Crystal Ice
Page 43
Alex looked again at the most recent import manifests for the Olga Tovic. There were pages of the stuff, all sorts of cargo from many different ports, in many different countries. As he waded through screen after screen of the coded imports something caught his eye, something that normally wouldn’t have rung any alarm bells, but now it did. The Olga Tovic had transported five 210-litre drums of lavender oil from Hobart Tasmania, to Tauranga, where they were off-loaded to Sutic Transport Limited who then transferred them to the Port of Auckland. Once the load was in Auckland, Jonathan Littman made up a part container load destined for the US, aboard the California Star. Alex had read in detail the memo that Trevor Pierce, the counter terrorism collective analyst, had passed on to them concerning the drums of lavender oil associated with the recent bioterrorism attack on the US, that memo had contained information that had been provided by the CIA in the US and what the New Zealand SIS had uncovered about the trans-shipment of the lavender oil in New Zealand. The memo set out the same facts that Alex had just uncovered, but now he had found a link between them and the Sutic brothers. A vital link, Alex believed.
***
Pete Rupene, laid out on a couch, stared at Ngaire in disbelief. “You want us to do what?”
“Sonny Rewaka and his Croatian cronies make the meth and we sell it. If we can’t hurt Rewaka physically, then we can hit them where it really will hurt them, where they make their money. Janet’s found the meth lab on a farm near Runciman. I think we should torch it.”
“It may have escaped your notice,” replied Brian Rupene sarcastically, “but we have only just come out of hospital. We’ve just had the shit kicked out of us by Sonny and his henchmen, who made it perfectly clear that if he caught us fucking about with anyone or anything associated with gang business again, we’d be dead.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be so surprising to you when it’s part of the Skorpion code. Now that he thinks he’s crippled us and put us out of action, we’ve got a great opportunity to get our own back. He won’t be expecting anything out at Runciman will he? He doesn’t know that we’ve found his precious meth lab. All we need to do is chuck a few firebombs through the windows and the place will blow itself up like fucking fireworks on bonfire night.”
“So, fucking simple, aye,” hissed Pete Rupene. “You stupid cow. How are we…?”
Ngaire’s response was swift. She threw the bottle of Steinlager she was holding at Pete Rupene’s face. The base of the bottle hit him just below his left eye, a perfect strike. The sensitive skin below his eye split like the skin of a cooked tomato and blood started to run down his face. For a few seconds Pete was left senseless and apart from an animalistic grunt he uttered not a single word.
“What the fuck are you doing? He didn’t deserve that. Look at his face!”
“Shut the fuck up Brian, unless you want the same. Your brother should learn not to insult a lady, especially this one,” hissed Ngaire.
Ngaire’s hold over the two Rupene brothers was uncanny. Though physically she was no match for either of them, she still possessed the mana of a leader’s woman. Brian did as he was told. Pete murmured something unintelligible as he regained his faculties, then realising that he was bleeding smeared blood across his face with the back of his hand. He looked incredulous at the crimson stain before turning to Ngaire to speak.
“You fucking...”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll gut you like a fish, you brainless twat.” Hissed Ngaire.
Pete was left speechless. He was at heart a coward. Although he had a reputation for cruelty to women, he cowered away from conflict with male Skorpion gang members. Ngaire was no man but he still recoiled from her verbal attack.
Ngaire eyeballed the brothers.
“Now listen to me you spineless fuckers, we are going to torch that place and we are all going this Saturday night. Is that quite clear?”
Both brothers nodded.
“Janet and I will be here at 11.00 Saturday night. Brian, you’ll supply the petrol and bottles, Pete, you’ll get us a set of wheels.”
Again, the two brothers nodded meekly.
“Right then, Janet and I will be off, see you both Saturday.”
The back door slammed shut as the two women left and both brothers sat in silence for nearly five minutes as they mulled over what might be in store for them if Sonny Rewaka and his henchmen caught them.
“How the fuck are we going to run around the place with firebombs when we both can hardly walk?” questioned Pete.
Brian remained impassive, contemplating the worst thing that could happen to him if he was caught. Blowing up the gang’s manufacturing base, the main source of their revenue was no minor infraction of gang law. He would be dead, and just now that wasn’t worth thinking about.
“I don’t know Pete, I’ve a bad feeling about this. I’m going out, I need to clear my head. Those fucking women will be the death of us, I’m sure.”
Brian Rupene got up from his La-Z-Boy chair and hobbled into the kitchen. Taking his car keys from the work surface, he too left via the back door.
***
Hohepa Morgan met Petera Mokaraka in the Papakura Tavern just after six pm Friday night. The place was packed as usual and since there were no seats available, Hohepa and Petera had to stand. Although all the windows were open, the atmosphere in the bar was heavy from the crush of labourers and tradesmen drinking after a hard week’s work. The beer though was cold and refreshing. Both men swallowed nearly half a pint of the golden brew before either one of them spoke. It had been a long hard week.
“What’s so important Hohepa that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”
“I had a visit this afternoon from Brian Rupene. The guy was shaking like a leaf and crying like a fucking baby,” Hohepa replied scornfully. “He told me that Ngaire and Janet Packman are planning to torch the lab this weekend.”
“Fucking hell, how did they find the place?”
“Apparently it was Janet that paid you a little visit the other night. She told the Rupene brothers that she followed you back from here and then decided that she would explore the place on foot.”
“Shit! So it was that Packman bitch who set off all the alarms. Shit, shit, shit. Sonny will frag my ass for being so negligent, that I could be followed so easily. When are they coming, do you know?”
“No, he didn’t know, or wouldn’t say. He’s scared shitless that Ngaire will fuck him over for telling us. He was as white as a sheet when he was talking to me, I thought he would puke.”
“Sonny hasn’t yet withdrawn his watchmen from the other day, so we’ll be ready for them when they come. And I can guarantee that they won’t leave the farm alive, Sonny will make sure of that.”
“Well, I won’t be sorry for that, even though Ngaire is whanau. She’s more trouble than a truck load of pakeha.” Both men laughed at the racist metaphor.
“I’ll feed them all to the pigs once they’ve squealed enough. The rest of their miserable carcasses I’ll throw in a lime pit. Bastards, we should have sorted them after Turangi. They obviously haven’t learned their lesson yet.”
***
Alex MacLean was on late duty, so working beyond 5.00pm aroused little curiosity. He wrote out all the facts he had discovered, in red, on a sheet of A3 paper. Then he wrote out his suspicions in blue. Then he tabulated all the players that he had references to. This list was quite long:
Name
Activity
Dino Sutic
Owners of Terra Brasil and Sutic Transport Ltd
Levorko Sutic
Tony Graham-Collins
Chemist
Captain Goran Sumovich
Master of MV Olga Tovic
Brian Rupene
Known Skorpion drug dealer
Pete Rupene
Pimp, drug dealer and thug
Sharon Davis
Deceased drug user and importer of drug baggies for 43 Tui Glen Rd
Lisa Davis
Jailed dr
ug user
Jonathan Littman
Import/export broker
Then, using what he had discovered and what was in the public domain, he tabulated the drug infrastructure he had knowledge of:
Site
Activity
Terra Brasil
Restaurant Drug HQ?
MV Olga Tovic
Importing drug precursors
Eden Terrace
Home of Sharon Davis
43 Tui Glen Road, Papakura
Known Skorpion drug house and site of Daniel Tua’s murder
Jewson Street
Skorpion HQ
Finally, Alex made a note of the trans-shipment of the Tasmanian lavender oil. Then using the customs equivalent of SmartDraw he drew a flow chart on his computer. The links between each entity he marked in black if it was a confirmed link and in red if it was just suspected. By the time he had finished it looked very professional, and certainly made more sense of some of the more tenuous facts he had uncovered.
What he didn’t yet know was the site of the meth lab. As for the terrorist link, he had no idea where the viruses came from or where along their route to America they were put in the oil. Alex was a Goods Analyst and so was not privy to all the details surrounding the Tasmanian lavender oil. He hoped that if he could convince Robin Hickman regarding the drug manufacture that it would then be passed through to the counter-terrorist analysts.
Alex was so excited about what he had achieved that he completely forgot all about time. When his phone rang at 7.30pm he was reminded in no uncertain terms by his wife Leanne how late he was. He had told her that he would definitely be home at 8.30. He wasn’t, it was more like 9.30. If Alex hadn’t had the foresight to buy some flowers from the Gull petrol station on the way home, he would probably have been sleeping in the spare room that night.
But when he showed Leanne a hardcopy of his file, she too was impressed by what he had discovered. They discussed each of the known facts, and then anticipated the questions that would be asked when he presented the file to Robin in the morning. They would surely have to listen to him now. The Sutics were possibly at the apex of an international drug and terrorist cell. The only thing left was for the various authorities, customs, the police, and even the SIS, to prove his suspicions were correct.
That night Alex got very little sleep as the facts kept rolling around in his head. By 4.00am he gave up and went back to the file downstairs. As he finished fine tuning his thoughts, the birds signalled that a new dawn had arrived.
37. Molotovs
Just before dark Ngaire and her co-conspirators drove past The Finches on the motorway, needing to fix in their minds what their chosen approach to the farm looked like. Taking the Ramarama exit off the motorway, they turned onto Great South Road. Travelling north, it took them only a few minutes to reach the point where they were opposite the farm. The buildings which probably housed the meth lab were just over half a kilometre away to the east. Using an old pair of binoculars, Brian Rupene stared at the farm for several minutes, memorising the layout of the buildings and ensuring that no one was keeping guard. Being cloudy, with only a small crescent moon, navigating across the fields to the farm was going to be particularly difficult. Brian slipped out of the car and jammed a white plastic carrier bag on the fence, to mark the starting point of their attack.
“This is going to be fucking difficult, walking so far over rough ground, climbing fences and crossing the motorway.”
“Shut the fuck up Brian and drive on. Hang left after Runciman and we’ll go to Pukekohe for a drink.”
***
Petera Mokaraka had twelve Skorpion soldiers to help him guard The Finches against Ngaire Rakena and her band of sycophantic morons. More than enough, he thought. There was only one approach to the farm and that was along Harrison Road. Consequently, one of the guards was hidden beside the road, half a kilometre north of the farm, to warn the others of Ngaire’s approach. Six other gang members stayed with Petera in his bungalow, while four more were in the farm’s outbuildings, leaving the fifth and final one in the meth lab itself. Although the lights and the television were on in Petera’s bungalow, the rest of the farm was as quiet as a grave. The plan was to allow the attackers to pass the bungalow and approach the farm along the driveway. At a given signal the five soldiers in the farm buildings would emerge and confront Ngaire’s group head-on, while Petera would lead his group up behind them. Caught in the middle of the two groups, Ngaire and her band of fools would be annihilated.
***
Four pimply-faced youths were shouting and jeering at Ngaire and the others as they left the Pukekohe Hotel.
“Three crippled black bastards and one ugly mother-fucking wigger,” one of them shouted.
“Fuck off back to where you came from, we don’t want you here.”
Pete looked all around for something to throw at the one with the mouth. He picked a bottle from a street-side waste-bin but as he went to throw it Ngaire put a hand on his arm to restrain him.
“What’s the matter cripple, do you take your orders from a woman, you stupid spineless fucker.”
Pete looked at Ngaire but she just shook her head. “We’ve got other fish to fry, let’s not draw attention to ourselves by getting into any bother here.”
As they got in the car the same bottle that Pete Rupene had returned to the waste-bin shattered on the wall behind them. Pete quickly started the car and drove along the pavement towards the youths.
“Pete NO, get back on the fucking road and leave them. We don’t want to be remembered by them or anyone else in this shit hole.” Screamed Ngaire.
It was against Pete’s nature to back off, but, after a second, he did as he was told. She was right for once; they didn’t need any police following them out of town. Just as they turned out of the High Street there was a dull thud as something hit the back of the car. Brian Rupene looked out of the back window to see who had thrown the rock, it was the youth with the big mouth.
The rest of the drive, to Bombay and then along Great South Road, was made in silence, as each of them pondered on the gravity of what they were about to do. After being all fired up in Pukekohe, both the Rupene brothers were now starting to get cold feet. It was one thing to kick the shit out of some brainless twats in distant Pukekohe, but it was very different firebombing their own gang’s meth lab. It was strange, but the jeering youths had undermined their resolve, it had somehow highlighted the stupidity of what they were about to do. One stupid act reflecting another.
When Pete saw the white plastic bag on the fence, he pulled over onto the verge and switched off the headlights but not the engine.
“Switch the fucking engine off Pete, you plonker, someone might hear us,” said Ngaire.
Pete couldn’t move.
“I can’t go through with it. Sonny will know that it’s us and he’ll kill us. He’ll probably torture us first and then when he’s bored, kill us.”
“Come on Pete, don’t get cold feet. We’re finished in the Skorpions anyway, so moving away from Sonny and his band of cut-throats will be just the same if we do them or not.” Janet tried to make both the brothers see sense.
“I said you should keep your mouth shut Packman, didn’t I? That idiot in town described you well, you are fucking ugly.” Both brothers simultaneously laughed from muted nervousness.
Janet sprang across the back seat towards Pete, shrieking aloud that she was going to kill him. It took Ngaire all her strength to pull her back.
“Janet, shut up and calm down!” screamed Ngaire, “this isn’t the time or the place to sort this out. We’ll get back to this later. And Pete, you brainless wanker, you can shut the fuck up as well.”
“I’ve already said I’m not doing it, and that’s it. You can’t fucking make me walk across that paddock. You’re fucked, so let’s go home.”
As Pete Rupene switched the headlights back on, Ngaire pulled up her trouser leg and took out a razor-sharp fillet knife from her
boot. She had anticipated that she might have trouble with one of the brothers, though she had thought it would be Brian. In one swift movement she grabbed the hair at the back of Pete’s head and yanked it backwards, extending his neck over the headrest. At the same time, she wrapped her right arm around his neck and pressed the blade of her knife hard against the side of his throat.
“Now you arsehole,” she hissed in his ear, “you might want to reconsider your last decision.”
“I’m not frightened of you, you’re all mouth and no trousers,” croaked Pete, “you haven’t the balls to cut me.”
As Pete lifted his right hand to pull the knife away from Ngaire, she pressed the blade even harder into his neck. The knife was so sharp that the taut skin of his throat popped open beneath the blade. Blood flowed down the side of his neck and dripped onto the white collar of his sweatshirt.