The Book of Lies

11

It was nearly four in the morning as Lloyd Harper flashed his ID and pulled the tractor truck with the long empty trailer through the main gate at the Port of Miami. Sure, he was tired—his side ached as the anesthetic wore off—but he knew what was at stake. When he got the e-mail notification that the hold was off, well, some rewards were better than cash.

He’d been at this long enough to know that juicy worms usually had a hidden hook. And he’d lived in Miami long enough to know that if he got caught, the payback would be unforgiving. But what the doctor said tonight: the pains he’d been having in his shoulders and chest, plus the way his hands started shaking over the past few years . . . He’d lost his wife, lost his family, in prison they took his dignity—life had already taken so much from him. Was it really so bad to try to get something back?

With a tap of the gas and a sharp right turn, Lloyd headed for the open metal fence of the shipping yard, where dozens of forty-foot metal containers were piled up on top of one another—rusted rectangular monoliths, each one as long as a train car.

But as Lloyd tugged the wide steering wheel, a lightning bolt of pain knifed his side. He told himself it was the bullet wound, but he knew the truth: just seeing Cal tonight—seeing the white hair and the heartbroken eyes—just like the ones that burned through him nineteen years ago. Tonight’s bullet wound was nothing. The sharpest pains in life come from our own swords. Lloyd had spent the past two decades building his shield, but this was one blade he couldn’t stop.

“I’m here for GATH 601174-7,” Lloyd called out his window as he read the container number from the yellow sheet.

Across the open lot, an older black man was sitting on a pyramid of three boxes as he read yesterday’s newspaper. He didn’t bother looking up.

“Excuse me . . . sir . . .” Lloyd began.

“I ain’t deaf. My shift don’t start till four.”

Lloyd glanced at the digital clock on his dash: 3:58. Typical union.

“Okay, whatcha need?” the black man called out two minutes later, approaching Lloyd’s truck and reaching up for the paperwork. “Lemme guess: Startin’ this early—y’r trynna make Virginia by nightfall.”

“Something like that,” Lloyd replied.

From there, it didn’t take long for the man to find the rust-colored forty-foot container with 601174-7 painted on the outside or to climb on his forklift and load it onto the back of Lloyd’s tractor trailer. To be safe, Lloyd came out to check the numbers for himself. And the seal they put on the back to make sure the container hadn’t been opened during transit.

As he was about to climb back in his cab, he took a quick glance around the metal towers of the container yard. No one in sight. Back in the driver’s seat, he checked again, peering in his rearview as he shifted the truck through the first few gears and headed for the exit. And he checked again as he drove toward the final security checkpoint—a three-story-tall radiation portal monitor that looked like an enormous upside-down letter U. The detector was new, designed to catch smuggled nuclear devices. Everyone who left the port had to drive through it. For a moment, Lloyd edged his foot toward the brakes.

He held his breath as he approached the detector. The truck bounced slightly. Slowly rolling forward, he kept his eye on the red and green bulbs that were embedded in the roof of the detector. Once again, a bolt of pain burned at his side. But when the green light blinked, he smiled, slammed the gas, and never looked back.

And that’s why, as the eighteen-wheeler climbed and lumbered over the bridge toward Miami . . . and as he stared into the darkness, searching for the coming sunrise . . . Lloyd Harper didn’t notice the white, unmarked Crown Vic that was trailing a few hundred feet behind him.

“Think he knows what he’s hauling in back?” Timothy asked.

“I don’t really care,” Cal replied from the passenger seat, never taking his eyes off his father’s truck. “But we’re about to find out.”