Fifty

Nico sat on a street corner in the Liberty City section of Miami, blocks away from a public storage facility. The drugs were sitting inside a storage unit, ready to be fork-lifted on to a tractor-trailer in the parking lot.

There were agents staking out the public storage facility and agents stalking out Nico, and they were going to take turns trailing him as soon as he decided to drive to the storage facility.

Local undercover cops took turns trailing Patrick as he left his strip club and made his way to the public storage. They all figured Nico would start his engine and make his way to the facility at any moment, but everybody was shocked when they saw Mia pull into the facility in a car she had rented in New Jersey and driven all the way to Miami. Mia had a guy in the car with her—a face no one had seen before.

Federal agents were all in position, but they were told to stand down until the transaction took place. Mia walked up to Patrick’s car. He got out, and she gave him a hug. She was wearing high-heel shoes, tight jeans, and a thin short sleeve blouse that was perfect for the Miami weather.

Mia and Patrick walked over to the car Mia had driven. Mia popped the trunk, showed Patrick the money, and then closed it and gave him the keys to the car. The guy in the car with Mia got out and called Nico on his cell phone and was giving him a play-by-play of everything happening.

Patrick got on his cell phone, and within two minutes a young black kid who looked no older than seventeen came wheeling a forklift from inside the public storage facility and placed it on the dock right next to the tractor-trailer.

Out of nowhere unmarked FBI and DEA cars swarmed on the scene, as did marked and unmarked local police cars. Within two minutes a helicopter was also hovering over the facility.

Within seconds, Mia, her male accomplice, Patrick, the young forklift driver, and the tractor-trailer driver were all on the ground and in handcuffs.

DEA agents locked down the public storage facility and searched every inch of it with drug-sniffing dogs.

As soon as Nico heard the sirens, he knew they had been busted. But in the federal agents’ haste to get to the crime scene when Gosling gave the order, the agents who had been assigned to watch Nico forgot about him and raced to the crime scene.

Nico had no idea that he had been followed, but he’d started up his car and got out of Dodge as quick as he could. He knew not to venture past the public storage facility.

Once he made it to the interstate, he rolled down his window and tossed all the cell phones he had on him as he tried to figure out exactly where he was heading next.