Zane: A Navy SEAL Romantic Suspense Read online

  “That’s the one.”

  “So what about the drugs?”

  “They’re headed to London and Sweden.”

  “They walk that far?”

  “Some of them. It’s good money. Enough to get established again.”

  “And they can then apply for asylum and get some of that refugee monthly cash once they arrive.”

  “About fifteen hundred euros in some cases. That plus the money they get for smuggling and they’re on their way.”

  “And they know the game so then they just stay in that trade. Helping along the next guy and unloading those drugs to all the users in the U.K. and Nordic countries.”

  “It doesn’t stop there. A lot of those profits, basically what they don’t skim, is going back to Syria via Western Union and prepaid debit cards to fund ISIS activities.”

  “Sounds terrible,” I said.

  “It is.”

  “So why are you wasting time here with me?”

  “Because we have good reason to believe the guy with the Turkish guy in the photo is a major player. Maybe at the top.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The Turkish guy is the major player in Turkey, but we know he’s working for someone else. Someone who flew in with him and had a very passionate discussion over rosé, cigars, and massive steaks.”

  “Those guys in the photo were drinking coffee.”

  “That was as the meeting was wrapping up. We were trying to get a voice recorder to the table next to theirs.”

  “Didn’t work?”

  “Waiters were instructed not to bother them, or the entire area they were in.”

  “If you had enough evidence why didn’t you just make the bust then?”

  “More complicated than that. We’ve got someone on the inside.”

  “Even better.”

  “It was until it wasn’t anymore.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They went missing three days ago.”

  “How do you know he’s missing? Maybe he’s just laying low.”

  “She. She went missing. Missed three call-ins. In our department three straight means they’re off the grid.”

  “You sent a woman in undercover in Turkey?”

  “It was the only way.”

  “Sounds like a desperate move.”

  “Maybe it was, but there’s a lot of desperation right now. I hate to say it like that, but it’s true. From the refugees, the DEA, and if we don’t stop it, soon the U.K. and Scandinavian countries.”

  “How do you know they’re refugees?”

  “We don’t. A lot are just migrants taking advantage of the situation. We’ve stopped a few. Pulled them off the trail to deal. Some don’t even speak Arabic.”

  “And the ones that do aren’t talking. More money in the drugs.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Something like that? Or that?”

  “That,” Frost said.

  I took a swig of my Mythos lager.

  “So as you can see we have a problem,” Claire Abbey said.

  “And you need me?”

  “No playing games. We’re here to level with you. We need some help here. I’m asking you to please help us.”

  The sincerity in her request took me back. What had been a lot of back-and-forth posturing was suddenly a real heartfelt request. I liked Claire Abbey. She was beautiful, smart, and likeable. Frost I wasn’t sure about at first. Now I was just seeing him as a company guy. He’s a lifer. Ten or so more years and he can call it a career. He’s going to go by the book. Stick to the script. Abbey seemed more willing to roll the dice. That was my style. Improvise, adapt, and overcome.

  “What do you need?”

  “We need information on the guy you saw. His background. Who he runs with. Anything you know,” Abbey said.

  “Who is he?” Frost said.

  “He’s a dead man,” I said.

  “Literally or figuratively?” Frost said.

  “Both.”

  I took another swig of my beer.

  “But now he’s undead. And I need to undo what’s been undone.”

  “How can we work on this together?” Abbey said.

  “Hospital records. I need the hospital records from San Diego, California from six years ago. Search Scripps, UCSD, all of them.” I told her the words to search for in the records. The type of entry and exit wounds. Time and location of death. Everything she’d need.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Frost said.

  They began the walk down the hill. I went inside to cook an octopus I had caught that morning. I knew it was going to take them some time to pull those records. It was going to take even longer to figure out how a dead man was alive again.

  I needed to relax before what was surely to be a new mission. Not in the SEAL sense, but close enough. This was going to take me back to some deep, dark places. First I wanted to cut loose. I knew Tiesto was spinning at Paradise Beach club. I wasn’t going to miss it, or the after parties that were sure to follow.

  The next morning the phone rang. I rolled an Australian girl off my arm. She didn’t seem to notice. Too much alcohol does that to anyone I guess. I took the cordless receiver to the balcony and took the call. It was Claire Abbey.

  “Windmills at 1500. I have what you asked for.”

  “First of all, good morning. Second, all ready?”

  “Yes. We put a guy on it last night.”

  “You put a guy on it? That’s not good.”

  “He’s inside. Way inside. He’s trustworthy.”

  “I hope so. See you then.”

  I went back to bed and set the alarm for 1430.

  I arrived at the windmills at 1455. Claire Abbey was practically at the car door to greet me. I paid the cabbie and exited.

  “Surfers found a guy floating just before sunset. Got him to shore and performed basic CPR. Didn’t do much, but probably just enough to keep him alive.”

  “Where was the body?”

  “Black’s Beach. He was lucky. They got to him right away. Had some fractured ribs and the legs were pretty mangled. They think it was from a fall, not blunt instrument trauma. Also a couple bullet holes.”

  “What was his name?”

  “They never got it.”

  “Never got it or he never told them?”

  “Both.”

  “What became of him?”

  “Rehab. Psychiatrists. The whole nine. Eventually he just walked out.”

  “What was his name?” Abbey said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  I said nothing. She stared at me as if to say I have done my part, now do yours.

  “What do you know?” She said.

  “What do you know about submarines?” I said.

  “That they go underwater. And James Bond likes them.”

  “That wasn’t a submarine. That was a Lotus Esprit.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “I knew you were English.”

  “My mother’s expression.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Whether you’re English or American?”

  “Maybe if you’re lucky. If you can tell me about this guy.”

  I liked Abbey. Her banter was fun and playful, but always had a reason or fit the dialog.

  “Nothing about submarines?”

  “My brother played with a toy one in the tub when we were younger. That’s about it.” Abbey said.

  “The U.S. declared a war on drugs in 1971. Nixon. Since then the drug business has not only gotten better, but also more sophisticated. Before I got wrapped up playing hero in the Middle East I was doing it in South America. Colombia actually. We were chasing some guy named Escobar. No, not that Escobar, but equally as dangerous and cunning. So we’re after Escobar and while we’re tracking his moves we stumble upon an even bigger fish so we start watching him instead.

  Anyways thi
s new guy we start watching was looking at all his options for supply routes for the drugs. They had him by air. Had totally shut down his best routes. Overland was taking too long and they were improving ways at catching him.

  SEAL stands for sea, air, and land right? Well his air and land options are looking slim so he decides to give the sea a try. Not just boats either. Guy gets some fish finders for navigation and to provide eyes underwater. Then he invests in some thin fiberglass. Only need it three centimeters thick. Next thing you know he’s in the submarine business. Load the drugs up in the Colombian jungles. From there they crawl undetected along the murky, muddy waterways to the Pacific. He runs them up the coast. Just off shore they transport the drugs from the subs to speedboats for the last leg in. The subs are scuttled.”

  “What do you mean by scuttled?”

  “Deliberately sunk.”

  “I know that. What I’m asking is why don’t they just reuse them?”

  “Because you’d have to take them back. The guys have been in them for a couple weeks already. They’re going crazy. Sometimes mutiny. It’s over one hundred degrees, it’s cramped, you’re living on rations. Plus the chance of getting caught. If you’re going to make four hundred million or more from the sale then two million is a small operating cost.”

  “Two million!”

  “It’s a submarine. They’re not cheap.”

  “Guys in the jungle are fabricating two million dollar submarines?”

  “When the profit margins are what they are on drugs, yes.”

  “So what about this guy? The one face down in the ocean?”

  “Colombian national. Big time businessman. Illegitimate businesses, but he washes the money well and has the political connections to keep everything flowing smoothly.”

  “Which party?” Abbey said.

  “Does he support?”

  “Yes.”

  I laughed. “All of them. They’re more similar than they are different. He contributes to them all. Hedges his risk.”

  “So why was he floating face down in the ocean?”

  “You watched The Spy Who Loved Me?”

  “The James Bond movie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure. When I was a kid.”

  “You remember the Lotus Esprit?”

  “The one you said was a submarine?

  “You said that, but yes.”

  “OK.”

  “It was pretty ridiculous right? That scene got panned for years after. It still does today. It’s just so far fetched and over the top. It’s like jumping the shark, although that’s with a caveat because Bond films are still good with Daniel Craig. Better quite possibly. Anyways, back to the point. That car. That waterproof car. Something like that was in the works for our seal teams. A land vehicle that was also amphibious.”

  “I thought you already had stuff like that.”

  “Kind of. Nothing even close to this level. The SEALs were working with a private company to design and develop such a vehicle vessel hybrid.”

  “OK.”

  “Ever hear of Halliburton?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “It was kind of like that. A private company that profits from a lot of government contracts. Huge conflict of interest between the board of directors and government. This company was like that. The guy floating in the ocean was the founder and CEO of that company. The one that was developing the hybrid. Equally capable on land or in the water.”

  “That doesn’t answer why he was floating in the ocean.”

  “He was blackmailing high ranking members of government in exchange for their turning a blind eye to his using those same blueprints to build subs for his Colombian drug running business. His attempt at a legitimate business was sea craft. It was just a cover. In that business you’re going to meet a lot of wealthy people and high-level players in business and politics. That’s exactly what he did. He got the contract for the James Bond style submarine from that business. Everyone knew he was dirty, but didn’t seem to care. He financed half of their campaigns. Once the plans got pretty far along and they got to the prototype stage he flipped it around on them. The project wasn’t public knowledge so he basically said, I’ll be taking this for myself now. Thank you. And he took it down to Colombia and finished it up. With his engineers and government engineers working stateside.

  They government engineers didn’t know the tables had been turned. They still thought they were working on something for the SEAL Teams. They weren’t. Not only that. He had them work on some anti-detection devices. Sonar jamming. Stuff like that. So he had the U.S. government, along with a handful of his guys, build the most advanced submarine the world has ever seen. A submarine with land capabilities, but it looked mostly like a submarine. Then he took that sub, and the anti-detection measures our government also developed, and used it against the DEA, Coast Guard, and SEALs to run cocaine undetected right up the coast and into the noses of every Tom, Dick, and Harry from Los Angeles up to San Francisco and over to New York and down to Florida. And everywhere in between. Needless to say he upset a number of people. They were in a Catch-22 so they needed somebody to clean up their mess.”

  “Somebody off the record,” Abbey said.

  “That would have made more sense, but this guy was untouchable. They needed a specific set of skills. Not only that, but a small, tight team that all had those skills and who also functioned as one unit at the highest level.”

  “A SEAL Team,” Abbey said.

  “The only type of team that fits that description.”

  “And you were on that SEAL Team.”

  I lifted and lowered my eyebrows.

  “And you killed him.”

  I tilted my head to the side and stared at her as if to say, come on.

  “Right. Sorry. But he’s not dead anymore. What was his name?”

  “Devlin.”

  “And you saw him on that boat?”

  I did the thing with my eyebrows again. “Luxury yacht. With the Russian big boobied bimbos.”

  We took a taxi out to Kiki’s Tavern at Agios Sostis Beach. They don’t have a phone and there are no signs. There was a two-hour wait to get in as usual, but it’s free rosé in plastic cups while you wait. We didn’t have to wait. Frost was already there with a table. I was surprised a couple pale DEA agents knew about Kiki’s. It’s definitely on my top five places in the world to have lunch. I ordered wine, a Greek salad, and grilled octopus. After the waiter took our order I was prepared for a barrage of questions. I wasn’t left disappointed.

  “How dangerous is this guy?”

  “On a scale of one to ten. Definitely a ten.”

  “In what ways?” Frost said.

  “I don’t know exactly how you can rate how dangerous someone is, but in my book to be a ten you have to be dangerous in every conceivable way.”

  “Could you provide some examples?” Frost’s question was almost annoying. It was like he had finally got a big break in his case and he couldn’t wait to wring every last drop of information out of me.

  “Well, for starters you have plenty of weapons. Hand held. Shoulder fired. Remote controlled. Vehicle mounted. Even underwater. Like submarines and torpedoes. Let’s not forget that. Let’s say when it comes to weapons you have the works. Better than the best equipped fighting forces in the world. Then you also have guys who are trained to use that stuff. Plus you, and your guys, are weapons yourself. Martial arts. Mentally tough. Totally resistant to torture tactics. Drown proof. If all that wasn’t enough you have blackmail on top world leaders. That’s just insurance anyways. You’re funding their campaigns and the extravagant economic retreats in Swiss ski resorts so they’re your puppets anyways. If your puppet acts up you just crush it in front of all the other puppets and get a new puppet from your drawer full of puppets. Your toys, including your puppets, are on endless supply. Have you tried the octopus since you arrived?”

  Frost looked at me oddly. “No, I haven’t.”

  �
�Definitely don’t miss out before leave the island.”

  “And you think Devlin is on this island?”

  “He was two days ago. No telling where he is now.”