Breaking Point Part I

[Robbie C.]

I can hear the groans now....not ANOTHER one... It's the Task Force again, so we'll see how long it ends up being. Got other stuff going on, so this one might be slower to post.

 

“U.S. Marshals! Keep your hands where I can see ‘em!” James “Sonny” Crockett kept his big Smith & Wesson 4506-1 trained on the two men in the car, a stray ray of sunlight glinting off the simple silver star suspended by a chain around his neck.

The two men looked at each other, and Sonny could see them measuring the angles and calculating the odds. But that all changed when the New York drawl of Ricardo Tubbs floated through the heavy Miami afternoon air. “I’d think again, chumps.” He stood on the passenger side of the Maserati, a black Walther P-88 comfortable in his hand. “My partner tends to mean what he says.”

“Smart choice, boys. Now step out of the car real slow and keep those hands up.” As he went through the motions of the arrest, cuffing the driver while Tubbs kept the passenger covered, Sonny almost smiled. These two morons were the last links in a mid-size cocaine ring the Task Force had been tracking for the last month. Earlier that day Stan Switek and Team Elvis had hit the warehouse they used as a staging area, sweeping up ten guys and around twenty kilos of coke being cut into almost twice that for sale. Martin Castillo had taken Trudy Castillo and Mindy O’Laughlin to a small airstrip on the edges of the swap and grabbed two more guys and a twin-engine Beechcraft they’d been using the fly at least some of the dope into the country. And now, with these two, the sweep was complete.

Rico smiled. “You cover this fool and I’ll get him sized for bracelets. Should go good with that Rolex he’s sporting.”

“You’re the fashion expert. I just drive the car.” Sonny chuckled as he pulled his pistol and covered the two while Rico slapped on the cuffs. Then he raised his wrist to his mouth. “Roll the wagon, boys. We got two more to deliver downtown.”

The small earpiece crackled to life. “Copy that. Be there in five.”

It had become a Task Force tradition to celebrate the conclusion of a case at The Sanctuary, a club owned by Robbie Cann, Sonny’s old friend form Vietnam. After loading the two prisoners into the Federal van, Sonny made arrangements for the Maserati to be towed to the impound lot and turned to Rico. “You figure they’re already there?”

“No doubt. And I’d bet Trudy picked up Jenny on the way.” Rico grinned. “So we can just head straight there, partner.”

Sonny nodded, grinning at the mention of Jenny Walker. They were almost done remodeling their new home, a sixty foot sailboat named Tranquility. If he was honest, he’d say she was almost done remodeling the boat. His part consisted mostly of handing her tools and material, and bringing beer up from below when she ran out. Jenny never failed to amaze him when it came to her skills.

When they got there most of the team was already at their table in the back of the club. Robbie was waiting at the door, a smile plastered across his face. “Sonny! Rico! Good to see you two! Head on back. I’ll be there in a minute with another bottle of that Maker’s Mark. This calls for a celebration!”

Sonny grinned back, giving Robbie a quick hug. They’d played college football for the University of Florida and then gone to Vietnam as young Marine MPs. They’d lost touch, and Sonny took all the blame for that. But now they were close again, and Robbie had adopted the Task Force as his own.

Martin Castillo looked up as they made their way through the crowd, one of his rare smiles decorating his face. “I hear we made a clean sweep.”

Rico nodded, settling in next to pretty red-haired Mindy. “We’ll have the full report in the morning, captain. But we got them in their nice new Maserati.”

Sonny looked around, smiling when he saw Jenny deep in conversation with Trudy. The two had hit it off right away. Trudy spotted him first, and nudged Jenny with a finger. The slender blonde’s eyes lit up when she turned. “Sonny! Sit down. I want to tell you all about the boat. We should be able to sleep aboard tonight.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Or something, at least.”

Sitting down, he slipped his arm around her and kissed her softly on the forehead. He could hear Stan Switek and Lester Franz talking, with the deeper voices of the two ex-Marine scout-snipers Dave Blair and Randy Mather mixed in. The four made up Team Elvis, combining Stan and Lester’s tech skills with the combat prowess of the two deputy marshals. A high-pitched laugh told him Stan’s wife Gina was there, too. Sonny smiled. The Task Force was a good team…a tight team. The best he’d ever worked with.

 

In another time and place, he had been a colonel. A leader of soldiers, doing the hard things required by their political masters. And his men had been the best, trained in the special American camps and then honed to a brutal edge in the vicious jungle battles and skirmishes against Leftists and traffickers alike. It was a war with no quarter and often no innocent bystanders. A man did what he must to accomplish the mission.

And they’d been winning. The smoldering holes in the jungle bore mute testimony to their successes. But then it all changed. New men in office said what they’d done in the name of their country was now wrong. That they were wrong. There were even talks about bringing men in the unit to trial. Yet no one said a word about the Leftists who’d set his men on fire, or the drug runners who’d been their close allies through the years. Somehow their crimes were forgiven.

He’d resigned his commission rather than confront honorless peasants hurling accusations. To his surprise many of his men followed suit; a company commander, one of the younger lieutenants, the sergeant major, and about thirty regular troopers, corporals, and sergeants. But what surprised him even more was the job offer that came a week later. Through an intermediary, one of the major traffickers in the region let it be known he’d be interested in hiring the colonel and his men to take out a rival who was starting to cut into his processing operations. “My guys can’t do it,” the stocky man had grunted when they finally met. “I need professionals. And your boys are the most professional I’ve ever seen. Maybe the pussies in the capitol don’t appreciate what you do, but I’ll pay you and your boys well for your time.”

Sitting in his office on the top floor of a high-rise building with commanding views of the city, he looked out over the shining buildings at the distant peaks and smiled. His boys had solved the narco’s problem in a week, and within three they were running his business. Oh, he still sat in his fancy hacienda and did the deals, but the colonel’s men controlled the processing centers and the routes the product took in and out of those centers.

They took control the way they had back in the jungles; brutally and directly. Opponents’ convoys were ambushed and slaughtered, the guards burned alive and the drivers given the choice of changing sides or joining their failed protectors. Resistance was met with overwhelming force. Soon the hired guns got the word and avoided any area protected by the colonel’s men like it was cursed or touched by the plague.

About this time the lieutenant came to him. “We need a name,” he announced, standing before the colonel at parade rest. “Something to strike fear into the hearts of those putas we’re taking out.”

“And I take it you have a suggestion?” He’d been both amused and intrigued. Their old battalion had both a number and a nickname, but they’d left them behind when they resigned. The hollow men in command of the army had immediately banned both from use.

“Most of the men are from 8 Company, sir. Why not Unidad Ocho? It both honors the memory and gives us an air of mystery.”

“Unit Eight.” He turned the words over in his mind. “It also may make some fools think there are other units like ours out there. Misdirection. I approve, lieutenant. Let the boys know.”

Even though it had been two years ago, he remembered the conversation like it happened an hour ago. Because as soon as the lieutenant left he had The Idea. What if they didn’t just provide protection? What if they took over the things they were protecting? It was like before; they did all the hard, dirty work while others raked in the profits. Money or power, it didn’t matter which. It was time the boys in Unit Eight started taking their fair share of the spoils, and not just what some pussy sitting in a hacienda thought they deserved.

Like all things worth doing, it took time. Sitting down with Captain Salazar, Lieutenant Orozco, and Sergeant Major Pascal (he still addressed them using their former ranks, even though none of that mattered now), Colonel Rodrigo Delacruz laid out his vision. “The lieutenant thinks we need a name and has suggested Unidad Ocho. I agree, but with that we need a focus. A mission. I say instead of working for these fat putas who have no honor, we take what they have and make it work for us. Their drugs are all bound for El Notre? Yes? Well, the gringos abandoned us, too. Let their cities rot from the inside, and our men benefit from their dollars.”

Captain Eduardo Salazar came from a long line of military men, so Rodrigo watched his face for any reaction. He had the high cheekbones and thin nose of Spanish blood, not unlike Rodrigo’s, and was the only man he considered his intellectual equal in the unit. They’d both been through the School of the Americas and their own country’s staff college. “But then we are no better than the narcos.”

“No, we use the narco scum. We don’t touch the drugs. They do, but they pay us for the privilege of remaining alive and in business. In return, we protect them and their routes from everyone. Including us. If they don’t pay, we shut them down. Permanently.” He looked at the men. “They may have numbers, but we have firepower and discipline. And our men know no pitty for the narco scum. We also know our enemy, thanks to your outstanding work, Captain Salazar. Your boys tap their phones, listen to their chatter on the radios they love so much, and map their routes. They, on the other hand, do not know us. And will not if we maintain discipline.”

Salazar nodded. “We can replace our losses from others who left the regiment. Train them to our standards.” He smiled. “I have a camp or two set up for that, sir. Like the old days. We will make them or break them.”

Rodrigo nodded, knowing he’d won them over. If Salazar agreed, the rest would follow. “Good. As of today we are Unit 8. Captain, have your boys work up a profile on that swine Hildago. His hacienda will be our first test.”

The buzzing of his desk phone jarred Rodrigo out of the pleasant memory. Punching the button for the secure line he picked up the receiver. “Go.”

“Sir, there’s been a setback.”

“Report.”

“Our element in Miami missed their standard check-in. Intelligence indicates they were taken while they were conducting recon of the local target in some sort of special operation.”

“I see. Let the captain know I want a situation briefing within the hour.” Hanging up the phone, Rodrigo turned and looked out the wide window again. Sometimes he longed for the old days when his men could just swoop down in their Hueys and burn a village that resisted their efforts. Now things were harder. Especially in that part of El Notre. First that rich Bolivian contract had disappeared with no warning and now his men hit their third brick wall in as many months trying to establish a foothold in Miami. Something had to be done.

 

“What do we know about these men?”

Sonny had anticipated Castillo’s question and looked down at his notes. “The two goofs in the Maserati are climbers who used to be part of the Moncado organization and moonlighted with Manolo before that. They hooked up with the two with the plane and decided to start their own direct run from Columbia to Miami. The ones from the warehouse look to be the usual mismatched cast of locals trying to make it in the drug trade.” He looked over at Mindy and Trudy. “Except for two of them.”

Trudy nodded. “The eight that were actually in the warehouse gave it up as soon as the entry team came through the doors. It was nice of the chief deputy to lend us Brick and his guys again.” She smiled, and then her face changed as she looked at her own notes. “The other two weren’t in the building. In fact, we don’t really know what they were doing there. When the team went in, they tried to engage them and Dave and Randy neutralized the threat.”

Randy nodded. “They looked to be set up for surveillance of some kind, captain. But they had long guns and were a direct threat to the entry team. M-16s with scopes. Not in our league, but good out to about three hundred yards and they were well within that.”

“Do we have IDs?”

“No. They had no identification.” Trudy looked at Mindy. “We ran the numbers on the rifles and they tracked back to a shipment that went missing from a Columbian armory five or six years ago. Who knows how many hands they’ve been through since then.”

Mindy nodded. “Prints came back negative in the US. We’ve got a query out to Interpol but I’m not very hopeful. They were both in their late 20s, were in good physical shape, and, get this, had the number eight tattooed on their arms.”

“Some new gang?”

Rico shook his head. “Naw, captain. I put in a call to a friend in the Gang unit at Metro-Dade. They got nothing like that on file. You got things like Eight Ball Kings, but the tats don’t match. This is just a block number eight like they stamp on military stuff. Only thing is one of ‘em had the letter A after the number.”

Castillo pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is there any chance they were standoff security for the warehouse?”

“No.” Sonny shook his head. “We asked the morons doing the cutting, and they said the only security they had was the guy who wet his pants when Brick’s team came through the door. They had no idea about the guys on the roof across the street.”

“Ask the others. I don’t like the idea of new players on the street. Especially if they’re using M-16s.”

Dave spoke up. “And these are the real deal, not AR-15s some redneck slapped a scope on. M-16A1s, and they’ve been looked after. Both were clean and well-lubed. Both guys had Berettas as well. Same deal on them, except they went missing in El Salvador.”

“Run it down.” Castillo closed his file folder with a snap. “Good work on the others. Crockett, Tubbs. See if the refugees from Moncado’s operation know anything about the two on the roof.”

“Yeah. I don’t think the cowboys with the plane would have any clue, but we’ll ask them, too.” Sonny stood up with a grin. “Come on, Rico. Time for a field trip.”

 

Sonny looked through the window into the interrogation room where Tony Orgato sat, his silk shirt wilting like a flower in the heat of the room. “And he hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet?”

The uniformed guard shook his head. “No, lieutenant. He just sits there. Sweating like a damned pig.”

“Good. Turn the A/C back on and I’ll give it five minutes before I go in.” He turned and looked at Rico. “You want to do the same with ol’ Falcone over there?”

His partner nodded. “Two birds with two cops and all that? Solid. I’ll rattle that chump’s cage but good and we can switch if nothing falls out.”

The room still smelled of Polo and sweat when Sonny strolled in, an empty file folder in his hand. “That’s a hell of a rap sheet you got, Tony. Shame that Maserati was only rented. Guess you’ll be losing the deposit.”

“Go to hell, cop. I got nothing to say.”

“Oh, you don’t need to say a damned thing. We got you on tape, pal. Conspiracy to import dangerous drugs. Conspiracy to distribute same.” Sonny stared at the open folder, acting like he was reading off a checklist of charges. “Use of a premises for same. I could go on, but you’re a smart guy. You get the idea. You’re looking at Federal time, pal. Real Federal time.”

“So charge me and get it over with, cop. I got nothing to say.”

Sonny sat down, snapping the folder shut. “Oh we will, compadre. The Assistant U.S. Attorney’s working on it right now. We’ve got your whole crew. Even those guys you had on the roof.” He grinned. “That was pretty damned sneaky. Gotta give you credit for that. Great way to watch your boys and make sure they don’t go off on their own.”

“What roof?” The surprise in Tony’s dark eyes looked genuine. “Dominic an’ I didn’t have no dudes on no roof. What you trying to hang on me now?”

“Come on. We know you had those two guys up there. With the M-16s. Damned good play. But I gotta know. What is it with the 8s on their arms?”

Tony’s eyes got big. “I don’t know nothin’ about no dudes with tattoos. Sounds like some kinda skinhead thing to me. When you’re a player like me you get enemies, even some you don’t know.” He looked down. “And now I think I need to make that call.”

Sonny crashed out of the interrogation room. “You heard the little punk,” he snarled at the guard. “Get him his call. I don’t want this guy getting an easy ticket out.” He turned, noticing Rico standing in the corner of the room. “And don’t say you told me so.”

“I can’t, ‘cause I didn’t. And my guy did the same damned thing. Said he didn’t know squat about two chumps on a roof an’ asked for his lawyer as soon as I mentioned tattoos.” Rico scratched at his stubbly beard. “And he looked like he was about to piss himself.”

“I gotta ask, pal. What is it with you and Stan and those beards? Hell, even Lester’s got one goin’ now.”

“Mindy likes how it tickles.” Rico grinned. “And if you gotta ask…”

“Oh, I don’t, partner.” Sonny laughed. “But now we gotta go tell Marty we came up empty and they both lawyered up.”

 

Martin Castillo sat at his desk in the tenth floor office suite the Task Force called home and looked out the window toward the distant ocean. At least he could see it from this office, unlike the hole he’d inhabited back at OCB. So much had changed in so short a time he sometimes had to take a minute to sort through it all.

They’d had a good few months. Orgato and Falcone were just the most recent in a string of mid-level operations they’d shut down. There were the gun-runners from Fort Lauderdale trying to fill the void created by the demise of Earl Lester Holmes, a series of middling Columbian gangs looking to up their status on the local cocaine trade, and now this bunch that had been taking that next step when the Task Force caught the case. At least six major busts in half as many months. It had helped Chief Deputy Pete Washington convince his superiors he was more valuable in Miami than promoted to some other desk.

But Castillo wasn’t one to let success go to his head, and he made sure the team stayed focused. Especially Crockett, whose attention had to be split between work and Caitlin’s House. So far the non-profit hadn’t been an issue, in no small part thanks to Jenny and her business sense. She did most of the heavy lifting with the rehabilitation center, leaving Sonny free to focus on the job. Not for the last time Castillo thanked whatever had brought the mysterious woman into his detective’s life.

Shaking his head, he felt his lips curving into a smile. He’d been adjusting, too. Both to married life and just being happy. He’d never realized how empty his life had been until Trudy came into it. But her getting shot had also hammered into his brain how much more he had to lose now if things went wrong. So he worked harder, and pushed the team harder. They had to be as close to perfect as they could get now. They had more to lose, individually and collectively, and their opponents were getting tougher.

The drug trade was a business now, not some glamorous hobby, and more and more of the major dealers approached it that way. And they’d gotten more violent, more in love with the blood-splattered display of power to scare rivals away. They weren’t the mafia, saddled with old traditions and ways of doing business. They all wanted to go bigger, faster, meaner than the next guy. And the Task Force had to keep up.

A knock at the door derailed his thoughts. “Yes?”

“Marty, we talked to them both.” Sonny came in, followed by Rico. He could tell from their faces the news wasn’t good. “They lawyered up as soon as we mentioned tattoos.”

Rico nodded. “The chump I was with was bragging about how we didn’t have squat and he didn’t need his lawyer until I said something about a tattoo. Then he asked for the mouthpiece and almost stopped breathing.”

“Same with Orgato, although I got him to admit they had no one on the roof before heard about the tattoos.”

“Did you say what they were?”

“Yeah. We both did.” Rico nodded. “And mine did the Marcel Marceau act as soon as I mentioned the number eight.”

“So did mine.” Sonny looked at Castillo. “But we got nothing on a gang tat like that.”

“Cast the net wider. Try the FBI and DEA. Especially DEA. Tell them the guns came from Latin America.”

“Yeah, and they still owe us.” Rico lowered his voice. “Does the tattoo mean anything to you?”

“No.” And it didn’t. “But it means something to those men. And whatever it is scares them enough that they’ll take Federal time rather than cooperate.” He looked at Sonny. “Do they usually just operate in Miami?”

The light-haired detective shook his head. “No…at least not Orgato. Back when he was with Manolo he did a lot of moving between Columbia and Miami. Might have made some runs into Bolivia and Peru, too. I don’t know for sure. He ducked out as soon as I…I mean Burnett…took over the Manolo operation. I don’t think Falcone’s been out of South Florida much at all.”

“But he did work with Moncado for over a year.” Rico looked up from the man’s file. “Could be he heard something about that when he was with Moncado. That dude was wired in tight with the death squads and God knows what else.”

“Have Trudy and Mindy run it and let me know.” Castillo leaned back in his chair, feeling the slight headache he usually got when he was puzzling over part of a case building just behind his eyes. “It might be nothing. But I want to know why they were in our city.”

He couldn’t explain why not knowing bothered him so much. If anything, his years with CIA taught him that not knowing was normal, and when you convinced yourself you knew it all you’d missed something important. And gangs came and went in Miami with a rapidity baffling to outsiders and even some veteran cops. But this felt different, and Castillo learned years ago in the jungles of Laos not to doubt the part of his being that felt the difference.

 

Sonny had forgotten all about the tattoos by the time he turned the Ferrari into his usual parking spot at the marina. Getting out, he looked down the dock and shook his head. It still felt strange seeing the bigger two-masted schooner tied up where the St. Vitus Dance used to wait each night for his return. But she was now part of the two-ship fleet used by Caitlin’s House, sitting at the dock next to Jenny’s Vellamo. Now they had Tranquility, a 60 foot two-master that was either a Mooring or Morgan depending on who you asked.

Originally she had belonged to Monaele Jankow, the daughter of Nazis who’d fled to Bolivia after the war. Jenny had worked with her for a time when they were both art smugglers, and Monaele blamed her for an arrest in the Bahamas. Now Monaele was dead, killed by Jenny as she threatened to shoot Sonny, and her boat was theirs curtesy of Pete’s forfeiture auction and the resources Jenny and Sonny had at their command - Sonny through Caitlin’s estate and Jenny through a trust fund her rich father set up for her.

When she wasn’t working with Angie, Caitlin’s old personal assistant, to run the financial side of Caitlin’s House, Jenny was hard at work remodeling Tranquility. She’d gutted the forward cabins, and now she was working on the rear cabin, remaking it into a master suite. She’d hired carpenters for the heavy work, two old guys who looked like they’d floated in with some driftwood but could work miracles with teak and mahogany, but she insisted on doing the finish work herself.

He could see her now, sitting on the deck with a bottle of beer taking a break from whatever she’d been working on belowdecks. Her long blonde hair shifted against her shoulders in the light breeze coming off the water, and he could see her firm breasts and body outlined by the thin white t-shirt she favored over almost any other item of clothing. She saw him and waved, pulling a bottle from the bucket of ice by her slender legs. “Sonny! Come and join me!”

“Looks like you’ve been busy, darlin’,” he said as he climbed aboard, accepting the cold bottle with a grateful smile.

“I put the last panels in about an hour ago.” She smiled, reaching out and touching his leg. “She’s done!”

“Already? Damn, you work fast.” He smiled, letting the cool beer run down his throat with a satisfied sigh. “What’s left to do?”

“Nothing, silly. Tranquility is done.”

“I thought you just meant that back section.” He started to get to his feet. “We should go see.”

“In a little while. Right now I just want to sit with you and enjoy the last of the afternoon.”

“Fair enough.” He leaned over and kissed her, tasting the beer on her tongue and feeling her body against his through his jacket.

The sun was just touching the caps of the waves in the west when Jenny set down her empty bottle. “We can go look now. I want to show you what I did.”

Sonny smiled, enjoying the curve of her backside as she started down the ladder. He never got tired of watching her. When she moved it was like watching liquid gold, her every motion smooth and almost calculated. As soon as they were both below she went straight instead of turning like he’d expected. “I want to show you this room first,” she said with a shy smile. “I hope you like it.”

The original layout of Tranquility had two small staterooms forward of the galley and saloon. She’d turned the port one into an office and library, but all he knew about the starboard one was that she called it the memory room. Reaching out, she opened the dark wood door and stepped back.

Sonny stepped in and felt his heart skip a beat. She’d taken all his pictures of Caitlin and his time in Vietnam and put them on the walls. A low sideboard with thick cushions was built into the wall, and a matching table held other items from their pasts. There were pictures of her he’d never seen before, some of her smiling in what looked like a silk prom dress and others of a short-haired tomboy tugging on the lines of a sailboat. Turning, he saw her still wearing the shy smile. “I love it,” he said, taking her in his arms. “It’s perfect.”

“We lock so much away,” she said into his shoulder, her arms wrapped around him like she was afraid of falling. “I wanted that all to be out where we could see it. It’s what made us who we are, and what made us so right for each other.”

“I know. And I love it. Almost as much as I love you.” He kissed her then, feeling the need rush through his body. “Now let’s go look at the aft berth.”

[mjcmmv]

So glad the Task Force stories continue! 

This new enemy is going to be a challenge! I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns out. 

[Robbie C.]

I decided it was time to update the narco scene. Groups like the Zetas are a completely different beast from anything in the 80s.