Джеймс Паттерсон - Lost

He said, “You’re Moon, right?”

“Yeah.”

He laughed. “Anti–Ray Lewis. I can see why the ’Canes never made a decent bowl while you were playing. See ya later.” And he was gone.

Every time I’m at the port, I daydream about catching that guy. Even though he had a point.

I tried to imagine what it might be like to live in a shipping container for over a week. It gave me the willies. We had to get this right. I didn’t want to see another dead girl someone had been trying to smuggle. I didn’t care if I was kicked off the task force for not making arrests. Right now, I just wanted to find those people.

I never realized how many ships came and went out of the port. I had a DHS supervisor on call. I explained about a possible leak coming from Customs.

The DHS supervisor, a guy named Rick Morris, said, “You watch too much TV.”

I chuckled and said, “I hope so. But I also work in Miami. Anything’s possible.”

With the trouble I’d had from Customs over the past few days, I thought it would be best not to call Rick until we had a hot prospect.

The waiting was killing me.

Chapter 68

THE SUN DIPPED in the west and all the lights in the port came on. You could argue that a full day of surveillance with no results was a bust, but all it really meant was that we’d be doing it over again tomorrow. That’s the life of a cop.

Marie had found the day fascinating. She liked seeing how the port operated and hearing stories about police work in and around Miami.

She asked me, “How long will you stay on the task force?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? I have to produce or they’ll just rotate me off. I know someone from the Miami PD who wants my spot.”

“You need arrests to stay?”

“They don’t keep me for my charming personality.”

“What if we don’t make arrests but are able to save the people being trafficked?”

“I’ll be thrilled.”

“Even if you get moved off the task force?”

“I’ll still be a cop.”

She smiled and squeezed my hand. She looked toward the water.

Two ships had just docked. I checked with my DHS contact and he said they had both sailed from ports in Europe. After a moment, he narrowed it down, said one had come from the Netherlands, the other from Belgium.

After I convinced him to come down to the port, I turned to my partners and said, “Let’s walk down to the ships. The one on the left is from the Netherlands and the other one is from Belgium. These are the best prospects we’ve had.”

We didn’t want to blow the surveillance in case neither of these was the right ship, so we stood back from the dock looking at them both. Steph asked, “Is one of them more likely than the other?”

Marie said, “I haven’t heard anything more specific from my informants. But both ships fit the profile we’ve been looking for.”

I was torn. If we jumped on one of the ships, word would get out. Sailors talked, and now, with cell phones, they were in instant communication with one another all over the world. I didn’t want to expose the surveillance early, but I couldn’t risk leaving people locked in one of those shipping containers one minute longer than they had to be.

If we picked the wrong ship, the crew on the other ship could flee and we’d have no suspects. I felt a knot in my stomach as I worked through the different scenarios. I wasn’t even factoring in the chance that someone aboard either ship might be armed and try to stop us.

There was no way we could do this without causing a major stir. It would throw the port into chaos for at least two hours and the news media would swoop down on it in minutes.

I looked around at the port crews and Customs people walking right past us about fifty yards from the two ships.

One Customs inspector with dark hair paused and checked his phone right in front of us. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him—except his ID. His name was Vacile, which sounded familiar to me.

My eyes involuntarily followed the unremarkable Customs inspector.

Then it hit me. I remembered where I had seen his name. He was the inspector at the Miami airport. I’d noticed at the time how the trafficker purposely moved to Vacile’s line for entry to the U.S. We’d just thought it was a case of a lazy inspector. DHS had said they’d follow up on it as a personnel matter.

This couldn’t be a coincidence.

We had to risk it. I wasn’t about to lose a load of people just to make some arrests. We had to do something, and now.

Whatever ship Vacile stepped onto was the ship we were going to search.

Chapter 69

I PULLED OUT a small pair of binoculars that generally saw action only during Miami Dolphins games and used them to track the Customs inspector named Vacile.

He spoke to a few people but kept moving, so no one was with him when he started poking around containers sitting at the front of the suspect ship.

My heart started to beat faster. This could be it. There was so much riding on what we did next that I felt a flutter of anxiety. I couldn’t stop thinking about the people locked on board. We had to get to them.

By now, Lorena Perez, Anthony Chilleo, and Rick Morris, the DHS supervisor I’d been talking to on the phone, had gathered near the ship. I explained how I’d recognized Vacile from the airport. Morris, an in-shape, middle-aged man with a slightly graying crew cut, said, “That’s a pretty thin story to ruin someone’s reputation over.”

I said, “Do you know this guy personally?”

“Never heard of him.” He glanced down at his phone. “But I’m looking at his personnel file and he doesn’t have any complaints. Coincidences happen all the time. That’s why they’re called coincidences . Like how it was a coincidence that I was the internal affairs supervisor on call when you said you needed help. If you had called the next day, then, by coincidence, I’d be at my college reunion right now instead of here. See what I mean about coincidences?”

He was right. It was a long shot. “‘Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous,’” I said.

Only Steph knew to ask, “Okay, who said that?”

“Albert Einstein.”

The DHS agent said, “So your probable cause is based on a dead physicist’s comments about God?”

I was losing my patience, and I raised my voice. “Look, Rick, people might die. This is a literal life-and-death situation. C’mon, don’t be an administrative geek now. Be a cop. If we ignore this and do nothing and people wind up dying, we’re responsible for the death of every one of them. Tell me, is that something you could live with?”

Rick shook his head and said, “Let’s go.”

Chapter 70

THE TIME HAD come. Hanna Greete felt like a bundle of exposed nerves. Everything was an assault on her senses. She tried to stay quiet as she and Albert waited near the port of Miami. All of her hard work came down to the next few hours. If anything happened and they weren’t able to pay off their debts, all was lost. There was no other way to look at the situation.

They could see the ship they were waiting for, the Scandinavian Queen, docked next to another ship in the easternmost section of the port.

Two long passenger vans rumbled into the loading zone behind Hanna and Albert.

Hanna twisted on the bench and saw Billy, her Russian contact, pop out of the front passenger seat of the first van. He wore a dark suit and had his thinning hair slicked back. She hid her surprise.

He was his usual cheerful self. Billy clapped his hands together as he walked toward them. “And how are my Dutch friends on this beautiful evening?” He had a wide grin.

Albert leaned in close to his sister and mumbled, “This can’t be a good sign.” He reached under his shirt. Hanna placed a hand on her brother’s arm.