The Warriors Series Boxset I

by Ty Patterson

  The Toyota was approaching the crossroad and was slowing down in anticipation. Khalid ignored everything else on the street and yelled out to the driver to go slower as he spotted another banner on the street. The banner became his universe.

  He squinted harder to make out the smaller lettering. He couldn’t.

  He squashed his face against the glass and tried again. No luck. He wiped the glass with his sleeve and tried again. The letters still remained unreadable. The banner was almost in line with his window now.

  He cursed and lowered the window.

  ‘I have a message for you, Ashraf,’ it read.

  And Bwana took the shot.

  The spotter continued watching through a pair of Steiner binoculars and then patted him silently on his back and stood up without a word. Bwana took apart the rifle swiftly, without haste, and looked up at the spotter when it was neatly packed. Bwana acknowledged only one other sniper as his better.

  That sniper was Zeb, his spotter on that day.

  Roger tapped the roof, bringing Bwana out of his reverie. He folded the rear seats, set up a tripod and mounted the rifle on it. He made small adjustments and murmured, ‘All set,’ in his collar mic.

  Broker went to the front passenger side and leaned casually against it while Roger fiddled with something stuck in the rear wheel. Chloe and Bear were still on the street, on opposite sides, making sure the street was clear, Bear drifting closer to the warehouse.

  ‘Now,’ Broker said and leaned inside and turned on a cell phone jammer. An NSA classified device – he had gotten hold of it through his channels – it had an effective radius of a kilometer, which was enough for them.

  Bwana took a deep breath and released it and then swung the driver’s side passenger door sideways. He now had a view of the warehouse and, more importantly, the three CCTV cameras.

  He crouched down, and the first camera jumped at him through the Leupold. A moment to allow the rifle to become an extension of his arm, the trigger, a sixth digit on his hand, and the camera to the right disintegrated. Bwana swung the rifle steadily to the left and shot that one.

  When Broker saw the third camera explode, he nodded at Roger. Roger straightened and, wiping his hands on his trousers, reached inside the SUV and picked up a small satchel. He walked swiftly through the gate of the warehouse and made his way to the corner on the right.

  He glanced back and saw Bear heading to the corner on the left with a similar satchel. He hugged the wall and ran to the first window. It was glassed and barred and a foot above his head. He paused for a moment and heard movement and muffled voices from inside. None of the voices appeared to be shouting or strained.

  His Glock slid smoothly in his hand and, reversing his grip, he extended his hand and rapped the glass firmly. Highly unlikely anyone’s near the windows. They’ll be packing and unpacking and doing whatever shit hoods do inside.

  From the satchel he took out a couple of cylindrical objects, a stun grenade and a CS gas grenade, pulled their pins, and tossed them through the broken window in an overarm arc.

  He heard the first bang from the stun grenade when he reached the second window, and then he heard shouting. A second bang followed, and he smiled thinly. Bear.

  He broke the next two windows and tossed devices through them and sprinted to the rear of the warehouse. Pandemonium had broken out inside the warehouse, the flash-bangs, shouting and screaming becoming a wall of sound. More than ten inside, closer to fifteen, and likely this is their first experience of flash-bangs. How does it feel, assholes?

  Half a minute from entering the gate, he navigated the rear corner and stopped suddenly.

  The rear door was wide open, and five hoods were outside.

  Three of them were armed, one had an AR-15 rifle and two of them had Skorpion machine pistols. The other two were in no position to offer any resistance. One was retching against the wall, and the fifth was kneeling down, holding his stomach. The three with guns were looking through the open door in amazement and shock.

  AR-15 spun round on hearing Bwana’s approach, his loose shirt stretching tight across his stocky frame, the barrel coming up.

  ‘The fuck you are? What…?’

  Roger flowed from a standstill, all thought and speed, moving under the arc of the rising rifle, twisting his body to the side, grabbing it with both hands like a javelin, and jabbed back, hard, catching the hood flush in the face. He collapsed in a heap; another jab and he was out of the equation.

  Roger turned to look at Bear and saw that he didn’t need any help.

  Bear had two facing him with the Skorpions, but he had the advantage of surprise and training. It also helped that the two were bunched closely together. He moved swiftly, turning, keeping one hood between the other and, coming inside the firing arm of the first hood, kicked his knee out. As the hood fell, losing his gun, Bear picked him up bodily, a hand on his collar and one at his belt, and threw him at the second hood. He hit them with a Skorpion and swiftly bound their hands with the plastic ties.

  He bumped fists with Roger, and the two of them picked up the three hoods and threw them inside the warehouse. The two affected by the stun grenades were still dazed and stumbled inside the warehouse without offering any resistance when Roger and Bear frisked them for weapons and then pushed them inside.

  Roger took a quick peek and saw the rest of the gangbangers were lying incapacitated and dazed, some of them crying.

  ‘Better be sure,’ he said and picked up the fallen AR-15 and fired a burst in the ceiling of the warehouse.

  He stepped to the side immediately, slammed the door shut, and wedged the AR-15 against it. It wouldn’t hold against a determined and concerted assault from inside, but they weren’t expecting one and were prepared for that eventuality too.

  Bear opened his satchel and brought out a thick steel mending brace, a battery-operated screw driver and drill set, and with Roger helping, sealed the door against the frame with the brace.

  They collected the Skorpions and the AR-15 and with a last look around, headed back.

  ‘On our way,’ Bear said in his mic and got an acknowledging ‘roger’ from Broker.

  Bear threw the last of the flash-bangs and CS gas grenades through the windows as they left, for good measure.

  Roger looked at him quizzically, and a grin parted the thick beard. ‘Mamma always said I should finish my lunchbox at school.’

  He trotted to the rear of the vehicle and removed the street signs, and Chloe did the same at the other end.

  ‘All quiet here,’ Broker commented when Roger removed the magazines from the guns and dumped them in the SUV and joined him at the front. ‘Not a peep from anyone within the warehouse. If they had, Bwana would have fired at and through the door, and that would have pegged them back.’

  ‘What about spectators from the apartments?’

  ‘Nah. I think they have learnt to leave well enough alone.’

  Roger left him to help Bear and Chloe load the signs in the rear, and they all climbed in, a tight fit this time with Chloe perched on Bear’s lap, since Bwana was still manning the Remington.

  Broker powered the ride and reached down to turn off the jammer. He twisted around to check they all were aboard and then called a number.

  ‘No names. You know who I am. It’s time to ride and claim your headlines,’ he drawled when he got a reply. ‘About ten, no thirteen or fifteen of them,’ he corrected when Roger mouthed at him silently.

  ‘Of course they’re alive. We don’t believe in killing,’ he said piously. ‘You’ll need to hurry, though. Those bastards are passive at the moment, but that might change, and also the gang might send more hoods.’

  ‘How’re they passive? Well, I dunno. Hoods have a siesta in the afternoon, don’t they?’

  The phone squawked, and Broker cut in. ‘That’s all I can share. The headlines are all yours for the asking if you move immediately,’ and he hung up.

  ‘NYPD?’ Chloe asked him as she loosene
d her hair and tied it again and replaced the cap over her head.

  ‘Deputy Commissioner. I’ve done him enough favors for him not to ask too many questions.’

  ‘What’re we waiting for now?’ Chloe asked. ‘We shouldn’t be here when the NYPD arrive.’

  ‘We’ll wait till we hear their sirens,’ Bear replied in a muffled voice, Chloe’s back squashed against his face.

  ‘Huh, and who asked you to talk?’ she said, jamming her back further against him.

  Bwana fired and reloaded immediately, the muffled clap of the shot loud in the confines of the vehicle, cutting off any further talk. He reloaded.

  All of them peered at the warehouse. ‘Got someone?’ Roger broke the silence.

  Bwana continued keeping his vigil through the scope. ‘Wasn’t aiming to. Saw a face at the slat and shot well high to discourage them. I don’t reckon they’re still in any shape to attempt an escape.’

  He glanced sideways at Bear and Roger. ‘That brace will hold, you reckon?’

  Roger nodded. ‘They’ll need a heavy battering ram to rip it off the door, and something tells me those guys in there are in no shape to lift a battering ram, let alone use it.’

  No other faces appeared at the slat, though a few times some gangbangers fired from inside. That came to a stop soon enough when Bwana placed his shots in a tight grouping at the top of the door. Another ten minutes and they heard sirens coming closer, and Broker rolled the SUV.

  He drifted down the street while keeping an eye on his mirror, and when he saw the first flashing lights, he sped off. Just as he turned into the next street, he rang another number and put the call on speaker.

  The phone rang five times before being picked up. There was silence at the other end, though they could hear the person breathing in the distance.

  Broker chuckled. ‘Hamm, is that how they teach you to create an aura? By keeping silent? You guys should write a book, The Badass Guide to Intimidating People. It would be a best seller.

  ‘But maybe not. I plumb forgot that reading isn’t exactly at the top of a hood’s hobbies.’

  Silence still.

  ‘By the way you guys have a warehouse in Harlem, don’t you?’ He gave the address and got no response in return.

  ‘You had that warehouse.’ He hung up and drove.

  Chapter 23

  The Watcher stretched in his hideout and put down his scope for a moment.

  He had a vacant apartment in the block opposite the warehouse, with a good view of the entire street and the warehouse. He had broken into the apartment at dawn, padlocked it from the inside, and had then set up his hide.

  A Barrett mounted on a bipod, a Leupold scope and binoculars, water and rations, and he had everything he needed for the whole day. He had seen the five hoods make their way to the street, with a lot of backslapping and low-rider tugging, and park themselves against the wall. They frequently adjusted their guns and privates as women passed them by, and their loud and lewd comments reached him even over the distance.

  He had seen Bwana and Broker driving up and the smooth taking down of the hoods. When they returned, he had trained the Barrett on them, adjusting the scope so that the crosshair was bang on target. He could have taken them out any time he wanted to. He lip-read them whenever they were on his side of the truck, and from their actions and the snippets of conversation, he knew what they planned.

  It hadn’t been difficult to track them down. The voice on the phone had been most informative, and the Watcher had found Broker’s apartment block on Columbus Avenue easily.

  Breaking in was out of the question since Broker’s security was unrivalled. The Watcher studied the block and Broker’s apartment overlooking the avenue, and a half day and several coffees later, he was still struggling for ideas.

  He drifted off to a Thai food truck, and when he returned, he noticed the window washers abseiling down the apartment block.

  Maybe there isn’t a need to break in.

  He studied the livery of the window washers and hung around to see what time they clocked off work. They left their equipment on the roof after work each day, a bonus for him. A couple of days later, he approached the block wearing the livery of the window washers, rappelling harness on top of his coverall, walked past the concierge, who barely registered his presence, and after using a cloned access card, went to the roof.

  The scaffolding rig was already in place, locked down, with weights loaded on it. He picked the lock and moved the rig across the roof to above Broker’s apartment and secured it. He donned the rest of his abseiling kit, and after attaching and securing his ropes, he rapidly dropped two hundred feet down.

  Thick sheets of dark blue glass, twelve-feet-high and across the entire breadth of the apartment, fronted Broker’s lounge and a large bedroom. The Watcher dug out a small object the size of a dime, covered it in a sticky putty the exact shade of the glass, and stuck it in one of the upper corners of the lounge window. He walked across the face of the window and stuck a similar voice-activated bug in the other upper corner and stuck two more bugs, for good measure, in the two upper corners of the bedroom window.

  The sticky putty, which muffled the radio waves emitted by the bugs and rendered them undetectable by the most sophisticated equipment available, looked like chewing gum and was the brainchild of NSA’s ANT division. It was so deeply classified that even Broker hadn’t got hold of it or was even aware of its existence.

  The Watcher walked up the face of the block and secured the receiver to the underside of the air-conditioning unit on the roof, and attached a transmitting device that would take the signal from the receiver and broadcast it to a wider range.

  After moving the rig back to its original location, he took a last look around before heading down to the basement.

  Broker’s Rover was in a brightly lit corner of the basement facing a ceiling-mounted CCTV camera.

  The Watcher rolled up the collar of his coverall and donned a baseball cap that he pulled low over his face. He pulled out an unlit cigarette and walked casually across the basement toward the Rover.

  When he was six feet away from the vehicle, he stuck another putty-covered bug to the front of the cigarette and blew on it. The bug flew from the cigarette-shaped blowpipe and stuck to the roof of the Rover, looking like debris from the road. So long as Broker didn’t remove the debris or take the Rover to a car wash, the Watcher would have ears on the vehicle.

  Having eyes on his movements was easier given that Broker’s vehicles were fitted with custom LoJacks.

  LoJack was a well-known manufacturer of vehicle tracking and recovery systems that enabled stolen cars to be recovered. The manufacturer installed small radio transceivers in vehicles that emitted a signal to tracking units. The NCIC, National Crime Information Center system used by federal and state law enforcement agencies, talked to the LoJack database, and thus stolen vehicles could be quickly tracked and recovered by the cops.

  The Watcher, while walking across, had another NSA gadget in his pocket – a battery-operated miniature spectrum analyzer that rapidly scanned thousands of frequencies in milliseconds. The NSA had the frequency ranges used by manufacturers such as LoJack, and by the time the Watcher had passed the Rover and exited the building, he had the frequency to the vehicle.

  The Watcher put his eye back to the scope to see the last of the police roll out their tapes across the gate and the door, and drive away leaving silence and an empty warehouse behind. He waited. The sounds and smells of dinner being prepared drifted through the block, the liquid laugh of a woman wafted and hovered and slowly broke up, and still he waited, the silence of the apartment a second skin.

  It was close to midnight when the sedan nudged its way through the street and stopped in front of the warehouse. Doors opened and thumped shut quietly, and through the scope he saw three figures head to the warehouse.

  Forty-five minutes later, the figures returned, the two on either side of the central figure doing a lot of nod
ding and head shaking. The Watcher zeroed in on the central figure, Hamm, who turned to his left, to Quinn. Find them. Put the word out.

  Quinn nodded. What about the other warehouses and businesses?

  You’ll get more people.

  He slid inside the rear of the sedan, doors thumped again, and the sedan drove off.

  The Watcher waited a couple of hours more, and in the deep of the night, he left the apartment as soundlessly as he had entered, the rifle folded neatly in a noise-and-shock-proof sling across his shoulder, a smaller backpack resting on his back.

  He approached the warehouse in the shadows, vaulting over the wall in the furthest corner, approaching the rear. The rear door was still intact, the brace gleaming in the dark. He turned on a red nightlight and saw that it would take too much time, make too much noise, to remove it.

  He walked around the building, pausing in the shadow of the front. The night slept. He ducked under the tape and, stepping to his left immediately, hugged the wall.

  The warehouse smelt heavy; fear and sweat mingled with the odor of CS gas and the flash-bangs. Mingled with it was the smell of drugs. Furniture was strewn across the floor, large tables lying on their sides, some of them smashed, cardboard cartons and rolls of unused baggies strewn all over.

  The Watcher reached into his backpack and removed four time-delay incendiary flares and, setting the delay on them, tossed them in the corners of the warehouse.

  He had reached the end of the street when the warehouse went up with a loud whoosh, outlining his form briefly before he merged into deeper shadow. He walked on without breaking stride and pulled out his phone.

  ‘911? Reporting a fire.’

  He flipped his untraceable phone shut. That was a good move by Broker. Switching vehicles. Where could they be?

  Bwana and Roger were wolfing down sandwich rolls for breakfast in a Subway a block away from their hotel when Broker, Bear, and Chloe joined them the next day. Bear and Bwana filled the café with just their presence.