Page 46 of Mike

Once in position next to the suspiciously well-maintained portal, she placed her ear to the metal, listening intently for any noise on the other side. It would suck eggs if someone were still in there and she broke in.

Joelle paused, holding her breath.

Hearing nothing, not even the low humming noise from before, she took her lock-picking set out of the small pouch she wore around her waist, and—noting the mechanism she was about to manipulate was a wafer tumbler lock—she extracted a tension wrench and a half-diamond pick before going to work.

Twenty seconds later…

Huh. She must be losing her touch. It normally took her ten to breach. She needed to brush up on her skills.

With the lock disengaged, Joe put her tools back in her kit, and lifted her gun from its holster, holding it aloft with one hand while grabbing the doorknob with the other to slowly swing the heavy egress, outward.

She gave a relieved sigh, when luckily the door didn’t squeak.

When nothing inside moved that she could hear, Joe, still outside with her back up against the building’s metal siding, poked her head in quickly to garner a look, and…

The place was pitch black.

Good, and bad.

Good because she was probably alone. Bad because NVG’s without periphery light—which Joe didn’t have—wouldn’t work in complete darkness. In order to see anything, she would have to use the flashlight on her phone. If anybody—i.e. guards—were inside sleeping, they’d have her made in a blink.

She had to take that chance.

Walking quietly across the threshold, she slid inside and closed the door behind her, keeping her back to the wall as she calmed her breathing and listened. Minutes passed, and as far as she could tell, she was alone. There was no snoring, farting, or coughing that would indicate men sleeping, so she’d go with the well-studied assumption she was alone.

Squatting, she set her phone on the ground, screen side down. She managed to turn on the flashlight, then in one smooth move, she flipped over the device while scooting it across the floor so it ended up five feet from where she crouched.

Joe once again held her position, waiting.

The phone lit up a good portion of the area around it, and…no one shot at the thing.

That was good.

Joe was now confident that she was, indeed, alone.

Inching her way rapidly toward her device, she picked it up, and at last dared to stand. She shined it around.

The interior was one, big room, with a loft above—an open mezzanine—that was accessed by a ladder. A large number of small bags were lined up on a shelf on one wall. The central ally leading back from the large doors was empty of any equipment or detritus, obviously so trucks or cars could drive in and execute whatever they came here to do. Opposite the doors, at the far end of the space, there was a setup that really caught her attention. It was an easily identifiable “cooking station” of glass beakers, tubes, and burners.

Joe sniffed. She could definitely smell something funky in the air.

Behind the apparatus, were stacked cardboard boxes, contents unknown from Joe’s distance, but she’d find out soon enough.

Before she moved closer, she shined her light around and took in the rest of her surroundings.

In the far back corner of the building, Joe spotted the only other thing in the main room. A small generator. That made sense. It had to have been the noise she’d heard while outside, probably giving Mr. Nugget electricity and lights with which to work.

But now…it was time to find out what was in the boxes and bags.

Walking over to the cooking set-up first, Joe snapped pictures of the contraption, then hastened behind it to shine her light into one of the open cases.

Well, hello. Joe gave a wry, but knowing smile.

Xylazine liquid. In bottles. Animal tranquilizer. Obviously in quantities larger than any vet would have on hand. Therefore, it had to be black market. Joe snapped more pictures, taking great care to record the manufacturing dates and skew numbers on the boxes, to hopefully ID where the substance had been illegally obtained.

She then ripped off a small piece of cardboard from a box that had been discarded, to use for her next task. No longer faced with the mystery of what was in the bags because she’d seen it all before, Joe walked to the first satchel in the stack. Opening it, she looked inside, and sure enough, as she’d expected, there was powder. It was light brown, and she knew from experience it was a cooked version of the liquid she’d already catalogued.

This powder, made from the tranquilizer in the bottles, had clearly been manufactured here. It was set to be cut into the fentanyl, which would in the end, maximize profit for the dealers who were selling.

---