Read The Team for Free Online Page A

rocks. Cascaes saw him move and yelled back to him.
    “Stay where you are! Keep your eyes open up there—both directions. Jones, get your shit together and help me search this truck. The GPS tracker was on the vehicle, this has to be it!” He was praying to himself that it was .
    Perez had already started to head around to the back of the truck and opened the doors carefully, his weapon at the ready. There were dozens of boxes of dates, which he started pulling out onto the road. He tore through the first couple of boxes, which contained only fruit.
    “Shit!” he screamed as he ripped open box after box as fast as he could, a cold dreadful feeling in the pit of his stomach. Was this the right truck? The sunlight streamed into the back through hundreds of bullet holes, the light hazy in the smoky air. Cascaes hopped up into the truck with Jones following behind, his face still wet with tears.
    Chris started throwing boxes to Perez and Jones, who stacked them neatly in the road as they checked each one and found only dates. They had calmed down a bit and realized that they would have to reload the truck, so they were slower and more methodical now. Cascaes threw down the last box.
    “That’s it!” he yelled.
    “There’s nothing here, Skipper, just fucking prunes!” yelled Jones.
    “They’re dates, idiot,” said Perez, his mouth full of them.
    “Hodges, how we doing?” asked Chris.
    “Clean and green, Skipper.”
    Perez ran back to the cab and started looking under the bloody shot-up seat. Cascaes called him back. “Perez, we’re looking for fifty million dollars! It ain’t gonna be in the fucking glove compartment!”
    Cascaes stood in the back of the now empty truck, hands on his hips, totally pissed. “I can’t fucking believe this,” he screamed at no one in particular.
    Hodges called down on his mic. “Hey, Skipper, were they really kids?”
    “Shut up,” he answered quietly.
    Jones was fighting back tears again looking at the wooden planks of the truck that Chris was standing on. One of them was sticking up a little bit, the end chewed up from bullets.
    He pulled himself up into the truck and gently pushed Chris a drop to his left, then started pulling up the floorboard. There was something under it. As soon as Chris realized what Jones was doing, he dropped to his knees and pulled out his K-Bar knife. The two of them worked together, prying up the splintered board.
    “Ernie,” yelled Chris to Perez, “get me that crowbar!”
    Perez took off in a flash, while Chris and Jones continued ripping up the floor. The board snapped off, exposing a square brick wrapped in newspaper. They pulled it out and tore off a corner of the paper. American hundred dollar bills were neatly stacked in a little brick of money.
    “Sonofabitch,” said Cascaes softly.
    “Leave it to the brutha’ to find the quan, man,” said Jones quietly. He was trying to be cool, but he couldn’t get the image of the two young boys blown to pieces all over the front seat out of his head. He must have personally put a hundred rounds through them. His blank expression echoed the empty feeling in his chest.
    Perez returned with the crowbar and whistled as he saw the brick of money in Cascaes’ hand. “ Damn , man. They had it stashed in the floor,” he said out loud but to himself.
    “Jones found it. Get up here and let’s get this stuff loaded into our truck. We gotta hustle.”
    It took fifteen solid minutes of grunting and groaning to rip up the entire floor. When they were finished, they had over a hundred of the heavy paper bricks stacked on the ground next to the dates. Cascaes ran down the road and hopped into their truck, letting the spare roll off the road, and raced back to the rear of the other truck. Jones, now with his shirt off and his dark muscled body dripping wet, was quick to start throwing bricks into the back of their truck. They loaded up quickly, and Chris hopped out to help reload the dates into the back