Chapter Thirty-Four
WALKER DOWNSHIFTED TO second gear to slow Belle’s old BMW, killed the headlights, then stepped on the clutch, allowing the car to coast slowly to a stop along the curb.
“Nice,” Belle said. “They teach you the silent approach in the CIA?”
He glanced at her in the passenger seat, her face illuminated by the glow of Google Maps.
You sure this is a good idea? You thinking straight?
He checked the rearview. Clear.
Ahead, a few streetlights, leaning on crumbled foundations, still tilted in the direction Katrina’s floodwaters had forced them twenty years earlier.
Walker had once read about an old mining town in the California Sierra foothills that had been forcibly abandoned to make way for the Folsom Dam.
Later, during a drought, the reservoir got so low that the old buildings were visible again.
In the pitch black of 1 a.m., this section of the Ninth looked like that; a city of ghosts.
“Learn what in the CIA?” he asked her.
They had spent the past four days poring over Connor’s journals in the van. When she went to work at the tattoo shop, he remained behind, clacking on the old typewriter, connecting dots and thinking through the plan. Then, in darkness he surveilled their target.
“Rolling to a stop in the shadows, Jason Bourne. What did you think I meant?”
“I knew what you meant. Let me see the SAT photo.”
She handed him the phone. He pinched in on the satellite overlay.
“Is that where you set up the past few nights?” she asked.
“Yeah. It really wasn’t enough time to establish patterns.”
“And that’s where you’ll be on overwatch?”
“Overwatch? Where’d you hear that one?”
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Three. Like a decade ago.”
“No. I won’t be able to get to you in time if something happens. I’ll be closer.”
“I told you, Chris. Kids score here all the time.”
She reached to release her seat belt.
“No. Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure nothing’s changed.”
“Get some G-2?” she asked, smiling.
“Yeah. G-2, intel. Call of Duty? Get in the driver’s seat. I’ll be right back.”
The interior light on the old car had failed years ago, so Walker didn’t need to worry about that. The door, however, creaked like a rusted ship hatch when he opened it, making him wince.
“Sorry,” she said from inside the car.
He pulled up the collar on an old surplus Army jacket and kept to the shadows, walking past graffiti-marred homes with plywood-covered windows, to an abandoned store that had been his hide site for the past few nights.
He checked out the interior through the broken windows to be sure no one was inside, noting the empty overturned racks were positioned just as they had been twenty-four hours earlier.
A few faded posters for liquor sagged behind the register.
At the edge of the building, he paused to observe the street. The only cars were abandoned, missing wheels and any semi-valuable parts. They were now just hunks of rusted metal with rotting seats, some providing shelter for the homeless or giving addicts a place to shoot up.
He found the overstuffed dumpster by the shop.
It had been there so long that it was recognizable from the satellite image.
Walker dug the toe of his boot onto a hinge and hoisted himself up.
He jumped and caught the edge of the roof, pulled to his elbows, swung a leg up for leverage, and rolled over the lip.
Knowing that he might present a silhouette, he stayed low, moving past a long-dead AC unit, vent pipes, and a giant hole with jagged wood splinters.
When he’d asked Belle about the hole after his first night of surveillance, he learned that a lot of people in New Orleans kept axes in their attics.
When the storm waters surged, those who had heeded that advice had chopped holes in their roofs and waited for help, help that often took days to arrive.
He stopped at the far corner and swiveled his ball cap, so the visor faced backward, and dug a monocular night vision optic from his jacket pocket. He turned it on and brought it to his eye.
Sure enough, as with the past three nights, the same two military-aged males were at the front of the house, one in a yard chair out front, another on the porch.
Stop thinking of them as military-aged males.
That’s exactly how you need to think of them.
The man in the chair was black, shirtless.
Even from here, Walker could see that he was jacked.
His chest and shoulders were wide and chiseled, a bandana tied around his head.
He rested his feet on a full-sized cooler while he screwed around with his phone.
His friend on the porch looked younger, skinnier, and wore a flat-brim ball cap on his head.
No lights escaped the house. Like most of the others in the area, it was still without power.
Walker shifted his focus back to the street as a car approached.
A modern Jeep Wrangler with Arkansas plates pulled to a stop in front of the house, a Razorback mascot sticker on the back window.
The guy by the cooler gestured and the Jeep’s headlights blinked out. A blond male, also military-aged, in shorts and a T-shirt, stepped out of the car, thick neck, clean-shaven. Walker could see there was a passenger in the vehicle.
The transaction went smoothly. Razorback walked up to Muscles, handed over some cash. It was hard to see what, if anything, was exchanged. Then Razorback returned to the Jeep and drove off. Walker had seen similar transactions over the previous nights.
Connor’s journal indicated that this was a known trap house. Though there were still blanks without the cipher key, they had figured out that the pills had colorful names: Yellow Jackets, Queenies, Pez, and Snowball. Connor was focused on Snowball. There was something different about it.
No sign of cops. The two guys out front were the same two that he had seen in his earlier observations. The op was a go.
After climbing down, he returned to Belle’s BMW, opened the passenger-side door carefully, trying to avoid the squeak, and slid into his seat.
“You happy?” Belle asked.
“Not happy.”
“Why?”
He glared at her. “Just nervous.”
“Oh, come on. Girls buy out here too. They’re often the ones who show up with drugs at the pill parties. Dealers are in it for money. They want repeat customers. And besides, I totally look like a junkie.”
Belle had played up her makeup, giving herself a sickly pallor.
From his research on the opioid epidemic, he knew that the drug created an immediate physiological dependence.
That was what drove the business. For increased highs, pills were cut with fentanyl.
One or two grains too many and the powerful painkiller designed for cancer patients would stop the heart.
Addicts continued to service their physiological cravings, and as the government had cracked down on fentanyl, a new drug had appeared on the scene. It was called Snowball.
“We talked about this,” Belle said, reading the doubt in his eyes. “Even though you look homeless, you move like a cop. Like you’re on a mission or something. They’d peg you for a narc in a heartbeat. You don’t know the language. I do, trust me. They won’t sell to you. I can handle this.”
During his surveillance, Walker had noted a derelict vehicle in the front yard of a vacant house from where he could observe Belle’s buy and act as a quick reaction force if necessary.
“I don’t like it.”
“They want the money, Chris. Come on, let’s do this. Hand it over. All we need to do here is confirm that they sell Snowball. The only way to do that is to buy some. Let’s go.”
Walker handed her eight hundred bucks pulled from the stash in the van.
“Give me five minutes to get in position,” he said. “Then drive up, make the buy, and get out. Anything looks off, trust your gut, don’t push it.”
Walker turned around and slid a wool military surplus blanket from the back seat, revealing his Bravo Company AR and Ops-Core helmet.
“Jesus, Chris, we are not here to kill everyone.”
“Sometimes your adversary has other ideas. I’ll be close if you need me. Make the buy. Don’t loiter. Then meet me back here when it’s done.”
Walker stepped from the car and slid the sling over his head.
He then attached his monocular NOD to the helmet, again wishing he had liberated a bino or quad NOD from the Agency instead of the monocular, and adjusted the helmet and optic on his head.
He tested his IR laser. It was working. He then removed the helmet, tucked it under his arm, and wrapped the wool blanket around his shoulders to obscure the helmet and weapon.
“What do you think?”
“This tactical homeless look is surprisingly similar to your normal everyday homeless look.”
“Perfect. Remember. The buys I’ve seen go down this week are quick and smooth; cash in exchange for what I think is a small Ziploc bag of pills or powder.”
“Stop worrying. I’ve got this.”
“Give me five mikes.”
“Five mikes?”
“Five minutes.”
“Roger, good buddy,” she said, in an attempt to take the edge off.
“Dial me in.”
He wore a wired earbud that was plugged into the flip phone in his pocket. Belle dialed the number and established the comm link. She zipped her phone into the breast pocket of her leather jacket and adjusted a Bluetooth earpiece.
“Say something,” he said.
“Uh, read you loud and clear?”
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Stick to the plan.”
Walker shut the door and moved off into the night.