He heard a vehicle start and his heart jumped slightly. He thought for a moment that it was the truck, but then realized it was the contact’s vehicle. He had already started making his way back to the front of the warehouse, using the exact same route along the side of the building that he’d taken before. He edged his head past the corner again and saw that he was in exactly the wrong position, at least twenty meters from Ngouabi and the other men talking near the back of the truck, closer to the warehouse office. Bishop did not do the head count he normally did in these sorts of situations. Doing a head count was a way of helping himself to keep track of everyone’s location. He did not notice the absent lieutenant. He was concentrating on his own position instead. He thought about it for a moment, then made a decision. He was too far from the smugglers, but that also meant they were too far away to hear anything over their own conversation. Bishop checked his gear again, then turned carefully and broke into a moderate sprint to get around the back of the building and up the other side to put himself closer to the truck and the smugglers.
It took a full minute to cover the distance. He wasn’t a great sprinter, especially over uneven ground in the dark. But he still made it easily and only need another minute to get his breathing under control. He edged around the front corner to the front wall of the office and worked his way along, keeping low and quiet. When he’d gotten all the way across the front of the office, he was positioned less than four meters from the men inside the warehouse and he could hear them plain as day. With all the lights back on and with the gate lights shining back toward the warehouse, he was as exposed as he’d ever been on any mission. There was no cover, but he had to hear the conversation.
The wait for something useful was tense. Bishop was too exposed. One of the men had brought food. Bishop heard the truck door open and close, then the man had announced the food. The others, including Ngouabi, had made appreciative noises and dug into the meal quickly. The conversation turned from vague references to their trade to inconsequentialities. A football match that had erupted in fan violence a few days earlier during an Africa Cup qualifier between Les Sao and the Super Eagles. Precy Ngouabi’s apparently amazingly delicious mbisi ye kalou. The price of gasoline. Corruption in AFCON. Finding a good deal for a real iPhone. It was so mundane, Bishop was ready to stand up and shoot them all.
Finally, Ngouabi called an end to the chatter.
“Time to go,” he said to the driver. “Paris. Charles de Gaulle freight terminals. Dart International Air Freight. Door 8. Paperwork for no one but Arnaud Fournier. Repeat it to me.”
The driver repeated the instructions perfectly, as did one of the helpers. The other helper would not be making the trip. Bishop heard it all clearly and managed to get it all with the voice recorder. It was all he needed and he had to get the intel to DeCourcey as quickly as possible so he could get an ID on the shipment. They needed to find out the destination on the manifest and the pre-clearance seal number. Without that information, the trail would go cold.
***
The lieutenant that Ngouabi had sent to check the warehouse perimeter spotted movement as Bishop moved from the back wall of the warehouse toward the roadway. The area was almost pitch black and the lieutenant had instantly dropped into a crouch behind one of the dozen or so stacks of discarded freight pallets littering the area.
Halfway between the back wall of the warehouse and the edge of the truck marshalling area that served several of the warehouses, Bishop stopped beside a meter-and-a-half stack of pallets. He’d sensed some movement or some sound out of place, but he couldn’t place it. So he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, calming himself, listening carefully, standing stock still.
Bishop was patient. Stakeouts, surveillance that required long hours of inactivity, relentless training and twenty years of experience had taught him to be still when necessary.
Ngouabi’s man was also experienced. Being raised in tribal bush lands and almost five years working for Destin Ngouabi had created a very good stalker and hunter. He maintained his crouch silently, breathing slowly and inaudibly through his mouth, his eyes mostly shut to help him gain as much night vision as possible. He waited a minute, and then another, not making the slightest detectable sound, biding his time until Bishop moved again which he knew the man would have to do.
Bishop for his part heard nothing. He waited a full minute, then began focusing on his sense of smell. Food, bad breath and body odor could be a dead giveaway. The problem with scenting another person was mainly that a strong enough sea breeze had kicked up that nothing could be detected upwind. Bishop realized there was nothing but the confusing smells of warehouse industrial area, and nothing of another man. Another minute passed and he went back to listening.
Bishop remained in position for a third minute. Nothing but the wind rustling something in this mess of pallets. Time to get moving. He hazarded a slow visual scan left, then right. The area looked clear. He turned to the rear, toward the warehouse, and dropped into a crouch of his own, but his view was partially blocked by other pallets. As he rose slightly to get a better view, he finally heard the faint sound of movement again.
Bishop snapped his head around and followed with his hips and feet, legs well spread for balance as he sensed an attack, and took a solid hit on the left side of his head from the butt of the lieutenant’s knife. Bishop went down, reeling from the strike. He rolled away instinctively until he thought he might be far enough away, then jammed his right foot against something jutting out of the tarmac and levered himself up into a combat stance.
Bishop’s roll away had caused the lieutenant to lose sight of him for a moment, but he heard Bishop plant his foot solidly and moved in the direction. Both men’s eyes had fully adjusted to the near-pitch black, moonless night and they could see more than mere outlines of each other. They could see enough to do battle.
The man rushed Bishop, feinting left, charging back to the right with a six or seven inch blade tearing through the air. There was a deeper black on the man’s wrist. Bishop, still unsteady from the strike to the head, recognized the deeper black as blood. In a rush he thought, guy must have misjudged his first attempt. Smashed his wrist against the edge of a pallet and turned the blade. Lucky me. Bishop simply dropped to his knees to get under the scything knife. The momentum of the violent swing pitched the knifeman forward when his momentum didn’t slow because of the miss. Bishop had only dropped and bent a few inches. He timed the bounce back up and forward as well as he could through the pain on the left side of his head. He hoped he’d judged his attacker’s weight well enough. If the man was too heavy, Bishop’s short thrust up and forward wouldn’t lift and unbalance him. As his right shoulder drove into the other man mid-chest, he could feel the lift. Bishop brought his right fist up inside as fast as he could and clipped him with a powerful uppercut. The lieutenant was already moving backward from Bishop’s powerful charge though. The uppercut hadn’t connected as solidly as Bishop hoped. He knew he’d dazed the man but hadn’t broken the jaw.
Bishop’s head was ringing. His opponent’s partially thwarted strike had been practiced and powerful. He needed time to clear his head. The man knew he’d hurt Bishop and didn’t back off. He came charging back with an overhand knife grip meant to force Bishop to focus on the blade. Bishop was too experienced to take the bait. He ignored the straight stabbing thrust a moment later and instead braced his right arm to block the opposite leg kick he knew would come. The African saw the block, but decided to put even more force into his kick. Bishop took the kick on his right forearm and felt the shock of the blow all the way through his shoulders. Pain lanced through his head in response to the force of the kick and he almost blacked out.
The African saw his advantage then, dropped all pretence at tactics and moved in to finish off the obviously shaken man. He took two steps forward, intending to use an underhand knife thrust into Bishop’s exposed throat. Suddenly everything changed. Bishop had shifted position twice, favor
ing his left side to keep from being struck on that side of his head again. As the other man planted his forward foot to gain force for a coup de grâce, he caught the edge of a single palette, unseen, lying flat on the ground. He’d planted so hard that his ankle turned on the edge and snapped instantly. The pain was astonishingly sharp and he shrieked once as he pitched over and fell to the ground.
Before there was any chance of the man crying out for help, Bishop jumped on him and drove his right fist into his solar plexus. With the man completely winded and unable to speak, Bishop wrapped him up in a choke hold and kept up as much pressure as he could on the man’s windpipe and carotid artery.
Seconds seemed like minutes. Minutes seemed like hours. Bishop passed out for a moment. When he came to, the other man was very dead. Bishop was nauseated from the obvious concussion he had and struggled to keep his stomach under control.
Body, he thought, I have to get rid of the body. He turned his head and immediately felt lancing pain. Slowly boy. Slowly. Do this carefully and slowly.
It took him a full two minutes to take physical stock, check his gear to make sure that nothing identifiable had come loose or been lost. He needed another two minutes to work up the will to stand up and regain some measure of control. He needed a place close at hand to hide the body. He was in no condition to physically drag or carry the dead weight of a body very far. He walked the immediate area in a slow circle. He knew what he was looking for, and hoped he could find it as close by as possible.
***
Bishop struggled up the metal stairs to his stakeout. If he hadn’t suffered an actual concussion, it had been damn close to one. His legs felt like lead. He had searched the area around the dead man for almost five minutes before he came across a short length of discarded reinforcing bar that he used to lever off a heavy iron sewer lid. He used the dead man’s own knife to cut deep into the belly, legs and chest cavity. He didn’t want a dead body swollen from gas build up to block a section of sewer and reveal itself before he’d left the country. The grim, bloody work had left him more lightheaded and more nauseated. He was normally impassive in such situations, but the blow to the side of his head had hurt him badly. The smuggler had been upwind, hit him hard and fast, and only blind luck had prevented Bishop from being killed on the spot.
He made his way to the chair in front of the laptop, closed the lid to stop the glare from aggravating his awful headache, and searched his kit for aspirin. He took three, extra strength, and almost a whole bottle of his remaining water. He closed his eyes, leaned back in the chair and began the process of calming himself, waiting for the analgesic to kick in. He did not open his eyes again for a good twenty minutes.
Bishop’s camera feeds were just as he expected. He was foggy and the pain in his head had abated only slightly, but he managed to text the warehouse one shipment details to Linders before doing anything else. One of the cameras had captured a clear, sharp image of the Customs seal and wrapper that the contact had affixed. It was the first image he sent to Linders. Looking at the other feeds, it appeared that everyone at warehouse two had already cleared out, and the warehouse three was clearing out as he watched. The contact was finishing up at warehouse four. Bishop’s cameras had gotten a look at two of the three crates because of the way the large trucks were parked. The crates were considerably larger than the 1.5 x 1.5 x 2.5 meter long crate he’d personally inspected. The small crate was headed for Charles de Gaulle airport and that meant that it would get to wherever it was pointed quickly by air. The huge crates in big trucks were much too large for typical air freight. They were at least 2 x 2 x 4 meters long. The large crates were also constructed differently. They all had lash points in the form of steel loops embedded in each corner. That meant stabilizing points for shipment inside a container and that meant either shipment by rail or a trip on an ocean freighter.
Bishop was breaking down the surveillance setup when his mobile phone vibrated.
“Go ahead,” he answered.
“The only crated shipment on Fournier’s list of the size you described,” Linders said quickly, “is coded for Port of New York. JFK. Scheduled to depart CDG tomorrow at 1230 local, direct to JFK. Landing is scheduled for 1430 local time.”
“JFK. Anything else? What about the pre-clearance seal number?”
“I’ll have the exact details for you in time. For now, it’s confirmed.”
“Confirmed? What do you mean?”
“It’s a real U.S. Customs pre-clearance seal. The code number is currently in the system. It’s not a forgery. It was generated by the system.”
Bishop was silent for a moment.
“Uh-huh,” Linders said. “Shut me up for a moment too. Seems like we’ve got bigger problems than we thought.”
“It just, uh, one time, I mean it just one day appeared in the database?” Bishop asked. His voice was weaker than normal and his headache was putting him off.
“Bishop?” Linders asked after a moment. “You all right? You sound… a bit off.”
“Just a bit of a, uh, a bit of a thing I got into with a security patrol after I finished the infil. Took a couple of, uh, shots. I mean hits. It’s nothing. Not my first prom, y’know?”
“You need medical support? Are you still operational?”
Bishop actually paused and thought about that for a good half minute.
“Bishop?” Linders said with some urgency in her voice.
“I’m operational,” he replied with a long sigh. “I was just thinking about how nice my life was before this headache. I’m okay. Look, someone had to enter the data in that database. Someone had to scan the shipping sticker and issue the physical seal. There is always an access code and a name associated with the transaction in the system, right?”
“Correct,” Linders said. “The name of a particular senior Customs supervising agent is always there, but it’s very far down the form. Millions of crates, packages, shipments of all shapes and sizes are coded for entry to the United States every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year, every year. The system doesn’t depend on the fact that Joe Smith or Jane Doe, the Customs supervising agent in any particular main office or even a specific broker authorized a particular set of papers or issued a particular seal or locked a particular crate or container. There is simply too much volume. The system relies on an encrypted database that is used to issue specially coded pre-clearance documentation. The pre-clearance is in the system. The initial verification I received came directly from my operations contact at CBP with the FBI confirming. They double-checked. It’s not a forgery.”
“I believe you,” Bishop said, trying to control the disbelief he was feeling. He almost forgot about the headache for a moment. “Something to look into without a doubt.”
“The information has been passed up the line. For now, you’re going to New York. I’ll text your boarding pass. Better get moving. It’ll be an Air France booking for 1035 hours. AF flight 3628. The transpo office got you business class.”
“Got it. Tell transpo I said thanks for the business class. Is it a security ticket?”
“Yes. Air France is co-operating, but it might be a partner flight operated by Delta. They will hold the flight if you’re delayed. Do not push your luck, though. Leave your car at terminal 2 valet parking.”
“Thank you. I’ll be rolling in twenty minutes. See you in New York.” He tried to sound as normal as possible, but he could hear the strain in his own voice.
Chapter Fourteen
“Thank you for covering for Lloyd,” Rose said. “I’ve worked out the schedule so you can have tomorrow off, if you like.”
“Thanks, I could use the time to work on my essay,” Julie gave the manager a nod as she picked up her bag from under the counter.
“Ah, Columbia. I loved college, but I also remember the stress. Always a deadline, some new paper that needs writing.” Rose smiled as she recalled her school days. She was a good working manager, fair, who didn’t play favorites, a
rare trait. Julie packed up her things and slung the bag over her shoulder.
“See you in a couple days, Rose.” Julie waved to the other employees as she left the cafe. Covering for Lloyd had meant working an extra four hours, a long shift. Julie’s legs hurt from being on her feet for twelve hours, but walking towards home brought some relief from the constant standing.
Traffic was at a standstill on Amsterdam, so she and a herd of pedestrians crossed against the light. Julie made her way down to the 85th street entrance to Central Park. She crossed the park almost every day, taking the same route. As Julie entered the park and left the traffic noise behind, she realized her eyelids were half closed. She sighed as she remembered the paper that was due in two days. Approaching the interior of the park, Julie perked up as she recognized the lanky frame of John Logan sitting on a bench, in conversation with a similarly dressed shorter man wearing glasses. No doubt a colleague of John’s.
On a bench closer to Julie was another man that she recognized, someone that she had seen sitting close to John in the coffee shop. Probably another friend of his. Julie was glad that John had friends. She was acutely aware that he was largely a loner, and not necessarily by choice. She knew that men like John Logan had trouble forming friendships, and especially relationships.
Julie had known John as a customer for nearly two years. She had never felt much of a romantic attraction towards him, but being single now, she allowed her thoughts to meander in that direction. John Logan was smart, with a good heart. Awkward, maybe, but also attractive in a nerdish kind of way. She knew there was a good person underneath that unpolished exterior. The fact that he was a recognized math genius didn’t hurt.
Julie’s aunt had married a man who had experienced social difficulties. He was eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism. Her aunt found the relationship trying, especially since her husband continually forgot her birthday and their wedding anniversary, something he finally was able to remedy by inputting the dates into his phone calendar. Julie wondered if John had Asperger’s. Probably not, she thought, or if he does, it’s a mild case.
All The Big Ones Are Dead Page 18