Chapter 64

I found the dead drop empty at 3AM when I arrived for the first time. Also when I checked again at 3:30AM. "There is no one at the drop site and no signal. It doesn't look at though anyone has been there at all." I said into the phone. I had no idea who I was talking to at the time. "So what you want me to do now?" I asked.

"Are you willing to risk getting picked up by the cops and sweated?" came the reply over the phone.

"Well there is nothing to tie me to the product, unless the leasing company is somehow tied up with it all," I suggested.

"It isn't. There is nothing to tie the distribution to the production," he said.

"I should be able to bluff my way through it. So where do I go," I asked.

"Sit tight let me make a call and see where I can send you to check on them," he said, I found a quiet parking lot and waited. It took him till almost 5AM to get back to me. "Go into Blacksburg VA. and stop at the waffle house just off the highway. A man will join you there at 5:45 sharp. He is involved in the production end of the business. He will take you to the product. I know it sounds shaky, but he said that he will check it out before putting you at risk.

I was waiting at the waffle house alright. I was also well into a bacon and egg sandwich, when the man came in and sat down. "They said you were a woman, who was trying to look like a man, One look and I knew it was you," the man with curly red hair and a red face said.

"This coming from Ronald McDonald," I said with a serious look.

"Wow, no sense of humor," he said.

"I have been on the road all night, and I feel like shit, so no I don't have much of a sense of humor." I said seriously.

"Okay pay your bill and let's go," he said.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"It's a few more miles into the mountains but it's all ready and waiting for you." he said.

"So you are taking me to where it is made?" I asked.

"No, but I'm taking you close to it, Now that all the information I'm giving up," he said.

"Fair enough," I said. "But you lead the way and if anyone else is there make sure they are alright, before you call me in the final quarter mile. This has been a cluster fuck so far."

"I know more than you do about it. The crew had a fire at the boiler and got behind. They thought they could get it in place before you showed. They must have missed you by a half hour the second time. Then your boss called and said the drop had to be somewhere else and he wanted me to be at the drop site." The partner in change of production said.

"I don't know any of that, but the other drop might have been compromised in our opinion." So live with it I thought.

"It isn't compromised, but I'll go along anyway, since the original glitch was on my end," He said.

"It was on your end yes," I said. "I was right where I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there." I was tempted to send a text message to my handler to see if I could get a raid at the second site, but I did not know where it was.

It was a half hour later while I was following Ronald that my phone rang. "On down this road about a mile or so there is a barn. In that barn is your pick up point," the voice of the redhead said.

"Okay you go in and check it out. Let me know and I'll come in. If I don't hear from you in ten minutes, I'm in the wind." I said.

"Fair enough," Ronald informed me. About five minutes later his voice added, "Come on in and lets get it done,"

"Right you are," I said then swooped in with the truck. It was just five minutes later that I pulled the truck into the barn. Under a tarp were fifty gallon jugs of white liquor with a little extra kick to it. I only had to load it to be back on the road again. Payment was made by bank transfer.

I had to make twenty very different stops with the witch's brew. They were all over two states, but I assumed the money was going to be good. I wasn't involved with wholesale middle man. I was the middle man. I delivered the gallon jugs to what appeared to be retailers of the product. They made their payments directly to me.

I couldn't make my first delivery until well after dark the first night, so I found a park and took a nap. I would have preferred to get the product under a better lock and key but the camper cover had a really good locking system.

I smelled really bad by the time I made the last of the first nights deliveries. I had delivered twenty gallons of the fifty I started with. I also kept track of every locations where I made the deliveries. There were a few high end restaurant, but most were to some guys house. I had to assume that he was a bootlegger of some sort.

Except for the lack of sleep, it wasn't a bad gig. I collected a lot of cash for the outfit and felt really good about the information I had collected. I was surprised to find that the money went back to Stoneville. I had expected the operation to be run out of Charlotte or some other larger city.

I made the cash drop in a park. There was no way either of us wanted to leave the kind of money I had alone, so it wasn't a dead drop. It was a brush pass. I could live with that. Since I didn't trust anyone to keep me from getting killed, I made the picture with the digital camera of the pickup woman. She was heavily disguised, so I had no idea who she was. It was up to the team and their facial recognition software to ID her.