FBI Agent Roger Damon hated the water. He was born in Kansas, where the only water he saw as a child came out of the ground, up through a well. The closest lake was several hours’ drive away. He didn’t even envy the few people he knew growing up whose families had pools. To him, they were just wide wells in which to drown.

As a result, he was miserable in his current assignment. He was sitting in the hold of a large tugboat that was docked in East Boston, awaiting an overhaul that was scheduled for later in the month. The ship was awful, as far as Damon was concerned. It was old and decaying, and the galley, where he was situated, smelled of stale spam and tuna. Every time the ship lurched with the tide, his stomach lurched with it.

The only good thing about the tug was its location. It was tied up to a pier across a shallow inlet from the warehouse that T’phong Soh and his MS-13 crew had used as their headquarters for more than a year. It was the only place from which he could conduct surveillance and not be detected. The area on land around the warehouse was too congested for a surveillance van to go unnoticed. The roads were so narrow that any vehicle parked for more than an hour would become an obstruction that could not be overlooked.

From the tug, though, he had a clear view of the western side of the warehouse, which faced the harbor, as well as the southern side that faced the inlet. The only other side that had any doors was the eastern side, which bordered the alleyway from which vehicles accessed the place. He could only see part of the way around the corner there, but it was enough for him to at least know when a truck entered or exited. He had a camera with a telephoto lens that fit perfectly in the porthole window, and a long-range microphone that connected to his headphones had been fitted to the tug’s navigation array topside, angled to catch as much sound from the outside of the warehouse as possible. The audio had proved relatively useless, though, so he only kept one of the headphones looped on his ear.

The door to the crew’s compartment opened and slammed shut, and Damon’s partner, Daniel Shift, climbed up the stairs into the galley. “Head’s busted,” he said.

“What’s busted?”

“The head.”

“Your head?” Damon pressed.

“The head,” Shift responded. “Downstairs in the bathroom.” It was clear that Damon still wasn’t comprehending. “A toilet on a boat is called a head.”

“Why?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Shift said. “But that’s what it’s called.”

“That’s stupid,” Damon said.

“Maybe, but it’s the reality. The more important reality is that this one is broken.”

“Can you plunge it?” Damon asked.