When Cameron sat down, Mei pulled out the ear buds. “Hi.”
“I can’t believe you can think with all the noise.”
“You get used to it. I’m not always working when I’m here.” She laughed at herself. “Yes, I am. Anyway, I have my Black Crowes,” she added, touching her ear buds. “You have the jump drive?”
Cameron handed it over, and Mei slid it into the side of her computer without looking. While Mei worked, Cameron watched the crowd. She politely declined the waiter’s offer of wine, while Mei ordered another. Occasionally, Mei reached over for a piece of cheese or bread, or took a sip of wine. The rest of the time her fingers flew across the keyboard like a concert pianist.
It was only a few minutes before she said, “I’ve got three of them. There’s some serious encryption on these last ones. It’s called Blowfish and I’ll need a few computers to break it.” Mei pushed the computer back so Cameron could see the screen.
“What’s on the three you can open?”
“Let’s take a look.” Mei double-clicked on one and a spreadsheet loaded. The first column was a list that had to be people’s names, first initial and last name.
Mei lifted her wine glass and was about to take a sip. “Whoa. Look at those names.”
Cameron saw it, too. The list started with L. Chervoniy, V. Lavrinenko, K. Novacek, R. Mahno… The surnames went on like that: Chaloupka, Juhno, Grabar, Popescu, Goncharenko, Moraru, Janak, Pesek. “Eastern European.”
“Definitely,” Mei agreed.
“It has to be the names of the women being trafficked.”
Mei said nothing to that. Instead, she pointed across the columns. “These must be dates.”
“Right. The date they were trafficked. The next column is the amount they owed or maybe what they’ve earned.”
“I’d wager it’s their debt. I can’t imagine these guys keep accounting like this on earnings.”
“Maybe not.” Cameron pointed to the last column. “What about this?”
“Some kind of code,” Mei said. “Alpha numeric, not dates. Maybe states? A lot of these are C’s. California? Maybe the numbers are partial zip codes.”
“What about the other files?”
Mei closed out the spreadsheet and opened another. It filled the screen. Cameron scanned a list of dates and dollar amounts.
After a moment, Mei whistled.
“What?”
She clicked through a series of sheets in the file. “This looks like a gambling ledger.” She leaned in. “See how each page has a code in the top left corner? That’s the gambler’s code. Each page represents a different gambler.” She scrolled right and displayed the line of tabs. “There are easily eighty or ninety.”
“But, what makes you think it’s gambling? Could be anything.”
Mei clicked back to the first page. “We had a case like this in Chicago. These are obviously dates, and dollars.” She clicked to the red and black numbers, “Winnings and losses. This last column, though. See these words.”
“Shanghai, High Chicago, Queen, Texas. What are those?”
“Those are types of poker,” Mei said.
Cameron had no idea how poker fit into the trafficking. “Are there any other files?”
“One more.” Mei opened a third spreadsheet.
It was a list of dates and locations.
“Sea Here Darling, Pesce King—what are those?”
“Boats,” Cameron said, feeling her pulse pick up. “Boats bringing in the women, I bet.”
“Most are in the past,” Mei commented, pointing to the dates.
“But that one is tomorrow,” Cameron said, pointing to the Pesce King.
“That’s right.” She typed in a side bar. “Pesce is fish in Italian.”
“I doubt these guys are Italian,” Cameron said, getting antsy. “Anything else we can open?”
Mei shook her head. “Not yet.” She pulled the jump drive out and handed it back to Cameron.
“You don’t need to keep it?”
“I copied the unlocked ones onto the jump drive for you and duplicated the encrypted ones onto my drive,” Mei said. “I’ll get to work on them as soon as I get into the lab.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Mei closed her laptop and picked up her wine glass.
“You stay till they close?”
“No. I should be going before my aunt calls my mother.” She sighed. “I need to find an apartment. Know anyone?”
“Actually, I do. Call Nicole Kennedy. She has a real estate company under her name.”
“Thanks,” Mei said.
Cameron nodded to the computer. “How long does it take to break the encryption?”
Mei paused. “It depends. A few hours to a few days.”
Cameron tried to hide her disappointment.
“I’ll work as fast as I can.”
Cameron thanked her and walked back through the buzzing crowd. Instead of answers, she had more questions. Like, how the hell did a poker ledger fit in to a trafficking ring?
Chapter 33
Wednesday morning, Cameron woke early. She’d spent a lot of the night trying to figure out how she’d get the team to South San Francisco at four o’clock. A lot of it depended on what was on the schedule for today. If they had a recon going on or were called into a hostage situation, that boat might slip through her fingers.
Cameron didn’t meet Lavick’s eye in the morning meeting and pretended instead to be taking notes while he spoke. Holding his clipboard, he started into the day’s assignments. Recon on a potential armed robbery gang holed up in a warehouse in Hayes Valley. “Lau, you and Kessler are lead on that.” Cameron wrote that down to have something to do. “Daley, Ahrens has requested your help for the day.”
To that, Cameron looked up. Daley was the worst misogynist of the group, and it was hard to imagine Captain Ahrens selecting to work with him on anything. Daley acted surprised, so maybe it was some sort of grunt detail. He didn’t appear disappointed either, and the news didn’t seem surprising to anyone else.
“Paules and Zagrafis, you two are joining Homicide on an early morning shoot out in Dog Patch.” Lavick glanced up at the remaining officers. “The rest of you are on open patrol.” When they weren’t on a specific assignment, the Special Ops officers spent a good portion of their time roaming San Francisco as extra support for the patrol cops. They did everything from picking up parolees at large, to arrests and outstanding warrants, to enforcing traffic violations. Unlike regular patrol cops, though, they weren’t tied to a particular area of the city. The Special Ops officers could respond to any call, so they tended to stay close to high-crime areas. They were rarely lacking for action.
Cameron and Ballestrini responded to a high-speed chase, an armed robbery at the San Francisco Jewelry Mart, and a rather nasty domestic call before taking a late lunch close to the Bryant Street Station. Ballestrini was in good spirits, talking about taking the family to see Rock of Ages at the Orpheum over the weekend. He was singing “Juke Box Hero” for most of the morning. At least it was a break from Les Miserables and Grease. One of his kids was applying to college, and he went on and on about which schools she was looking at and how his wife was going to take a little tour of some state schools with both kids. “They’re only eighteen months apart. Might as well kill two birds, you know?”
Cameron tried to imagine what her life would be like when Nate was old enough to visit colleges. It didn’t seem possible. By two thirty, things had slowed down a little. Ballestrini stopped for coffee. Cameron pretended to have a phone call, psyching herself up to lie to his face.
When he got back in the car with a steaming cup, he was humming “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
She lowered the phone. “We’ve got a lead on a boat coming in.”
Ballestrini frowned. “A lead from who?”
“Didn’t give her name. A woman with a heavy accent—could have been Eastern European.”
“She called your ph
one?”
Cameron nodded without answering. It was easier to lie if she didn’t have to do it out loud.
“How’d she get your number?”
That was a great question. “I don’t know, but she sounded legit.”
Ballestrini pulled out his own phone and stared at it like he should have gotten the same call. “How would she have gotten that information?”
“Maybe she overheard someone talking.”
He hesitated.
She tried to push him over the edge. “She gave me the name of the vessel—Pesce King. P-E-S-C-E.”
He looked at her. “She spelled it out for you?”
Cameron stopped herself. “I’m guessing on the spelling.”
“What is it? French?”
“Italian,” she said. “For fish, I think.” With a name like Ballestrini, it seemed like he might have known. But Ballestrini was about as Italian as Chef Boyardee.
He gestured to the clock on the dash. “We should check in.”
That was the last thing she wanted. Surely, Lavick would call someone and reroute it. Or what if it wasn’t coming in the first place? Her brothers always took every opportunity to show off. She hoped Ballestrini might do the same.
She took a breath and decided to play his ego. “We probably should. I hate to have Lavick round up the whole team if it’s nothing. But, we can’t handle this on our own. Not when it could turn into something dangerous like the incident with the truck. The sergeant would want to know what we were doing.”
Ballestrini thought about that for a second.
Cameron leaned forward to pick up the radio.
Ballestrini caught her hand and pushed it back. “Maybe we ought to check out the location and all, make sure it’s valid before we call in.”
Cameron replaced the radio on the dash. “You’re probably right,” she said again.
“You want to take a pit stop?” he asked. “Might be our last chance for a while.”
Cameron hated how he was always asking her if she had to use the bathroom, but since Nate’s birth, it was like she always had to go. Cameron got out of the car and hurried toward the coffee shop’s bathroom.
In five minutes, they were on the road. Ballestrini was quiet. Maybe calculating the boost his career would get from single-handedly catching a boat full of smugglers. Cameron’s thoughts were on Diego. From the freeway exit, Cameron directed him toward the water.
“She gave you a street address?”
“She mentioned the UPS trucks. This has to be it,” she lied.
Ballestrini peered around. “We’re about a half hour early, but we’ll need a spot to hide the black and white while we take a closer look.”
They drove to the backside of the UPS building where there was a freight loading area and employee parking.
“This seems like a good spot,” Ballestrini said.
From there, they could walk up a small grassy incline and see the water through a few planted trees. It was a great spot to watch from.
Cameron felt herself tense as Ballestrini parked. He popped the trunk, and they both got out.
Ballestrini put on his heavy vest. Cameron decided it wasn’t a bad idea. Plus, the day was cold, and the wind off the water dropped the air temperature by ten to fifteen degrees. The vest would help keep her warm.
Ballestrini brought out a small black case that held binoculars and pulled the strap around his neck. He pointed to a similar-looking bag that held the camera. Cameron pulled it out of the trunk. They left the heavy weaponry in the car, and Cameron wondered if they’d need it. It would be the first time she’d been in full gear since her return.
The water was choppy and the white caps created a sea of little hats on the surface of the water. Ballestrini handed her the binoculars. “You want to try to find this Pesce King?”
She handed him the camera bag and brought the lenses of the binoculars close together, before pushing them to her nose.
Starting from the northern part of the bay, she scanned the water for boats. There weren’t many. Like the other day in the Berkeley marina, it wasn’t a good day for boating. A number of large tankers crossed the bay, but other boats were few and far between.
The first one she saw was a ferry crossing the bay north of them. She recognized the familiar blue and maroon striped logo on the side and the name Peralta. She and Rosa had ridden that same ferry from Jack London Square into San Francisco when Rosa had first moved to the Bay Area. Nothing else caught her attention, and yet, she couldn’t shake the numbed certainty she felt in her gut. It was coming. This was happening. She sighed, trying to release the tension in her gut.
“It’s early,” Ballestrini said, mistaking her sigh for impatience. “Give it a minute.”
Her muscles grew taut. She couldn’t stay still. She handed over the binoculars and rolled her neck in slow circles. “Can I have the keys for a second?”
“You forget something?”
“I want to see if I brought my notes from the call,” she said, an excuse to walk away if only for a moment.
He lowered the binoculars. “You have notes?”
Shit. “Keys?”
He patted both pockets before digging into his right one, pulling out the key ring, and tossing it to her.
She unlocked the trunk and checked inside. Everything was in its place.
“Call for backup,” Ballestrini shouted. “There’s a boat called the Pesce King moored to a buoy out there, couple hundred yards off. I can’t see anyone on board.”
Her fingers trembling slightly, she lifted the radio and made the call for backup. She hoped whatever was out there offered some evidence for the good guys because they needed some.
Chapter 34
Captain Ahrens and Sergeant Lavick were in meetings at Bryant Street, so the next in charge, Ryan Lau, would pull together the troops. He contacted the Coast Guard for air and water backup and told Cameron to hold tight until they were given direction. Ballestrini kept watch while Cameron radioed with the team and set up a temporary headquarters. The wind had picked up and the skies were darkening. The boat remained anchored some two hundred yards offshore, which seemed odd.
It took over two hours before the team was assembled. Everyone was dressed in raid gear. Lavick arrived shortly behind them to give direction. He made a beeline for Cameron and asked sharp, pointed questions about her source. Cameron lied flatly, offering as little as possible to explain how she and Ballestrini had ended up there. The sergeant digested the story without much expression, but Cameron knew he’d swallowed every detail. She would need to repeat herself more than once over the next few hours or days. Oddly, she didn’t feel tension from him. Maybe it was all a wild goose chase or perhaps she was wrong about Lavick.
The last piece to fall in place was the mode of transit that didn’t look like a police boat. The Coast Guard came through with that. They were able to get approval to use a ferry from the Alameda/Oakland Ferry company. Within the hour, the team was shuttled north to a port out of the view of the boat to be loaded.
Captain Ahrens arrived as they were boarding the Coast Guard boat. She and Lavick stayed behind to man the situation along with four members of ICE while the eight-member Special Ops team and a boat captain boarded the vessel.
“Remember,” Lau started, pumping them up on the trip toward the boat. “Nuts to butts.” His cheeks reddened. “Except you. Just the butt part for you.”
“You love saying that, don’t you?” she retorted, playing the game, although her mind was a million miles away. She thought about Nate. It was her first takedown since his birth. Those wide eyes, that tiny toothless smile. She’d never felt so vulnerable.
Because there was no way to do reconnaissance on the boat, the intelligence group had contacted the manufacturer to obtain the layout. That, in turn, was blown up, and a map of each SWAT member’s course laid out. Each member would move with a partner to cover each other’s backs. Cameron and her partner, Kessler, would take the downsta
irs aft compartment. She would buttonhook the door first while he covered, then he would cross while she covered. She watched Lau go over the plan again and again, until the monotony of repetition made it feel like she’d known it forever.
Lau and Paules would lead. No ram would be needed to get on board, but Lau would carry a weapon loaded with less-than-lethal. If he could, he’d drop the suspects with that. If not, they all had plenty of real ammo.
They checked and double-checked equipment. She had flash bangs on her right thigh, sting balls on her left. Both would be helpful in the lower cabin of a boat. She hoped she’d need neither. She crossed herself with a finger one last time, and thought of Nate and Rosa and Mama and Diego. She added an extra cross for Diego.
“Let’s do it,” Lau called out.
Nuts to butts, it was. The closer together they stayed, the safer they were. From there, they’d split up and search for their suspects based on the plan they’d agreed on beforehand.
At one nautical mile, the team lined up on the side hidden from view of the Pesce King. Cameron fell into succession between Ambley and Kessler. The tension was in every breath. For each of them. Though the cold wind whipped across them, sweat dripped down her back beneath the equipment and the extra layers of protection. She smelled the salt in the air, and it reminded her of blood. She’d never been much for the sea. The steady rocking of the boat did nothing to calm her nerves.
In her earpiece, she heard the call that they were within a minute of arrival. Every muscle in Cameron’s body ratcheted tighter. She ignored the pain in her shoulder and the pull of the stitches under her glove and tucked the butt of the gun under her arm and held the muzzle cocked down slightly.
The final countdown started and before she knew it, the bodies were shuffling before her. The air filled with shouting. The first officer went below deck, the next following as cover. The next two went left, Cameron right, Kessler behind her. Voices shouted in the background, adding to the thumping of her heart and the stomping of feet to create an all percussion band.
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 75