The Athena Project

CHAPTER 54

LJUBLJANA

SLOVENIA

WEDNESDAY

In the eastern warehouse district of Ljubljana known as Smartinska, Gretchen Casey, Alex Cooper, Julie Ericsson, and Megan Rhodes sat in a nondescript vehicle watching a steel garage door a half block away.

“Nino Bianchi knows we’re coming back and taking him for another swim if this is BS, right?” asked Cooper.

Casey smiled. “If he’s lying, I’ll drown him myself.”

“You girls are so dang violent,” stated Rhodes from the backseat. “It’s no wonder neither of you can ever hang on to a man.”

“Please,” replied Casey. “I have no problem hanging on to men.”

“Handcuffs don’t count, Gretch,” offered Ericsson.

Cooper pointed at Casey. “I knew it. It’s always the quiet ones. The freak runs deep in them.”

“You’re looking at the wrong sister, sister,” stated Casey, pointing over her shoulder at Megan and Julie. “You want to talk freak, talk to them. They run the Freaky Town Rotary Club.”

“It’s always the dog without the bone who barks,” teased Rhodes.

A chorus of oohs rose inside the car over that response.

“Thank you,” said Rhodes. “I’m here all week. Try the veal.”

“By the way,” replied Ericsson. “If I had known we were going to be spending so much time in Eastern Europe, I would have stopped shaving my legs and threaded my eyebrows together.”

“Some women will do anything to get laid,” said Cooper.

The car erupted again.

“You’re really coming into your own on this trip, sweet stuff,” said Rhodes.

“Jules, I was only kidding,” offered Cooper, afraid that maybe she had hurt her teammate’s feelings.

Ericsson laughed. “It’s cool, Coop. We all give as good as we get.”

“Speaking of which,” said Casey. “Let’s all get ready. The door’s going up.”

Down the block, the faded metal garage door rolled up and the first truck pulled out of the warehouse.

“There’s number one,” said Cooper.

They watched as the semi trailer exited the warehouse and headed west.

“And here comes number two,” replied Ericsson, as the second truck exited and headed in the opposite direction.

Suddenly, the unexpected happened. “Wait a second,” said Casey. “Number three?”

Rhodes looked behind it and said, “And four?”

“I thought Bianchi said this guy Abressian only used two trucks before; the real deal and a decoy.”

“I guess we’re seeing how serious they are,” stated Casey.

Cooper looked at her and then down at her cell phone. “Why is that not ringing?”

“It’ll ring.”

“Gretch, there’s four trucks. There’s no way we can follow them all,” said Rhodes.

“Everybody calm down,” said Casey. “It’s going to be okay. Just be calm.”

Seconds later, Casey’s cell phone rang. “Yes?” she said. “Thank you.”

Hanging up, she put the car in gear and said, “Truck number three,” and pulled out into the street after it.

“I still think we ought to drown the guy just on principle,” said Rhodes, referring to Bianchi.

“So far, so good,” cautioned Gretchen. “He said his warehouse manager would alert us to which truck and that’s exactly what he did. I think Bianchi is a scumbag and I’m going to be first in line to sign up for his firing squad, but the verdict is out of my hands.”

“I’m getting real tired of all your law and order lip, missy,” Rhodes joked from the backseat.

“Your mom and I,” said Ericsson as she indicated she was speaking about Rhodes, “are very disappointed in you. Aren’t we, dear?”

Megan nodded. “Absolutely. I didn’t raise any daughter of mine to be such a softie. Do you want us to take your Glock away? Is that what you want? Because we’ll do it.”

“What I want,” said Casey, calling for some decorum, “is for everyone to pay attention. We’re on the clock.”

The team didn’t need to be told twice. They all focused on the truck that was several car lengths in front of them.

Casey decided to fall back a little farther. The semi was a big, easy target that wouldn’t be hard to follow.

It led them through stop-and-go traffic across the Slovenian capital. Though Casey had requested professionalism when the pursuit had first started, Ericsson and Rhodes couldn’t help themselves, and eventually a stream of jokes poured from the backseat. It broke the tedium and a couple were actually funny, so Casey allowed them.

When the semi slowed down and pulled into another warehouse, she didn’t need to ask her team to look sharp. They were already with her.

Casey kept driving, turned around two blocks down, and then came back and found a parking spot where they could monitor the building without being observed.

This was now the part that was completely out of their hands. Whereas they had Bianchi’s warehouse manager inside from the first location, here they had nobody. This location had been of Abressian’s choosing. The Athena Team could only imagine that the three other trucks were pulling into similar warehouses at different points around the city.

“Did anyone get a look at our driver or the man riding shotgun?” asked Rhodes.

“I saw a little bit of a face in the passenger mirror,” replied Cooper, “but not enough to make a positive ID.”

“Then we’d better hope we don’t screw this up,” said Ericsson.

The women waited in silence, their eyes glued to another rolling garage door.

After about four minutes, Rhodes said, “So, Gretch. What was it like seeing Scot Harvath again?”

“Yeah,” added Ericsson. “Has he dumped Riley yet?”

Casey didn’t bother turning around to look at either of them. She just took two fingers, pointed at her eyes, and then turned the fingers and pointed out the windshield toward the warehouse. They got the message and the car fell silent once again.

Ten minutes later, the garage door rolled up.

“Whoa,” said Cooper as four trucks poured out and went in different directions. “This guy Abressian is taking no chances at all, is he?”

“No, he’s not,” replied Casey as they watched the trucks exit and the garage door roll down.

Minutes passed and Casey could sense anxiety out of the backseat. Before the peanut gallery could say anything, she said, “Wait for it.”

It was the longest twenty minutes of their lives, but sure enough the garage door rolled back up and out drove a silver G Class Mercedes SUV. Bianchi had been telling them the truth. He’d also been right that they would very likely run the same scam they had the first time they’d accepted a shipment from his Ljubljana warehouse.

“Those sneaky bastards,” said Rhodes.

“What a shell game,” admitted Cooper, a little awe in her voice. “Load the bombs in the SUV and load the SUV in the back of one of the semis and then keep people guessing.”

Casey waited until the Mercedes had passed them and put their car in gear. “Now let’s see where they take us.”