by Ty Patterson
‘Why’re you changing?’
Bwana jumped in disgustedly, ‘Hell, he’s like that. Changes four or five times a day. Has to look as if he’s stepped out of GQ.’
Roger folded his discarded clothes, stuffed them in the bag, and approached them.
‘What?’ Bwana asked him, seeing the expression on his face.
Roger held out a phone. ‘I found this in my jeans. I was wearing them in the valley.’
Bwana frowned as he inspected the phone. ‘This must be from one of the bandits. We were searching them, and you must have slipped it in your pocket and then forgotten about it.’
He powered it on. ‘Nada. No juice.’
Broker took apart its battery and put it back again and powered it up. He shook his head. ‘Deader than that frog in my biology class in high school. This is a pretty basic phone. We’ll power it up later and see whether we can retrieve any numbers or messages off it.’
Roger looked at him doubtfully. ‘I think there was one number on it, but I don’t remember it.’ He looked at Bwana, who shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t we ship it to the Border Patrol?’
‘We will. After we have played around with it.’
He clapped Roger on the shoulder. ‘Good find, even if it was a late discovery. Now let’s hope it yields some dirt.’
Chloe had been inspecting her bag and looked up impatiently. ‘Can we get out of here now? Broker, I presume you’ve arranged digs for us?’
‘You presume right, Chloe. A seedy place – an hourly hotel, between Little Italy and Central Park, will be our palace for a few days. Not exactly the Mandarin Oriental.’
He drove out of the basement lot and merged into traffic, which was moving slowly, dragged down by the after-office commuters.
The hotel was as seedy as Broker had promised. A wad of cash flashed by Broker ensured that the desk clerk didn’t glance at them, hardly looking up from the lurid magazine he was thumbing through.
Broker pulled out his iPad once they had settled in and assembled in his room. ‘One of their stashes.’ He enlarged a section of the map of Harlem. ‘About half an hour drive from the garage, the other end of Harlem, near the river. The gang bought a dilapidated plot having a couple of semi-detached houses a few years back and converted it to a storage and distribution center. They deliberately let it run down on the outside and on the inside demolished the separating walls and made it one large warehouse.
‘They receive drugs here, unpack them and pack them into smaller units for street distribution. They usually have fifty Ks there, and that’s just coke. They have other nasties there, meth, PCP, 2CP, all kinds of stuff people inhale, inject, and consume.’
He pulled up a series of images of the warehouse. ‘The warehouse is basically a long rectangle with one of the smaller sides facing the street. It’s surrounded by a wall, and there’s a gated entrance at street level. Front door is solid oak, a few inches thick, opens outward. Has a sliding slat that covers a peephole. A couple of barred windows either side of the door, a bit high up, and three windows each on the side walls. The rear is exactly the same as the front. Just the two exits, front and back. All windows are barred. Four corners of the house have CCTV cameras. As far as Joe Public is concerned, this place is some sort of civic or community center. A couple of heavies always at the gate to discourage Joe Public and to ensure that the right community enters the warehouse. Not that it’s a street Joe Public would frequent. It’s gang territory, and they know enough to keep away.’
Chloe frowned at the images. ‘What about the surroundings?’
‘Low-income apartment blocks, where a lot of single-parent families, broken families, reside. This is not exactly the neighborhood where you’ll find moms and kids or couples going for a stroll. If there’s anyone loitering on the street, chances are they’re hoods.’
‘How come the police haven’t pulled this place down? If you know of this, surely they do too? In fact, how did you know the chapters operate from all those places, that garage, for example? If it was so easy to find where the gang holed up, surely the cops would have been on them like a ton of bricks,’ Bwana asked him.
Broker counted on his fingers. ‘One, the cops cannot act until they have probable cause, for which they have to mount surveillance, monitor various gangbangers, all that shit, which can take days, weeks, months or years. Just because they know that the garage is Hamm’s office isn’t worth jack.
‘Two, the chapter headquarters are properties owned by the gang through a series of shell companies, which have offshore accounts. The cops need warrants and have to cut through international red tape to tie all those together and lead it back to the gang. Werner’ – he nodded at his computer – ‘doesn’t need all that shit. Werner goes where he wants to’ – the program was a living being for Broker – ‘does what he wants, and leaves no trace. I have some incredibly smart guys all over the world, like the Ukraine for example, who put the pieces together. There’s a lot of technology that goes into gathering such info. Using gangbanger sightings at various places, correlating street chatter, drawing radii of influences, running facial recognition programs, analyzing Facebook posts, reading financial statements… lots of geeky stuff.’
The middle finger came out. ‘I shared my dossier on the gang with the cops a long time back, and I’m sure the intel in it has helped their organized crime task forces, but like I said, they’ve got their constraints.’
Broker made a disgusted face. ‘One of my analysts came across this warehouse by accident when he was gathering juice on illegal arms shipments in the city. I fed the NYPD this intel, and they never did anything about it. I took it up with Clare, and she said the NYPD had politely told her that I should mind my own business. So I did.’
Roger looked up at him. ‘Are you sure the gang still uses the warehouse?’
‘Yup. Tony has been watching it for a few weeks now. In fact, there’s possibly a stash there; he saw stuff being unloaded. Came two days back and the gang hasn’t shipped out whatever came in yet.’
Chloe scrolled through the various images. ‘How many bandits?’
‘About eight heavies work inside the warehouse and cover it, two or three park their asses on the street usually. But Tony says now there are anywhere from twelve to fifteen inside and five outside. Guess Hamm must have told them about us.’
‘Shouldn’t we tip the cops?’ Roger asked.
Broker grinned. ‘Done. I’ve a friend there who’s pretty high up; I’ve told him. Have also asked him to give us a few hours before they hit the warehouse. We go a long way back, plus Clare has pulled strings. Dunno what yarn she has spun, but he knows juice when he hears it.’
Bear cracked his knuckles. ‘What’s the plan?’
Broker grinned. ‘We do some distribution ourselves.’
Chapter 22
They hit the warehouse at noon the next day.
Bwana cruised down the street, driving a bright red Ford SUV with dark windows, wearing a red cut-off tee that showed off his heavily muscled arms, a black bandana covering his head. His windows were rolled down, and music blasted away, audible at the next planet. Not exactly a gangbanger look, more like dad-banger.
‘Five hoods outside, three to the left of the gate, two to the right. All wearing our favorite gang tats. Gate is wide open. No signs of activity outside or inside,’ he murmured into his collar mic.
‘Roger,’ came Broker’s voice through the flesh-colored earbud.
Bwana glanced disinterestedly at the hoods and drove slowly on. Once past them, he arranged his inside mirror and made eye contact with Roger and Bear, who were in the rear of the vehicle. They gave him a silent thumbs-up, having heard his call to Broker.
Bwana drove around the block and re-entered the street again, driving slowly. ‘All clear, except for the hoods.’
‘Roger. You can see us now.’
From the other end of the street an identical SUV approached, heading his way.
The hoods had clock
ed the Fords, but their postures hadn’t changed, their butts firmly parked against the compound wall. Bwana’s gaze passed over them casually. No weapons visible, but those lowriders are weighed down with something.
He drove past the first couple of hoods and idled to a stop a wheel length ahead of the three hoods. They straightened and stared balefully at him. In his mirror he could see the two hoods behind them looking their way.
He leaned his body across the seat, stuck his head out the window, and shouted above the music. ‘Say, bro, this where 5Clubs hang out?’
‘What?’ the one closest to him shouted back, stepping closer.
Big mistake.
His left arm blurred, a brown explosion of muscle and sinew, grabbed the hood by his tee and smashed his forehead against the A-pillar.
The other two hoods moved towards them, their hands darting inside their pockets and then jerked and fell to the ground as twin streams of electricity shot out from Roger and Bear, who had come from behind the SUV.
They turned off their Tasers, pulled out plastic ties, and cuffed the hoods’ hands and legs, and then duct-taped their mouths. Bwana got down from the vehicle and did the same for the hood whose face he had smashed. The three of them threw the three hoods in the SUV, slapping away their attempts to kick them.
The two hoods on the other side of the gate had started running towards their brothers when Broker slowed and Chloe slid out of their ride. The heavies were running too fast for her to unload the Taser, so she stood her ground and let them approach her.
A smooth step to the left, ducking beneath the gun that had appeared in the first hood’s hand and his wild thrust, she grabbed his wrist on its outward swing, twisted his arm, nearly dislocating his shoulder, and thrust him in the path of the hood behind him.
Both went crashing down, and swift kicks in their nuts took them out of combat. Broker hopped out and duct-taped their mouths, muffling their groans, and a minute later the two hoods were in the vehicle, immobile.
Broker looked up and down the street and across it. The street was quiet. No one came out of the apartment blocks opposite. Probably seen and experienced enough to mind their own business.
He looked down the street at Bwana. ‘All done here,’ he said into his collar mic. Bwana gave him an acknowledging nod and climbed into his Wagon.
They drew the SUVs to the next street, where Tony was lounging against a large NYC Department of Transport truck parked sideways and sectioned off by traffic cones. He guided them to park in a rough triangle when they approached, closing the view to onlookers. Tony, dressed in blue overalls with the DOT’s logo, rapped the driver’s window. Another stringy man climbed out, similarly dressed, bumped fists with Broker, and silently helped them transfer the five hoods.
Broker took hold of the legs of the last hood and Bwana, his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask. That’s Eric, another of my guys,’ he replied when Bwana looked at the truck and back at him.
Tony drove away when they had finished.
‘He’ll keep driving till we tell him to RV with us,’ Broker said and then grinned at Chloe. ‘That was smooth work. You had them down before I could join you.’
She chuckled. ‘You’re old, Broker. You wouldn’t have been of much help in any case.’
Bear cut in before he could reply. ‘Let’s hustle, shall we? The gang will soon notice the absence of their street patrol.’
They climbed in Bwana’s ride, and he pulled off, merging in the traffic unobtrusively.
Bwana stopped a couple of buildings away from the warehouse, on the opposite side of the street, and stepped out. They had a clear view of three of the CCTV cameras on the corners of the warehouse from that spot. ‘Broker, you’re the one they would have seen the least of, since Chloe and you were away from the sight of the front door and windows.’
Broker got out without a word and then stuck his head back in the window. ‘Ageist, that’s what the lot of you are.’
He turned his jacket inside out in the shadow of the vehicle – most people tend to remember upper clothing – and walked down the street, which was still empty. An hour had passed since their first entry in the street, but it was still deserted. Kids at school, guys either stoned or at work, moms at work.
He looked at the warehouse from the corner of his eyes as he walked past it and thought he detected sounds from inside and distant movement deep inside the window, but he couldn’t be sure. He went down to the far end of the street, pulled out a rolled-up newspaper from his jacket pocket and read it as he walked back. Nothing had changed in the second pass.
The other four were standing in the shade of the SUV when he reached them. All of them had turned their jackets inside out, and Chloe had tied her hair up and tucked it under a baseball cap. All of them were wearing dull-colored combat trousers with large pockets. The jackets concealed their guns in their shoulder or hip holsters, and carried their spare magazines, and their leg wear had large and deep pockets down the thighs, knees, and legs, for more magazines, a backup gun, duct tape, plastic ties and first aid kits. Each one of them had blades strapped to their chest or down their backs or trouser legs.
Bear and Chloe dug out road barriers and signs and each walked two hundred yards down and placed them across the street. On top of the barriers they hung large ‘Road Temporarily Closed’ signs.
Bear adjusted the sign at his end and looked at it critically for a moment. Broker said the NYPD would stay out of this. Wonder if they’re watching. He stopped thinking about it and placed smaller signs at the entrances to the apartment blocks on the street.
Roger and Broker watched them while keeping an eye on the warehouse.
Bwana climbed inside the SUV from the passenger side and lifted a long, heavy case from behind the seat. He unwrapped a Remington M24A3 sniper rifle from the case and put it together with practiced ease. The Remington, along with the Barrett, were his sniper rifles of choice, and as he slapped a Leupold Ultra M3 scope on it, he remembered the last time he had used it had been in Iraq.
The target then had been a planner and banker for terrorist organizations and was the brains behind several suicide bomb attacks in Europe and Africa.
Clare had green-lighted the assignment, and a three-man team had followed him from country to country before deciding on the hit in Iraq. The target had been paranoid about his security and had never stayed in the same country for more than a month and, even then, stayed only in apartments for less than a week, places that his organization had vetted and secured.
Broker had picked his trail up by tracking down his advance team, who went to the apartments and secured them by paying cash and, on the rare occasion, by card – a mistake that Broker gleefully capitalized on.
The three-man team had worn white dishdashahs, the long, one-piece dress traditionally worn by men, covered their faces with gutrahs, the headpieces, and had followed the target in a Toyota Saloon that had seen better days. Three days of sweltering heat in Dora, Baghdad, choking dust, and endless traffic, and they were no closer to finding a pattern to the target’s movement or a spot for the hit. The target’s apartment was surrounded by gun-toting men all day and night, and was struck off immediately as a take-out site.
Conscious that the target could leave the country at any time, they finally decided to take out the target the next day.
There were two constants in the target’s movements – one was the street he took in his heavily armored Land Cruiser once he exited the apartment. This street led to a crossroad where the vehicle took any exit randomly.
The crossroad would be the site of the hit, since the vehicle slowed down almost to a stop to allow for oncoming traffic.
The other constant was the target’s seating in the Land Cruiser. The target sat in the rear, next to a window, directly behind the driver.
The sniper’s hide would be the flat roof of an apartment block – apartment block was being generous to the bombed-out building – behind the target’s building, taller than it, w
ith a clear view of the street.
The bullet would have to traverse a shade over two thousand yards in the heat of the day, a temperature of around a hundred and ten Fahrenheit and a wind speed of eight meters/second. Difficult shooting conditions, but Bwana had shot in those conditions before.
The challenge was to get the target to lower his window, which was made of toughened, bulletproof glass.
The three-man team occupied the roof of the building at dawn the next day. The building was deserted, a hollow shell, through which the ghosts of the dead wandered.
Bwana and his spotter surveyed the roof and positioned his Remington on the site that afforded the fullest view of the street. Bwana set the Harris bipod up, put together the rifle, took wind and temperature readings, and then did what the best snipers did – lay down prone and willed his metabolism to slow and went inside himself. His spotter did the same.
The third man went down to the street and did a check of their comms – barely detectable earpieces and microphones that were covered by the folds of the gutrah.
At eleven in the morning the Land Cruiser swung in front of the block and waited, its engine ticking over. The man on the street whispered in his gutrah and got an acknowledgement from Bwana and the spotter.
At half past eleven, the target’s bodyguards came out, forming a protective circle around the target. One of them opened the door for him, and Khalid Ashraf, the target, settled into the window seat with a satisfied grunt. The Toyota set off.
A hundred yards later, the Toyota slowed, and Ashraf squinted through the window at the large white banner on the side of the street. ‘Salaam Alaikum, Ashraf,’ read the banner in large Arabic script.
Another hundred yards, another banner. ‘Ashraf, we have a secret for you.’
Ashraf leant forward, ignoring everything else, and his eyes grew wide as the next banner approached, ‘Pay attention, Ashraf.’