A few hours later as the men were ready to pack it in for the night, Deanna walked into the room. As the wife of Pax, she’d been helping with all of the legal issues revolving taxes with the businesses. Her brilliant mind was saving them millions every year and able to point out tax deductions they hadn’t seen before.
“Hi, Deanna. What’s up?” asked AJ pushing in the chair.
“You guys asked me to take a look at the finances for that Marine, Bora.”
“That’s right,” said Tanner. “Did you find something?”
“More than something. For the last fourteen years he’s been funneling millions into offshore accounts.”
“Millions?” they all repeated.
“Millions. By my account, he now has somewhere in the neighborhood of Four-hundred and ninety-nine- million between five accounts. It was difficult to find at first but then I started using anagrams of his name. There are two accounts under the name Roba, instead of Bora. One under the name Orba, one under Bora, and one under Abro.
“Once I had the accounts, I started digging into the accounts affiliated with his duty stations and those that he was in charge of. There’s nothing missing. He wasn’t taking money from the Marines or from any branch of the government that I could see. I don’t see any checks, I don’t see any common account numbers.”
“Wait. You’re telling me that this money comes from different accounts every single time?” asked AJ.
“That’s what it looks like. I know that it’s common for the cartels to funnel money offshore but I’ve never seen a cartel do something so sophisticated, and this is sophisticated. You would really need to understand tax laws, banking transfers, all of it to do this seamlessly for so long.
“The other thing is no money is ever taken out. It’s deposited but never withdrawn. Why? Most people putting away that kind of money have a plan. So what is he doing with it?” she asked.
“I think he’s getting ready to rule a country,” said Hiro. “He could use those funds for his own military, for weapons, anything and everything. Do we know if the Bolivian government is flush with cash?”
“I wouldn’t say flush but their national debt is reasonable for their country. I can’t see a reason he would need to add his own funds to this unless something terrible were to happen.”
“Like?” asked Tanner.
“Like,” she said stretching the word out. “Like a terrible natural disaster. Flood, fire, earthquake, or something similar. It could be a pandemic.”
“Or,” said AJ, “it could be war.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Coming up on the Ángeles camp made all the men stop in their tracks. Although their team was around one-hundred men, there must have been five-hundred in the camp below.
“Fuck me,” growled Ham.
“They’re tired,” said Gator. “Look at them. They look hungry, frustrated and tired. I’m going to guess they’re being held here until a signal is given.”
Cowboy raised his binoculars, searching the faces as Brooks did the same. Neither man saw the face they were looking for. It was hard to scan all the faces but Bora would have placed himself in a position of prominence.
“He’s not here,” said Brooks with frustration.
“No, he’s not,” said Cowboy. He turned to Ham and the others. “What do you want to do?”
“Team decision,” said Gator. “We can take them out in one swoop or we walk away and let them live.”
“Fuck that,” said Rush. “We’ve been traipsing through this fucking jungle for days now. Those bastards are everything we are against. Just because they don’t have what we want right this minute, you and I both know if we let them go they’ll be selling drugs, women, and kids tomorrow.”
“Does everyone feel the same?” asked Ham staring at all the faces. Every man nodded, one small jerk of their head.
“Alright. We drop explosives via the drones. No one on our team gets injured, no one is in the line of fire. We might have a few that attempt to scatter but they won’t get far. Form a perimeter around the camp, hide, and wait for the boom-boom.”
The perimeter was vast. The space the Ángeles was occupying was the equivalent of two football fields. Every man on the Shadow Warriors team knew that there were at least three-hundred more, somewhere in South America, that would want revenge.
But for today, in this moment, they would handle those in front of them. Fifteen men stood with drones ready to deploy carrying enough explosives to create a crater the size of Detroit in the jungle. It would be visible from the air and people would ask questions.
Or, they might not.
