CHAPTER TWENTY
“Is she okay?” asked Ivan, looking at his son. They were waiting on the front porch of her cottage for the medical team to come out.
“I don’t know, Dad. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. She was just sitting there, lost in her own thoughts, waving her hand in the water. Then, she started leaning forward like she was looking for something or found something. Then she was in the water.”
Rachelle and Ashley stepped out onto the porch, closing the door quietly.
“Is she alright?” asked Pax.
“We’ve given her a sedative,” said Rachelle. “She was pretty shaken. How close were you to her before she fell in?”
“At least a hundred feet,” said Pax. “I was in the middle of oak alley, and I could see her in the maze. She kept leaning forward, and that’s when I started to walk toward her.”
“She said someone was behind her. Unless we have a stray ghost that’s playing tricks on our folks, she saw something or remembered something.”
“We need to find out what she remembered, sis,” said Gaspar.
“I know that, but right now is not the time. Let her sleep, and when she wakes, we’ll come back and talk to her again. Kelsey is going to stay with her. If you need us, we’re just a call away.”
Pax frowned at the two women, nodding.
“Pax, she’ll be fine. We’re going to make sure of it.”
“What can I do to help?” he asked the seniors.
“Do you know anyone in Guyana?” asked Gaspar. Pax frowned, staring from Gaspar to his father, to the other men.
“Why are you asking that? Why Guyana?” Brax walked up and repeated his brother’s question.
“Who is asking about Guyana?”
“Okay, now you’ve got me all kinds of fucking curious,” said Gaspar. “Whatever is happening has something to do with Guyana. Jackson and Douglass have been flying in and out of there more and more frequently. What do you guys know about Guyana?”
“It’s the mission we never got to finish,” said Brax. “Technically, Guyana is a ‘feel good’ type of place. It’s full of calypso music and a serious Caribbean vibe. But with that come tourists, and with tourists come money.”
“And with money comes opportunities for corruption,” said Nine.
“Yes, sir,” said Brax. “Most of the country speaks English as their formal language. It’s been relatively quiet there for a while, but recently, the population is growing more rapidly than they can support.”
“Why?” asked Ian.
“Oil. Oil production in the area has grown nearly ten times compared to other South American countries. It feels a lot like Louisiana with tropical rainforests, Guyana creole populations, rich in oil, and it’s incredibly bio-diverse.”
“Predictions have it as becoming the third largest petroleum-producing country in the world, per capita,” said Pax. “If something is happening down there, you can bet that it has something to do with Denis Leon.”
“Tell me that’s a joke,” said Rafe, scoffing at the younger man. “We killed Dennis Leon twenty years ago.”
“You thought you did,” said Brax, looking at the men apologetically. “You killed a body double. One of many. He paid ten different men to have plastic surgery so they would look just like him. Six of them were his cousins. We should know. We killed four of them.”
“Leon went down there under the premise of buying land to drill for oil, promising he would split the profits with the country. He never intended to do that. Instead, he bribed anyone and everyone he could get his hands on. Oil is his currency. He buys women, drugs, cars, homes, anything, and everything.”
“Why did you not get to finish the mission? What was the mission?”
“We were given orders to go in and kill him. Him and whoever looked like him. We killed four, another team killed three, but we knew from DNA samples that none were him. We had him in our sights, a thousand percent positive it was him, two seconds from killing him, when word came down that the mission was scrubbed. Immediately.”
“Who gave that order?” frowned Ivan.
“We’re not sure. Someone from the joint chiefs, but it was loud and clear. If we killed him, there would be hell to pay,” said Brax. “So we packed our equipment, traipsed back through the jungle, and left.”
“Is he involved in shit coming into the U.S.?” asked Gaspar.
“Yes, sir. He’s got men in several cities that we know of. New Orleans was one of them, but we could never find a name of who might be involved. It never occurred to us it would be someone posing as a contractor. If he succeeds in controlling the oil in and out of South America, the U.S. could be in a crisis unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. We’re already pissed at the Russians. The Middle East is not our friend, and the environmental impact on a larger Alaskan pipeline would be devastating.”
“We need to find out if your command knew anything about all of this,” said Nine. “How far up the ladder does all this go?”
“I wish we knew,” said Pax. “I can tell you this, if we need to go to Guyana, we’d damn sure sign up to do it. That’s one I wanted badly.”
“Same,” said Brax. “I know Maverick and the others would feel the same.”
“We need to know what Deanna saw first. Once we know that, we can go after Jackson and Douglass. They have no clue who we are and what we do. They think they’re going to find Deanna, and we’re not letting that happen.”
Pax turned to stare at her front door once again, swallowing hard. His father and brother watched him, then they all walked away. Whoever was responsible for this, Douglass, Jackson, or Leon, they were going to find out very quickly that they’d fucked with the wrong people.