Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [117]
He lifts the night scope and scans the lagoon.
A few minutes later, he sees the boat.
“Jesus God,” he murmurs, handing the scope to Harrington.
“They’re kids,” Harrington says. “Little girls.”
Johnny takes the glasses back and counts seven little girls, a young male Hispanic, and Dave.
“You want to take them here?” Harrington asks.
“Fuck no.”
“What if we lose them?”
“Then I’ll commit ritual seppuku,” Johnny says.
“What’s that?” Harrington asks. “Some sort of Jap thing?”
“You should read a book every once in a while,” Johnny replies. He turns the glasses onto the van and can make out the license plate. He calls it and a description of the van into the Sex Crimes Unit waiting on the 5.
Then he turns back to the boat, which is making a gentle, perfect landing onshore.
126
Dave hops out of the Zodiac.
The ground feels funny under his feet.
“I thought I was delivering herb,” he says to the guy who gets out of the van, a cute little shit named Marco.
“You thought wrong,” Marco says. “You got a problem?”
“No problem,” Dave says, because the guy is holding a wicked-looking little machine gun under one arm. “Just tell Eddie I’m out.”
“You tell him,” Marco says. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a fat envelope, and hands it Dave. “Help me get the merchandise into the van.”
“Do it yourself,” Dave says, stuffing the envelope into his jacket. “I’m done.”
“Whatever, bro.”
Another guy gets out of the van and starts herding the girls into it. They go obediently, passively, like they’re used to being moved around.
“Jesus, they stink!” Marco says. “What’d you do with them?”
“Seasick,” Dave says. “It was a little rough out there, bro. And you might have let me know I was driving people. I would have been better prepared. You know, life jackets, shit like that?”
“If I had told you,” Marco says, “would you have gone?”
“No.”
“So?”
“What do they do now?” Dave asks. “They’re like maids or something like that?”
“Yeah,” Marco says. “Okay, something like that. Look, much as I’d like to stand around and shoot the shit …”
“Yeah,” Dave says.
He goes back to the Zodiac, praying that Johnny got his call. He casually opens his cell phone and sees the text message: “Back-paddle.” Dave starts the engine, then takes the boat to the other side of the lagoon, where he left his truck. When he lands the boat, he says to Esteban, “Disappear, dude.”
“What?”
“Va te,” Dave says. “Pinta le. Get the fuck out of here.”
Esteban looks at him for a second, then gets off the boat and disappears into the reeds.
Dave kneels, bends over the edge of the boat, and throws up.
127
They follow the van out to the 5, then north to the 78, and east to the town of Vista, where the van pulls up to a nondescript house in a lower-middle-class neighborhood.
Nothing special, just your basic suburban cul-de-sac.
A garage door opens and the van pulls in.
Johnny gets on the radio.
The Sex Crimes Unit is there in five minutes, with a SWAT team. The SCU lieutenant is a woman named Terry Gilman, who used to work homicide and then jumped from the frying pan into the shit fire. She walks up to Johnny’s car.
“Where’d you get this, Johnny?” she asks.
“You’re looking good, Terry.”
She straps a vest on, checks the load in her .9mm, and says, “If we don’t find evidence, will your source testify?”
“Let’s find the evidence,” Johnny says as he gets out of the car.
“Sounds good to me.” Terry Gilman is pissed. She hates snakeheads in general and snakeheads who run children in particular. She’s almost hoping this thing goes south so she can use the nine on one of them.
They hit the front door like Normandy.
A SWAT guy swings the heavy ram and the door cracks open. Johnny is the first guy through. He ignores the adults scrambling to get away—SWAT will wrap them up. He just keeps pushing through until he comes to a door that opens to a basement stairway.
Pistol in front of him, he goes down the stairs.
It’s a dormitory, a barracks of sorts.
Dirty mattresses are set side by side on the concrete slab. A rough open shower in one corner,