Triple Team: A Military Reverse Harem Romance, page 17
The bank was moderately busy at this time of day. People came and went, and new transactions popped up on my screen.
“Remind me how you guys narrowed down this place?” I asked.
“Most deposits to Accola’s account are made randomly,” he said, never taking his eyes from the front of the bank. “Different cities, different days, different amounts every time. Never the same bank twice. Except for this bank. They make the same deposit every week. It was the only one on the list that was routine.”
“Why?” I wondered out loud. “If all the others are careful to mix things up, why is this one different?”
“Been wondering that myself,” he muttered. “I figure one of JGB’s underlings is just lazy. Has gotten too comfortable with the setup, and doesn’t think he needs to be careful anymore. You’ve got to understand these guys are practically untouchable down here. Nobody wants to mess with them.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe this is a trap. An obvious deposit at a regular time to lure Blanco’s enemies here.”
“Huh,” Gregor said.
A silence stretched in the truck after that. If this was a trap, we would learn soon enough.
Watching people come and go was boring work. I could never be a cop on a stakeout for hours and hours, I decided. A boy in a New England Patriots shirt went inside and came out with a bag of coins. An old man with a shock of white hair on his brown head carried a billfold inside, making a small deposit to a local account on my computer screen. A woman about my age with a heavy backpack slung over one shoulder followed soon after.
“Hey,” Gregor said after a little while. “I wanted to tell you that we’re lucky to have gotten this far. You’ve done a good job on the team.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am surprised,” he laughed. “Nothing against you personally, kiddo. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around digital warfare. A rifle I understand. A bomb? It’s simple and straightforward. But ones and zeroes on a hard drive, or firewall ports, or other shit… It’s all foreign to me. I struggle to picture what needs to be done. But you’ve done it just fine. So yeah, good job.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning away so he couldn’t see my pleased smile.
A transaction flashed on my laptop screen. I glanced at it and nearly jumped out of my seat.
“There. There! A deposit to Accola’s account! Double-check my work.”
He squinted. “Account number 000214863… Shit. You’re right.” He grabbed his binoculars from the equipment bag and peered at the bank. “Who went inside?”
“A couple of people, I think.”
“I can see three customers inside. One’s leaving now.”
The woman with the backpack exited the bank and put on a pair of sunglasses. She turned right and began walking down the road.
“Her,” I said. “It’s her!”
“How do you know?”
“Her backpack was heavier. It was digging into her shoulder before. Now it’s lighter.”
“Maybe she made a normal deposit.”
I waved at my laptop. “The only other transactions are withdrawals. Trust me, it’s her!”
“Hope you’re right,” he grumbled as he started the engine.
We pulled out of the alley and then parked on the side of the road where we could watch her from a distance. When she was almost out of sight Gregor drove forward again, double-parked in front of a building, and we watched some more.
“I’m gonna have a tough time beating up a woman for information.”
I elbowed him in the arm. “That’s not very feminist of you.”
“How do you figure?”
“True equality means you’d happily use the same interrogation tactics regardless of her sex.”
“Yeah, well, things aren’t always the same on paper as they are in real life.”
We tailed her as she walked north through the city. Soon we reached crowded roads full of pedestrians. At this time of day, they frequently blocked our path, forcing us to creep along slowly. I shifted in my seat to keep the woman with the backpack in view.
We were in the heart of Ciudad Bolívar when she abruptly slipped down a side alley.
“Shit,” Gregor said. “Too small for the truck.”
I grabbed a walkie-talkie from the duffel bag. “On it,” I said as I left the truck and followed on foot.
The alley she’d taken was very narrow. Two people would have had trouble standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and the walls on either side seemed to lean in, blocking most of the sunlight from entering. The woman was far ahead of me now so I had no fear of her noticing me. The garbage was thick here, requiring me to constantly sidestep or leap forward to avoid stepping in piles of paper and glass.
The woman reached the end of the alley and turned left onto a main road. I ran the rest of the way to the alley exit, paused, then looked. She was 50 feet ahead of me.
“She’s walking north on Avenue Cumana,” I said into the walkie-talkie.
I followed her through the city, keeping as far behind as I dared without losing her. We walked alongside a lush park, and then she crossed the street and disappeared inside a shop. She came out a minute later with a glass bottle of Coke.
“Continuing north on Cumana again,” I said.
The woman never looked over her shoulder or gave any other sign that she was cautious. Either this was a trap—something I didn’t want to think about—or they really were overconfident in their drug and money arrangement. Hopefully it was the latter. The woman walked with long, confident strides. I had to hurry just to keep up.
Finally we reached the riverfront. The Orinoco River was narrower here than it had been in Ciudad Guayana, and it was the rich, brown shade of sediment. A barge was moored against the riverbank, at least 100 feet long with an old rusted hull. Men on deck relaxed in the sun drinking beer and tossing the empties into the river.
The woman with the backpack approached the boat and climbed up a ladder onto the deck. One of the men said something to her and she replied with what sounded like an attitude. The man looked at his comrade and laughed while the woman went inside the cockpit.
“Gregor,” I said into the walkie-talkie. “I found their boat.”
25
Juliana
Gregor met me in an abandoned lot downriver from the boat where we could do surveillance without being noticed. The cockpit room at the front of the barge was where the woman and the men had gone, and from our spot we could barely see them through the side window.
“Looks like just the three,” Gregor said. “No others that I’ve seen. Haven’t spotted any weapons but we should assume they have them within reach.”
“Think we can take them?” I asked.
“If we catch them off-guard, maybe. But not without creating a scene. The last thing we want to do is bring a whole bunch of corrupt police officers down on us. Fortunately, I’ve got another plan.”
He rifled through the duffel bag until he found what he wanted. He pulled out what looked like a metal disk shaped like an Oreo.
“Magnetic GPS tracker,” he said. “I’ll sneak up and attach it to the boat. Then we watch it on the map while following along from the truck. See where it goes, which city it stops in next. That’ll give us better data than we could ever beat out of her.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Lucky for you.”
“Hey. Discretion is always better than blunt force, kiddo.”
“Says the guy who packed 10 pounds of plastic explosives!”
One of the men on the boat emerged from the cockpit and bent over the side. He began unraveling the mooring ropes holding the boat against the shore.
“They’re getting ready to leave,” I said.
“If the shit hits the fan, start shooting. Try not to hit me.” And with that Gregor slipped from the truck and headed for the boat.
I watched him through the binoculars. The river wall would block their view and allow him to get close. Gregor walked casually until he reached the river wall, then ducked low and moved quickly toward the barge. The engine started up, a deep gargling noise that drifted across the water. The man on deck was still untying the second mooring line.
Gregor reached the rear of the barge. He was close enough that he could slap the tracker on the outer hull if he wanted, but he bent over and hesitated. He was fiddling with something but I couldn’t tell what. Then he raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth.
“New plan, kiddo,” he said. “Get down here as quick as you can. Bring the bag and your laptop.”
“What?” I said into the receiver. “Why?”
“Just hurry.”
There was no time to argue because the boat was starting to drift. I grabbed the duffel bag, tossed my laptop inside, and began jogging down to the river.
I felt dangerously exposed out here in the open. If the people on the boat turned to look this way they would see me coming right toward them. But they were all back inside the cockpit now, facing the other direction. It was a relief to reach the river wall and then hurry the rest of the way to Gregor.
“Here,” I said as I handed him the bag. “What’s up?”
We had to walk along the bank to keep up with the boat as it began turning out to the river. Without warning Gregor jumped up, grabbed hold of the metal railing on deck above us, and then deftly pulled himself up.
“Gregor,” I hissed. He was out of sight. “Gregor!”
His head reappeared over the edge. “Give me the bag.”
I held it in the air so he could lean down and grab it. Then he reached back down. “Grab my hand.”
I was flustered as I walked along the riverbank, trying to keep up with the steadily-moving barge. It would be out of reach within seconds. This was happening too fast. I didn’t have time to think.
“Do it!” he said. “Come on, kiddo!”
I jumped to grab his hand. He caught my arm easily, then pulled me up onto the barge. We were behind a stack of crates covered by a blue plastic tarp. Although we were hidden from sight of the cockpit, anyone on shore would see us.
Gregor went to his hands and knees and yanked at something on the ground. The handle to a square hatch leading into the cargo hold. The rust-covered hinged screamed as he opened it.
“They’re going to hear us!” I whispered.
“Not over the sound of the engine.” Then he placed his hands on either side and lowered himself down into the darkness. “Hand me the bag.”
I lowered the bag into the hatch until unseen hands took it. “Your turn,” he said.
I copied him and lowered myself into the cargo hold. Gregor grabbed my waist and pulled me the rest of the way to the ground. Then he jumped up, grabbed the hatch door, and closed it behind him, plunging us into darkness.
26
Juliana
Darkness.
Complete and total darkness.
An ocean of black.
I tried to get my bearings but my eyes refused to adjust. The rolling of the boat caused a wave of vertigo to crash over me, my stomach lurching into my throat as I flailed around with my hands and tried to touch something, anything…
Hands took me by the shoulders, steadying me. “I’m going to turn the light on,” Gregor said over the thumping sound of the engine. “Watch your eyes, kiddo.”
The flashlight cone was harsh and painful, but it was better than the darkness. I blinked away the spots until I could see our surroundings. A shrink-wrapped pallet was next to us, and another on the other side. More beyond that. In fact, the entire cargo hold of the barge was full of the same wrapped pallets.
And all of them were filled with cocaine.
White bricks of cocaine wrapped with duct tape. They looked surprisingly similar to the plastic explosives Gregor had packed, but there were hundreds of them. Thousands.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“We’ve hit the motherlode,” Gregor said. “If we commandeered this barge and drove it up to Key West we could host one hell of a party.”
Seeing this many bricks of cocaine was like a hammer blow to my brain. The cartel’s drugs had been an abstract thing before now. This was as real as it got. Physical evidence of what JGB sold. How he made his money.
The core reason my father was killed.
I touched the nearest pallet of cocaine. The brick underneath my finger was soft to the touch. My father had died because of this drug. This fine white powder. Emotions swirled, threatening to overcome me…
I shook it off and turned to Gregor. “Mind telling me what the fuck we’re doing here?”
He held up the Oreo-like tracker. “These fuckers are dead. No battery charge. Something must have happened to them in transit… Or my supplier fucked me.”
“So your brilliant solution was to use not just one but two highly conspicuous humans?”
He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“I could have stayed in the truck,” I insisted. “Followed you along the river.”
“I would have gotten lonely,” he said with a disarming grin.
“You’re being way too cavalier about our present situation.”
“Oh come on, kiddo. This is an adventure! And we’ll gather way more information this way. Imagine connecting directly to these guys’ laptops or phones.”
“What I’m imagining is their fists connecting to our faces.”
I pulled out my cell phone and ran a network scan. When it was done I held it up to Gregor.
“There’s jack shit here. No laptops, no phone devices. They probably use burner phones on the barge so they can’t be tracked with GPS.”
The cone of light from the flashlight swung to the ceiling as he scratched the back of his head. “Oh. That actually does make sense. But hey, we can follow them to their destination. Send reports out to Donny and Michael as we go. Mark all the stops along the way.”
I pushed my phone screen closer to his face. “Not in this giant metal tube we can’t. Zero bars. We need to be up top to get a signal.”
Gregor looked around as if the answer might suddenly appear. But there were no portholes down here, and no other electronics. Just endless bricks of valuable cocaine.
“Okay, so the plan has a problem or two. You know what a better word for problems is? Opportunities.”
“Opportunities,” I repeated skeptically.
“Sure. Opportunities to come up with creative solutions. Challenging our skill.”
“You sound like a motivational speaker. Maybe next time you could have your skill challenged by checking the batteries in the gear before it’s needed.”
Gregor at least had the good sense to grimace a little.
I sat down and folded my legs up to my chin. It might not be too late to go back up on deck and jump off the boat. Our equipment would get wet—including my laptop—but it was our only chance to get away before we sailed too far from the truck.
The engine noise rose to an oppressive level as the boat sped up. Being at the back of the barge meant the engine was pretty much right below us.
“I can’t hear myself think,” I shouted over the noise. “Let’s get away from here.”
We walked from one end of the barge to the other, weaving between the pallets of drugs. The largest drug bust I’d ever seen on television was about half a pallet worth of weed, divided into the same fat bricks. This was that drug bust a hundred times over.
“How much do you think all this is worth?” I asked.
“Millions,” Gregor said, awe in his voice. “Tens of millions. More.”
But I couldn’t think of the drugs in terms of monetary value, no matter how hard I tried. All I could think about were how many people were addicted to this stuff. How many people it had killed.
It nauseated me.
We got to the front of the cargo hold, underneath the cockpit. There were some crates of oranges stacked in the corner, a hilariously benign sight compared to all the cocaine. Gregor pulled two crates off the stack and put them on the ground to use as seats.
“Much quieter up here,” I said. “Okay. Let’s discuss what we—”
Gregor stood up and held out a hand for silence. His eyes searched above us for something.
“What is it?”
He climbed onto the orange crate and touched a vent in the ceiling. Voices drifted down from it. It was the drug runners up in the cockpit.
“What are they saying?” I whispered.
Gregor cocked his head to listen. “Talking about television. Apparently they just started watching the show LOST.”
I smiled in spite of our circumstances. “That’s how you can get information out of her without physical violence. Threaten to spoil the ending to LOST and she’ll tell us everything we want to know.”
“Never saw it,” Gregor said, climbing back down from the crate.
“Seriously? You never even watched the pilot episode?”
“I know a plane crashes on an island. Seems like a dramatic version of Gilligan’s Island.”
“Dude, don’t even joke. LOST is way more than that.”
“If you say so.” He looked up at the vent, then back at me. “The good news is I’ve got some emergency rations in the bag. Water and protein bars.”
I swept my hand around the cargo hold. “Who needs that when we have all the oranges and cocaine our hearts desire?”
Gregor pulled out his pistol and stared up at the roof of the cargo hold, hoping he would need to use it.
*
We rested on the orange crates with our backs to the hull and waited. It wasn’t hard, at first. I was too scared to do anything but sit still and listen for any sign that the drug runners might come below deck. If they opened the main hatch, we could probably shoot one of them before they knew what was happening. Two if we were lucky. But then the third would have us at a disadvantage; all they would need to do is lock the hatches from above and we’d be trapped. We didn’t want it to come to that. Not until we were desperate.
But eventually our riverboat cruise began to feel like a riverboat prison. I stood and stretched my muscles to keep them from cramping. Gregor paced from one end of the cargo hold to the other, deep in thought. I analyzed our situation with as much objectivity as I could. As if I were a neutral observer rather than someone actually sitting in the hold of a drug barge surrounded by mountains of cocaine.
