The Cocaine Princess Part 5 (Cocaine Princess Series #5)(12)

“I’m sure you’re wondering how she got acquitted of all those charges,” Alexus correctly surmised. “Apparently, the feds were unable to establish a connection between Aunt Jenny and any of the Al-Qaeda members who hijacked that plane in Miami; her Texas home was in her boyfriend’s name, so she can’t be prosecuted for the drugs; and the eyewitnesses to the I-94 shooting have either recanted their statements or vanished.”

“Damn,” Blake murmured, gazing out his darkly-tinted window as Alexus’ chauffeur cruised out of the parking lot behind one of the Tahoes. “You think she’s still gonna be tryin’ to kill you?”

Removing her sunglasses, Alexus looked over at Blake, a perturbed expression darkening her countenance. “I hope not.” She took a deep breath. “Aunt Jenny was only trying to take me out to get Granny Costilla’s billions. Killing me now would do her no good. She’ll need me to regain her footing in the business world, so I’m not really worried about her. What bothers me is”—another deep breath—“her ties to those terrorist groups. She’s still upset over her son’s disappearance, and I’m afraid of what she’ll do when she finds out that he was last seen with me and Papi.”

Blake turned back to the window, absently fingering his four-million-dollar red diamond-filled necklace. The 13-passenger limo passed the liquor store next to Redbone’s, the barbershop across the street, the convenient store on the corner of Sixteenth and Drake. Black pedestrians wandering the recently restored neighborhood stopped and cast excited stares at the stretch Rolls-Royce as it crept up Sixteenth.

“I hope things go smoothly between Aunt Jenny and I,” Alexus said, more to herself than anything.

Just as Blake was about to respond, Alexus’ iPhone started ringing. She answered the call, and her mother, Rita Mae Bishop, urgently said, “You need to get home immediately.”

“Why? Is something wrong?” Alexus asked.

“The director of the CIA is standing in your kitchen, snacking on a bag of Doritos and talking to your attorney. I’d say something is definitely wrong.”





Chapter 6

They made it back to the Highland Park estate in record time. Alexus found her mother, her attorney, and a dark-suited white man standing in the foyer, admiring the gold-framed portraits of Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Na’im Akbar, and Michael Eric Dyson that hung on the white marble walls. Several more dark suits stood near the front door.

“Hello, Ms. Costilla,” said the white man, an obese-featured, gray-haired, fifty-something-year-old. He extended his hand to Alexus for a shake. “I’m CIA Director Newt Bowden.”

Alexus nodded. “I met your predecessor. In fact, I was under the impression that he was still in office.” She ignored Bowden’s offered hand until he produced the proper identification. Then, studying his ID, she asked, “What is this about?”

“Can we go somewhere private?” Bowden glanced at Blake and Alexus’ chief of security.

“Anything you need to say to my daughter,” said Rita, a forty-five-year-old Angela Bassett look-alike, “you can say in front of me.”

“I got it, Momma.” Alexus took off her coat, handed it to Blake, then motioned for Bowden to follow her.

She led him through the grand Victorian-style mega mansion, across heated white marble floors, past massive rooms filled with expensive Italian-made furniture and plush white Persian rugs, and finally to the hotel-white cabana beside the Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool. Sunlight beamed down from the glass ceiling.

“Please tell me this is not about my Aunt Jenny,” Alexus said, sitting down across from the chubby man.

“Unfortunately, it is about Jennifer. It also concerns your tunnel, your drug shipments, and your entire cartel.” He paused long enough to let his words sink in.

And sink in they did.

Alexus wondered if her uneasy expression was as palpable as it felt.

“A few weeks before your aunt was arrested, the FBI received a tip from a woman in Tengen-Wiechs, Germany. The woman claimed to have seen Jennifer Costilla leaving a clothing store with a couple of bags in hand. On that same day, eighteen kilograms of highly enriched uranium was reported stolen from a nuclear research facility in Tengen-Wiechs, and another thirty-seven kilograms of HEU was reported missing from a second nuclear research facility in Munich, Germany. We have reason to believe that Jennifer was behind those thefts.”

“Oh shit. You don’t mean nuclear as in…nuclear weapons, do you?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Forty-five kilograms of HEU is all it took to produce Little Boy, the fifteen kiloton uranium bomb that decimated Hiroshima. If an A-bomb of that caliber gets detonated in—let’s say midtown Manhattan on a typical workday—it could easily kill close to a million people. And that’s no exaggeration.”

Shocked, Alexus looked away and settled her eyes on the 500-inch flat-screen television that covered most of the wall across the pool from her. Beneath it was a fully-stocked bar and a DJ booth, the latter of which was connected to a concert-worthy sound system.

“We’ve been investigating this matter for over a year now, and we have yet to recover even an ounce of that uranium,” Bowden continued. “To say that we are concerned for the safety of this nation would be an extreme understatement. Eight thousand troops are being deployed to the U.S. / Mexico border as we speak.”