Lost(41)

Thirty seconds later, he flopped, exhausted, into the seat next to Hanna.

She said, “How do you know they won’t scream for help?”

Albert tapped the pistol in his waistband. “I explained that if they didn’t keep quiet until I told them they could come out, there would be plenty of air holes in the door. Young pretty boys aren’t used to people fighting back. We’ll be fine.”

Hanna had known her brother was tough, but this was spectacular. He looked like a movie spy. How could she not feel safe traveling with him?





CHAPTER 59



Miami


I’D BEEN BURNING up my contacts trying to keep an eye on everything that came through the ports in Florida. The problem was that Florida, being a long peninsula, had a lot of damn ports. I didn’t even bother to consider what would happen if the ship came into a port outside of Florida.

It was easy to get overwhelmed with data and details, and this was where my background in sports came in handy. If I viewed major cases the way I used to view football games, I kept a better attitude and was able to manage each task that popped up a little more easily.

This wasn’t a game, but that’s how cops have to look at major cases. Every cop has some form of psychological trick to help cope with the stress that gets piled on us from all sides by the administration, the public, and our own natural desire to make arrests in every case. Not to mention the stress that comes from department infighting, though in my experience, the hardworking cops who want to solve cases don’t care much about promotions or office politics.

Still, it didn’t pay to ignore them completely. As Plato said, “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” That’s especially true in police work, and I was experiencing it on the task force. Luckily, our supervisor left decisions about assignments up to my discretion.

Chill, Steph Hall, and Lorena Perez were all looking at the Rostoff connection. It bugged me that the smug son of a bitch Roman Rostoff thought he could sit in his fancy office and count his money without facing any consequences for his illegal activities. Maybe that’s how it worked in Moscow, but it wouldn’t fly in Miami. I didn’t care how many Russians lived here.

Now Marie Meijer and I were in my FBI-issued Explorer heading to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. The way Marie took in everything that flashed past as we drove made me feel like I’d brought her to an alien world.

“It’s all so green,” she said.

“It’s the subtropics. That’s what happens. Wait until summer and you’ll understand why things are green—they get watered every single afternoon.”

“Why don’t they call this the port of Fort Lauderdale instead of Port Everglades?”

I shrugged. “No one consulted me when they were naming it. It’s a big port with the second-busiest cruise terminal in the world.”

“Where is the busiest cruise terminal?”

“Miami. Where else? That’s part of what’s making everything so difficult. There are so many ships coming into the ports daily, not even counting the cruise ships, and it’s impossible to investigate them all.”

I drove into the port off Seventeenth Street so that Marie could get an idea of the size of it. Even the county convention center was at the port. The cruise terminal was bustling as I eased past a security checkpoint and inched toward the cargo terminal. While not as elaborate as the cruise terminal, this area sprawled over acres of the port.

There were oil and natural-gas storage containers on the property between the port and US 1. I had visited them once during a class on terrorism, and I didn’t like to consider the damage that would be done to downtown Fort Lauderdale if a terrorist managed to puncture one of the tanks and ignite the contents.

I didn’t mention that to Marie. Tourists don’t like to hear about potential terror threats.

I found a spot near the southernmost part of the port. This part of the port wasn’t too busy today. In fact, it felt a little isolated. A few cars were parked haphazardly. One crane was working to unload a small freighter farther down the dock, and the sound of metal against metal echoed through the port.

We stepped out of my car and looked at the three ships that had docked since last night. None of them would have been confused with the Queen Mary.

The middle ship held about fifteen containers on the bow and dozens more amidships and on the stern. One of the containers caught my attention. A rail-thin man smoking a cigarette was playing with the lock on the front of it.

I nudged Marie and pointed at the ship.

Marie said, “I’m not sure what I’m looking at. It looks like a normal cargo ship to me. I don’t see anything unusual.”

“The container near the bow of the ship has air vents along the sides. We’ve got to get a better look.”





CHAPTER 60





IT’S HARD TO overestimate the importance of cell phones in modern police work. As I hustled down to the ship with Marie, all I could manage was a quick check with an FBI analyst on my phone; I gave her the ship’s name and said that it was docked at Port Everglades. The analyst told me right away that the ship had left from Belgium and had made several other stops before arriving in Florida, and she was working on the registration as I reached the gangplank.