Chapter 195: Throw the Poor Copper a Bone

Their video surveillance showed nothing, because we hiked in carrying everything we needed on our backs. The insertion team consisted of the marine sniper, the handsome blond, late twenties soldier, and me. I wanted to go into the building but Damien showed me the error in my thinking. I really did not want them to win by default. I didn't want to just hand myself over to them.

The compromise was that I would stay outside the wire. I would be the perimeter guard. If there was trouble, I would keep the exit open till they returned or I died. The last was my order to myself. No matter what I did to ease it, the close to a mile hike from the abandoned service station to the almost abandoned chemical plant was pure hell on my still hurting leg.

I was out of breath and my leg ached with every beat of my heart. Even so I managed to find a position with a good view of the wire. I sat there with my Russian Sniper rifle. The rifle was a left over from the pirate skirmish.

The two operatives from Swamp Thing dug a hole under the wire to make it appear as though an animal had done it. Then they slipped inside the wire. Before we left my office, I made damn sure they knew everything that I knew about the inside of that compound.

Their objective was to find a broken window, surely there was at least one, then they were to insert the mice. Lucas and the mice would do the rest, They were inside the wire fifteen agonizing minutes. I was revved up to kill someone the whole time. My heart was beating so loud I knew that anyone passing my burrow would hear.

I left my position in the tall weeds only after the two Swamp Thing men were well away from the Chemical Plant. The quiet hike back to the cruiser was pure misery. I was humming music to myself in order to keep moving. I was just forcing the rhythm to keep my mind off the pain. In the back of my mind the words "Walk or die" played over and over.

I made absolutely sure we weren't being followed, then I pulled into Helen's commercial kitchen located beside her home. The two Swamp Thing operatives were treated to anything laying around. We ate while she and two younger women prepared the bags for her Sit Down.

"If you two young men are taking care of our Maxine, you are welcome here anytime," Helen said. She was the absolute dictionary definition of southern charm.

"Ma'am, if everything you fix is this good, I want to marry you," the sniper said.

"Now, we might have to fight about that," the blond soldier said.

"No wonder you love what you do Max," she said to me. "I could learn to love this kind of attention."

"Trust me I don't get treated like you do. But then I can't cook like you either." I said.

"Don't let her kid you Ma'am. We love Max even if she can't cook," the sniper said.

"How could you not?" Helen asked. All the attention embarrassed me. I was speechless.

When we got back to the office, the three of us found an empty mattress pad on the floor inside my gun vault. The gun vault had been Ed's storeroom. We piled up like puppies and went quickly to sleep. Even when the office came to life, we stayed asleep. The idea was not to sleep like the dead, but to sleep, so that lack of sleep didn't make you dead.

I awoke several hours later to find that Lucas had run the mouse all over the plant. He had also saved the film for us to analyze together.The mouse wasn't very speedy so he had edited the film. The mouse couldn't climb as his real brothers and sisters could, so he had to sit on the ground floor of the plant with it's camera pointed up. He sat like that until someone opened a door giving up a glimpse of the things inside that one upstairs rooms, then he moved on.

Since one shipment had arrived, we determined that nothing happened downstairs. The drugs were moved immediately up to the upstairs rooms for processing. It made perfect tactical sense. It gave them a lot of room to ambush those who might try to enter. The downside was they had no easy escape route. The Tong might not mind a fight to the death, but the local employees would want an escape route for sure.

I went back and found the two metal outside fire escapes on the blue prints. Those were the choke points for the Chinese. Since I did not think an assault was feasible, I had no idea whether that information would prove beneficial or not.

"Okay you have been watching and following these guys almost a day now. what do we know about the workings of the gang?" I asked.

Damien spoke for Swamp Thing. "You were right Ling Po, is the headman and it appears that Wang is his number two now. I have no idea how it worked before the raid."

"Immaterial," I said. "What are they doing for product now?"

"It appears that they still have it coming in at the airport. Whatever was in the pipeline before Smiley drew attention to them, evidently came through without interruption, so I guess Ling canceled the cancellation order."

"Have you followed a pickup at the airport yet?" I asked.

"There have been two since we decided to follow them. Both times they take a small panel van and drive right to the international package pickup area. They load the large boxes into the van then they drive away," Damien informed me.

"Okay so what goes out of the plant?" I asked.

"My guess is they package it in smaller bundles then deliver it." Damien answered.

"Are the drivers Tong or locals from the drug trade." I asked.

"Even after it is repackaged the merchandise has to be worth way more than they would trust to a round eyed drug dealer." Damien added.