Choke Points Page 2

  They had planned for this. Sirena turned left and headed toward a small fishing village about five miles away. From there they could get a small boat and travel to another island. While she drove, Jake texted his organization, saying they would need an extraction. He would send the location soon.

  Since the only airport was on the north shore of the island, they would travel along the south shore to their planned departure point.

  2

  Lisbon, Portugal

  The lone Asian woman kept pace with two much larger men ahead of her in the downtown region of this port city. By now they were only a couple of blocks from the main train station.

  Chen Fang had worked for the International Intelligence Division of the Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China for nearly fifteen years. Her star was rising within MSS. But failure in Portugal would be a huge setback, and she wasn’t about to let that happen.

  She had hired and tested these two men for the past couple of weeks. Although they had a sketchy background with underworld criminals, she suspected they would act as she hoped, considering the amount of money she was paying them for their services. Security Chief Fausto Crespo was their main target. The fact that this man was having an affair with his subordinate, Gilda Freitas, was a fortunate bonus for them. Two for one deal, she thought.

  On the comm, her associate said, “Approaching the apartment building.” Since their only common language was English, that’s what they would use for this operation.

  Yan Shen was a year younger than Chen, but he had been with MSS for the same amount of time. Yan was a deliberate man with a curiosity for this work, but he lacked the temperament to complete missions with deadly accuracy. He had been the advance man, waiting outside the apartment complex for their target to return from dinner and drinks. When the man returned, and was accompanied by his deputy security officer, Chen knew that the time to strike was now. In fact, all three of the strikes had to be coordinated this evening. That way the targets would not be alerted to the danger. She had not gotten word on the outcome in Dublin or the Azores. The strike on Pico Island was the most important, since that man was more dangerous than all of the others combined.

  “Engage,” Chen said in her mic.

  Only grunts came back through her comm from the Portuguese men.

  She strolled up the block and watched the two men enter the apartment building. Then she passed in front of the building and met Yan. As coordinated, they hugged like old friends.

  When he put his hand on her butt, she turned off her comm for a second and whispered into Yan’s ear. “If you touch my ass again, I’ll rip off your arm and beat you with it. Then I’ll shove it up your ass. Do you understand?”

  He nodded slightly. “I was trying to be authentic.”

  She glanced down the street at the apartment and saw flashes from the second floor from silenced guns. Chen turned on her comm again just in time to hear the Portuguese men say they had completed the task and were heading out.

  Chen told the men where to go to get their additional payment. Then she turned off the comm again and glanced at her colleague.

  “Are you ready to meet with them?” she asked.

  “Must we?”

  “Yes, we must. We promised full payment upon completion.”

  The two of them walked back down the block and found their current car. Yan drove out to an isolated position on the west side of the city, close to Belem. They were on the edge of the shipping docks near the large suspension bridge that crossed the Tagus River where it met the Atlantic Ocean. Here sat a massive fishing and sporting boat harbor lined by warehouses that had started to be gentrified. But at this hour of night, most folks were either at home or drinking in one of the newly-trendy bars in the area.

  Yan parked in the designated area, but he kept the engine running.

  Chen stepped out and unbuttoned her long leather jacket, giving her access to her suppressed 9mm handgun.

  When the older SEAT sedan pulled up and parked a short distance away, she turned on her comm again and spoke into the mic. “Stay there,” she said. “I will bring the money to you.”

  She opened the back door and lifted a duffle bag from the seat, slinging it over her left shoulder. Then she walked with purpose toward the Portuguese men in the other car.

  The driver of the car powered his window down and said to her, “Put the bag in the back seat.”

  She hesitated and said, “Are they both dead?”

  “I would hope so,” he said. “We emptied our guns on them.”

  “Good job. They can’t be too dead. You made it look like a robbery?”

  “We took their computers, phones, wallet and purse,” the driver said.

  As she went for the handle on the back door, she simultaneously drew her weapon behind her coat. Then, instead of placing the bag full of dirty clothes onto the seat, she put a bullet in the back of the driver’s head. The passenger looked at her in shock and she put a bullet in his face. She closed the back door and pointed her gun into the driver’s window, about to fill them with more bullets. When she saw the impact of her well-placed shots, she thought for a moment. The comm units. She took a bloody earbud from the driver and went around to the passenger side, taking his comm unit as well. She found a bag of items taken from the apartment, which contained laptops and other personal items from those killed. Then she simply walked back to her car and got back into the front passenger seat.

  Her colleague gave her a shocked look. She had not told him her plan. But he had to know they couldn’t leave loose ends.

  Dublin, Ireland

  Jimmy Leary had walked directly from work in the Silicon Docks area to his favorite pub between that trendy area and the Temple Bar area frequented by obnoxious tourists fired up on Guinness. He was easing into his retirement years, working now as a chief security officer for a multi-national communications company. He found the work much more sedate than the government job he had recently retired from, but the money was much better.

  After a number of beers in the pub, he had called an end to his night. Since it was New Year’s Day, most of the drunken revelers had done damage to their brain the night before, so the pub had been almost normal for a Wednesday.

  He stumbled down the street and turned through a short cut, a narrow alley that would take him to the street where he lived near Trinity College.

  Halfway down the alley, a man suddenly appeared in front of him. Jimmy considered turning around, but the man was small in stature. He could take him.

  As he got closer to the man at the end of the alley, he suddenly heard footsteps behind him. He stopped and bent down to tie his shoe, which was actually a loafer. But it gave him a second to assess the man behind him. This one was much taller, he thought.

  In his mind, he developed a plan of action. Take out the big man first and then move on to the smaller fellow, he thought. As he backed up slightly to put the stone wall behind him, he tripped slightly and caught himself with a hand on the cold stone. Jimmy tried to recover, but he felt a sharp pain in his lower back.

  Then the night was filled with flashes from both men. Why were they shooting at him? He found himself face down against the cold, wet pavement, his eyes still open and in wonder.

  Jimmy’s last thoughts on this Earth were muddled by the sound of a foreign language echoing off the stone walls of the alley. Then he closed his eyes for his final sleep.

  3

  Jake and Sirena got to the small fishing village a few minutes before ten p.m. He had insisted on laying low for a little while, knowing the Pico police would take some time to close down all of the exit points from the island. Jake had rented the house under one of his many personas, paying in cash to his landlord, who wasn’t a fan of the Portuguese government or taxes in general. And the two of them had been very careful to not be photographed while on Pico Island.

  Before leaving the house and the grounds, Sirena had destroyed any access to their cameras. Sinc
e the videos uploaded directly to the cloud, the only hard copies were on their phones and possibly their laptops, which were on them in their go bags. The only thing left behind at the house would be their DNA and fingerprints, which would leave the police nothing at all, since both would be still purged from all law enforcement and intelligence agency databases. There could be a slight possibility of lingering matches in the Interpol system, but Jake guessed that even that would have been wiped out by now.

  That left their car, which Jake had purchased for cash from his landlord’s cousin. Again, he had used his Austrian passport exclusively on Pico Island, along with his International Driver’s License. Jake would have to dump the car, since the police would be looking for that.

  Now, Jake drove down to the small waterfront, where the tide seemed to be in, the waves lapping gently against the jetty and the large rocks along the small harbor. Only a couple of small fishing boats sat against one side of a small pier. The larger boat took up the entire other side. Their ride.

  “Do you trust this guy?” Sirena asked.

  “As much as money will influence,” Jake said. “I’ve been out fishing with the guy a couple of times. We’ll see.”

  Jake pulled their little Fiat sedan to a small parking area. There were no other vehicles there, which made some sense, since the boat captain lived only a block away.

  “Let’s dump the bags and I’ll stash the car in the trees up the hill,” Jake said. Then he got out and helped Sirena pull the bags from the trunk. He kissed her on the lips and said, “It’ll be fine.”

  Then Jake got back in the car and drove up the hill, finding an isolated spot to park. Once Jake got out and fluffed up the shrubbery on the back of the car, there was no way anyone would be able to see if from the road. Satisfied, he jogged back down the hill toward the pier.

  When Jake got there, the old fisherman was standing next to Sirena, and they were laughing about something.

  “Your wife says you had to take a dump before heading out,” the fisherman said, his English strained. “Good move. We have a bathroom aboard, but the quarters are tight, so the smell can be a problem.”

  Jake simply smiled at both the notion of Sirena being his wife and his bowel movement. “Let’s go,” Jake said, remembering to use his German accent.

  They got onto the boat and the captain immediately turned over the engine. Jake unleashed the ropes and threw them aboard before shoving off and jumping aboard.

  The captain slowly cruised out of the small harbor, his running lights on and the dark ocean out in front of them. The boat was large enough to carry about a dozen people, Jake guessed.

  “What can you tell me about your boat?” Jake asked.

  “She’s a ten-point-five meter beauty, with twin three hundred seventy horse engines. Maximum speed of about thirty knots. Where are we heading?”

  “What kind of range on this boat?” Jake asked.

  “Four hundred nautical miles. Why do you ask?”

  “Is she fully fueled?”

  “She is. But I thought you said we were only going to Faial. That’s about twenty miles, depending on the port. Again, what’s our heading? I can punch it into our GPS.”

  Before Jake could answer, the radio squawked and a man’s voice came over the speaker.

  Sirena put her hand on Jake’s lower back. Her Portuguese was much more fluent than his. But even Jake could understand his Austrian name and Sirena’s fake name through the quick lingo.

  The captain picked up the mic and was about to push the button to talk when Jake drew his gun and pointed it at the man’s head.

  “Set down the mic,” Jake said.

  The captain did so without hesitation. “You’re the people the police are looking for. It doesn’t matter. Put the gun away.”

  By now, they were about a mile away from the harbor, heading directly south.

  “Cut the engine,” Jake demanded.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  The captain shut down the engine and turned to Jake. “Listen,” he said. “Someone doesn’t ask for a ride in the middle of the night just for the hell of it. I knew what I was getting into. But the money was good.”

  “Along with the GPS,” Jake said, “I’m guessing this boat has a transponder.”

  “Of course.”

  “Turn it off.”

  The captain shook his head. “I don’t know if it can be done.”

  Jake smiled. “You forget the last time you took me fishing? I asked you about the transponder. After a couple of beers, you told me you could disable that to keep the coast guard from tracking you.”

  The captain gave Jake a sheepish grin.

  “Disable it now,” Jake said.

  Reluctantly, the captain opened a small panel below the wheel and pulled a cord apart. “That does it.”

  Jake waved his left hand at the man. “Let’s have your cell phone.”

  “It only works for a few miles off the Pico coast,” the captain said. “Then you’ll pick up another signal about three miles out from Faial Island.”

  Jake accepted the cell phone from the captain, placing it in his back pocket. “Let’s go out on the deck.”

  The man’s eyes grew. “You can’t be serious. The water temperature this time of year is brutal. I won’t survive five minutes.”

  While the two of them went to the stern of the boat, Sirena had taken over the controls, powering up the engines and turning them toward the west side of the island in the direction of Faial Island. She moved closer to shore than Jake would have liked, but he guessed she was going to give the captain a fighting chance of survival.

  “I take it you can swim,” Jake said.

  “Of course, but. . .”

  “You’ll be less than a hundred meters from shore up ahead,” Jake said. “I’m sure you can make it that far.”

  Sirena slowed the boat and glanced back at Jake.

  “Now would be a good time to jump,” Jake said.

  “At least give me a life vest,” the captain said.

  Jake found an orange ring lifebuoy and threw it to the man. “Now, go over.”

  “Where will I find my boat?” the captain asked.

  “On Faial somewhere. I’ll turn the transponder back on eventually.”

  The captain nodded. Then, without further hesitation, the captain jumped overboard, hitting the light waves with barely a splash.

  Jake holstered his gun and glanced out at the fisherman, who had surfaced and was hanging onto the ring flotation device. Then he found the captain’s phone in his back pocket and threw it into the ocean, before heading back into the cabin with Sirena, who had started to slowly power up the engines again.

  “Will he be alright?” she asked.

  “That old sea dog will be fine. He told me he once swam twenty miles in the Atlantic. If he was lying then he might have a slight problem. But he should be halfway to shore by now.”

  “He will call the cops on us,” she said.

  “I’m banking on that.” Jake touched the map screen and found his destination. Then he locked in the position and said, “Alright. Let’s see what this boat will do.”

  Sirena pushed forward both throttles and the boat lurched forward, finally trimming out to level.

  Once they got around a small point, Jake turned off their running lights. Now they would be blind to others, but the GPS would keep them on track.

  “We aren’t going to Faial Island,” Sirena said, handing over the wheel to Jake.

  “Nope. While we still have cell service, you need to contact your friend and let her know we’re coming to see her.”

  “She’s only there for a few more days.”

  That’s what Jake thought. But he really wanted to know how this Mossad officer might have had something to do with their Chinese visitors that evening. Or, did they simply follow Sirena back to their house? That wasn’t too likely. Sirena was one of the best in the game. She didn’t let just anyone follow her. But
Jake would find out soon enough.

  “GPS says we have six hours at this speed,” Sirena said.

  “That’s good. We want to get there in the dark. Take the wheel.”

  Sirena stepped in and handled the wheel as they cruised along the western point of Pico Island.

  Jake found one of their go bags, pulling his M4 from inside. He removed all of the accessories from his weapon, including sights and lights, and then took the full upper assembly off and replaced it with a new one. Now he had a new barrel and bolt, with a pristine firing pin. Once he got the new rifle together, he zipped it back into the bag. Then he took the old barrel out onto the stern deck and threw it overboard. It wasn’t like the authorities could tie this weapon to him, since it had been given to him by the Gomez people, but he didn’t like to take chances. Sirena’s handgun could still be a problem, but she could easily dispose of that when needed.

  As he stood at the stern glancing at the water churning by, he saw that the ocean was beginning to pick up in ferocity. Part of that, he knew, was the channel between the Azores islands. This area had three close islands: Pico, Faial and São Jorge. The old captain had told him about the winds and heavy seas, especially between Pico and São Jorge to the north.

  Now the rain started to fall. First it came in periodic drops, like the mist from the sea splashing through the midnight air. Then the rain fell in earnest, as Jake found his way back into the cabin.

  Latching the door shut, Jake came next to Sirena at the wheel. “It’s getting nasty out there,” he said.

  “Let’s hope it’s just the Venturi Effect,” Sirena said, both hands struggling against the wheel.

  Jake put his hand on her waist and kissed her on her left cheek. “Look at you getting all science on me. That makes me hot.”

  “Easy boy. This boat won’t drive itself.”

  “It does have autopilot,” he said. “But in these heavy seas, I’m not sure we should trust it.”

  Her eyes shifted to the left toward him. “Do you suppose the captain made it to shore?”