Chapter 32
Juan and his team had put together a simple plan for tonight’s mission.
Simple, but not easy.
The Oregon team never got the chance to board the Golden Lotus. The Chinese vessel had docked and unloaded in record time, its container cargo warehoused under padlock.
The first part of the Oregon’s mission now was to find the contraband container—a needle in a haystack if there ever was one.
The container storage area for the Port of Acajutla currently covered over fifty-seven thousand square yards with a capacity for over thirty-four hundred containers.
The storage yard was bursting to capacity in both the open areas and nearly spilling out of several warehouses.
The good news was that one of those warehouses was owned, operated, and secured by a Chinese firm fronting an MSS operation—with civilian-garbed MSS guards patrolling the place.
Since the Golden Lotus was known to be owned by an MSS cutout company, it was highly likely the container would be stored inside the Chinese warehouse.
The better news was the container’s identification number had been provided by Overholt’s contact.
Unfortunately, it was still unclear what was inside the container.
The suspicion was either guns or drugs. The extremely high-value contraband shipment was handled at the Chinese docks by a third-party intermediary, a notorious triad organization with long association with the Chinese Communist Party.
This was nothing new. Mao had partnered with criminal gangs even before the 1949 Revolution; in fact, those gangs had helped facilitate the Communists’ victory over the Chinese Nationalist forces.
Lacking the necessary resources for international operations during the early part of their regime, China’s security services relied heavily on the triads to carry out various global operations including money laundering and even primitive wet work.
Juan had heard firsthand from some of the old-timers the CIA had similar associations with American criminal gangs, though for what reasons was never made clear.
The other challenges Juan and his team faced were getting inside of that container, determining what was inside, and documenting it. With that documentation, Overholt could supply the U.S. State Department with the necessary evidence to sever China’s predatory trade treaty with El Salvador.
Of course, all of this had to be done without a direct confrontation with Chinese nationals nor could the Oregon or its personnel be identified with the operation.
The last thing the United States needed was an international incident given the current state of high tensions over the Taiwan situation.
Overholt didn’t want an obscure operation in El Salvador to become the Sarajevo event igniting World War III.
Local port authorities and law enforcement provided minimal but decent security around the port facility. The container storage areas were fenced, well-lit, and covered by security cameras.
The Oregon’s long-range optical sensors along with a few discreet drone flybys revealed six armed MSS guards at the Chinese warehouse: two patrolling outside and four inside.
The Chinese warehouse itself was a newly refurbished building with concrete walls and a roof that was peppered with vents, but had stairwell access as well.
It stood some distance from the other warehouses, giving the patrolling guards clear lines of sight.
Though the port was a twenty-four/seven operation, the Chinese warehouse had shut and padlocked its doors for added security.
It was a tough nut to crack, but Cabrillo had shelled quite a few in his day. This one hopefully would be no different.
★
The operation began just three minutes after 02:00 as the first tendrils of lightning cracked overhead. A series of squalls had begun rolling in. Weather reports indicated they would grow in intensity over the next twenty-four hours. Juan and his crew would be in and out before things got crazy.
The operation’s opening salvo was a narrowly directed energy beam fired from one of the Oregon’s EMP cannons.
Murph carefully swept one side of the container yard, knocking out lights and cameras with each burst. He continued that process until the Chinese warehouse was similarly darkened, as was the next one over.
They hoped people on the ground would assume the storm was responsible for the temporary shutdown across the yard.
By hitting a large portion of the yard, the Chinese wouldn’t think they had been singled out and targeted.
With the lights and cameras knocked out, the Oregon’s newly acquired Joby S4 eVTOL leaped off the Oregon’s deck. The four-passenger, electric-powered tilt-rotor flew in near silence through the thundering, windswept night.
Gomez carefully followed the Joby’s AI-chosen path, its sensors and algorithms assiduously avoiding visual and radar detection until it hovered just inches above the warehouse roof.
Juan and Eddie Seng slipped off the skids and padded over to the nearest transom as the stealthy Joby slipped back into the dark. If anything went sideways tonight with the Chinese guards, Cabrillo wanted both Eddie’s sangfroid bravado and linguistic expertise deployed.
Seng opened his pack, pulled out his surveillance gear, and quickly deployed a tiny quadcopter equipped with a night vision camera and audio.
Thanks to his first-person view goggles and handheld controller, Eddie was able to deftly maneuver the whisper-quiet surveillance drone through the crowded warehouse stacked with containers.
Within moments he located the four interior guards, each highly alert and attentive to their duty, deploying flashlights against the dark.
Clearly, they were concerned about whatever it was they were guarding—yet another confirmation the Oregon team was in the right place at the right time.
With the guards located, Seng turned to finding the container.
Their plan A hinged on a quick ingress and departure; no telling when shift changes or other potential disasters could upend the applecart.
The prevailing thought was that the target container had only just been unloaded and therefore would be near the front entrance and not stacked somewhere in the back.
It took all of two minutes for Eddie to find the correct alphanumeric-sequenced ISO code and signal a thumbs-up. “Got it.”
With all six positions of the guards confirmed and the container location secured, Cabrillo radioed back to Hali Kasim. “We’re good to go. Let her rip.”
Moments later, Kasim engaged the Oregon’s supremely powerful electronic surveillance suite affectionately known as the Sniffer, a primary means of carrying out the Oregon’s intelligence-gathering missions.
The Sniffer was designed not only to hoover up all manner of electromagnetic signals but also to intercept and decode virtually any form of encrypted signals.
The Sniffer was equally capable of breaking into and manipulating those signals. Tonight’s plan A avoided direct confrontation with the guards, but still disabled them by hacking into the encrypted Chinese security comms.
The Cray-powered Sniffer then manipulated the comms signals in the guards’ earpieces, broadcasting a series of subtle binaural beats and other sonic wavelengths synced with theta and delta brain wave frequencies.
The theory was this would induce a form of audio hypnosis that would immediately paralyze the guards in an eyes-open but mindless stupor, rendering them oblivious to the world around them.
Once awakened, they would remember nothing.
“Wow, looks like it’s working,” Seng said. “I thought it was a load of sci-fi nonsense.”
“I was afraid Murph might have fried their comms with the EMP cannon,” Cabrillo said. “I never should have doubted the lad.” Both men carried holstered tranq pistols on their hips in case Hali’s audio hypnosis trick didn’t work.
“Okay, let’s go.” Juan had already picked the lock of the roof’s access door.
The two men sped noiselessly down the steel staircase and onto the floor.
The two operators moved in perfect sync.
Thousands of hours of training together had given the entire Gundog team a near-telepathic connection.
They always carried comms, but hardly needed them.
They knew each other’s rhythms, strengths, preferences.
As the head of shore operations, Seng knew each of his operators intimately, including his boss, Juan Cabrillo, who was as good as any of the decorated former combat operators on the team.
Within moments, they arrived at the target container. It was on top of a three-high stack, some seventeen feet off the ground.
“How much time do we have, Hali?” Cabrillo asked in his comms.
“Hypno-signal is still strong, so as long as you need.”
But who knows how long the effect will last? Juan asked himself.
“Let’s get after it.”
The two men scrambled up the container stack without climbing ropes, utilizing the forklift pockets, vertical locking bar brackets, and horizontal catches.
They had practiced this maneuver a few times in the holds of the Oregon for just this eventuality.
The practice exercise also taught them to bring carabiners and straps so they could easily secure themselves at their lofty height.
They attached themselves to the left door, since the right door had to open first.
Eddie pulled out a pair of bolt cutters and snapped the bright blue bolt seal.
The bullet-shaped steel pin with bar-coded numbers was an important security measure for any shipping container.
The only way for thieves to open the bolt was to destroy it, signaling to the rightful owners that the contents had been either stolen or tampered with.
With the bolt cut and its two parts pocketed, Eddie grabbed the handle for the right-door locking rod and rotated it, unlocking the cams from their slots in the doorframe.
He nudged the door farther open with the toe of his boot and looked inside.
“Didn’t expect that,” he whispered.
Juan craned his neck over the smaller man’s shoulder. Inside was a large steel tank approximately eight feet long, and three and a half feet wide and tall. It was well secured to the deck with bolts and heavy-duty straps. Chinese ideographs were stenciled on the facing side:
两千五百升
“What does it say?” Cabrillo asked.
“Twenty-five hundred liters.”
No smell emanated from the enclosed space, but the hairs on the back of Cabrillo’s neck stood on end, his worst fears crystallizing in his mind. He and Eddie unhooked themselves and swung inside.
Cabrillo pulled out a respirator from his pack and slipped it over his face and donned a set of heavy rubber gloves. Eddie did the same. Not knowing what they would be facing on this trip, the two men had packed plenty of protective gear.
Eddie handed Juan a sturdy glass test tube with an absorbent test strip parked inside of it. Cabrillo stepped over to the small sealed opening at the top of the tank, twisted it open, and glanced inside.
“What is it?” Eddie asked through his mask.
“Clear liquid. No telling.” Cabrillo dipped the test strip into the fluid, careful not to get any on his gloved fingers. He was even more careful to drop the saturated strip into the tube and seal it up quickly. He handed the sealed tube gingerly to Eddie.
Seng studied the strip as Cabrillo resealed the tank.
Eddie pulled off his respirator, wanting to make sure the mask’s view screen hadn’t affected his perception of the color of the strip. His frown said it all.
“That bad?” Cabrillo asked.
“Yeah.” Seng nodded at the tank. “You’re staring at twenty-five hundred liters of pure fentanyl.”
★
Juan darkened. That much liquid fentanyl wasn’t just a problem.
It was pure evil.
Fentanyl was fifty times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of the liquid opioid could kill an average adult. If evenly distributed around the planet, the contents of that tank would theoretically kill one and a quarter billion people.
Equally bad, that same drug—ironically used as a highly effective anesthetic and painkiller—was designed to make other illegal opioids more powerful and therefore more addictive.
Fentanyl had already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years, and turned many of America’s inner cities into violent and filthy zones of zombielike addicts.
“We’ve got our evidence now. But we can’t just leave that crap behind,” Juan said.
“And we can’t blow it up or burn it or drain it out—it would trash the environment, and who knows how many innocent civilians would die.”
“We need to get back to the Oregon and come up with a plan,” Juan said as he fished around in his pack. “Hand me that busted bolt seal.”
“Aye.” Eddie pulled the two broken pieces from his pocket and handed them to Juan, who now held a tablet in his hand. He scanned the barcodes on the bolt halves. Seconds later, a miniature thermal printer spit out an identical pair of barcode labels.
Eddie handed him a brand-new, bright blue bolt seal, identical in size, style, and color to the one they had destroyed.
Every shipping line used its own preferred color and style of bolt seals and it was easy enough to pull one from the Oregon’s stores.
They used bolt seals in their own containerized operations, but they also kept a stock of nearly every kind of seal currently in use worldwide for just this kind of work.
Juan fixed one transparent label to the long, bullet-shaped male side of the seal and then the other to the short female receptor as Eddie bagged up the gear for both their packs. Unless inspected under a microscope, no human eye would be able to detect the deception.
Six minutes later, the two men had shut the container door, snapped the new bolt seal in place, and planted a tracker. They then scrambled back up to the warehouse roof and climbed into the Joby S4 hovering just above the deck for the short flight back to the Oregon.