worked, before Mendoza, and she was right about them-Declan hadn’t been at his best.
Cesar was a transporter, and he’d ship pretty much anything to anyplace, according to Mr. Boyce and Tina. He’d started out, like so many in the region, with drug shipments, and found natural synergies in the movement of small arms and cash. Then, in the early years of the new century, he diversified into transporting heavier weapons, hijacked electronics, pirated software and DVDs, and human traffic headed north. Despite his success, or perhaps because he kept so busy spending its fruits on hookers, Ferraris, and thoroughbred horses, Cesar had, over the years, underinvested badly in his own security infrastructure.
“I’ve seen 7-Elevens with tighter perimeters,” Tina had said.
The perimeter she was talking about was in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, around a waterfront compound where Cesar kept an office, some odds and ends of his shipments-a pallet or two of flat-screen TVs, a crate of RPGs-a climate-controlled garage for some of his Testarossas, and $6.8 million in shrink-wrapped packs of hundred-dollar bills. The money was in a cinder-block annex to the Ferrari garage, and it should’ve been a simple job-three sleepy guards, a fence to scale, a video feed to interrupt, an alarm system barely worth the name, and a safe room that wasn’t. In and out, unseen and unheard, in seventeen minutes flat. It should’ve been simple, but it wasn’t, because Declan developed something of a mania for Cesar.
Not that that was difficult to do. Cesar was unlikable in the extreme-a thug, a beater of women and children, a liar, a casual killer, and an all-around swine. Though he was, in truth, no worse than any of the other people they stole from, Declan had for some reason decided that he was.
“I think it’s his girth, boys,” he confessed over beer one night in a Puerto Barrios bar. “He’s such a fat fuck, and he dresses like… What’s he dress like, Bobby?”
“Like an L.A. pimp, Deke, circa 1977.”
“Not even that well, lad. And he’s an insult to those cars of his. I just don’t know how he jams his guts behind the wheel.” It was a running joke through all their planning, and then, on the night of the job, in an instant it wasn’t.
Carr was on the fence, and Declan, Bobby, and Ray-Ray had the safe room. Carr watched through the nightscope as Bobby and Ray-Ray came out, bags over shoulders, and headed toward him.
“Where’s Deke?” Carr said into his headset.
There was a pause, a whispered chuckle, and then Declan’s raspy voice. “Leavin’ a little something for that feckin’ sack,” he said, and Carr saw him in the doorway of the Ferrari garage-saw him pitch something in underhanded, and then come running.
“Might want to add some quick, lads,” he said, and then the night lit up with an orange flash, a muffled blast, a symphony of breaking glass, and a shock wave that Carr felt even fifty yards away. He tore the nightscope from his head.
“What the fuck?” Bobby and Ray-Ray shouted, nearly in unison.
Declan was laughing when he reached them, and laughing later that night, when they passed a bottle around in the cabin of a sport fisher, halfway to Belize.
“He didn’t deserve those cars, the fat shite. All I did was restore order to the universe. And what the fuck was he gonna do with that box of pineapples anyway? Nothing so productive, I’ll guarantee you.” He looked at Carr. “Why’re you being a feckin’ old woman about it, anyway? It’s fireworks is all-nothing to fret over. It’s like a tonic.”
Bobby and Mike and Dennis and Ray-Ray had laughed with him; Carr and Valerie had not.
Nobody was laughing after Nicaragua, though. The Russians were called Dudek, and they were actually from Ukraine-two cousins who cashed out of the army and headed west when the Evil Empire dissolved. And weapons were their specialty. They bought them, sold them, shipped them, serviced them, and trained clients in their use. And unlike Cesar, they did not leave piles of money about in cinder-block sheds. They did, however, keep some petty cash on hand-$5.1 million, more or less-in a safe in the back office of Dudek Air Charter, not far from the Managua airport. The safe was a serious one, as was the security around it, which relied less on technology than it did on the presence of many guys with guns.
Carr hadn’t liked the job at first, hadn’t seen a way of doing it that didn’t devolve into a full-on firefight, but Declan had pushed, and eventually he’d come up with a plan. It relied on distraction, misdirection, and some painfully tight timings, but if it played as written, it would get them in and out without a shot fired. Carr was pleased with it; Declan less so. It was late, and they were sitting in the shitty kitchen of a shitty house, in a city- Managua-full of shitty houses.
“The way in is okay, I guess, but the exit is too clever by half. We’ll have the swag in hand, fer chrissakes, we don’t need yer feckin’ floor show. We just head for the door.”
“And do what,” Carr had said, “shoot your way out? Those aren’t rent-a-cops at Dudek, those are mercs- mostly kid mercs. They’re not big on judgment or hesitation or worries about mortality-theirs or anyone else’s. You light it up with them, it’s not a halfway thing.”
“I know who they are, boyo, and the last thing I need is a lecture on firefights. Not from you. I’m saying yer plan is riskier than it has to be because yer shy when it comes to heavy lifting-you always have been. You’re delicate, so to avoid the shootin’ you have us wastin’ time in that stairwell, while you sing and dance. Well, I say that’s a higher risk. I’d rather do the shootin’ than wait around fer someone to do it to me.”
“I’m talking about a series of flash-bangs on the other side of the building, to draw them off. I’m talking about a wait of a minute, ninety seconds tops. We make some noise, and then you leave, and if you do meet people on the way out, you’ll meet fewer of them.”
“So you say. But what’re you so worried about, boyo-you’ll be on the outside, out of harm’s way.”
“There are risks we can minimize, and risks we can’t. The exit plan falls in the first category. If I’m worried about anything, it’s that you don’t see that. I’m talking about a minute, Deke, a minute and a half tops.”
“You shy because they’re kids? Is that it?”
They went back and forth like that, until the sky grew pale and everyone but Latin Mike agreed with Carr, and Mike stayed silent. Finally-peevishly-Declan folded. And then, three nights later, as he and Bobby and Mike were on their way out of the Dudek Air Charter building, he changed his mind.
No one laughed after that. Not Bobby or Mike, who had taken a round through his right arm and who Carr had never seen so pale, and not Declan, who’d taken a round in his left thigh and killed three child soldiers along the way. The wound didn’t seem to bother Declan much on the drive west, from Managua to the Pacific coast, nor did it stop Carr.
“We had a plan,” Carr said.
Declan’s smile was thin and cold. “You know what they say about those, boyo: they don’t survive the first shot.”
“We all agreed on it.”
“And since when was this a feckin’ democracy?”
Carr stared for a long while, and then shook his head. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” he whispered. Declan stopped smiling, but had no other answer.
It’s nearly nightfall when Mike arrives, and there are clouds in the darkening sky, and approaching thunder. Mike has a six of Corona under one arm, and a bucket of fried chicken under the other.
“Howie’s still sleeping,” Carr says, as he passes Mike in the doorway. “Don’t hit him again.” Mike starts to say something, but Carr keeps walking.
Dennis is eating dinner when Carr arrives, a Cuban sandwich and a beer. He’s bent over a laptop, wearing headphones, and he doesn’t look up when Carr opens the door. Carr raps on the table, and Dennis starts and pulls the phones off.
“I’m looking at the latest from Chun’s place-the wires Vee laid down.”
Carr pulls a chair alongside Dennis’s. “And?” he asks.
Dennis colors. “It’s good,” he says. “Actually, it’s great.”
The image is clear, despite the low light: Amy Chun in her home office. The tiny camera is planted in a bookshelf behind her desk, and the view is over and above her right shoulder. She’s wearing a sleeveless white shirt, and there’s a mug of tea steaming in a corner of her desk, next to her cell phone. She is pushing aside the keyboard of her home computer and opening up the laptop she carries every day to and from her office suite at the Spanish River Bank and Trust Company.
“Laptop keyboard is nice and clear,” Dennis says. “Vee did a good job with placement.”
