Cash Landing Read Free

had been on its way to the Federal Reserve Bank, and the warehouse was just the starting point. The FBI would assert its bank robbery jurisdiction as soon as Littleford arrived.
    â€œHow much did they get?” asked Andie. They were standing in front of the thirty-six bags of cash that the thieves had left untouched. The empty armored truck hadn’t moved, its doors wide open.
    â€œNot sure yet,” said Watts. “But if you’re a trivia nut, I’d say at least a few million more than the JFK Lufthansa heist. We may be looking at a new record.”
    Anyone in law enforcement who’d worked a bank robbery or armored-truck heist knew about JFK, but this wasn’t the time to debate the dollar value in 1978 versus the twenty-first century. “Who was first on the scene?”
    â€œOfficer Foreman. He works out of the MDPD airport substation.”
    â€œHow many witnesses?” asked Andie.
    â€œFour guards and four warehouse employees. They’re sitting over there, with Foreman,” he said, indicating with a jerk of his head.
    Andie wondered which one would be trading in his uniform for prison garb. “A job like this doesn’t happen without inside help.”
    â€œYup,” said Watts.
    â€œWhat about camera surveillance?”
    â€œTwo outside cameras, four inside. They’re all monitored by airport security from the main terminal. Crooks were outta here before security noticed anything and dispatched police.”
    â€œYou think the guy watching the screens was in on it? Maybe looking the other way?”
    â€œHonestly, I don’t. I talked with the director of airport security. The weekend staff is shorthanded. Just three guys watching dozens of screens that cover the entire airport.”
    â€œWouldn’t they be more focused on this particular warehouse when a hundred million dollars in cash is clearing customs?”
    â€œThe policy is not to give advance notice of a cash delivery to the guards who watch the CCTV screens, or to anyone else who isn’t part of a very small need-to-know circle. It makes sense: the more fifteen-dollar-an-hour employees who know exactly when a hundred million bucks’ll be spread across the floor in the warehouse, the more people you tempt into planning an inside job.”
    Andie couldn’t disagree with his logic, but she still suspected an insider. Her gaze drifted back to the eight men who were in the warehouse at the time of the heist—the armored-truck guards, in particular.
    â€œWhich one you got your eye on?” asked Andie.
    â€œOne of the guards. Octavio Alvarez. Cuban-American guy.”
    Watts was showing his bias from Tom Cat experience, where the “Cuban connection” was always part of any investigation into a cargo heist. Cuban-American crime syndicates in Miami preyed on Cuban nationals in Havana and other cities. The price of a trip to Florida was an indefinite stint as a “lumper” offloading truckloads of stolen cargo, followed by a string of heists around the country. For some young men, the risk of incarceration in the United States outweighed the risk of a leaky boat across the shark-infested Florida Straits.
    â€œWhy Alvarez?” asked Andie.
    He shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
    It was possible that his hunch was correct, but Andie was trying to clear her head of the stereotypes that might apply in a Tom Cat case. Cargo theft, at the FBI, was part of “Major Thefts,” grouped together with stolen jewelry, art, vehicles, and the like. Bank robbery was part of “Violent Crimes,” grouped together with gangs, kidnapping, murder for hire, and serial killings. It wasn’t about turf wars. It involved different training, made investigators think differently, and changed the way they looked at things. As far as criminal enterprises went, cargo heists were comparatively low risk, while thieves who targeted money flights had historically shown an