12. Don't Do Stupid Shit

“H ow long, now?” Marcus turned to look at the driver, and the man checked the time on his watch.

“Twenty-six minutes.”

Silence.

They had been stopped for twenty-six minutes, half a block from where the red dot on Kellen’s phone had become stationary.

This was a warehouse district. The large rectangular buildings speckled the wide empty roads all over the surrounding area.

The location made sense.

“Still no movement?” Marcus’s finger lifted off the button on the radio he had just spoken into.

There was a crackle. “Nothing.”

“ 10-4 .”

Silence.

Kellen stood up and moved to the front of the van. He held out his hand to Marcus. “Give me my phone.”

Concern crossed Marcus’s face. “What are you gonna do with it?”

“I’m going to walk around until I can pinpoint the exact position of the tracker,” Kellen responded simply.

“No, you’re not.” The shadow of a grin touched Marcus’s lips. His eyes were pinned straight into Kellen’s. Fearful amazement.

“They could be on the wrong side of the building for all we know.” Kellen’s hand jerked in the air. “Give me my phone.”

“We don’t have a search warrant, Eastland,” Tim spoke up from beside Kellen.

“Do I need a search warrant to walk around outside?” Kellen shot the SWAT leader a quick look.

Marcus laughed. Short, unamused. “You’re fucking crazy.” And his voice was suddenly lowered. “You get seen one time by one person, and you’re compromised.”

“I won’t be seen.”

“I can’t fucking arm you.”

“I know.”

Silence.

Marcus glanced to the side and met eyes with the SWAT leader.

There was a moment of quiet. Wordlessly, Tim rotated in his seat to face the back of the vehicle. “Any volunteers to cover Eastland? He wants to scout the complex.” There was a tone in his commanding voice like the question was posed in sarcasm.

Dead silence answered.

And then, with a limp movement like it were controlled on a puppet string, a hand lifted. “I got Eastland’ six.”

A moment of visible surprise passed between Marcus and the SWAT leader as Arlo stood up and made his way to the front of the van.

Marcus pinched his lips. “You two understand what situation you’re putting yourselves in?”

Arlo swatted his thigh. “Man, I got nine years on Narcs, you think I don’t? ”

“Stay within external access zones,” Tim instructed, his voice immediately deadpan. “Remain within line of sight of either vehicle as much as possible. Don’t be out there long.”

“Eastland needs a radio,” Marcus spoke up stiffly. “Does anyone have a spare set?”

“Might be one in the drawer there,” the driver responded with a gesture to the glove compartment.

“Don’t do stupid shit,” Marcus warned as he handed a receiver and earpiece to Kellen.

The air outside smelled like train tracks and industrial grease. Noise from heavy equipment covered the sound of Kellen’s and Arlo’s footsteps as they followed a narrow roadway between steel-sided buildings.

The dot on Kellen’s phone appeared to be stopped on the other side of the complex. Supposedly, that was also where the F- 150 was.

The roadway dead-ended in a dock door. But there was a forklift path to the left. Kellen started down along the neon yellow paint. There was a steel ramp up ahead. A concrete platform in front of a door. Either there was a drop on the other side or a descending ramp; either was navigable—

“Hol’ up,” Arlo whispered suddenly from behind Kellen.

Kellen froze in his tracks, immediately scanning his surroundings for what the officer behind him had seen. The doorway ahead—nothing. The pavement behind—nothing. Rooftop above—nothing. Kellen turned back to look at Arlo.

Arlo shifted his assault rifle to his other arm and crossed the four feet between himself and Kellen. “’Fit check,” he announced before pinching the front of Kellen’s gaiter and pulling it neatly a little higher on his face. His gloved hand moved to the top of Kellen’s hood, and he tugged it down a little lower. He adjusted the drawstrings and smiled in satisfaction. “All good.”

“The fuck?” Kellen whispered. He abruptly turned away and continued toward the ramp. When he glanced back, Arlo was silently grinning.

They were nearly on top of the red tracking dot by the time they came out on the other side of the forklift run. Kellen flattened himself to the wall at the corner and took a moment to view both ways up and down the gravel opening ahead.

Three dock doors. A garage entrance. Steel-caged pipes bridging the open space at roof level. The F- 150 was parked right around the corner, the passenger side of the tinted windshield just visible. There was a white box truck backed up to one of the dock doors. Tinted windows and a faded image on the trailer of Santa Rosa wine.

I’ve never seen a wine truck with a faded label that was still owned and operated by the company, Kellen silently noted. He put two fingers on his phone screen and zoomed in on the map. Zoomed in more. The tracker wasn’t necessarily accurate. Most likely, it wasn’t accurate down to this proximity.

But if it was, that white box truck was sitting directly under the red dot.

Kellen’s eyes lifted back to the truck. The shadow of the rooftop was hitting it with just enough depth to make the cab interior too dark to determine if anyone was inside. Kellen glanced back at the officer leaning against the wall beside him. “What do we know about this box truck?”

Arlo gave Kellen a blank stare and slowly raised a hand to the radio receiver pinned to his shoulder. “Scout, what we know about this box truck?”

Arlo’s voice fed back into Kellen’s earpiece. There was a crackle. Then, “Yeah, there’s a box truck parked in front of the dock doors up here. Think it’s just parked, though. It’s been there since we pulled up.”

“ 10-4 .” Arlo looked at Kellen.

Kellen stared wordlessly back.

Arlo slowly raised his hand to his receiver again. “You sure it’s jus’ parked, Scout?”

A three-second pause and another crackle. “Not sure, no. But it hasn’t moved. No one’s been out around it, either. ”

Silence.

“‘It’s been there since we pulled up’ and therefore it’s just parked and not involved?” Kellen asked in a hushed voice. “The tracker has been stationary since we pulled up. That means nothing.”

Arlo gave him a three-second stare. “Du’, you know you’ radio work jus’ as well as mines.”

Kellen’s jaw set. He turned away.

“Mm-hm, that’s―” Arlo began. But before he could say another word, a door opened to the far right of the box truck, and two men walked out of the building.

Kellen shrank several steps back from the opening. One of the men was dressed in a mechanic’s jumpsuit. The other wore a high-vis vest over a regular T-shirt.

“Control, there’s movement,” came over the radio.

“Movement, but jack else,” Arlo murmured.

He was right, maybe. There was nothing particularly suspicious about the man in the neon yellow vest who climbed into the driver's seat of the box truck, or the other who walked around to the back to watch the dock door.

The radio crackled in Kellen’s ear. “What movement?”

Another static pop. “Looks like the box truck driver is getting ready to take off. Two guys. Can’t say anything looks off, though.”

“Mules don’t always know what they’ haulin’,” Arlo whispered.

“Keep an eye on them.” Marcus’s voice.

There were a few seconds of silence over the line. Then: “De’Angelo, I want to see if I can talk to these guys. One of them looks like he works here at the warehouse. Maybe he’ll let us take a look around.”

Another pause. “Any potential for concealed firearms?”

The box truck’s engine started up with a sputtering rumble. The vehicle pulled out from the dock door two yards, then stopped. With the engine still running, the driver hopped out again. He joined the other man at the back of the truck and began securing the rear roll-up door.

No. Kellen’s eyes swept both figures twice. The jumpsuit guy, possibly. Remotely so. The other man’s clothing would’ve betrayed it if he were hiding a gun.

“Nah, they look clean.”

The roll-up door landed with a clang. A rusted metal screech followed as the locking handle was put into place.

“ Alright, just be careful.” Marcus’s voice.

There was a sound through the under-murmur of distant equipment: a car door slamming.

“Here we go…” Arlo whispered.

A tactical officer in full uniform walked into view in the clearing. He had a pistol strapped to his thigh, but no rifle.

“Monte,” Arlo named the SWAT operator.

The two men at the back of the truck stepped out as soon as they noticed the officer. But other than the first two words of the officer’s greeting, Kellen couldn’t make out what was being said.

There was strange body language, Kellen immediately detected. Neither of the men so much as glanced at the truck behind them, despite the many gestures made to it throughout the conversation.

“Mind if I take a look in the back?” the officer’s voice carried briefly.

The men responded with a shrug and something that looked dismissive.

The officer pointed to a padlock one of them was holding.

More back and forth, the man in the neon vest beginning to show clear signs of irritation. “Yeah, I got a BOL,” he said loudly, turning back to the cab. “And I’ll show it to you, too!”

The officer was following him to the cab at a distance. Kellen silently noted that the jumpsuit guy was walking back around the truck.

There was a three-yard gap between the SWAT officer and the open driver’s side door. The man in the neon vest was rifling around for something in the cab. The jumpsuit guy joined him up front from the passenger side and began taking down the sunshade. They were talking, Kellen saw through the windshield. And then they stopped talking.

Kellen caught a flash view of an AR- 15 through the tinted glass of the windshield, seconds before the weapon went off in fully automatic gunfire.

Arlo’s arm was across Kellen’s shoulder before the body even hit the ground. Arlo pulled Kellen nine feet back from the entrance as the box truck jolted into motion and started for the exit roadway. Kellen caught a glimpse of what looked like a third person seated at the front of the truck before the vehicle was out of sight.

“Officer down! Officer down!” Arlo was yelling into his radio. He was still gripping Kellen’s shoulder, pulling him back—back away from view of the man lying motionless on the gravel. Back toward the ramp behind them. Kellen saw the F- 150 speeding through the clearing moments before Arlo pulled him down behind the forklift ramp.

There was chatter over the radio. Directions. Eastbound toward the street.

“We’ exposed as fuck out here,” Arlo murmured. He took Kellen’s shoulder and pushed him closer to the wall, then positioned himself in the space facing the open forklift run, rifle pointing outward. “Goddamn mothafuckas gonna shoot an’ ask questions later.”

Kellen looked down at his phone and unlocked the screen. The red dot was moving. Moving eastbound toward the street. Fuck, it registered in Kellen’s mind. Fuck, he’s on that truck. And that truck had become a death trap the second one of the occupants opened fire on an officer.

As if on cue to the rhythm of Kellen’s thoughts, screeching brakes cut through the white noise. Immediately following was the unmistakable sound of a vehicle collision. And less than fifteen seconds after: the rhythmic popping of an automatic weapon. Then a second opening fire.

Kellen didn’t think twice. He jumped up the side of the ramp to his left, then down the other side. On the flat concrete leading back to the gravel opening, he broke into a full run.

Arlo’s yells drowned to the background behind the pounding in Kellen’s head. He stopped short in the opening, yards from the officer on the ground. Dead, the conclusion ran through his mind. A bullet had found its mark in the man’s neck. Carotid artery. The blood that must have immediately pulsed out of it had already slowed to a crawl.

Kellen’s footsteps quickened toward the exit, and he broke into a run again.

And then, around the corner of the building, he could see it. The F- 150 was stopped closest to the roadway, the front smashed up, both doors open. Closer to Kellen was the SWAT van, doors also open. And between the two police vehicles, the box truck stood stationary, its front end sunken toward the ground like it had hit a ditch.

There were people standing around the scene. Officers in the open with no cover.

Drowning panic seized Kellen from every side. It left him staggering. Gasping for air. Trembling fingers lifted to the gaiter covering his face, and he drew it down. Gasped. In the four seconds it took him to resume movement, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Alexei. The youthful face, the sound of his voice. Those restraint marks on his wrists.

And that dream. That first dream—the blindfold, the shivering body, a face and form very much like Alexei’s. A dream exactly like all the others.

“You dream of the vulnerable and abandoned as they experience their last moments. You are a predictor of death.”

“God, no. Fuck. Fuck, no.” The words escaped under Kellen’s breath. He reached the scene, chest still devoid of air. The box truck’s front left wheel had come off. The broken end of the axel stuck out under the wheel well like a visionless eye. Both windows were shot out. The windshield, too, Kellen saw as he moved toward the front. Blood. There was a waterfall of blood running down the outside of the passenger door, coating the white paint. The back of a person’s head could be seen, resting in the splintered glass. Dark hair soaked in blood.

Something in Kellen’s chest sank all the way through the ground. Body suddenly almost too heavy to move, he stepped around to the cab.

“Eastland,” someone called. Marcus’s voice.

Kellen didn’t register it. He lifted a bare hand through the broken window and gripped the blood-soaked fabric of the passenger’s shirt, then pulled it back.

An automatic rifle dropped between the passenger’s knees as the body slumped against the seat. The face that dropped to the headrest was—Caucasian.

Relief swept Kellen’s body with weight he couldn’t rationalize. The driver was too tall. There was no one else in the cab. Alexei wasn’t here.

“Goddamn, Eastland, what the hell are you doing?” Marcus pulled Kellen’s arm out of the broken window and grimaced at the blood on his hand. “That’s a goddamn biohazard. And you shouldn’t be touching even if you had gloves.”

Sirens sounded through the air. Moments later, lights became visible from the direction of the street.

There was a metal bang from behind the truck, and someone called that the back was open.

A broken lock and a length of chain were lying on the ground when Kellen walked around to the back of the vehicle. Two officers were standing on the tailgate, struggling to lift the roll door. It finally gave with a loud rattle.

Containers. Not the type of containers Kellen had imagined, but the wooden boxes packed into the back of the box truck were undeniably containers.

“Are we waiting for the bomb squad?” one of the officers asked. Several faces turned toward Marcus.

The detective visibly hesitated. There must have been a million things on his mind as the flashing lights of an ambulance and multiple patrol vehicles closed in. Marcus glanced at Kellen. “It was stable enough to withstand the crash. Just be careful,” he said finally.

Someone retrieved a crowbar from the van. The team split, some of them separating to direct the ambulance, some moving to the patrol vehicles. There would be a sweep, Kellen overheard in the mixture of voices. A crime had taken place, and law enforcement now had reason to poke around.

But Kellen was with the group that remained at the back of the box truck as the first of the nails pulled free from the wood, and the top of one of the crates was levered off.

“Stand back, stand back,” one of the men in the back of the truck was saying as the top came off. Then silence. “What the hell?”

Kellen maneuvered through the people and stepped up on the tailgate. There was movement within the box as Kellen peered over its edge. Four faces, wide eyes, shifted and pinned on Kellen from within the cramped space.

The cargo in those containers wasn’t explosive. It was human.