Brenda's Coming

GPS is always right. It doesn’t know how to be wrong. It doesn’t get confused by signposts and mountains that look different from one side and the other. The sun doesn’t shine in its eyes and it doesn’t lose its temper.

Global Positioning System. It just tells you where you are, and that’s the truth. You can superimpose the grid reference it gives onto a map, and the map can be wrong, but the position will be bang on. They had agreed not to complicate the handover with a complex grid reference, they kept it in whole numbers. 32 degree North, 111 degrees West, bang on the confluence of those two lines of latitude and longitude.

That took them straight up the highway from Nogales to Tucson, maybe 65 miles. But after maybe 50 miles, just before they hit the San Xavier Indian Reservation—as a Catholic, educated by the Xaverian brothers, Rudy couldn’t help wondering how the Indians found themselves in a reservation named after a Spanish saint—they turned off due West into the desert. But the map didn’t show everything. They were quickly glad they’d left themselves with plenty of time. There was a huge fenced off area of piled earth with strict, ‘Death at the Very Least’ signs put up by the Department of Defense.

‘Mine dumps,’ Doug said. ‘I guess they have to go somewhere, but did it have to be right between me and twenty six million dollars?’

There was no reply. Tension in the pick-up was high.

They had a seized vehicle from the DEA pound, running on false plates. It was a Toyota Hi-Lux. What else?

When they rounded the mine dump, a couple of miles further along, they found another fenced off area, the remains of an old mining company work site, long unused, with a couple of old, rotting metal site offices and a couple of busted up temporary toilets. They drove round the fence until they found a gate. They had a crowbar and powerful snippers, but the gate was already unlocked, with the big steel padlock hanging open, with no obvious damage.

‘Assuming Fukoyami’s guys went through the lock, they do pretty skilled work. That’s a top grade lock.’

They moved slowly through the work site, following the GPS readout as it ticked slowly through the numbers to get to the exact location, until Rudy spoke up.

‘Over there, by the big Saguaro.’

‘You mean the cactus? Doug asked.

‘Seeing you’re now looking at their Jeep, next to the cactus, yeah the cactus.’

‘Keep it together now guys. Moments of our lives, coming up.’

They parked a distance away, turning the vehicle first – so when the point came, they could back the truck up for loading. Or if it started to look nasty, they were pointed the right way to run for it. On the other hand, they’d all thought about this, they knew the sort of people they were dealing with, if things started to look nasty, they would have no more financial worries, they’d get a government funeral ceremony, with honours.

They walked over to the Jeep; a big Challenger, sitting low on its springs. A couple of Mexican looking guys stepped around the vehicle. No large weapons in view, which is always a reassurance when a guy is doing business. One of them was holding a sheaf of papers. He waved them over. The papers were PC printed digital photo shots of the three of them, Rudy and Doug sitting drinking with Fukoyami, Alan sitting in the car, sweating like a pig in the slaughterhouse, and looking about as happy.

The guy with the photos came up to each of them in turn, holding up the photos next to their faces. He turned to his partner who nodded.

‘You the guys then, yeah? You got the same faces, and you’re here. I could ask to see ID, but the business we’re in…’

‘Yeah,’ Rudy said. ‘Sometimes the hardest part of the day is remembering my name when I wake up. Don’t know the colour of my hair till I see the mirror, don’t know the colour of my eyes until I put my contacts in.’

‘So you’re here…’

‘To collect the goods, and the details of where to send the delivery details for when we’ve processed the goods.’

The guy handed over an off-white envelope.

‘Contacts here. What you need to know, if it isn’t in here, can be found out from something that is. There’s a mobile number in there that goes through relays. No-one else has that number. You call it, we know who it is, so no need to identify yourself. Mr Fukoyami wants you to call daily and tell him what you’ve done. Whoever answers, you tell. No need to bother the boss. No need for numbers and too much detail – nothing that we’d worry if a scanner picks it up. But he likes to know there’s progress.’

He handed a mobile phone to Rudy. You’re the guy who calls. No reason, we picked a guy. It’s you. Don’t ever use this mobile for anything else, don’t call the number in the envelope with any other phone. This phone has no number memory, no last number redial. It won’t know the number so you need to remember it. You OK with all that?’

Rudy shrugged. ‘Ideal way to work, I don’t call in like a kid on work experience, but I’m a practical guy. It’s a lot of money and it was mine, I’d like to know where I was in the story, keep right up to date, so yeah, sure, I’ll call every day. Can’t give you a regular time. We plan to get about some, so there’s time-zones, all that to manage, but we’ll call.’

‘Fine. Back up the truck.’

It was a lot of money. They knew that. And they’d handled big sums before. But they’d never handled an amount this big. And most important, every other time it had either been ‘Before’ —when it had belonged to the bad guys, or ‘After’ —when it had belonged to the government. This would soon be theirs, which was exciting and wonderful. And scary—because they were stealing it from someone who ordered executions like a regular person might order a chilli-dog and fries. It took some time to move, and they built up a sweat, even though the air was cool and wind was high and climbing. Climbing fast. It wasn’t blowing in gusts either. It was blowing hard and steady. The advance wave of Hurricane Brenda. Picking up dust and the odd twig, some litter and debris from the site. But who was looking at the airborne flotsam? They were looking at the cargo.

They parted with the kind of flamboyant exit you might expect. A nod one way, a nod the other.

A couple of miles down the road, heading back to the highway, driving slowly in the falling visibility, as the wind and dust-storm rose relentlessly, Alan stopped the car. He laughed and it came out slightly high pitched and hysterical. He held out his hands. The tremor in the ends of his fingers was visible.

‘Man, will you look at that.’

‘I nearly filled my pants,’ Doug said. ‘Not far to go now and we’ve done it. We just lay low, disappear these IDs, make sure they aren’t in any records linked to us, and sit out some nice desk duties.’

‘Something else we need to do too, if we don’t want trouble.’ Rudy said. He held up the mobile phone.

‘We need to do something about this. Either one of us does some travel, calls up Fukuyami, blows some smoke, but that only gives us places to be where we might get caught. The other alternative is that our disappearance, the whole lay low thing, starts today.’

‘What’s the rush? He isn’t expecting to see any money transfers for a couple of weeks.’ Andy asked.

Rudy waggled the phone again. ‘This thing. It’s like an offender’s cuff. You have the right people, and you can bet he has the right people, and this thing is a tracking device. He’ll know where a call is made from, so he has an idea where to look for us. It could even have a tracker in it, like a car theft GPS so you can always find it.’

‘So what are we going to do with it?’ Doug asked.

Rudy shrugged. ‘Drop it right here? Mail it to Moscow?’

‘Why Moscow? Doug asked.

‘Why not? Moscow, London, Reykjavik, Kansas City. Just get rid of it. Because we saw them together, they won’t be expecting their first call until tomorrow. When they don’t get it, the game’s up and they’re after us. But we’re gone.’

‘So let’s get rid of it now, get back on the road and unload it before this wind gets any worse, I can hardly see the road for the damn dust.’

The self storage company was a few miles south of Tucson in a run down industrial park. Unlike the modern storage companies, with their lifts and airco, and more important their insurance, their forms and their ID checking, this place was old school. Steel containers, like toughened trailers, padlocks, and cash. They had bought a good padlock, the best in stock at Wal-Mart. They were ready to buy a real professional high grade toughened steel lock, but then realised that in a junky old self-storage yard like this, a place where plenty of wrong sorts hid their goods, a lock like that was not a lock, it was an advertisement, an invitation.

‘Come on in boys, good stuff for the taking.’

It was locked away, and over the next months and years they would move it around, pay off their mortgages, slip out enough for daily luxuries, make some quiet investments, and go along day to day knowing you didn’t have to worry about money. None of them were about to resign in a hurry. They knew the rules in this game and they would take it sloooow.

Meantimes they had taken out a couple of thousand bucks apiece. Just walking around money, the odd drink, the odd rack of ribs, without worrying it was coming out of the kids’ shoes money or your mother’s doctor’s bill. Easy does it.

They drove back to the car lot where they had their own cars, sprinting through the dust storm but inside, deep down, feeling as carefree as they could remember, money worries banished..