Chapter Fifty-Seven
IT HAD TAKEN three days of reconnaissance and preparation. Walker was ready.
In his hide site at Chalmette, he had mixed the fertilizer and aluminum powder in jugs and built detonators from rifle cartridges, combining hydrogen peroxide, acid, and acetone into a white powder after being filtered and dried.
He had learned how to build the devices from the EOD techs in his SEAL platoons and Development Group squadrons.
He had also excelled at the HME—Homemade Explosives—course at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah and gone even deeper studying the IEDs of the enemy in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
He built upon that foundation in the CIA through advanced courses at Harvey Point, North Carolina, where he had perfected the darkest of arts.
Now he was going to use that expertise on U.S. soil.
He was ready. All that remained was to wait for Gormley.
On his first day of reconnaissance, he was surprised that the area where he dispatched Babineaux and the three henchmen was not a crime scene. Had they simply cleaned it up and continued with business as usual? Who can make four bodies disappear?
Belle’s video analysis indicated that Detective Howard Gormley met someone at Dorado Freight on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at midnight.
Walker had confirmed it on Monday. He met with a man who Walker guessed to be Babineaux’s replacement.
If the pattern from the hard drive Walker had liberated from the office held true, the detective would be there in an hour. Walker would be ready.
The river lapped softly against the pilings. A barge sloshed in the distance.
Walker adjusted his position and scanned the road. Headlights. A Dodge Charger. Same make and model as in the video. Why was Gormley early? Why had he broken the pattern?
Should he wait until Friday to make his move?
That would give the authorities two more days to tighten the noose. Walker needed answers tonight. The longer this played out, the greater the odds that the violence that found Connor and Leigh Ann would also find Belle and Gloria.
Walker climbed down from his perch on the crane, rubber soles silent on steel rungs. He moved quickly to the back side of a dumpster.
Walker had thirty seconds before Gormley’s vehicle would emerge from the other side of a row of containers. He slipped the Dewalt twenty-four-inch wrecking bar from his belt, sprinted low across the dock, and took up his position behind a stack of pallets. Heart steady. Breath slow.
The cruiser rolled to a stop. The door opened. Gormley stepped out. Walker watched as he pulled up his pants, burped, and looked around. He reached back into his vehicle and extracted a long flashlight. He turned it on and shined it into the darkness.
Don’t move.
Walker remained perfectly still. Movement would draw the eye.
Gormley had never done that before. Maybe with Dupuis gone he was being more cautious.
The light passed over him once and then returned.
Stay still but be ready.
Gormley turned off the light and threw it back into his vehicle.
The detective grunted and approached the trailer.
As he fumbled with his keys, Walker made his move, sprinting toward his target.
The short crowbar connected with the base of Gormley’s skull with a sickening crack that reminded Walker of a gunshot.
The detective fell forward against the door and then back onto the concrete.
For a moment Walker worried that he’d killed him.
He quickly checked for breathing and a pulse.
Still alive.
Walker slid the crowbar into his belt and frisked the downed officer, relieving him of his duty pistol and extra mag, his backup ankle gun, badge, wallet, and his car keys.
Setting them aside, he removed Gormley’s handcuffs and secured them around the man’s meaty wrists, locking them behind his back.
Then he grabbed him by the cuffs and dragged him toward his Charger, feeling and hearing both shoulders pop from their sockets.
It was a struggle but he managed to work the larger man into the cage in the back of the police cruiser, locking him behind the partition that usually separated the good guys from the bad.
He retrieved Gormley’s personal items from where he had fallen and deposited those in the passenger seat. Then he started the car and slowly drove down the pier, stopping about ten yards from the end. He cut the engine.
As he waited for Gormley to come to, he inspected the interior of the unmarked cruiser. No shotgun or rifle. He popped the trunk and found a medical kit and Remington 870. It’s tubular magazine was fully loaded but the chamber was empty. He put both in the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel.
Hearing movement in the back seat from behind the protective partition, he twisted in his seat.
Gormley blinked, dazed, then attempted to push himself up, screaming in pain at the effort.
“I heard your shoulders pop out of their sockets, Gormley. Probably rotator cuff tears. Painful. A good surgeon could fix you right up, but after tonight you won’t need a doctor, you’ll need a mortician.”
“Who… who the fuck are you?”
Walker saw the recognition dawn across the detective’s face, a recognition quickly replaced by terror.
“Please,” Gormley gasped. “Please, I’m not the guy you want.”
“Who do I want?”
“Fuck.” Gormley strained and fought through the agony, positioning himself upright in the back seat. He was sweating profusely and breathing like he had just finished a marathon.
“It’s time for a little talk, Detective.
I took out Rayne, Hendrick, and Dupuis. I’m working my way up the chain.
Tonight, you are going to tell me who else is involved in your little operation.
If you are truthful with me, I might let you live.
If you are not, well…” Walker started the Charger.
“We are going to see if your car here floats.”
“Jesus, come on. Don’t do this. What do you want? Who hired you? The cartel?”
Cartel?
“That’s not how this works. You don’t ask the questions. You’re in the back seat tonight.”
“Okay, okay,” Gormley said, straining to catch his breath.
“What are you moving through Dorado?”
“Sugar.”
“Not the legal product. The stuff you personally move. In your partner’s yellow truck, the same one I sent into the river.”
“Pills.”
“What kind?”
“Jesus, man, they’ll kill me.”
“I’ll kill you just as dead.”
“Fuck! Snowball.”
“How does it get here?”
“On ships from down south. With sugar.”
“Whose sugar?”
“Nectar. It’s a refinery downriver, not far from here, just down the tracks. Big company. I just do what I’m told, buddy, that’s it.”
Walker’s eyes narrowed. “But you get a cut, don’t you? I’ve seen you pick up product in that F-350. What do you do with it?”
“We sell it.”
“Like in the Ninth? Through dealers under NOPD control, officers like Rayne and Hendrick?”
Gormley nodded slowly, still catching his breath. “Yes.”
“I’ve seen the video here at Dorado. I’ve watched you pick up pallets, probably six or eight hundred pounds’ worth. If that’s all pills, you’re not unloading it all in the Ninth. It’d be everywhere in this city.”
When Gormley didn’t answer, Walker revved the engine and rolled down the driver’s- and passenger-side windows.
“Okay, okay,” Gormley screamed.
“Where does that Snowball go?”
“We sell it to a company. A pharma company. We just get a slice.”
“What company?”
“Genyra. That’s all I know.”
“Genyra?”
“A drug company.”
Walker thought of Connor’s theories, a corporate conspiracy.
“How do you get it to this… Genyra… the drug company?”
“I drive it.”
“When you load up here with a truck, where do you go?”
“I deliver it to their depot in Metairie. A distribution center.”
“Who picks it up there?”
Gormley’s eyes shifted. “I don’t know. I leave it at the edge of the warehouse.”
Walker shifted the cruiser into gear and edged closer to the end of the pier.
“I need a name.”
He inched forward farther.
“Oh, come on, man.”
“Name.”
He gunned the engine again.
“Walt Kimbel,” Gormley blurted.
“Who’s he?”
“Senior exec at Genyra. Oversees deliveries. We code pallets for him. That’s all I know.”
“Does he work for the DA?”
“The DA? Isaacson?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t fucking know, man! I’m just a low-level cop trying to get by. I swear!”
“What about Connor Staub?”
“Who?”
“You know who I’m talking about. You kill him?”
“No.”
“Did NOPD kill him?”
Walker floored the accelerator, ate up a few more feet, and then slammed on the brake, sending Gormley careening into the partition.
“Stop! Stop!” he screamed. “Rayne and Hendrick found out he was snooping around, asking questions, putting together a story. Dumbass kid. He wasn’t even a reporter. They tried to warn him off, but he kept investigating. Started getting close.”
“So, you killed him?”
Walker inched the car forward.
“The end of the pier is getting close, Gormley. Who killed Connor Staub?”
“Oh fuck. We outsourced it. I don’t know how, exactly. My boss handled it.”
“Bates?”
“Oh shit, yeah, Bates,” he said, through the snot and tears that were now falling down his face.
“Who did he hire?”
“He won’t tell me. He calls him the Afghan.”
For a moment, Walker was back on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, leaving his dead friend behind.
“The Afghan?”
“Some refugee that Bates met in the 2025 New Year’s attack investigation. The guy had nothing to do with it, but Bates got to know him. He worked for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Came to New Orleans in 2021 after the withdrawal. I’ve never met him, but Bates swears he’s solid.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know his fucking name. I just told you. We just call him the Afghan. We use him when we need to keep some distance.”
“You son of a bitch. And Leigh Ann Staub?”
“That was you fucking guys!” Gormley hollered.
“What do you mean?”
“Cartel!”
“What do you do here at night?”
“I pick up cash from a safe in the office.”
“Why were you early tonight?”
“Early? I just came for money. My cut.”
“Why early?”
Headlights from two vehicles illuminated the trailer.
Gormley twisted his head and saw them too.
He laughed.
“That’s what I was doing here early, you dumb motherfucker.”
The headlights shifted toward the pier.
“Who are they?”
“They’re here for you. Hitters from down south. Six, maybe more. Now let’s make a deal. You let me go and I keep them from killing you tonight. That’s the best offer you are going to get.”
Walker watched as the two cars sped toward him.
“Wait here.”
Walker grabbed the shotgun, exited the vehicle, and unzipped his Orvis waterproof sling, extracting a garage door opener.
As the cars got closer, he recognized them as a minivan and a full-sized truck.
He waited until they were mid-pier and then he pressed the button.
The garage door opener sent a radio frequency to its receiver that completed a circuit and delivered a small electrical charge to the Christmas light bulbs buried in the milk jugs that Walker had set next to the concrete pier pilings hours earlier.
Instead of illuminating a festive light, the electric spark ignited the peroxide powder, which in turn detonated the ammonium nitrate and aluminum mixture packed into milk jugs wrapped in nails, nuts, and bolts.
The four simultaneous explosions lit up the night and sent the shrapnel flying through the thin metal doors of the approaching vehicles, the blast directed inward due to the IEDs’ placement against the pilings.
The lead vehicle swerved to the right and smashed into one of the supports. The truck continued, rolling past the disabled minivan and slowed to a stop.
Walker racked the shotgun and moved forward.
The driver of the truck kicked open the door and fell to the pier.
Walker’s double aught took him in the chest. Walker racked the shotgun and fired into the man’s head.
He then set the weapon’s stock on top of his right shoulder and twisted it to the outside.
He grabbed the most forward shell on the side saddle with his index finger and the next shell in line with his pinky.
He moved his thumb behind the second shell and slid both into the loading port on the underside of the shotgun to top himself off.
He then approached the open driver’s-side door and looked across to see a man in the passenger seat struggling to breathe.
Walker aligned his sights on his face and pressed the trigger, immediately racking the shotgun again to chamber another cartridge.
He stepped to the rear passenger door on the driver’s side and unloaded two more barrages through the closed window before he opened it to find a man sprawled in the back seat. Walker leveled the barrel at the top of the man’s head and fired again.
He topped off the shotgun with the remaining four shells in his side saddle and moved to the minivan.
As he came around the back corner of the pickup, he saw a man in khakis and a tank top holding a stainless revolver wiping blood from his face.
Walker shot him once in the chest and again in the face as he dropped to his knees.
Gunfire erupted through the windows of the minivan, in his general direction, but it was wild and ineffective.
Four rounds left.
He continued his approach, sending his final four rounds into the source of the shots.
As his weapon went dry, he dropped it to the ground and drew the Staccato from his belt.
He fired as he walked to the open sliding door of the vehicle, adjusting aim as bodies came into view: driver, passenger, and another man in the back seat.
Walker put rounds into each of their heads before walking back to the Charger.
He was now on the clock.
“Jesus,” Gormley stammered. “You killed them all.”
“And you tried stalling, talking to me, knowing you had men on the way.”
“I’m sorry. Please, let me live and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Unfortunately for you, those explosions mean that cops will be here any minute. If it’s any consolation, your buddy Bates will be joining you soon.”
“No, please,” he pleaded.
Walker revved the engine.
“Christ, man, who the fuck are you?” he asked, eyes wide in horror.
“You know who I am.”
Walker put the car in drive, and then stepped from the vehicle, letting it roll forward and plunge into the Mississippi.
Gormley screamed the whole way down.