Liberation Day

by Dustin Stevens

  “And I get the feeling you’re not just a security guard,” Nio replied, meeting the gaze.

  The three stood for a long moment, watching as the last of those that survived the container disappeared into the night. Once they were gone, Thorn looked down again at his fallen partner before following the trail of water left drying along the pier.

  A few steps down he turned, walking backwards. He hooked a thumb at his chest and said, “Thorn Byrd.”

  “Seriously?” Isabel asked, no small hint of surprise in her voice. “Did your parents hate you or something?

  “Nio,” the man called, cutting things off before Thorn could reply. “Short for Antonio Garcia. And you can call her Iggy.”

  “No he can’t!” Isabel snapped, the sound of a hand hitting flesh sounding out.

  “Iggy it is,” Thorn muttered, shifting to face front, his mind already working on the next steps before him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ling pounded the ball of his fist against the heavy metal door, his ire rising as each knock went unanswered. Above him, he could see the camera angle down and removed the fedora covering his face.

  “It’s me, you idiots, open the damn door.”

  Anger roiling through him, he smashed the hat back down atop his head and knocked twice in succession. He exhaled and waited a full second before knocking a third time.

  The door swung open on cue a moment later.

  Ling burst through with long steps, moving straight down the hall. A beefy guard with dark hair and bushy eyebrows stepped out from the guard room beside the door and said, “Sorry, Ling, you know the...”

  Before he could finish the sentence, Ling snapped a straight left into his mouth, smashing lips against teeth and sending the much larger man toppling backwards.

  “There’s what I think of your rules,” Ling spat and left the man on the floor, headed for Gold’s office without looking back.

  Despite the late hour, the house looked just as it always did. A few servants roamed the halls, each giving him a wide berth, and the interior was well lit. Crossing the open foyer to the stairwell in the corner Ling bounded up, taking the stairs two at a time, and entered to find Gold sitting behind his desk as if expecting him.

  “I take it this visit isn’t a social call?” Gold asked without preamble.

  “No,” Ling replied, the word little more than a hiss.

  “What went wrong?” Gold asked, peering at his employee, getting right to the crux of the matter.

  “Somebody was waiting for us.”

  “Isn’t there always somebody waiting for us?”

  “Yes,” Ling conceded, “but this time was different. It was almost like they knew we were coming and what we were going to do.”

  Gold made a motion for Ling to continue before pulling his hand back and lacing his fingers before him, saying nothing.

  “Two man team,” Ling recounted. “One went right for the container, the other came for me in the crane.”

  “You take care of them?”

  “The one dumb enough to come for me,” Ling said. “Never had a chance at the other.”

  A disapproving look fell over Gold’s features, his lips pursed. “Not like you to leave survivors.”

  “I didn’t think there were any. He surfaced just as I was dragging the others to their feet.”

  “They were on the ground?” Gold asked, his brow furrowed.

  “The first one put them down before he went in after the container,” Ling said, his eyes and voice both lowered.

  Gold accepted the information without comment, nodding slightly. “Have we seen him before?”

  “No,” Ling said.

  “But he’s good?” Gold asked, raising his eyebrows, looking up at Ling expectantly.

  Vitriol boiled within Ling as he stared back, pulling his mouth into a tight line. “He was lucky tonight. Won’t happen again.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Ling knew what Gold was doing, was fighting with everything he could not to let it get to him, but there was little he could do to stop his hatred from flashing.

  “I’m going after him as soon as I leave here,” Ling seethed.

  Gold raised a hand. “If he was just lucky, as you say, then he can wait. Right now our focus is on the meeting in a couple of days.”

  While he did not agree with the answer, Ling chose not to challenge it. “Do we change our approach to the docks at all?”

  A long moment passed as Gold considered the question, tilting the top of his head to the side. “Were you seen?”

  “No,” Ling said. “They’ve put up cameras, but we shot them out before they got a look at us.”

  “Then I see no reason to stop what we’re doing there. You know as well as I that the docks are central to our plans. Without them, the meeting and everything we’ve worked for is useless.”

  Ling could feel the flush of blood pooling into his cheeks as he endured the same lecture he’d heard a hundred times before. Still, he remained silent.

  “And if this meeting is worthless,” Gold continued, “we’re going to anger a lot of people, people much more dangerous than a single dock worker.”

  The last part was no doubt a jab, the heat rising even more on Ling’s face. “Yes, sir.”

  Without waiting for the old man to continue, Ling pivoted on his heel to leave. He passed through the curtain at the top of the stairs and descended, again taking them two at a time. His anger still sat heavy within him, but there was nothing he could do about it for the time being.

  As his foot touched the bottom landing, Gold’s voice called out from above.

  “Ling, do you think we were set up tonight?”

  Ling turned to see Gold sitting atop the staircase, holding the curtain back with the gold-tipped end of his cane. “Set up?”

  Gold leveled a knowing stare at Ling, but said nothing.

  Ling peered back for a moment before the realization of what, or rather who, Gold was referring to set in. He considered it a moment before shaking his head in the negative.

  “Too spur of the moment for a planned setup. Like I said, the kid got lucky.”

  Gold stared a moment longer before putting the wheelchair in reverse and speeding away. The last Ling saw of him was the gold tip of his cane as it disappeared and the heavy curtain swung back into place.

  Chapter Twenty

  A plate of bacon and eggs sat steaming on the counter beside Thorn as he lowered himself into a chair along his elevated bar and began to eat. In front of him was his laptop, the screen already open, a video conference window poised and ready to play. In quick succession he took in three large bites of eggs, handed a slice of bacon to Abby, and dialed Ingram’s number.

  He was still chewing as the image of Ingram came up in front of him, his former coach wearing a dress shirt without a tie, looking fresh.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Thorn said. “Debrief took longer than expected.”

  He made no effort to hide the grouse, or the exhaustion, in his voice.

  “Aw, hell,” Ingram said. “Good first night I take it?”

  Thorn snorted, his head rocking back a bit. “Depends on your definition of good.”

  “Meaning?”

  Thorn had spent the entire ride home trying to determine how to best package the events of the night. In all that time he arrived at the unenviable conclusion that there wasn’t one, nearly everything that had transpired being bad.

  “Meaning on night one, my coworker was killed, along with the better part of a hundred Cuban refugees that were stowed away inside a storage container.”

  He decided to stop there, knowing Ingram would have scads of questions, choosing to let him ask whatever he wanted instead of trying to summarize it all at once.

  For a long moment Ingram stared back at him, a look on his face that displayed he wasn’t quite sure if Thorn was telling him the truth or not. “That’s a hell of a first night’s debrief.”

  “It was a hell of a fir
st night,” Thorn said.

  On the floor beside him Abby let out a low whine, a strong hint that she was finished with her first piece of bacon and ready for more. The same thought passed through Thorn as the aroma of the food wafted up at him, just inches from his fingertips.

  “Were you able to find out anything?” Ingram asked.

  Thorn leaned forward and rested his elbows on the edge of the container, looking into the camera. “Whoever’s behind this has done their homework. They knew our round schedule and knew which container to go for. If it hadn’t been for the crane turning on, we may not have even known they were there.”

  “Crane?” Ingram asked. “Meaning they hooked up a container and dropped it in the harbor?”

  “Yeah,” Thorn said, bobbing his head up and down, a scowl on his features. “A hundred people screaming inside and they tossed it in the water like it was a bath toy.”

  “Damn,” Ingram said, looking up at the ceiling as he thought out loud. “That’s cold. Sounds almost personal.”

  The same thought had occurred to Thorn less than an hour before, though he refrained from saying as much.

  Ingram pursed his lips and thought another moment in silence. “What else?”

  “After it went down, I waited until the refugees cleared out and called Sam King.”

  Ingram flipped open a manila folder on his desk, rifling through sheets of paper until finding what he was looking for and reading from it. ”Sam King, looks to be Turner’s go-to guy on the docks.”

  “Two o’clock in the morning and he was there twenty minutes after I called.”

  “He shake you down any?” Ingram asked.

  “No, but he had no reason to,” Thorn said. “The scene confirmed everything I told him. After that, he made a few calls, brought in a crew to clean things up.”

  “Any idea who he called?”

  “Naw,” Thorn said, shaking his head. “I heard him mention the Cubans, but I didn’t get a name.”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know there.”

  Thorn nodded, but said nothing.

  “So what’s the next move?” Ingram asked.

  “I’m on again at eight tonight,” Thorn said, a sigh rolling out with the information.

  Ingram raised his eyebrows and said, “You really think they’ll come back tonight?”

  “Tonight? Not a chance, but it’ll give me time to figure out if those cameras actually saw anything and, if so, get a copy of the tapes.”

  Ingram wrote the note down, scribbling on the pad in front of him. “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not. There wasn’t a light on a single one and the few that had wires running from them weren’t attached to anything.”

  ”Anything else?” Ingram asked, finishing his notation and looking up expectantly.

  “I’m going to need some things from you.”

  “Name it.”

  From this point on, Thorn was going purely on speculation. He had nothing more than a couple of conversations with Ingram in terms of knowing what his new employer had for capabilities, but it was time to start testing the boundaries.

  “I need a few fiber optic cameras,” Thorn opened. ”Something small, inconspicuous.”

  If there was any surprise from Ingram at the request, he didn’t let it show. “Okay.”

  “Also,” Thorn said, watching close for any reaction from his boss. He was just a few days into the job and knew he might already be pushing his luck. “We know these guys are targeting two things, and I don’t feel good using people as bait.”

  “You’re going to need some cars,” Ingram said, connecting the dots, jumping straight to the conclusion.

  “Just enough to fill one container. A few muscle cars, a foreign job or two with flashy paint, I’m sure we’ve got a database somewhere of what’s hot right now.”

  “We do,” Ingram confirmed. “How are you going to leak the word that they’re coming in? I can put them on a boat, but that doesn’t mean anybody will know about it.”

  “Already working on it.”

  Ingram finished jotting down the request. “When do you need this stuff?”

  “Maybe tomorrow on both?”

  Raising his wrist, Ingram pushed back the sleeve on his shirt, checking the time. “Should be doable.”

  “Alright,” Thorn said, bringing his hands together in front of him, a slight clap sounding out. “That should do it.”

  “Good work on your first day,” Ingram said, already moving about on the other side of the camera, heading off to fill the requests he’d just been given. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Thanks, Coach. Later,” Thorn said, slamming the laptop shut. He paused a moment, his hands still flat on top of it, before shifting his attention to the meal fast growing cold beside him.

  “What do you say, Abby,” he said, turning to look down at the floor, his dog still in the same spot, staring hopefully up at him. “We finish eating and then hit the hay?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nine blocks from the docks, Iggy had rented a single room in a cheap hotel. Close enough to swing by whenever she needed to, it also was just far enough away to allow ample time to watch for a tail upon returning.

  At half past eight o’clock, she and Nio together stepped out of their room and down to the street. Darkness began to descend on the city as they went for a stroll, Iggy’s hand looped into the crook of Nio’s arm, just another young couple without a care in the world. They maintained the pose for over twenty minutes, working their way towards the docks in the most circuitous route they could manage without being noticed.

  An ambient glow rose from the city as the last of the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. Once it was gone, they looped their way towards the dock, avoiding the guardhouse on the far end, concentrating their efforts on the cluster of buildings sitting a half mile away.

  The sum total of Iggy’s efforts the previous nights had yielded her a fair bit of information. Her first evening had rendered a pretty decent layout of the small structures grouped tight. The next two she had managed to sweet talk a pair of bumbling oafs into revealing far more than they should have.

  The result was a hand-drawn map she had made from memory and the strong supposition that the feeds for the cameras she saw stuck at various locations were housed in one of two buildings. Both small and nondescript, they were tucked away in a remote corner, virtually out of sight from the main thruway.

  Identical in construction, each was made of wood with plain glass windows on either side of the front door. Like every building on the dock, they were neat and in good repair, if not a little aged.

  “You take one, I’ll take one?” Iggy suggested, pulling her hand free from her brother’s arm as they approached.

  “No,” Nio said, shaking his head as they ducked behind a dumpster overlooking the buildings, the scent of day old produce finding their nostrils. “One of us needs to stand watch. You stay outside and I’ll go in.”

  “You’re seriously trying to play the tough guy card on me?” Iggy seethed, her brow pinching inward. “I’m the little lady who cries help and you’re the gallant knight on his white horse?”

  “Knights and little ladies?” Nio asked, his face contorted in surprise as he twisted to look over at her. “And who the hell said anything about a horse?”

  “You know what I mean,” Iggy snapped. “We’ll go one at a time while the other stands watch.”

  For the sake of time and maintaining their cover Nio let the directive pass, avoiding the same conversation that had played out with them for years, always ending the same way. Instead he circled towards the first building, Iggy on his heels. He waited as she positioned herself, giving him a small wave once she was tucked away with a clear vantage of their surroundings.

  The plan, as thin as it may be, was for them to gain access to the data stored from the cameras and use it to determine if their father did in fact arrive in Boston. Using Nio’s journey as a barometer, they
had a rough idea of when their father left and how long the trip took, knowing to start a few days before, checking only the hours of dusk until dawn.

  The hope was to find out definitively if their father had passed, and if so, who was responsible.

  Nio started with the front door, determining it as expected to be locked tight, the same for the windows on either side of it. Slipping around to the far end of the building, he found one cracked just a half inch and wedged his fingers under it, the aging paint grunting in protest as he slid it upward.

  Once it was open just over a foot, Nio ducked his head around the front of the building and asked, “All clear?”

  “For now, but if anybody’s close they definitely heard that racket you were making.”

  Nio didn’t bother to respond, instead sliding his head and shoulders through the window and scanning the room in both directions. In it was a standard office set-up, replete with a desk, file cabinet, ancient computer, and a couple of office chairs.

  Pulling himself through, he went straight for the filing cabinet and rifled through it. Heavy manila folders stuffed with purchase orders and receipts filled the drawers, but nothing of any value.

  The thought of trying the computer crossed his mind, but it appeared far too old to serve as the repository for the cameras, not worth risking the lights or noise of turning on. Instead, he opened the office door and stepped into the foyer.

  The door of the second office stood slightly ajar as he pressed his back against the wall alongside it and nudged it open. The iron hinges of the door creaked as it inched back, going just far enough to allow him to squeeze through.

  The office was a mirror copy of the first, furnished in the same way and housing more outdated equipment. The only difference was a small collection of personal photos atop the desk that showed a plump woman with red hair and two small girls that looked exactly like her. Nio shook his head in sympathy for the poor man that went home to that every night, and again dug through the filing cabinet. The result was more of the same banal paperwork and four minutes after entering, he slid out through the window and pushed it back down into place.