The Threat

“It’s never likely, but ordure occurs. I’d suspect a human source, myself.”

“Somebody in this office?”

“Could be one of a long string on this one. All the way from the top on down to the foot soldiers.”

Dan remembered how much Tony Holt had known about the operation. The rumors about drug use among the civilian staff. De Bari supposedly blowing coke in the governor’s mansion. His wife’s ties to organized crime. He blinked, shook them off. The administration had counted on this bust to prove it was hammering the drug trade. Giving it away wouldn’t have been in its interest.

What about his own people? Everybody in his office had known about Hot Handoff. Should he start suspecting them? Lynch, Harlowe, Sergeant Ihlemann — she saw a lot, heard a lot, at that front desk. Alvarado — could the cartel have gotten hold of one of Luis’s relatives, squeezing him that way? Certainly the Coast Guard officer was closely associated with South American operations. The banal, cunning little Meilhamer? Bloom himself? He cleared his throat, watching Miles watching him and knowing he was thinking the same thing about him. “So … where to from here?”

“On the cartel? I’ll pass along DEA’s view. Smartest thing we can do right now is to let the silt settle. Know how when you’re spearfishing, you go for a big langouste and miss, he kicks a lot of sand up into the water? We still picked up some heavy players in Haiti. A clear gotcha. Let’s see how things shake out with Tejeiro, and where Nuñez pops up next.”

Dan swiveled, looking out and down a hundred feet into the loading area. The GSA guys were playing b-ball with trash bags again. One scored a two-pointer as he watched. Unfortunately the bag broke, showering documents all over the asphalt. Yeah. Great security.

He was struggling with the old craving. But getting drunk wasn’t going to help with Blair, or Nuñez, or with anything else that was wrong. He needed sleep, and to get things straight with her, one way or the other. “Okay, I guess we can let it ride awhile,” he said at last. Glad Bloom was here. Behind the breezy facade, the guy was sharp.

“Another issue, if we’re done with that, boss.”

The first time one of them had called him that. He leaned back. “Shoot.”

Bloom cracked the door and yelled, “Ed! Get your ass in here.” The Air Force major took the last chair, and they all three sat uncomfortably intimate, knees bumping.

“Here’s the picture,” Lynch said. “Remember, you told us to keep an eye peeled for anything pointing to a linkup of terrorists and druggies.”

“Right.”

“Well, the FAA’s surfaced something.”

Dan told them to go on, and Bloom started. “Kind of a weird indicator; we’re not sure what it means. Aviation Administration called it in. Has to do with someone who might be trying to penetrate the cargo-handling setup for UPS.”

Lynch told him that United Parcel Service, which most people thought of as the guy in shorts who came to your door in a brown truck, was actually one of the biggest airline operations in the world. “Six hundred airplanes, making it, like, the tenth biggest. That’s how the package gets from the truck that picked it up from you, to the truck that delivers it. The Office of Transportation Security/Civil Aviation Security service — that’s the part of the Transportation Department that does security on air cargo. They put out a bulletin reporting inquiries by a group in Pomona, California, called International Blessings. They were importing empty containers from Mexico.”

“Wait a minute.” Dan rubbed his face. “I missed that. What’d you say was in these containers?”

“Nothing.”

“I meant originally. When they were shipped.”

“There was never anything in them. As far as Aviation Security could tell.”

“That’s illegal? Shipping nothing?”

“Course not. That’s why they got bulletined, not charged. There’s a write-up, you want to read it?”

“Maybe later. What kind of containers?”

“The usual air cargo boxes. They load up ramps into the plane. Like sea containers, only smaller.”

“So they’re coming in from Mexico, you think it’s drug related? Dry runs for shipping drugs by air cargo? Illegal immigrants? Or what?”

Bloom said, “That’s why they liaised up. We put a warning out, thinking yeah, like you said, it might be a new wrinkle on transporting stuff. Using the air cargo system, which is admittedly pretty loosey-goosey security-wise.”

“Is it? A new wrinkle, I mean.”

“I talked to the guys who looked into it. They X-rayed the containers, put sniffer dogs in and everything. No secret compartments. No traces of coke, opiates, cannabinols. Nada,” Bloom said. “That’s kind of the universal conclusion.”

Dan said, as patiently as he could, “So these idiots were shipping empty containers. Why are you telling me?”