Fernando.
“What the hell is he doing there?” Gibson asked.
“Don’t know. He was at the beach too.”
That meant something. Gibson didn’t know what, though. Before today, Fernando would never have been allowed anywhere near the shipments. Either they had been misled from the beginning or else things were changing in the Alves organization. Maybe the murders of Silva and Peres had created a job opening.
“Can we hear what they’re saying?” Hendricks said.
“Oh, right.” Gibson had forgotten he had audio and tabbed up the volume on the microphones. It was indistinct, but they could just about make out the conversation happening around the desk.
“Where are they?” Baltasar asked.
Gibson didn’t get why they were speaking in English until he realized that Baltasar didn’t want to be understood by his own men.
“They’ll be here,” Fernando said. “Gibson would do anything for Jenn.”
“I thought she was Sebastião’s woman,” Baltasar said, checking his watch again.
“Yes, but Gibson carries a torch. You can hear it the way he talks about her. It’s in his voice even when he doesn’t mean it to be,” Fernando said. “He’ll show.”
“Cabrão,” Baltasar said, causing Anibal to snort in agreement.
Gibson didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Luisa?” Baltasar asked.
“Nothing yet,” Anibal said.
“I want her found and brought to me.”
Anibal and Fernando both agreed.
“I mean it,” Baltasar said. “Nothing happens to her until I talk to her face-to-face.”
“Where is Luisa?” Gibson asked, muting the laptop. She didn’t seem like someone who should go unaccounted for.
“Good damn question. She wasn’t at the beach either. Jenn said she was taking men to Quarteira to deal with the Romanians.”
“Sounds like she’s fallen out of favor in the meantime.”
“One less we have to reckon with, then,” Hendricks said. “Frankly, she scares me more than those other three put together.”
They counted only five armed men in the Fresco Mar warehouse. That didn’t mean there weren’t more, but that was all they could see. Gibson held out hope that, with everything that had happened, Baltasar had spread himself too thin. Luisa would have taken their best to confront the Romanians. Perhaps that had left Baltasar vulnerable. Not that they were shooting their way out. Even if they had guns, which they didn’t.
Gibson watched Fernando on-screen for another minute. From the moment the Alves scion had met him on the beach yesterday morning, Gibson had felt that he was seeing only about half the picture. So far, he’d made the best decisions he could, but seeing Jenn and George in harm’s way, he worried that it was the wrong half.
Driving alongside the chain-link fence outside Fresco Mar, Gibson didn’t see any signs of life. Under the relentless sun, the facility looked like the bleached bones of an animal long dead. Hendricks turned in at the gate and stopped. A solitary man squatted on a milk crate in the shade of the guardhouse. He stood as they pulled up and crushed a cigarette under his heel. Unarmed so far as Gibson could tell, the man had the kind of gentle, open face that you would trust to watch your kids. He was about as intimidating as a shih tzu. That he had been posted here, weaponless, was a sign of how little Baltasar feared them. The man opened Hendricks’s door like a valet and motioned that he intended to search them.
“Like hell. I’m not armed,” Hendricks said without moving.
Apologetically, the man shrugged that he didn’t understand and gestured again for them to exit the vehicle. Hendricks still didn’t move. Gibson shook him gently by the shoulder. It was hard to tell when something would rub Hendricks wrong, and once he dug in his heels there was no moving him.
“We don’t have time for this,” Gibson said.
Hendricks grunted.
Gibson got out of the car and raised his arms to allow the man to pat him down. Hoping to set a good example. Gibson gave him his messenger bag to search. To make it simpler, the man took out the laptop and handed it back to Gibson without a second glance. No one ever thought of computers as dangerous until they’d been attacked by one. Gibson intended to remind everyone exactly how foolish that was.
Grudgingly, Hendricks followed Gibson’s lead and got out of the car too. The retired cop looked none too happy at being frisked. “You know you missed about three different places I could have a small pistol?” Hendricks asked pleasantly. “Fucking amateurs.”
When the man was satisfied that neither Hendricks nor Gibson were concealing bazookas, he pointed toward the warehouse and made it clear that they’d be walking from here.
“In this heat?” Hendricks said. “That ain’t even Christian.”
The man gave Hendricks a blankly agreeable smile and held out a hand for the keys.
“All right, but I just gassed her up, and I know the mileage, so no joyrides, youngster,” Hendricks said.
Gibson and Hendricks squeezed around the gate and set out across the dusty lot toward the back of the warehouse. The sun high in the cloudless sky, scorching everything it touched. It had to be a hundred degrees. Gibson was sweating after thirty feet.
“At least it’s a dry heat,” Gibson said.
“Shut the hell up.”
They circled the corner of the main building. Against the back fence, a row of vehicles was parked so as not to be visible from the road. A motley assortment of old trucks, cars, and even a few motorbikes. They hadn’t been there yesterday.
“What’s that all about?” Gibson said.
“That’s about Baltasar planning on getting his drugs back,” Hendricks said. “They’ll break the shipment down and pack it into the vehicles and send it north. Same game they play at the Mexican border. Nice thing about the European Union, though, is that once you’re in, you’re in everywhere. But to be safe, Baltasar will spread the shipment out among all these vehicles so there’s no chance of losing the whole thing to one overzealous customs official.”
“That’s good,” Gibson said.
“How you figure?”
“We still have something he wants.”
“Yeah, same thing we had down at the beach,” Hendricks reminded him.
And there was the bottom line. The deal George had offered to Baltasar Alves should have been an easy one to strike. Instead, here they were walking into a hostage situation that should never have happened. It only emphasized that Baltasar Alves and his organization were in chaos—Silva and Peres dead, Luisa missing. How realistic was it to think Gibson or Hendricks could negotiate with Baltasar where George had already tried and failed? Gibson saw the faces of the children who had been sold into slavery. He saw the face of Kamal, hopeful and kind, smiling for the camera. How many had gone before him? How many would follow if it wasn’t stopped now? Gibson’s anger, which had been smoldering, caught and roared back into flames. Baltasar would see reason or he would die. Gibson was done playing nice.
Hendricks read his mind again. “It comes down to it, blow the shipment.”
“Even if we’re in the blast radius?”
“Even if,” Hendricks said. “But do me a favor, yeah?”
“Name it.”
“Make it count for something. Let’s get those kids free first.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Anibal came strolling down the ramp from the loading dock like a man without a care in the world. Hendricks stopped to let him come to them. A peculiar casualness seemed to have fallen over the day, as if admitting the previous urgency on both sides was tantamount to disaster. It seemed pointless gamesmanship to Gibson, but he waited with Hendricks. Still, he wondered, if Alves’s people were going to posture, couldn’t they at least do it in the shade?
“Enjoy the sunshine,” Hendricks said with typical clairvoyance. “It might be our last.”
“You are King Pep Talk, you
know that?”
It made Gibson uneasy to see Anibal alone and unarmed. But glancing up, he spotted two black rifle barrels poking out from among the white air handlers on the roof. For whatever reason, that settled him. That he was in trouble was a given; all Gibson wanted now was to be able to anticipate from what direction that trouble would come.
The flat brim of Anibal’s sombrero shaded his eyes, but when he tilted his head up, Gibson saw how weary he looked. No one had seen much sleep since this thing had begun. Another factor that decreased the odds of a peaceful resolution.
“Been a long couple of days,” Hendricks said.
Anibal grunted in agreement and told them to turn around. He frisked Hendricks despite his protestations.
“We went through this out at the gate,” Hendricks said, hands above his head. “What you think? I stumbled over a Glock on the walk over here?”
Anibal, unswayed, took a knee and searched Hendricks’s legs. Thoroughly. “Did I miss three places too?” he asked when he finished, making the point that he’d been listening over an open radio.
“No,” Hendricks conceded, readjusting his pants. “Think you found one or two I didn’t know I had.”
Anibal smiled at that, then searched Gibson. He took the messenger bag and rifled through it. When satisfied, he slung the bag over his own shoulder as if doing Gibson a favor. That sparked a moment of frustration that Gibson hoped didn’t show. Anibal couldn’t know how badly he needed the laptop. For now, having it in Anibal’s possession worked to Gibson’s advantage, psychologically. If Baltasar wanted the shipment disarmed, then he would have to choose to return the laptop. That appearance of choice would give Baltasar the illusion of control, and the illusion of control had a funny way of lowering one’s guard. Gibson would only need an inch or two.
They followed Anibal up the stairs to the top of the loading dock, where the retractable door rolled open like it was hungry and could smell dinner. Two guards stepped out of the gloom to greet them, hands on the pistol grips of their bullpup compact rifles. Gibson recognized them from the video feed. Including the guy at the front gate and the two on the roof, that made at least eight. The odds of getting out of here alive kept sliding in the wrong direction. The two guards ushered everyone inside, and one of them pressed a button set into the wall. The door rumbled ominously closed, and that sense of being swallowed whole redoubled.
“This way,” Anibal said, as if there was anywhere else for them to go. It wasn’t a long corridor, but he kept glancing back to reassure himself that they were still following. The guards fell in behind but left a buffer in case Gibson or Hendricks decided to try anything. Gibson thought that was giving them entirely too much credit.
Emerging into the warehouse, they took their bearings. Not much had changed from the video feed. There were still five guards; Baltasar was still holding court at the security desk; and Jenn and George still sat on the floor by the edge of the circle. Hendricks took a few tentative steps in that direction, but the guards barred the way and funneled them toward the desk. Jenn caught Gibson’s eye and mouthed something to him. He didn’t catch it the first time, so she repeated it, slowly this time: “Fer-nan-do.” Beside her, George brought his chin down with the finality of a judge’s gavel. The implication was plain, but it was hard for Gibson to wrap his head around. Fernando, not Baltasar? Could that even be possible? Gibson suddenly became aware of how unnaturally still it felt in the warehouse. The refrigeration had been shut off. His footfalls echoed cavernously in his ears.
Cocooned in a thick white coat, Baltasar offered them seats across the desk. Gibson sat; Hendricks stood—stubborn streak at eleven. At a sign from Anibal, one of the guards forced Hendricks down into the seat. Baltasar sipped from a coffee cup balanced on a saucer. It all seemed so civilized. Gibson wondered if he should have printed out his résumé. Anibal put Gibson’s messenger bag next to the desk where Fernando was leaning. Fernando seemed otherwise engaged and was slow to look Gibson’s way, but when he did, his familiar, cocksure smile played on his lips.
“Gibson,” Fernando said. “I looked for you at the beach this morning.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t up for a run. Did you find your car okay?” Gibson looked for any hint in Fernando’s eyes of what Jenn and George were trying to say about him. He saw nothing.
“I did, thank you. I don’t have much reason to visit Alcantarilha ordinarily. We were sorry to miss you there.”
“So, I thought you didn’t have anything to do with all this,” Gibson said. “Or was that just bullshit?”
“Amusingly,” Fernando said, “I was about to ask you the same question.”
“Enough,” Baltasar rumbled. “It appears I should have been talking to you from the beginning, Gibson. Am I saying that right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Or perhaps I have been? Perhaps there never were any hijackers? How do I know you four haven’t been behind this from the beginning?”
Gibson chuckled at the preposterousness of the idea. “Mr. Alves, with all due respect, if we had the resources to do that . . .” He pointed at the mountain of drugs behind him. “Do you think we’d have let you take George and Jenn?”
Baltasar acknowledged the point with a grumbling sound. “I’m told you control my shipment. What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means your noon deadline is off. You’re welcome, by the way. But if you or your people go anywhere near it, it’s going to rain heroin for twenty miles.”
Baltasar grunted at the threat. “If you were able to take control of it, what’s to stop me from having someone else do the same?”
“Time,” Hendricks said. “You don’t have any.”
“And how do I know you control the shipment? This could all be an elaborate deception.”
“What time do you have?” Gibson asked.
“Five of,” Anibal said. He’d taken off his watch and stood beside Baltasar, nervously watching the second hand orbit the dial. Gibson smirked. Only guys over a certain age used a watch when they wanted to know the time.
“You’ll know in six minutes when we’re not all on fire,” Gibson said. “Or we can go wait outside if that would make you feel safer.”
They sat there in silence as time ticked by, reading each other over the desk. Baltasar’s men had begun drifting toward the exits.
“If it detonates, George and Jenn will take the worst of it,” Baltasar said.
“Not going to detonate.”
Baltasar studied Gibson for any tremor of fear or doubt. Seeing none, he told Anibal to control the men. Anibal barked orders and gestured for them to return. There was a pause. A moment’s flickering indecision when Gibson thought the men would bolt. It would only take one to start a stampede. Gibson prayed, but it wasn’t to be. The men still feared their boss more than a quick death, but none took his eyes off the shipment. They looked like villagers on a tiny island gazing up at a volcano threatening to erupt.
“Three minutes,” Anibal announced.
“Then we will wait and we will see,” Baltasar said.
“Can I get some coffee while we wait?” Hendricks asked. He didn’t seem overly surprised when no one offered him any.
The minutes dragged by.
Anibal kept a steely eye on his men. Baltasar and Fernando switched into rapid-fire Portuguese, and Gibson regretted again how careless he’d been these past few months not to learn the language. Not that he’d be able to keep up, but at least he wouldn’t feel like such an American.
When Anibal called out the last minute, Baltasar and Fernando went silent. Baltasar’s knuckles were white on the armrests of his chair. Even Fernando’s practiced nonchalance looked in jeopardy; Gibson caught his eye and winked at him. Fernando colored ever so slightly and sneered back. It was childish, but Gibson needed the morale boost. Besides, it felt good for once to be more certain of a situation than his dapper friend.
As the clock ticked down, Gibson half expected Hendricks to begin counting down from ten like an MC at a
New Year’s Eve party. The retired detective loved nothing so much as an excuse to twist the knife if he thought you were an asshole. But Hendricks had turned still and serious too. That irked Gibson—he was wrong about a lot of things, but when was the last time he’d gotten a hack wrong? He cuffed Hendricks on the leg and mouthed the words “What the hell?”
“That’s it,” Anibal said, the relief clear in his voice. “It is the afternoon.”
Baltasar relaxed visibly. Gibson turned in his chair and gave George and Jenn a thumbs-up. Neither looked overly reassured.
“Satisfied?” Gibson asked.
Fernando didn’t look satisfied. “I think it was already deactivated and this is all for show.”
“Take a walk and find out,” Gibson said.
Fernando did not take him up on the suggestion.
Baltasar cleared his throat. “To answer your question, I will be satisfied when the explosives are disarmed. Not before. Now, do I need to make threats or will you see reason where your friends have not?”
Before Gibson could reply, the radio at Anibal’s hip squawked. Baltasar glared at it for interrupting his negotiations. With an apology, Anibal walked away and put it to his ear. The warehouse appeared to be playing havoc with the signal. He asked for the message to be repeated and moved toward the exit, trying to improve the signal, but it only seemed to make it worse.
From the corridor, a rumble of motors filled the warehouse. The loading dock door was opening again. Anibal snapped his fingers twice, and two of the guards sprinted up the corridor to see what was happening. Anibal must have found a pocket of clear air, because he told the voice at the other end to repeat the message.
Gibson only made out one word—“Luisa.”
Luisa Mata was here.
The warehouse descended into chaos. Judging by the reaction, her arrival had not been on the menu. Baltasar was up and on his feet, red-faced, demanding answers no one seemed to have. Meanwhile, Anibal attempted to marshal and organize the men, who didn’t look happy about what they were being ordered to do. Gibson didn’t get the impression Luisa was being welcomed back with open arms. Fernando, on the other hand, had gone absolutely white, as if he’d been hung on a hook to bleed out. It was so out of character that Gibson couldn’t take his eyes off him. Fernando glanced his way, but this time there was no sly smile, no arrogance. Only fear.
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