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THE OLD POWER PLANT loomed massive against the night sky. Piles of broken concrete and chunks of twisted metal littered its grounds beside the Delaware River, which flowed cold and black in the dim ambient light. Water pushed through a narrow channel beneath a thick iron chute that had once trundled coal into the bowels of the plant. Fifty years before, barges had traveled there to disgorge their loads. At its peak, the plant had produced 600 megawatts of electricity daily for the city of Philadelphia. Zan could imagine its noxious fumes. Still, she wished she had seen it, the coal hissing and burning yellow-orange to create steam to power giant turbines, the whole building operating as a single machine.
What did Rainer say to me about humans that time? So physically weak, so strong in their industry.
She and her FBI partner, Melissa “Mel” Romani, had chosen this abandoned place to meet with the targets of their investigation, a crew thought to be neck-deep in the illegal handgun trade.
Detective Jamal Williams, their colleague from the Philadelphia Police Department, had come through for them again.
“Got a juicy one for you this time, O’Gara,” he’d said. “Arrested a couple dudes moving some serious weight. Heroin. Found the usual cache of illegals weapons in their house. As soon as we applied pressure they got helpful. Told us the source of the firearms.”
Unfortunately, Zan and Mel had failed to gather enough evidence by conventional means to get an arrest warrant, so here they were, undercover. They waited in a dirt lot behind the plant with a bag full of money. If all went well, the targets would sell them the guns and leave. Other agents waited on the street to pick them up.
Mel poked around by the river. She wanted to make sure there were no bad guys lurking in the spindly bushes and weed trees. The other agents were at least a quarter mile away on the other side of the plant. This was risky, but neither Mel nor Zan wanted their colleagues to spook these people off the sale. They’d put too much time and effort into the case. They were wired for sound and it would have to do.
Thank Christ she hadn’t told Rainer any of this, the way he worried. But she couldn’t resist telling him something, especially when the site of the sting was only a mile or so downriver from their house.
“Did you know we have the perfect spot to perform dark criminal deeds right next door in Port Richmond?” she’d asked. Rainer knew the old power plant. He’d peppered her with questions about the operation. She wasn’t supposed to talk about it, but she answered a few anyway. She told him she viewed him as an exception because he was an alien. Made him laugh.
All right, O’Gara, it’s almost witching hour. Stop thinking about how beautiful he is when he laughs.
A little past midnight, Zan heard the crunch of gravel. A large black SUV with tinted windows rumbled over the uneven lot. It parked beside their dented white panel van. A man and a woman got out, the two they expected.
Zan displayed a nylon bag. “Let’s do our business so we can get the hell out of here,” she said.
“All right, ladies,” said the man. He had the kind of plastic voice that calls old people to sell them bogus insurance. He gestured to his companion, a tall blonde woman wearing a pair of enormous furry boots. She opened the back hatch of the SUV.
“We’ve got the guns right here,” she said, although she stood in their line of sight. Zan noticed Mel tense up.
“Place the product in our van,” Mel said, opening its rear doors. “Then we’ll give you the money.” She took a few steps back, no doubt trying to get an angle on the interior of their vehicle.
Plastic man smirked at furry-boots. They moved as if to comply, but turned back from the SUV with guns in their hands. A big man in a leather jacket slid out of a door. He carried an assault rifle.
“Don’t pretend you’re unarmed,” plastic man said. “Put your guns on the ground and throw the money here.”
The agents did as he asked. Zan kept an eye on the driveway.
I’ll enjoy seeing their faces when our colleagues swarm in.
“Let me frisk them,” plastic man said to his companions. “Don’t take your eyes off them.”
First, he went to Zan. He shoved his hands between her legs and along her ass. He unzipped her jacket and roughly groped her breasts, breathing heavy. He found the Bluetooth device that allowed their colleagues to listen in.
“Fuck me.”
“What?” Furry-boots took a step toward them, her gun trained on Zan.
He pulled the device out, switched it off and held it up. He snatched Zan’s billfold out of her inside pocket, flipped it open and groaned.
“They’re feds! We’re fucked! We’re fucked seven ways from Sunday!”
“We’ve got to get out of here now,” furry-boots said, as she frisked Mel and disabled her Bluetooth. “Like, fifty of them will rush in at any moment.” Her eyes darted around the grounds. “Throw them in the van. It’ll be easier to tie them up.”
“What about the guns?” leather-jacket asked.
“Leave them. No time.” Furry-boots motioned with her gun towards a rutted dirt track that curved from the far side of the power plant to the river then turned south along its bank. “We’ll crash through that fence into the old quarry. If we get cornered, we’ll use these bitches as bargaining chips.”
As furry-boots spoke, Zan slipped her hand in her jacket’s outside pocket, which plastic man had overlooked in his panic. With a few thumb presses, she sent a blank message to the last person she’d texted. Rainer.
“Get your hand out of your fucking pocket!” plastic man screeched as the first blast of a siren cracked the night. He and leather-jacket rushed over, grabbed Zan’s phone and the van keys, bound her hands with a zip tie and threw her in the van. They frisked and bound Mel, tossed her next to Zan, then chucked the agents’ phones in the bushes. A few seconds later, the van was bouncing down the dirt track. Furry-boots drove. Leather-jacket bound Mel and Zan’s ankles as plastic man kept a handgun trained on them from the passenger seat.
The wail of sirens told Zan her colleagues were not far behind, but the van had already sped beyond a giant pile of gravel in the quarry. She hoped the other agents would be able to tell which way they’d gone.
Zan also prayed the agents would reach the van before Rainer. She cursed the fear that had made her send that text.
Like that’s not asking for all kinds of trouble.
The Vengeance Season, Book III of the Covalent Season
is available for purchase.
