The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

nothing in particular.

“Well, that’s not necessarily true.”

“It is today,” Razvan said.

“You can’t just stop the traffic like this.”

“There’s been an accident. Or road work. Or a high school car wash. Traffic will adjust. And you need to tell the people in town to stay at home. Or at work, wherever they are. Stay put.”

Wern looked up at him again. The angle made the fat rolls around his neck gleam in the morning sunshine.

“What, like a curfew?”

Razvan shrugged.

“If that means they stay where they are. No cars moving on the side streets, they’ll only get in the way.”

Wern shook his head and sighed while he looked at the mess piling up around him.

Razvan didn’t care. If you accept the money, you have to earn it at some point.

Wern said, “Are you going to let anyone through here?”

“Eventually, yes. Luca here is going to check the drivers. When others arrive, they will help. Tell your men to do the same.”

Wern shook his head.

“Not everybody—”

“The ones I pay. For the rest of them, whether I pay them or not, tell them if they locate the white truck I’m looking for, and the men inside it, I will reward them.”

“White truck,” Wern said.

Razvan nodded.

“And the men inside it.”

“Do you know these men?” Wern asked.

“Not yet,” Razvan said.

When the Sheriff drove away Razvan took his phone back out and called Chicago.

The number rang inside a blank brick building on Halstead Street and was picked up on the second ring.

An ancient male voice spoke in Romanian.

“Yes?”

Razvan also used Romanian, since the man on the other end was bad with English and the translation created one more step for anyone else who might be listening.

“It’s me. The truck is down. The delivery was stolen.”

The phone was silent.

Then: “By who?”

“I’m working on that part.”

“This is a large delivery, my friend.”

“Yes, I know.”

The old man said, “Many people are expecting it. Here, and back home.”

“Yes.”

“You will get it back.”

“As I said. I’m working on it.”

“I’m sending more men.”

Razvan had expected this.

“It’s not necessary, I have enough.”

Which wasn’t true—he needed more men—but the men from Chicago would have two jobs: Help Razvan and his crew find out who stole the money and how; and if that didn’t work, find out if Razvan and his crew had anything to do with it before executing them and burying them in a cornfield, then taking over the work in Iowa.

“It’s done,” the old man said. “It won’t be the babysitters expecting you in Dubuque. They’ll drive, so expect them in seven or eight hours. If you resolve this before then, if you get the delivery back, just sit tight and wait for them. They will have some questions. Then they will bring the delivery to me.”

“And if I find the people responsible?”

The old man chuckled, which turned into a wet cough.

Razvan waited until it was done.

The old man said, “As I told you, the men from here will have some questions. Who they ask...now, that is up to you.”

The sun stayed closer to the Iowa horizon this time of year, and Razvan watched it creep near its apex at about the same speed as the traffic going through the crossroads.

The cars going north and west got waved through at a faster clip—there was almost zero chance the men in the white truck had somehow gotten south or east of town, and absolutely no chance they would come back through the crossroads if they had another option.

Razvan checked his watch again.

Two hours.

Two hours of him and Benj and Luca and Costel checking cars and trucks at the intersection, with Claudiu, Grigore, Pavel and Mihail scouring the neighborhoods and homesteads and fields and two-tracks.

There were some false alarms—apparently there was more than one white truck in the world—but so far the only real result was a snarl of traffic around town and a group of savages from Chicago getting two hours closer.

Yes, Razvan needed more men, but not those men.

He seethed when he sent the update to his crew via text, knowing they would see the message and look at each other, maybe even wonder out loud if he couldn’t handle what was happening.

Of course he could handle it.

But first…just what the hell was happening?

He needed to know within six hours.

It was almost eleven o’clock, time for the next round of twenty-minute check-ins.

He called Grigore first and got the same answer he’d been getting all morning: “Nothing yet.”

Grigore and Pavel were now in the southwestern quadrant, having swept the northeastern part of town with no results.

Razvan said, “How is Pavel?”

“Angry.”

“Good.”

“But his eyes are still glassy from the explosion. He needs to lay down for a while, I think. Drink some tea.”

“He can sleep in the truck.”

Razvan hung up and called Mihail, who’d set up a checkpoint west of town, out on the four-lane highway past Pine. He was working with one of the sheriff’s men to check the vehicles coming from town. The white truck might try to slip out that way from the side streets, but Razvan doubted it.

He figured the thieves had found a place to hide and were waiting for things to die down.

They might even be getting updates from someone local, which irked Razvan.

Not the betrayal aspect—just the idea of someone not being afraid of what he would do when he found out.

Mihail answered.

“No sign of them.”

“Be ready. They might not wait in line. They might just try to smash their way through along the shoulder or median.”

“Right. We’re ready.”

Razvan knew Mihail had an M249 light machine gun in the passenger seat of his truck.

“What does the cop have?”

Mihail said something away from the phone, then came back.

“He says he has a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle. I’m guessing it’s an AR-15. He—hold on. Hah?”

Razvan heard someone else talking in the background.

Mihail said, “He also has his sidearm. Which, you know…big deal. And he was in Iraq, and he shot enough people over there and he’s not going to shoot anyone here. This one has a lot