Cargo

CARGO

A novel by

Hal Williams

Copyright © 2016 by Hal Williams

ISBN 9781310995668

All rights reserved under International and Pan American copyright conventions. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations—other than public figures identified by their real names and documented historical events—are products of the author's imagination and are not intended to portray actual persons or events.

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Since 1835 one hundred-eight Texas Rangers have given their lives in the line of duty (as of Summer 2016). This book is dedicated to their memory and to the men and women who continue to uphold their legacy by wearing the Texas Ranger star.

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GALVESTON, TEXAS

THESE THINGS have tons of good stuff inside, Manny Garcia told Juan Espinoza as they crept past a queue of ISO shipping containers. They got everything, man. TVs, stereos, speakers, computers, cameras, cell phones, shoes, clothes. It’s like Costco with no checkout line.

Espinoza had never prowled the Galveston docks before, but Garcia’s promise of quick thefts and easy money had enticed him. He followed Manny along a string of standard 53-foot units.

Stay out of the light, Garcia cautioned. Security here ain’t so good, but some rent-a-cop might cap you if he gets the chance.

The last container in the row sat in the darkest section of the pier. Garcia used bolt cutters to defeat the padlock and unlatched the metal doors.

Juan Espinoza screamed in horror when emaciated scarecrows and the sickening stench of human excrement began spilling out around Manny Garcia.

CHAPTER 1

SWEAT SOAKING Carlos Gamboa’s shirt had little to do with the oppressive evening temperature on the concrete pier. He had done his part in preparation of the arrangement made by the man in Costa Rica, but now that plan was in jeopardy. He worried that he might be blamed.

Finding someone to trade shifts with him had been simple enough. The less senior man was delighted about not having to work on a sweltering Friday evening. Gamboa’s driver had come on time but the container ship had not. Because the vessel failed to reach its berth as scheduled, he was left with no choice but to send the truck away empty. The ship’s belated Saturday morning arrival compounded his problem.

Carlos wore jeans, a blue chambray shirt, a Day-Glo vest, and a yellow hard hat—the things he and most other dock hands wore to work every day—so no one paid much attention to him. Crane operators began offloading ISO containers while he watched in frustration. He could not remove the container of interest in daylight. That meant waiting until workmen departed at the end of their abbreviated Saturday shift, then strolling the pier and acting nonchalant while searching for the correct unit number. He found the container at the end of a row. Fortunately for him, Galveston had so little container traffic that boxes were rarely double stacked. Unimpeded access to the container’s side would allow him to lift and load his unit without having to move any of the others.

He made a call to mobilize his truck driver, then settled in to wait for darkness.

The forklift he planned to use sat beside a maintenance shed at the southwest corner of the dock facility, so with his flatbed due in five minutes, he decided to move the machine into position. Before he could start the engine, however, he heard a shriek followed by a cacophony of coughing and wailing.

Gamboa looked back at the row of containers. What he saw caused bile to surge into his throat.

He had two calls to make, and he did not look forward to dialing either number. He hurried off the pier, slipped between freight cars sitting on the railroad tracks, crossed Harborside Drive, then stopped and phoned his driver to abort the pickup for a second time.

Next, he called Rafael Santiago.

Answering his phone at odd hours just went with the job, Steve Oliveras reminded himself. One in his position could not simply ignore it. He put down the Texas Monthly he had been reading. Oliveras.

If you had plans for the rest of weekend, forget ‘em, Jim Travis said. I need to see you in my office.

When? That was the only question you asked the Director of the Department of Public Safety when he called you at home on a Saturday night.

Soonest you can get here.

Oliveras glanced at his bedside clock radio. The glowing blue LEDs showed 10:22. No problem, sir. I’ll be there in a half-hour.

He looped his holstered Colt 1911 and two magazine pouches onto his belt, pulled on his black elk skin Larry Mahan boots, and turned out the lights. At 10:49 he parked his state-provided Chevrolet Tahoe in a nearly deserted lot and entered the north door of Building A at the DPS complex in Austin. Even though he had beaten his estimated arrival time by three minutes, he found that his boss, Texas Rangers Chief John Baird, had arrived before him. Highway Patrol head David Gonzales pulled into the next space a minute later. Gonzales and his deputy, Carl Wade, followed Oliveras into the conference room adjoining Travis’s office.

Grab some coffee and a chair, Travis told them. I’ll let David bring you up to speed since he got the first call.

Earlier this evening a couple of guys broke into a shipping container in Galveston, Gonzales said as he filled a coffee mug. They figured on scoring some stereos or TVs to sell for quick cash, so they certainly weren’t expecting what they found instead.

Which was what? Oliveras asked. He glanced at Baird and could tell that his boss already knew.

Out of a hundred and sixty or so people inside, forty were already dead.

People? Slave trade gone wrong?

We’re not sure, Travis said. They may have been trying to enter the U.S. as asylum seekers.

It would be kind of an extreme alternative to wading the Rio Grande, Gonzales said, but we can’t rule it out.

The clowns who opened the container are wetbacks, Travis said. Juan Espinoza is clean except for being undocumented. The other one, Manuel Garcia, did a year up in the Ellis Unit on a robbery conviction, then got deported to answer an outstanding warrant in Mexico. He seems to have slipped that trace somehow, and now he’s back. He’s also known to be involved with Tango Blast.

Oliveras and Gonzales nodded in tandem.

Tango Blast had its birth in the Texas prison system and grew up on the streets of Houston. Incarcerated Hispanics organized Tango Blast as a sort of anti-gang to defend themselves against other established prison gangs. Many Tango Blast members released at the ends of their sentences took the gang’s allegiances with them even though membership did not require it. Once out of prison you could stay in the gang or leave it, your choice. But some former Tango Blast inmates reverted to the kind of criminal behavior that had landed them in prison to begin with, and that appeared to be the case with Manuel Garcia.

If it’s a slave trade situation, then it seems unlikely that these two were the intended recipients, Oliveras said. I take it somebody has them in custody and has interrogated them?

Yes, Gonzales said. The way I’m hearing it, they were delighted to go with anybody who’d get them off that pier. City of Galveston has them locked up right now.

Where’d the container come from?

Gonzales checked his notebook. The ship came here straight from Panama, but the container was handled by a forwarding agent, so we don’t know yet just exactly where it originated. Whoever packed it listed the contents as perishables.

Accurate in a way.

Baird scowled at Carl Wade. That’s not amusing.

Unfortunately, this thing slipped through without having a consignee identified on the bill of lading, Gonzales continued. What that suggests to me is, somebody working at the port down there knew to watch for it.

So we’re talking inside job?

That’s our theory, Steve, Travis said. The coyote would have to know the container number and have the means to remove it from the pier. The first part’s easy. For the second, you’d need a large forklift and a flatbed semi set up for ISO boxes.

That’s no big deal, either, Gonzales said, and anyone with a copy of that shipping manifest could simply write in his own name as the consignee and drive away with the container. That’s if anyone bothered to look at the paperwork.

Well, Oliveras said, they’d have to outwit the customs inspectors, but if these two got onto the dock unmolested and managed to open a container, we can infer that security down there isn’t everything it ought to be.