Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  “You are right to be displeased,” he was told. “It was the chief of police here who told us about your secret corridor from the garage. I would have that deficiency corrected, if I were you.” Hokum sat motionless in his chair.

  “You got cojones, I’ll say that for you, mister,” the man in the flowered shirt continued. “But I also know they’re in your mouth right now . . . yes, I was sent here to check on you, Mr. Van Nuys. My associates and I learned about your apparent association with both Sandra Geffar of the Border Security Force and Hokum, the chief of police here. But imagine my surprise, Mr. Van Nuys, when my informants tell me you are running a million-dollar-a-month smuggling operation. Truly I was shocked, impressed. Importing cocaine right under the lady’s lily white nose.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Now it is you who are lying. That is no way to do business, senor. We know you have managed to fly as much as a hundred kilos a month from Grand Bahama Island right to this place. Senor Hokum here has been most cooperative with us. He has told us how his men have unloaded the drugs just before Customs arrives to inspect your plane, and how he alters the records to hide your money. Ingenious, I must say.”

  Van Nuys gave Hokum a look that amused the man in the flowered shirt. “Do not be angry at Senor Hokum. He has managed to keep your operation a secret from us for all these months even while he was working for us, helping us transport weapons and money into and out of south Florida. At first he was most reluctant to tell us anything about you. We are generous, but it took a surprising amount of money to convince him to talk. After that, however, I must admit he could not have been more cooperative. That was good for him, it kept him alive.”

  “What do you want? Money? Drugs? I don’t have either. Go ahead and kill us—M

  “I have never met a man so willing to die, Senor Van Nuys. A gratifying change. No, as you know by now, what we want from you is information. We want you to tell us everything there is to know about Commander GefiFar, and we would like you to distribute a few of these.” He held out a black plastic case, then tossed it onto the pool table in front of Van Nuys. “Open it.” Van Nuys did and found several items that looked like stick-pins and small thick buttons with thin wires trailing.

  “You want me to bug her house?”

  “Her house, her cars, her office, the Hammerheads platform, everything. Our agents cannot penetrate the Border Security Force’s security screen at this time. But you seem to be in the enviable position of having access—to GefiFar. You are such friends. We would also like you to report any unusual movements, projects, special activities, operations.”

  “You’re crazy. I don’t have that kind of access to her. I see her occasionally, mostly at public events. I haven’t even been on her damned platform.”

  “Then we expect you to turn on your noted charm and get closer to her, Mr. Van Nuys. After all, she is still a woman. If you provide her with companionship and trust, surely even she will let you into her world.” He patted the cellular telephone on the bar. “We will even provide you with a telephone, Mr. Van Nuys—untraceable, unbuggable, and no cost to you. As a businessman you should appreciate this offer.”

  “Offer? What do I get if I go along with you? A bullet in the head?”

  “There you go, so melodramatic, sir. You will find that my employers can be very generous. Ask the chief here. Cooperate, live, and prosper. My employers could always use another shipping and distribution outlet. Even a small one such as yours.” He examined his sunglasses, deliberately put them back on. “My employers are not pleasant with those who disappoint them, or cheat them. You seem to be a man with a good deal to lose, Mr. Van Nuys—nice house, reputation, business. A shame if you were obliged to spend the rest of your life in prison. Perhaps if you asked for death then, someone would be kind enough to give it to you.”

  Van Nuys knew he had no choice. He might avoid prison by going to the Hammerheads or Customs, but how long would he live then? “What if I can’t get you any information? What if she won’t confide in me?”

  “I have more faith in you than that, Mr. Van Nuys.” He stood. “You have a reputation with the ladies—I feel you will want to uphold it. If for some reason you do not, we will be back to visit you. And we will proceed to cut off your balls. We will ruin your career, your reputation, and your sex life all in one visit. And then we will kill you.

  “Now, tell me a story, Mr. Van Nuys. Tell me what you know about this Sandra Geffar.”

  San Diego, California

  The Next Afternoon

  Customs Service Chief Inspector Roger Bolan had to acknowledge the efiFect the Hammerheads were having on his own agency—something he did not like to admit—all the press the Hammerheads were getting, good and bad, caused a surge in applicants for the new agency, and the overflow meant more good men and women for Customs. The resulting manpower made possible increased inspections, which were finding more drugs than ever before. This, in turn, bolstered morale, which made the whole process run more smoothly. Things were snowballing in a very big way—a development even Hardcastle hadn’t anticipated.

  Bolan was the commander of the Port of San Diego CET, or Contraband Enforcement Team. The CET was responsible for finding contraband—narcotics, stolen goods, cash, and any other illegal or non-declared items—in cargo containers or vessels entering the huge port at San Diego. Bolan was a thirty-eight year old fifteen-year veteran of the Customs Service who had taken command of the San Diego CET three years earlier as one of the youngest chief inspectors in the country. The reason why he was placed in command was obvious—he took his job very, very seriously, and he expected all those assigned to him to do the same. As an ex-Army officer, he ran his CET with military-like enthusiasm.

  In the past few months, the number of inspectors assigned to him had nearly doubled, allowing him to do much more with his operation than ever before. Because of his increased manpower, they could inspect more ships in port, and (partly because of the effectiveness of the Hammerheads, something Bolan did not often admit) because of those increased inspections, they were finding more drugs than ever before. Their success in finding huge caches of drugs increased morale, and subsequently increased his manning and increased his detection rate. Things were snowballing, and in a very promising direction.

  Bolan put his feet up on his cluttered but (he told himself) organized desk, shifted the bulk of his .44 Magnum revolver under his left armpit, and looked over a Customs Form 1302, a cargo declaration of an American freighter due in port in a few hours. Bolan was short but wiry, with short brown hair and dark brown eyes. His wife had complained about his moustache and he had shaved it off at her gentle persistence, which only made the CET chief look even younger. Like most of the CET members, who had at one time or another worked the docks and warehouses as inspectors, he had a trim, muscular build from carrying crates and lifting barrels, with thick, veined forearms, big biceps, and thick, powerful thighs. His attention to more mundane desk duties, however, had resulted in the inevitable “executive spread” and spare tire. His wife had already started bugging him about those as well.

  The cargo declaration he read was about thirty pages long, so he grabbed a cup of coffee from the outer office before retaking his position and looking it over. It was a typical “milk run” freighter cargo, with a cargo manifest as varied and unusual as you could get. The freighter, the Maria Star Kelly, the largest freighter of the Kelly Steamship Company of Alameda, California, had made six ports of call in the past three weeks: Valparaiso, Chile, loading tomato products, grape juice, lumber, wine, furniture, and fish; Callao, Peru, loading personal effects, cars, copper wire, and lead shot; Guayaquil, Ecuador, loading glass bottles, balsa wood, coffee, frozen shrimp, and banana puree; Buenaventura, Colombia, loading coffee and automobile tires; Balboa, Panama, loading ceramic bricks, melons, and electronic goods; and Puntarenas, Costa Rica, loading bamboo furniture and ceramic pottery. The Maria Star had all this packed into 5
2 twenty-foot containers resembling the big cargo boxes on interstate tractor-trailer rigs, and 56 forty-foot containers, some refrigerated, all with registered steel seals on the locks with the seal numbers logged onto these manifests.

  The manifest also showed the ship’s master’s name, the date of each port call, the shipper’s name, the consignee’s name, and the NF name, or the person to be notified of the cargo’s arrival if it was to be picked up by an agent. It described the contents of each shipping container, how the goods were packaged, what state they were in (if the tomatoes were whole, crushed, sauce, puree, etc.), if the goods required refrigeration, and the total weight of each container.

  Not long ago, inspecting a freighter like this would be a nightmare. Perishable cargos needed immediate attention—they couldn’t afford to let these shipments sit around on the hot, steamy docks awaiting the next CET team—and the Customs inspectors always had to be careful going through fragile cargo like personal effects, pottery, or glassware. It was risky sending a young kid with a two-ton forklift through a container with two thousand glass bottles—very often, Customs would end up buying thousands of pounds of accidentally destroyed goods on top of the items that were routinely destroyed during most inspections.

  But this type of shipment needed the attention—it fairly cried out for an inspection. There was something about it, something that spelled strike. Bolan and the other CET members called it “getting a hard-on,” when a shipment or freighter just seemed to be suspect. Of course, having ports of call in Peru, Colombia, and Panama- three major cocaine production and distribution nations—only fed those suspicions. Bolan was getting a raging hard-on about the Maria Star.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the harbormaster of the Port of San Diego, a Greek-born bear of a man named Danerkouros. “Hello, Inspector Bolan for Mr. Danerkouros ... Hello, sir, Inspector Bolan. We’ve got a manifest on the Maria Star Kelly due in this morning . . . yes, sir, that s the one . . . you’ve read my mind, Mr. Danerkouros. Dock it at the ‘carnival’ for us, please ... I don’t know when we 11 be done, sir. My manifest shows one hundred and eight containers altogether, which is a lot, and I have no count on how many double-enders they have. I can give you a more accurate estimate about an hour after the Maria pulls in . . . thank you, sir, I appreciate it... no, I don’t know which one will be next. I’ll let you know as soon as I do ... thanks again.” Bolan then finished his coffee, made a few phone calls to his family and to his headquarters downtown, hit the head, then headed for his unit’s small computer center, where he picked up the intelligence report printouts on the Maria Star that had been compiled for him as soon as the Form 1302 had been received by the shipping company. One last cup of coffee, a check of his portable phone, and Bolan headed out the door towards the docks and the area known as the “carnival.”

  The "carnival" was a specialized area of the port that had been created only a few months earlier, as a result of the same funding measures that created the Border Security Force. It had been argued that the Hammerheads would not be involved with more routine narcotics interdiction jobs such as inspecting freighters and aircraft once they arrived at American ports of entry, so the Gustoms Service was provided with much more sophisticated and powerful tools for carrying out inspections of large seaborne cargo shipments such as this. These GAI, or Gargo Automated Inspection systems were installed at several large American ports of entry in the south to allow inspectors to quickly and accurately inspect an entire freighter's cargo in just a matter of hours. Located inside a tall chain-link security fence, the chambers, buildings, container rails, docks, cranes, slides, and transporter arms reminded someone of a cheap amusement park; hence the nickname "carnival"—except at a hundred million dollars a copy, this amusement park was definitely not cheap.

  The place was empty at the moment; the last ship had unloaded its cargo and had been inspected earlier in the day. Bolan went to the operations center at the CAI and met with the inspection team chief, Ed Bartolo. The inspection team chief of each eight-hour shift usually ran all three divisions at the CAI: the inspection, warehouse, and security divisions. “We got another one coming in soon, Ed,” Bolan told the shift chief. “The Maria Star, the South American milk run I told you about.”

  Bartolo nodded and retrieved his copy of the customs declaration form while stuffing the last of his lunch into his mouth. “Yeah,” Bartolo said after studying the Form 1302, except his reply sounded more like a muffled “ughk.” “Figured you’d be sending this one through the carnival. Well, the boys are ready.”

  They found the warehouse and inspection crews in the dining hall eating lunch, so Bolan briefed them as they ate: “We got a good one for you this afternoon, boys and girls,” he began. ‘Maria Star, American registry, six hundred footer. One hundred and eight containers total, fifty-two 20-footers and fifty-six 40-footers. Thirty refrigerated. No count on double-enders.”

  Bolan opened the intelligence printout on the freighter: “This vessel was involved with a very small marijuana smuggling incident three years ago on a run to New Orleans,” he said. “The company and master were not charged, although they did get a hefty fine. No other reports on the company, this vessel, or the master; in general, U.S.-registered vessels are not major targets for smugglers. They know our security is a little tighter and our foreign officials a lot less accessible. This vessel last underwent a complete top-down compartments search nine months ago and a complete cargo inspection six months ago, without the carnival of course, with no hits recorded.

  “Let’s go over its cargo and our actions. Starting from the top of the heap: Empty container goes to ultrasound mapping; see if we have this container’s electronic profile on file in the computer, but map it anyway for a cross-check. Household goods, pottery, and bamboo furniture can go through the sniffer chamber; I have a signed statement from the owners of the military household goods saying that there are no pressurized bottles inside. Fresh fruit have to be hand-checked; we have honey dew melons, tomatoes, and bananas. Watch for tarantulas, guys and gals.” A humorless moan went up from the audience; the hairy spiders were sometimes present in even the best-inspected boxes of fruit, and although they were not deadly and little more than a nuisance, they were not welcome guests.

  “Electronics goods can go through the sniffer,” Bolan continued. "Melons . . . more melons . . . ceramic bricks go through the sniffer, but I want each container random checked if they are not doubledoored.” Double-doored containers had doors at each end, which facilitated inspecting a container. Although shippers were not required to have them, those that did were usually given preferential treatment by Customs, and those who did not retrofit their containers with extra doors usually attracted attention. It was much easier to hide contraband in the old-style containers with a single set of doors, which were exactly the ones that Customs kept an eye out for.

  “Coffee—lots of coffee,” Bolan went on. There were a few “oohs” and aahhs” from the inspection force—there was nothing in the world like the smell of a forty loot container full of Colombian coffee beans, even from those few who didn’t drink coffee. “These can go through the sniffer. We have . . .” Bolan made a quick count of the containers that held sacks of coffee beans, “... twenty-four containers from Colombia with coffee beans. I want at least six of these hand- inspected after they come out of the sniffer.

  “What else? Balsa wood can go in the sniffer. Cigarettes in the sniffer. More coffee beans, Ecuador—sniffer. Frozen shrimp, ten containers: sorry, boys, hand inspect. It says 18 degrees Celsius, so you’ll need parkas and mittens.” More displeased moaning. “Drums of banana puree can get ultrasound. Household effects: aha. A special handling request.” Bolan nodded thoughtfully. Special handling requests were common with dependents of foreign diplomats returning home; they usually brought back expensive items that they wanted protected from damage.

  “What are you going to do, boss?” Bartolo asked.

  Bolan looked at the “special ha
ndling” request again, then shook his head. “I haven’t done a hand inspection in a long time,” he said. “I’ll take this one.”

  That seemed to please a lot of the inspectors in the room—Bolan got a lot of approving nods and sly smiles, happy that their boss treated the big-shot diplomats—and himself—like everyone else. “Well, I’ll help out to make sure you do it right, then, sir,” Bartolo offered.

  “I would’ve insisted on it,” Bolan said with a smile. He continued down the list, assigning each container to a particular area or system in the CAI, then read off a list of Customs briefing notes compiled from reports from around the country, advising inspectors on things to look out for or things that other inspectors had found. He also read off the latest intelligence summaries, outlining any information received by the FBI, DEA, or Border Security on drug shipments or activity.

  “We’ve received an alert on household goods again,” Bolan read off. “Seems we get one of these every other month, but it’s still a popular way to smuggle in small quantities. DEA says to watch out for military and government household goods shipments in particular, since packing jobs for government employees overseas are now being contracted to local moving companies, often the lowest bidders. This means that any smuggling operation can front itself as a moving company and load a shipment down with product relatively easy, during several stages of the moving process. Stay on your toes. The sniffer should catch most jobs, but as we’ve learned, it isn’t foolproof.

  “We’ve received a status briefing from the FBI on narcotics sales nationwide: they’re supposed to be down ten percent from this time last year, with cocaine prices now averaging twenty-three thousand dollars a kilo for street grade. That’s almost a hundred percent more than last year.”

  “This almost sounds like a commodities report on the Financial News Network,” somebody quipped.