It was a tone and manner of voice that Randy had heard from the General only once before, when they were both active-duty and the General had been a major, overseeing a maintenance unit on Qatar, just before the first Gulf War had kicked off, when men and women were going to fly into harm’s way with the equipment that Randy and his crews were servicing. Randy swallowed. Some heavy shit was going down, no doubt about it.
‘General,’ he said. ‘We won’t let you down.’
The General said, ‘I knew you’d say that, Randy. And I can’t tell you how pleased I am.’
Vladimir looked over at Imad, stunned at what the stupid boy had just done. What had gone through that simpleton’s mind to cause him to insult the American Customs officer like that? The Arab had a silly, triumphant grin on his face, like he had machine-gunned a school bus filled with Jewish children or some such, and Vladimir hissed, ‘What the fuck are you doing, idiot?’
Imad said, ‘I don’t bow to any woman, especially not to a nigger woman like that.’
‘You fool, you’re going to—’
Imad said sharply, ‘I acted like a man! Like you should!’
A woman’s voice, from outside. ‘Come along, fellas. I want to see what’s in that truck, and now.’
Vladimir’s head and hands felt thick as he let himself out of the truck, descending to the asphalt. It was noisy, with the other tractor-trailer trucks rumbling by, heading for the open highway, only meters away. But because of this…creature, this mis-spawned creature from that hellhole of a region that produced only oil and fanatics, all his years of dreaming and planning and all his hopes of revenge were about to come tumbling down.
Imad joined him at the rear of the truck, by the locked rear doors of the shipping container. A small black box with a thin cable secured the rear lock. Vladimir looked at the Customs officer striding over to them, a fierce look on her face, and he bowed and said, ‘My apologies, officer. My young driver has been on the road for a very long time. He didn’t mean what he said.’
The woman was having none of it. ‘Don’t care if he gets down on his knees and kisses my ass. He did what he did and now I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. The rear of the trailer is getting opened, and after I get the drug-detecting dogs over here to look at every single package in there, you’ll be on your way. Probably by tomorrow.’
Imad stood there, smirking, and Vladimir knew now there was more going on than the boy’s attitude towards women. The boy was challenging him, was trying to see how Vladimir could pull this off, how he would do anything to prostrate and humiliate himself before this black woman so that they could get into the country.
Vladimir took a breath. ‘Again, madam, our apologies. We are behind schedule. Please. This time. Could you let us proceed? If we are late, we do not get paid. We could lose our business. Please, madam.’
The Customs officer shook her head. ‘Not going to happen, pal. Open it up.’
Vladimir’s legs refused to move. He could not believe this was happening. The trips across the dusty plains of Asia, following diesel buses belching thick clouds of soot, working and wheedling and bribing, all his years of schoolwork and study and lab work and Party membership and kissing the right asses of the right overseers — that it should all come to this? So that the great-great-granddaughter of some slave or tribe member from the Dark Continent would thwart his plans? It could not happen!
The woman was now in his face, her eyes flashing. ‘Get a move on, pal. Unless you and your buddy want a full body-cavity search as well. Is that what you’re gunning for?’
‘But… the lock, it’s a lock secured by—’
‘Mister, shut the fuck up and open the door. Now.’
The keys. The keys were in Vladimir’s coat pocket. How long could he stall her? How long?
Imad was looking over, still grinning.
Vladimir’s hand went into his coat. Felt the hard metal of the keys.
‘Move,’ the woman said.
The keys were now out of his pocket and in his hand. He moved up to the door.
Imad had disappeared. Where had the little shit gone?
Vladimir’s throat was dry. This could not be happening, could not be happening. He looked over to the woman again, to see if he could once more appeal to her. But there was no possibility of appeal there, not with that anger.
He went up to the lock, the key in his hand, and—
‘Tanya!’
Vladimir turned, as did the woman. An older Customs officer stood there, clipboard under his arm.
The woman’s tone changed instantly. ‘Sir?’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘No problem, sir,’ she said. ‘Just pulling this one out for a random check.’
The older man came over, looked at Vladimir, the truck, and then eyed the square black box under the lock. From his own coat pocket, the older Customs officer pulled out a scanning device, ran it over the black box, and said to Tanya, ‘Cut them loose.’
Her mouth was agape. ‘Sir?’
‘You heard me, cut them loose.’
Vladimir could hardly believe what he was hearing. The older Customs officer said, ‘You haven’t kept up with your circulars, Tanya. Recognize the box?’
‘Sir, I know it’s a SmartSeal, it’s just that—’
‘Right, a SmartSeal. Which means one of your brother or sister officers overseas, either in Tokyo or Singapore or Shanghai, cleared and verified what’s in the container. The scan I just did shows that nothing’s been disturbed since it was loaded last month. So Customs has already taken a look inside. Don’t waste your time or my time. Let ’em go.’
‘Sir, I just wanted to do a random-’
The older man said, ‘You’ve already surpassed your quota today for randoms, Tanya. Now let’s get a move on, before the fucking Chamber of Commerce people start howling again at how we’re strangling international trade, all right? So they go south and you get back to work.’
The male Customs officer walked away and the younger, female Customs officer stared at him with such contempt and hate. Vladimir knew that he should feel triumphant, but all he felt was cowed. This had been, as the Duke of Wellington had said about Waterloo, a close-run thing.
And where in hell was Imad? He walked over to the driver’s side, saw Imad standing there, grinning, arms crossed, the door to the cab still open.
‘Come along,’ Imad said. ‘Didn’t you hear the man? We’re free to go.’
Vladimir shook his head, still not believing what had happened.
Tanya Mead stood there silently, still furious at what had happened, as the truck containing the young boy and the man with the Eastern European accent drove away. The young snot looked triumphant, the older guy looked like the two of them had just gotten away with murder.
Sure, she had gone over quota, but so what? Something was still hinky about those two and she hadn’t liked their attitude, even before the little dark-skinned one had called her a nigger. And then there was her supervisor, Herbert Corner, known to everyone — except himself, of course — as Captain Commerce. He was a regional office hack who had been demoted and sent down because of some indiscretion — the latest rumor had him surfing for Internet porn during his lunch hour — and his single goal was to keep the wait times down, the searches to the minimum, and the business concerns in Washington State and elsewhere happy.
Some damn attitude, Tanya thought.
She also thought about her heroine, Diana Dean, a Customs officer on duty years ago, back on- December 14, 1999. Dean had stopped a guy coming in on the Vancouver ferry, to Port Angeles. Something about the guy had made her look twice at him and his car, and when Dean went to talk to the character — later found to be a member of al-Qaeda — the little fuck had fled, before being tackled to the ground. And in his rental car? In the trunk, they found 130 pounds of plastic explosives, two 22-ounce plastic bottles full of nitro-glycol, and a map of LAX, Los Angeles International Airport. That had been going to be al-Qaeda’s contribution to the millennium festivities on December 31 — blowing up the airport at Los Angeles. And that plot had been stopped dead in its tracks. Not because of the FBI or CIA or NSA. Not because of some whizbang satellite in orbit, snooping on cellphone conversations and e-mail messages. And not because of some multibillion-dollar agency.