Ready to Kill

  “How did you sleep?” Harv asked.

  “Not too bad, thanks.”

  “Your MARPATs are on the dining room table. I’ve been thinking about something.”

  “What’s that?” Nathan asked.

  “When you got out of the shower, you could’ve gone commando in your cargo shorts.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  Nathan lowered his voice. “I think Estefan’s more torn up about his father than he’s leading on. I figured I’d lighten the mood.”

  “That was quite selfless of you, but it doesn’t surprise me. You’ve always been a giving person.”

  “You too, Harv. Let’s go sort through those letters.”

  “We still need to retrieve the aerials and topo maps and look into the public records on Macanas. Like Estefan said, if we find Macanas, we’ll find Raven.”

  “Estefan’s already got them.” Harv handed him a cup of coffee.

  “I didn’t hear him leave.”

  “We pushed his truck out of the garage. We didn’t want to wake you. He parked it on the curb when he got back.”

  “What about an address for Macanas from the public property records?”

  “Estefan told me how it works. It’s not that easy to get down here. Well, it kind of is, but there’s no centralized database in Managua. Each city has its own cadastral office with survey records of the land. Nicaragua’s a small country. He said if he went into the Jinotega office and pointed to Macanas’s property on a big map, it’s a safe bet the staff will already know the book and page numbers. He said he works with the various cadastral offices to determine ownership on land bordering the forest preserves all the time. He uses the information to contact the owners about pending road improvements through their property.”

  Estefan entered the kitchen. “What’re you guys talking about?”

  Nathan said, “Getting a home address on Macanas.”

  “Yeah, that might not be easy,” Estefan said. “He’s likely hidden his personal information by using shell companies as the owners of record. And those companies might be owned by second-tier shell companies. He’s probably got attorneys on retainer who handle all the real estate paperwork for him. If that’s the case, all inquests about ownership would have to funnel through his attorney’s office. Macanas would then know someone was snooping into his property, and he’d want to know who and why.”

  “We definitely don’t want that. Do you think it’s worth a try? I mean, looking at the survey records?” Harv asked. “Do you have to sign a logbook or anything to look at the books?”

  “No, but the cadastral office staff is often bored to tears. They’d be looking over my shoulder the whole time. I’ve been in the Jinotega office many times. We could hire an attorney to dig into Macanas’s land-ownership holdings, but it would take time and be really expensive.”

  “Wouldn’t that also raise red flags with Macanas?” Harv asked.

  “It definitely would. He’d find out about it for sure. I’m fairly certain we won’t find a residential address for Macanas in any of the cadastral surveys.”

  “Tell Nate what you told me about that large property purchase two years ago.”

  “A large chunk of land bordering Macanas’s property was jointly purchased by two corporations. Jinotega Norte Corporation and EMI. I remembered doing a Google search. Nothing came up for Jinotega Norte, but there were a bunch of listings for EMI, and one of them jumped out at me. Edmonton Mining Industries is a medium-sized Canadian company that primarily extracts copper, silver, gold, and uranium. It operates several sites around the world.”

  “Uranium? Is that being mined in Nicaragua?”

  “No,” Estefan said.

  “Could a uranium mine be in the works?”

  “Absolutely not. I’d know about it for sure.”

  “Is there uranium in Nicaragua?” Harv asked.

  “Technically, yes. It’s found all over the world, but concentrated uranium ores are rare. Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada are some of the bigger producers. Super-high-grade deposits are only found in Saskatchewan.”

  “What about copper and silver?”

  “It’s quite common for gold mines to also contain copper and silver in the ores. Some of the mines in Atlántico Norte are producing silver, but extracting copper isn’t as cost effective.”

  “Estefan, don’t take this wrong, but why didn’t you look into Jinotega Norte? Didn’t the connection to EMI make you curious?”

  “I was curious, but two years ago before any of the murders, it didn’t look out of place. It was before I suspected Raven was working for Macanas. EMI hadn’t approached any landowners about leasing, and neither company applied for any mining permits. It looked like an investment or land-banking purchase.”

  “I see what you mean. The purchase seems suspect now, but back then . . .”

  “That’s right. Unless specifically requested, my office . . . well, me . . . I don’t generally get involved in private-party sales or leases. My jurisdiction is over government-owned land, mostly forest preserves. It’s like the Bureau of Land Management in the US. If a logging company buys some private property bordering BLM land, the BLM would get involved to make sure streams and rivers were protected from silt damage. Rivers cross from private to public land and vice versa. It works the same way down here, but many mining sites are bootlegged, so there’s no environmental oversight.”

  “Are any of Macanas’s mines permitted?” Harv asked.

  “Yes, but not very many. He permits just enough to keep the heat off.”

  “What would you bet that Jinotega Norte is a Macanas-owned shell company?”

  “I’d bet a lot,” Estefan said. “If Macanas owns Jinotega Norte, the question becomes, why did he buy the land jointly with EMI?”

  “That’s a good question. Do you know how much land was purchased? Maybe it was beyond his reach alone.”

  “I don’t remember exactly, but it was a pretty sizable chunk. I remembered it because it was within my overlay area of potential high-yield sites in Jinotega.”

  Nathan broke into the conversation. “Maybe the question should be reversed. Why would EMI need Macanas to make the purchase?”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. A company like EMI would pursue a long-term lease rather than make a purchase.”

  “Do other mining corporations buy land like that?” Harv asked.

  “It’s not unheard of, but most of the landowners don’t want to sell. They’re way better off leasing than selling. They get a bunch of money and get to keep their land.”

  “Is EMI currently operating any mines in Nicaragua?”

  “No,” Estefan said, “but we’re being looked at by dozens of commercial operators, including EMI. It’s the primary reason Torres is hosting the gold summit. Nicaragua is a hot prospect right now.”

  “It seems we’ve got more homework to do.”

  They followed Estefan into his office. Inside the closet, concealed by a long raincoat, Nathan saw a gun safe. It looked capable of storing ten or twelve long guns with enough room for an upper shelf. It employed a combination dial and a brass handle on its door.

  “Why do you keep the letters in your safe?” Harv asked.

  “It’s fire resistant.” He shrugged. “I guess they’re important to me, even though I didn’t bother to read most of them.” Estefan opened the safe and removed two shoe boxes from the shelf. Behind the shoe boxes sat half a dozen boxes of various ammo and several handgun cases.

  Nathan pointed. “It looks like you kept your Remington 700.”

  “I offered to buy it when our kilo unit broke up, but no one could tell me who to pay, so my lieutenant told me to keep it. All of us kept our rifles. I haven’t used it in years.”

  “You still keep a three-hundred-yard zer
o?” Harv asked.

  “Just like you taught me.”

  “Let’s talk about how we’re going to tackle these letters. Did your father date them?” Nathan asked.

  “I think so, but I’m not positive.”

  They carried the shoe boxes out to the dining room table.

  “We’ll start by making sure all the letters are opened. Then we’ll put them in chronological order as best we can. Let’s reserve reading them until we have them organized.”

  “I’ll get us a couple of kitchen knives.” Estefan returned a moment later.

  Nathan grabbed a stack that was secured by a rubber band. “Once we have them in order, we’ll dig in. Each of us should have a pad of paper for making notes. Estefan, do you care if we color code the letters with a highlighter? I’m thinking we should put colored dots on the letters based on their relevancy to Macanas’s operations. A green dot for important, a yellow dot for maybe, and a red dot for not relevant.”

  “Sounds good,” Estefan said. “I’ll get the highlighters from my office. I’ll also grab a stapler for any letters with more than one sheet.”

  After Estefan left the room, Nathan shook his head. “He wasn’t kidding about these letters.”

  “Looks like there’s several hundred, and some of the envelopes look kinda thick. This might take a while.”

  “Hopefully, we can knock it out in a couple of hours. Not all of them will have what I’d consider tactical info. Most of them will probably have a mix of personal and tactical; we’ll just have to sort through them.”

  “I’ll start opening the sealed envelopes.”

  It took about fifteen minutes to get the letters in chronological order. They ended up with three stacks, each stack spanning a one-year period. Everyone grabbed a pile and began reading.

  “Let’s look for common elements,” said Nathan. “If you see a name or place, like Macanas or general store, write it down on your pad. Every time you see the same name or place again, put a check mark next to it with the letter’s date in parenthesis. With a little luck, we’ll find people and places that are mentioned with some frequency. There’s got to be someone in these letters we can talk to. It’s reasonable to assume your father had the confidence of someone who fed him information on Macanas. Either that, or he overheard stuff. People love to talk.”

  “I remember reading some pretty detailed letters. I can’t remember any specifics, but there were definitely names mentioned.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Nathan said. “After we’ve got them color coded, we’ll use our notepads to make lists of names and places. Each of us can take a stack.”

  An hour later, a pattern emerged. Most of the letters expressed Tobias’s concern for the safety of the mill workers and miners. Several key people and places were mentioned over and over. The two people mentioned most often were the general store’s owner, Mrs. Perez, and the work bus driver, a man named Mateo. The three most referenced locations were the church, the general store, and the lumber mill. The open-pit mines north of town were chronicled with some frequency as well. About a third of the letters made some kind of reference to Macanas’s bootleg operations and the periodic helicopter visits. Everyone in Santavilla seemed to know that gold was being flown out of there on a regular basis.

  Mateo appeared to be a semiprominent figure in town. Although Tobias hadn’t actually said so, it was clear he thought Mateo knew a fair amount about Macanas’s gold-mining operation. If Mateo would be willing to talk to Estefan, they might get somewhere.

  “Did you guys see a telephone number for Mateo anywhere?”

  Neither of them had, but Estefan had seen Mrs. Perez’s home number written on the back of one of the letters. He’d written it down in his notes.

  “Apparently, Mrs. Perez and Pastor Tobias were close friends,” Estefan said.

  Nathan thought he heard a little resentment. He wanted to question how close but decided discretion was the right play. Besides, it didn’t matter. “Let’s give her a call,” Nathan said. “She’s probably got Mateo’s number. Think she’ll talk to you, Estefan?”

  “Based on everything I read, I’m pretty sure she will.”

  Estefan put his phone on speaker and made the call. Mrs. Perez answered, and a minute later they had a phone number to Mateo’s house. During the call, Mrs. Perez’s biggest concern was over secrecy. Estefan assured her they were both in the same boat and that their conversation would never be repeated to anyone. Mrs. Perez also told them Mateo should be home, but it would be better to call him earlier than later. It seemed Mateo suffered from severe alcohol impairment after 7:00 PM. When Estefan called Mateo’s house, a young woman answered. A few seconds later Mateo was on the line. They heard him issue a muffled command, presumably to the same young woman to go outside and give him some privacy. It took some convincing, but Mateo agreed to meet Estefan late tonight, especially after Estefan referenced some monetary compensation. No surprise there.

  Nathan had no doubt the young woman who answered the phone was Antonia, Mateo’s daughter. She was frequently mentioned in Tobias’s letters. Tobias hadn’t said anything too specific about her, except that she seemed to be somewhat reserved. One of the letters from last year mentioned Mateo’s concern about some creepy looks Antonia had received from one of Macanas’s white shirts.

  One thing became clear from Tobias’s letters: Estefan was right about Macanas controlling the town. It had little to no police presence, and even when an NNP officer cruised through town, no one spoke to him. It seemed like Macanas and his men maintained an iron-fisted reign over Santavilla.

  It surprised Nathan to read that for the most part, the residents of Santavilla seemed somewhat content. Tobias often wrote about their indifference or lack of ambition. It seemed they’d given up and resigned themselves to a life of poverty. Antonia, however, was one of the few exceptions. She’d argued with her father extensively about wanting to leave Santavilla. But where could she go? Without money, her options were limited. Many of Tobias’s letters mentioned her resentment about the situation. She seemed unwilling to accept the idea of living the rest of her life in a crappy little town full of losers and drunks. Quite honestly, Nathan didn’t blame her. Life in Santavilla lacked any kind of excitement or change. It had to be tough, feeling like things were hopeless with no way out.

  It seemed many families were being torn apart by substance abuse, and it wasn’t always the men who were the problem. Some of the women in Santavilla could drink and smoke their men under the tables. Since Mrs. Perez and her husband owned the general store, most of the letters containing her name also referenced their store. Many of them mentioned how devoted Mrs. Perez was to Pastor Tobias’s church. She was one of its biggest donors.

  After they had a fairly clear picture of the key players and locations, they turned their attention to the aerial photos. Over the last five years, Estefan said he’d been to Santavilla fewer than ten times but had a pretty good idea where the major buildings were. He’d always stayed in the local motel rather than his father’s hut. Nathan didn’t think it was a statement of Estefan’s social status; he simply preferred having running water and a functioning toilet.

  Estefan grabbed the cardboard tube containing the aerials, pulled them free, and laid them on the dining room table. There were three, each map was about one meter square. All of them were centered on the small church. The 1:500-scale sheet offered the best detail, but it didn’t include the lumber mill to the north or the wooden bridge to the south.

  “Estefan, I’m a little rusty on this stuff. What distance does one inch cover on this 1:500 aerial?”

  Estefan closed his eyes, concentrating. “Let’s see . . .”

  “Your phone should have a calculator,” Harv told Nate. “We need to be as precise as possible. Since these maps use the metric system, we’ll make some conversions. A meter isn’t much longer than a yard.” r />
  Nathan pulled it from his pocket. “Give me the numbers, Estefan.”

  “Okay, like Harv said, one meter is 39.3 inches. So divide five hundred by that number.”

  “Got it. It’s 12.72. So every inch equals 12.72 meters. One meter is 1.1 yards, so each inch equals . . . 13.9 yards.” Nathan crunched a few more numbers. “Okay, so on the 1:500 scale aerial, one inch equals forty-two feet. The 1:2000 aerial is going to be four times that. Each inch becomes 168 feet or so, or just over . . . fifty-six yards. Let’s be conservative and say it will take seven seconds to run one inch on this aerial. That means it will take one minute to sprint from the church due east to the river. The lumber mill is just over a one-minute dash. Let’s calculate and memorize some additional numbers using the church as the anchor point.”

  They spent a few minutes marking the aerial with an orange highlighter and wrote the sprint times in black marker next to the colored lines. They allowed for changes in direction and unforeseen obstacles like fences and walls by padding the numbers slightly.

  “As you can see, the topographic lines are only on the 1:10000 aerial. These are Macanas’s open-pit mines.” Estefan pointed to the top edge of the map. “As the crow flies, they’re about one mile from the church and about half a mile from the lumber mill. I should be able to identify some of the prominent buildings in town.” He moved his finger along the main road bisecting the town on the 1:2000 aerial. “Pretty much everything’s along this road.”

  “That’s definitely the church,” Nathan said. “You can see the shadow of its steeple on the roof below. Let’s study the basic layout of the town, so when we get there we can minimize our radio chatter.”

  Nathan was a quick study. Based on Estefan’s input, he had a pretty good idea of the town’s layout within a few minutes. The valley containing Santavilla was mostly flat. Although much larger in scale, the basin below the surrounding mountains was roughly the same shape as a football stadium field—a giant oval. The river followed the east side of the valley along the base of a sickle-shaped mountain. Everything had a gentle slope toward the river. Santavilla basically sat atop a thick alluvial buildup—higher on the west, lower on the east. Small farms and ranches surrounded the buildings near the center of town. Houses were interspersed across the valley like randomly thrown pebbles. It looked like a thousand other small towns nestled in mountainous valleys. The topo map indicated the town’s elevation was two thousand feet. The open-pit mines were about five hundred feet higher, and the wooden bridge to the south was two hundred feet lower. As Estefan had indicated, the town was bisected by a thirty-foot-wide dirt road running north and south. Beyond the town to the north, the valley pinched down to a narrow gorge where the road wove its way up the canyon to the open-pit mines.