Nancy Drew wondered for the thousandth time how she could have ever thought of working for an intelligence agency as glamorous. There was nothing glamorous in lying on your stomach feeling hundreds of twigs poking your body. There was nothing glamorous either in being still for hours in a mosquito infested swamp. At least it's summer and the ground under me is dry, she thought disgustedly.
She had been lying there for nearly two hours now. After she had gone back to the conservatory, Giovanni had arrived a few minutes later. He was frowning and looked preoccupied, but it had vanished when he had seen her. She was feeling unequal to coping with his attentions, and had pretended to feel extremely nauseous, so Giovanni had had Carlos escort her to a cab with a look of disgust. Before she had left Giovanni however, thinking her too drunk to understand, had muttered to Carlos, "We leave in a few hours. Finish your work quickly."
Carlos had walked her to her car, almost carrying her at times, and he had not kept his hands to himself. Nancy remembered the way his breath had smelt and the way he had squeezed her breasts and bottom, with a shudder. She found Giovanni repulsive, but he was positively attractive compared to Carlos. As Nancy had looked at his cruel, beady black eyes and thick slobbery lips when he helped her into the car, she'd felt her skin crawl.
Daniel had stayed behind to maintain surveillance of the house. When the rest of them had returned from the ball, they had gathered in the living room of Nancy's suite and started looking through the data from Giovanni's computer. Most of them seemed to be records of finances of Giovanni's various operations, and they couldn't find anything out of place, even with Cody's genius computer brain working feverishly alongside them. At close to midnight however, Cody had found a discrepancy, cleverly disguised though it was. He had been looking through the shipping records when he had noticed regularly repeating occurrences of shipments of products like spices, sugar and machinery that seemed to have nothing to do with regular exports from his warehouses in his homeland, Mexico.
"Is he into black market as well?" Dominic had asked dispiritedly. "Where is he shipping it off to?"
"Well, that's the funny part. He's just sending it just across the border, over here," Cody replied, confused. Then his eyes widened and he looked at Nancy. "To remote airfields not on the usual commercial routes."
With a surge of excitement, she had looked over Cody's shoulder at the most recent set of entries, and then looked again, unbelieving. She scrambled to her bedroom and returned with a scrap of paper.
"What is it, Nan?" Adam asked, curious about her excitement.
Nancy didn't reply, merely smoothing the paper and reading the numbers off the paper and the entries on the computer. There was no doubting it; they matched.
101557 …. 102557…..
As Cody and Dominic started working anew, with this new information, Nancy and Adam tried to decipher the rest of the scrap of paper.
"The last number looks like a time, so maybe the others are similarly related as well. It could be a date." Nancy suggested.
"Brilliant, Drew!" Adam exclaimed. "That's exactly what it is. A date and time…and the word could be a location!" With that he turned to his computer again.
Dominic spoke up. "And check this out. The discrepancies occur only for perishable commodities like spices, or sometimes sugar and salt, or for non-perishable items like machinery."
They all looked at each other and came to the same conclusions. Giovanni was using food items to smuggle drugs and the machinery to smuggle weapons. It was a clever plan, with the drugs passing through customs and measures like sniffer dogs unnoticed because of the pungent masking smell of the spices; the guns passing through metal detectors and other checks the same way.
"Well," Cody spoke up, "So the initial set of numbers in the note are serial numbers of the cargo containing the contraband, the rest of the information could possibly be date, time and location from where the cargo is being shipped. By the date and time, I'm guessing the next shipment is about to go through in the next four hours. So we know when. About where…?" His voice trailed off.
"I think I may have found it!" Adam said triumphantly, looking up from his computer. "There is an airfield called Armado about 30 miles south of the city!"
"I think Giovanni is planning on leaving tonight too, maybe with the contraband." Nancy said suddenly, remembering Giovanni's words. She told the rest of them about what she had heard.
Everything after they had called in their information had been a blur of activity. It was no longer a simple reconnaissance mission and things fell into place rather quickly. While their evidence was strong, with Giovanni's lawyers, he still had the chance of going scot free. Catching him red-handed, however, made it a different issue altogether. A team had been put together and dispatched to the airfield. Daniel had reported that two cars had swept out the gates of Giovanni's home, with Giovanni in one of them.
And so, here she was, two hours later trying to divide her attention between her stiff shoulders and cramped legs when she heard footsteps nearby. She looked up as Adam materialized next to her, smiling in sympathy as she sat up wincing.
"You look like you could use some gun-toting action, about now," he said with a chuckle.
Nancy shook her head ruefully. "Nearly ten years of stakeouts and I still don't seem to have mastered waiting them out patiently."
Adam looked momentarily confused. "Ten years? Oh, that's right; you were a hotshot detective even before you joined the CIA. With the number of cases you have solved, it seems a most unfair advantage over the rest of us," he teased.
"I've always had loads of help. I couldn't have solved most of them without my best friends George and Bess, or…" she trailed off, frowning suddenly.
"What's wrong?" Adam asked.
"Nothing…just something I remembered seeing during Giovanni's ball. Or something I thought I saw." Nancy said.
Adam looked curious. "What did you see?"
"On some of those cases when I was a teenager, I used to work with this pair of brothers, the Hardys."
"Hardy? As in, the private investigator, Fenton Hardy's sons?" Adam asked, with eyebrows raised.
"You know of them?" Nancy asked, astonished. "Oh wait, you are from New York…and they are pretty famous. And very good at what they do!" she smiled fondly.
"Yeah, they are. But what does that have to do with what you saw during the ball?" Adam asked.
"That's the strange thing. I thought I saw Frank Hardy at the ball. But before I could get a closer look, he had vanished. And then Giovanni claimed my attention and it completely flew out of my mind until now" said Nancy musingly. Almost as if my thoughts earlier in the evening had conjured him up…Just then she heard a voice over her headset.
"Iris, this is Raven. Target is approaching the airfield. ETA in five minutes," came the voice of Daniel.
"Guess I'd better get back to my position." Adam said, leaving quietly through the trees. Nancy nodded to him.
"Roger that, Raven," she acknowledged. "Are all points in position?"
"Yes, and raring to go," replied Dominic, covering the hangar with another three agents. "So are we," replied Adam, who had returned to his position by the gate, with four agents.
In a few moments she saw two large cars sweep through the gate and come to a stop near the offices and hangar of the airfield. There was an airplane standing at silently at the head of the runway, which she had earlier observed being loaded with cargo. She could hear static crackling through the ear piece as her team stirred, getting geared up for action. She had to make sure that no one jumped the gun though.
"Iris to all points, make no movement until target is in sight. Macaw, can you make out whether the target is in one of the cars?" Adam replied, "Unable to identify…hold on a sec! He's just getting down from the second car. Iris, target identified. Time to move in?" Nancy replied, "Affirmative. All points move into position. Do not shoot to kill, but let no one escape."
"Let's go, guys" she said to the three agents with her. As she hoisted herself off the ground and took off towards the plane, chaos erupted in the airfield. She could hear shots being exchanged, though none of them made it her way. Her team was doing a good job of covering her back. Adam and Dominic had cut off the men in the cars from heading to the plane while Daniel was covering their escape back down the road. Her job was to prevent the plane from being used as an escape route and seize the cargo. She saw the members of Giovanni's guard scattering with some of her agents in pursuit. A small group huddled around Giovanni near one of the cars, shielding him from the bullets as they exchanged fire with her team.
Even as Nancy was running towards the plane, she was struck by something wrong with the picture. Suddenly she realized what it was. Giovanni had made no attempt to get near the plane, even before her team exploded out of the trees and converged on the cars. And that was because the cars were parked too far away from the plane. Almost as if he'd had no intention of getting to the plane, as if he'd wanted to draw her agents towards him away from the plane…
Too late, she realized her mistake. Even as she was yelling to her agents to cover the plane, that it was a decoy, a third car burst out of the trees this time heading directly towards the plane. She threw herself on the ground along with the agents with her as bullets sprayed from the swerving car. She saw the car screech to a stop in front of the plane and the quiet hum of the engines picked in volume. She looked around and saw that the three agents with her were unmoving while the rest of the agents were too far to stop the plane, though some were rushing back and firing at it now. A few of the men from the new car broke away and returned fire to cover the real Giovanni and two of his men, as they scrambled into the plane. She furiously castigated herself for making such a rookie mistake and leading her team into an ambush.
Knowing that there was no other choice even as her sensible side was screaming at her for rushing in without backup, she pushed herself to her feet and ran towards the plane, her position allowing her to slip past the guards from behind. The plane was already moving when she vaulted through the door, surprising the man who was in the process of closing it. Before he could recover, she slammed her gun into his temple and he collapsed with a groan. Giovanni and his other man, whom she recognized as Carlos, whirled around, Carlos beginning to line his gun against her, but she already had her gun trained on Giovanni.
"Drop it, Carlos," she warned. Carlos only glared at her, but didn't drop his gun. She turned to Giovanni. "Oh, he could shoot me, I guess, but before I die, I will mostly have enough time to get off a shot of my own. Are you willing to risk your life on that chance? I'm a very, very good shot," she taunted. She saw a flash of fear pass over Giovanni's face, but it was gone immediately, replaced by a chilling smile. She had only a second to process it, as her mind registered that someone else had vaulted through the open door of the plane. Before she could turn around, she saw the sleeve of a brown leather jacket and felt the heavy butt of a gun crash into her head and she crumpled on the floor, fading into blackness.
Author's note :
Well, a faster update this time, but I'm not too happy with this chapter. Or the next one either. But the rest of my story is coming together nicely, and unless I am attacked by a sudden bout of laziness I will update fairly regularly! And a big thank you to all my reviewers! You truly do inspire me to do better. :)