AGAINST
THE LAW
A JOE THE BOUNCER NOVEL
DAVID GORDON
THE MYSTERIOUS PRESS
NEW YORK
For Matilde
AGAINST
THE LAW
PART I
1
JOE WAS IN HELL. Or close enough. The suburbs of hell. And he was stuck there with a kid who was bugging the shit out of him.
“I’m hungry,” Hamid said, sprawled face down in the dust, in the middle of nowhere, staring at nothing.
“Have one of those protein bars,” Joe told him. Joe was lying beside him, holding the gun.
“Those shits taste like sawdust. Or actually, they taste like dirt. The same dirt that we’re lying in, and that I already got in my mouth and nose and eyes and ass crack. I don’t need any more. I want a chicken parm sub from Defonte’s. And a hot shower. And a bed with clean sheets.”
“Sounds good,” Joe said. “You can buy me one too, with your share of the money. Meanwhile protein bars and bottled water are free. Pretend like you’re working at Google.”
Hamid snorted derisively but started chewing a protein bar, which shut him up for a minute at least. Joe wasn’t used to chatter on this kind of mission. But he couldn’t really blame Hamid either. He wasn’t exactly thrilled himself. This was the last place he’d ever choose to be, though he found that he visited often enough, in his nightmares. It was a place whose memory he tried to erase, first with alcohol and later with opium and heroin. It was a place that had nearly killed him, and left him wounded, physically and mentally, wounds that had finally begun to heal. And now he was back. By choice. In hell.
Joe was prone, on a low ridge, in camouflage clothing, holding a rifle, and staring through a sniper’s scope at a patch of desert road. All around him, poppy fields spread, their brilliant red and pink and purple petals open like eager mouths, smiling at the orange sun, which blazed and bled into the hills as it sank and dusk gathered between them. This was the province of Helmand in Afghanistan. He was waiting for a heroin deal to go down, and for a bandit to come out of hiding and steal it. No one Joe knew had ever met or even seen this bandit unmasked, but his name was Zahir al Zilli, Zahir the Shadow, and Joe was here to kill him. That was what brought him back to this place he never wanted to see again. That and a half million dollars.
There was a time when Joe did this sort of thing for a living, full-time—as a Special Forces operative dispatched on top secret missions around the world. Then he retired, or the government retired him, erasing his records and sending him home with a bad case of PTSD and some substance abuse issues. Now assassinating drug lords with terrorist ties was more like a hobby, something he did part-time when he wasn’t busy with his regular gig, as a bouncer at a strip club in Queens, not too far from the airport. However, this strip club (which was technically owned by an eighty-something widow) belonged to Gio Caprisi, a Mafia boss and Joe’s childhood friend, and when the heads of New York’s underworld—Russian, Dominican, Black, and Chinese gang leaders among others—decided they had to organize and fight any terrorist cells in the city, to protect their domains and keep the government off their backs, Gio had tapped Joe, and the bosses made him their sheriff, empowered to pursue his quarry throughout their territories. He was 911 for people who don’t call the cops.
His last job for them had involved blocking a heroin shipment that was being used to fund terror overseas. Joe had stopped it and, with the help of his crew, had also stopped the smugglers, permanently. But the mastermind behind it, a mysterious figure named Zahir, was still at work, hijacking heroin shipments bound for established US and European dealers and funneling the money to terror cells. Zahir’s New York pipeline was still operational but no one knew how the heroin got in. And everyone back in this corner of the world, the source of the highly-sought-after “Persian” dope, was terrified of Zahir, though no one knew his last name, or what he looked like. Or those who did know were dead.
So Little Maria, a major player in the New York dope trade despite being less than five feet tall, had put a bounty on Zahir’s head and implored Joe to find that head and cut it off. Generally speaking, not even a half million dollars would tempt Joe to pop over to Kandahar for a weekend of sunbathing and souvenir shopping but, despite grave misgivings, he felt a certain nagging obligation to close out this business once and for all. Not to mention, friends like Gio Caprisi and Little Maria are hard people to deny when they come asking a favor. And enemies like Zahir and his New York connections, whoever they were, are dangerous enemies to leave alive.
Joe’s last caper had left some loose ends. For one thing, Maria had really wanted to get her hands on that Persian heroin, which had ended up literally in the wind, four million dollars’ worth tossed out of the car window by Joe’s colleague Yelena, who didn’t approve of dope. And speaking of Yelena: an ace thief and deadly fighter, she and Joe were a good team at home and on the field, but her own past had caught up to her. A child of the Russian prison system and a natural-born criminal, the Russian secret service, the SVR, had set her free on the condition that she spy on the Russian mob in New York. Now, thanks largely to helping Joe, her life was in danger from both Moscow and Brighton Beach and she had vanished, most likely, Joe figured, never to be seen again. Then there was Donna Zamora. Donna was an FBI agent with whom Joe had repeatedly crossed paths, and while their relationship had been strictly professional—she was law, he was crime—she had ended up shooting a terrorist, Heather Kaan, to save Joe, under circumstances the FBI might not understand. Joe had returned the favor by getting rid of the body. And so on . . .
Let’s just say Joe’s life, the simple life of a strip club bouncer who lived with his grandmother in Jackson Heights and liked to read and watch Jeopardy, had suddenly gotten very complicated, and the idea of settling it all with one quick trip to Afghanistan, and one well-placed bullet in the brain, had seemed to make sense. The money didn’t hurt either. A half million dollars in cash could finance his very simple life for a very long time.
“Look,” Hamid said, interrupting Joe’s thoughts. “Here they come.”
At the end of the last job, Joe had taken a cell phone off the corpse of a dope smuggler, Felix Habibi, and though it hadn’t contained much data, Juno had managed to trace a few calls and emails to a nondescript office building in Kandahar. However, all Joe discovered was a bland import/export office owned by Wildwater Corporation, US military contractors. That didn’t mean much. Maybe someone who worked there was involved. Maybe just someone who used their Wi-Fi. Maybe nothing at all.
Then Maria got a tip from her local sources. There was a big exchange going down; a large shipment of heroin processed from these opium fields would be sold to traffickers, who would smuggle it to Albania, then on to Italy and the rest of Europe. It was just the sort of target Zahir chose, so Joe and Hamid had driven out in their Range Rover Defender and set up here, Hamid with a pair of high-powered binoculars and Joe with the rifle. Joe was white and lean, in his thirties, in worn desert camo pants and jacket, an old black T-shirt and brand-new sunglasses, his last pair having gotten smashed in a fight at the club. His hair was a bit ragged and he had a few day’s scruff on his chin. Hamid, short and boxy, with a heavily muscled upper body, was in jeans, Nikes, and a black hoodie, his hair and goatee freshly trimmed.
Hamid was his translator. He was a fluent speaker of Farsi, known locally as Dari, but he wasn’t local. He was from Brooklyn, and a tough, somewhat troubled kid, though not by Kandahar standards. He’d dropped out of school, gotten into some minor scrapes with the law, mostly just fighting and dealing weed or molly, but enough to make him the black sheep of his high-achieving family. This was his chance to make them proud, as
proud as they were of his older sister the doctor or his brother the social worker. Joe was well-liked in the Muslim community, where he was known, or at least rumored, to have stopped a large-scale terror attack, sparing New York thousands of deaths, and sparing New York’s Muslims the inevitable reprisals they’d suffer, despite the fact that many of them, like Hamid’s own Persian parents, had come to New York fleeing religious extremism and violence. When Joe took on this new mission, his young friend Juno, a tech genius and delinquent from Bed-Stuy who often worked with Joe, had recruited Hamid, whom he knew from the clubs. Juno told him he’d make enough to open his own club, and get to roll with a kick-ass secret-agent type. Instead he was bored to death, lying in the dirt or staring at buildings all day and night, or watching Joe read from the paperback that was poking from his back pocket now: Selected Poems, the cover said; selected, Hamid guessed, by some guy named Rilke. What kind of person reads poems for fun?
But now, sure enough, a small caravan of two SUVs, one open and one closed, was making its way over the tracks that led through the hills. The open one held armed men in khet—the long, tunic-like top—and partug—the loose-fitting pleated trousers, folded at the waist. Some wore vests or military jackets and all had kufi or turbans on their heads. The second vehicle would have the dope, plastic-wrapped kilos packed into boxes or sewn into sacks.
Adjusting his scope, Joe scanned the landscape, and spotted a rising dust trail coming the other way, from the nearest small village. There was a closed Jeep and behind that a surplus military truck. The buyer. This would be the dope trader Maria knew about, an established supplier who would repack the goods and, through bribes or deceit, send them on to their next stop, the price doubling each time they changed hands. Depending on the quality, the bricks in those trucks might be selling for three to six thousand dollars each, less for a large purchase of course. By the time they hit New York, they’d be worth fifty to eighty thousand a piece. Opium production dwarfed all other sectors of the Afghani economy and war had been good for business. Lack of government control had led to a surging crop, which would lead to a flooded market, which meant lower prices, higher quality, and eventually, dead junkies.
But Joe wasn’t here about any of that. The way you survived in this world was to mind your own business and watch your own ass. His job was to kill Zahir, if he showed. What difference did it make if one or two more trucks full of dope got through or not?
The dust trails converged and, as dusk crept over the raw landscape, the earth shifted between shades of brown and tan, rust and red. Below him was the road, then another lower ridge, and beyond that, the poppy fields, a sea of flowers, the fat petals like soft, sleepy heads, drooping atop their stalks, like an army of angels descended to earth. He’d seen men die in these fields. He’d seen US soldiers patrolling between the flowers, and children tending the crops. He’d seen civilians blown up accidentally by American ordnance and his fellow soldiers tortured by insurgents. He knew that 42% of the world’s opium came from this one province, more than all of Burma, the number two supplier after Afghanistan. He knew that opium fed the worldwide drug epidemic and financed the Taliban who made life hell for so many of those who lived here. But it was still a beautiful sight. That was the thing about hell; it could look a lot like heaven.
Then, as the two parties met and halted, Joe caught a glimpse of something else, a small dark shape moving on the horizon. It was just a flicker, with the sun behind it, and then it was gone, but Joe knew; someone else was there.
“Don’t move,” he told Hamid, who was fidgeting. “This is it.”
The exchange happened fast. Two men stepped from the lead vehicles, and Joe watched through the scope as the money changed hands, a leather grip that the seller unzipped, checked and then re-shut. He yelled a command and his men began quickly unloading, handing off the packages to the buyer’s men, who quickly loaded it onto the truck. Other men stood guard, standing in a loose perimeter, weapons drawn. In a few minutes it was done. They climbed back into the trucks and, in a cloud of dust, turned around and raced off the way they’d come.
“Shit . . .” Hamid muttered. “That’s it, I guess.”
“Shhh . . .” Joe silenced him. “Just wait.”
He remained still, moving only enough to refocus the scope, because the black speck he’d seen before, or almost seen, was on the move. Really that was all he saw, movement, a gray shape moving in the gray air, now that the sun had disappeared behind the horizon. But something was moving fast now, and he heard a faint buzz as well, like a mosquito. The mosquito darted along the far ridge, then down a winding path to the road in the direction the seller had gone. Joe focused: it was a figure on a motorbike, dark clothes and scarf billowing, rifle strapped to its back.
“Let’s go,” Joe said and rolled back, then got to his feet. Hamid followed, shouting questions, but Joe didn’t answer as he scrambled down the steep hill to where the Defender was parked out of sight. They got in and Joe pulled out, wrestling the wheel as they plunged down the rutted path, then hitting the gas as they reached the road. He sped until he heard the whine of the motorcycle and then eased back. Now they were following the biker, who was in turn, it seemed, following the money.
“Is that Zahir?” Hamid asked, catching his breath between guzzles of water.
“Maybe,” Joe said. He opened a water and drank. The MO was all wrong. Zahir stole the dope not the dough. There might be a hundred or hundred and fifty thousand dollars of whatever currency in that bag. Not a bad score, but nothing compared to what that product was worth on the streets of New York. And what was the point of having a network like Zahir’s if you weren’t going to use it? Plus, Zahir wrote his name in blood and terror. Take the dope and the money, leave a pile of corpses and burning trucks. That was the way to get people’s attention in this neighborhood. One armed man on a bike wasn’t especially impressive. Though, Joe supposed, it depended on the man.
Night fell as they reached the village, just a few buildings around a market square, with homes and small shops staggered along the dirt streets from there. There was no one in sight. He moved slowly, cruising around the square at walking speed. Just then a man came running, sprinting right past the truck without a glance. Joe nosed the truck into the lane he’d come from. Two more young men ran by.
“Zahir!” one yelled. “Zahir darad meeyayad!”
Now Joe saw a café, lit from within. The bike was parked out front, beside the dust-covered Jeep the seller had been driving. Men rushed through the door and scattered.
“Zahir!” one screamed as if warning the town about a fire.
“Al Zilli! Al Zilli!” another yelled as he bolted past. The shadow. Joe parked.
“Wait here,” he told Hamid.
“Don’t you need me to translate?”
“Zahir!” an old man yelled as he quickly hobbled by on a cane. A younger, wider man raced past him, tripped and fell flat, then jumped up and fled.
“I think I get the gist,” Joe told him. “The keys are in it. If I’m not back in ten minutes, drive back to the hotel. If I’m not back there by tomorrow, go home.”
“What if you don’t come back at all?” Hamid asked, suddenly quieter.
Joe smiled and patted his arm, reassuringly. “Then at least you got those free protein bars.” Leaving the sniper’s rifle, he took his Beretta M9 pistol and jumped from the truck. “See you soon, kid.”
Then he crossed the road to the café. He removed the safety on his gun and positioned it in front of him, proceeding carefully, though the men who ran by him, all heading the other way, barely gave him a glance. He approached the door, just a curtain hung in the archway, and went in low, thrusting the curtain aside. The café was deserted. Glasses of tea and hookahs sat abandoned. Stools were overturned. A cat wandered by, unconcerned. A sudden whistle made him swing left, pistol aimed. It was just a kettle boiling. More tea. Joe quickly checked behind the bar, turned the heat off under the kettle, and then made his way to t
he back door. He suspected there was another room where opium was smoked, a scene with which he was all too familiar. He eased the door open slowly with his free hand, then stepped into the dimness. Immediately he smelled it, that odd but distinctive scent, somewhere between gooey brownies and rotting fish. The perfume that the poppy only releases in smoke. The scent of dreams and slow, happy death. A few men lay on their backs, sprawled on thin mats, their heads propped on pillows, eyes closed or seeing nothing in the gloom. They hadn’t run when Zahir came through. They were beyond care. That was what you paid for here: to not give a shit for an hour or a night. Joe crossed the room, leaving the lotus-eaters undisturbed, and crept through the exit, which led to an alley in the rear.
There was Zahir. A figure all in black, black tunic, loose black trousers, a black turban, and over his face, a cotton ski mask. He wore gloves and held a rifle pointed at the seller, a bearded man in his forties, who kneeled now, hands clasped together, as if earnestly praying and offering up the gift of the zippered bag, which was on the ground before him. Just as Joe entered, Zahir reacted, leaping like a cat, and somersaulting out of his line of fire. But Joe didn’t fire. There were windows behind Zahir, and he was afraid of his bullets entering the neighboring building. Instead he moved too, ducking right, trying to take cover against the wall while training his pistol on Zahir, whose gun pointed back at him. The kneeling man trembled between them, with both guns leveled right at his skull. They were in a standoff. If either moved, even to take a shot, they’d be exposed to the other. Joe stayed perfectly still.
That’s when Zahir, while keeping his gun on Joe, began to slowly lift his left hand, palm out, as though holding traffic. “Don’t shoot me, Joe,” the figure said in a familiar voice, peeling away the mask and turban. Blond hair tumbled out.
Against the Law Page 1