Cash tugged Juno’s arm and he sat back down onto the couch. “Bro I told you. You’ve got to translate it into like regular New York English for us. We don’t speak brainiac.”
“Right, right, sorry. Okay . . .” He took a deep breath. “Point is, I figured out how they’re getting the shit in, all right? It’s the returns.”
“Returns?” Yelena asked.
“It’s pretty clever actually,” Joe said. “Almost foolproof. Wildwater supplies all kinds of junk to the military overseas. Random, boring shit . . .”
Juno nodded. “Exactly. Like shoelaces, cases for binoculars, tent poles, housings for flashlights . . .”
Joe went on: “It goes through the normal channels, purchase orders, delivery stateside, and then ships overseas. But if something is defective, or the wrong item shows up by mistake, then Wildwater’s local office just issues a return authorization and ships it back.”
“Get it?” Cash asked, proud of his friend. “Like when Nike sent me the wrong size sneaks, I popped them in the box, printed out the label and sent them back for free.”
Juno stood up again, excited. “That’s the brilliant part, see? It’s coming in as US military property, not as an import, so now customs is nothing. And Wildwater has already accepted the return, so no need for a further military inspection here either. It just flows right through, via air freight, to the terminal for pickup and then back to Wildwater’s warehouse.”
Cash was grinning now, as the others began to get it. “Except now, those tent poles or flashlights or whatever . . .”
Yelena laughed. “They are full of heroin.”
“That’s pretty damned good,” Liam said. “Just let the government deliver the gear for you.”
Josh nodded. “Beautiful. The closest thing to an open pipeline you could have. No customs. No military police. No nothing. Ah, what we could do with that. I better not tell Rebbe. It will break his heart.”
“When is the next shipment of returned goods?” Liam asked.
“Two days,” Juno said. “Air freight to Newark.”
Yelena hugged Juno. “Juno you are a genius.”
“Thanks, Yelena,” he said, blushing.
“Now how do we stop it?” she asked him.
“Oh . . . that . . .” Juno sat back down and reached for his Coke. “I haven’t gotten to that part yet.”
Silence descended, and everyone sat back, as though the elation were escaping from the balloon. After a couple of minutes, Joe realized all eyes were now on him.
“Anyone here know any dog trainers?” he asked.
As it happened, the club manager, who’d been conducting business from a seat at the bar while Joe and the others commandeered his office, was a dog trainer himself. Johnny “Santa” Santangelo, who took advantage of his white beard and huge belly to play Santa at the club’s Christmas party each year, took in rescued dogs, mainly German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Rottweilers, which he trained as guard dogs, and then sold, or failing that, gave away as housebroken pets. Many of the Caprisi family’s warehouses, parking lots, and construction sites were patrolled by Santa’s helpers. The dog Joe wanted was of a far more specialized and rare type, but Santa knew a guy who knew a guy and when Nero and Pete went to visit him on Gio’s behalf, the trainer reluctantly agreed to fake some paperwork and lend out the talent for a day.
Meanwhile, Cash was busy. He had to obtain two vehicles. One, which he’d be driving, was the crash car. A crash car is what it sounds like, and it could be any make as long as it had some power. Cash chose a Camaro, which he modified with heavy-duty shocks, a reinforced steel front bumper and some additional steel poles welded into the interior. The second vehicle was a specialty item for Joe, which he got from an Armenian guy who owned a salvage yard near Reliable Scrap, the huge auto junkyard Cash ran for Uncle Chen, and which was the center of his car theft business. Cars disappeared and dissolved into parts, then reappeared in new colors and shapes and under new names in that giant labyrinth, itself just a small corner of the junk kingdom that spread over that part of Queens.
Liam and Josh, who’d become familiar with the Newark Airport freight operations through their hijacking, stole a semi, switched the plates to make it pass as legit, and had it repainted. J&L Trucking—“In It For the Long Haul”—was what Liam stenciled on the door, which Josh thought was ridiculous, but sweet.
Yelena handled weapons and costumes.
And Joe tried to explain what he needed to Juno.
“I can get you in easy,” Juno said. “But getting out the way you want is impossible.”
“Sure, it’s difficult maybe, but there must be . . .”
“No man, you don’t understand. Am I generally given to hyperbole?”
“Somewhat.”
“Okay. But right now I mean literally impossible.” He sat forward and explained it slowly to Joe, as though to a large child. “Getting a truck in for a fake delivery is no problem, because it won’t be fake. Anybody who wants to can ship some shit somewhere. It’s America. I’ll just go online with a made-up company name and manifest, say y’all are bringing in a load of whatever to be sent off to Lithuania or some place. You pull up in the truck, show the paperwork, and you’re in. But for me to go into their system and find out exactly where they put the can from Wildwater, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.”
To save on money and logistical hassle, Wildwater, in its capacity as a legit corporation, would consolidate all the items from that general region going stateside and then send an entire truck-sized container, which would be loaded onto a gigantic plane and offloaded in Newark. Any item in there could, conceivably, contain the dope. And the container could end up anywhere in the depot, since it would be slotted into an open space whenever it came in.
“But why can’t you just hack in, even once it lands, and tell me its location? Don’t tell me their security is too much for you. It’s got to be in their system.”
“Ah, but that’s precisely what I keep saying, my dude. In their system. And their system is closed. It’s basically just a local network for moving boxes around their yard. There’s no internet access, nothing over phone wires or cell signals. Doesn’t matter how good a hacker I am if there ain’t shit to hack.”
“So who does have access?”
“Folks working there. Shipping clerks at their terminals. And those dudes in the orange vests who drive around in carts, finding your can. They have handhelds, like UPS does, for checking it’s the right package. Same idea, but the packages are the size of subway cars.”
“So, if you had one of those handheld things?”
“The range isn’t much. It wouldn’t work outside the yard.”
“But if you were in range . . . with one of those devices . . .”
“Then I can find you your Persian. Or at least the can it’s in. How you’re going to get me in there I don’t know. Not to mention back out.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll think of something.”
Juno sighed. “Oh, I know you will. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
27
IT WAS BRIGHT AND early. The morning air was still cool and quiet, and you could even hear birds trilling in the wetlands (along with the roar of airplanes) and smell water on the breeze that shifted through the reeds (along with the burn of chemicals), as J&L Trucking’s 18-wheeler pulled up to the gate of the high-security air freight depot adjacent to Newark Liberty International Airport, with Liam behind the wheel.
“Good morning,” he told the head guard, a forty-something white guy with a flattop buzzed haircut and creases in his uniform pants. The credentials clipped to his ironed shirt read James Barker, Supervisor. Liam handed down the paperwork that Juno had provided. “We’ve got a drop off.”
“Morning.” Barker looked it over, while two junior guards circled the truck, checking underneath it with mirrors. “Says here you’re hauling fertilizer? What does certified organic, single source mean?”
“Means this
is the purest horseshit around, straight from Kentucky, home of the best horseshit in the world,” Liam went on. “Now some folks will tell you Virginia, but for my money, the horseshit that you get from a diet of sweet bluegrass . . .”
“Well, we’ve got to open her up. Give them a hand, Myron.”
“Yes, sir. No problem,” Liam said, as Josh jumped down from his side. Barker led the way to the rear of the truck, followed by Myron, one of the other two who’d been checking the exterior, a young Black guy with a smooth-shaven head and red eyes behind his glasses. Artie, a plump, fair-skinned redhead and the youngest of the lot, stood around trying to look useful.
“Does it stink bad?” Myron asked Josh.
“Not if you don’t break the seals.”
Liam, who was watching in the side view, pressed a button and the gate lowered, hitting the asphalt with a clink and making a handy ramp. Then he hopped out and joined them.
“Here it is,” Josh said, walking Barker up the ramp. He unlocked the rear and he and Myron rolled the door up, revealing a solid wall of rich, brown fertilizer, sealed into large, plastic-sealed cubes, and marked “Kentucky’s Finest—100% Pure Manure.”
“How much you hauling?” Barker asked, peering at it.
“Twenty tons.”
“Right . . .” He decided he’d seen enough. “All right, looks good.” As he turned to descend, Josh slipped on the metal gate for a second and bumped him, then grabbed his arm to keep from knocking him off. Barker stumbled back and knocked into Myron, who dropped his clipboard while fighting for balance. The papers blew around. Artie and Myron chased them.
“Oops, sorry . . .” Josh said.
Liam too reached up to support Barker’s back. “Careful!”
Barker regained his balance. “I’m fine,” he said, defensively, then shouted at Myron: “Come on, quit fooling around,” as he headed back to the front, Artie trotting behind him. Barker told him to lift the entry barrier while Myron reorganized the clipboard.
“Here’s your authorization and delivery location,” he said, handing Liam back the stack of papers and circling something with a pen. “I marked it on this map.”
“Thanks very much.” Liam hopped back in the cab while Josh locked up, then climbed back into his seat. Liam lifted the ramp. Meanwhile, the barrier rose and Barker, having regained his authority, stiffly waved them through. Josh pulled two small earpieces from the glove box and handed one to Liam while fitting the other in his ear. He spoke into the tiny mic.
“We’re in. You copy?”
“Loud and clear,” Juno’s voice replied.
While Liam followed the map, Josh removed a small panel that had been cut into the rear of the cab, then reached through and knocked on the wall of the trailer. Juno slid a panel open from the other side, inside the body of the truck.
“Here you go . . .” Josh said and he passed him back the handheld scanner that he’d lifted from the guard.
Inside the trailer, Juno plugged the handheld into his laptop and began to search for the location of the Wildwater canister while Joe and Yelena moved the cubes of fertilizer. They had nowhere near twenty tons. There was just a single layer of large cubes, stacked like bricks, blocking off the rear doors, and now they shifted them aside.
“You find it?” Joe asked Juno.
“Looking, looking . . . Wildwater Corp, one canister, landed at four A.M., from Kabul via Frankfurt. Unloaded at five A.M. Here it is . . .” He spoke into his mic.
“Liam, I found it. I’m sending the location.”
“Great,” Liam answered. “I’ll look for a quiet spot to unload.”
The location of the container appeared on the truck’s GPS and Josh told Liam to keep going straight, while he stuffed the paperwork from the guardhouse into the glove box. Even with the map they’d been given it was confusing: like a maze built of shipping containers, stacked several stories high and sprawling out for acres, with no one in sight but the occasional worker on a forklift shifting one in or out, or another truck looking to load or unload. Now they followed Juno’s digital map, which led them like a red string through the labyrinth. Then Josh spotted a shed that looked like it housed unused forklifts.
“There,” he told Liam. “Pull up alongside it.”
“Right,” Liam said, and backed in, so that the rear of his truck was hidden in the shade of the shed. Stacks of containers shielded the other sides.
“We found a spot,” Josh said over his mic. “Get ready.” Then he jumped down and came around the back while Liam lowered the gate, keeping an eye out the whole time. In the back, Josh took another quick look around too, then unlocked the door and pushed it up. The fertilizer wall had been cleared, revealing the interior, and Josh waved while backing down the ramp. Slowly, the Jeep rolled out of the truck and down the ramp. Joe was behind the wheel, clean-shaven and in an Army major’s uniform, with a standard issue sidearm and his hair neat under the hat. Yelena, also in a uniform, sat beside him, cradling an army issue M-1. A German shepherd in a military harness and leash lay resting on the back seat.
Josh saluted as they drove past.
28
FOR CASH, WAKING UP so damn early was the hardest part of the day, or so he thought. Still he was there, at the salt depot on the West Side when Joe said to be, and at least Joe brought everyone coffee. That’s the mark of a true leader. After they got the truck squared away, with the Jeep on board and a little desk set up for Juno, he helped Liam and Josh build the wall of—he was happy to know—hermetically sealed manure and then trailed them to Jersey. When they reached the outlet road for the depot, Liam and Josh got on line behind a row of trucks, pick-ups, and other vehicles waiting for entrance, including a number of ordinary passenger cars, couriers and such, as well as a few military vehicles, green trucks on giant tires, a Humvee. Another line slowly pulled out from the exit. There was a guardhouse with gates, and a chain-link fence enclosing the whole gigantic place, like a super-sized Lego-town built of brightly colored rectangles. Beyond that were the Jersey wetlands, miles of swamp and weeds, with chemical plants firing on the horizon, planes coming and going from the airport.
Cash pulled over. The whole road leading to the entrance was lined with parked trucks and cars, mostly long-haul truckers waiting for something to arrive or be cleared for pickup. Some had been there all night, with the drivers asleep in the cabs. Now a few stretched their legs and smoked. A couple of livery drivers were taking naps between airport runs. Cash slid into a spot that gave him a nice view of the entrance, said “in position” over his mic, and settled in, watching as the truck got through, no problem, and not really expecting much of anything else to happen until it came back out. And for a while nothing did. He sat back and snoozed.
Donna hadn’t planned on going to Jersey that morning. She hadn’t even planned on leaving Brooklyn. In fact, if Sergey Popov ran true to form, he wouldn’t even stir till past noon. But there she was, parked down the block from his apartment building, fighting to stay awake in the car—she’d relieved Andy at six—when his black Benz came rolling out of the parking structure with Popov behind the wheel. She followed him onto the Belt and then through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel into Manhattan, where he stopped at a corner in Tribeca to pick up a guy she hadn’t seen before, an athletic-looking young white dude with a blond ponytail. Still it was nothing to get too worked up about. Maybe they were going to hit some golf balls. But the next thing she knew, they’d crossed the Hudson, if driving through a tunnel beneath it counted as crossing, and were heading to I-9 and the outskirts of Newark Airport. She reported in, as a matter of course, letting her office know she was in New Jersey, but when Popov arrived at the freight terminal and pulled over, as if waiting for someone or something, she decided that this might be more than a trip to see his grandma. So she called Blaze. The deputy federal marshal was just getting into her office in Newark and agreed to drive over and provide backup, if Donna would back her up later by being her wing-woman at a new lesbian ba
r she’d been meaning to check out that night. Donna agreed to one drink. Then she settled in, eyes on Popov, whose own eyes seemed to be dozing behind his mirror shades.
29
ARTIE WAS ON THE early shift today, pulling a double, covering for his buddy, who was hooking up with some girl he’d met. Artie didn’t mind. He needed the money, plus Floyd had given him a little thank you gift for the favor: a fat juicy joint of primo bud that he went off in the reeds and smoked between shifts with his other pal, Myron, who was showing up for gate duty that A.M. The weed definitely made the shift go quicker, but it was stronger than he was used to, a special gift after all, and when this MP, Major Somebody, pulled up in a jeep and started talking about a suspected shipment of illegal substances, it was all Artie could do not to freak out.
“Officer,” this MP said as he pulled right up and stopped Artie on his rounds, piloting the three-wheeled cart they gave him to drive. At first he didn’t even know who he meant; Artie was just private security and nobody called him officer or anything fancy like that. His plan had been to do a quick tour of the depot then stop at the vending machines and pick up sodas and snacks for him and Myron.
“I’m Major Ardon,” the MP said, pointing at a name on his uniform, H. Ardon. He looked serious and tough, like Artie’s high school gym coach, and he had a girl, sorry woman, sorry female officer beside him, who was looking straight ahead through her shades, helmet low, and holding a German Shepherd by the leash. “And I need immediate emergency access to this container.”
“Um . . . which . . .” Artie fumbled, flustered and already starting to sweat. He knew he was supposed to call this in, but the Major kept banging on the container. Artie checked: it was marked US MILITARY, described as “Returned and/or Defective Misc,” and Wildwater Corp’s agents were supposed to pick it up today.
“Open her up, pronto,” the major ordered.
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