“We designated this as a surgical strike, remember? Your targets are the Fuk Ching, not the slaves, not the johns. I want to hit them with precision tools, not blunt instruments.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
Baker shrugged. “You tell me. You did the analysis. You’re the precision instruments. You’ll be the ones pulling the trigger. If anyone is in a position to determine an execution method, it’s you guys, not me.”
Trent cracked his knuckles behind Chu’s head. “Why don’t we just cut the power and go in with NVG goggles? They might have flashlights or try to use their cell phones to compensate, but we can use the sensory advantage to pick them off blind.”
Baker rocked his head back and forth in Chu’s rear view mirror as if deliberating. “Maybe, but if the lights suddenly go out, then everyone knows there’s a problem. The snakeheads might go in and out of the building looking for the problem, which takes the op into the street. The women could be used as human shields. After Hurricane Sandy, they might even have their own backup generator as part of the restaurant system. I don’t think we gain a tactical advantage by turning out the lights.”
Trent had other ideas. Chu imagined him sitting up at night thinking of different assault options. “Well, when I was in the rooftop bar next door, I could see the windows were sealed shut, probably to keep the women from escaping or calling for help. Why don’t we use it against them?”
“How?”
“Air circulation is limited to the ventilation system on the roof. Any chance you could get your hands on something like Agent 15 or some other type of sleeping gas? We can pump the building and then go in to do the cleanup. If everyone is asleep, then it will be easier for us to pick out the viable targets from the off limits ones and…”
“And there will be traces of the gas all over the place when the cops do show up and do a forensics sweep.” Baker cut in with a raised hand. “Even if we could get enough fentanyl to knockout the entire building, someone would be able to trace the purchase back to us. Besides, you two aren’t trained to use that shit and we don’t know what kind of drugs the snakeheads are giving the slaves. I don’t want this to turn into another Dubrovka Theater crisis”.
Chu inched into another lane to take him away from the Tunnel. “You were hanging out in a rooftop bar while I was sitting next to a dumpster all night?”
“Hey, I needed to get a look at the outer structure and the roof. The bar offered a good vantage point and they have excellent ceviche.”
“Fuck you with a brick.”
“Gentlemen, we need to focus. So far I haven’t heard any good options for insertion, execution and extraction.”
Chu slammed down on the brakes as a truck cut in front of him. “Maybe there are no good options. Didn’t Sun Tzu say not every castle should be assaulted?”
“Actually, he advocated against the sieges of fortresses because the army lost the element of surprise and were a waste of time and lives, but I appreciate you trying to throw my shit back in my face.” Baker breathed a heavy sigh and shifted his gaze out the window.
Chu felt the need to lighten the mood fast. “Hey I was just trying to…”
“Why don’t you just try to change your focus from negativity to creativity and come up with a suggestion we can use for a change?”
Baker’s sudden frustration took Chu’s voice away for a moment. He struggled to recover and spoke before he could think. “Maybe we could set a fire alarm or maybe start a small fire in the front to…”
“To do what, drag EMS into the firefight or guarantee every slave gets killed to keep them quiet?” Baker’s cane pounded the floor of the car to emphasize his anger. “We can’t have public distractions. We can’t move the operation out of the building and we can’t walk away with a building full of dead women. Are we clear?”
“Yeah, but Ghost…”
“Are we fucking clear?”
Part of Chu wondered what about this op made Baker so hostile. Part of him wanted to reach into the back seat and beat Baker with his own cane. But Chu suppressed the urge to violence and it came out as a brisk nod in the rear view mirror. “Yeah”
“Outstanding, then let me out here. I’ll take care of my SDR on foot.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to…?”
“Here’s fine. You two meet me tomorrow at the hotel with some viable options. I got some shit to take care of.” And for the first time Chu could remember, Warren Baker stormed away without a smile or snide comeback.
The remaining two men sat in silence until the light changed and they pulled away from the curb. Chu’s voice came back then, louder than he intended. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds like this op is going to happen even if Ghost has to hobble in there and do it himself.”
Chapter Five: Homicidal Ideation
Baker wiped his mouth with a coarse napkin and sat back in his low chair. “So tell me all the amazing ideas you bright boys came up with.”
The request changed the mood in the room without warning. One minute the room had the comfortable air of a three friends shooting the shit over lunch. The next moment felt like a high stakes hostage negotiation.
Chu compared the three of them sitting around the retro Formica table to King Arthur and his knights. The only differences between the two groups lay in the details. Baker, Chu and Trent hid in a suite at the Nu Hotel in Brooklyn, not the halls of Camelot. The remains of the meal around them consisted of empty Thai take out and not the grand feast fit for a king. And their discussion didn’t revolve around quests of gallantry and heroism. They came together to plan cold blooded murder. The details destroyed Chu’s comparison, so he tried to focus on the matter at hand instead.
“My idea is a straightforward insertion, execution and extraction. We know the restaurant takes out the garbage through the back entrance several times a day. The last dump is around one AM after the restaurant closes. We can wait in the alley and use the dump to get inside without being seen from the front door. ..”
“It’s not the worst plan I’ve heard so far.”
Chu took the tepid praise as a signal to continue. “We go in hard, fast and quiet. We take out the Fuk Ching as we find them and bind any johns we encounter in plasticuffs to keep them out of our way. We clear the place out room by room, floor by floor until we reach the top. Then we just hustle downstairs and leave the same way we came.”
“What do you plan to do with the women?”
Chu shrugged. “My idea is to lock them all in an empty room and let the cops find them after we’re gone.”
Baker rummaged through the delivery bag and fished out a tiny container of spring rolls. He didn’t respond to Chu until he’d recovered his discarded package of duck sauce on the table. “It’s a good start, but from an insertion standpoint, it doesn’t make sense to base your entry on a variable event like taking out the garbage. If the event doesn’t have a precise time, who knows how long you two could be standing in that alley? The guns and the equipment you’ll have will be hard to explain to anyone who might wander back there.”
“Dump times over the past two days are consistent within a thirty minute window.” Trent reviewed the notes from his laptop as he spoke. “It’s not the best time frame, but it’s not the worst one either.”
“True, but I don’t think I’m comfortable conceding higher ground to the opposition. Also, I don’t want you guys coming out the same way you got in. There’s too much chance of things going sideways if you have to retrace your steps.”
“So you like my whole plan except for the beginning, the middle and the end?”
Baker’s smile had a cynical edge. “I like the effort and the attitude. Only the details need work.”
Trent spun his laptop around to face them with the authority of a corporate CEO. His screen showed an overhead map of Chinatown, with a tight zoom on the Red Crane building. “My plan doesn’t involve relying on the bus boys to ta
ke out the garbage, it gives us control over higher ground and it doesn’t retrace steps.”
“I like it already.”
“I say we insert through the roof. We can take the fire escape on this building here,” Trent reached over and pointed to the tenement next door, access the Red Crane with a short jump and then pop the lock on the roof door. From there we sweep the rooms and exit through the back door.”
Chu closed his notebook without taking his eyes off the map. “This is a variation on the plan you used uptown, isn’t it?”
Trent raised an eyebrow. “The plan doesn’t have to be original. It just has to be good.”
“Ok, but we’re after several targets now, not just one. This plan sounds like we’ll be pushing them out into the street once they know we’re there.”
Baker countered before Trent could defend his proposal. “If you do this right, they won’t know you’re there. Besides, they have a certain amount of incentive to keep things indoors. Once they come outside, they risk exposing their whole operation to public cell phone cameras. We can use their greed and their need for secrecy to control the playing field.”
Chu suppressed the urge to push back against Baker’s optimism, so he decided to focus on his skill set. “OK, but how far is the jump from one building to another? Trent knows parkour, I don’t. Even if I could make the jump, I don’t think I could do it quietly enough to maintain the element of surprise.”
Baker took the opportunity to agree. “Can’t argue with that point,” He rested his head in his hand as he looked to Trent. “Your concept doesn’t match the skill set of your team, but maybe we can cannibalize these plans and come up with some viable options.”
“Options like what?”
“Why don’t we consider a pincer movement?” Baker held his hand out and parallel to each other over the table. “You can take a position on the roof and watch the back door. Smoke can stay in across the street on his bike. When you see the busboys dump the garbage, you can give the signal and Smoke can cover the distance and get inside. When you see his entry, you can enter the building through the roof. You two can take out the opposition simultaneously from opposite sides of the structure, meet in the middle and then go out the side window onto the fire escape. It’s not the ideal scenario but…”
“I don’t see that working” Trent turned his laptop back to pull up another file. Based on our estimates, we could have up to ten on the ground. It doesn’t make sense to split up our firepower if we have to sweep multiple rooms. If we’re going to take out this many targets, were going to have to watch each other’s back.”
Baker stretched out, folding his hands behind his head as if he was on a porch in the summer time contemplating a nap. “Yeah, single room clearing is always tricky. The tactical advantage you gain from attacking in both directions comes at the cost of a diluted attack on both ends.”
“Maybe our force capabilities aren’t suited for the op…” Chu tried to project the most confident and professional attitude he could muster because this was his best chance. Now was the time to kill this op before it killed them.
He wouldn’t get a better shot at changing Baker’s mind. The research was done. The reconnaissance was recorded. They’d all developed potential plans and couldn’t come up with a viable solution. If they couldn’t get a bigger team or change the mission parameters, what choice did Baker have but to abort?
The look Baker shot at Chu was half dismissive annoyance and half stubborn determination. “Shadow, what parkour moves would you need to know if you wanted to access the roof of the Red Crane?”
“Not much, landing, rolling, a gap jump for sure and maybe a wall run just in case the fire escape is hard to access.”
“And how long would it take you to teach someone all those graceful maneuvers?”
“For a beginner, it would take a couple days. For an operator it would only take a couple of hours, but we’d have to rule out using Dragon Skin. The armor is too heavy for beginners to wear it and be effective.” Chu saw where this was going, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Well maybe we can use the terrain to maximize our force capability.” Baker glanced over at Chu with a confrontational look in his eye. “Two men could gap jump or whatever the hell you call it across the building onto the roof of the Red Crane. You could access the building from the top, sweep the rooms as you went down and exit from the rear alley. You’ll attack from an unexpected direction, you’ll keep the element of surprise and the higher ground without diluting your forces and you don’t have to go back the way you came.”
Trent leaned back and folded his arms in a partial mirror of Baker’s posture. “It sounds good to me. You up for a little added training, Smoke?”
Chu locked eyes with Baker as the question echoed through the room. “Yeah Smoke, how would you like to learn to fly like your friend here?”
The heat rising to his face flared his nostrils. He felt his teeth grind as his jaw locked. The smoldering flare of rage bubbled up in his stomach and seeped into his limbs. Baker’s play was pure peer pressure. It questioned Chu’s commitment to the team as well as his manhood. Chu had experience with the heavy handed tactic. His father used it to goad Chu into submission when he tried to protect his mother from domestic abuse. His superiors in the DSS used it to attack his sexual preference without saying anything to his face. Chu spent long nights imagining painful revenge on both those men, and a part of his mind wanted to punish Baker too.
But Chu knew what he should do. He knew nothing would make Baker abort this mission. If Chu wanted out, he’d have to get up and walk out the door.
“It doesn’t sound like the best option to me. The risk might not be worth the…”
“Shadow, you said this is the same maneuver you did when you took out Rafael Ramon, right?”
“Basically…”
“And how many of the Uptown Gods did you take out on your way to Ramon?”
“Five or six…”
“So in theory, you could handle this solo, right?”
Chu threw up his hands. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense and you know it…”
Trent ignored Chu’s protest, lacing his hands behind his head to fully adopt Baker’s form. “I guess so. The only major snag would be separating the johns from the opposition.”
“What if we expanded the rules of engagement? What if I said all males not readily identifiable as slaves could be acceptable targets?”
“So now you’re talking about wiping out everyone in the building, cops as well as johns?”
Baker shrugged his shoulders and gave Chu a blank look. “The cops are johns in the Red Crane. That’s what the intel says. If Shadow is going in alone we need to make certain allowances…”
“What are you trying to prove?”
“I’m not trying to prove anything, Smoke. I’m trying to plan an op using the resources I have available. If you don’t want the job, don’t take it. But this op is going to happen with or without you.”
“Even if it means losing Trent?”
“Hey, don’t drag me into the middle of your drama.” Trent got up from the table in one fluid move. “You two want to have a catfight, fine. Just let me know when you’re finished fucking around so I can go back to planning. This shit is going to be twice as hard if I have to do it on my own.”
Chu didn’t take his eyes off Baker as he spoke. “You don’t have to do it on your own, Shadow. You don’t have to do it at all.”
Baker’s gaze didn’t flinch. “You don’t get it. Smoke. He wants to save those girls. He wants to do this op. He’s in. I’m in. What you need to do is decide if you’re in. Don’t try to protect him from himself. Don’t try to use him to justify your refusal. None of that’s going to work. If you want to watch his back, you’re going to go into the shit with him. If not, just walk away.” The ultimatum hung in the air like the stench of rotting corpses before Baker finished his outburst. “So answer the call Smoke. Are you in or out?”
Smoke and Shadow Page 11