Oath to Defend Page 3

  “What was that all about?” Casey asked as he and Drake climbed into the back of a taxi. “The only thing he seemed interested in was following that tour group around. You know, I thought the place was pretty amazing.”

  “The big guy didn’t seem to think so.” Drake looked at the taxi driver’s ID hanging from his rearview mirror. “Victor, if you keep that black Range Rover in sight, I’ll double your fee for the day.”

  Victor met his passenger’s eyes in the rear view mirror and smiled. “I still have time for another tour or two today. How about you hire me for the day and I will make sure he doesn’t know you are following him?”

  Drake returned his smile. “How much?”

  “Three hundred dollars.”

  “Two hundred, and I won’t tell your wife about the young woman you were flirting with at the souvenir stand.”

  “Two-fifty, señor. That was my sister.” Victor laughed and said, “Are you interested in a date?”

  It was Drake’s turn to laugh. “Two-fifty it is, for you, and two for the other two drivers. I haven’t seen their sisters.”

  Fifty minutes later they were back at the ferry terminal in time to see the bodyguard park the Range Rover and hurry inside.

  “Victor, I don’t know where this guy’s going. Stay here and wait for us.”

  When they got inside, Drake moved to one side of the terminal waiting area and Casey covered the other. Their man was standing next to the rack of tour brochures, again looking like he was trying to decide which tour he was going to take. As the line for the ferry returning to Cozumel began boarding, he dropped the brochure he was holding back in the rack and stared at the last of the tourists boarding until the gate to the ferry was closed. When no one came back through the gate as the ferry pulled away, he walked back to his Range Rover and drove off.

  Victor had the motor running with both rear doors open when they walked out.

  “Follow the Range Rover?”

  “Follow the Range Rover.” Drake turned to Casey. “Mike, he’s driving north toward that resort the DEA agent mentioned. If Barak’s there, let’s end this now.”

  For the next twelve minutes, Drake and his team in three taxis drove north on Highway 307 until they saw the Range Rover turn right toward the beach and the five diamond Mayakoba Resort and Spa. As they pulled up in front of the reception area, they saw a valet at his post in front of the lobby.

  Drake told his driver to have the valet allow them to park their taxis and wait with the other drivers until they returned. He then gathered his men around him.

  “We’re here for lunch and a tour of this resort,” he told them. “If we’re asked, Mike’s company is thinking of hosting a conference here. Gonzalez, go find a young señorita and find out where the bodyguard is staying. Mike will see about a tour, and when we’ve looked around, we’ll meet up for lunch at one of the restaurants. Any questions?”

  “What do you want to do if we spot them before lunch?” Casey asked.

  “We’ve got to do this without attracting attention, so wait until we go over a plan. We’re on our own here, and I, for one, don’t want to spend time in some Mexican jail. You’ve all worked undercover, so you know how to do this. Let’s do it.”

  Drake followed Casey into the lobby and walked past him to look out over the lagoon. A canopied gondola motored quietly toward a small island in the middle of the lagoon and electric carts moved along paths between the luxury lagoon suites. If Barak was here, he thought, he was hiding among the world’s affluent, judging from the French, German, Russian, and Spanish conversations he could hear behind him in the lobby.

  After a few minutes, Drake returned to the three men from Casey’s team. “You guys ought to see if Mike can arrange a little R&R for you here.”

  Billy Montgomery, a former Army Ranger, grinned. “My dad used to have brochures for places like this in his office. He’s comfortably retired from his Wall Street firm now, but I don’t think he would spend this much on a vacation. This is some resort!”

  Lawrence Green, a stocky, black cop from L.A. with a master’s degree in criminology from USC, shook his head. “Only guys I know who live like this are the ones who make their money illegally. Like Wall Street, I guess.” He stepped back before Montgomery had a chance to respond.

  “Okay,” said Drake, “if we’re right about Barak, he should fit right in. He’s somehow involved with drugs and the Mexican cartels. That’s one reason to be very careful here. He probably has plenty of protection available.”

  Casey walked toward them with a smiling young Mexican woman at his side.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “please meet our hostess, Angelina, who will show us her wonderful resort and conference facilities. After our tour, she has offered to buy our lunch at her restaurant down on the beach if we’ll consider the Mayakoba for the company retreat. Let’s go take a look.”

  For the next hour, Angelina led them through the conference rooms, the spa on an island in the middle of the lagoon, a raw bar and tequila library, and resort shops that were the equal of any on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. She ended the tour at a beachside restaurant located on a mile of white sand beach.

  “Señores, please enjoy your lunch,” she said, still smiling, “and order anything you like. When you leave, Mr. Casey, I will have the information for you at the front desk about arranging your conference. It has been a pleasure to assist you today.” She gave a tiny curtsy and left them to be seated near the windows overlooking the beach.

  Drake grinned. “Mike, I’m sure your men think you should bring them back for some R&R.”

  “Bring them back, hell, I don’t want to leave! You get DHS to cover my costs, and I’m in.”

  “Has anyone seen Gonzalez?”

  “Relax,” Casey said. “I’ll call him and let him know where we are. It’s been four hours since we had breakfast, can we eat now?”

  “Unbelievable! We’re about to go active, and all you can think about is eating.”

  “Some men face danger and think about sex. I don’t like to mix business with pleasure, so I focus on keeping my lean machine fueled and ready. Shall I call our waiter?”

  “Wait,” Drake replied. “Gonzalez just walked in. Let’s hear what he’s got first.”

  The former Green Beret pulled out a chair and sat down, then opened a map of the resort.

  “Despite the danger of my assignment,” he began, “I was able to learn that our bodyguard has been seen coming and going from the presidential suite right down the beach from here. It’s the last one in the row of beachfront suites. The golf course is on one side,” he laid a finger on the map, “here, with some trees providing a little cover. Access from the beach also has some tree cover, but it’s open to the suite next to it. Cart paths link all the suites.”

  “Are there others in the suite besides the bodyguard?”

  “She didn’t know, but she has taken a cart away from this restaurant with plates and utensils for two.”

  “What about gardeners, maintenance workers, other people around?”

  “She said the landscape crew works in the early morning so no one will be disturbed. She didn’t know about anyone else being around on a regular basis.”

  “Hmm. This looks too easy. Mike, what am I missing?”

  Casey looked at the map again. “Other than people who might be around, I don’t know. There are no high places to use for observation. This place is as flat as a tortilla. He can retreat to the beach, but we can have someone there. There aren’t any roads he can use, only the cart paths.”

  “So…wait for dark or go now?”

  “I’m not sure it’ll make much difference, unless we wait until three or four in the morning. We could see if there are a couple of rooms we could book, but without any luggage, it’ll look suspicious.”

  Drake made his decision. “That’s too much time. Here’s what we’ll do. Mike and I will approach from here in one of those electric carts. Montgomery, you look like a golfe
r. Take Green and rent a golf cart. Tour the course. Get in position close to the suite. We can use the golf cart to exfil with Barak. Gonzalez and Richards, you two will take a stroll down the beach and approach from that direction. We’ll go in one hour. If we need to separate, find your way back to Cozumel and the hotel. Fall back is the airport and Mike’s plane.”

  “Can I order now?” Casey asked.

  7

  It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sun shimmered on the blue Caribbean Sea. David Barak was standing and watching a large white yacht in the distance motoring toward Cozumel. He’d been thinking about buying something like a yacht and making it his floating headquarter in the Caribbean. Expensive but private, a yacht could provide the margin of safety he’d need if the Americans kept looking for him. Hiding in Mexico certainly wasn’t what he had in mind for the reward he would give himself as soon as he completed his next mission. The Mayakoba resort was nice, he had to admit, but he deserved more. There was no way he was going to end up like bin Laden, isolated in a grubby villa, cut off from the world. His sponsors might think the “true way” was to live like a nomad roaming around in the desert, but refusing the advantages the modern world offered didn’t make any sense to him.

  His cell phone came to life with the sound of a Ferrari driving by at speed. He opened it and heard a voice.

  “I’m not being watched, but you are.”

  “What are you talking about, Ryan?”

  “I spotted your bodyguard as soon as I got off the ferry,” said Ryan, “as well as the surveillance team that followed us both to Tulum and back. They weren’t watching me. They were watching him. Leave now. Use the number I gave you earlier and tell them to get you out of there. And erase everything.”

  “Ryan,” Barak replied, “I don’t need your advice. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t insisted on meeting.”

  The line went dead.

  “Jamal,” he yelled. “Get in here.”

  His faithful servant ran in, a startled look on his face. He had never been yelled at before.

  “What did you do?” Barak asked. “Ryan just called and said you were followed.”

  “Malik, I did as you told me. There was no one following Ryan. I didn’t see anyone following me. You trained me well. I did not fail you. Maybe Ryan is angry because you made him go to Tulum.”

  Barak shook his head. “I can’t take a chance that he’s wrong. Download everything on my laptop, then run the incinerator program. I’ll call for a ride out of here.”

  But he waited until his bodyguard had left the room before he called the number Ryan had provided. As faithful as Jamal was, he wasn’t in Ryan’s league and most likely had been followed. The problem was to escape and make sure Jamal was no longer a risk.

  “This is Barak,” he said into his phone. “Emergency, extraction now, beach off the Mayakoba.”

  The call ended, he went into the master bedroom and changed into black swimming trunks picked up his waterproof fanny pack. When he returned to the living room, he found Jamal waiting.

  “Your laptop is clean,” the bodyguard said. “Here’s your thumb drive. What do you want me to do next?”

  “You know what I must ask of you, Jamal. You have been beside me all these years, and you know I cannot be captured. What we have planned must be completed. Tens of thousands will die soon. Because of your sacrifice, you will always be remembered as a martyr. Let no one get by you. If no one comes and Ryan is wrong, call my number and I’ll get you out of here. Are you willing to do this for me, my friend?”

  “You know that I am, but Ryan is wrong, I promise you.”

  “I believe you. But this must be good bye for now. Guard the front. I must go.”

  As Jamal turned and started toward the foyer of the large suite, Barak took his silenced Sig Sauer P226 out of his fanny pack and shot him twice in the back of his head.

  “Sorry, old friend, but I think Ryan is right. You were followed.”

  When he was sure there was nothing in the suite that would lead anyone to him or compromise his plans, he threw a towel around his shoulders and walked out the door.

  On the beach, he saw a few couples walking along the water line and several parents watching their children playing in the white sand, but otherwise the area looked safe. He walked to the edge of the trees lining the beach and sat in the shade. If they knew where he was staying, he knew they wouldn’t leave the beach open to him. He looked up and down the beach, but saw no enemies approaching. Then he shaded his eyes from the afternoon sun and looked for a signal from his rescuer on the horizon.

  Despite the humiliation he knew he would experience if Ryan was right and his man had been followed, at the moment Barak felt only anger. No one but Ryan and the Alliance knew he was in Mexico. Until Ryan had called and said they needed to meet, Jamal had never left the resort. If it turned out that Ryan was responsible for Jamal being followed, he swore that one day he would kill him in exchange for Jamal’s life.

  When he opened his eyes after a quick prayer for his friend entering paradise, he saw two men walking along the beach from the direction of the Las Brisas restaurant. The shorter of the two looked Mexican, the taller, American. Both were walking more like soldiers than tourists, alert and looking in the direction of his suite without a glance at the blue water.

  Barak slowly stood up and walked casually toward the water line. When he felt the surf starting to swirl around his calves, he took three running steps and dove into the first wave high enough to allow him to swim freely. Surfacing, he swam steadily until he was beyond the breaking waves. He kept swimming. From the beach, he was sure, he looked like just another swimmer exercising in the sea.

  A hundred yards out, he turned and began treading water so he could watch the two men on the beach. If they had noticed him, they weren’t paying any attention to him now. One had stopped and was sitting in the sand near the tree line, twenty yards from the deck of his suite. The other had gone another twenty yards beyond. Another five minutes, Barak thought, and he would have walked right between them.

  He turned and swam another fifty yards, then turned toward the beach again. The two men hadn’t moved from their positions. Yes, he said to himself, they were waiting for him, or maybe waiting for a signal to rush his suite. It was the way he would have done it. Whoever they were, they were good. He would have to learn more about his hunters, for surely he would face them again.

  He heard the approaching roar of a fast boat. When it had pulled alongside and he’d climbed up the ladder that had been lowered to him, he looked again at the two men on the beach. They weren’t looking his way.

  8

  With the team in position, Drake drove an electric golf cart down the path toward the presidential suite. Casey, riding shotgun, used their secure personal radios to alert the others that they were moving in. The in-ear tactical headsets with speaker and bone conduction microphones made them, he thought with a silent laugh, look like Secret Service agents protecting the President.

  They saw no one outside guarding the suite.

  “Gonzalez,” Drake asked, “you see anyone on the beach side?”

  “Not from here.”

  “Montgomery, anyone on your side?”

  “We’re sitting just off the green on 15. Can’t see anyone.”

  “All right, enter on my command.”

  He stopped the cart on the turnabout in front of the suite and walked to the main entrance. With Casey standing to the left of the massive, carved front door, he took his Glock from the belt clip at his back and rang the doorbell.

  After ten seconds and no response, he tried the door. It was unlocked. With a nod to Casey, he gave the command.

  “Go.”

  He pushed open the door and moved quickly to the right of the foyer as Casey moved to the left. Moving forward together, they cleared the media room to the right and then the elaborate bar and game room to the left. The only sound they heard was footsteps running across the
terrace.

  Drake saw it first, the blood and brain matter on the mahogany floor leading into the main room of the suite. It was Barak’s bodyguard, lying face down on the floor.

  “The bodyguard’s dead,” Drake said into his radio. Make sure Barak isn’t hiding somewhere in here. Then we’ll meet in the main room.”

  To get so close and fail made Drake coldly furious. They had been lucky to get this close, he knew, but with Barak on the run again, they might not get another chance at him.

  “Mike,” he said, “how’d he know we were coming? Where did we screw up?”

  Casey shrugged his shoulders. “We may never know. Maybe the bodyguard spotted us at some point. Maybe some gardener was a lookout. Remember the goat herders in Afghanistan?”

  Drake nodded and said, “If the bodyguard spotted us, he did a hell of a job not letting on. Damn it, anyway. Let’s make sure there’s no sign we’ve been here and get back to Cozumel.” With a brief curse, he added, “I might as well let DHS know we missed him.”

  Driving the cart back to the resort’s parking lot, Drake called Liz Strobel at DHS.

  “We missed him, Liz. We found his bodyguard dead with two bullets in the back of the head. His body was still warm. He had to have been tipped off somehow.”

  “Did you get out clean?”

  “We’re leaving the resort now. We’re clean.”

  “The Secretary will be glad to hear it,” she said. “How long ago do you think he slipped out?”

  “Why?” Drake asked.

  “I needed to make sure there were no repercussions. I bought satellite images of Cancun and the Mayan Riviera from a private space firm so no one else in the government would know what you were up to. Give me an approximate time he might have left, and I’ll see what we can learn.”

  “We arrived in Cozumel this morning at 0630 and took a ferry to Playa Del Carmen at 0900. I don’t think there’s much of a chance he could have known we were here before this morning. You didn’t tell me about the lead until yesterday.”