A cab passed with a sign that said OUT OF SERVICE. The driver stopped in front of the BART station and two of the men from the restaurant used a gray blanket as a stretcher to carry a dazed man from the entrance to the backseat of the taxi. Two more men ushered another injured man with a towel wrapped around the lower part of his face and blood on his shirt into the passenger seat. Julian sped up to a trot to see if this one was the old man, but it wasn’t. The cab pulled away.
Julian kept walking. He had warned his superior officers. He had told them a couple of times that the old man wasn’t just an old man, like somebody’s uncle. He was old in the way a seven-foot rattlesnake was old.
Julian had listened to the agents when they told him he was going to be the one to meet the old man and take charge of the money. He had said “yes, sir.” He’d certainly had no interest in getting himself killed, and this was the kind of mission that might accomplish that. He had known instantly that the thing to worry most about was friendly fire. He had listened to the plans, but heard nothing to make him expect so many people with guns surrounding him in a crowded public street.
Julian’s strides took him to the spot where he had been told to go after the exchange. A fake UPS delivery truck was stopped around the corner with its engine running and lights flashing as though it were making a delivery. He stepped up into the open side door by the driver’s seat.
Inside the cargo bay there were three men sitting on a bench wearing UPS uniforms, but two of them held MP5 rifles with thirty-round magazines. The slings that held the short automatic rifles were brown webbing that matched the uniforms. Julian didn’t know any of the three.
“Where do we pick up the money?” one of them said.
“He transferred the money electronically,” said Julian. “He’s already gone.”
“Should we go too?”
“Affirmative,” Julian said. “It’s over.”
The man released the magazine on his MP5 and put the gun and ammunition into an open cardboard box that sat in front of his bench, closed it so it looked like something he was delivering, and hurried forward to the driver’s seat.
Another man held a radio. He said, “I’m getting the call now.”
In a moment the truck pulled away from the curb, went down the street to the next corner, and turned. The big rectangular vehicle made two more turns and headed south of Market. Through the windshield Julian could see warehouses, garages, and small manufacturing operations. Occasionally there were bars that Julian judged were probably even less inviting at night. Then the truck was on the freeway. Fifteen minutes later it pulled through an open gate into a fenced lot adjacent to the vast open space of the San Francisco airport.
The building inside the fence had once been a hangar. The door swung upward and the truck pulled in past a couple of large trucks that looked like appliance delivery trucks and stopped. Julian got out. Beside him were two taxicabs, and beyond them an ambulance, a repair truck for Pacific Gas and Electric, a US Postal Service truck, and four black cars that looked like unmarked police cars, with the distinctive side spotlights.
“Hey, it’s Carson.” Harper’s voice was flat with a hint of sarcasm. “Glad you survived your dramatic mission.”
Julian turned to see that Harper and Waters were sitting at a table at the far side of the hangar. They got up and walked toward him.
“Thanks,” Julian said. “There didn’t seem to be anything dramatic about it that I could see. There seemed to be quite a few people running around tripping over each other, though. Did something happen after the old man left me?”
Harper and Waters glanced at each other, and Waters gave his familiar cringing expression. Harper said, “Maybe that’s the problem right there. He wasn’t supposed to leave.”
Carson said, “Nobody told me that.”
“Then maybe you weren’t supposed to leave either,” said Waters.
Harper’s cell phone rang and he clapped it to his ear. “Harper.” He listened. His eyes widened and then his jaw muscles began to work. He slowly turned his head to look at Julian Carson, but when he saw that Carson was looking at him he looked down at the floor. “Carson just arrived,” he said. “Yes, sir, we’ll do that.” He listened for a second and then put away his phone.
He muttered something to Waters, and Waters nodded and walked away. Harper picked up the newspapers on the table and began putting them in order and folding them neatly. It looked as though Waters was walking to the back of the hangar.
Harper looked up, put the papers in a pile, and said, “They want to debrief you before we wrap it up here.”
“All right,” said Julian. “I’m not doing anything else. It’s hard to get a date on short notice.”
“Well that’s fortunate,” said Harper. “They want us to wait in the office until they get here.”
Julian caught a movement in the periphery of his vision. Waters had opened the passenger door of one of the police cars. He took something off the seat and stood behind the car door holding whatever it was, but Julian couldn’t see it. Julian said, “What have you got in your hand?”