Our team did something I couldn’t remember us ever doing. We sat on the couches and watched a movie on the giant inflatable screen and drank beer. Amber fell asleep about halfway through, by the end V was the only other one awake and I was dozing. None of us had exchanged a word.
“This was nice,” V said unexpectedly and it took me a minute to get what she meant. This was indeed the first time we’d all been together when we weren’t in mission go mode and just had time to enjoy each other’s company without mission planning or even talking.
“Hey,” Bobby said coming in quietly.
“Hey,” V answered, and it suddenly dawned on me why she was still up. She said her goodnights and the two of them made their way upstairs.
I woke up Amber as gently as I could.
“Fuck!” she said bolting upright.
“You got mad at me last time I let you sleep on the couch,” I reminded her.
“Right,” she agreed.
We made our sleepy way upstairs and there was no back breaking sex this night. Amber slumped down on the bed fully clothed and went right to sleep. It had been a long 48 hours and she deserved the rest. Too bad, I was really enjoying the money I was making as a man-whore but that’s the way it goes some nights.
The next morning came late for all of us, Bobby and V being the last ones downstairs. I had to give them credit for leaving their relationship in the bedroom. When they were downstairs it was all business with both of them.
Deek called early. “This came in on one of the old numbers,” he said. “You should hear this.”
The message was from Rafe’s old self-storage place. He introduced himself and then had this to say. “You guys said you were going to get all that stuff out of there. If it’s still there at the end of the month I’ll have to sell it or have it thrown out. It’s not right to stick me with cleaning it up, so if you could come and get it, I’d appreciate it.”
“What the hell?” Q asked. “That warehouse was empty when we left.”
“Yes, it was,” I agreed. “Apparently, it’s not empty now.”
“You know that’s like the perfect setup for an ambush.”
“I never would have guessed.”
I called the team together and explained the situation.
“That’s a trap,” Bobby agreed. “That’s just how I’d do it.”
We looked at an overhead satellite shot of the area.
“Pretty shitty spot for an ambush,” I pointed out. “There’s a lot of cover, there’s no angle from high ground. At least three different routes we could use to get there.”
“A drive by?” Q guessed.
“That’s the only option,” I agreed. “These guys set it up just right last time and now they’re going to go all O.K. Coral on us when they know we have backup? That makes no sense. There’s something in the warehouse and we need to find out what it is.”
“Deek, we’re going to need some stuff,” I began and gave him the list.
“On the way shortly.”
It took two hours to get our delivery and we headed out late morning for the warehouse. This time everyone looked a little bulky sporting Level IIIA body armor under their work clothes. The warehouse provided surprisingly good cover but we checked carefully anyway. The van worked three locations near the storage facility, using both visible and infrared to look for open windows or sniper hides. Deek used the drone to scan rooftops for anything out of place.
“I’m not seeing anything,” Deek said after a while.
“If there’s anyone out here,” Bobby began, “they’re more stealthy than ninjas in a Kung Fu movie.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen ninjas in a Kung Fu movie,” Q pointed out.
“See how stealthy they are?” Bobby retorted.
“Guess I walked into that one,” Q grinned.
V scanned the neighborhood from the back of the van with her rifle scope while Amber cruised the nearby neighborhoods in a car with a real estate agency sign on the side.
“All quiet here,” Amber reported.
“I got nothing,” V agreed reluctantly.
Mateo used the truck, lined with ballistic bomb blankets, to block the door to the storage facility office and then slid his seat back behind the bomb blanket. I got the key from the owner while Q checked out the rest of the office. All clear.
We drove down to the storage unit in case the ambush came from one of the other units but the longer we were there, the less like an ambush it felt. I opened the lock on the storage unit and raised it just far enough for Q to get a small camera under the door and check for booby traps.
“Door’s clear,” he said and we slid it open.
There in front of us were three shallow pallets of lead bricks. Some were clean as the day they came from the factory, some were broken or bent and had barnacles or coral growing on them.
“What the fuck?” Q asked.
“What is it?” Deek and Amber asked at the same time, stepping on each other’s transmission.
“I know exactly what this is,” I said, as everyone waited. “It’s our fee.”
“You’re going to have to explain that one,” Bobby said.
“We claim half the salvage as our fee,” I explained. “This is about half of the lead. The opposition is trying to buy us off.”
“I’ll be damned,” Q said.
“Amber, swing by and pick up V and head back to the office up north,” I instructed.
“On my way,” she copied.
I held up a small transceiver that Deek had sent along with the gear.
“Deek?”
“No trackers that are radiating anything,” he concluded. “Not burst mode. There’s nothing radiating in that pile.”
We carefully checked the piles for explosives but, as I suspected, they were clean.
“Mat, back the truck up here,’ I requested. “Let’s start loading it. What doesn’t fit in the truck we load in the van.”
“Is the local warehouse clean?”
“Yeah, the guys cleared it out this morning,” Deek informed.
“Okay, we’ll stash it there. Send a corporate crew down to pick it up in a couple days. Ask Fred where to put it from there.”
“Roger that.”
Those of us left formed a makeshift bucket brigade to load the bricks, most of which fit in the truck. There was about half a pallet leftover that we loaded in the van. The truck definitely drove heavy as we made our way back to the Miami warehouse. We checked the tree line with the van cameras and Deek cleared the building before we opened the doors. There was no point taking chances now.
I texted Anita and she and Nick showed up a few minutes later.
“What is it?” Anita asked.
“This is what Rafe was dragging out of the ocean,” I told her.
Nick picked up one of the bricks and looked it over, then pulled out his tactical pocket knife and cut a slice out of one.
“It looks like lead,” he said.
“It is lead,” I confirmed.
“This can’t be worth anything.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said, explaining low alpha lead. “That chunk you carved off with your knife was about $20 worth.
“Shit,” he said looking at the pile with renewed respect.
“Is this all of it?” Anita asked.
“Half.”
She looked puzzled, then it hit her. “Your fee!”
“That’s right,” I explained for Nick’s benefit. “We keep half of what we get back, this is Sergei’s way of paying us off.”
“You going to take it?” he asked.
“We’re going to keep it,” I confirmed. “If Sergei had offered this in the beginning, I probably would have accepted it. We’d give this to Ana and the kids and take what Fred managed to recover as our fee.”
“But not now?” Anita questioned.
“Doesn’t solve Rafe’s murder,” I pointed out. “We were like brothers.”
“You never actually met h
im, did you?” Nick asked.
“Never mind,” Anita told him.
“Let’s go in the office and talk,” I suggested, leading the way to conference room. The rest of the crew gave Nick the silent stare on the way by.
“They don’t like me,” he surmised when we got to the office with a glance at Anita that was something between disappointment and jealousy.
“They don’t know you,” I corrected. “Did you get the file?”
He tossed a thin folder on the table. “His name is Anatoli Seleznev. Interpol’s had him on their radar for a while but we don’t have much on him. He’s pretty much kept his nose clean and stayed out of trouble here.”
The picture in the file was old, before he started bleaching his hair white, but that was him.
“This is the guy who killed Rafe,” I told Anita.
“Under Sergei’s orders,” she clarified.
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Can you prove it?” Nick asked.
“That’s what we’re here to talk about,” I informed him. “By the way, you looked good on TV.”
“Rumor has it he’s getting his old job back,” Anita smiled.
“We need a deal for Sergei,” I informed them. “Something under three years, minimum security.”
“The DA is hot to nail this guy,” Nick laughed. “That white slavery story made every major network. We can’t unring that bell and it was your idea!”
“Half of those girls were underage,” Anita reminded me.
“A legal technicality,” I countered. “Things are a little different in the home country when it comes to the age of consent. Besides, he was paying them pretty well. He was a dirtbag, but this wasn’t slavery.”
“I don’t think I can sell a deal,” Nick said.
“You might if we hand them dipshit here on murder one,” I nodded at the file. “Make out like it was a power play between Russian gangs and Sergei had no part in the warehouse deal. Anatoli goes for murder and you tack on whatever else you want. The shootings in Miami, the strip club. Give Sergei a nickel for ongoing criminal bullshit and cut him loose in three.”
Nick and Anita exchanged a look. “You’re asking a lot,” she pointed out.
“I’m offering a lot...shit, I’ve given you a lot. You got your career back,” I pointed out to Nick. “And you still get to keep your white slavery story.” Even I had to admit that was awesome copy even though it was bullshit. “No one will notice eight months from now when the charges get reduced as long as you keep the White Rabbit here front and center on the story. It’s easy to say something about the focus of the investigation shifting in another direction. Wala-wala bing bang and Sergei falls out of the headlines. Look at this guy,” I said, tapping the folder, “he’s a fucking meat eater. People love to be horrified and who’s going to make the better villain? Some senior citizen pussy dealer or Anatoli the Terror?”
“You should have been a lawyer,” Anita observed.
“Or PR,” Nick added.
“Gee, what a compliment,” I panned. “Do we have a deal or don’t we?”
Nick sighed. “Maybe we put this guy out front, Sergei agrees to cooperate and we get something solid on Cotton Top here...maybe we can do that.”
I looked at Anita who nodded. “Okay, you two start circulating Anatoli’s jacket, let someone else come up with the idea that he’s got a leadership role then pretend to do some digging and come back to say they’re right. That’s always a better sell than something you cook up yourself.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“What are we going to do,” I corrected and outlined my plan for them.
“Bold,” Nick agreed. “Can you manage the logistics?”
“That we can definitely do,” I assured him. “Can you get your guys together in time and brief them?”
Nick looked at his watch. “Just. We better get going,” he said to Anita. They got up and headed out the door.
“You sure this is going to work?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Not at all,” I replied.
We drove back to West Palm and I briefed the rest of the team on the plan and, as I guessed, no one liked it.
“This is bullshit,” Amber complained, still in her real estate agent outfit, complete with a name tag.
“For once I agree with the hooker,” V added.
“I find myself in agreement with the ladies,” Bobby intoned.
Q, the only other person involved in the next phase, said nothing.
“I don’t like it, either,” I said, “but if the logistics don’t come together we’ll pop smoke and dust off.”
“Do you really trust the Feds?” Mateo asked.
“I trust Anita,” I said, realizing that was half an answer. Mateo frowned, obviously not liking that answer but unwilling to press his case.
“You’re doing all this to get a deal for a guy who took a shot at us,” Amber reminded me. “Even if he didn’t order it, they were his people, his organization.”
That one landed. Amber was reminding me that, had the tables been turned, Sergei would rightly have blamed me for my organization’s behavior. She had a point.
“I can’t argue with that,” which was the truth. “I’m doing what I think is right under the circumstances.”
That got the general frown of disapproval from the table and the closed arm sulk from Amber. If body language could kill, I’d be DOA.
Bobby stood up. “You’re on your own on this one, brother,” he said motioning to his people. “You already know our feelings but we’ll play it like you want.”
Teddy’s group headed back to the warehouse.
“Fuck it,” V said, getting up to go join them.
That left us with the Queen of Closed Body Language. “Don’t expect me to come to your funeral,” she spat. “And you can forget any conjugal visits if you end up in prison. My vagina is not speaking to you.”
Q smiled at that one as she got up and banged her way out of the office.
“That went well,” Q said. “Except for the vagina part.”
“She’ll cool off...eventually,” I predicted. “As the only person with an active role in this phase, you get a vote that actually counts.”
Q thought it over for a minute. “Your track record is pretty solid,” he reminded me. “I can’t count the number of times I was sure you were out of your fucking mind. And yet I’m still here because I listened to you.”
“And yet this one bothers you.”
“Every goddamn one bothers me,” he pointed out. “This one is no worse than the others.”
“Sooo?”
“So, fuck it. I’m in.”
“Alright then.”
I called Deek on the speakerphone in the conference room. “Did you get the number?”
“I think so,” he replied.
“You’re usually a little more definite,” I reminded him.
“If you’re right about who made the calls,” he said, “then I’ve got the right numbers.”
He read it off and Deek switched to monitor mode so he could listen in while he dialed the number and routed it to the other line in the conference room.
The number rang twice. “Da?” an older man said.
“Sergei, I got your message today,” I began.
“Who is this?” he asked in heavily accented English.
“People call me the Fat Man.”
The line got quiet and I could hear a door close in the background.
“I’m surprised to hear from you,” he said after a moment.
“In English we have a saying about when a relationship gets off to an unpleasant start we call it getting off on the wrong foot. I believe you and I may have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“I have heard this saying,” he confirmed. “What do you propose?”
“I suggest a meeting,” I said giving him the address. “Tonight.”
&n
bsp; “And what will we discuss at this meeting?”
The Blue Tango Salvage: Book 2 in the Recovery and Marine Salvage, Inc. Series Page 32
