Noel Hynd - Hostage in Havana

“Correct,” Alex answered. “Here’s an overview: Panama gives Colombian drug traffickers a culture they can blend into.

Colombian-owned businesses also make up the majority of Panama’s most successful companies, most, if not all, located in Panama City. Many Colombians own vacation land or plantations in Panama and make up part of the billions of dollars Colombians invest in Panama. A lot of the money is legitimate, but a hefty percentage isn’t. Look. If U.S.-bound cocaine starts in Colombia, the key transit link is Panama. You know this as well as I do. While we can make regular interdictions, we’re hard-pressed to combat the sheer number of options Panama City and the rest of the country offer to criminals. So we go after the big shots.”

“The Dosi family,” MacPhail said.

“Correct.”

“They’ve been arrested?” Ramirez asked.

“They’re in hiding. Possibly in South America somewhere as of this morning, looking for a sanctuary state to escape to. That’s between us, of course.”

Leslie spoke up from a visitor’s chair. “Here’s the issue, Alex. The Dosi family’s planning a counterattack.”

“A counterattack?”

“They’ve hired someone to kill you,” Ramirez said.

Alex tried to wrap her mind around this. Then she sighed. “Threats are nothing unusual in cases like this,” she answered. “People talk, they get angry, they threaten. Carrying through is something else,” she said. “I have a scar and a pain in the left shoulder that reminds me every day that I’ve been shot at before. There’s always blowback from these Central American hoods when there’s a successful operation against them. And macho oversexed thugs that they are, they probably like it even less when a woman is leading the charge against them.”

MacPhail produced a manila envelope. From it slid a photograph.

“Take a look,” said Ramirez. “This is Manuel Perez. Ever seen the face?”

Alex looked at the picture. “No. Haven’t seen him, don’t know anything about him, and have never heard or read the name before.”

“Consider this,” MacPhail said. “Four months ago, the Mexican judicial minister, Nelson Sanchez, who was involved in financial fraud and money laundering, was at his beach-side villa on Mexico’s Pacific coast, just south of Zihuatanejo. The whole place was cordoned off by army and local police. There were two navy speed boats in the bay in front of him, protecting him while he was there. He was sitting on the beach with his mistress when two fifty-caliber bullets came at him. One of them hit him in the forehead, the other in the chest. The final report said the shot came from a boat half a mile out at sea. The sniper had fired long range and escaped.”

Ramirez picked up the narrative.

“Now put that in the back of your mind, Alex, and consider a more recent case when a similar sniper fired on a motorcade driving Ramon Inezia, the chief of Colombia’s national anti-narcotics squad, to the airport. Inezia’s car was armor plated and thought to be bulletproof. But the sniper had a new bullet that was ahead of the glass technology used by Mercedes Benz. Three bullets hit the car. One got Inezia in the neck. The other got him in the head. The third hit the vehicle’s fuel line and killed the driver when the vehicle exploded. Quite an efficient bit of shooting from about four hundred meters at a fast-moving car. There’s television footage available. Sort of Zapruder-style. You can see the Mercedes speeding along, first with an impact point and then the whole back window blows apart, as does the late Sr. Inezia’s head a nanosecond later. We can arrange a viewing if you like.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Alex said.

“Then take our word for the rest of it too,” Ramirez said. “We have staff people who get paid to correlate these things. There’s one smart girl who works with a computer in the Miami office; whenever there’s a hit of any notoriety in the world, she throws all the possible links into it. Then we play back all the links, things of substance, rumors, whatever. In both of the above cases, as well as several older ones, we believe this Manuel Perez was the gunman.”

“Only a few people in the world can work a rifle like that,” MacPhail said.

“Now, both Sanchez and Inezia had a lot of enemies,” Ramirez said, taking up the dialogue. “But both of them had locked horns with the Dosi organization and both were involved in preparing indictments against them and their empire.”

Alex listened carefully.

“Perez is someone we track as best we can. We tend to know where he’s been and try to have a projection about where he’ll be. We have several hundred high-profile shooters in our files. Most are Russian or Middle Eastern these days, but the ones associated with the Colombian and Mexican gangs are in our database too.”

“Plus a few of our own, I’m sure,” Alex added.

“We know Perez was in Colombia the week of the Inezia hit. And he was in Mexico for Sanchez.” He paused. “Do you think Senora and Senor Dosi knew that your operation was on the verge of striking against them?” he asked.

“I’m certain they were aware of Parajo,” Alex said. “We speeded things up and made arrests sooner than we’d hoped. Word was getting around, and we were worried that the Dosis were going to travel to Israel to get beyond extradition.”

“True enough,” MacPhail said. “Our source in Panama told us that last week and added that Senora Dosi had interviewed a professional shooter in Belize. Big man, spoke Spanish. Arrived by private plane with his family, left the same way. Our surveillance film got the visit. Physical stature works for Perez, but we didn’t get a face. Anyway, the rumor gets better. Said she paid him a big-time sum of money and that he was on a new assignment. The assignment’s in New York. And the target’s a woman.”

“So,” said Ramirez, “put it all together. The bottom line is, you organized a massive operation against the Dosis, and your work is costing them millions of dollars and, if you’re successful, their freedom.”

She fingered the photo and stared into the black eyes of her would-be killer.

“So is he in New York?” Alex asked.

“We doubt it,” MacPhail said. “Our spotters think he went to Mexico City first. But then there’s the issue of our borders with Mexico. Fact is, he could be anywhere.”

“Do you have a security system at home?” Ramirez asked.

“No. I can take a hint. I’ll get one.”

De Salvo leaned forward. “We’ll have it in place by tomorrow, Alex,” he said. “We’ll take it out of our Rodent Fund. Also, we’ll need to put some interior bullet proof glass in as quickly as possible, unless you’re willing to move very quickly, which is actually what we’d prefer. Temporarily, of course.”

Alex sighed.

“You have a gun?” MacPhail asked.

She reached to her hip and showed off the baby Glock. “Of course, I do,” she said. “Several if you want to know.”

“The FBI doesn’t have enough free personnel to protect you,” MacPhail said, “but we’ve spoken with the U.S. Marshal Service. They can put a few agents on this to act as support for us, at least until we get Perez – or at least neutralize him. Would that work? The marshals have already been assigned and should be in your building by midnight. And until we get Perez, you don’t ride the subway, you don’t walk anywhere, and you don’t run in Central Park. While you’re at it, you don’t leave your window shades up either.”

“He’s a long-range sniper, Alex,” Ramirez said. “Or at least that’s how he usually works. This isn’t something to take too lightly.”

“Why aren’t the marshals in place already?” De Salvo asked. “What’s the delay? “