TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Read online

  TWO SUDDEN!

  An Omnibus Edition

  Containing the Novels:

  1.HURRICANE FATS

  2. THE HADRON ESCAPE

  Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2015

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, transmitted, reverse engineered, decompiled or stored in or introduced into any storage or retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electric or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading or distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Visit the author’s website: www.lawrencedemaria.com

  (Special thanks to Nancy Kreisler, Deborah Thompson and Maryellen Alvarez)

  Published by St. Austin’s Press

  Dedicated to Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book – and others – would not be possible. And to my two sons, Lawrence and Christopher, good men, both.

  HURRICANE FATS

  (A Cole Sudden CIA Thriller)

  A Novel By

  Lawrence De Maria

  Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2012

  Revised 2014.

  CHAPTER 1 – A LIVE ONE

  The four bull sharks circled below the strange-looking raft bobbing in the gentle swells amid smaller pieces of flotsam.

  Bull sharks are found worldwide, most commonly near shores. They prefer the shallows, but they are tough, adaptive animals, especially when hungry, and often travel far up rivers (among their many attributes is the fact that they can thrive in fresh water). Bull sharks have been found in the Mississippi all the way into Illinois.

  They derive their name from their stocky shape and broad, flat snout, as well as their aggressive behavior. Normally solitary hunters, they will only occasionally pair up to corral prey. Thus, this toothsome quartet was highly unusual. Their atypical behavior may have been precipitated by the chaos inflicted on the Gulf of Mexico and its denizens by the huge hurricane that had just passed through.

  Vicious, unpredictable predators, bull sharks are responsible for many of attacks on humans attributed to other sharks, particularly the Great White. Many scientists now believe that bull sharks, and not a Great White, were responsible for the rash of deadly attacks along the New Jersey coast in 1916 that inspired the book and movie, Jaws. While they don’t specifically target humans, bull sharks will go anywhere in search of a meal. Bulls have been known to swim through the streets of flooded coastal cities. They are not picky eaters. Floating bodies are a favored treat.

  The smallest of the group beneath the raft was a seven-footer. Occasionally one of them closed on the raft and slammed into it. They had been at it a long time and would have stayed indefinitely, drawn by the steady seep of blood and other organic fluids that drifted down from the raft.

  It was a human chum line no shark could resist.

  Suddenly a huge shadow came between the circling sharks and the raft above. The massive creature glided down toward them. The bull sharks, with millions of years of accumulated instinct, recognized its malevolent intent.

  The bulls scattered. They had been looking for a meal, not auditioning to become one.

  Whatever was on the raft now belonged to a much bigger shark.

  A hammerhead.

  ***

  Commander Bret Pagano knew he was pushing it. The MH-60T Jayhawk had barely enough fuel to make it back to the crew’s base in Sarasota. Of course, in a pinch he could set down safely anywhere along the devastated Florida coast. But that probably wouldn’t help any survivors they might find who were in bad shape.

  Besides, his crew needed rest. And, he admitted, so did he. They had been running double and triple missions for three days. A replacement team waiting in Sarasota would be sharper – a consideration more important than pride when lives were at stake.

  Not that this crew wanted to rest. The previous day they had rescued a dozen people drifting in the Gulf, including several children. They were still on an adrenaline and emotional high. The Coast Guard lived to save lives. Its men and women breathed the Coast Guard motto they all memorized in training: I serve the people of the United States. I will protect them. I will defend them. I will save them. I am their shield.

  Pagano smiled at the thought of the service’s unofficial motto: You have to go out, but you don't have to come back! It dated to an 1899 United States Lifesaving Service regulation, which states that Coast Guard personnel must persevere “in attempting a rescue” until “the impossibility of effecting a rescue is demonstrated.” That led to many near-suicidal assignments, in all sorts of weather. The old regulation, he knew, didn’t speculate on what might happen to the rescuers.

  Pagano looked down at the Gulf of Mexico, unnaturally calm after the hurricane.

  Still ….

  “Let’s call it a day, Meg.”

  “Roger, Skipper.”

  It had not taken Pagano very long to get used to having a woman as a co-pilot, or to find out that on any given day she could fly rings around him. That was three years ago. Lieutenant Margaret O’Malley would soon have her own bird. He’d miss her competence and good cheer.

  Pagano started to pull on the yoke. A shower, hot chow and some rack time was just what the doctor ordered.

  Then he spotted something on the horizon.

  ***

  The young Airman scanning the Gulf from the chopper door was on his first “combat” assignment. Having survived the Coast Guard’s rigorous para-rescue training school, with its 70 percent washout rate, his trial by fire, or rather, water, had quickly solidified his standing with his older flight mates, both officer and enlisted. They had teased him about his eagerness to jump out of the hovering copter to save someone.

  “Only over water, son,” his Flight Mechanic crew chief had said, only half joking.

  It was the young Airman’s first hurricane – he was from Minnesota – and he never wanted to see another. The stretch of southwest Florida coast they were searching was devastated. Some areas looked like a bomb or tornado had hit. Not all of the victims the crew eventually unloaded to waiting hospitals were alive. But enough were, so he didn’t care how long the pilot kept the chopper in the air. He’d follow his skipper right into the drink if he’d asked.

  The helicopter tilted slightly and begin a gradual turn. The crew chief moved to his side and said, “Skipper is calling it a day. We’re heading back.”

  The Airman gave him a thumbs-up but kept his eyes on the expanse of water below. You never knew.

  ***

  “What’s that down there, Chief?”

  The older man leaned out the door past the Airman to get a better look. The sea was littered with debris, much of it small.

  “Don’t know.”

  He started to key his helmet mike when the chopper tilted and made a sharp turn, quickly lost altitude and headed toward the area that had caught their attention.

  “Skipper saw it,” the Chief said. “Got eyes like an osprey.”

  A minute later they were hovering above the object.

  “Looks like a roof of some sort,” the Airman said. “Is that a man?”

&
nbsp; “Sure is,” the Chief said. Despite 20 years with the Coast Guard, he was still excited every time they found a live one. “Get the hoist and basket ready.”

  “What’s that next to him?”

  The pilot skillfully hovered the copter 25 feet above the target. The Chief peered down.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Kid, that’s not something you see every day.”

  CHAPTER 2 - LONGSTREET

  Nine Months Earlier

  Watching the pod of dolphins cavorting off what he now considered his own private beach – although he did put up with the occasional ambling tourist – Richard Auburn Longstreet could not believe his good fortune.

  After all, it was only a scant year ago that his back was against the wall; his once-thriving business in dissolution. Short of cash and hounded by creditors and investors, with the F.B.I. nipping at his heels, Auburn Longstreet faced financial ruin and family humiliation, his reputation in tatters. Again.

  It had been another stunning comedown for the brash native of backwater Thatch, Alabama, who after flunking out of the university his football-crazed father named him after, followed a girlfriend to Georgia and made a fortune in Atlanta real estate and a string of upscale yoga and health clubs.

  That first success had taken the sting out of his father’s disapproval. The old man had wanted his only son to take over the family insurance business in Thatch, marry a local airhead and produce a passel of grandkids he could regale with his stories of the time he scored against the hated University of Alabama. The fact that the “score” consisted of an extra point (the regular kicker had tripped over a water bucket and hurt his foot) and represented all the points scored in his career didn’t matter to the old man, who basically warmed the bench when he wasn’t screwing cheerleaders. He needed new, unsophisticated, ears for his tiresome tale, which everyone in Thatch, black and white, was thoroughly sick of hearing, especially since Auburn University had lost the damn game by three touchdowns. For his part, Auburn Longstreet – no one ever used his first name – was just happy his father hadn’t played football for Alabama. That would be a tough middle name.

  When the Atlanta money started rolling in, the young Auburn had built a new home for his parents, and his father stopped bugging him about going back to college.

  At first it had seemed so easy. The handsome, affable and strapping six-foot-four Auburn was a born real estate salesman and a walking endorsement for his health club empire, which grew to include 12 facilities in Atlanta, Macon and Savannah. He soon enjoyed a lush lifestyle that included frequent trips to the Caribbean islands he grew to love. But then, seemingly overnight, Longstreet’s empire collapsed – a victim of overexpansion and its founder’s lifelong preference of the good life over a sound bottom line. Ill-timed investments in “can’t miss” internet stocks were the last straw.

  Longstreet was forced to declare both personal and professional bankruptcy, and move back in with his parents in Thatch, where between listening to his father’s extra-point story and dousing himself with bourbon he hatched his next venture.

  During his Caribbean vacations, Auburn had met an Austrian “banker” named Fritz Von Schroeder playing baccarat in an Aruba casino. The two men hit it off, and kept in touch. It was Von Schroeder’s dream to start an offshore bank somewhere in the Caribbean, where regulators were as prevalent as icebergs.

  Now, Longstreet called Fritz to see if he’d ever acted on his dream.

  Actually, Von Schroeder told Longstreet, he had just located a suitable venue and now needed a partner.

  “I was going to call you, Auburn.”

  Longstreet told him he was a little short of cash at the moment. Von Schroeder was unfazed.

  “Bankers don’t need their own money, Auburn,” Fritz told him. “Especially down here. They just need customers with money. And I need someone who can attract customers. That’s you.”

  Longstreet was on the next plane to the island of Antigua, where, Fritz told him, anyone able to fog a mirror could open a bank. Which the two men did. They took no chances, even bribing the officials who held the mirrors.

  With a financial plan sketched out on the back of a napkin in a waterfront bar, Longstreet and Von Schroeder rented a storefront in the capital city of St. Johns and “Stability International Bank” was in business. The new institution’s auditor was an 80-year-old certified public accountant lured out of retirement and a rum-punch haze by an attractive salary and a well-appointed office above the storefront. His financial reports were run off by a print shop operated by one of his nephews.

  Attracting customers proved surprisingly easy, since their so-called bank offered CD rates three percentage points higher than anyone else. It would have been two percentage points, but Longstreet had spilled his mojito and distorted the writing on the napkin. When he and Von Schroeder unfolded the napkin later, they didn’t notice the mistake.

  It didn’t matter that they couldn’t deliver on the promised rates. Whatever so-called interest they paid came from the deposits of new investors. It was a classic Ponzi scheme, facilitated by an almost total lack of regulatory oversight of the $21 trillion offshore banking world. Within a few years Longstreet and Von Schroeder had more than $300 million in deposits, mostly from South Americans trying to hide money, including some drug cartels. They also were the banker for Louisiana’s Boudreau crime family.

  Yes, things were going swimmingly. Longstreet and Von Schroeder quickly left their storefront and built a grandiose financial center near the airport, which was convenient for many of their customers, who tended to keep their visits to the island on the brief side. For the first time in his life, Auburn Longstreet couldn’t spend money faster than he was raking it in: yachts, private jets, homes on four continents, dozens of Senators and Congressmen in the U.S., various Caribbean prime ministers – he owned them all. And there were the women. He juggled three of them at the same time, in the Islands, the U.S. and Europe. Each thought she was his only mistress. Each had a million dollars in jewelry. Then there were the $2,000-an-hour call girls in Vegas, for the threesomes Auburn favored.

  Finally, Von Schroeder said he had enough. He wanted to settle down and raise a family. He asked his partner to buy him out. Longstreet readily agreed and even served as best man at Fritz’s wedding. The blushing bride was a woman that Auburn had introduced to Fritz. Longstreet didn’t tell Von Schroeder that she had once been in one of his Vegas threesomes, serving as the bottom layer in what he liked to call a sex sandwich. The last he heard, Fritz and Mamie had two adorable children and owned their own island in the Seychelles.

  Then, the financial world collapsed and Ponzi schemes like Stability International Bank were exposed for what they were when nervous investors started emptying their accounts, which, of course, were almost empty to begin with. For the second time in his life, Longstreet, who now harbored a suspicion that his pal, Fritz, had seen the debacle coming, faced ruin.

  He wasn’t worried about the thousands of middle-class investors whose retirement savings had gone into funding his lifestyle and who were now destitute. Rather than pay them anything, he gave millions to lawyers to fight any criminal and civil actions. In this he was helped by the fact that mega-crooks like Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, with their multibillion-dollar Ponzis, had given prosecutors all they could handle. His modest $300 million fraud slipped under their radar.

  No, Longstreet was concerned about the drug cartels whose funds he’d laundered and “invested.” He had no desire to be beheaded. He had just enough money, less $40 million he kept for himself, to pay off the crazy drug lords.

  But that left the Boudreau mob in New Orleans, a group of thugs only slightly less deranged than the Colombian drug dealers. It was the Boudreau $40 million he wanted to keep for another rainy day.

  The solution was as elegant as it was simple, and was suggested to him by one of his lawyers who had some relevant experience in Louisiana. A $5 million “donation” to a Big Easy prosecutor with n
ational political ambitions insured that Lorillard Boudreau, the elderly head of the crime family, would be indicted for money laundering and tax evasion. His conviction was facilitated by financial information supplied by Longstreet but made to look like it came from one of Lorillard’s most trusted lieutenants. The Boudreau family was told that their Caribbean money had been confiscated by the U.S. Government.

  Auburn Longstreet, now with full immunity from prosecution, and the Boudreau family’s remaining $35 million to play with, moved to southwest Florida, where he saw another opportunity in the area’s post-crash depressed real estate. It was ironic, he thought, that the “legitimate” bankers of Wall Street and elsewhere, who had almost brought down the world economy with what he knew in his heart was the largest mortgage fraud in history, laid the groundwork for his next rise from the ashes. He believed they all belonged in prison cells next to Madoff and Stanford. And, he admitted honestly, himself.

  “Would you like another mojito, Mr. Longstreet?”

  Longstreet had almost dozed off reminiscing about his latest coup. He looked up from his lounge chair facing the Gulf of Mexico. It was the waiter from his building’s Tiki Hut. Henry something.

  “Yes, thank you, Henry. A little less mint this time, if you please.”

  “It’s Harry, Mr. Longstreet. Henry is the pool boy.”

  “Of course, I’m sorry.” Longstreet made a point of being nice to his staff. “Must be the sun. Maybe even the mojitos.”

  Just one more drink, he thought. Then he’d head up to his penthouse apartment to see how they were doing with the new tile in the master bath. He’d sunk most of his money into the 18-story luxury beachfront building in Bonita Springs, just north of Naples, Florida. The original developers had gone belly up in the crash and the $10 million he’d paid to get the unfinished building was a steal. When completed, the 96 condominium apartments, not including his penthouse, would bring a minimum of $600,000 each after the real estate market rebounded, as it surely would.