Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,51
hours, Lucas would pick it up from one to four a.m., and Bob would take it from four until seven.
“We’ve still got twenty-five minutes on the movie,” Bob said, when Weaver rang off. They watched the movie to the end and a few minutes of a sports talk show, and then Bob went back to his room to catch some sleep. Lucas was a night owl and spent an hour reading a Lee Child thriller.
Weaver called Lucas at 11:30 and said, “We’re gonna grab the truck the first time it stops. Tennan identified both the driver and the passenger. The driver is on probation in Jersey and didn’t bother to get permission to travel, so we can take both him and his passenger and search the truck. The passenger is a leg-breaker from Staten Island. Depending on what we take out of the truck, we’ll see if it’s enough to get a warrant for the warehouse. We’ve got an overnight judge ready to sign it, depending.”
“Am I still staying up?”
“Yeah. We need to watch. I’ll call if we get any changes, but if you could still go on at one o’clock, that’d be great.”
“Go to bed now, you need the sleep,” Lucas said. “I’m up anyway.”
“Thanks, man,” Weaver said. “Oh. I called the rest of the task force down from Broward, we’re staking out Romano’s house and his son-in-law’s place, just in case.”
* * *
At midnight, Weaver called back, sounding stunned. “I no more got to sleep than I got woke back up. The van stopped at a Pizza Hut at a service plaza on the Florida Turnpike and we grabbed the guys and the van. The black box was hidden in a slot under the floor of the van. We opened the box and it’s full of handguns, a hundred and twenty of them.”
“Whoa. No problems?”
“We’re not sure. One guy was driving and I guess the other one was sleeping in the back. When we boxed them in, the driver was yelling something to the guy in the back and he wouldn’t unlock the van until our guys threatened to break the windows and drag him out. That took two or three minutes—and we couldn’t see what the guy in back was doing. He could have made a call.”
“Damnit. Now what?”
“We’re getting a warrant now and we’ll hit the warehouse tomorrow morning as soon as it gets light,” Weaver said.
“Stay on schedule for now?”
“Yeah, I really need to get some sleep. I’m so goddamned tired, I’m stumbling around. I need to be sane when we hit the place.”
* * *
Weaver didn’t get any sleep. He called back a minute later and said, “Romano’s moving. So’s Bianchi, the son-in-law. Something happened. Both houses went dark around 11:30, and then ten minutes ago, the lights came on in what we think was Romano’s bedroom and then in Bianchi’s. We think Romano called him. Now both of them are in their cars, headed our way. They’ll be twenty minutes or so, if they’re coming to us.”
“The guy in the van made a call,” Lucas said.
“That’s what we think. We’ve got the warrant and if they walk into that store, we’ll hit them one minute later. Stay out of sight until then.”
“Okay. We’ll see you in the lobby. Ten minutes.”
* * *
Lucas rousted Bob and washed his face and put on jeans, a canvas shirt, and cross-training shoes, then took another few seconds to brush his teeth. Bob was dressed and he’d thrown his gear bag on the bed. He pulled out a bulletproof vest and tossed it to Lucas, and put on his own, then pulled out his M4.
Lucas asked, “Think we’ll need that?”
“Better to have it and not need it . . .”
“Right.” Lucas checked his Walther, reseated it in his cross-draw holster on his left hip. He checked his watch: time to move.
“Rock ’n’ roll,” he said.
“You sleepy?” Bob asked.
“Tired, but not sleepy,” Lucas said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Let’s watch out for these FBI turkeys, the ones tracking Romano and Bianchi. They’ll have guns and they’ll be running toward us. And it’s dark outside.”
Lucas took a last look out the window: “Not too dark. Lots of lights around.”
Bob said, “Get the handset. Let’s go.”
* * *
Weaver was waiting in the lobby, cocked his head at Bob’s M4 but didn’t say anything. A young woman who was standing behind the check-in desk said to Weaver, “I’m going to hide in the office now.”