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

with his assault rifle pointed at the personnel door while Brown pushed a flexible camera tube slowly underneath it.

“The lights are out. Looks like nobody stays to guard this place,” Brown said, looking at the screen attached to the probe and immediately switching it to night vision. The screen turned to a green and slightly fuzzy monochrome. “Single large space with two cargo containers and a truck. Wait—there!” he said suddenly, pointing at the screen. “A tripwire. That’s the guard. Let me pull the camera up to view the back of the door in case there are any more surprises.”

Cochrane and Lazlo waited a couple of beats until Brown confirmed that there were not. Then Brown pulled out the camera tube and placed it in his backpack. He took out his tool roll.

“Quick, I can hear a car coming,” Cochrane said.

Brown took out two picks from a set in his tool roll and placed them in the cylinder. A few manipulations of the lock and the door clicked open. The car Cochrane had heard seemed to stop briefly on Seabreeze, but was now approaching again. Any second, it could turn the corner onto Kendle. Brown swung the door open. He took a few steps inside and immediately illuminated with his flashlight the almost invisible, thin wire that spanned the floor, six inches above it, and about a yard away. “Wire!” he cautioned through his helmet’s microphone as Lazlo followed him in. Lastly, Cochrane entered, closing the door behind him just as the headlights of the turning vehicle lit up the elevation of the building opposite.

It took a couple of seconds for their eyes to become accustomed to their night-vision goggles. Brown inspected the tripwire. It was connected to a micro-switch, which in turn was connected by wires that ran across the floor to the rear of two huge, metal shipping containers. Next to the containers was the tilt-bed truck that Lazlo had seen earlier.

As the group drew closer, they could see that the wires disappeared behind the first container. Brown went ahead to check it out.

“Barrels of ammonium nitrate mixed with oil, each with a detonator cap. There’s enough here to take out the whole street,” he advised moments later through the helmet intercom.

Lazlo and Cochrane hustled up to take a look at the plastic barrels, and detonator caps hidden below the container. “Fuck!” Lazlo whispered.

There was another set of wires coming out of each detonator cap and passing around the second container. Brown had already traced it. “Second tripwire by the shutter,” he said. “These guys can’t afford to be forgetful,” he joked.

Cochrane mounted a tiny battery-powered camera high up in each corner of the space, with the help of the collapsible aluminum ladder he had carried in strapped to his back. At the same time, Lazlo and Brown opened the door to one of the steel containers by sliding the locking bolt upward.

“No padlock?” inquired Lazlo skeptically.

“No need. They weren’t counting on anyone getting this far,” smiled Brown.

As the heavy panel swung open, a refrigerated mist seeped out like dry ice at a concert. The inside was automatically illuminated by bright fluorescent lights.

“Goggles up!” shouted Lazlo as he and Brown were momentarily blinded by the night-vision equipment magnifying the intensity of the light from the inside of the container.

Once their eyes re-adjusted, they could see the container was fitted with shelves on three sides and that nearly every shelf was occupied by a body bag. There were four shelves of six bodies on each side and four bodies on the far wall, making fifty-two bodies in total. Ten spaces had not been filled.

Lazlo had briefed the team that the pills were most likely hidden in cadavers, but even so, the sight of so many body bags caused one of them to gasp––a sound that the intercom picked up and relayed with its usual preceding crackle.

Lazlo unzipped one of the bags. It was the body of a woman in her twenties. She had vertical sutures along her chest and horizontal ones across her stomach and abdomen in the area where her kidneys and liver would normally be located.

“Goddam it! They’re all like her, just kids!” exclaimed Cochrane after unzipping other bags and finding more bodies.

“And all these bodies are filled with drugs?” Brown asked.

“Only one way to find out.” Lazlo swapped his reinforced leather gloves for latex ones and took out a pocket knife. He picked at the woman’s suture stitches, which frayed and broke on the razor-sharp edge. Trying to keep the last meal he ate where it belonged, he placed his hand into the re-opened cut. Dark, rancid-smelling liquid oozed out as he extracted a clear plastic bag and wiped it clean with his fingers.

Lazlo gave a sigh of relief that he hadn’t called out the team for nothing. As expected, the bag was full of pills. It looked as though it contained about a hundred of them. Every one bore the Spider’s Bite logo. He called over to Brown, asking him to hold open a large evidence bag and then dropped as many bags of pills as he could fit into it, each one smearing the insides with putrefying liquid.

“I say we clean out all the bodies of the drugs and make a run for it! There must be at least five million’s worth here,” Brown muttered.

“Keep to the plan, Brown. We skim off the top—not take the lot. It’s safer that way, and nobody suspects it’s us!” shouted Cochrane, grabbing Brown by his arms.

“I’m sick of letting millions go through my fingers,” Brown answered, slamming his fists down hard on Cochrane’s arms.

“What the fuck is going on?” came a voice over the intercom.

“Nothing,” answered Lazlo. He turned to Brown. “Cochrane’s right, and you’ll never move that much product. Think about it. It’ll ring alarm bells—El Gordito will come after you. There are five bags in here with your name on them. That’s five hundred pills, or ten easy grand at dealer price, and we get