buy a bottled water from the vending machine in the breezeway first.
He opened the door to head out into the breezeway and found himself staring down the barrel of a long black automatic pistol.
Ryan was still out on the patio. He looked up in time to see two men come over the low fence. They both carried pistols that they waved in Ryan’s face.
“Back inside,” said a man with a pronounced Russian accent.
Jack raised his hands.
Two aluminum patio chairs were brought in from the patio by one of the Russians, and Ryan and Caruso were forced down into them. The smallest of the three goons had a canvas gym bag with him, and from it he pulled out a huge roll of wide duct tape. While both of the other men stood on the far side of the room, the Russian taped first Jack’s and then Dom’s legs to the legs of the chairs, and then their hands behind the backs of the chairs.
Ryan had been too stunned to speak at first; he knew he had not been followed back to the motel, so he could not imagine how they had been tracked here.
The three guys looked serious, but they also looked like simple muscle. Jack could tell these were not the brains behind this operation, or any operation more complicated than tying their shoes or shooting their pistols.
These would be Dmitri’s thugs, and by the looks of things, Dmitri wanted Ryan and Caruso dead.
Dom tried to talk to the men. “What’s this all about?”
The obvious leader of the trio said, “We know you are spying on us.”
“I don’t know what the hell you are talking about. We just came down to the beach for the weekend. We don’t even know who—”
“Shut up!”
Every fiber of Ryan’s being was focused on readying himself to act. He knew once his feet were tied together it would be over, he’d have no way to move or fight.
But he did not see any opening. The two men holding the pistols on them were on the other side of the bed, easily ten feet away. Jack knew there was no way in hell he could get to those guns before the men fired them.
Jack said, “Look. We don’t want any trouble. We were just following orders.”
The man in charge said, “Yeah? Well, your boss is going to have to get a new crew, because you two pretty boys are about to die.”
The smaller man with the gym bag pulled out a length of black wire and handed it across to his boss. It took Ryan only a moment to see the loops at each end, and to understand what he was looking at.
It was a garrote, an assassination device designed to be placed around the neck and then pulled tight from behind to strangle the victim.
Ryan continued speaking more quickly: “You don’t understand. Our boss is the same as your boss.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Center sent us. He says Dmitri is stealing from the wire transfer that is supposed to be split evenly among you. That’s why we’re here.”
“What are you talking about?”
Caruso followed Jack’s lead: “Center hacked your boss’s computer and his phone, and you boys are getting ripped off.”
One of the men on the other side of the bed said, “They are just making up some shit so we don’t kill them.”
Jack said, “I’ve got proof on my laptop. A Cryptogram conversation where Center tells Dmitri how much to pay you guys. I can show you.”
“You aren’t showing us shit,” said the same guy. “You are lying. Why would Center care what we are getting paid?”
“Center demands that his agents do what he says. You guys
Caruso chimed in again: “Yeah. A few months back he sent us to Istanbul to take out some guys who were cheating him.”
The lead Russian against the wall said, “Dmitri told me Center wanted you guys taken care of.”
Jack and Dom looked at each other. Center knew they were here in Miami? How?
But Jack recovered quickly. “That’s what Dmitri told you? I can
“How?”
“Let me log on to Cryptogram. I can be talking to Center inside of two minutes. You can confirm with him.”
The three goons started speaking in rapid-fire Russian. One asked, “How will we know if it’s really him?”
Jack shrugged in his bindings. “Dude. It’s Center. Ask him anything. Ask him about your organization. Ask him what ops you’ve done for him. Hell, ask him what your birthday is. He’ll know.”
That sank in with the Russians, Ryan could tell.
After another conversation between them, one of the three holstered his pistol and walked over to the desk. “Give me your password.
Ryan shook his head. “That won’t work. He can see through the webcam. Shit, how long have you guys been on the job? He’ll see it’s not me and he won’t authenticate the conversation. He’ll lock out the machine and, knowing Center, he’ll probably send another crew down to Miami to kill everybody down here working for him, starting with the idiot that logged on to my machine.”
“You are exaggerating,” the Russian at the desk said. Still, he took a step back from the laptop, away from its camera.
“Trust me,” said Jack. “The Chinese take their security seriously.”
“Chinese?”
Jack just looked back at the man.
“Center is Chinese?” one of the other Russians asked.
“Are you serious?” Jack said, then looked at Dom. Dom just shook his head like he was in the presence of idiots.
“Are you guys new?”
“No,” said the smaller man in the crew.
With a barking order from the man by the desk, one of the other two pulled a butterfly knife from his jacket and whipped it open with a flourish. He cut the tape from Ryan’s ankles and wrists, and Jack got up from the metal chair. As he moved the ten feet he looked back over his shoulder at Caruso. Dominic gave nothing away with his look. He just sat there watching.
Ryan looked to the head goon now. “Let me connect with him, explain the situation, and then bring you into the conversation.”
The Russian nodded, and Jack could tell that he’d successfully tricked the three armed men who just a minute before had been about to kill him and his cousin.
He knelt in front of his laptop, painfully aware of three sets of eyes on him right now. The closest man was just two steps away on his right, another was still on the other side of the bed with his weapon low by his side, and the third, the man who had just cut Ryan free, stood next to Caruso with his butterfly knife in his hand.
Jack had a plan, but it was an incomplete plan. He knew he wasn’t going to be talking to Center on Cryptogram, he did not even have the software on his machine, so he was seconds away from a full-on fight here in the room. And while he felt reasonably certain he could take care of one of these three thugs in a mano-a-mano brawl, there was no way he would make it across the room to the guy on the other side of the bed.
He needed a gun, and the closest gun was in the holster under the shirt of the man next to him.
Jack looked up at him from his kneeling position in front of the computer.
“Well?” said the Russian.
“Maybe I won’t check with Center,” Jack said, his tone a lot sharper than when he was taped to the
