A quarter of a ton of heroin—226 kilograms—represented a significant amount of money. The wholesale price of a single kilogram was $60,000. Cutting the heroin with vitamin B and other substances provided enough powder to fill twenty-five thousand single-dose envelopes that would be sold at $5 to street-level dealers, who in turn would sell them for between $10 and $15 to their customers. The DEA had done the math: each kilo brought in a $70,000 profit to the mill operator.
That’s over $15 million in heroin. Hunt wasn’t naive. To him and his men, $15 million was a fortune. But to the drug traffickers it was nothing, and it tortured Hunt not being able to hurt the damn cartels. He had seen firsthand the devastation and misery hard drugs left in their wake when his younger brother, Jake, had overdosed on the stuff fifteen years ago. Hunt might not be able to harm the cartels, but if his actions saved even just one life and spared a family the grief associated with the loss of one of their own, it was all worth it.
“Sierra One from Alpha One,” Hunt said as the driver turned onto Lawrence Avenue.
“Go for Sierra One.”
“We’re one minute out.”
“Copy that, Alpha One. You’re one minute out. Standing by to cut power.”
With the exception of the two drive-in bays, a standard-size windowless door was the only entrance. Hunt had no doubt the traffickers had reinforced the strike plate and the doorframe with a high-end dead bolt, so he had come prepared. A ram wouldn’t do here, nor would a thermal option. He didn’t want his two breachers to spend too much time exposed. Hunt was a fan of explosive breaching, and that was the method they’d be using today. One team would go through the door while his team would enter through one of the bays. With the power out, the simultaneous breaches would allow his team to deliver overwhelming force before any of the defenders could understand they’d been hit.
That was the plan, anyway. But how often did anything go according to plan?
CHAPTER TWO
Chicago, Illinois
Luke Moore of HJ-TV Chicago News wasn’t at his first rodeo. He disliked the DEA agents, and he knew they despised him back. They were a bunch of bullies with guns, just like the local PD. Dangerous bullies with guns. And Luke would make sure they didn’t break the law. If the big guy in the passenger seat thought Luke would stay inside the vehicle, he didn’t know Luke’s reputation very well. They might have guns, but Luke had his camera. He had started tweeting about the raid the moment they left the regional DEA office. The hundreds of likes and retweets coming in from his half a million followers melted his last barrier of intellectual resistance against sharing everything live on social media. Once at the warehouse and outside the SUV, he’d be in the perfect position to capture anything these bullies did. His bosses might slap him on the wrist since sharing live content of this operation was strictly forbidden, but he would be quickly forgiven if the ratings were there. And Luke knew they would be. They always were when he was bashing the police in the pursuit of justice.
Ramón Figueroa was eating a bag of barbecue potato chips when his phone rang. He licked his fingers clean before answering.
“Yes?”
“The DEA is on its way.”
Figueroa sat straighter in his chair. “What? Are you sure?”
“You know that reporter, Luke Moore—”
“I know who he is!” Figueroa snapped back. Moore was a local reporter well known for his bias against the police.
“Moore is live tweeting about a raid he’s part of. He mentioned a link to the Black Tosca’s cartel.”
Fuck.
“How long do we have?”
“About fifteen minutes. Tops.”
Maldita. Figueroa banged his desk with the palm of his hand. He’d have to leave a lot of product behind. But that was the cost of doing business. It would set them back a month, no more.
“We’ll move to site two. I’ll call you when we get there.” He hung up, removed the battery from the burner phone, and grabbed his suppressed AR-15.
Figueroa hurried down the stairs and jogged to the lab, where Edmundo and Juan—his two team leaders—were supervising the addition of cutting agents to the heroin.
Both men turned when they saw their boss barge in without a mask.
“DEA will be here in less than fifteen minutes,” Figueroa whispered. “Get the rest of the guys, and pack everything you can in the trucks. I want to be out of here in five. Leave everything else behind.”
Edmundo pointed at the dozen workers cutting the heroin. All of them were women between the ages of fifteen and twenty who had, in one way or another, fallen into the hands of the cartel. They were slaves, victims of human trafficking. As an added humiliation, they were forced to work naked.
“Them too?”
Figueroa shook his head. “No. We’ll load the trucks ourselves.”
“As you wish, boss.” Juan raised his rifle.
Figueroa pushed the barrel back down. “Their blood will contaminate the heroin. Usher them into the corner. Do it there,” he said, pointing to a space at the opposite end of the lab.
Edmundo approached the workers and barked orders in Spanish. The women looked nervously at Figueroa, knowing something awful was about to happen. But what could they do? They were naked and unarmed, but it was human nature to hold on to hope.
Maybe, just maybe, if they did what they were told, everything would be all right.
CHAPTER THREE