you being up front with me, I value your opinions and you have been a good friend.

“Now, enough of that. I need some serious geeks. I want to build that clearing house I mentioned. I will use your investigative arm to do backgrounds on anyone I find, so I hope you are up and running down there?” I made that last bit a question and Burt nodded his head.

“Yes, for the most part. I still have apps open for a half-dozen more investigators, but I put out feelers to Terry about starting to open up branch offices. We are going to end up with two or three offices per state, for the large population ones, anyway. I don’t imagine we’ll need more than one in Montana. We already have two ops going in California, one in Arizona. A lot of it is fallout from the Salazar takedown. We followed the trail of breadcrumbs and are rolling up some of the coyotes who bring girls in for the whorehouses.”

“Good man, Burt. Don’t be afraid to use that reward account for informants, for your operatives, however it works best. It’s only money and we can make more of it.”

When Burt left, Dean surprised me by handing me a slip of paper. On it was an international phone number and the name of the man who had headed my native security team in the UK, Dale Clarkson.

“Dale has a couple of guys who might work for your new company, Jack. Ex-Army types, weren’t ready to retire and are working as mercenaries in Africa. I told him you would call before noon today or tomorrow.”

Dale Clarkson turned out to be a godsend. There was a mercenary company, mostly British Ex-Pats mixed in with a couple of Germans, a dozen Belgian Paras and a single Swede, whose contract had expired when the Politician they were protecting snuck away from his guards for a liaison with an underaged boy. The boy’s father cut off the politician’s head so the company was at loose ends at the moment.

Clarkson was willing to vouch for the leader of the company and could set up a meet if I wanted.

Hell yes, I wanted. It took a couple of days, but I set it up for the Bahamas, paying for the leader of the company and two men of his choice to fly in, first class, and put them up at a local hotel. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be in classes I had registered for at UCLA, but I had only made the first two before I was going to skip one? I would have to bring my books to make sure I didn’t fall behind. It was only two classes, but they were classes I wanted.

Lisa elected to come with us, damn near fearless after that last mess! Dean had become the liaison with Rook, so he arranged for three additional armed security types to accompany us. If one of them happened to be Gwen, that was probably a coincidence, right?

Yeah, right.

My Accounting class was on Tuesday with a voluntary lab on Wednesday. Statistics was on Thursday after lunch and no classes at all on Friday, so we flew out Thursday evening. Chartered, of course! I learned my lesson.

We landed at the Lynden Pindling International Airport on the island of Nassau, and took a short limo ride to the South Ocean Golf & Beach Resort. We had reserved rooms for the folks coming in from South Africa and had also reserved a conference room guaranteed to be secure. Not that we would trust in that guarantee, of course, but that was true anywhere.

The President and CEO of Highgarden Security was its founder, an ex-Army colonel named Niles Highgarden. His dossier had been sent over by Dale Clarkson and the man looked good on paper. He had served with distinction in the Falklands, then in the Balkans and through four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. While in Iraq, his wife had divorced him and he had no children, so he continued doing what he was trained to do even after his retirement.

With him were two ex-enlisted men. Geoffrey Peters was a senior NCO, non-commissioned officer, who had served with Niles Highgarden during several campaigns and, like Highgarden, didn’t have anything to go back to. The other was an ex-German army NCO who chafed at the inaction and slow promotions in the German army and, the intelligence file said, he had flourished in the chaotic life of a mercenary. He was said to practically worship Highgarden.

We had an informal meet and greet over dinner and drinks and, while Highgarden seemed an amiable man, the other two were dour and definitely suspicious. Peters seemed to get along with Dean okay, but Gwen made sure that someone else was between her and Bruner the whole evening.

We were going to meet for breakfast the next morning at eight, local time, but Dean and I ran into Highgarden and Bruner while out running after our forms.

We returned from our run and found a good place to spar only to be interrupted by Gwen, followed by two of the three Rook guys who were guiding Peters at gunpoint. Mr. Peters looked a little worse for wear!

“Mr. McCoy. I guess this one thought that I was the only other warm body on your team here for this meeting. This shitbag managed to bypass the electronic lock and waltzed into your suite as if he belonged there. Jim, Pete and I were going over the schedule and decided to have him apologize to you personally. Mark was shadowing your run, just in case, of course.”

“Has anyone informed ... ah, never mind, here he comes now. Colonel, it appears one of your men got lost.” I said, watching Highgarden’s face turn red. He looked pissed, but at Peters, not at us.

I watched as he visibly took a deep breath and fought to calm himself.

“Mister McCoy. Intelligence is the most valuable weapon a solider can have. It doesn’t matter if it is an infantryman fighting a set-piece battle as part of a division or a mercenary fighting a rag-tag band of natives armed with machetes and stolen rifles. While I understand what ex-sergeant Peters was trying to do, he’s usually a good hand at gathering intel, I can assure you it was not at my orders. In fact, I thought I had made it perfectly clear that they were to walk on eggshells until we were sure of our position here.”

He watched me, pausing to see if I would interrupt. I could junk this right now, or I could try and salvage this. I glanced at Dean and he raised an eyebrow. I could almost ... ah, I could. I knew what he was thinking, but could I do it? If this guy was better than Dean, no, if he was as good, I could get my ass handed to me.

Fuck it. No guts, no glory right? Do they really say that?

“Gwen, release Mr. Peters, if you would.” I said calmly, smiling at the handcuffed man. He looked pissed still, and that might be what I need.

“Mister Peters, can you tell me why you tried to break into my room like a common thief? I don’t carry a lot of cash and there are no secret files or microfilm. What did you think you would find in there?”

The man practically growled at me, but paused to look over at his boss before answering me.

“Don’t look at me, you damned fool, answer the man’s questions!” Highgarden growled.

“I think this stinks. What does some wet-behind-the-ears rich American need with a mercenary company? Do you think this is some game, that we would beat up your bullies for you or something? What are you up to, boy? We will find out sooner or later, and if you are setting us up, I’ll ‘ave you, mate. Count on it.”

I think my smile was making him angrier.

“You’ll ‘ave me, will you? Somehow, I doubt it. Gwen, did you take him by yourself or did your team help?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at a grinning Gwen.

“It was mostly Pete. I did have to pull him off though, he seemed overly enamored with this guy’s ... um ... assets.” Gwen said with a laugh.

“Oh behave!” came a campy reply from Pete who vamped for a second behind her.

Peters face turned bright red, his fists clenched at his side and a big vein on his forehead seeming to pulse in time with his heartbeat.

“Maybe you would have preferred she not, Mr. Peters? I don’t care who my employees date, but I thought we would finish with business first.”

“Listen you little...”

“No! You listen to me, you fucking Neanderthal! If, and I say if, I hire your company, it will be because of the company’s qualifications and, despite your amateurish display this morning, I have the word of someone I trust that you can do the work I need. As it stands, I am not impressed at all. I need men who can follow orders, who can stand and be counted when it matters, not amateurs who act like children playing a game.” I interrupted him, moving up until we were almost nose to nose.

I don’t think he realized that I had him by a couple of inches and probably fifty pounds of muscle. While there was no give in him, he seemed less like he was about to snap at any second and more like he was calculating the odds.

“What was your specialty in the army, sergeant.” I asked, not backing down.

“I was small arms and a hand-to-hand trainer. I cross-trained in demolition.” He said smugly, sneering up at me.

“Ah, so you probably think you are pretty good then? How did those little guys over there get the jump on you then?”

Both of the Rook guys were healthy, fit guys, but neither of them topped six feet and Peters was about six one or six two.

“They surprised me, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I was just snooping.” He said, sounding a bit defensive.

“Sure. Okay, so you are a tough guy, right? Can you beat a twenty-year old kid who has never been in the military?”

The gleam in his eye told me his answer before he even opened his mouth. I was already turning away to set up across from him when he spoke. “I bloody well better. This should be fun.”

I took a look around and the entire group looked surprised, but were moving so they could both see and keep an eye on everyone else. The one that surprised me, however, was the missing Mark who was standing on the roof with a rifle in his hand. When he saw me looking his way, he gave a two-fingered salute and crouched down again. He was in the shadow of a roof-top condenser unit and damn-near invisible.

Dean stepped close and quietly, so no one else could hear him, he gave me some advice, “These guys are pretty good, but I am pretty confident he is not in your class. Take him down quickly but try not to really hurt him.”

I just nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, rolling my neck and wind-milling my arms a bit to loosen up. I had already started to cool down with all the chatter but it didn’t take much to get me loose again.

Peters stepped forward, his hands coming up like a boxer and even taking a boxer’s stance. He had his weight on the balls of his feet and seemed pretty well balanced. He edged forward, watching me closely, but I was standing there, seemingly relaxed, with my feet shoulder width apart and my hands at my sides.

There was a feral grin on his face as he darted forward, whipping out a left-hand jab at my nose to blind me and then trying for a massive right hand to my mid-section. It might have worked if either part of me had been where he expected when his punches arrived.

I pulled my head back and to the side enough that his jab hit nothing but air. I was already swinging my torso to his right when his strong right punch barely brushed the shirt I was wearing. He had put all of his weight behind that punch, going for an early victory, but had over-extended himself and was off-balance when he missed.

My left elbow slashed out and caught him solidly behind the right ear, right behind where the jaw hinged, and my body momentum brought a lot more to that move than my arm and shoulder strength alone.

Ex-Sergeant Geoffrey Peters hit the grass with an audible thud and bounced just once before settling down, unmoving.

Dean was there in an instant, checking for a pulse and, when he found it, looked up at me and nodded. “He’s just out. He is going to be really hurting when he wakes up.”

“Dat vas very impressive, you move very quickly. If you do not mind, I vould like to spar vis you or vis your trainer. Friendly sparring, if you please.” Karl Bruner held up both hands, palms towards me and smiled.

I grinned at him and nodded, moving over to a clear section of grass.

He was a lot warier, coming in with his hands up, and his center of gravity lowered. He was an inch or two taller than I was, though a little slimmer and the way his hands moved, I could tell he was a grappler. He was perfectly capable of throwing punches and kicks too, I quickly found out, and we went back and forth for a while, neither of us really getting an advantage over the other.

My instincts told me I was better than he was and, if we were not playing it safe, were not pulling our punches, I could take him, but he would be harder than Peters, that was for sure, and would get a few punches in.

After twenty minutes we both backed off, breathing hard and sweating in the morning sun. We were both smiling though and shook hands amiably before he went back to stand by his boss again. One of the Rook guys gave each of us a hand towel and a bottle of water, earning himself a bonus whether he knew it or not!

Peters was nowhere in sight and Highgarden, noticing my search, shook his head.

“I sent him to get a shower and told him to remain in our rooms. He’s a good man in the field, Mr. McCoy.”

I just shrugged. He was Highgarden’s man to deal with.

We met over a big breakfast and I began laying out a little of my past and what I was trying to do with a team based outside of the US.

When Bruner learned what my goal was, he seemed to turn to ice, his jaw clenched and his eyes like chips of flint. “It is an abomination vat they do. In Africa, one tribe enslaves another. They kill the men, rape the vomen and girls, sometime selling them to other tribes. The boys, those under five years, are brainvashed and become soldiers for the tribe. Ve have seen the slaughter and fought against it.”

Highgarden was nodding his head, his own expression wan.

“That damn Peters.” He cussed, shaking his head. “He had a local woman he was shacked up with. Her daughter disappeared. The whole company other than two to stand by our principal, all combed the countryside looking for the girl, questioning everyone. We did find her. She had been snatched and sold three times before we caught up to them. We killed them all, but it was too late for that girl. She was never the same. If Peters had known who you were, what you wanted, he would have come to work for you even if we didn’t.”

“He’s your man, Colonel. So, what we need is three-fold. I need to develop intelligence assets in the regions where slavery is still practiced. I need to get eyes on the Saudi Prince and, when he leaves the country, I want him grabbed if at all possible, killed if not and a message passed. Last, but not least, I need men who are not afraid of a fight to be my hands out here, to take intelligence that we develop elsewhere and use it.

“First, last and always, the focus is on freeing the slaves, returning them to their homes and family. Second, is punishing the slavers and getting the message out that it won’t be tolerated.”

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as a handshake, but the details were not overwhelming. I would pay twenty-five thousand a month base, plus two thousand a week per soldier, up to forty. Twenty-five hundred a week for up to seven NCOs and five thousand a week for three officers finished the pay scale. Highgarden said he only had fifteen troops, three NCOs and two officers at the present.

They had their own gear, but I authorized a one-time, five thousand per man relocation bonus that would include each man getting his gear in order. I would provide aircraft and vehicles on demand, leasing them from a service out of Miami. The Kawasaki C2C was capable of landing on the small field on the island of Barbuda where they would be based.

Erin had done a fantastic job and found a compound we leased a klick or so north of the airfield. She told us her contact promised local construction crews could be laying a foundation for a barracks and utility buildings in less than a month. There would be a weight room, laundry facilities and other amenities right there in the compound or they could spend their pay at any of the resorts and bars on the island. No pool though, the ocean was a stone’s-throw away.

The timing worked out just fine since it would take a month for Highgarden’s people to withdraw from their current job, even if the principal was already dead, and make the move to the new digs, but he said he could be up and deployable in thirty days if he had to.

Their restrictions were easy to add to our contract. They were all, but for one man, still citizens of their birth countries and would not be forced to work within their borders or against their national interest. The agreement was that if any leads lead to one of the participating countries, they would inform me as soon as they knew. As it stood, the countries were England, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Belgium.

I did tell them that this might not hold true for Africa, the Middle East or South America, and each of those cases, should they get soldiers from one of those regions, would have to be discussed on a case-by-case basis. Highgarden agreed easily enough after I pointed out all the issues we had uncovered from those areas already.

Back to LA again in time for my Tuesday classes and I was stoked to find out the security modifications were done to my new house. I really hated living on the boat in the harbor, I hated the thought of getting sick of the place. If I only stayed aboard when we were travelling, it would always be a get-away, not a grind.

The new house was sweet! No pool yet, though we were in discussions with the next-door neighbor about buying their property. If I did, we could expand the house, put a small guest house over there as well as a big pool.

It took me the better part of a day to move the E2 from her berth to the dock at the new house, and I immediately started thinking about a small boat to play around with in the local waters. Something in the forty to fifty-foot range like the E-Key, but probably a mono-hull like a Hatteras.

Lisa was happy with the new digs too, especially when I assigned her a room and told her it was hers for as long as we were working on the project.

I made sure to face-time Cade in New York. I gave her a virtual tour and walked around the house with my tablet. She was in love with the infinity spa out on the rear deck and loved the balconies on the second floor too. The master bath had her and Kate both drooling and swearing they were coming to LA as soon as they could convince their agents.

It felt good to settle into something like a normal schedule again. Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons, I would spend time working with Lisa on the story of my life. It took three more weeks to lay it all out for her and I ended up telling her just about everything.

We then started over from the beginning, going over what she had written and making corrections. I did my best to censor anything that would positively identify people and Lisa was totally onboard with that, even pointing out things I missed. We made it a bit of a game coming up with new names, new titles and even new places, tying it all together into a coherent and believable picture.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had my classes. The classes themselves were not all that difficult and I could already see where some of it was going to be very useful. I felt a bit disconnected in class though. I was the same age as many of the students, older than some too, but I felt like I had very little in common with them.

While I had managed to maintain some semblance of normalcy when I was in high school, it was much harder today to feel the same. The kids I talked to in class were still very much in the high school frame of mind. They were as concerned with the party on Friday, or with who was dating whom or even what band was coming to town, as they were about their grades.