Pipeline

Gordon Donnell

Description

Michelle Addison’s diploma came from the school of hard knocks. Roller derby had taught her how to fight hard and fight dirty. Neither had prepared her for the consequences of doing the wrong favor for the wrong friend.
Winding up in the crosshairs of a Federal Strike Force investigation was bad enough. She was caught in a scheme to launder a vast hoard of US currency amassed over decades of Middle Eastern graft. The money was a magnet for thieves in a world where treachery and murder were business as usual.
It was definitely the wrong time for the right man to find his way into her life.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Heroine
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Suspenso
• Terrorism
• Smuggling
• Roller Derby
• Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
• Mystery
• Murder
• Adventure
• Suspense
• Thriller
• Corruption
• Noir
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781663247230
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

PIPELINE
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
GORDON DONNELL
 
 
 
 

 
PIPELINE
 
 
Copyright © 2022 Gordon Donnell.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4719-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4723-0 (e)
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  10/25/2022
CONTENTS
Mickey
The French Connection
Philip
Carmella
Impulse
Strike Force
The Iceman
Gun Slinging 101
Moral Support
Decoy
Quicksand
Confidential Informant
Pipeline
Road Rage
Interrogation
The Roller Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Iceman Cometh
Dear Old Dad
Typhoid Mickey
The French Colonel
London
Only The Paranoid Survive
Get Out of Dodge
Jackpot
The Mexican Colonel
A Falling Out
Junior Varsity Jezebel
The World According to Carmella
The Martyrs
The Money Laundry
Sudden Death
Over The Moon
MICKEY

R omantic old Mexico, where soft guitar music drifted on the warm evening breeze and impossibly handsome men made courtly love as only the Latins knew how.
Yeah. Right.
The taxi radio was blaring salsa. I was soaked in sweat. The overweight driver was so terrified of the neighborhood he wouldn’t have put a move on the Playmate of the Month . As soon as he had his fare, he hit the gas and left me standing in front of a hotel no self-respecting cockroach would check into.
A sizzle of electricity lit up random letters in a grubby neon sign and removed any doubt that this was the place. My common sense tried to make itself heard, but I hadn’t come this far just to wimp out. I clamped a lid on my nerves and pushed the door open.
The lobby was ill-lit; narrow and claustrophobic. Random patterns of grime took the place of artwork on the stucco walls. Something that had once been a carpet still clung to the floor in spots, like patches of dirty moss. Behind the reception desk a wrestler was perched on a spindly stool that didn’t look strong enough to support his weight. He took his broken beak out of a gaudy magazine and peered at me. His thick lips managed a half-hearted leer.
“Buenos noches, Senorita.”
I wasn’t still senorita entirely by choice. The class of guy I wanted to get cozy with usually didn’t want anything to do with me.
“Buenos noches,” I said. “Esta Colonel Guerrero aqui?”
The leer vanished. “Nombre y apellido, por favor?”
“Mi nombre es Michelle Addison.”
“Momento, por favor.”
The wrestler climbed down from his stool, waddled through a flimsy curtain of hanging beads and vanished into the dimness beyond.
The odor of forgotten transients lingered on the stifling air, stirred indifferently by a slow-turning ceiling fan. A guy sauntered in from the street. He came to the customers’ side of the desk and started checking me out. At a glance he was more Arab than Latin or Anglo. He was trying to pass for manual labor and not doing it very well. His khaki shirt had wrinkles, but no dirt. His facial scruff was carefully groomed, and he had just enough in the looks department to give him the idea he was a babe magnet.
“You’re an American,” he said.
His voice sounded like he had some college in his past, but I wasn’t man-hunting at the moment. After four years skating pivot for the Junkyard Roller Girls I was pretty sure I could discourage him if ignoring him didn’t work.
“Your Spanish gives it away,” he said.
“What’s Espanol for get lost?”
He probably had a comeback line. Before he had a chance to use it the wrestler returned and ushered me through the curtain of beads.
A couple of local machos were waiting in a hallway, togged out in freshly pressed camouflage. Their armor was clean and new looking. Web slings supported matching assault rifles. One of them opened a door for me.
The room wasn’t large to begin with, and the layers of sandbags against the walls made it even smaller. The only window was barricaded by iron shutters. There was a desk, old and heavy and scarred. The man behind it wasn’t as big or as imposing as I had expected. His fatigue uniform was crisply starched and his grooming would have passed muster in high society. His English pronunciation was better than mine.
“Good evening, Miss Addison. I presume you are the one Carmella sent?”
Paid was closer to the truth. I mean, sure, I had a misbegotten sense of adventure, but I wouldn’t have made this trip if the Corona Virus crap hadn’t trashed my finances. I handed him the picture.
It was a four by six snapshot of Carmella and me standing side by side. Carmella was tall and elegant. I was tall.
A fond smile played on the Colonel’s lips while he gazed at the picture. He set it aside reluctantly, opened a desk drawer and took out a package. It was wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with kitchen twine.
“You must guard this carefully,” he warned.
The drama seemed a little over the top. The package was about five by seven. It was thin and light enough for me to button inside my shirt. I hadn’t forgotten the pick-up artist in the lobby.
“Is there a back way out of here?”
The Colonel rapped some Espanol. One of his machos ushered me out into the hall and opened a door that let me out into an unmistakable fragrance of eau de dumpster. I got my bearings, took the alley at a dead sprint and slowed to a fast walk when I reached the street.
I caught a break. Not only had I deciphered the city map and the bus routes correctly, but there was an actual bus approaching. Just my luck the A/C was running full blast when I climbed aboard. I was shivering by the time I sorted out the fare and found an empty seat next to a stumpy senora.
She started in immediately in mile-a-minute Espanol. It didn’t take long to figure out the sancho she was bitching about was her husband. After that all I needed to keep up my end of the conversation was the occasional sympathetic nod. It was worth the effort. The bus had no shortage of sketchy looking passengers, and I was less likely to be molested if I was hooked up with one of the locals.
Stumpy was on her way downtown to a night job cleaning offices. I was headed for the twenty four hour express company shipping office.
The clerk was no fool. First he made me unwrap the package. It contained only a leather-bound journal, written in Spanish in a flowing feminine hand. Then he gave me a shitload of forms to fill out before I could ship it will-call across the border.
I taxied back to my hotel and checked out. I hoped I could use my return trip ticket to get an immediate flight back to the US. Even if I couldn’t, I was probably safer sacking out in the aeropuerto. It was late morning when I finally de-planed in California and started feeling secure.
I should have known better.
An African-American heavyweight in a TSA uniform ordered me out of the Customs line and took me to a private room. It wasn’t a drug search. She didn’t take me down past my skivvies. She rummaged my back-pack while I got dressed and then took me to another room.
The guy who had tried to pick me up in the hotel in Mexico was waiting there. He showed me an ID that made him an agent of the United States Treasury Department. This time he had reinforcements. A smartly dressed Asian babe who flashed a set of FBI credentials.
It took me a minute to convince myself that panic wouldn’t help my situation. A few of the girls in the roller derby league made a hobby of getting busted in bar fights. I had an idea from them how to handle the police. Look whoever was talking straight in the eye and zip it. You had the right to remain silent. You were a sucker if you didn’t use it.
The two Feds sat me down and tag-teamed me with questions. They knew the Colonel and Carmella were father and daughter. Apparently the family was mixed up in some money laundering scheme. BFD. The only money I cared about was the cash I was getting out of this deal. I had received twenty five bills plus expense money going in. I was due twenty five more when I delivered the package to Carmella.
Being interrogated wasn’t my gig, and it made for an uncomfortable couple of hours. Eventually the Feds ran out of steam and cut me loose with a dire warning about what could happen if I served as a go-between in a scheme to move dirty money. I didn’t doubt them for a second. It was time to collect my cash and eighty-six myself out of whatever load of crap this was.
I had met Carmella when I was doing an exhibition skate in Europe. She was an actress in a travelling show. We were both running hash to make up the difference between reality and what the cheap bastards were paying us. We had done our share of pass-offs. I mean, it wasn’t like we were just a couple of dumb-ass broads trying to get cute.
We set it for the downtown lunch hour rush. Carmella e-mailed me a