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  Rammi tried to be super cool. “Yeah yeah. I got it. It’s not exactly like hacking into the Pentagon, is it? Hey, can my girlfriend come over?”

  Curtis looked at J.A. and then back at Rammi. “We may be operating an illicit enterprise, but we would never deny a colleague a conjugal visit.”

  Rammi had no idea what Curtis had just told him, but he guessed from the friendly tone that Trishi was welcome to join him.

  “Okay cool,” Rammi said.

  “Are you sure your piece is in good working order?” J.A. asked.

  Rammi reached for the compact Glock 26 he kept in his belt at the small of his back. “Check it if you want.”

  With two dozen more stops to make, J.A. and Curtis were already headed to the garage. “Looks good, Rammi. You know, if you ever want more rounds, that gun takes mags from its bigger brothers. We gotta head out. Keep your eyes open.”

  The men walked to their car—a twelve-year-old Chevrolet Impala. Curtis owned an Audi R8 and J.A., a Maserati, but Otis insisted that they use unobtrusive cars when they were working. As he got in the passenger side, Curtis tossed the last half-inch of the joint into a sewer grate. They drove off to the next house in the southeast quadrant of the city.

  From his vantage point at a bus stop down the street, Ramon put down his newspaper and dialed Hector’s number. “Come and pick me up,” he said.

  Twelve minutes later Hector pulled up to the bus stop. He too drove a nondescript vehicle. Ramon got in, and they drove back to the body shop. He told Hector how he had seen the two men arrive at the house, followed by the kid in the flashy imported ride. After a half hour the two men had left, but the young man stayed behind. They entered and exited via the garage. That was enough to arouse Hector’s suspicions. The men who left the house looked serious. The kid not so much. He was probably just a foot soldier.

  When they reported to the Colonel, he called all the men together. “It’s as we expected. We knew the man in charge of the drug operation, Otis Gaverill, would not sit back and let us loot his business. So, let us adapt our planning, logistics, and weaponry to the task.”

  Luis made the first suggestion. “It might not mean anything that they only use the garage entrance. Or it could mean they have booby-trapped the front and back doors. It would be easy to use a high voltage feed to the door hardware. It’s silent, but it can also attract unnecessary attention—anyone going door to door for ordinary purposes could end up twitching on the front steps.”

  Andre, the sniper of the group, shook his head. “I don’t think they would want another drain on the electrical supply. All those thousand-watt lamps they use to grow the plants also use a lot of power. If there is a booby-trap, I would expect it to be a crude disabling device such as an anti-personnel explosive or something motion-activated.”

  Barros the mechanic was next to speak. “If we were in their shoes, I would use something silent. A crossbow or a spring-loaded punji rig of some kind. It would allow the quarry into the house and dispose of them there, so the neighbors would not be alerted by noise.”

  The Colonel listened to the conversation. It was good. His men were disciplined. They did not argue and interrupt each other. They were merely discussing options, ideas, and all the possible eventualities. But he had heard enough. “We will be going in through the garage, just as they did.”

  Diego looked at the Colonel, puzzled. “But Commandante, breaching a front door is easy. A large, locked garage door is noisy and difficult.”

  The Colonel smiled. “Barros has a little device that will make it easy.”

  As he continued, Barros dug a three-foot length of flexible steel out of a duffle bag. It was hooked at one end. “Every electric garage door opener sold in this country has an emergency handle to disengage it from the chain. When the door is down, the handle is hanging just inside. If firefighters need to get into a garage, they push the top of the door in, then use a tool like this or sometimes even just a wire coat hanger to grab the handle and unlock the door. Then we can lift it silently and enter.”

  The men were amazed at the simplicity of the entry. Barros put them back on edge with his next remark. “There’s no guarantee that the door from the garage into the home isn’t protected somehow. So be careful. The first two men in should wear vests in case the man inside gets a shot off.”

  The Colonel reinforced this point. “Agreed. I cannot afford to lose any of you; you know that. When we return to our country I will need you in critical command positions to help protect the new government. So be fierce, but be wary.”

  They went through the rest of the plan for the house, including which decals would be put on the truck. They would back it up to the garage to provide cover for the garage door entry. Barros had one more trick up his sleeve. “Because we’ll be inside the garage and the door to the house may be booby-trapped, we won’t use the battering ram. Instead I’ll load my shotgun with breaching rounds and take out the deadbolt. Then we’ll wait a few seconds to ensure there is no delayed explosive.”

  The breaching rounds were the same type used by law enforcement. SWAT teams called the rounds master keys. They used a shotgun shell loaded with metal powder, held together by wax. When it hit the target it delivered the impact without any ricocheting fragments that might injure the assault team. Police personnel referred to breaching a door this way as an “Avon calling,” a term that was lost on these men. The Colonel and his men would execute with the same operational efficiency as an elite police unit, but their objectives were far simpler: steal the pot plants, immobilize any residents.

  With the final elements of the plan decided, they turned in for the evening. Early the next morning they would move on their tenth grow house in Otis’s empire.

  15

  While the Colonel and his men were sleeping, Jak Mosely was once again burning the midnight oil. Apart from his work at the ad agency, he had a very profitable freelance client. He packed up his laptop, locked his loft, and drove his BMW Z8 to an upscale building in Salento’s theatre district.

  He used a key card to gain access to the underground parking and rode a private elevator to the sub-penthouse. The door opened, and he saw his favorite client waiting in an expansive living room.

  “Hey Curtis, how goes it?”

  “Not bad at all, Jak. I’m not sure whether you’ve met my brother, J.A. He’s going to sit in. What have you got for us?”

  Jak shook J.A.’s hand, then sat down on one of the suede sofas that bracketed the recently-replaced Eames coffee table. He pulled out his 17-inch laptop and booted up the presentation program. “You mentioned that your boss wanted something very stylish, without any cliché Amsterdam drug culture references. So I’ve kept it very simple and elegant. The brand name I’m recommending for your new game-changing hybrid ganja is…

  He paused for effect, and the title slide appeared.

  “Seraphim.”

  J.A. and Curtis looked at the wordmark Jak was proposing. The font was a lean serif with a very graceful descender and ascender on the p and the h. It gave the impression of a fine wine, or a luxury watch company.

  Curtis spoke first. “I like it. Can you give me the etymology behind it? I know the boss will be curious.”

  “Of course. In mythology…” Jak caught himself, “Excuse me, in religions such as Judaism and Christianity, the Seraphim are a favored class of angels. The literal translation of the word, however, is ‘burning ones’ because in the Book of Isaiah they are described as fiery winged beings who serve God in the heavens. So without getting too highbrow, I thought it was a clever play on burning angels. A heavenly high, so to speak.”

  J.A. smiled, “That’s brilliant, man.”

  Jak blushed at the praise. In contrast to his day job, with the office politics and asshole clients like Conrad Helmsley, his freelance work did wonders for his ego as well as his cash flow. “Let me show you the other components of the brand identity. Rather than the pedestrian cellophane bags other enterprises use for t
heir pot, I’ve created an embossed sleeve that you can slide over the plastic. It gives your product the appearance and cachet of a really high-end herbal tea. Similarly, you can overprint this small flip-top box and market a dozen pre-rolled spliffs at a time to very upscale clientele. If the weed is as good as you say it is, your profit margins will be huge.”

  “Oh, it’s good,” Curtis said. “Here’s a pre-production sample for you.” He took an ounce from his jacket pocket and handed it to Jak. Then he removed a wad of bills, still in the bank wrapper, and put it down on the table. “And here’s an installment on your fee. Ten Gs, which will get you a pound and a half of the Seraphim, if you’re so inclined.”

  Jak laughed and stowed the pot and the cash in his computer bag. They chatted for a while about branding and their respective business problems. Then Jak handed over a flash drive with the presentation on it and headed for the elevator. “So you’ll let me know how the boss man likes the work, and then I’ll get you final files suitable for sending to your printer. It’s going to be very choice stuff, just like the product. I wish I could enter it in some of the mainstream graphic design awards competitions.”

  Curtis waved as the elevator doors closed. Then he called out, “So, Big O, you like what you see?”

  From the penthouse, where he had been watching via CCTV, Otis’s voice came over a hidden speaker. “Yeah, that kid’s got some serious skills. He reminds me of my son. Where’d you say he was from?”

  “I met him at the gym about a year ago. He works at a big ad agency downtown. But he seems to enjoy our compensation more than the nine-to-five he gets,” Curtis said.

  “It’s a very good start on the brand. We can keep the supply down, and skim the cream when it comes to pricing. Let’s make sure we keep the wheels turning and get this to the street in the next quarter. It’s going to be a very good year for the enterprise.”

  J.A. and Curtis heard the speaker click off and they looked at one another, satisfied. “Never hurts when the big man’s happy,” J.A. said. “Now we just have to find out who’s ripping us off.”

  Curtis pulled out a joint of the newly-christened Seraphim and lit up. “Just a matter of time, bro. Can’t say I’d want to be part of that crew when they come up against Q’s booby traps. Someone’s going to lose life and limb.”

  “Dunno Curtis. These boys aren’t the garden-variety gangsters we’re used to dealing with. Their weapons and tactics are too slick. I think it’s going to be a bloody one. But nobody beats Big O when it comes to laying down the pain.”

  “You got that right.”

  16

  Four thousand miles to the east, Pyotr Ptushko was up before dawn. He went through his daily workout regimen with the personal trainer he employed full time. Kara Novotna was six feet tall and weighed 147 pounds. Except for a slightly more feminine distribution of those pounds, she would have made a formidable welterweight boxer. Her shoulders were narrower, hips slightly wider, but the definition in her abs, delts, and calves was striking. Her cheekbones were high. The only blemish to her appearance was a slightly crooked nose, courtesy of a bottle hitting her in the face as a union protestor tried to get to Ptushko at an opera premiere.

  Kara had crushed the protestor’s windpipe, driven the cartilage just below his sternum into his diaphragm, and then broken three of his front teeth with her boot as he stood there doubled over. The police weren’t sure whether to arrest the protestor or hospitalize him. The paramedics took matters into their own hands and spirited him away.

  On this morning, like every morning, she helped Ptushko absolve his body of the effects of too many business lunches and too much horilka—his own private brand of ultra-premium Ukrainian vodka. She chided him as he did stomach crunches on a bosu.

  “You’ve gone from a six-pack to a two-pack, Pyotr. My little sister has a better core than you, and she’s eleven.”

  Ptushko grunted through the pain. “Yes, but she’s at the national gymnastics academy Lee-sa!”

  He used his nickname for her, Lee-sa being a bastardization of the Russian word for fox. He used it because he knew she disliked it. She ignored him. “On your feet. Take the twenty-kilo kettle-bells, and give me a set of twenty cleans.”

  He worked through the reps, resisting the temptation to cheat because he knew she would tack five more reps on the end of the set. From the kettle-bells they would go to three minutes of skipping rope at 160 rpm, then to dumbbell flies with his chest on a balance ball. The torturous program was the only way he had been able to maintain his college weight. In the twenty years since he graduated, almost all his classmates had developed spare tires and gotten soft.

  “Let’s go, Pyotr!” Kara was really challenging him now, the only one of his employees who had that sort of license. They were skipping rope in front of one another. He watched with envy as she spun the rope at least 30 rpm faster while crossing her hands in front of her and whipping the rope to the sides. It was intimidating and sexy at the same time. But their relationship was strictly platonic, since Kara was sleeping exclusively with his chef.

  Coupled with the workouts, the chef’s diet kept Ptushko fit and trim while seldom sacrificing flavor. Classically trained, Niki Duchovny was petite and beautiful. She could cut corners in a recipe, sparing his cholesterol, and still create culinary masterpieces. The only thing she couldn’t replicate was his mother’s shashlik. But that was probably due to the unique diet of the lamb in his region growing up. The mountainous vegetation in his home territory was moist, not dry, and this resulted in very flavorful meat.

  Kara was yelling at him again, snapping him back to the present.

  “Pick up the pace, zalupa!” Kara used the Russian gangster slang for “penis head,” knowing full well that this was the only place she could get away with it. In truth, she respected Pyotr more than any man she had ever met. He treated her very well and also supported her entire family with jobs, apartments, and cars.

  He burst out laughing at the insult, and the skipping rope caught his foot. He cursed and tried to get back up to speed, but the timer went off and they moved to his last exercise, the dumbbell flies on the balance ball. He gave it all he had, performing the reps perfectly, and telling her he wanted to do an extra ten. Finally, dripping with sweat, he rolled off the ball and lay on his back on the compressed foam floor. Kara came to him with a cool towel.

  “Thank you, Kara. I know I complain, but this is the best part of my day. It is why I have the stamina of a man twenty years my junior.”

  “You work hard, Pyotr. It is my pleasure to train you.”

  “Will you come with me to America for the parade they are throwing in my honor?”

  “I would love to, but Niki is preparing for the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon. She says she needs me to be there if she is going to cook with passion.”

  “I understand. Tell Niki good luck for me.”

  “I will, thank you, Pyotr.”

  Kara turned and headed to the locker room for a post-workout massage. Ptushko drained a half liter of mineral water and then went to his private dressing room. As he took his own massage, a computer monitor set into the base of the massage table directly under the opening for his face gave him a steady stream of data to prepare him for his day. In all he would have twenty-two different meetings, taking him right through until ten p.m. They concerned everything from commodity futures to labor negotiations to the expansion plans in his newest conquest, the newly-formed South American Republic of Uramera.

  After thirty-five minutes Ptushko pressed a button on the side of the massage table. His corporate secretary entered the room. “Good morning, Mr. Ptushko,” she said.

  “Good morning, Yasmine,” Ptushko replied. “Do you have a formal itinerary yet from all the American governments involved in my visit to their country?”

  Yasmine Sivortsova handed over a piece of paper. “It will be a fairly intense three days. There are thirty-six different elected officials who want…I believe they call it in America, a
‘photo op.’ It seems everyone from the President to the mayor of the city of Salento would like to be seen with you.”

  Ptushko smiled. “I should figure out what re-election is worth to each of them, and we could charge enough money to buy another Sukhoi Superjet. What other business do we have besides being showered with the praise of grateful Americans?”

  Yasmine took the itinerary back and passed him another sheet of paper. “You have meetings with the Salento Port Authority CEO, to expedite the movement of our containers through their system. If he agrees, we’ll move all our shipping from Boston into Salento. There is also a new mining technology company that has developed a very interesting suite of seismic interpretation software. They were thinking of making an IPO but I said that you were intrigued enough to make them all rich without involving lawyers and the SEC.”

  Ptushko wiped the sweat from his brow and waved the masseuse away. She left, bowing deeply on her way out.

  He drank the other half of his bottled water. “What would I do without you, my dear Yasmine? You have as keen a mind as anyone I’ve ever met. The London School of Economics must be proud. Did you keep the gold medal they gave you? You never fail to impress me with your analysis and insight.”

  Yasmine gave him a pout. She began to undo the buttons on her blouse. When she was finished she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. “Pyotr, are you only interested in my mind?”

  She pulled him off the massage table and loosened the towel around his waist. Ptushko let it fall to the floor, then drew her close and smelled her perfume. “On the contrary, my dear. Of all the thousands of figures I look at every day, yours is the only one where I can see no room for improvement.”

  17

  The clock registered six o’clock a.m., and once again Mitchell and Mya were awakened by the FM deejay and his pandering minions. This time they were seeing which of two listeners selected via ballot could eat more live cockroaches in the studio, given a two-minute time frame.