-JP4 "This one sets the bar!"

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CHAPTER 1
Barranquilla, Colombia

The man in the chair screamed in pain.
It came out as a muffled cry around the gag stuffed in his mouth. He bucked against his bonds that held his arms and legs to a metal chair as his interrogator struck him in the face again. The interrogator leaned in and studied his victim’s eyes from behind a balaclava. Not satisfied with the man’s answers, John Phoenix punched the banker in the face again.
Phoenix then ripped the gag from the man’s bloody mouth and said, “Who ordered you to make the payments?”
“Please, I don’t know,” the man sobbed.
“You do know, Matias. You signed the transfer paperwork. You authorized twenty transactions to an account in the name of Wheatley Commodities. It’s a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands.”
Matias Arias Ramirez shook his head as Phoenix removed some papers from a manila folder and held them up for the banker to see.
“You signed the forms,” Phoenix said. He pointed to the signature at the bottom. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
Ramirez stared uncomprehendingly at the transfer orders. “How … How did you get those?”
“Your bank’s system isn’t as secure as you thought,” Phoenix replied. The burned spy never considered himself a vengeful man, but now that his life was at stake, he felt any ruthlessness on his part was justifiable. He smacked Ramirez across the face for good measure. Phoenix was the one asking the questions, not the banker. Blood and spittle flew from the banker’s mouth.
“Who told you to send the money?” Phoenix barked.
“Please,” Ramirez begged. “I have a family.”
“A wife and five kids, I know,” Phoenix said. “You’ve been a busy man.”
“You have to let me go. They’ll kill me.”
“Give me a name,” Phoenix said, enunciating every word as if it were its own sentence.
“I can’t,” Ramirez whined. “They’ll kill me.”
“Why do you guys always say that like the guy holding you hostage isn’t going to kill you?” Phoenix asked. “Look around you, Matias. No one gives a shit about you. You’re just a paper pusher who signed these forms. All I want is the name of the guy who asked you to do that. You tell me, and then you can go home to Ada and make another baby.”
Ramirez’s features relaxed as he glanced around the empty shipping container that acted as Phoenix’s torture chamber. With the doors to the hot steel box closed, both men sweated profusely. He had threaded an extension cord through a wall vent to power an LED work light on a tripod stand.
“I thought we could do this the easy way,” Phoenix said, “but if you don’t answer my question, we’ll have to take this interrogation to the next level.”
“Next level?” Ramirez echoed.
“Have you ever seen what a cattle prod will do to a man’s balls?” Phoenix laughed. “Then again, your wife might thank me for sterilizing you. She’s probably tired of being pregnant. You gotta wear some protection, bro.”
“I like to pull out,” Ramirez boasted.
“You know what they call guys who pull out?” Phoenix asked with a chuckle.
Ramirez shook his head.
“Daddy—cause you can’t get out fast enough.”
Ramirez shook his head.
Phoenix squatted and rummaged in a bright pink bag. He pulled out a cattle prod, held it to the side of the shipping container, and triggered it. Electricity crackled and jumped from the prongs to the metal container.
“I can tell you firsthand that this hurts like a bitch,” Phoenix said. “After you get zapped four or five times, your skin starts to burn where the electrodes touch, and you feel like your nerves are on fire.”
Ramirez whimpered.
“Come on, Matias,” Phoenix urged. “Tell me.”
The banker shook his head. Phoenix didn’t know if it was in disbelief or because he was saying no.
It really didn’t matter. Phoenix shoved the gag into the banker’s mouth and then pressed the cattle prod to the naked man’s inner right thigh near his shriveled ball sack. Matias wiggled and screamed without Phoenix triggering the prod.
“Have some self-respect, Mathias,” Phoenix chided.
He triggered the prod and shot electricity through the bound man. Phoenix kept triggering the electricity on and off as it burned the skin, turning it black. The smell of burning flesh filled the container. Phoenix wished it hadn’t come to this. He moved the prod to the left thigh and zapped him again. Ramirez shit himself.
“Fuck me,” Phoenix moaned, trying not to inhale the violent bouquet of stench.
He smacked Mathias across the face a few times to draw the banker out of his stupor. “Who told you to send the money?”
“Andre Tejada,” Ramirez moaned.
“Good,” Phoenix said with a smile. Everyone broke under torture. “Where can I find him?”
“He has an export business in Cartagena,” Ramirez replied.
“What’s the name of the business?” Phoenix pressed, holding the prod to Ramirez’s balls.
“Diaz and Sons Coffee Exports,” Ramirez said.
“Thank you, Matias,” Phoenix said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Phoenix had a name and a place. He was working his way up the money chain toward his target, an intelligence purveyor and criminal mastermind known as Terry Martin. CIA had code-named him Dragonfly. Martin held sway over people Phoenix cared about, and Phoenix had vowed to hunt him down and put him in a grave.
Reaching into the pink bag, Phoenix exchanged the cattle prod for a suppressed INDUMIL Córdova 9mm. He pulled the gun out and shot Ramirez in the forehead. He dropped the Córdova into the bag, pulled off his balaclava, and wiped the sweat from his brow.
After picking up his spent brass, Phoenix pocketed it. He shouldered his pink bag and walked out of the shipping container, padlocking the door behind him. Phoenix pulled the extension cord out of the vent and wound it carefully before looping it over his shoulder and donning a hard hat. He walked out of the parking lot that bordered a food processing plant and headed for his vehicle stashed farther down the street.
Phoenix climbed into the Audi Q5 and adjusted the air conditioning vents so they would blow right on his face. He leaned back in the black leather seat and let out a sigh. Ramirez had pointed him up the food chain. If he kept taking out the little fish, he might finally catch a big one. He hoped Tejada was a bigger fish.
He started the car and headed for Cartagena.
During the two-hour drive, Phoenix thought about how he would play Tejada. He would need to study the man’s business and personal habits. Phoenix had found Matias Ramirez with the help of a hacker duo named Barry and Carmen. Phoenix interacted with them through a video game called Second Life and had paid them to find financial information that would link Dragonfly to a private detective named Eddie Episcopo. Using the dates Phoenix had provided, the hackers had located Ramirez, and now, Phoenix had the man who had authorized the payments.
Phoenix smiled, thinking how Dragonfly was paying for his own demise. Six months ago, Terry Martin had paid Phoenix one million dollars to assassinate Hector Calderón, the head of the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional, Venezuela’s premier intelligence agency known by its ominous acronym—SEBIN. Calderón had plenty of blood on his hands, so Phoenix had no problem putting the guy out of his misery. He’d even managed to pin the blame on another SEBIN agent named Marcus de los Rios. Phoenix had lured de los Rios to his sniper hide and then shot de los Rios while the SEBIN agent cradled Phoenix’s sniper rifle. Phoenix had then pressed the agent’s thumb to each of the ten spent cartridges he’d fired while killing Calderón and eight of his bodyguards.
Using the money Dragonfly had paid him, Phoenix hired the hackers and began to chase the money trail—what CIA called swimming the chain. He knew it would eventually lead him to Dragonfly’s lair, where he would put an end to the man’s life. Dragonfly threatened national security, conducted business with criminals, and moved money, drugs, guns, and whatever else would turn a profit while also selling the names of CIA case officers and assets to the highest bidder. Rumor had it that he’d sold out Russian SVR and Israeli Mossad agents, too.
But the thing that goaded Phoenix the most about Terry Martin was that he had used two women against him. The first was Coralina Blanco, a former Venezuelan Special Forces soldier turned SEBIN agent, and the other was his ex-girlfriend and current CIA officer, Leslie Connelly.
Blanco had acted as a double agent to feed him misleading information. She had also tried to kill Phoenix on several occasions. Martin still held sway over Blanco by issuing sinister threats against the SEBIN agent’s mother.
And Martin had gotten Phoenix to assassinate Calderón by threatening to kill Connelly. While Phoenix was no longer intimate with either woman, he still cared deeply about them.
Killing Dragonfly would end the threats to the women’s lives and plug serious security leaks for many nations, especially the United States.
Phoenix had vowed to stop the maniac at all costs, and finding Andre Tejada was the next step up the ladder.