Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

“Here’s the address of my lab guy in Queens, Richard Genna,” Lazlo said, giving him a business card. “Leave him the samples, and he’ll rush it for Monday morning. This is it, Tom. At last we are going to nail this son of a bitch, or at least one of his men, for murder,” Lazlo enthused.

“OK, let’s say the test comes back conclusive. How are you going to make it admissible? It was obtained outside normal process. It will get thrown out by El Gordito’s defense.”

“Don’t worry about that. You leave it to me,” Lazlo said.

The look on Stevens’ face showed that his mind was most definitely not at rest.

John could understand his concern. This would be difficult.

“I’ve already texted Genna, and he’s expecting you,” Lazlo clarified as he got out of the car. “Once you’ve given him the sample, get back to the wife and kids.”

Lazlo then made his way back into his house. John could tell he wasn’t finished for the day. He looked as if he had something else planned.

Inside his bedroom, the detective opened one of the four doors to his closet. He took out a full set of clothes—every item was black. John gave him some privacy and waited in the living room. A few minutes later, the detective came downstairs dressed from the neck down in black combat gear and boots. He had a long black duffel bag with him, which he let drop to the floor before heading for his hidden war room. He returned immediately with a handful of small black boxes and an automatic rifle fitted with a scope.

Holy Shit! thought John when he saw the rifle. He also sneaked a look at the boxes in the bag before it was zipped closed. Miniature surveillance cameras. The next step in the plan had been to take a look at the storage facility by the Red Hook port where the containers full of bodies were being kept, and Lazlo looked as if he was well prepared to do just that.

Lazlo took out his phone and sent a group text. John could see it was addressed to three names: Cochrane, Levine, and Brown. The message simply read:

IT’S ON!

He finished dressing with a black baseball cap and a windbreaker that covered his bulletproof vest. None of his clothes identified Lazlo as a police officer. He left the brownstone.

John decided he would sit this one out. That was a serious piece of weaponry, and although he couldn’t actually get shot, to witness the mission he would have to possess one of the team which could compromise their effectiveness, not to mention that if his host was killed, it would be extremely traumatic.

Twenty-Three

Lazlo arrived at a lock-up garage in a backstreet in Queens. The door rolled up after he flashed his headlights three times. He drove in. There were two other cars and a black panel van inside. Three guys stood waiting: Phil Cochrane and Joe Levine, both NYPD SWAT, and Greg Brown, FDNY and a former Navy Seal. They were dressed the same as Lazlo and shared the same sense of entitlement to personally profit from every lowlife they protected the public from. This usually meant taking a cut of drug money or drugs before an official seizure. Lazlo had told them that tonight was to be one of those occasions—an unapproved ‘sneak and peek,’ and there would be a large stash of the new Spider’s Bite pills to skim from.

It suited Lazlo just fine to steal from El Gordito. These guys wouldn’t leave any trace of entry, and the drug lord would suspect his own men. The detective just hoped he was right about the bodies containing drugs. These guys didn’t like not getting paid.

Three of them got into the van. It was a plain, unmarked SWAT vehicle which, according to official records, was in the repair shop with, among other faults, a damaged GPS––all of which was bogus except the GPS, which had been deliberately sabotaged. It wasn’t just any van. It was a surveillance van with three monitor screens and equipment capable of picking up camera feeds from a distance of up to a hundred and fifty yards. Cochrane drove the van out and picked up Brown, who had closed the shutter door on the lockup.

By the time they arrived at the storage facility in Red Hook, it was dark, as planned. They stopped about twenty yards away so they could scope out the building. Levine had got hold of some plans from the county clerk’s office, but they were out of date. The storage building was an old, brick-built warehouse of around ten thousand square feet facing onto both Seabreeze and Kendle streets, about a mile from the Red Hook container terminal. The only lighting on the outside was from low-power sodium lights, which looked just as old as the warehouse. The other elevations of the building were back to back with neighboring buildings—meaning they would have to go in from the front.

Cochrane moved the van and turned the corner from Seabreeze onto Kendle. The Kendle elevation had the roller shutter door that Lazlo had seen before. A personnel entrance door, next to it, would be their point of entry. Lazlo had no idea what the schedule of deliveries was, but he figured that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at the club would yield the most bodies in the week. It was, therefore, a safe bet that any container used for storing the bodies would be near full by Sunday evening ready for shipping out on Monday. Lazlo also hoped that the guard he had seen before was only present during deliveries, not 24/7.

Cochrane, Brown, and Lazlo donned balaclavas and helmets fitted with intercoms and flip-down night-vision equipment. They slid out of the van. Levine stayed behind. He would check the feeds from the cameras.

Lazlo and his team made their way along the elevation on Kendle Street. Cochrane stood ready