River of Ruin (17 page)

Once they left the relative security of the deserted container storage area, Mercer began to feel the tension. There were thirty guards patrolling the facility and dozens more workers. Any one of them could shout an alarm. Considering what he knew of the company, he doubted Hatcherly would let them go with a stiff warning. More like a one-way ticket to China in a sealed container.

He drew his pistol and checked that the silencer was screwed on tightly. Lauren padded silently at his side.

Fighting the instinct to climb the first tower they came across, Mercer and Lauren needed to get closer to the warehouse in order to cut the distance they’d need to shimmy along the cableway. Lauren tapped him on the shoulder, pointing to a line of trucks that would provide partial cover. Step in step they moved across an open expanse of cracked asphalt, ever alert for a roving guard. In the distance, a large freighter secured to the quay was lit like a cruise ship, and gantry cranes methodically lowered cargo containers into her hold. The air was sharp with the smell of bunker fuel and diesel smoke.

Bent double, they edged along the row of silent trucks, careful not to let their motion draw attention. Once they reached the lead vehicle, they saw they next had to cross multiple sets of rail spurs. Longshoremen in dark overalls and hardhats worked on coupling a locomotive under the glare of pole-mounted arc lights.

Mercer slid onto his chest and crawled across the filthy ballast rocks, angling to pass on the far side of the train. He rolled off the last rail and into a wild tangle of bushes that had somehow taken root in the oil-soaked ground. Lauren reached him as a small forklift raced past.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “He came out of nowhere.”

“The closer we get to the warehouse, the busier it’s getting.” The approach of another truck forced them deeper into the bushes. The risk of discovery was growing too great and Lauren suggested they climb the next tower they came across. Mercer agreed.

The nearest support structure for the cable crane was fifty yards away. They dodged from their cover, racing hard for another group of containers that was halfway to their goal.

Thirty feet from the closest container, Mercer saw a figure suddenly emerge from around its far side. He raised his pistol just as a dockworker looked up.

Mercer dropped his aim, unable to shoot an unarmed man. He quickened his pace so his boots slapped. He was just ten feet away when the Panamanian opened his mouth to yell a warning. Without slowing, Mercer threw himself in a cross block that slammed into the worker’s chest, crushing him against the container. The man was doubled over, gagging to catch his breath when Lauren ran up and clipped the side of his head with her Beretta. He fell silent.

“Thanks.” Mercer struggled out from under the unconscious laborer. They stuffed the worker in the gap between two containers and waited in the shadows to see if anyone noticed. Everything appeared normal.

The support tower was a skeletal frame resembling a radio mast topped by a set of pulleys and gears for manipulating the cable crane. It reminded Mercer of part of a ski lift. Securing their weapons, he and Lauren climbed the integrated ladder. The machine was so new it had yet to show rust from the tropical humidity. Eighty feet up, they found a precarious perch and a vantage to check their location.

Beyond the terminal lay the main channel of the Panama Canal and on the far bank the lights of another dockside facility. A ship was passing up the canal on its way to the first set of locks at Miraflores, its lights reflected in the black water. Behind them was Quarry Heights, the former headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. To reach their target, they needed to shimmy a thousand feet and cross over several other towers. The warehouse sat alone in its chain-link redoubt, and all but its roof was bathed in artificial light. Smaller than the other storehouses, it still measured about a hundred feet wide and at least four times as long.

Mercer studied the cableway. The two main lines shooting off into the darkness were about two feet apart. Up close they looked thick and substantial, tight braids of steel wire pulled so taut they felt like iron bars. But when he looked across the port, the wires became like a gossamer lattice over the facility, as insubstantial as thread.

“Are you ready?” he asked Lauren after they’d caught their breath.

“You did notice that they are using this system, didn’t you?” Lauren pointed to where a container glided silently across the night, held aloft by a grapple crane running along the wires.

“Victor said the warehouse is off limits. I doubt they’ll move any containers our way.”

“They’d better not.” Tentatively, Lauren took a step onto the tandem wires, bending over so she could grasp with her hands as well. Just over her shoulder, the electrified third cable seemed to hum.

“Careful not to get too close to the other wire,” Mercer cautioned as he followed her. “Your body may cause an arc.”

The cables were coated in grease and each step demanded attention before weight could be shifted. Their gloves became so slick they took them off, absorbing small cuts from the sharp strands rather than lose the control of direct contact. Like a pair of monkeys they shuffled along the wire, not daring to contemplate the eight-story drop. Below them, workers continued their duties without looking up to see the dark shadows moving along the cableway.

When they reached the next tower, Mercer checked his watch. Half an hour had already passed since their arrival at the terminal. At this pace, they’d only have a couple of minutes in the warehouse.

“I know,” Lauren said when she saw his expression. “I’ll try to push the pace.”

The hunched position cramped Mercer’s back and his legs began to tremble. His hands felt like claws. He looked down and saw an armed guard sheltered by towering walls of cargo pause to light a cigarette. The orange flare of his match looked as distant as a shooting star. That tiny lapse in concentration caused Mercer’s next step to be slightly off. His foot slipped from the wire.

As he fell, his body torqued over, forcing him to release one of the cables to keep his arms from pulling from his shoulders. Dangling one-handed on the greasy wire, Mercer watched horrified as one of his gloves fell from a pocket in his BDUs. It landed no more than five feet behind the Chinese guard. The man looked around slowly then shrugged before continuing his illicit smoke.

Mercer’s first stab of panic had sent enough adrenaline into his system for him to lurch upward to grasp the cable with his off hand. Fortunately his frantic effort wasn’t enough to shake the cables and jar Lauren loose. In fact she didn’t even know he’d nearly fallen. Panting, he hoisted one leg over the wire and muscled himself upright, straddling the two cables for a second to let his heart slow.

Lauren finally looked back. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

“Right,” he muttered, feeling tendons in his shoulders protest every movement.

Ten minutes later they crossed over the fence surrounding the warehouse, noting that guards had been stationed all along its perimeter, especially around its only gate. A string of large dump trucks idled just outside the building’s main doors.

The warehouse’s roof had just enough pitch to channel away Panama’s nearly seven feet of annual rainfall and was studded with air vents. Its peak lay about thirty feet below the cable. Once in position, Mercer pulled the rope from his back and tied a slip loop in one end. He lowered it until it brushed the edge of the building, then swung the loop back and forth until it caught around one of the vents. It took a dozen tries.

“A cowboy you ain’t,” Lauren teased.

He gave her a good-natured scowl and pulled on the rope to tighten the noose then tied his end to the cable. They could now climb down to the roof and be able to extricate themselves the same way.

A shift in the lighting drew Mercer’s attention. He looked up from his work and saw the mammoth grapple carriage trundling toward them like a mechanical spider stalking prey on its web. In its pincers dangled an enormous crate. It glided almost silently on the cables and the spotlight attached to the rig hit Mercer full in the face. The wires began to vibrate.

“Lauren, move!” They had seconds before the crane either knocked them from the cables or ground them under its guide wheels.

Without hesitation, she reached for the rope and slid down far enough for Mercer to follow. “Keep going,” he hissed. “The carriage will cut the rope when it crosses it.”

Hand over hand she dropped down to the roof. Mercer looked up as the first of the large metal wheels reached his knots. The crane didn’t even shudder. The knife-edged rollers simply sliced through the line. The rope seemed to dissolve in his hands. One second he was eight feet above the roof, secure, and the next instant he was falling through open space. He landed on his feet, bending his knees to keep the metal from rattling.

Lauren had had the presence of mind to haul in the severed rope before its free end dangled over the open doors below them. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I am until we have to get out of here.” Mercer looked up as the crane dolly rocked to a stop just past the last of the dump trucks. The cableway was hopelessly out of reach. They were trapped.

Captain Vanik seemed unfazed. “One of the first rules of conflict is that plans go to hell the instant they’re implemented. Let’s see what we can see and worry about getting out later.”

She moved out of the spill of light coming from below and found a roof vent large enough to see through. Feeling powerless by the turn of events, Mercer joined her. Through the vent he saw that the concrete floor of the warehouse was littered with more containers. Several men in military-style uniforms drifted in and out of his view. They appeared to be Chinese. He and Lauren moved from vent to vent, getting an idea of the building’s layout. They found a vent large enough to crawl through at the far end of the warehouse. Below it was a darkened second-floor storage level crammed with trunk-sized packing crates. The top of the nearest crate was only five feet below them.

Mercer twisted the cap off the vent and dropped through. He landed silently, his pistol at the ready. Nothing but murky shadow and dusty boxes. Lauren followed and together they crawled to the railing that overlooked the main floor. Along one wall of the warehouse were several large eight-wheeled trucks of a type Mercer didn’t recognize. He assumed the yellow vehicles were specialty cargo-handling cranes like the one Victor drove. Piled along the full length of the other wall was a towering hill of crushed stone that reached almost to the ceiling and stretched under the second-floor deck. A Caterpillar bucket loader sat at the base of the gravel mountain.

In a clear space at the center of the building, workmen were moving wrapped blocks of something heavy into the back of a van. Around them stood six or so anxious guards with assault rifles. Two men in suits surveyed the work from a short distance off, their heads close together as they spoke. Unlike the multiethnic workforce outside, everyone here was Chinese.

“Those weapons are the new Chinese type-87 assault rifles, a copy of the British SA-80 bullpup,” Lauren whispered so softly her voice was like a ghost’s. “Notice how the magazine is placed behind the trigger grip to make the weapon more compact.”

Mercer remained silent, watching.

Realizing he was more interested in the workers than the soldiers, she asked, “What are they loading?”

Each man took just one object from the stack on the floor, and struggled to carry it to the van. It was the small size and great weight that tipped Mercer off. His voice was suddenly hoarse. “Gold!”

No sooner had he mouthed the word than one of the supervisors stepped over and slid the cloth covering off one of the bars, revealing the unmistakable buttery yellow gleam. Lauren drew a sharp breath. Mercer had seen more gold than most people, rough nuggets and ranks of ingots at some of the big mines on South Africa’s Witwatersrand, and still it held him enthralled. He put a quick estimate of forty million dollars on the blocks being loaded into what he now recognized as a disguised armored car.

“Is that from the treasure your friend was looking for?”

Nodding, Mercer whispered back, “They must have found it when I was in the hospital and have already melted it down. For that much bullion they must have a smelter someplace in this building. That’s why none of the Panamanians have been allowed inside.”

“What about the cargo Victor said came in last night?”

“No idea.” The Chinese superintendent made some comment to the worker and they both laughed. The cloth was replaced and the gold bar went to join the others in the armored van.

“They’re going to smuggle the gold out of Panama?”

To Mercer that scenario didn’t make sense. “Why bother with an armored car when they can put it directly on a Shanghai-bound freighter? No, I think they’re going to transfer it to a bank.” Lauren’s exceptional eyes asked the follow-up question of why. He had no answer.

“Here’s something else to think about,” she said. “Those assault rifles the guards are carrying are only issued to China’s elite forces, like the first troops they sent into Hong Kong after the handover from Britain in 1997.”

He failed to see her point. “Meaning?”

“Meaning this operation has probably been sanctioned by the Chinese government.”

Mercer knew that after the drug trade, the second largest source of illegal revenue in the world came from the smuggling of art and antiquities. It was a multibillion-dollar business that garnered few headlines and even less resources to combat. Much of the activities were art forgery and theft-for-hire, but the plundering of archeological digs was fast becoming a huge business in its own right. Especially in South and Central America, where governments didn’t have the means to protect the hundreds of newly discovered sites. Most of the looting was carried out by locals, who would steal one or two pieces from a tomb then sell it immediately for a fraction of its value.