“Funny,” I said, “but no. I was thinking something along the lines of a chemical agent.”
“Mustard gas?”
“Preferably something that won’t kill everybody.”
“You’re never any fun,” she said.
“Do you know where we might find ourselves a large quantity of fentanyl?”
“Do you need to stop smoking?”
Fentanyl is what comes on the backside of smoking-cessation patches, but when it’s turned into a gas, it’s also a very effective chemical for subduing a human being. Problems occur when people don’t know just how much gas one might need to use to effectively render a human unconscious (or, in what is often a better outcome, exceptionally relaxed) versus the amount that will kill them, which is what happened in Chechnya, except that the Russians didn’t just use fentanyl when they tried to smoke out the terrorists that had overtaken a school; they used a chemical derivative that renders the nervous system obsolete, particularly, as it happened, in the small children who’d been taken hostage.
But dissolve a small amount of fentanyl and the chemical portosyt together, which Lowe’s and The Home Depot keep in the garden section in huge cakes to help with the growth of new strains of certain field grasses, and you end up creating a gas that will cause disorientation and drowsiness, followed, usually, by sleep, but that won’t turn off your central nervous system. It’s the perfect chemical agent to use when putting down a rebellion, provided the rebels don’t have gas masks. It’s also known to be a very popular party drug in parts of Belgium where, apparently, falling asleep is the height of fun.
“I need to stop the Latin Emperors,” I said. “But what I’d really like to do is get them to steal the fentanyl for us.”
“Oh, Michael,” Fiona said, “I love it when you double-cross people.”
“I’m looking for a warehouse,” I said. “Something with cameras. Know of any?”
“I just sold some guns to some very nice Australian separatists who were planning several very interesting, nonlethal attacks on their government,” she said. “Let me ask them if they have any leads and I’ll call you right back.”
“Australian separatists?”
“Everyone hates their government, Michael,” she said, “not just burned spies.”
Usually, planning a heist requires a certain amount of qualitative thinking mixed with just a hint of immorality and a dash of spite. If you’re robbing something so large that you actually need to plan a heist versus just walking into a bank with an Uzi, the spite issue is paramount. Most criminals work quickly because they work from need. Out of drug money? Rob a liquor store. Or they work from specific, unreasonable obligations they’ve made for themselves. Like a billion-dollar pyramid scheme that needs constant attention. But in order to orchestrate a big score, to embark on the sheer amount of planning that goes into a high-level action, a driving personal desire helps keep you excited through the down times.
Sometimes, however, planning a heist comes down to a single word that has bedeviled bad guys since the beginning of time: opportunity. See a truck from Best Buy rolling through your neighborhood? Need a television? Need five televisions? Have a gun and some friends with dollies? You have an opportunity.
I couldn’t help but think, as Fiona, Barry and I sat parked across the street from Harding Pharmaceutical Labs of America, that the opportunity to rob Harding glimmered like a diamond. The building was a one-story warehouse structure with a loading dock on the east end and was surrounded by a chain-link fence, atop which stood video cameras. A nice precaution.
There was also a sign that promised an armed response by a private security company, which was also a nice precaution.
When you’re staking out a place to rob, it’s important to know just what an armed-response sign means. And that means spending some time examining the cars in the parking lot of the place you’re considering robbing. If you don’t see any security-company cars in the lot, that usually means security isn’t on-site, or if they are, they aren’t armed. For insurance purposes, most security companies require their armed employees to check in at their offices first, receive their guns and then leave again in a company-owned fleet car.
If the parking lot has an empty space reserved for the security company, that means the security company tends to come by at prescribed intervals, or it means that there’s a security guard on duty who also drives around the property, looking for criminals, when he’s not sitting behind a desk, reading Harlequin romances. This person might be armed, but it’s unlikely, and, nevertheless, if he’s not there, it’s irrelevant.
The mere sign itself indicates a response, not a presence. If you’re savvy, this makes a difference. If you’re a crackhead looking to steal a home theater system, it probably doesn’t.
Harding had neither a space nor a car in the lot. Employees and visitors each drove into the facility through a big, open driveway that was on either side of the chain-link fence. They’d taken precautions here, but I had a pretty good feeling that’s all it was. The building was certainly alarmed, but beyond that, an armed response was likely ten to fifteen minutes away, which was fine, as Harding Pharmaceutical wasn’t exactly making nerve gas in their offices.
A simple look at their Web site told me that what the mythical guards were guarding was, in most hands, absolutely nothing of value. They warehoused various “stop smoking” products from a variety of corporate partners who used their fentanyl, but since the chemical wasn’t being made in the building-they handled that in lovely Newark, New Jersey-it was merely a shipping port for a variety of Southern locations. The Web site also touted their frozen-storage facilities for products like chlorine dioxide hydrate, a product so volatile and toxic when defrosted that you’d need to be a chemical engineer to make it worthwhile to possess, unless, of course, you intended to bleach wood or process flour.
“How did your Australians find this?” I asked Fiona.
“They needed chlorine dioxide hydrate,” she said.
“For what?”
“I don’t ask questions,” she said.
Sometimes, being a burned spy is actually a blessing.
“They break in?”
“No,” she said, “they bought their supplies using a purchase order. They are very organized.”
“Barry,” I said, “what’s the market value of fentanyl?”
“Pure? I could name my price. But if it’s just on patches, it’s worthless. I’d tell my clients just to go to Target and buy what they want.”
“What about, say, half a truck full?” I said.
Barry thought about that for a moment. “Would the truck be included?”
“If need be,” I said.
“There could be a profit,” he said.
“What if we just needed the truck to be ditched somewhere after they took the product?”
“The truck could be stripped in this scenario?”
“Of course,” I said.
“And who gets the money?”
“I thought maybe a donation could be made to Honrado,” I said, “and then the rest could go to the charity of your choice.”
“The International Barry Appreciation Society is holding a charity dance next month,” he said.
“Make some calls,” I said. “See if you can get someone ready on a moment’s notice.”
“I’ll be in my office,” he said, and then Fiona let him out of the backseat so he could walk down the street and conduct his business. Better I didn’t hear him making his connections.
“How many guys you think we’d need to hit this place, get a truck and not get anyone killed?” I asked.
Fi pushed hair from her eyes and exhaled hard. “Michael,” she said, “you bring the Latin Emperors here, and someone is going to get hurt. What time were you thinking of doing this?”
“Night,” I said.
“So some custodian can get stomped to death?”
“Broad daylight would be a little brazen even for the Latin Emperors. They aren’t exactly a tactical force. I need them to leave as much evidence as possible,” I said, “but that doesn’t include slugs in heads. You have a
