[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (25 page)

Security is usually on par, especially at large multinational companies where trade secrets are highly valued and closely watched.

I didn’t expect that would be the case here, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were only two guards on duty, both at the entrance to the facility, which was surrounded by an eight-foot-high fence topped by barbed wire. Granted, the location meant it was unlikely to be targeted by anyone, including the tax collector. And heavy security would have probably drawn unwanted attention. But sometimes you wish people would present more of a challenge.

Even in the dusky twilight, getting past the fence was simple; all I had to do was put a pair of sharp-nosed wire cutters to appropriate use. I pushed the fence back and slipped through. I didn’t have night glasses, but there was no need for them; the stars and moon gave plenty of light as I walked to the back door.

It was locked. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a problem, but I didn’t have my lock-picking tools with me, and there had been no acceptable substitutes at camp. So I took a more creative approach: I went to the trees, picked up a fallen limb, then hurled it through one of the windows.

I scurried back to the other side of the fence, expecting an alarm to ring. I didn’t hear any, but soon a beam of light danced in the window closest to the front of the building. I grabbed some other branches and threw them over the fence near the window, then retreated into the shadows.

The guard and his flashlight made their way methodically through the building, checking each room until at last he came to the one broken by my tree branch. Discovering the branch, he turned on the light. It framed him as he examined the broken window. Opening it, he stuck his head out and looked down on the ground, then around toward the fence. Satisfied by the debris on the ground, he closed the window and retreated.

As soon as the light was off in the room, I ran to the building. I pushed the glass shards out of the bottom of the window, then snaked inside. I found myself in an empty storeroom.

The first order of business was to check for internal security devices. The window turned out to be wired; I gathered that the alarm must be silent—a slightly more high-tech flourish than I’d hoped for. Though it was a little late now, I popped my flashlight on to check for a motion detector (none), then checked the door for wiring (ditto).

The door opened into a small manufacturing area. Machines were grouped into different clusters; some were set off by drapes of sheer plastic, others were wide open. Computer workstations, mostly ganged in twos and threes, filled tables near every cluster. While there were a few shadows toward the edges of the room, LEDs on the machines provided enough of a glow for me to see easily.

There were no motion detectors or other security devices in the large room. Closets similar to the one I’d been in ran about halfway down the side. An enclosed vestibule sat at the front of the room, on the side where the guards were stationed. I went to it and cracked the door open.

Long and very narrow, the vestibule was empty. There were posters on the wall with Bengali writing—they looked like the sort of propaganda factory owners put up reminding workers to be careful, as if that were necessary in a place where becoming crippled is tantamount to condemning yourself to an early death.

The steel door on the opposite wall looked like it went to the outside. The guard post would be nearby, in a small shack separate from the building.

Moving back inside, I spotted a beam of light swinging through the darkness outside two of the far windows; the guard I’d seen earlier or maybe his partner was outside, checking to see what was going on. Most likely he would conclude that the branch had been blown into the window from one of the nearby trees.

And if he didn’t—I planned to be gone by then.

Expecting to find an office where the records were kept, I discovered only a single desk a few feet from the rear door. There was a brand-new Dell computer at the side, with a modest display screen and a wired keyboard on the desktop. I booted it up, finger over the screen button so I could turn it off if I heard someone coming.

The machine booted into Windows 7 without asking for a password. A few clicks later I had an Internet connection. I typed in the URL of a site Shunt had set up and hit Return.

The site looked like a garden-variety page of porn, featuring your usual big bazookas and unprotected flanks. I moved the cursor to a sensitive area on the first picture and clicked.

A message appeared: Access denied. It wasn’t really, though—it was a fake message that would be stored in the computer. Five seconds after I cleared the screen, Shunt was looking at the computer’s hard drive, starting to download the data.

I went and looked around. The place was a druggist’s wet dream—there were pills of every shape and size imaginable, identified only by bar codes. Large bottles were stacked neatly near some of the machines; boxes with other bottles were packed in different pyramids around other stations. The place could cure a thousand different diseases, I’m sure.

The far side of the room contained a cascading collection of metal containers, miniature silos of different chemicals. An area at the front contained shelves of more boxes and a few very large bottles, all with writing in English identifying what they were.

How good were the drugs that were being made here? The machines to mix and press the pills practically gleamed in the dim light, and there were no rats or other vermin in the place—present company excepted, of course. Would I buy my acetylsalicylic acid from here? Lansoprazole? Codeine? Xanax?

I’d gone back toward the front of the room when I heard the outer door opening. Ducking down, I hid behind a stack of boxes, slowing my breathing as the door opened.

This time the guard switched on the light. I squeezed my shoulders down, trying to make myself invisible. I took my pistol, in case that didn’t work.

The guard mumbled to himself as he walked through the room. I leaned forward just enough to get a glimpse of him as he peered left and right. Satisfied that the room was empty, he came back and began working his way methodically down the small storerooms at the south side of the room, checking each one.

I sidled around, waiting for him to finish. But as he came out of the last one, he happened to glance to the back of the room. Something caught his eye: the computer screen, which I had neglected to turn off. He walked to the machine and began complaining loudly. I’m not sure what he was saying, but I would guess it was along the lines of
Those dipshit techies never remember to turn anything off.

By the time he left the room five minutes later, my sat phone was shaking so hard it could have pounded a nail into my leg.

“What the hell is going on?” asked Shunt when I answered. “Why’d you turn the computer off? I wasn’t done downloading.”

“It wasn’t me, it was a guard. How much time do you need?”

“A few minutes.” I went to the computer and turned it back on. “Find anything good?”

“Some lists of people they do business with. Nothing jumped out at me. They also have the names of shipping agents they use. We can track through them if I don’t get any other information.”

“OK.”

“Say, do you think you could pick up some codeine while you’re there? I have a tooth that’s bothering me.”

“I’ll cure it when I get back,” I told him. “I have some rusty pliers that’ll do the trick.”

“Thanks.”

I restored the connection. Shunt’s program finished doing its dirty work in a few minutes and he placed a “rat” on the hard drive—a type of program that would share whatever happened on the computer with Shunt’s network back home.

“We’re done,” he said.

I shut down the machine and started to take my leave. But as I cracked open the back door, light flooded in—enough light to shoot a movie. Closing it quickly, I retreated to the side room where I’d come in to see what was going on.

The guards had activated a set of floodlights surrounding the building. The lights weren’t as much of a problem as the people in front of them were: the grounds were filled with workers, several of whom had chain saws. Apparently the guards’ supervisor didn’t want a repeat of the “accident” that had broken the window.

If he was sending people to take care of the trees, what about the window itself?

I made it out of the room just in time, ducking behind a set of machines as three men came in from the front. They were workmen, carrying tools and several very large panes of glass. The men were wearing lab coats—why that was necessary, I have no idea, but it did provide me with an easy means to escape. While they were inside the room, I skirted through the machinery, went over to the storeroom nearest the front, and selected the largest coat and cap I could find.

By that point, the window had been repaired. The men came out of the room and began examining the machines, making sure there was no damage. They were techies, not glaziers.

A quick wave to the two guards in the guardhouse on the left, and I was out.

Almost. One of the guards yelled to me in Bengali. I have no idea what he said, but I replied in a universal language all guys would understand: sweeping around, I mimed myself unzipping my pants and relieving myself, rocked my arms as if running, then spun and walked quickly into the woods.

Works every time.

*   *   *

The connection to Veep via the bank account was a thin reed. The fact that the unlicensed drug plant manufactured goods similar to those I was buying was an intriguing coincidence.

The fact that the cell phone I had taken the call on in Djibouti had been purchased by the same credit card that paid for a bill to the drug company—now
that
was interesting.

“It wasn’t actually a bill to the drug company,” Shunt said, correcting my paraphrase of what he’d just told me. “What they did was, they bought chemicals and then had them delivered to this office in Rangpur. That office is rented by the people who own the drug company. Got it?”

Shunt had a lot of information about the overall operation, thanks to his downloading of the hard drive on the administrator’s machine. Among his choicest finds were e-mails sent to a man in Chittagong who acted as a shipping agent. The bootleg drugs apparently were shipped from the building right alongside other shipments to India. Once they reached the port, they were placed on a different ship, and from there, traveled to Africa, Europe, or the Middle East, wherever the buyer had specified.

That gave him a dozen leads to pursue. As he pursued them, he confirmed that the most recent shipment was aboard the
Indiamotion,
the same ship Garrett had mentioned. It was headed to Europe. He’d done some research on the company.

“Research” in this case being Shunt’s word for breaking and entering.

“Pretty typical shipping company computer system,” he told me. “They have this interface where their company officials and the ships’ captains can check the position of all the ships. They think it’s pretty innovative. Easy to break into, though.”

“Which you did.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t very hard.
Indiamotion
is off the coast of Africa,” said Shunt. “The boat’s going through the canal up to Europe. If we could bug the boxes, we’d get a lot more information. I could coordinate arrivals with payments, maybe figure out the whole network. I don’t know if it’s an Allah’s Rule shipment,” Shunt added. “But until I get more information, you know, it’s what you always say—don’t
ass
-u-me.”

Shunt started babbling technical information and other things he’d been working on. I started to zone out—until something in the middle of his diatribe about 0s and 1s caught my attention.

“… The shipping line’s security is so easy to breach, that a bunch of people have done it. I put a tracker on, and guess whose computer has been used to access the company site?”

You can always tell when Shunt thinks he has earth-shattering information: he answers his questions with breathless answers.

“Veep.” Shunt was hyperventilating. “His computer goes on that site regularly. He’s checked that ship like two or three times this week.”

“Veep?” I asked.

“We have that earlier connection, now this. There’s got to be something up with him, right? I mean, not to ass-u-me, but, right? Right? Right?”

“What were the ports again?”

“Hang on.”

I was thinking we could follow the shipments once they landed, but the logistics would be tricky—I’d have to set up in every port they were planning to land in. Meanwhile, we’d still have to set up for the Allah’s Rule delivery, assuming it was a separate shipment.

No, it would be much smarter to visit the ship before it landed. And so a visit was arranged.

(II)

Forty-eight hours later, I stood behind a curtain at the rear of a 727, sucking on pure oxygen and waiting for a signal from the cockpit. We were flying right around 29,000 feet, following the general course taken by cargo flights from India to Djibouti—which made sense, as this was a commercial cargo plane on a scheduled run.

I wasn’t going all the way to Djibouti. My destination was a speck in the ocean several hundred miles to the east.

Connections inside the Indian security forces—and a good amount of hard American currency—had helped make it possible for me to hitch a ride. And now as the lights flashed in the hold, it was time for me to take my leave.

I have fond memories of 727s stretching back to my days with Six. They tell me the aircraft are obsolete now, due to aging airframes, changing airline requirements, flight regulations, and unfortunate developments related to the price of fuel. Boeing stopped making the planes decades ago, and no major American passenger line I know of still uses them. But the engineers who designed them and the men and women who put them together knew what they were doing, and those that have been properly maintained still ply their trade around the world.

My enthusiasm isn’t so much for their versatility and dependability, but rather the door at the back of the plane. It opens to a retractable set of stairs, famously used by D. B. Cooper over the northwest mountains in 1971 when he escaped with a bag of money. At SEAL Six we installed a metal slide over the stairs so we could expeditiously exit the whole team. The “laundry chute” strewed agents of mayhem across the sky.