Chapter 23
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Coconut Grove
Just after one a.m., not long after Patterson sacked out in the safe house guest room and the others had headed home, Flint stood in his kitchen pouring himself a whiskey. Before he could take a sip, Gaspar called.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” Flint asked, knowing the answer was no. Gaspar had taken a bullet in the line of duty years ago. The pain kept him awake almost around the clock.
“You’ve heard the story about the pot and the kettle?” Gaspar replied with his customary good humor.
“Point taken,” Flint admitted with good grace. “What’s up?”
“Something you’ll want to see. Sooner is better.”
“What’ve you got?” Flint set the whiskey down without drinking it. Gaspar wouldn’t ask unless he had solid reasons.
“Bring the phones and wallets you’ve collected. I assume you’ve got them bagged?” Gaspar replied. His secrecy suggested Flint should stop asking questions.
“Yeah. We can do that after we get some sleep. We’ll head out first thing,” Flint said. “Get some sleep. Even that Cuban coffee you love can’t keep you awake forever.”
He heard the grin in Gaspar’s tone. “I will if you will.”
Flint had slept four hours and called Drake at six. Drake had the Pilatus ready when Flint pulled up.
“What’s Gaspar got for us that’s so urgent?” Drake’s voice came through the headset once they were underway.
“He asked me to bring the items we collected from the goons,” Flint said, donning his sunglasses against the rising sun. “He wouldn’t say more on the phone.”
“His phones are the most secure on the planet,” Drake said after a long pause. “If he doesn’t trust his own tech, we’ve got a much bigger problem than we figured.”
Flint reached for his coffee. It had gone lukewarm. He drank it anyway, distracted, as he reviewed the facts in his head once more.
Just over two hours later, Flint felt the wheels touch down at the executive airport on the outskirts of Miami.
It was the closest field to Gaspar’s home.
Drake slowed the Pilatus along the runway.
Flint noticed the palms along the perimeter fence were motionless in the warm morning air.
He hoped the weather would hold. It was too early in the season for Miami’s legendary afternoon thunderstorms.
Drake taxied off the runway and brought the plane to a stop and shut the engines down. He stretched his arms above his head and worked the kinks out of his neck. He rolled the shoulder he’d taken a bullet through a few months back forward and back, testing the joint.
“How’s it holding up?” Flint asked.
“I can feel it. But it held up fine on the stick for two hours. You worry too much,” Drake grinned.
“Yeah, well, it’s my ass you’re supposed to be covering,” Flint replied easily.
He unbuckled and reached into the cabin for his duffel.
Inside, four phones and four wallets they’d taken off the dead goons were sealed in a Faraday bag.
The pouch was lined with conductive metal mesh that blocked all radio signals, meaning the phones inside couldn’t be tracked or wiped remotely.
Three from the highway airstrip and one from the Langford pilot’s lounge.
They walked across the pavement to the small terminal. An armored Lincoln Town Car waited at the curb with the engine running. The driver had placed a specific card on the dash with the Scarlett Investigations logo on it. Flint didn’t recognize the driver, who didn’t introduce himself.
All of which meant Gaspar sent a man well qualified to handle trouble of all kinds. They climbed in the back.
The driver raised a glass divider between the seats for privacy and took a route designed to force any surveillance team to show themselves.
A long stretch through a residential block where a follower would be alone behind them.
A right turn into a strip mall parking lot and a slow loop past the storefronts before exiting on the far side.
A bridge over a canal where the only options were forward or back.
Nobody followed behind them on any of it.
Flint recognized that Gaspar sent him because he knew his job, but that kind of driving wasn’t necessary for a routine airport pickup. Whatever was waiting had Gaspar worried.
The driver took surface streets where the tree canopy closed in over the road and the houses sat back behind older landscaping. He dropped them at the end of a tree-lined street two blocks short of Gaspar’s house.
Spanish moss hung from oaks that had been here as long as the houses had. Sweet jasmine and mango perfumed the air.
A miniature schnauzer in a side yard watched them pass, barking its head off. Drake gave it an amused look. “Wonder if Whiskers would like a playmate? Maddy adores that puppy. She’d love two of them twice as much.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Flint shot him down.
“I wasn’t,” Drake comically feigned innocence.
Flint scowled. “You were.”
Drake grinned under his Stetson and didn’t argue.
Gaspar’s house sat back from the street behind the bougainvillea wall and the royal palms. Red tile roof. White stucco. Wrought iron at the windows. It fit in well with the neighborhood.
They didn’t go to the front door. Gaspar had texted to say he was out back and they should come around the side.
Flint walked the property line to the gate at the corner of the house.
He pressed the button on the post. A camera he couldn’t quite locate silently on his face. The gate’s lock clicked open.
They walked through into a tiled patio with a large pool and paved pool deck. Gaspar relaxed on a lounger in long swim trunks and a faded T-shirt with a white porcelain cup of Cuban coffee on the table beside him.
The house was quiet behind him suggesting the kids were elsewhere.
Gaspar looked up and lifted the cup in salute. “Welcome to paradise.”
“Coffee?” Drake said hopefully.
“Fresh pot in the kitchen. Help yourselves on the way through.” Gaspar pushed up off the lounger. He limped past the pool to the sliding glass door and they went inside.
They followed Gaspar through the back of the house to his office.
He opened the door and motioned them in. “Put your phones and any other tech you’re carrying in there. Wallets, too, just in case.”
The Faraday box on the specialty shelf recessed into the wall was a matte black cube the size of a small wall safe. It appeared to have been milled from a single block of aluminum, with a recessed touchscreen on the door and no visible seams.
Flint had never seen one like it on the open market. Gaspar had sources for equipment others couldn’t get. He made a mental note to ask for a duplicate.
Flint and Drake placed phones, watches, wallets, and key fobs inside.
Gaspar pressed his thumb to the screen. The door sealed with a soft click and a row of green lights came alive below the biometric reader.
“This is new. And impressive,” Drake said. “What? You don’t trust us now?”
“If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be here.
It’s not you I’m worried about.” Gaspar moved to one of the desks.
“Whoever’s running the back end of whatever it is you’ve got going on here is way superior to normal thieves.
Way beyond most governments, too. So we needed to tighten up.
Probably should have done it a while ago.
I’m hoping the horse hasn’t already left the barn, as you Texans would say. ”
“What about our bag? Want that inside the box, too?” Flint lifted the Faraday pouch in his hand.
“We’ll handle that in the office,” Gaspar said.
Flint had been in Gaspar’s lair before. Each time, he’d added more equipment.
Three monitors glowed along the long wall.
Two more above a workbench and a different forensic workstation.
It was an odd looking matte black cabinet about the size of a microwave oven with a thick window in the front-opening door and built-in shielded gloves at the front.
Heavy-duty cables ran out of a panel on the side and into the bank of computers next to it.
It looked like a more advanced model than anything the FBI had been running when Gaspar retired.
“Blocks all radio signals,” Gaspar said even though Flint hadn’t asked. “I can hook a phone up to my equipment in there and copy whatever’s on it. The phone can’t connect to anyone, so we don’t need to worry about tracking. And nobody can reach in to monitor anything.”
The doorbell pinged from a speaker on the desk. Gaspar glanced at the monitor, hit a key, and the front lock clicked open somewhere behind them. “It’s Otto. I asked her to join us.”
Drake raised an eyebrow over the rim of his coffee cup, but Gaspar didn’t elaborate.