The task seemed a fool’s errand, but he continued searching anyway, expecting that he’d make the judgment call to exfil within the next few minutes unless something was found.
And when he saw the answer to all his concerns, it was with a sense of absurdity—there on the floor, not ten feet to his front, a traffic cone bore a taped piece of paper reading L13.
The load that it marked, however, raised its own questions.
He shouldn’t have been dismayed to see the 55-gallon oil barrels filling a vast swath of the warehouse floor—his worst fear was finding a weapon of mass destruction, if not actual terrorist operatives awaiting transport to conduct an attack. Nonetheless, the sight of oil barrels triggered a deep-seated instinct that something was very wrong with this picture. Nigeria produced oil in vast quantities; why would Gradsek be importing it?
Nonetheless, he transmitted his findings.
“I got oil barrels here, marked as the L13 load. Gotta be a couple thousand.”
Ian sounded confused, even dismayed, as he replied, “Wait, barrels as in—what, like 55-gallon drums?”
“That’s what I just said. There a problem?”
“The problem,” Ian clarified, “is that oil isn’t shipped in actual barrels. Maritime transport occurs in purpose-built tanker ships with enormous capacity; for the past fifty years or so, the barrel has just been a unit of measurement.”
“Well I’m looking at fuckin’ barrels,” Cancer said testily as the thought dawned on him that there was only one explanation for the disparity: the barrels didn’t contain oil at all.
Cancer keyed his mic again before Ian could beat him to the chase. “I’m going to open one, see what’s inside.”
For the first time in their existence as a team, the nerdy intelligence operative actually agreed with him.
“Good idea. Keep me posted.”
Selecting a barrel at random, Cancer examined the rectangular sticker affixed to its side. It bore the title SCEPURA ENERGY SERVICES LIMITED above a block of safety disclaimers for moving the product, followed by a product code, batch number, net weight, and volume. Nothing suspicious there, and Cancer snapped a photograph before continuing with his examination.
He opened his Gerber multitool to use the pliers, prying a round plastic seal to expose the metal cap below. Bracing the tips of his pliers against the inner tabs of the metal cap, he twisted counterclockwise until it was loose. Then Cancer spun the cap with his gloved fingers until it cleared the threads and came free.
Setting it aside, he replaced the Gerber with his fighting knife, then opened a zip lock bag, turned it inside out, and wrapped it over the handle.
Delicately holding the knife by the flat part of the blade, he dipped the covered handle into the barrel opening until the hilt prevented it from going further. Then he withdrew it slowly, grasping the bag by its seal and setting his knife aside to examine the results.
The bag interior was covered in a viscous, yellow-black fluid that drizzled back through the cap opening, and he brought his face close to sniff it—definitely oil. He secured the sample anyway, reaching inside the bag to pinch the bottom between his fingers and pull it right side out before sealing the slick of oil inside and stowing it.
So the barrels didn’t conceal anything at all, Cancer thought as he sheathed his fighting knife. That should have made him feel better, but it had the opposite effect—he was more deeply unsettled than ever, and now he wanted nothing more than to see what the rest of the cargo contained.
Before continuing his search, he transmitted, “Pulled a sample. Be advised: the oil barrels contain oil.”
For reasons Cancer couldn’t understand, Ian sounded unsurprised. “Did you smell it?”
“Yeah, I smelled it.”
“Describe the smell—sweet or sulfury? Any traces of diesel or kerosine?”
“Kind of a fuel smell,” Cancer replied. “Traces of diesel, maybe, but not like you’d get at the pump.”
“Then it’s not crude oil—someone refined it and shipped it to Gradsek. The question is who, and why?”
Cancer shook his head and keyed his mic again. “Keep your pants on, dickhead. Let me find the other cargo—what’s the other code I’m looking for?”
“Y210.”
“Good. Now shut up for a minute.”
Drawing his pistol, Cancer moved deeper into the warehouse until he stumbled upon another traffic cone labeled Y210, though this patch of floor space bore not one cargo, but two.
The first three containers were ajar, their contents scattered on the ground in an orientation that didn’t make sense. Each container’s customs seal—thin metal bands stamped with serial numbers—was broken. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise, since any enterprising smuggler would have the means to produce a duplicate and re-band them at will.
He moved swiftly between the three containers, photographing the laminated signs with addresses of destination and noting that while one was located in Nigeria, the remaining two were in Chad and Niger, both of them bordering, landlocked nations. Upon taking the pictures, he noted a secondary issue with the containers’ contents, partially unloaded: large cylinders labeled as canned corn, though the first one he picked up was empty, as were the others he tested.
His explanation for the disparity came in the form of the fourth container positioned parallel to the first. This one was partially loaded with what looked to be 30-gallon blue plastic drums, the labels identifying their contents as 1-Propanol. When Cancer attempted to lift one, expecting to find it empty, he instead found the weight too unmanageable for a single person.
A cursory examination revealed that the contents of the propanol barrels were in the process of being transferred to the corn cans for export; and, upon closer look, Cancer found exactly what those contents were.
He reached into an open propanol barrel, lifting a kilo-shaped brick from the many shrink-wrapped bricks below it. The brick was labeled with a distinctive sticker that struck Cancer as somewhere between curious and ridiculous, but he pushed aside the thought as he drew his fighting knife once more.
Driving the tip of the blade through the shrink wrap, he knew what he would find before seeing it.
The white powder was glistening, pearlescent. Cancer knew without a doubt that he was looking at either pure, uncut cocaine, or a product so close to pure that it had barely been touched after being processed from coca leaves. Nonetheless, he tapped some of the powder into a zip lock bag, sealed it, and continued photographing the contents until he’d documented them in full.
Then he transmitted, “Y210 is cocaine, 800 kilos or so, maybe more. Looks pure or nearly pure. It’s arriving in 30-gallon barrels labeled as 1-Propanol, whatever that is, and being transferred to empty corn cans from another shipment destined for multiple places in Africa.”