Chapter 19
Chapter 19
W e landed in Maui and navigated via a rented four-door Jeep with aggressive mud tires, making us look like surf bums in search of a rush. The warmth and gentle breezes were a stark contrast to the cutting winds in high-altitude Colorado. We landed ninety minutes after the beacon, which, according to Eddie, ventured to a barber shop, a liquor store, a grocery store, a tattoo parlor, and finally a cellular phone store before coming to a stop in the parking deck of a Marriott overlooking the water. It then wove a serpentine path through the grounds to the elevator of an eight-story timeshare, riding the elevator to the top-floor penthouse. Eddie was in his phone, so he’d been listening to the guy talk. American. Maybe Midwest accent. Tough to tell his age but probably midthirties. He did not invite conversation, didn’t engage in it, and drew little attention to himself other than his stop at the tattoo parlor where he shared a beer with the owner and had some ink added to an area on his arm. Even then, his conversation was cryptic. The guy was good and had been living beneath the radar a long time.
We sat in the parking deck and Eddie piped in the guy’s phone. The noise was muffled as the phone must have been in a pocket, but when he entered the penthouse, a female voice emerged. Enter character number two. They greeted each other, then it sounded like grocery bags were placed on a counter, along with some keys. Five more minutes passed while they greeted each other again, and then we heard what sounded like a pocketknife opening, followed by sounds we couldn’t immediately make out until Clay said, “He’s cutting open a box.”
Thirty seconds later, the flashing beacon stopped flashing and the phone went dead. He’d just burned his burner. But he had one problem. Wi-Fi. His own. Everything from lights to thermostat to the coffee maker was controlled through some rather advanced smart technology with, sadly for him, a weak firewall that Eddie, Jess, and BP broke through in less time than it would take to pour a cup of coffee. Once inside, Eddie had access not only to the phone that had been there when the guy arrived but also the new one that just booted up, along with the cameras and the speakers attached to the cameras. In terms of technology, we owned him. The guy was toast. He just didn’t know it yet.
The interior cameras proved that given both his build and his gait, he’d been one of the two snipers in the video as well as the one whose hands gave sarcastic signals to his chest-mounted cam. Whether or not that made him the commander of the unit I couldn’t say, but it did make him somewhat cocky as well as really good at his job. He had just walked into the home of the vice president of the United States and walked out with Aaron’s three daughters all while showing a level of black-gloved humor. His hands made light of a massively egregious crime. Which suggested to me that he’d done it before. Like he was numb to the depth of depravity of his own work. I knew very little, but I knew enough to know that he was comfortable being bad and this was not his first rodeo.
Fifteen minutes later, the duo rode the elevator down and exited toward the ocean. He was tanned, maybe even Hawaiian, long black hair pulled up in a bun, tattooed sleeves on both arms, muscled, zero body fat, and the awareness of a cat. His girlfriend, or the girl with him, looked like an Amazon and a former member of the Swedish Bikini Team. The two made quite a sight, which I tended to think he liked—attracting attention without attempting to attract attention.
They sat alongside the pool, and he ordered drinks from the cabana boy who delivered two umbrella drinks shortly thereafter. Clay, Camp, and I rented a room in the adjacent dog-friendly high-rise with views overlooking the ocean—and pool. Over the next two hours, the man ordered several more Mai Tais as well as a plate of nachos, all while appearing to read a novel.
Camp studied him through binoculars and shook his head. “You won’t believe this.”
I knew it before he said it.
I could tell he was smiling as he spoke. “You want me to tell you what novel he’s reading?”
“No.” I shook my head.
At sunset, the two meandered down the beach, and if the alcohol in his six Mai Tais had any effect on his cognitive or motor abilities, he didn’t show it. They walked down to where a crowd of fifty had gathered and were boarding a large catamaran sailboat for what looked like a sunset cruise. Which it was. They boarded, were served more drinks with umbrellas, and then sailed along the shoreline under a picture-perfect sunset.
Knowing they were a captured audience gave Camp and me time to investigate their penthouse. Which turned up nothing of real value other than a prescription med bottle in his dope kit, which, after Eddie ran the name, proved not to belong to him. The owner had died six years earlier but was interestingly still collecting retirement. The search proved the guy was smart. As the sun faded and the boat returned to offload passengers onshore, Clay called and updated us, as did Eddie, who was watching in real time on satellite.
Camp and I exited, Eddie cleared the alarm history, and we waited as the duo returned, showered, and then once again descended the elevator, walking the short distance to the oceanfront steak house where the ma?tre d’ welcomed “Mr. Smith.” To which Clay commented, “Well, he just lacks any creativity whatsoever.”
After dinner, they stopped at the bar for a nightcap and then ascended the elevator to the penthouse. An hour later, the internal security camera system showed him brushing his teeth. Just before turning out the light, he reached into his medicine cabinet, lifted out a prescription bottle of pills, dropped one or two onto his tongue, and swallowed. Proving Camp’s suspicion that he was nursing pain or an inability to sleep. Or both.
In studying people, if you are patient, sooner or later you can detect a chink in their armor. A weak spot. Evidently Mr. Mai Tai had been in this line of work a while and had the requisite injuries to go along with it. An hour later, he was snoring. As was she.
He was surprised when we turned on the light and doused him with cold water and a fan set on high. Even more surprised when he attempted to move and found himself naked, blindfolded, gagged, and zip-tied to a chair in the kitchen. After Eddie had disabled the alarm, we entered the penthouse and gave them both the same treatment they’d given Miriam, Ruth, and Sadie, aiding their ability to sleep deeply. So while Amazon Woman slept it off, Camp gave Mr. Mai Tai a second injection and woke him up for a little conversation. The clock was ticking, and if I’m honest, I was losing my patience. We’d sat around long enough. When I asked Camp where he learned these methods, he just shrugged it off. I was beginning to think I needed to get five or six beers in Camp and loosen his tongue. Get him talking. The problem was, he seldom drank.
I sat in front of Mr. Mai Tai and made sure I had his attention. How is not important. Only that I did. I then ripped off his blindfold, flipped his laptop around, and pushed Play so that his own recorded video began to play. His reaction convinced me he’d been down this road before. Even sat on my end of it. He relaxed. Completely. I watched his breathing return to normal. Amazing, really.
When I took the gag out of his mouth, he said nothing. Just stared at me. Waiting. So I stopped the video when it showed the three girls sprawled unconscious in the back of the SUV. “Where are they?”
He was trying to get the words “I don’t know” out of his mouth but didn’t. I lifted the syringe from the table, pressed out any air in the needle, and slammed the eighteen-gauge, two-inch needle into his thigh muscle. Having emptied the syringe, I laid it on the table. “That’s enough fentanyl to kill a horse.”
I then laid a Narcan inhaler on the table. “You have about six minutes.” A pause. “Give or take.”