Chapter Note: Okay...so this will not be the "final" chapter. I hit 14k words and decided to split it up a little. I guess I really stink at estimating my story length. Who knew? :) Chapter 15 is at 8k words now and I have not decided if it will be split into an additional two chapters or not. Sorry for the delay and all of the excuses I posted on my blog entry still apply. Hehe.

Thanks Note: Again, thanks goes out to Elrod for his most excellent MAU universe and all MAU mistakes/transgressions are totally my fault. I am trying to keep this story as close to the MAU rules as possible, but I am afraid I may end up bending a few. Thanks also go out Beyogi, Landing and Grover for their sometimes real-time feedback and suggestions. Last but not least, djkauf for his magical editing.

It took Greg less than a minute to spot and catch up to the truck towing the shipping container.  Once again, he reveled in the sense of power and freedom he felt as Arcee in motorcycle mode.  It was so damn fun zipping along at breakneck speeds while still feeling in complete control. The speed was addictive and for a nano-second, it almost made him not want to find the MAU and change back.

He laughed at his traitorous thought as he followed the trailer at a discreet distance.  He wasn’t an expert, but he figured the odds of the driver spotting him and coming to the conclusion that he was a tail to be practically nil.  Motorcycles didn’t follow the bad guys; only large full sized cop cars and SUV’s followed the bad guys to their secret lair.

The truck made a beeline for the Long Beach harbor and Greg followed it all the way to the gates of the shipping yard.  Greg kept his distance as he watched the truck enter through the security gates after the driver checked in with the gate guard. From this side of the gate, the place looked huge and it was full of shipping containers stacked between two and five high, waiting to be picked up or shipped off to some other country.  He had to find out where the driver was taking the container , but the only way he could do that would be to follow the truck through the gates.

Greg doubted that the security guard would let him in and blowing through the gates would attract too much attention.  He decided to jump over the fence and try to spot the truck on the other side. For the first time, he shifted into full Arcee bipedal robot mode and lightly hopped over the 10 foot high security fence, using his compensators to help control and mute his jump. Once over, he shifted into his upright scooter mode and used the height advantage to try and spot the truck.  He caught a glimpse of it once and shifted back into motorcycle mode to try and run it down.  By the time he got to where he last spotted it, it was nowhere to be found.

As he roamed the shipping yard, he kept his lights off and stuck to the shadows as much as possible to try and reduce the odds of being spotted while searching for the truck.  The yard was freaking huge and he was just about the give up hope when he spotted a truck heading his way.  His night vision cut through the glare of the truck’s headlights and he quickly identified the truck as his target, but it was no longer carrying the shipping container.

“Son of a...” Greg muttered softly to himself.

He waited until the truck passed before he doubled back and tried to trace where it came from, but he quickly became overwhelmed by the options.  It looked like the container could be in any one of three separate storage yards.  Three, very large, 50+ acre yards filled with shipping containers, potentially thousands of shipping containers.  While he could use pattern recognition to match the container using the images he had, it would still take time to scan all the containers in each yard.

“Shit!”  Greg was not happy.

A flash of blue lights and the toot of a police horn roused him from his predicament. “Hey you! What are you doing here?”

Greg looked over his shoulder and spotted a harbor security car with a mid 30’s, male officer in opening his door to stand and yell at him. A couple of excuses and options ran through his processor. Running seemed the easiest, but maybe he could play the lost girl card.  He heard hot women only had to bat their eyes or cry for a police officer to get out of a speeding ticket; maybe he could work it to his advantage.

Greg made his Sadie hologram take off her helmet, smiled nicely for the grumpy officer and tried to look as embarrassed as possible. It wasn’t too hard considering the fact that he was embarrassed at getting caught. “Umm, I’m sorry officer, but I got separated from my boyfriend back on the interstate, got all turned around and ended up here. Can you show me how to get out of this place?”

“This is a secured area. How did you get in here?” The officer was a little more cynical than Greg expected.

“I’m not sure. I was following this truck because I thought it was going in my direction. I couldn’t see around it when it stopped. So, I kinda just followed it and next thing I knew...” Greg glanced around at all the shipping containers and shrugged helplessly his shoulders. “Here I was.”

The security officer relaxed and after a moment, nodded his head. “Okay ma’am, follow me and be more careful next time.”

“Yes sir...” Greg had his Sadie hologram put her helmet back on and meekly followed behind the nice security officer. The officer stopped his car at the front gates and motioned for Greg to go ahead. Greg had Sadie politely wave back as he accelerated away, heading back to his friends at the warehouse.

Hector quickly lost track of Michelle as she moved away from his position in the rafters. Even with his Snake Eye’s goggles, her suit blended her into the background perfectly. No, wait, he spotted a ripple when she swung down to a storage rack. After a few seconds of trying to spot her again, he gave up and concentrated on the task at hand. 

There were six wannabe tough guys on the floor below. One was in a small office working on a laptop, three were playing a video game using someone else’s big screen TV and the other two were pretending to keep a lookout with their submachine guns slung at their side as they drank a beer and talked smack about the guys playing the game.

Perfect, no one was really paying attention or expecting their little party to be crashed, but Hector wasn’t sure what he needed to do, exactly.  He knew he needed to get rid of them, but he didn’t want to kill them if he didn’t have to. Even though it would have been easier, he wasn’t a murderer, but in a combat situation, he would do whatever he needed to do.

Hector spotted an open cargo container off to the side and wondered if it contained any of their stuff, but he discovered it was empty after his goggles automatically zoomed in to give him a closer look. He decided it would make an excellent jail, if he could get the bad guys into it.  With the start of a plan forming, Hector crawled down the wall and behind a stack of pallets.  He cautiously made his way toward the five targets around the big screen.  He decided to try to even the numbers a bit before fully engaging the bad guys.

Hector knocked a box over causing it to crash loudly to the floor before he hid behind a nearby stack of boxes with the intent to ambush anyone who came to investigate. Like a real ninja, take them out one or two at a time instead of all at once.

“Yo, G-dog, what the fuck was that?” Hector heard one of the ‘guards’ ask.

“Beats the fuck outta me man, probably just a rat again...”

“Should we go check it out, ya know, just in case?”

“In case what?  Na man, you can go check it out ya want, but I’ll stay here and watch these no talent punks try to play.”

“Ahh, fuck you G, you fucking loser!” One of the guys playing the game said.

Hector ducked a little lower and listened as the conscientious guard decided to investigate the noise.  The guard stopped at the start of the aisle instead of walking down it to put the fallen box back on the shelf.

“Yo G! It looks like a box fell.” He yelled over his shoulder.

“Whatever!” G-Dog dismissed his report as he focused his attention on his gamer buddies. “Ahh shiiit man! Ya owned him!”

Hector sighed. It didn’t look like the guard was going to walk past his position. No plan survives contact with the enemy. He managed to catch a glimpse of the guard through the boxes.

The guard paused, as if debating if he should bother. “Ah fuck that shit...” He muttered and began to turn back to his buddies.

Hector eased his way out from behind his concealment and rushed the guy, aiming a punch for the back of the guard’s head.  Ordinarily, he would never try punching someone in the skull because it was a good way to break a hand, but with his new bones; it wasn’t a concern. Dropping the guy as fast as possible was the primary goal.  He also didn’t want to kill the guy. So, he pulled his punch as much as possible in an attempt to use his old normal human strength.

The guard started to turn back as he caught the hint of movement from behind him when Hector’s fist slammed into the back of his head. Hector thought his hit felt solid and it didn’t feel like he had crushed the dude’s skull. Hector grabbed the guy as his legs started to collapse. He didn’t want the guard falling and alerting his friends with the sound of his body and weapon hitting the floor.

The second guard, G-Dog, was the only one who noticed anything wrong and by the time he did; it was too late for him to even try and bring his weapon to bear against the apparition that charged him from the darkness.

“What tha...” G-Dog’s eyes flared with shock as the linebacker sized man in the ninja costume closed the 10 yard gap before he even thought to try and use his weapon.  He scrambled to raise his weapon, but was stopped when Hector’s elbow slammed into the side of his head.

Hector tried to pull the strike, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was in his attempt not to kill anyone.  Like the first guard, the second dropped to the floor, but Hector didn’t have the time to follow up to insure he was down for the count.  He had another three to deal with, plus the dude in the office. Michelle must have noticed him starting his attack because the lights flickered and stopped burning, plunging the warehouse into darkness and causing his built in night vision to automatically activate.

The big screen and their game was still going strong, which meant she probably didn’t cut the power to the building, but with the only light in the area coming from the TV, the gamers were too night blind and confused by the shadows to react effectively to his presence. It really did feel like shooting fish in a barrel as he smoothly vaulted over the couch and slammed his knee into the stomach of the nearest target, followed by a quick backwards elbow strike the back of the target’s head. 

Hector spun clockwise, his left hand set to block his right torso as he performed a spinning back fist into the side of the next closest target’s face.  He heard the crack of the man’s jaw breaking and caught the sight of teeth and blood spraying from his mouth as spin around and fell to the floor from the force of Hector’s strike.

Hector caught movement from his right side and approximately 10 feet away from him, on the other side of the couch.

“You crazy, bitch ass, mo-fo!” The third gamer screamed with a mixture of fear and bravado as he brought his pistol to bear on Hector.

Without conscious thought, Hector drew the katana from his back as he jumped forward and spun to deal with the threat.  His opponent’s pistol fired once, the muzzle flash and booming sound taken care of by his face mask.  Hector felt something slam into his side as he reached out with his right arm, aiming a lazy single handed swipe of his sword at the man’s arm, intending to slash his arm and cause him to drop his weapon.

Hector trained with the katana in class and regularly sparred with a bokken, but he had never used a live edge in a fight. Yes, he knew his new sword was sharp, but he expected to only slash into the man’s arm because hacking  a person’s limb off took a lot more force than the movies portrayed and he was only trying to figuratively disarm his opponent. However, when Greg’s MAU forged blade impacted the target’s forearm, it traveled cleanly through the man’s arm with only the slightest resistance. It felt like he had sliced through a piece of paper. 

He felt a moment of surprise and wondered if he missed, but Hector realized what happened when the man’s hand, still clutching his pistol, begin its descent to the floor. Confusion flashed through his opponent’s eyes as Hector followed his katana’s downward sweeping motion by continuing with his clockwise rotation from right to left, using his left to perform a roundhouse punch to the side of his opponent’s head. Hector pulled his punch at the last second to avoid crushing his skull.  Even then, the force of his blow rocked the man’s head to the side and he collapsed bonelessly to the ground, mercifully KO'd.

He knew there was still one opponent left to take down, the man in the office, but when he turned to look for him; he found Michelle standing over a prone body.  An assault rifle was lying on the floor in front of the man.  “Is he out?”

“Yeah, I think so...” Michelle nodded nervously with her tail low, between her legs, betraying how shocked she was at what she had just done.

“Did he see you?” Hector started toward Michelle’s position, paused to pat his side. He tried to find where he had been shot, but there was nothing there, not even a hole in his costume. He wasn’t sure if the bullet had bounced off or if it had penetrated and the costume repaired itself.  He didn’t feel any pain in his side.

“No, he was about to shoot you. I had to stop him.” Michelle gazed down at her hands with wonder and flexed her knuckles before she glanced back up at Hector.

Wheelie peeked around the corner of the office door. “Yo yo yo, Boss! Did you fracking see that shiznit?!?  Tha crazy cat lady was awesome and you, well, let me be the first to say that the fracking Decepticons ain’t got nothing on yo shit!”

Hector groaned at the even worse language Wheelie had picked up from his stay with the bandits. “Wheelie...did you see where they put our stuff?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure did boss. It’s right over there.” Wheelie pointed over toward one of the stacks near the door.

“Good job you two.” Hector nodded at Michelle, but included Wheelie only to keep him from talking some more. Michelle smiled at his approach of handling the diminutive robot.

“Okay, I’ll toss these clowns into the shipping container over there.” Hector gestured to the container. “Can you two find our stuff?” Hector reached down and easily dragged the unconscious man by the back of his denim jacket. He didn’t want anyone to spot Michelle and he didn’t want her to have to deal with the blood.

After tossing the man into the empty shipping container, he deposited the rest of the wannabe gangsters into it.  He wasn’t without mercy. He created a field expedient tourniquet using a belt to stop the bleeding for the man he had sort of permanently disarmed. One of the men started to come around as Hector was finishing up with the one armed bandit. That thought made him chuckle.

“If you want your buddy to live, make sure you keep his tourniquet tight.” Hector exited the container and then, closed and locked it. “I’ll call the police to come ‘rescue’ you in a few minutes. Behave and don’t make me come in there...” He tapped on the door once to help punctuate his statement.

Hector joined Michelle and Wheelie. They found most of their stuff, but the computers and more importantly, the MAU was missing from the pile.  “Hey Wheelie, did you see what happened to the MAU?”

Wheelie glanced nervously back at Hector. “No Boss, sorry. They took me into the office pretty much right away, but they talked about loading the primitive computer junk into a shipping container. They were in kind of a rush.”

“Fuck...” Hector muttered and shook his head with frustration. If they had simply hijacked the truck, they would have the MAU by now.  He hoped that Gr-Sadie had managed to follow the truck and wondered where she was at now.

{“Hey you guys, need my help in there?”} Greg’s voice came over their Bluetooth links.  How Greg made his voice sound like his old voice over the comm, Hector didn’t understand and it only made him feel more confused about how to deal with his friend.

“Greg!” Michelle smiled happily and glanced around, looking for her boyfriend. “Where are you?”

{“I’m outside the door here. Is it safe to come in?”}

Hector sighed. “Yeah, we found our stuff, but the MAU was in the shipping container. Lemme get the door open for ya.” He started to head toward the large garage door when a pair of robot hands reached under and forced the door open with the squeal of stressed metal giving away.

He stopped. “Okay, maybe you got it.”

Greg in Arcee’s full bipedal mode bent low as she entered under the door. Again, the dichotomy of Greg as a female robot messed with Hector’s head. “Arcee, did you find the shipping container?”

Arcee glanced around the warehouse, her eyes stopping at the shipping container holding their prisoners. “Well, I followed the truck, but lost it at the harbor facility and there are a shit ton of shipping containers there. Are you sure it’s not in that one?”

Hector nodded. “Oh yeah, that one has all our prisoners in it...”

Arcee glanced curiously back to Hector before turning her gaze to Michelle. “Are you okay?”

Standing next to Michelle, Wheelie beat her to the punch. “Oh yeah boss, I’m fine, but you shoulda seen these two. The way they handled those meatbags was mighty impressive!”

Michelle knelt down and patted Wheelie’s eye stalks as she grinned mischievously up at Arcee. “Thanks, Wheelie! You’re so helpful!”  She stood, approached Arcee and hugged her leg. “Yep, I’m fine and it was kinda cool.” She let go and took a step back so she could look at Arcee’s face. “I kicked ass! What did you do to me?”

Arcee blushed and nervously scratched the back of her head. “Well, I kinda gave you the Black Widow package mixed with some Cat Woman.”

Michelle smiled. “Awesome, because me likee!”

Hector walked back to the pair with a laptop and held it up for Arcee. “This is their laptop. It might have something on it, but it’s locked. Can you do anything with it?”

Arcee bent down and gingerly took the laptop from Hector. She sat down on the floor and her interface cable snaked out from the back of her head. It tentatively touched the laptop’s keyboard before separating into small, glowing white tendrils that sought out and entered the open ports.  The laptop’s screen switched from its password protected screensaver mode to display the desktop.  File directories, spreadsheets, pictures of stolen goods and naked women began to rapidly flash across the screen before stopping on a spreadsheet entry from today.  It was highlighted and showed the container number along with a manifest and dollar value.  The total value of the goods in the container was listed at a little over $200k.

“Wowza!” Hector whistled appreciatively.

“Yeah, there’s some nice shit in there. Lots of iPads...” Arcee said before the spreadsheet scrolled to another highlighted entry. “And, here is my stuff. I can’t believe they only valued my rig at $500! The assholes...”

Hector stifled a grin at Arcee’s outrage.

Wheelie jumped in. “Oh, hey boss, there was a safe in the office that those meatbags stuffed some cash into. I know the combo, ya want me to, umm, ‘liberate’ some funds?”

The three friends glanced at each other and smiled. “Sure, Wheelie, that would be awesome, but don’t take it all. We don’t have a lot of storage space here.” Hector said more to distract the little robot than anything else.

“No problemo Boss! I’m on it!” Wheelie rolled himself toward the office.

Hector gave Wheelie a few seconds to enter the office before continuing. “Well, we need to try and find that shipping container at the harbor. We should call the cops and bail now.”

Arcee nodded her agreement. “Yeah, good idea. Should we call the agents too?”

Hector glanced over at Michelle. She shrugged noncommittally. “Beats me...”

Hector turned back to Arcee as he considered the option. “Hmmm, I don’t think so. We know where the MAU is now, but if we got them involved, they would probably take it without giving Greg a chance to change back.”

Arcee sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” She peered at the laptop in her hands. “Can’t trust the government about these kind of things, but I should leave the laptop unlocked so the police can get the evidence from it.”

Wheelie returned with a three wrapped bundles of $100 bills held in his clawed hands. “Here ya go Boss.” He handed the bundles to Hector. “There was about 150k in their safe. Is 30k enough for you all?”

Hector nodded approvingly and handed each of his friends a $10,000 bundle of cash. Arcee shrugged her shoulders and gestured to her non-existent pockets as Hector held the bundle out her.  Michelle graciously accepted Arcee’s cash bundle on her behalf.

“All right then, let’s roll out!” Arcee gleefully cried as she transformed into her bike mode.

Agent L and Agent P were in Long Beach doing what law enforcement agents are supposed to be doing while on a case, eating donuts.  They had no leads to follow. So, now it was a waiting game and what better way to wait for your suspects to make a mistake than to drink coffee and have a donut? 

“Do you think they’ll find it?” Agent P glanced over before taking a sip of her steaming hot coffee.  She had her laptop plugged into a car power inverter to keep it running and monitoring the cell phone trace they had running on Mr. Vasquez and Ms. Williamson.

Agent L finished chewing the bite of his raspberry filled jelly donut before replying. He did not want to spill on his suit. “Doubt it, but they seemed to have a destination in mind before their phones died.”

“Mr. Vasquez’s phone seemed to die pretty damn fast. If I didn’t know better, I might think they knew we were tracking them...” Agent P sighed and closed her eyes as she took an appreciative sip of her coffee.

Agent L shrugged his shoulders as he reached for his coffee. “Maybe, but the carrier did explain that the active GPS uses more battery, so maybe, and who knows if Ms. Williamson’s phone even exists anymore.”

The laptop chimed, gaining their attention. [“Unidentified caller reports a warehouse break in with armed intruders and possible stolen goods!”]

The two agents read the address off the 911 police report as the screen switched to show a map view.  They were less than 10 minutes away from the location.

“What are the odds?” Agent L asked as he carefully placed his half eaten donut back in the bag it came in before putting their car in gear.

Agent P secured her laptop from the dashboard. “Pretty damn good if ya ask me.”

Agent L glanced over at Agent P as he pulled onto the main road. “Yeah, but now we gotta find the pair.”

The warehouse was swarming with local law enforcement officers and the 911 monitor on Agent P’s laptop told them an ambulance was on the way to deal with an injured suspect. The two agents flashed their badges and were let inside the police cordon. Both agents were a little surprised by how many stolen goods were stored inside the warehouse. The place was stacked floor to ceiling and a twitchy team of officers were yelling at some men to step out of a cargo container with their hands in the air, nice and slow. One of the men had to be helped out because he was missing his right hand just above the wrist and looking very pale. 

Agent L identified themselves as FBI, Special Investigations Branch, a very anonymous and safe generic designation. The officers on the scene didn’t seem to attach any significance to the label and it gave the pair of agents free rein to inspect the crime scene on their own. For the officers, it appeared to be an open and shut case of grand larceny and no honor among thieves.  Of course, the fact that a single ninja was the attacker seemed a little farfetched, but the officers didn’t seem to care. An embarrassingly long string of robberies had finally been stopped.

Agent P felt surprised there weren’t more signs of a firefight. It looked like the guys really were taken down by a ninja.  The man with the cleanly removed hand seemed to support their claim.  Agent P spotted a flattened round lying on the floor near the severed hand. “Is this what I think it is?” She glanced up to one of the nearby crime scene investigators..

The man came over and took a close-up picture of it. “Looks like it. Maybe a round from that hand-ee weapon?” He grinned as he gestured to the handgun still held by the man’s severed hand.

“Body armor?” Agent P ignored the man’s weak crime scene humor.

“Would’ve had to  be hard plates. A Kevlar would probably have caused less flattening of the round.” The man shrugged dismissively as Agent P recalled the last person she had seen wearing hard plated body armor.

Ms. Williamson’s G.I. Joe costume, it had hard plates, but she thought it was simple costume armor and not real. Although, she kicked herself for dismissing the possibility so easily. After all, the alien devices seemed to be able to create any material known to man and then some. Why not real body armor?  The puzzling bit about her theory was the fact the suspects here all agreed it was a large male ninja that attacked them, not a red headed female.

Yes, the pair of them would have much to answer for when they surfaced.

Greg was starting to feel a little concerned.  The three of them, plus Wheelie, had searched the harbor for the last few hours and now that the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, they would have to stop.  With the random security officers driving past and the need to remain undetected, it was slow going. The shipping yard seemed to go on forever and the rows and rows of stacked containers didn’t help make their search any easier. Despite the difficulties, they managed to search one of the three possible storage areas without being spotted, but traffic inside the yard was slowly beginning to increase. The odds of remaining undetected would soon become an impossible task, even for Michelle with her chameleon suit. 

Greg currently looked like a blonde Scarlett and he cursed his light hair color. It made sneaking around a bit trickier.  Hector and Michelle had it easy with their all black suits with built in masks.  The four of them had fanned out to cover more rows and help reduce the odds of the group being spotted by security.  They met at the end of the current row and judging by the expressions on his friends faces, the shipping container had not been found. Greg sighed. “Guys, we should leave now before we are spotted.”

Hector nodded. “Yeah, I hate to say it, but you’re right. On the plus side, we still have about 12 hours; _if_ what the agents told us was true.  I suggest we leave Wheelie here and let him continue the search.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Boss! I’d like to help, but how am I going to keep the meatbags from running over me with their big dumb machines or spotting me?”

Michelle giggled and crouched down to apply her feminine wiles on the diminutive Decepticon. “But Wheelie, you’re the only one who can help us right now. You’re so good at sneaking around and remaining undetected. Even if someone did spot you, no one would even think that a toy truck was a fearsome and brave scout.”

Greg struggled to not laugh as the little robot melted under Michelle’s touch.  He could sympathize with the little robot because she had the same effect on him. “Exactly! Wheelie, you’re the only one who can remain here and not arouse suspicion if you’re spotted.”

Wheelie didn’t disappoint. He stood tall on his little foam rubber monster truck wheels and saluted. “I won’t let you down. You can count on me, Boss!”

Hector jumped in. “Thanks, Wheelie. I know this could be a difficult and dangerous mission for you, but I know we can depend on you and I know you won’t let us down.”

Greg wasn’t sure how he did it, but with Hector’s praise, the little Decepticon appear to grow two inches taller. 

“Sir! Yes sir!” Wheelie saluted Hector before performing a smart about-face and marched a few steps into the yard before he transformed into his mini-monster truck form and disappeared by drifting around the corner a shipping container.

Greg and Michelle glanced at each other and struggled to contain their laughter at Wheelie’s antics as Hector turned back to face the pair. “I dunno if that’s good or bad...” Hector muttered softly as he slowly shook his head with wonder.

The three of took great delight with their ability to easily jump over the security fence and after confirming there weren’t any eyes or cameras on them, Greg initiated his shift back into Hector’s motorcycle. 

{“Well, now what?”} Greg asked his friends via their Bluetooth link as they pulled away from the shipping yard.

Hector sighed. “We wait, I guess. Maybe Wheelie will spot it.”

Michelle nodded. “Okay, then what?”

“I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure that assaulting the shipping yard would be a bad idea.” Hector paused as he merged with traffic to cross a bridge that lead to a park on the other side of the channel. “If Wheelie spots it before lunch, we could try ambushing a worker or two during the lunch break and infiltrating the yard as workers, or something.”

Greg did not want to think about the last ditch, Hail Mary option Hector left out because he didn’t trust the Agents and he doubted they would let him use the MAU if they recovered it. He fully expected the pair to confiscate it and bury it in Super Top Secret red tape.

They stopped briefly at a nice public park on the opposite side of the channel that ran past the shipping yard. The park’s elevation provided the perfect location to survey the harbor area and after spending 10 minutes watching the yard’s increased activity as the sun inexorably rose from the eastern horizon, they decided their decision to call off the search was a good one.

The place was crawling with workers and vehicles moving around the yard, loading containers onto the waiting ships and trucks, and unloading containers from ships and trucks.  They would have been zero chance of any of the three remaining undetected while conducting a search during the daylight hours and now Greg worried about Wheelie’s chances.