Page 126 of The Fourth Option
“That’s him. That’s Walker. I can tell by his posture. He always moved like a fucking predator. I’m surprised he’s not dead by now.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He left the Agency under a cloud, angry. Operators like that with nowhere to go usually end up suck-starting a pistol. I figured he’d last a year on the outside, tops.”
“Why did he leave the Agency?”
Fisk shook his head. “That, my friend, is above your pay grade.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
New Orleans
WALKER SAT INthe front passenger seat of the classic AMC Eagle wagon. Belle was behind the wheel in her leather jacket, skirt, and Doc Martens, backing into a parallel parking space along Poland Avenue, a few miles downriver from the French Quarter. The streets were slick from a passing shower that had turned to mist. More rain was on the way.
“You sure you have everything you need?” she asked.
“I’m good,” Walker said, patting his pants pocket with the forged ID.
“You sure you don’t want me to take Paladin back to your van?”
“No,” he said, holding up the Ziploc bag with the flannel. “I want Paladin to sniff this out. If he gets a good read, we’ll know that this is the Dorado we’re after. I might not even have to use the ID.”
“The fake ID,” Belle reminded him.
“Right, the fake ID.”
Now that she was in the parallel slot, she threw the lever in park. “You never told me how you got that.”
“It’s from one of the guys at Leigh Ann’s. I cut off a section of his shirt. They all had a weird smell to them, something dark under the fingers. If that smell is here, Pal’s going to know it. Isn’t that right, boy?”
Paladin barked once from the back seat.
Belle tilted her face toward the chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. Dorado Freight was tucked into what used to be a busy naval facility. It was abandoned in 2011. It featured wide concrete aprons and tan buildings, some with broken windows. The federal government had recently leased sections to the city, which then sublet a few warehouse buildings to companies, one of which was Dorado.
“I could wait,” Belle offered. “You sure you want to walk back to your van from here? You know where you’re going?”
It was a workday for her. She’d be at the tattoo shop by ten, working a longer shift because the shop owner was on vacation this week and had left Belle in charge.
“Don’t wait. If this goes south, I want you as far away from it as possible.”
“Hey,” she said. “I was going to leave you a present as a surprise in your camper. But I’m going to give it to you now. It will help you fit in around here.”
“A present?” He scratched his trimmed beard.
She opened the center cargo console and extracted a New Orleans Saints ball cap. “Your old hat is looking pretty ragged.”
“I’m actually a Seahawks fan,” he said.
“Now you’re a Saint.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, trying it on.
“Yeah. The patron saint of lost causes.”
Before moving through the gate, Walker stopped at a bank of freight trailers without trucks in an asphalt parking lot. Some of the containers bore the names of shipping companies like COSCO and APL. Others were blank.
“Blijf,” Walker commanded Paladin. The dog sat on his haunches.
