State of Siege - Tom Clancy [18]
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FIVE
New York, New York Saturday, 4:57 A.M.
Standing outside the rundown, two story brick building near the Hudson River made Lieutenant Bernardo Barone think of his native Montevideo.
It wasn't just the dilapidated condition of the body shop that reminded him of the slums where he grew up. For one thing, there were the brisk winds blowing from the south. The smell of the Atlantic Ocean was mixed with the smell of gasoline from cars racing along the nearby West Side Highway. In Montevideo, fuel and the sea wind were ever present. Overhead, a steady flow of air traffic followed the river to the north before turning east to La Guardia Airport. Planes were always criss-crossing the skies over his home.
Yet it was more than that which reminded him of home. Bernardo Barone had found those in every port city he'd visited the world over. What made it different was being out here by himself. Loneliness was something he felt in Montevideo whenever he returned.
No, he thought suddenly. Don't get into that. He didn't want to be angry and depressed. Not now. He had to focus. He backed up against the door. It felt cool on his sweaty back. The door was wood covered with a sheet of steel on both sides. There were three key locks on the outside and two heavy bolts on the inside. The sunfaded sign above the door read Viks" Body Shop. The owner was a member of the Russian Mafia named Leonid Ustinoviks. The small, bony, chain-smoker was a former Soviet military leader and an acquaintance of Georgiev'"s through the Khmer Rouge. Barone had been informed by Ustinoviks that there wasn't a body shop in New York that was exclusively a body shop. By night, when it was quiet and no one could approach the building unseen or unheard, either they were chop shops selling stolen cars, drug or weapon dealerships, or slavery operations. The Russians and Thais were big in this arena, sending kidnapped American children out of the country or bringing young women into the United States. In most cases, the captives were put to work as prostitutes. Some of the girls who had worked for Georgiev in Cambodia had ended up here, moving through Ustinoviks's hands. The size of the crates used to ship "spare parts" and the international nature of the trade made these businesses a perfect front. Leonid Ustinoviks's business was arms. He had them brought in from former republics of the Soviet Union. The weapons came into Canada or Cuba, usually by freighter. From them, they were slipped into New England and the Middle Atlantic States, or into Florida and the other Gulf Coast states. Typically, they were moved piecemeal from small-town storehouses to places like this body shop. That was to prevent losing everything if the FBI and the NYPD'S Intelligence Division caught them in transit. Both groups quietly monitored the communications and activities of persons from nations known to sponsor illicit trade or terrorism: Russia,
Libya, North Korea, and many others. The police regularly changed signs along the riverfront and in the warehouse districts, altering parking restrictions and hours when turns could be made on certain well-traveled corners. This gave them an excuse to stop vehicles and clandestinely photograph the drivers. Ustinoviks had told him to keep an eye out for anyone who turned off the highway or any of the side streets. If anyone came here, or even slowed down while driving by, he was to rap three times on the body shop's door. Whenever a deal was taking place, operations like this always had someone who would come out and demand that a search warrant be read to him-a right, by New York City law-while anyone inside escaped by the roof onto an adjoining building. Not that Ustinoviks was expecting trouble. He said there had been