The Looters (32 page)

“Are you sure he isn’t lying?”

“Naw, he was so scared he was pissing his pants.”

That from Fernando.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

Fernando grinned. “On my father’s ranch. Turning bulls into steers. When they’re calves, you rope ’em and tie ’em down and whack their nuts off. That way they don’t grow up to be bulls and mess up the whole herd.”

Why did I ask?

Chapter 49

As we made our way back to the yacht, I watched the white rooster tail wake behind the powerboat and tried not to listen to the chitchat back and forth about how they would have to deal with Stocker. They sounded like a gang of kids planning an attack on a neighboring tree house. But they weren’t kids and they were talking about killing a former friend… or otherwise being killed by him.

Ever since I bought the Semiramis, I’ve been looking back on my life and wondering how I got sidetracked. Before that, everything just seemed to click as I went from one career goal to another. Like a game show contestant answering the questions right, I moved up, sometimes crawling, sometimes leaping, as I went from college, to job, to success.

I knew I had to stay focused on the dangerous curves that lay ahead and stop thinking about the past. I was barreling down a road that led straight to hell.

No longer was it possible to completely redeem myself.

You don’t cut the balls off the biggest auctioneer in the business and expect to do business in this town.

Every man whom I contacted about a deal would experience a queasy feeling in his groin. As they said in Oz… which is Hollywood-speak for Hollywood… I would never do lunch in this town again.

Ruined. Finished. Hung out to dry. I wondered if they still made license plates in prisons. Or was it quilts they made in women’s prisons?

Even though my career was not redeemable, I had to worry about something else. It roiled in my head as we bellied over waves in the high-speed boat back to the Manhattan marina.

I had to save my soul.

I didn’t know exactly what that meant. I guess it just meant that I had to make up for the evils that I’d spawned. Coby was right. I was part of a daisy chain that evolved from the looting of the Iraqi museum to the death of Abdullah in New York. Along with other deaths and now at least one mutilation.

That evil bitch Semiramis was at every flash point. Lipton, Bensky, Neal, myself, even Coby and his gang, we all had our lives altered by the queen’s golden mask as if it spread a malevolent virus that ignited the avariciousness in Neal, Lipton, and Stocker, boiling their greed until it was consummated in murder. Even poor Abdullah was affected, because his stubborn pride got him killed.

And for me? My weakness was the lure of success.

It boggled my mind that Neal was playing such a dangerous game with my career, especially with my life. That was the real kicker. He made far more money than I did. How much more did he need?

I guess someone could ask me the same question about my career. How far would I go to get what I wanted? Sometimes along the way we take a wrong turn and it becomes difficult to get back on the right track. Sometimes it’s easier not to get back.
Where did I fit in that equation?

I suddenly felt sorry for Neal.

“Is he going to be all right?” I asked Coby when he took a break to get a beer.

“I wouldn’t worry about him. He’ll be ready to run the marathon in a few days.”

“He’ll call the police on us.”

“Not likely,” Coby said. “He’ll get to a hospital for sure, but what’s he going to tell them—he lost a nut because he wouldn’t tell where stolen loot and his murdering partner are?”

I knew I shouldn’t have been so concerned about Neal. He had set a deadly killer on my heels. But I wanted the cycle of violence to stop. Coby and the SEALs talked about how it was their “duty and a matter of honor” to “put Stocker down.” It sounded like they were talking about a rabid dog they once owned.

What a strange bunch. Stocker was once a partner. Now he had murdered their business partner and stolen their share of the artifacts. And while they talked about “putting him down,” there was never a moral outrage about the high crimes and misdemeanors the lot of them had been committing. I wondered how much of their feelings was duty and honor… and how much was just plain being pissed that their buddy had stolen from them.

For sure, they were crooks, with their own moral code and personal definition of duty, honor, and country.

The discussion and hashing over plans about how to breach the defenses at the waterfront warehouse, terminate Stocker silently and with extreme prejudice, and recover the antiquities continued after we boarded the yacht and while they ate hot dogs, tortilla chips, and salsa and drank plenty of beer.

“Stocker will be expecting us,” Coby said. “He’s not stupid. He knows that ultimately we’ll find him. He’ll have set up an electronic defense perimeter as an early warning. He knows we won’t have to beach a boat, that we can swim ashore, come in underwater. Once we get our feet on land, that’s when we have to watch out for detection beams and booby traps.”

No one expected Neal to tell Stocker that he’d squealed on him any more than Neal would confess to the police. So they expected an element of surprise for the raid.

“Why would you go in by water if he’s expecting that?” I asked.

“He’ll have the land side approach covered, too.”

“But it sounds like you and him are thinking the same way, reverting back to your military training. Maybe you should change your thinking,” I pointed out.

He squinched his face like I’d said something disgusting. Everyone was quiet. I had crossed the line. A mere woman telling these commandos that maybe they didn’t have all the answers. I could see the ire and contempt on their macho, gung-ho, military faces.

“Wait a minute; she’s right,” Gwyn said. “We’re talking like the land approach is enemy territory. Hell, it’s just Brooklyn; you can drive up to the front gate.”

“Don’t forget this is the good old USA.” Coby grimaced. “We can’t just start shooting and launching rockets. Our biggest problem will be noise. We can use silencers on pistols and machine guns, but if Stocker starts hurtling rockets, the whole damn city will know it.”

“Like you said, he’s not stupid,” Gwyn said. “If we come by boat, we could always just back off and run for it if the cops arrive. He can’t go anywhere without packing up a truckload of antiquities.”

“You’re assuming again that he’s thinking like you,” I said. “You’re also assuming that he’s rational. This guy used a rocket to kill people and destroy a building in London in broad daylight. There had to have been a quieter and more effective way to get the job done.”

“Stocker’s a nutcase, class triple A,” Coby said. “I always told you guys that, but because he was on the team, we ignored it.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call him crazy,” Gwyn said.

“I would. You could see it was getting worse. When he started using drugs, he got more schizoid.”

I said, “I think we can all agree that a guy who plays with a rocket launcher like a pacifier isn’t playing with a full deck. In that case, we shouldn’t assume that he’ll cross all the
t
’s and dot all the
i
’s. When you hit the beaches in those rubber commando boats, he’s likely to start firing rockets that will make the area around the warehouse look like the Fourth of July.”

Coby scratched his jaw. “Yeah, even just opening up with a handgun will probably bring the police.”

“The police, hell,” Gwyn said. “With everyone on edge about terror attacks, we’re likely to have the Army, Navy, Air Force along with half a dozen fed and state agencies shooting at us.”

The group started throwing out more ideas.

Someone proposed a gas to put Stocker to sleep—or better yet, kill him. But poisonous gas had a way of migrating…. Another suggestion was to drop onto the roof by helicopter while two others landed by rubber raft.

Names of weapons and their firepower flew around the room like confetti at a victory parade.

At some point I simply tuned out and went to bed. My mind was swirling. I just wasn’t into the commando scene. I heard someone suggest that I ride shotgun on the chopper and watch for police vehicles approaching the warehouse. I couldn’t quite see myself hanging out of a helicopter with a pair of binoculars. And I didn’t ask who would fly the chopper.

What had I gotten myself into?

Another nagging question wiggled like a worm in my brain. What was going to happen to the Iraqi antiquities if this band of commandos managed to kill Stocker and recover them? Would Coby and company really return them to a grateful Iraqi government? Anonymously, of course.

When hell freezes over.
That’s how I felt about the chance of Coby and his band of frogmen thieves giving back millions of dollars in stolen loot they’d risked their lives for.

I waited until Coby came in later to wrestle the truth from him.

“Look me in the eyes,” I told him. Once we had locked eyes, I said, “Now tell me the absolute, bottom-line, ironclad truth: When we get the stuff from Stocker, are we going to give it back to the Iraqis?”

“Didn’t I say so?”

“Tell me the truth.”

“We’re going to recover the pieces and give them back.” He held up his hand in a Boy Scout sign. “Scout’s honor.”

“You were never a Boy Scout.” A wild guess on my part, since he didn’t strike me as the type. And if he had been, he would have been thrown out for conning Girl Scouts out of their cookie drive money.

“True, but my intentions nonetheless have always been pure and honest.”

He was lying, of course. His utter sincerity and lack of concern about turning over the museum pieces was the tip-off. Any thief who really intended to give them back would have moaned and groaned or at least showed real regret that millions of dollars in looted antiquities were going back to their owner.

However, he was my best hope. No way would any of these other treasure-hunting frogmen return the stolen pieces back to the Iraqis. They were just kidding me along, taking me for a ride… whatever the expression. Once they had their hands on the merchandise, I’d be back to square one on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

You are screwed
, I told myself as I made my way down the gangplank the next afternoon. I had to get away for a while. I needed air. To clear my head. To figure out what to do. An idea was buzzing around my little brain, one that could get me into a heap of trouble, even worse than the mess I was already in over my head.

I had spent the day moping around the yacht as the rest of the merry band of thieves and pirates made plans and requisitioned supplies. For reasons I didn’t even attempt to fathom, there seemed to be a limitless supply of military weapons available here in New York City.
Jeez, I thought that even BB guns were outlawed in this city.

Muttering to myself about how my newfound friends had painted me into a corner, one with prison stripes, I walked three blocks to where the “company car” was stored.

A garage attendant brought the yacht owner’s BMW down to me. We had permission to use it—Coby did, at least. I reminded the attendant that I had been with Coby when we borrowed the car previously. After I got in, I automatically put my cell phone on the magnetic dashboard mount, since it was illegal in New York to hold a cell phone while driving—the last thing I wanted was to get pulled over by the police.

As I pulled out of the garage, I spotted Gwyn walking on the other side of the street.
Damn, had she followed me?
She waved. I cringed and pulled into traffic and sped away as fast as one could on a Manhattan street. She’d report back to Coby that I’d just taken the car and hightailed it.

Coby knew me well enough by now to know that I had something up my sleeve. Probably even well enough to guess what I was going to do—find the hoard and turn it over to the FBI.

First I had to locate the right warehouse. I hadn’t paid attention to the exact address. I knew it was old, fronted water and was on a part of the Brooklyn docks that was no longer in service. And I remembered a landmark from the satellite picture I’d seen: a big old metal water tower with a picture of a brand of candy that I remembered eating when I was a kid.

If I could find the tower, I could find the warehouse and direct the FBI to it.

Of course, there’s always a snake in every paradise that seems to slither around just when you think you have a situation figured out.

In this case, that snake was a cold-blooded killer named Stocker.

Chapter 50

Coby stared at his partners in crime gathered on the aft deck after Gywn reported seeing Madison drive away in the car.

“Let’s go down the list of alternatives.” He flicked the first off his forefinger as he spoke. “One, she’s just out for a joyride and will be back later.”

“No way,” Gwyn said almost immediately. “She looked like a criminal fleeing the scene of a crime when she saw me.”

“Or two, she’s running out on us. She’s scared, panicked, running blind, or is leaving for parts unknown.”

“Or all of the above?” Gwyn asked.

“I don’t think she’s running. Not blindly at least. She’s too methodical, too organized. She knows she won’t be able to clear herself until she can get the Iraqi pieces into the hands of the feds.” He shook his head. “That means she’s done absolutely the worst possible thing.”

“Called the cops.”

“Maybe. Rob, can we get a real-time satellite picture on the warehouse?”

The group gathered around the computer screen.

“It’s too far up and too vague to see a person,” Gwyn said. “Cars are little bigger than a dot.”

“It’s not too far up to tell us that there aren’t a dozen police cars at the warehouse. Can we get any closer?”

“Nope. If you were an NSA operative, they could get you close enough to read the license plate on that car.”

“It’s that car I’d like to see better. The speck moving on the street in front of the warehouse.”

“It might be gray,” Gwyn said, “just like the company car. But so are a million other cars in the city.”