Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“I’m Mr. Lee,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m Ms. Smith.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee says, “but please turn around and put your hands on the door.”

She does it and he frisks her for wires. Then he opens the briefcase, takes out a small electronic sweeper and checks the car for bugs. Satisfied it’s clean, he says, “You will forgive me, I hope.”

“No problem.”

“Let’s drive.”

“Where to?”

“I’ll tell you as we go.”

He gives her directions and they head for the harbor.

Art has the GOSCO harbor facility under surveillance.

It’s his last, best shot.

A DEA agent sits high atop a gigantic crane, his powerful night-vision glasses trained on the GOSCO entrance, and he sees the black Lexus coming down the street.

“Vehicle approaching.”

“Can you ID the driver?” Art asks.

“Negative. Tinted windows.”

It could be anyone, Art thinks. It could be Nora, it could be a GOSCO manager coming to check on a warehouse, it could be a john finding a dark spot for a quick blow job.

“Stay on it.”

He doesn’t want to be on the horn too much. If this is really going down, the narcos will have audio sweepers going, and even though his transmissions are encrypted, the sad fact is that the narcos have a bigger budget and better technology.

So now he sits in the back of a hippie van three miles from the harbor and waits.

It’s all he can do.

Nora drives down a street between two rows of GOSCO warehouses that run perpendicular to their two loading wharves. Two huge GOSCO freighters are pulled up at the wharves. Sparks fly from welders doing repairs on the ships, and forklifts scurry back and forth between the wharf and the warehouses. She keeps driving until they’re in a quieter area.

A warehouse door opens and Lee directs her inside.

“I lost them,” the agent says to Art. “They went into a warehouse.”

“Which goddamn warehouse?”

“Could be one of three,” the agent answers. “D-1803, 1805 or 1807.”

Art consults a plan of the GOSCO facility. He can have teams at the location inside ten minutes and cut the group of warehouses off from two sides. He switches channels and says, “All units, prepare to move in five.”

Mr. Lee is polite.

He gets out, comes around and opens the car door for Nora. She gets out and looks around her.

If there’s a huge shipment of weapons in here, it’s cleverly disguised as a whole bunch of empty shelves and a black Lexus identical to the one she drove in.

She looks at Lee and raises her eyebrows.

“Do you have the money?” he asks.

She opens the trunk, then the briefcases. Lee flips through the stacks of used bills, then closes everything up again.

“Your turn,” Nora says.

“We’ll wait,” he says.

“For what?”

“To see if the police arrive.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Nora says.

“It wasn’t part of your plan,” Lee says.

They stare at each other for a few long moments.

“This,” she says, “is really boring.”

She gets back in the car and sits down, thinking, Please God, don’t let Keller come blasting through that door.

Shag Wallace’s voice comes across the radio.

“On your signal, boss.”

Art tightens his Kevlar vest, flips the safety of his M-16 off, takes a deep breath and says, “Go.”

“Roger that.”

“Hold!” he yells into the mike. It comes from his gut-something’s wrong here, something’s hinky. They’ve been too careful, too cute. Or maybe I’m just getting chicken in my old age. But he says, “Stand down.”

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty.

Half an hour.

Nora reaches for her phone.

“What are you doing?” Lee asks.

“Calling my people,” Nora says. “They’re going to be wondering what the hell happened to me.”

He hands her his own phone. “Use this one.”

“Why?”

“Security.”

She shrugs and takes the phone. “Where are we?”

“Don’t send them here,” Lee says.

“Why not?”

He has a little self-satisfied smile on his face. Nora’s seen it on men a thousand times, usually after one of her spectacular fake orgasms. “The merchandise isn’t here.”

“Where is it?”

Now that no police have arrived at this location, he feels it’s safe to tell her the real one. Besides, he has Adan Barrera’s mistress as insurance.

“Long Beach.”

The new GOSCO facility at Long Beach Harbor, he tells her.

Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.

She calls Raul and gives him the information. When she hangs up she says to Lee, “We have to call our boss and get the okay for this change of plans.”

Art Keller is sweating bricks.

If that was Nora who went into the warehouse, she’s been there for over half an hour. And nothing’s happened. No one has gone in or come out, no trucks have arrived. Something’s gone wrong.

“All units stand by,” he says. “We’re going on my signal.”

Then his cell phone rings.

Lee listens anxiously as Nora tells Adan Barrera all about how they took her to an empty building and put a gun to her head as a test, and how the guns are really at Long Beach, “Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.”

“Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323,” Art Keller says.

“You got it,” Nora says.

She hangs up and hands the phone back to Lee.

“Let’s get going,” she says.

He shakes his head. “We’re staying here.”

“I don’t understand.”

She understands when he takes a. 45 from beneath his black suit jacket and lays it on his lap. “When the transaction is safely completed,” he says, “I will take the car with the money, and you will take the other car and drive away. But if something unfortunate should occur…”

Long Beach, Art thinks.

Fucking Long Beach. We have to get down there before Barrera’s trucks can get there and load up. He gets on the radio and tells his people to scramble. We have to move this goddamn army down to Long Beach, and do it in a hurry.

Fabian Martinez is thinking pretty much the same thing. He has a freaking convoy on the road now, three semis painted as CALEXICO PRODUCE COMPANY that he had ready to go to San Pedro, and now they have to roll down the 405 to freaking Long Beach.

Pain in the ass.

He sits in the passenger seat of the lead truck with a Mac-10 under his coat.

Just in case.

Two of his best men are in a scout car about half a mile ahead. They’ll go in first, and if they spot anything that shouldn’t be there, they’ll send him a beeper message to get the fuck out.

It’s cold for a southern California night, even in March, and he pulls his collar up around his neck and tells the driver to turn on the fucking heat.

Nora sits in the front seat of the Lexus and waits.

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” she asks.

Lee doesn’t mind.

Racing down to Long Beach, Art reformulates his plan.

What goddamn plan? he thinks. That’s the problem. He had a tactical plan for the raid in San Pedro, but now it’s just going to be a make-it-up-as-you-go cavalry charge into God knows what, and that makes him very goddamn nervous.

The best thing to do would be to let the Barrera trucks make the pickup and hit them on the road. But he has to make sure that Nora is all right. So the bust has to be at the warehouse, and now it just has to be smash-and-grab. Go in fast, go in hard.

All the agents have been briefed-they all know that The Border Lord wants La Guera bad, and he wants her alive because she can be pressured into giving up her boyfriend. They know that, Art thinks, but will they remember it in the chaos of a raid, especially if the Barrera people decide to shoot it out?