I drive past the turn that Cargill took and then take the next one. The street I’m on winds its way into the heart of the industrial park. I pull into a parking lot of a U-Haul repair center to get my bearings. The blinking dot on my phone has slowed, then stops near the back of this cluster of buildings, about two hundred yards away from where I am. Most businesses in here are closed and dark, although streetlights illuminate the roadways. Google Maps says Cargill is parked by the loading dock of a warehouse that isn’t identified on the map but is next to a concrete product supplier. I pull out of the U-Haul repair center lot and ride down the street, then I turn right one block before I reach Cargill’s street. I pass a series of brick buildings all in shadow, then turn into a parking lot behind a contract flooring business and kill the engine. When I remove my helmet, traffic noise from Fulton Industrial washes over me, but other than that I hear nothing. The night is heavy and thick.

I stow my helmet under the seat and take off my leather jacket, then open the top box mounted on the back. I already have all my usual toys, but from the box I take a pair of night vision binoculars, which I clip to my belt, and then I lift out a Kel-Tech KSG bullpup shotgun. It basically looks like a large pistol mated with a rocket launcher, all just over two feet in length. I sling the KSG over my head and shoulder so it lies across my back, the muzzle pointing down. Frees my hands for other things. I screw a silencer onto my CZ. My hip holster accommodates the silencer, although the increased barrel length will make it harder to draw quickly. But this situation calls for stealth, not shotguns—not yet. I check the rest of the gear I’m carrying, put my leather jacket into the top box, and lock it. Then I walk out of the parking lot, cross the street, and head down the road that runs between a wedding store and the corporate office of a dessert company, making my way toward Cargill’s truck.

Creeping down this street at night, I’m struck by how the whole place looks like a slightly nightmarish version of cookie-cutter suburbia, except with brick warehouses instead of two-story homes. Even the Bluff has a sense of life, of people living there. This empty tract of storage buildings and industries looks like something left after the apocalypse, a world devoid of human beings.

Behind the wedding store there’s a narrow, empty parking lot backed by a thin scrim of pine trees. Beyond the trees sits the warehouse where Cargill’s truck is located. I hurry across the parking lot and step into the trees, my feet crunching softly on dead pine needles.