The Invisible Tycoon

Chapter 3 — Dockside Choke

By morning, everyone at Sloane still smelled faintly like the pallet yard fire. The whole office had that crisp, brittle quiet of people trying to talk softly around bad news. Lena set up a war room in a glass conference cube, whiteboards blooming with arrows and dates. Aiden paced a groove into the carpet. Maris brought in a tray of muffins she clearly hadn’t slept to bake.

Then Logistics called with the kind of voice that makes you stop pretending to be calm.

“Terminal Twelve just put holds on our boxes,” the head of logistics, Dale, said. “Twenty-eight containers. The system shows ‘random inspection,’ but Customs says they didn’t flag it. Trucks are getting turned away.”

“Who flagged it?” Lena asked.

“Terminal ops says ‘safety review.’ That’s code for: someone on the union side told them to slow-walk us.”

Aiden pinched the bridge of his nose. “We miss these deliveries and penalties kick in. The hospital order alone—”

“—is a promise we made,” Lena finished. “We get those boxes.”

Victoria leaned into the doorway like a ruling in a robe. “Is this Marcus? If we call him, he will fix it. Then he will own the credit.”

The question hung in the room. Evan felt everyone’s eyes slide past him and land on Lena. He kept his voice even. “Maybe we don’t ask the arsonist to light our candles.”

Aiden gave him the look. “You think you know ports now too?”

“I know how pressure shows up,” Evan said. “It shows up as a ‘random’ hold and a lot of shoulder shrugs.”

Lena turned back to Dale. “What can we control?”

“Appointments. Chassis. Drivers,” Dale said. “But the gate won’t release the boxes.”

Evan’s mind walked the map: terminal lanes, gate codes, the language of cranes and clipboards. “We go around,” he said. “Off-dock.”

Aiden scoffed. “With what fleet, Evan? The imaginary one?”

“For forty-eight hours, we borrow one,” Evan said. “Dale, if we had our own tractors, our own chassis, and a pop-up yard two miles off-port, could you peel twenty-eight boxes out if the holds come off?”

“Sure,” Dale said slowly. “If we had those things. And if the holds come off.”

“Okay,” Evan said, already reaching for his phone. “Give me an hour.”

Archer picked up on the second buzz. “What do you want to rent now, a navy?”

“Fourteen tractors, forty chassis, forty-eight-hour leases,” Evan said. “A fenced lot with cameras—there’s a dirt yard on Edison Street that rents by the day. Contract them under Stave Logistics LLC. I need a certificate of insurance, a bond, and a bank letter naming Stave as authorized dray for Sloane Dynamics.”

“We’re not a trucking company,” Archer said.

“For the next two days, we are.”

Archer sighed. “You understand everyone on the docks is tense right now.”

“Call Nora Kline,” Evan said. “She still runs dispatch for the independents, right? Offer hazard pay. Deliver the paperwork in an hour. And one more thing: line up an emergency release letter—critical infrastructure exemption. Our microgrid units feed hospitals. Get someone respectable to sign it.”

“You want a magic wand.”

“I want a fax that looks like a magic wand,” Evan said. “And Archer—no fingerprints.”

“You’ll get a glove,” Archer said. “I’ll call back.”

In the war room, they made a plan like a game of Jenga: one wrong move and it all falls. Dale called drivers. Maris phoned a cheap fence company to shore up the yard. Aiden called the insurer to confirm the pop-up lot coverage and used his inside voice to swear.

Lena caught Evan by the coffee station. “If this works,” she said, “I don’t want to know how it worked.”

He smiled. “Then I’ll keep it boring.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we’ll ask Marcus to light our candles,” he said, soft. “But not yet.”

At the port, the line of trucks snaked like a patient animal. The air had that salt-metal smell of containers and cranes, and a low thrum that lived in your bones. Sloane’s drivers rolled up to Gate C, only to be met by a foreman whose mouth made the shape of a sorry that didn’t reach his eyes.

“System shows holds,” he said. “Nothing I can do.”

Dale, in his neon vest, waved a folder like a flag. “Emergency release. Hospital contract. Here’s the letter.”

The foreman read the header, frowned, and looked up. “Who signed this?”

“The State Energy Office,” Dale said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

A long minute. The foreman made a call. Another guy in a safety jacket came out. The gate printer spit out two appointment slips like bones. “Two containers,” the foreman said. “Then we’ll see.”

It’s not nothing, Evan thought. Two is a crack in a wall.

The first pair of boxes rolled out of the yard like they were guilty, riding behind Stave’s freshly leased tractors that still smelled like other people’s miles. The drivers—independent, suspicious, professionals—kept their eyes forward. A man in a gray hoodie watched from the fence line, hands in his pockets, attention too sharp to be casual.

“Eyes open,” Nora whispered over Dale’s radio. “They’re poking our tires.”

“Offer cash bonuses for anyone who completes a pull,” Evan said. “And coffee. Lots.”

Maris showed up with two cardboard carriers and a lie: “Union outreach.” She handed cups through windows like peace offerings. Drivers smiled despite themselves.

By midafternoon, a rhythm emerged: two boxes, sometimes four, then another mysterious “system delay.” Half the trucks idled. Half crawled. Nora worked a second phone, swearing colorfully. Lena phoned the hospital’s procurement officer twice an hour to promise and then re-promise. Aiden plotted penalty curves on the glass wall like math could force fate.

Evan stayed at the edge, where the public road met the private gate. He didn’t have authority here. But he had a binder. The Stave Logistics lease agreements, the insurance certificate, a letter from Redwood Commercial saying they’d guarantee demurrage up to a cap. He brought it to the yard gate because sometimes paper still opens doors men can’t.

“Tom, we’re good on coverage,” he told the foreman, holding the documents through the gap. “We’ll take custody at our lot. You’ll see less congestion if you let us peel.”

“You’re not the first smart guy to try to outsmart the gate,” Tom said. But he took the papers. He flipped. He grunted. “This Redwood letter helps.”

Something buzzed above them. A little electric whine. Evan looked up. A drone hung there, black and curious, the size of a dinner plate. It tilted to one side, as if thinking. Then it drifted down a little, framed him in the wash of its tiny camera, and hovered.

“Friend of yours?” Tom said.

“Reporter,” Evan lied. He put a hand up to shield his face, then dropped it. Too obvious.

The drone lifted, jittered like a bird shaking off rain, and zipped away toward the parking lot where a sedan idled with its lights on.

Archer’s text came thirty seconds later: You just got filmed at the gate. Not ours.

Evan didn’t answer. He felt the heat of a camera long after it was gone.

The slow squeeze continued. More boxes trickled through, enough to keep hope from drowning. By early evening, they had sixteen out. The first loads hit the Edison Street lot, where Sloane logos on crates looked like small wins lined up.

Lena stood at the edge of the pop-up yard as twilight turned everything blue. Trucks rumbled in and out. She touched a crate like it was a living thing. “We’ll make the hospital delivery if we go all night,” she said. “Tell the drivers there’s hot food coming. I put it on Maris’s card; she doesn’t know yet.”

Evan smiled, then caught himself. “Consider it done.”

Her phone lit with a notification. She glanced, then looked again. A video, shaky, muffled, posted to a local port-watch channel: a man at a yard gate, holding papers through a gap. The caption: “Who’s this guy cutting side deals for Sloane? #gatewatch”

The thumbnail froze on Evan’s face, halfway between polite and determined.

Lena’s eyes flicked from the screen to him. Not accusing. Just surprised, then thoughtful.

“Friendly neighborhood nobody,” he said lightly. “They’ll film anyone these days.”

She held his gaze a breath longer than that joke deserved. Then she slid the phone into her pocket and turned to wave in another rig, choosing work over questions—again.

From somewhere beyond the fence line, a woman in a gray coat watched a convoy of Sloane crates roll into the night, and smiled like a person who enjoys other people’s puzzles. The port muscles flexed. The holds would be back tomorrow. For tonight, the boxes moved. And on a thousand tiny screens, a stranger at a yard gate became a clue.