Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“I’m afraid I don’t understand that, either,” Holly said.

“Neither does the NSA. Their earlier scans were handled routinely by lower-level personnel. All they did was to listen in; they didn’t do any analysis. Now they’re going to take another look at the transmissions and see if there is any change in what’s coming out of there. They’ll also do an analysis of the information.”

“I still don’t understand it,” Holly said, “but maybe that’ll help somehow.”

“Sounds like your old man’s idea of the antiaircraft emplacements wasn’t all that far-fetched,” Harry said. “Though, for the life of me, I just can’t believe that anyone on the Florida coast would start shooting at airplanes.”

“Who would do something like that?”

“It doesn’t make any sense as a security precaution. It might make more sense if they intended to use that kind of weaponry to buy some time.”

“Time for what?” Jackson asked.

“Time to evacuate. From what Cracker had to say in his interview with Holly, it sounds like they have a plan to hold the place just long enough for some aircraft to get out of there. I mean, they can’t get into a shooting war with the outside and expect to win, can they?”

“They could sure hold off my department for a while, though,” Holly said.

“I think that’s what they’re counting on. In a pinch, they can get out of there before reinforcements arrive. Your dad’s right; they couldn’t hold out against a military assault, but cops with small arms couldn’t take the place.”

“Have you found out anything else so far?” Jackson asked.

“We’ve had a report from Miami Center on the aircraft in and out of there. They’ve had airplanes with registrations from Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Canada, Japan and, mostly, from the United States. We ran down the U.S. tail numbers and nearly eighty percent of them were owned by a charter service out of Miami, which is owned by a Delaware corporation, which is owned by a Luxembourg company. Wheels within wheels.”

“Spooky,” Holly said.

“We checked out Diego Ramirez, the general manager of the place, too. He’s Panamanian, a former colonel in Manuel Noriega’s palace guard. He got out before the invasion and has been living quietly in Miami. No criminal record in this country, and his immigration status is okay.”

Holly spoke up. “I checked out the property ownership this afternoon, but the results were disappointing.”

“Dummy ownership, I’ll bet,” Harry said.

“Not even that. Every house is owned by the Palmetto Gardens Corporation. But, of course, that’s a Cayman Island corporation. Here’s a list of the directors.” She handed him a sheet of paper. “The only one I recognize is Ramirez. You might check out the others.”

“Good work, Holly.”

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Harry said, “about what sort of people could own and operate this place. It seems to be operated without regard for profit, which is strange, and if the members are taking up the slack, then it has got to be the most expensive club in the world to belong to. Rich people, even billionaires, didn’t get that way by flushing money down the kind of toilet that Palmetto Gardens seems to be, so that leaves just two other candidates for ownership that I can think of—governments or drug cartels. The presence of Diego Ramirez there, given the recent history of Panama, makes me lean in favor of the drug cartels, or maybe a combination of governments and the cartels.”

“That makes sense,” Jackson said. “Even if you got Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and the Sultan of Brunei together, with all their money they would expect a return on investment, or, at the very least, some kind of value for money. With only a couple of hundred houses there, the expense per house has got to be staggering.”

Harry continued. “We’re going to bug Barney Noble’s Range Rover tonight, come hell or high water,” he said. “It’s

at Westover Motors, still outside in the rear parking lot; apparently, it gets serviced first thing in the morning. Arnie is out on Jungle Trail, scanning their VHF radio frequencies, all their handheld radios, and he’ll record what he can get there. Once the frequencies are identified, which should be easy, we can jam them, if we have to go in there.”

“Don’t you need a court order to bug Barney’s car?” Holly asked.

Harry shook his head. “Between you and me, Holly, this is just to get information; we’ll never use it in court, so the hell with a warrant. It’s quick and dirty, but it’ll work. Oh, one more thing—I’m trying to get a female agent into Palmetto Gardens as a domestic worker. There’s an ad in the local paper and a hiring office on the mainland. We’re flying up a woman who’ll try to get an interview tomorrow morning.”

“That’s a great idea,” Holly said. “We really need somebody inside.”

“Well, there’s always Cracker,” Harry said. “I think you scared him shitless this morning, and I don’t think he’ll spill to Barney, do you?”

“I sure hope not. I’ve got him by the short and curlies. I didn’t lie to him about that. I know who his parole officer is.”

Bill spoke up. “I learned something this afternoon,” he said. “I don’t know how important it is.”

“Tell us,” Harry said.

“I tracked down the people who were in charge of most of the infrastructure work at Palmetto Gardens, a construction company called Jones and Jones, in Vero Beach.”