Free Blond Cargo by John Lansing Page A

Bridge as a thick cloud bank swallowed the stream of incoming traffic.
    Jack had checked out of his hotel and caught the first flight back to L.A. No reason to stay. He dug under the seat in front of him, retrieved his small carry-on, and pulled out his dopp kit. His back was spasming from the emotion of the day. The Excedrin wasn’t cutting the pain by half. He pulled out his prescription for Vicodin.
    Jack shook the plastic bottle and let out a distressed breath. He knew before he pried off the cap—his emotions twisting in the wind—that the pills were light. His son was the only one who had been in his room, and at least four Vicodin tabs were missing.
    Jack Bertolino had spent his career working narcotics, and his son, the love of his life, his reason for being, had just stolen prescription drugs from him.
    Jack never heard the flight attendant offer him a glass of water.

13
    Hassan, a lean, swarthy man with military-cut copper-red hair, a close-trimmed full red beard, and chiseled features, stepped off the multicolored cigarette boat and expertly tied it to the wooden dock.
    He wore green cargo pants, black leather boots, and an army-green T-shirt that accentuated his ropy muscles. A lit Camel hung lazily from his lips. He took a last deep drag and flicked the cigarette into the ocean. Then he grabbed two canvas rucksacks filled with provisions out of the boat and started the steep climb up the weather-beaten wooden stairs built into the side of the cliff.
    Twenty-five feet up, he stepped easily off the first landing onto a small, flat grassy outcropping and set down his parcels. The stairs continued up the rock face to the top of the cliff and the wall that surrounded Malic al-Yasiri’s compound. He eyed the metal door that was set at an angle into the rock and painted a muted camo-brown so that it blended with the cliff face and all but disappeared when viewed from the water. He rifled through his pockets, looking for the key. He caught sight of the sun threatening the horizon and decided to get a move on before he lost all light.
    Angelica stiffened and then moved quickly from the bed to the small kitchen table as she heard her jailer’s turn of the key. The rusted hinges made a grating sound as the heavy door was opened and then slammed shut. She steeled herself seconds before he appeared on the other side of the Plexiglas wall. It was the same routine every day. His was the only face she saw.
    “Did you bring me the cranberry juice I asked for? A bottle of wine?” Angelica asked, her voice dripping with attitude.
    Hassan would have been happy to kill her. It wouldn’t have been the first time. But it wasn’t his call.
    The Americans had taught him how to follow orders when they were rebuilding Baghdad after bombing sections of his neighborhood back to the Stone Age. Malic had given him a way out of Iraq before the Shia majority took power, and paid him handsomely for his loyalty.
    His brother was now driving a cab in Detroit, attending to gang business, and two of his cousins had been smuggled directly to Los Angeles. They were all Sunnis, all members of the same tribe, all fiercely loyal to Malic, to whom they owed their lives and their livelihoods. The Iraqi gang had been conceived in the slums of Baghdad and migrated to the city of Detroit.
    Malic had been raised in an upper-crust Iraqi family, but he was a thug. He negotiated with the gang’s leader when he first emigrated, and a deal was struck to form a splinter group in Southern California. Malic’s group would serve as the conduit for the drugs that fueled the gang’s business, smuggled from south of the border by operatives of the Sinaloa cartel.
    Ultimately, it wasn’t in Malic’s DNA to be anyone’s second. He killed the Detroit boss and successfully merged the two cities together into one Iraqi gang, operating for all intents and purposes under the radar.
    Until now, Hassan thought, worried. Dumping those women’s bodies was risky