by M G Leslie
“Very true,” said Pete. “And you’re right, there’s another guy that collects the shipments. But if he calls and reports the shipment has been intercepted, that just adds to our story – so I don’t see that as an issue.”
“Won’t he try and stop it being intercepted?”
“He can try all he wants – but from what they said, the drug enforcement agency have promised to turn out in force – huge numbers. So I suspect he’ll just walk away – he’d be very foolish to interfere.”
“OK, but can’t we get any plans of the house – layout of the rooms – any idea where they keep their records?” asked Price.
“We have the original architect drawings that were registered when it was built – we can review those tomorrow. But we need Aarón to go into to be certain – his previous meetings with Mancilla have been in town – not in the house. We have to get a better idea of the layout because you’ll have very little time.”
“And the distraction?”
“As we speak, there are some friendly contractors working just down the road from Mancilla’s house. It’s a little anti-social, but they’re placing some rather special explosives in the mains water supply to the building. The explosives won’t burst the pipes in the road – instead, they create a huge shock wave that travels up the pipe to the house, in the process, forcing water at great pressure in to their appliances – in most cases bursting the taps or connectors so that water floods the place. With any luck, in the chaos that follows, you’ll go in as the local water company to fix it and should have pretty much, a free run of the house – well most of it anyway – hopefully enough time to find what you’re after.
Price finished his steak and looked up, “That explosion will be on a timer I presume – or will it be remotely triggered?”
“Remotely triggered. Aarón will go in and have a good look around as he discusses what happened. Once he’s safely back out again, we trigger it from here and we’ll go in with four other guys in support.”
“And if we get caught whilst we’re in there?”
“You know the score Price – we’re on our own,” replied Pete with a grave voice – avoiding eye contact.
“And Aarón?”
“He knows the score as well – although he’ll have a bleeper with him. So if he thinks he’s in trouble, he can signal us and we’ll trigger it and go in and get him.”
“OK fair enough.”
Pete didn’t reply – but just looked at Price for a moment before saying, “What’s up?”
Price caught his eye – for some reason, he’d been thinking back to the incident on the plane and hadn’t really focused on Pete’s briefing as much as he should have. “You fool,” he told himself, before replying, “Sorry – there was a really bad incident on the flight on the way here. I don’t know why, but it’s bugging me for some reason.”
“I heard,” said Pete. “It made the news. A passenger went crazy and killed one of the crew.”
“He tried to open the door at thirty-thousand feet,” replied Price, in a tone that said he could barely believe what he was saying himself.
“That didn’t get reported.”
“No, I’m not surprised.”
“But why?”
“To kill me mate.”
Pete didn’t reply – so Price repeated his answer, “To kill me – just me. So tell me this – what drives someone to be so determined to kill one person that they’re prepared to kill everyone on the flight? I mean – just how nuts do they have to be to do that?”
“José Mancilla. That’s the fear he puts in his people.”
“Yeah, well. This can’t be allowed to continue.”
Pete almost laughed, “So you’re going to bring down an entire drugs organisation on your own? Don’t get me wrong Price – I have great respect for your abilities, but… Well I think you know what I’m saying.”
Price ignored Pete’s reply – although he did give a brief smile – realising it had been a foolish comment on his part.
Then he said, “I think an early night is called for. I’ll see you tomorrow and we can go through the plan again – and look at those drawings of the house please.”
Pete stood up and shook Price’s hand, “Goodnight my friend – and don’t worry, we’ll get this sorted out.”
“I never worry,” thought Price, as he walked out of the restaurant, “That’s what’s annoying me.”
As he made his way back to the hotel, Price was still thinking and began to grasp what was really bothering him. It wasn’t the incident on the plane at all – it was all the different, but seemingly interrelated events that had taken place.
It had all started with Mary’s comments all those months ago, then Jennifer appearing in the CS Research papers – the way he’d been tracked and followed so efficiently. “Things just don’t add up,” he said to himself. “There’s more to this than meets the eye.”
11. The Intercept
It was 3am when the mobile phone in London beeped. The man, who had been sound asleep, lazily reached over and picked it up off his bedside table. The message read:
PLAN FAILED HE TOOK THE PLANE TO SOUTH AMERICA
The bad news kicked his brain into gear – instantly waking him up as his heart sped up and increased the blood flow around his body. As he sat up and switched a light on, he started cursing whilst calling the number that sent the message.
It was answered immediately, but before the person could speak he shouted, “What happened?”
“There was a fight on a plane and someone died – it’s all over the news.”
“Who died?”
“The man we sent to intercept the guy from Harare.”
“I thought you said it was fool proof!”
“Yes I thought it was. The injection would have created a blood clot and it would have looked like deep vain thrombosis – nobody would have asked questions.”
“The problem is, you sent a boy to do a man’s job!”
“He was an experienced operator – I had used him before – I can’t understand it.”
“You put an amateur up against a professional – that’s what happened.”
“But…”
“Find him! You need to understand how important this is. If he names me, I will name you.” Then he shouted down the phone, “Find Price! Do you understand you bloody fool?”
There was a brief silence – then the man replied, “I have some other news.”
The man gave a loud sigh that could be heard, even down the phone, “What now?”
“One of our shipments has been seized on arrival.”
“Who seized it? How much? How the hell did they know?”
“I don’t know boss – but it’s all been seized. I will try and find out – I’m heading down there now to speak to my contact at the port and see how they found out.”
“Do that,” he shouted again, “Or you’ll wish you’d never been born.” Then he hung up the call and threw his mobile phone across the room.
The man that had sent the message had been calling from Namibia and had been expecting to meet the shipment from Venezuela – so he had been horrified when it didn’t clear customs.
Now, as his 4x4 pulled in to the Walvis Bay port management office car park, he could see armed police and drug enforcement agency officers everywhere.
The management office itself, a plane single story building, sits just outside and across a small road from the controlled area of the port – the seaport equivalent of what’s generally referred to as ‘Airside’ in airports.
However, despite being Namibia’s largest container port – indeed, one of the largest container ports on the west coast of Africa – the man walked in to the management office, and nobody stopped him or asked questions – he met shipments at least once a month – so everyone knew him and just acknowledged him with a wave and a nod.
“Morning, What’s going on out there?”
The office manager was busy filling in a report
to record the events of the morning for later reference. So he replied without looking up – having already recognised than man’s voice, “Oh some illegal substances found in a shipment. The police are interviewing the crew to see who knew about it. Were you expecting anything – because I’m afraid you may be in for a bit of a wait if you are – there’s a lot of checks to go through before we can release anything?”
“Nothing on that ship,” the man lied. “I heard there had been trouble and came down to see if I could help.”
“Thanks but, as you can see, we have it under control,” the office manager replied – still focused on his paperwork.
“So go on then – what was it you found? I’m curious.”
The office manager put down his pen and, for the first time, looked up and made eye contact, “Drugs – several hundred kilos.”
“How the hell do you store that much?”
“They were in a false hull in the bow of the ship.”
“A false hull? What will people think of next? How did you find it then?”
“We got tipped off actually – anonymous phone call to the drug enforcement agency,” the office manager replied before standing up and continuing, “I’m sorry – you’ll have to excuse me. I need to clear this mess up.” Then he left the office – taking the report with him.
As soon as he was alone in the office, the man walked over to the desk and started to look through papers and searching the drawers. Then he noticed a small notepad and picked it up. He could see where the office manager had written down the name of the ship and the location of the illegal substances. But that was all, so he put everything back where he found it and left the office.
As soon as he was back in his 4x4, he picked up his mobile, used its web browser to find the phone number for the Drug Enforcement Agency and called it. Pretending to be a member of the press, he asked for details of the story and who had tipped them off.
Not surprisingly, though, they just stated that it was an anonymous tip off. So he thanked them and hung up the call – cursing quietly to himself – he needed more information to keep his bosses happy.
He was about to start the engine when he felt cold metal touch the back of his neck. He froze and then heard the familiar voice of the office manager that he’d spoken to only moments earlier.
“Don’t make any sudden movements. Just tell me why are you so interested in this shipment?”
He tried to be calm and joke with the office manager, “Hey what are you doing – I was just curious I already told you. What are you doing with that gun? You wanna be careful – someone could get hurt.”
Then as he started to turn around to face the office manager, he felt a sharp pain, as the gun barrel was pushed hard in to the back of his neck, “Hands on the steering wheel and face to the front.”
“What are you doing? I was just curious – I have lots of shipments coming in,” the man replied – this time, less casual and with rising panic showing in his voice.
“I want to know why you have so much interest that you’re prepared to phone the drug enforcement agency, and, refuse to answer questions, even with a gun stuck in the back of your head.”
“I told you, I’m just curious – I was trying to help you,” the man repeated.
“Fine. Don’t answer me – you can explain yourself to the police instead. Get out of the car – slowly! Very slowly indeed – you understand me?”
The man opened the door slowly, but as soon as the office manager started to move – he started to run – relying on the rear door of the car to obstruct the office manager for a second or two and prevent him shooting his gun.
As the office manager started after him, the police noticed what was going on and started running to block the man’s path as well. Unfortunately, this caused him to turn towards a row of containers – the only direction not blocked. And since this meant he had now entered the secure area of the port, an armed police officer raised his gun and shouted, “Stop or I will shoot!”
The office manager immediately shouted, “Don’t shoot – we need him alive. He may know about the shipment.”
Undeterred though, the police officer shouted again, “I am warning you! Stop! I will shoot!” Then he fired a warning shot in the air.
The man didn’t slow down as he had reached a large row of containers and quickly turned – running in between them and out of sight. As the police officers ran towards him though, part of his body appeared again – this time with a pistol in his hand, that had previously been hidden in his trousers.
“Put the gun down,” a police officer shouted – whilst taking aim with his weapon.
The man didn’t listen though and started firing in the direction of several of the police officers that were now closing on his position.
The office manager shouted again, “Don’t fire back! We need him alive. Don’t fire!”
But he was too late. Several of the police officers stopped running, crouched, took aim and opened fire – the sound from their guns echoing around the port as the man dropped to the ground, dead.
An hour or so later, the police and the drug enforcement agency left the port and activity returned to relative normality.
As various workers from the management office stood outside smoking cigarettes and talking about all the events of the morning, the office manager picked up his mobile phone and called his contact in Merida, Venezuela – this was the pre-arranged call that he had agreed to make for Pete.
It was a very brief call where he did most of the speaking. “The shipment was intercepted and the contents confiscated.”
“How did they know?”
“There was a tip off to the police – so someone told them. I’ll get the details together for you and brief Aarón over a secure link. I’ll ask him to come and see you to explain in person.”
“OK, but do you have any idea who tipped them off?”
“No. No idea yet – I need to ask questions and try and find out. I’m guessing it may have been a tip-off at source. I.e. in you neck of the woods.”
The reply was non-committal – and then, a few seconds later, they ended the call. So with that done, the office manager stood up, picked up a box of his own cigarettes and joined his colleagues outside.
12. Busted Flush
Price felt fresh. He’d put the plane incident out of his mind, started to piece together all the events that had taken place so far and, after two large Grey Goose vodka’s, had slept for a solid eight hours. So, as he sat across from Pete in a café in central Caracas, eating breakfast, he felt more positive – he would deal with this and get home in one piece.
“So are we good to go?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Pete. “The call was made earlier today. They know to expect Aarón.”
“OK. So take me through the plan of the house.”
Pete withdrew a plan of the house from his pocket and placed it on the table. “The house is basically an L-shape, with a bunch of other buildings around the back – all linked by covered walkways but not a part of the main building.“
Then he walked Price through the salient points.
After a few minutes of speaking, he paused, and Price said, “So we’ll focus on what looks to be an office upstairs.”
“Yes – but be quick about it. Those other buildings around the back are where we believe the security teams sit. We triggered a fire alarm there some months back and they were in the house in less than two minutes. So your only chance is to sneak in there whilst you’re trying to stop the water flooding the house. Hopefully, in the chaos, they won’t follow you – but your best bet is to grab the hard drive from the computer system under the office desk – and we’ll check it out later.”
“I thought you said they were hi tech?”
“They are – it’s impossible to get in to their systems remotely – we’ve tried – and their network equipment has state of the art encryption because we’ve tried intercepting their network data as well. But you know
how it is – most people store stuff on their hard drive and for something this sensitive, I doubt if he’d put it on the main systems – which incidentally are also housed in those other buildings, under lock and key.”
Price sighed, “I’d like to get the data undetected if I can. I’ll try and copy the drive to a USB stick.”
“I’m telling you Price – you’ll have no time – at worst as little as two minutes – at best, only a few.”
“If I just grab the drive, your operation is over because they’ll know we’ve been in. If I can get the data off the computer and get back out again under the cover of a flood, you may, just may, still have an operation afterwards. So we have to try.”
“Just be careful. That’s all I’ll say mate. Be careful – these are no amateurs.”
“Neither am I.”
“I know but…”
“Pete, if I took the easy way out all the time, I may as well stay at home. Look… I’m going to head back to my hotel and check-out, then I’ll see you at the airport OK?”
“Yes – sounds good,” replied Pete, as he paid the bill.
“See you later.”
Then, they both stood up and left.
The flight to Merida was uneventful until they approached the city’s location in the Andes. Price knew it was surrounded by mountains, but was a little surprised when he looked out of the window and realised they were basically flying a U-turn between two mountain ranges in order to land on a tiny airstrip in the middle of the old part of the city.
As they came in to land he smiled to himself – the runway had an obvious incline – they landed uphill and presumably took off downhill to make up for it’s short length. “I suppose, it’s either that or you end up landing in the middle of the town,” he thought to himself.
Price always enjoyed arriving at smaller domestic airports, believing they have so much more character than the huge edifices that typically represent modern international airports these days. And Merida was no exception – basically a short strip of tarmac with a small building on one side and very little in the way of security.
