29
To get started, the SEALs and Captain Sartan drove past the big food-importing firm.
“Looks like any other business,” Lam said. “Offices, big loading dock for a dozen trucks at once, and their name plastered on everything you can see.”
“How can we penetrate a big outfit like that when we’re looking for one individual?” Jaybird asked.
“Might not be that hard if we had time,” Murdock said. “But we’d need cooperation from the owner. The man we want has to be one of the managers, or at least somebody who puts in orders to foreign markets.”
“So looks like we work up the food chain here,” Jaybird said. “We know the delivery outfit, and we know the one getting the goods. How many kinds of foreign foods would a fishing boat order anyway?”
“When do the fishing boats get orders brought to them?” Murdock asked.
Captain Sartan shrugged. “Most of them get supplied each morning; then they don’t worry about refrigeration. Some boats on the other end of the scale get goods for a week at a time.”
“So could be an 0300 delivery, three A.M.?” Murdock asked.
“That’s when mine used to come. I seldom had anything delivered from International Food and Novelties.”
“So it looks like that’s our next hot appointment,” Lam said. “Only, how do we stake out the boat and not look out of place?”
“I’ve seen a few street people, bums and winos, sleeping it off on the sidewalks,” Jaybird said. “You have many of them around town?”
“Too many. They get to be a real problem.”
“Good, we can be three winos deep in our cups and sleeping on the sidewalk.”
The SEALs agreed.
“You’ll be wanting to carry firearms?” Sartan asked.
“I’m almost never without one,” Jaybird said.
“We’ll need some protection and enforcement ability,” Murdock said.
“Better have your colonel talk to the police and get yourselves deputized, or at least get gun permits.”
“Should be no problem,” Murdock said. “Do any of the fishing boats get in early?”
“Three or four of them. They have contracts to supply hotels and restaurants with the fresh fish catch of the day. If it isn’t caught that day, they can’t advertise it that way, and the Health Administrator watches them like a hungry lion in a herd of African antelope.”
“I’d like to walk past the boats, maybe past where Zekharyah docks, again, just to get the feel of the place,” Murdock said.
They did. The fishing dock here was on a mole, a triangular-shaped wharf that extended out into the bay at a forty-five-degree angle, then took a turn to the left parallel with the shore, and then another forty-five-degree angle coming back toward the shore pier. It gave access to both sides of the wide dock for moorage and discharge and onboarding cargo via small flatbed electric trucks that plied the pier continuously. Zekharyah’s boat, the Gimbra II, had its dockage midway in the third leg. Only one boat on that leg was at its berth unloading the early morning catch.
Sartan knew the captain and the crew. He told them some friends of his wife were in town and he was giving them the ten-shekel tour. They continued to the end of the mole, and watched the boats coming and going in the harbor.
“About the tides,” Sartan said. “They will help boost the floaters highest on the sand, but it’s the waves, the breakers, that really push the items through the surf and into shore.”
“Then the bombs would have to be dropped near the surf line, or maybe inside the first wave,” Jaybird said.
“Yes, otherwise a north-south current along the coast could pick up a bunch of them and send them a hundred miles down the coast.”
“So the men dropping off the packages of bombs know what they are doing.”
“They’ve had enough practice to get it down to perfection,” Murdock said. “We need to chop off the tail of this snake and work back up to its head.”
“How are we going to stake out this pier?” Captain Sartan asked.
Lam grinned. “Hey, that’s the easy part. We can put ten men around his boat and he’ll never see a one.”
“On the other boats,” Sartan said. “But won’t the other captains warn him? This is a tight little community, and even if Zekharyah is a bastard, the other captains will help protect him.”
“They would, but they won’t see us either,” Murdock said. “We’ll be underwater waiting for him to make his move. We’ll already have taken the screw off his boat so he can’t run for it.”
“You can do that?”
“We’re part fish,” Jaybird said. “Mostly barracuda.”
They all laughed at that, and headed back along the concrete wharf toward the shore.
Back at the dock, Murdock asked where the delivery trucks usually stopped.
“For big shipments they use forklifts and boxes or pallet boards for the goods. Smaller packages they work with the little power tractors. Just a motor and a lift and a man pulls it along.”
“Where will the truck from International Food and Novelties stop at?” Lam asked.
“They always use a big bobtail truck, because they make a lot of deliveries. It would be back here where the cross street hits the one in front of the wharf.”
“What are you thinking, Jaybird?” Murdock asked.
“We take the truck up here, grab the driver, insist that he shows us which delivery is heading for Zekharyah’s boat, then we open it and check to be sure it’s the fireworks. We close it up. One of us about the same size as the driver puts on his uniform and hat if he has one, and makes the delivery. As soon as Zekharyah signs for the delivery, we take him down.”
“He’s going to be armed,” Sartan said. “Both of his men will have Uzis or some other submachine guns. A lot of fishermen could get hurt if everyone starts blasting away.”
Murdock scowled. “True,” he said. “So we don’t take his screw off. We use a high-speed boat and take him as soon as he separates from the other fishing boats.”
“I like that a lot better,” the boat captain said.
“By then the fishing captains will be talking about the shoot-out. They’ll identify Zekharyah’s boat, and the supplier is going to know seconds later,” Lam said.
“Means we have to take them both down at once,” Jaybird said. “One squad on the boat, one to take down the International Food place.”
“Be a lot better if we knew who we were hunting,” Murdock said. “Big business like that might have ten guys who buy goods and sign orders from foreign countries. Which one is our man?”
“I know the general manager there,” Sartan said. “He knows I’m out of business, but I could call him and tell him I was getting my feet under me and ask him about some supplies I used to get from him.”
“Take him out to lunch; then we could drop by your table, one of us at least,” Murdock said. “We can find out the specific man who orders goods from China. If there are two or three who work the China trade, we’ll take down all of them and find the right one.”
“Trade with China must be a haphazard thing,” Lam said. “Would they order in advance and keep fast-moving goods in stock until needed? Say, toys and knickknacks and nonperishable items?”
“Seems reasonable,” Captain Sartan said. “I’ll get a lunch date with him for today. We could take out that end of things even before the boat sails tomorrow.”
“Let’s do it,” Murdock said. He handed Sartan the cell phone the colonel had given him to use if he needed it. The Israeli thought a moment, took a card out of his wallet, and dialed a number on it.
Two hours later, Murdock sat with Captain Sartan at a hotel coffee shop not far from International Food and Novelties. The general manager of the firm, Kiva Nissan, shook Murdock’s hand and they sat down.