Diversion 1 - Diversion (4 page)

. Id have you screaming my name.
He attempted to send the message telepathically across the table; however, the guy didnt seem to be taking his calls.
He tried again.
I bet you got an ass like an onion. Make me wanna cry.
Shit. Hed been standing behind the man out in the hallway. Why the hell didnt he check when he had the chance? Was he losing his touch, or, Heaven forbid, becoming
involved
in his work? Lucky always checked out the scenery, even when whoever he ogled suffered a bad case of no-ass, like Walter.
It ate at him, sitting there, imagining Bos rear end hidden beneath those razor-creased dress pants. He caught sight of a slight arm bulge beneath a jacket sleeve when Newbie raised the water bottle to his lips. Must work out.
Do you work those glutes? Are you hiding a nice haunch of bubble-butt beneath your suit?
Knowing he was obsessing and finding a reason to stop were two different things, and Lucky worked himself up to an aching cock while fantasizing about parting two rounded mounds.
With your coloring, your hole is probably dark pink. Ill bet you shave your balls, dont you, Mr. Prim and Proper? Youre a hellcat in bed, too, aint cha?
He tore his gaze away for a second to find Walters disapproving frown. Lucky shrugged. His boss had had eight years to get used to his roving eye. If Walter didnt like it, he ought to hand over the pink slip hed been threatening to for years.
I wish!
Lucky recalled what hed have to trade for the pink slip. Maybe hed better tone down some. Ogle more discreetly, perhaps.
Only a few more months to go; dont screw it up now.
The coffee lady returned. Lucky damped down his libido and held up his empty cup, but she bypassed him to smack down a handful of papers next to her boss. Kramer stared at the pile, holding up the top page for closer inspection. “The first lot in question produced 47,000 units, 12,000 of which were on the truck, and 6,000 remaining in the warehouse. Weve been shipping cases out for six weeks.” He handed the printout the man next to him, who began hammering away on a calculator.
A hush fell over the room, funeral parlor quiet except for the
shick, shick, shick
of the adding machine tape. When the adding stopped, the man stared in shocked horror at the display.
“Yes, Robert?” the CEO asked.
“If we cant recover the product, well have to issue a full recall and destroy every affected lot.”
“How much are we talking?” A new voice chimed in, from a man too stupid to realize now was not a good time to draw the bosss attention.
Kramer leaned over the table, studying the readout. He extended a finger andtapped out a few more numbers. “Between the recall, stolen product value, and destruction fees, this little hijacking stands to cost the company roughly forty-seven million dollars.”
Pandemonium followed. “Were insured, right?” and “Cant they still findthe trailer?”
A massive round of blamestorming followed, the doomed picking a sacrificial lamb to keep the wolves from their doors. When Lucky grew bored, he climbed to his feet, ready to get the real show on the road.
“A-hem,” he said, attempting to penetrate the chaos. The bickering executives ignored him. “May I have your attention, please,” he tried a little louder. The hissing and spitting calmed. He grinned lazily and quipped, “I just loooove attention.”
Walter stifled a laugh. Poor idiot laughed at anything.
Lucky smirked, anticipating the impact of his next words. “I believe I can solve your little theft problem.”
“And who are you?” someone demanded.
“Thats easy,” Lucky replied. “Im the SOB who stole your truck.”

Lucky took his time getting to the front to the room. Cocky? Sure. Hed earned the right.
“The thing to remember about Lucklighter is: if you happen to find a knife sticking from your back with his name on it, its your fault for giving him a target,” hed overheard Walter telling a coworker once. “If I were half as good at my job as Lucky is, I imagine Id be rather insufferable, too.” Only, Walter
excelled
at his job. And was equally insufferable, in his own way.
Lucky kept his eyes glued to the newbie, wondering if Walter had yet imparted those words of wisdom on the newest member of “the team.” When this day ended, Bo would have no doubts of exactly whose shoes he could never fill.
“What the hell did you do with our cargo?” Orange-tie-guy shouted, bolting from his chair. Lucky grinned and winked at the man whod hired him for the Raleigh plant and whod quickly forgotten him at the companys peril. “Mr. Kramer, Im calling security!”
Kramer held up a staying hand. “Youll do no such thing. Sit down and listen.”
The protester resumed his seat, shooting daggers at Lucky with his eyes. Lucky reached back into his memory, trying to produce a name, not that it mattered. The mans head was due to roll the moment Lucky finished his spiel. One less BMW parked in the executive parking lot come Monday morning. And the bastard hadnt even taken the time to find out the particulars of a heist from his own division.
“Your cargo is safe and sound, right where it should be—in your Orlando warehouse.”
Am I bragging? After Friday night, I deserve to. I
am
the larcenous asshole!
“Mr. Kramer, I dont understand. If this man hijacked the shipment, why hasnt he been arrested?”
Kramers fleshy face purpled. “Hes not in custody because hes had my full cooperation in his investigation, and I was aware of the Bureaus intent to stage this little exercise, to test the soundness of our operating procedures.”
The CEO shouted to be heard over the outraged squawking of his minions. “Our security measures leave a lot to be desired. These men”—he nodded to Bo, Walter, and Lucky—“specialize in theft prevention in pharmaceutical supply chains, which includes locating and eliminating weaknesses. After what Ive seen this weekend, I thank my lucky stars theyre on my side.”
Im on nobodys side but my own
.
Kramer had the floor—for the moment—and made full use of it. “Now that weve established that this isnt an actual emergency—yet—Ill open the floor to Mr. Smith and his associates, to enlighten us on how this situation might have been prevented.”
Walter smiled and nodded toward Lucky. Lucky dialed his cockiness down a notch or two. Time to put away the irritable, irascible grump, leaving a hard-as-iron professional in his stead. Corporate types tended to look down on redneck hillbilly types, regardless of their balls hanging in the vise and his hand turning the lever. Which contributed to how those balls ended up there in the first place, in his opinion.
“You say you delivered the truck on time to the warehouse? The products are okay?” a timid voice broke the quiet to ask. Ahhh…here comes the first contestant.
Go ahead, step out of the safety of the herd. Ill pick you off first, save you the agony of anticipation.
Lucky turned a disdainful glare on the asker. “Which never should have happened. Why in Gods green earth didnt you inform the warehouse of the theft? You should have called immediately. What if Id delivered a truckload of counterfeits? Right now your wholesalers could be stocking their shelves with poison.”
Thunderclouds hovered behind Luckys eyes, wrath blurring his vision. “But Im getting ahead of myself.” He cast a haughty gaze around the room. “Id take notes if I were you.”
Taking Luckys advice, several suits scribbled on notepads. No telling what they wrote. Maybe “eat shit and die.” Hed found similar messages lying on conference tables in the past.
“Mistake number one!” Lucky raised his fingers, ticking off the point. “The driver arrived to pick up the load near the end of his allotted sixteen hours of driving time. Meaning hed have to stop on the road with a full load.
“Mistake number two.” Another finger joined the first. “According to company policy, trucks are to be tanked up and ready to go when picking up a load. Stopping is not permitted within fifty miles, in case the load is being followed. For good reason. Most cargo thefts occur within fifty miles of the pickup location.” Back in the day Lucky had contributed heavily to those statistics.
He wandered down to the place where hed been sitting, glancing into his empty cup. Picking it up anyway to appear nonchalant, he savored the last cold drop, complete with coffee grounds.
He roamed his eyes over the scared managers whod yet to clue into how bad their day might get. “I want you to understand something: Mr. Kramer didnt provide us with any inside information. I gained access to your facility by hiring on through a temp service, which goes to show your background checks basically suck.” Nobody in their right mind would hire Lucky to work around drugs after a complete background check. Thatd be like asking the fox to mind the henhouse. Of course, Walter probably doctored those reports.
Orange-tie-guy gasped. Maybe his awful neckwear decided to choke him. “I thought you looked familiar!”
Inclining his head with a bitter grin, Lucky confirmed the mans suspicions. “I should, since youre the one who hired me. Which only makes matters worse. Shouldnt you know who works for you? To top things off, the driver told me his route, which brings us up to mistake three. He
didnt
know me any better than you did, and its against protocol.”
“I say we hold the trucking line accountable!” the ex-boss ventured.
Uhhuh. Find someone to pin it on, why dont cha
. Lucky narrowed his eyes, willing the man to receive the mental message of “idiot” he kept trying to send. By law, Regency was responsible for ensuring any subcontractors they hired played by the rules, included transportation companies.
“Mistake four,” he continued. “A load of this type required a two-man team, to avoid leaving the truck alone at any time. Five occurred when the driver stopped at a truck stop within fifty miles of the manufacturing plant. Six? A GPS doesnt do much good if the load doesnt have one. And you should have trackers inside the trailer, preferably on the shipping cartons themselves in case thieves divided the load.”
“On the cartons?” Probably hoping he might still save his targeted ass, Orange-tieguy challenged, “Do you have any idea how much viable tracking devices cost?”
You drive a brand new BMW, take two hour lunches, and never work Fridays. I wonder how much your life is about to change.
“No, I dont,” he lied. “Is it less than forty-seven million? It took me less than five minutes to snatch that amount from Regencys pockets. And before you start convincing yourselves this was merely a stunt, Ill throw a few figures at you. Last year close to seven hundred cargo jackings occurred in the US.”
Apparently, the man didnt get when to shut up. “Seems to me all we need to do is find a new common carrier.”
“Not so fast,” Lucky replied. “Walter?”
Walter aimed a remote and the projector sitting dead center of the table came to life. A video played, taken inside of a meshed metal cage filled with sealed cartons of various shapes and sizes. A panorama looped, sweeping round and round the structure.
“Any idea what youre seeing?” Lucky asked.
Mr. Days-arenumbered, responded, “Thats the inside of the controlled substance cage at the Raleigh facility.”
“Good. You recognize you own building. Now, let me ask you this. Whats wrong with this picture?”
Several soft murmurs followed but no one spoke up definitively. “Ill tell you whats wrong.” Luckys jaw clenched. Damn, he felt honestly upset. What the fuck
? Calm your ass down. Its just a job.
“This video was shot by a temporary employee whod been on the job a few days.”
Again, no one replied. Lucky huffed out a sigh. “A temporary employee who didnt have clearance to be in your controlled substance cage unsupervised. The supervisor left me in there to make a phone call. A personal phone call.”
Do I hear the flushing of another job?
At least ten more employees still circled the drain, and Lucky poised to send another down. “Theres a camera in the cage, yet security didnt arrive to escort me out.” The spinning projector image now included more people, talking, standing around, and not appearing to be doing much work. The facility manager buried his face in his palms. The image went dark, save for a pale square of light.
“Whats that?” someone asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Lucky replied offhandedly. “A skylight. An uncaged skylight. For kicks I shimmied through it on my lunch break one day, and did it again the next day for the exercise. You should get those fixed. Each one is an unlocked window, waiting to be opened. If you read the industry mags, Im sure youre aware of a major heist recently where thieves entered through a similar opening.”
Luckys cell phone vibrated. He slid the device out of his pocket enough to read a text message from Walter:
“Theyre in place.”
Lucky emptied his lungs on a heavy breath. Now the water turned truly choppy.
Kramers phone rang. “This had better be important,” he growled. Several more security infractions showed onscreen. Lucky explained each in a flat monotone, tuning out Kramers shouts of outrage.Finally, Kramer broke in, fuming. “What is the meaning of this?” His eyes glared daggers at Lucky. In his hand he clutched the phone. “Did you have anything to do with this?”
“If by
this
you mean a certain federal agency showing up in Raleigh for a surprise inspection, I suppose I do.”
“But…but…” Kramers former bravado vanished, replaced by shocked outrage. “You work for me, damn it! This was only supposed to be a test. You werent supposed to report your findings to anyone but me.”
Lucky raised an inquiring brow at Walter, who accepted the tag and stepped into the ring. “While we protect a businesss right to privacy, wed be in violation of federal law if we were party to criminal negligence. Unfortunately, my associate uncovered numerous violations during our investigation, warranting a full audit.”
Kramers mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing worthwhile emerged. Lucky half expected to have to blow the dust off of his seldom-used first responder training. At a wave of Walters hand, Bo and Lucky followed their boss around the table and out the door. No one stopped them. The closed door barely muffled angry shouts.
“What happens now?” Bo asked, as the trio trekked down the hall out the front exit.
“Now, we let FDA conduct their investigation,” Walter replied. “Warning letters are likely, and possibly a facility shutdown until their security breaches are rectified. We set out to expose weaknesses and we did. Youd do well to recall the old adage, „Be careful what you wish for.”
They piled back into the Range Rover and left the glass monstrosity behind them, Lucky announcing, “Chaos, mayhem, and confusion. Our job here is done. Any idea where the nearest Starbucks is?” He slapped his Ray-Bans in place, letting loose a satisfied grin.
Ive brought one of the largest corporations in America to its knees, and I want more coffee. I am da man.