April Smith - White Shotgun

“Zabrina has something special we can use to our advantage — a deep abiding hatred toward the Puppet for using her boyfriend as a test dummy. He gave the kid a high dose of heroin that almost killed him,” I say. “Cecilia saved her boyfriend’s life.” “You’re willing to use this girl, just like that?” “She knows the risks. She’s from the south, she understands revenge, and she wants it. My company believes infiltration by our operatives with her help is the best course,” Atlas says.

“Do it.”

“Good. The mission must be completed within the next thirty hours,” Atlas adds. “Before your wife is moved to another location.” “Just one question,” Nicosa says. “How do you plan to get Cecilia out?” “No worries. That’s why you hire Oryx,” Atlas tells him. “Peace of mind.” The Oryx team assembled outside London, secreted in a nondescript industrial building near the airport. Because they are often hired to get people out of impossible situations — reporters held by North Korea, or a Red Cross ship hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia — there are many hostage rescue scenarios in the Oryx playbook to which they can quickly turn.

The accuracy of Zabrina’s drawing could not be trusted; they needed to update schematics of Little City, particularly the roofs. For this, they used Google Earth, and from there worked with an engineer, using the overhead views to computer-generate three-dimensional drawings of the buildings.

The housing project had been built according to low-cost government standards, each pod exactly alike. They first considered the vast underground basement as an escape route for Cecilia and their operatives, but Sterling, who would be the strategic commander, did not like the possibility of being trapped. The answer to Nicosa’s question — once we were in, how would we get Cecilia out? — became a point of heated argument until a compromise was reached. There would be a diversion, and the victim would be removed to a point of safety hundreds of miles away.

Inside the hangar, the layout of the apartment had been hastily constructed. They rehearsed the breech. They knew where the front door was, how it opened to the kitchen, and the hallway that led to the back bedrooms. If they determined that Cecilia was not on the premises, they would abort. Atlas called the abbey early on the morning the team was to leave for Italy. All that remained was for Nicosa to wire the money, and we were good to go.

Moments after getting the green light, I hurry from the sweet-pea bedroom, down the marble steps, and run smack into Dennis Rizzio.

He eyes the rucksack and field boots. “Slow down, Ana. Where’re you off to?”

“Dennis! What are you doing here?”

We face each other in a cube of morning light between the stairs and the main quarters. Dennis, large enough to block the sun, is wearing a somber blue suit and not about to give way. Behind him lies the steamy flower garden, and farther back, in the hot gravel courtyard, four American FBI agents standing at the ready beside two idling black sedans.

“I’m looking for your brother-in-law. Is he on the property?”

“What’s going on?”

“I have a warrant for his arrest.”

“What for?”

“We’ve obtained new evidence — enough to charge him with smuggling cocaine into the United States.”

“How did this happen?”

“Well, we had a little excitement in the port of Pittsburgh. The Bureau’s had a vessel owned by the Spectra Chemical Company under surveillance for some time. Spectra, we discovered, is part of a layered business syndicate going back to ’Ndrangheta, which uses the vessel to conceal drugs in bulk cargo. But it didn’t come together until Special Agent Mike Donnato in the L.A. field office put the cargo in the ship next to your brother-in-law. Based on that, he initiated a joint task force request by DEA and the FBI for Customs to do a red alert inspection.

“A Coast Guard cutter went out to escort the Spectra ship, but it ignored repeated orders to stop. The Guard sent a helicopter. The Spectra ship reversed direction. The chopper followed in pursuit, and the bozos started throwing stuff overboard. Ultimately the Coast Guard removed eight people off the ship and seized 4,558 pounds of cocaine with a street value of $61 million. The cocaine was tucked away inside sacks of coffee. It’s Nicosa’s coffee.”

Nicoli Nicosa will be arrested, today or tomorrow; it hardly matters when. Foremost on my mind right now is that every minute going by is making me later to meet Sterling and Chris at the Walkabout Pub. The strategic clock to recover Cecilia is ticking. We can’t afford a celebrity takedown right now, involving lawyers and the press.

“Can you delay the warrant?”

“Gee, honey, I don’t think so. There’s a steady stream of coke flowing from Colombia to Naples to the Midwest — and we’d kind of like it to stop.”

I keep striding toward Giovanni’s car, fast-forwarding every angle I can think of to deflect this now , and coming up blank.

“Good morning,” I say to the American agents.

“Good morning, ma’am,” one answers, politely blocking the path. “Do you mind holding up a minute?”

“Sure. Not at all.”

I turn back. Dennis is waiting in a patch of shade with a disapproving look.

“Who are you trying to kid?” he says.

Unshouldering the rucksack, I let it drop to the ground.

“I’ve been briefed by Mike Donnato on the task force with DEA concerning smuggling routes through the port of Pittsburgh,” I say. “I didn’t think it would unwind this quickly.”

“It’s not a good play for you to try to protect Nicosa,” Dennis advises.

“That’s not it. We found his wife. She’s alive.”

“Thank God!” Dennis says with genuine relief. “That’s great! Really good news. Where?”

“Captive in a ’Ndrangheta stronghold in Calabria.”

“That’s where you’re going — with the unauthorized use of force?”

“This operation has nothing to do with us. Nicosa hired Oryx, the private military company, to get her out.”

“Well, he can afford it.”

“We have good intel. We’ve got a source who—” Dennis holds up a palm. “Don’t say another word.”

“We’ve exhausted every resource. Negotiation failed. We can’t go to the police. The Bureau’s hands are tied—”

Dennis displays two palms. “I can’t hear this, please !”

“Sorry.”

“The timing is rotten,” he says, removing folded documents from a coat pocket. “But the evidence is solid. The cocaine was buried inside bulk quantities of raw coffee beans with the generic label Bravo Beans, traveling on board a container ship owned by the Spectra Chemical Company. Special Agent Mike Donnato requested that the DNA of Bravo Beans be tested by Quantico, and they found a match to an arabica variety only grown by Nicosa’s company. Bravo Beans is a front, but a sophisticated one. They had all the right bills of lading, invoices, layers of falsification, everything.”

“And the scientific evidence is conclusive?”

“You’re asking the right person,” he says self-mockingly. “In seventh-grade science we had to make DNA out of Life Savers. My mom did it for me.” He glances at the documents. “There’s something called ‘class III chitinase LR-7, signal peptidase complex subunit SPD35.’ I believe it’s a gene that makes it possible for the coffee plant to pollinate a couple of times a year, so that it produces more coffee. It’s a biologically engineered gene unique to this particular brand. They created a new plant. Nicoli Nicosa was responsible.”

Nicosa has appeared in the doorway. Despite the pressed white shirt and tailored trousers, he looks like hell, deprived of sleep and racked with anxiety.