Chapter 5

The next morning I had a pleasant surprise, the price of gold had taken another jump, and the Krugerrands were worth nearly $1,900 each. I planned to visit one of the up-scale coin shops in Boston to peddle as many as I could, up to 10 of them.

I got that bit of data from the TV business news, and I switched over to the cable news service NECN. They specialized in New England news, and they had a big spread on the fire in the warehouse in Weston. It seemed that the FD found the warehouse "full" of weapons. Homeland Security was called in, and "an investigation is underway." At least, the terrorists no longer had access to those weapons. They might never be caught by the clowns at Homeland Security, but they were going to have to find a new supply before they could start trouble.

I managed to get $1,700 for each of 10 Krugerrands, and I was happy. The coin shop stood to make a decent profit, and I had enough money for the next stage in my crusade against the terrorists and the Russian Mafia. Oh, hell, I had to admit that I had a permanent partner, and it was our crusade.

Currently, there were no outstanding cases for me to work on, and Alice was my only employee, so there was no problem with taking an "extended vacation." Alice made the necessary calls to the utilities, etc., and we prepared for a trip to NYC. I didn't want to haul all of that gold around the country, so I rented enough safe deposit boxes to hold most of it. A number of gold bars were converted into cash and deposited in a joint checking account with Alice's name alongside mine. We put $53,000 into the account. The amount was somewhat arbitrary, based on what the gold bars were currently valued for. We kept out $1,000 each in cash to use for emergencies, and we figured we had the economic problem solved for the moment. Later on, we would probably have to explain ourselves to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), but we could worry about that later.

We decided to take my car to NYC because we would have trouble moving the guns through airport security, and we would need private transportation to accomplish out goals in NYC. A rental car would be more trouble than it was worth, and it would make it too easy for the local cops or Homeland Security to trace us. Alice suggested switching to an RV (Recreational Vehicle) that could tow the car, and that sounded good to me, but we could forgo that for now.

It took us four days to get everything done, but we were finally ready to head south. We decided to go after the weapons cache first because we had no idea of the schedule that the terrorists were following, or if they were doing so. It was my guess that they were waiting for a special occasion, but I didn't know what it was. The presidential election was scheduled for next year, and maybe that was when they would hit us. That was a good time for a lot of reasons, so we might have that long to counteract the terrorists. I hoped so, but I was not going to bet on it.

The weapons were cached in an abandoned building in the Bronx. That was good and bad from our viewpoint. An abandoned building could be destroyed without too much collateral damage, but it was likely that we would have trouble finding an inconspicuous spot to park our car. All we could do was to check it out.

We booked a room in a motel near LaGuardia airport in hope of making us less conspicuous. We pulled into NYC too late to do any daytime scouting, so that had to wait until the next morning. I had Alice drive while I looked the building over. It appeared to be an abandoned factory with a loading dock. That would certainly fit the requirements for unloading a large semitrailer. In fact, I would guess that total shipment took more than one delivery. How was that kept from the local populace? Maybe, they just did not care! On the other hand, it might not be safe to be too curious in this neighborhood.

We spotted a car parked in the dock area of the building, and that looked like something that we should check on. Quite possibly, it would lead us to some of the people in the terrorist organization if we could tail it. I had a GPS (Global Positioning System) device that would tell us where the car was at any moment; all I had to do was to hang it on the car.

I had a suitable disguise in the back seat of the car, and I changed while Alice drove at random through the nearby streets. When I was changed, I looked like any homeless person who might be wandering the streets idling away the time. I got out of our car about two blocks away from the target car and strolled toward it as nonchalantly as possible. When I came to where I could see the car, I went into the details of my act.

I looked around to see if there were any witnesses, and there were none. I walked quickly to the car and stuck the magnetic bar of my GPS tailing device to the inside of the front fender. Next, I looked through the car windows to see if there was anything worth stealing. I had not finished doing that when a man came out of the building and yelled at me. I don't know what he said because I took off at a run to escape. Apparently all the man wanted was to chase me away from his car, so he didn't come after me. I ducked out of sight and used my radio to tell Alice to pick me up.

Alice showed up within five minutes and I got in the car with her. I left my disguise on just in case I might soon have a need for it again. I had seen what the outside of the building looked like, so we could plan the best place to enter, but, right now, we were more interested in what the tagged car did. The tailing device had a range of over five miles, so we could relax somewhere and wait until it started to move. We decided to visit Pelham Bay Park while we waited for some action from the car.

We grabbed a sandwich and a cola from a lunch stand and relaxed in the park for a couple of hours. We used the time to catch up on each other's history. About 2:30 PM, the car moved, and we started our chase. It didn't take long for the car to stop near where we were following, but the signal had gotten very weak. That suggested an underground parking garage. We drove to the location indicated by the GPS and found a small apartment building that did, indeed, have an underground garage.

Alice drove us into the garage and we looked around. The car was easy to find and the warm engine verified that this was the car we were looking for. I left the tracking device in place in case we needed to do any more tailing. Naturally, the car was locked, but I had no problem getting the driver's door open and popping the trunk lid.

To be on the safe side, I had removed my disguise and now looked like the average middle-class citizen. Hopefully, if the car owner spotted me, I could claim that I had just foiled a robbery of the car's contents. In the meantime, Alice kept a lookout while I searched the trunk and the interior of the car. Dammit, there was nothing interesting so I closed up the car and we walked away.

We took the elevator to the lobby and read the list of names on the mailboxes. I was amazed at the number of "John Smiths" who were living in this building. Unfortunately, I could not find a name that rang a bell. One of those John Smiths was probably the one we wanted, but it was not practical to challenge each one until we found the man we wanted, especially because we had no idea what he looked like. Oh, well, back to doing things the hard way.

We went back to the garage and waited for somebody to claim the car we were following. We were there until 9:00 PM and nothing happened. By this time, both of us were ravenously hungry, so we gave up the stakeout and went to a Greek restaurant that we had seen as we drove by.

The food was not just good, it was outstanding! However, we were careful not to drink too much ouzo: that Greek wine could be a killer in our business. On top of everything else, the entertainment was a belly dancer who got us both so jazzed up that we had to hurry to our hotel to relieve our passions.