Hunting LeRoux by Shannon Elaine

Author:Shannon, Elaine [Shannon, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“I Just Don’t Want to Get on the Plane”

AMAZINGLY, THE DIPLOMATIC PROCESS WORKED THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED to. Officials at the U.S. embassy in Monrovia presented the indictment and federal arrest warrant to the Liberian Ministry of Justice. Since LeRoux was not a Liberian citizen, formal extradition proceedings were not required. Instead, he could be expelled as an “undesirable alien” pursuant to the Liberia Aliens and Nationality Law.

Liberian Justice Ministry officials prepared an expulsion order and sent it on to the office of President Johnson Sirleaf. Since she was traveling at that moment, the order was signed by the acting president, Brownie J. Samukai, the minister of national defense, and dated September 21, 2012.

All Cindric and Stouch had to do was get LeRoux to Monrovia, and agents from the Liberian National Security Agency would put him on a DEA plane.

Jack messaged LeRoux that the meeting in Panama was a success. He said he had set up the meet with the Colombian cartel’s man in Africa, a guy by the name of Diego. Diego would be played by a formerly high-ranking Colombian cocaine trafficker until he got arrested in the Midwest. He copped a plea, went to work for DEA, and became a U.S. citizen.

Cindric and Stouch cast Diego because he fit LeRoux’s idealized image of a Colombian cartel leader. Diego was tall and elegant, with salt-and-pepper hair, an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and a commanding aura. He joined Cindric, Stouch, and Jack in Monrovia to wait for LeRoux and play out their climactic scene.

Only, LeRoux wasn’t in the air. Jack sent him an email drafted by Cindric and Stouch that everything was ready for the big Monrovia meet. LeRoux kept making excuses. There was only so hard Jack could push without arousing the Boss’s suspicions.

So they waited. It was monsoon season in Monrovia. The rain wasn’t the kind that cooled things off. They were staying at the RLJ Kendeja Resort and Villas, Monrovia’s finest hotel. It was luxurious, for Monrovia, but since the wars, the beach was dirty and the pool was dirty. Stouch insisted on swimming in it anyway, to train for the next triathlon.

“You idiot, it’s gonna be like that show, Monsters Inside Me,” Cindric said. “God knows what you got growing inside you now.”

Stouch ignored him. He ran as often as he could, jumping animal carcasses and piles of garbage. The rain was a problem. It was unrelenting. It kept them confined to their room much of the day. One day, as sheets of water pounded onto their dingy balcony, Jack popped in to say that LeRoux had just advised him of another delay in his travel schedule. Stouch lurched forward, stared at the window, and melted down.

“I can’t fucking do this again,” he groaned. He had a flashback from four years earlier, when he had collapsed in the backcountry of Togo and gone into shock. He had been interviewing Colombian traffickers imprisoned by Togolese cops extorting bribes. He was so thin and fit that he had no body fat to cushion the effects of dehydration and sickness brought on by tainted food.

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