by Ty Patterson
‘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 nodding and head shaking. The Watcher zeroed in on the central figu
re, 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.
Chloe looked at the roll in Bwana’s hand and grimaced. ‘Bwana, you do realize it’s called breakfast for a reason, and not lunch?’
Bwana took a larger bite. ‘Yup. But I’m a growing boy and need all the vitamins. You’re all growed out, so you don’t need them.’
Bear stifled a chuckle at Chloe’s glare and headed to the counter to get nourishment for the rest of them.
Broker had his laptop running when he returned and was replying to Roger. ‘We lie low for a day or two while we decide which other place to hit.’
Bear paused while handing out their drinks. ‘What about Isakson? Is he in the loop? Does he know about yesterday?’
Broker shook his head. ‘Nope and nope. He might put two and two together, but we have carte blanche to do things our way. That was the condition I insisted on for helping him.’
He went back to studying his laptop. His intelligence business did not need his full-time presence, and he used a light touch with managing Tony and his other managers, but he still studied all the intelligence reports that were collated overnight, and commented on them before they got distributed to various clients.
His phone rang, interrupting his reading. He glanced at it and picked it up. ‘Tony? What’s up?’
He listened for a moment. ‘Did the NYPD approach you?’
‘All right, keep me posted.’ He leaned back and gazed out of the window for several moments, not registering the inquiring glances from the rest.
Chloe finally broke the silence. ‘Spill it, Broker. We’ve been properly respectful for long enough.’
He turned to look at her, grinning. ‘If you guys had been really respectful, you’d have allowed me to speak first.’
He turned his gaze on Bwana and Bear. ‘The warehouse was burnt at night. Late night. The NYPD suspect it’s arson. They’ve found traces of incendiary devices at the site, and the official line is that they’re pursuing all lines of inquiry. Unofficially, they don’t give a damn. They’ve got the gangbangers, they’ve got a shit load of drugs, and they’ve got the limelight. The case will be buried and closed later.’
He held his hand up to forestall them. ‘That’s all we know, guys. Tony is looking into it and will let me know if he has more intel.’
‘Could 5Clubs have razed it to the ground?’ Bwana asked curiously. ‘Maybe they’ll claim damages from insurance.’
Broker shrugged halfheartedly. ‘It’s possible. I’m just wondering why they’d want to bring attention to themselves, if that’s what they’ve done.’
They went at it for a few more minutes without any theory taking shape. Bear said disgustedly, ‘They wouldn’t be a gang if they acted rationally, would they?’
And on that, they put it behind them.
Broker folded his laptop to tablet mode and pulled up Google Maps. He zeroed in on three addresses – in the Meatpacking District, East Harlem, and in Midtown West.
‘The first is another crack warehouse, very similar to the one we busted. The second is a gas station in East Harlem. They own this station… a lot of their customers end up reporting card fraud. They probably use card skimmers to rip the numbers. They use the gas station to also consolidate their daily take from their local businesses. The last one, in Hell’s Kitchen, is a high-end strip club. Business types from Wall Street, corporate honchos, media guys… you know the kind, they all head there.’
Bwana tilted the tablet toward himself to see better. ‘Why don’t we hit all three?’
Bear shook his head immediately. ‘Let’s turn the screw slowly. Let’s do one and then another a few days later.’
Broker nodded approvingly. ‘What I figured. So, guys, which place do we go for?’
Chloe grinned when hers was the only finger resting on the strip club. ‘I thought you guys wouldn’t pass on the opportunity to see some flesh. Are you being righteous on my account?’
None of them replied.
Chloe looked back at the map and frowned. What did I miss?
‘Gotcha. More innocents at the strip club.’
Bear’s lips twitched, though it was hard to make out with his thick facial hair. ‘I wouldn’t call patrons of a strip club innocent exactly, but yes, more people there.’
They went back to studying the map as Broker zoomed in on the gas station. ‘On Second Avenue and has exits to the street on two sides. Other two sides are walled up. A Spanish restaurant, a saloon, and a grocery store opposite, on the other side of the street. All with a clear view of the service station.’
‘We watch tomorrow?’
‘Yup. In turns, every two hours from four p.m. in the evening to midnight. You and Bear go first, then Bwana and Roger. I’ll go last, with Tony. After six hours, we change partners, you pair with Bwana then. We’re looking for one vehicle with a couple of guys, maybe three, though I think two is the most they’ll send. One to drive, the other, the bagman. If they don’t fuel up but drive right to the glass door, one guy going in and coming out very quickly with a bag or case of some kind… those will be our boys. One of our pair will idle in a car nearby.’
Bwana shook his head mournfully. ‘Not even a contest.’
Chapter 24
Bear and Chloe walked down the block on Second Avenue the next evening and, after one pass past the service station, crossed the avenue and headed to the eating joint. The place was empty, the lull between lunch hour and the evening traffic giving it a sleepy feel.
Chloe rummaged in her bag and spread out a large map of New York and started circling the attractions while talking about their plans for the next day, tourists filling in every available minute with things to do and places to go. Bear moved around to sit with her and look at the map better, and watch the gas station across the street.
‘I was thinking we’d struggle to kill two hours. I shouldn’t have worried,’ Chloe commented when their orders arrived. Bear’s tray was overflowing with food, whereas she had ordered just a salad.
Bear grinned, his eyes softening. ‘I’m compensating for you.’
She l
aid her phone in front of their trays, the head of the phone facing the street. It was a Broker gadget, a long-distance video recorder whose lens was built in the head. ‘I doubt we’ll see them on our watch. Too early.’
Bear nodded silently. His silences had never been an issue in their relationship, Chloe was the talkative one, and he was the listener. Well trained was how Chloe described his silences.
The only excitement during their watch was when an overweight drunk lurched in the pizza joint and waved a long, wicked knife at the cashier, a blade that caught the lights and looked scarier than it was. Weaving on his feet, he shouted at the teenager to open his cash register. The joint was nearly empty, just Bear and Chloe and another couple, and in the sudden silence, the drunk’s loud, labored breathing sounded like the wind across the windows.
The drunk looked around when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Let me take this. Someone might get hurt.’ Bear smiled down at him, his hand gripping the drunk’s fist like a vice. He twisted the arm around, kicked his feet back, and leaned the drunk against the counter. The drunk offered no resistance, and by the time the teenager had overcome his trembling, the owner, who was also the chef and his dad, rushed in from the kitchen.
He stopped short when he saw the drunk. ‘Not again! Mike, I thought you had quit drinking.’ He scolded the drunk in Spanish, who was now weeping, and then turned to Bear. Bear realized this was not a genuine holdup and released Mike.
‘Gracias, Señor. Mike is my brother, and he does this a few times when he’s drunk. But he had sworn on our mother that he’d quit.’ He whacked his brother on his head and pushed him to the teenager, who led him away.
‘No police?’ Bear asked mildly.
The owner shook his head furiously. ‘No, Señor. This is family. Mike is harmless. He’ll be alright once he’s sober. Thank you for helping.’
Bear went back to Chloe, who had kept a watch on the gas station. ‘Anything?’
