by Ty Patterson
‘What do you think it means?’
Bear sighed and straightened his long frame and brought his seat forward. He knew what she was referring to.
There was one last page in the journal that Broker hadn’t told the cops about.
He’d torn out that page, made copies of it for all of them, and only then had handed the book to Rolando.
That page had Shattner’s last entry, the day he left the kids with Elaine Rocka.
Forgot to tell Kirkus their messaging system, and now it may be too late. Our next call is not due for a few days. The system is simple. We all call a number and leave a voice mail on it and then text the other guys a password. The password can be anything, numbers or letters, or a combination, but has to have the number nine in it somewhere. Where the nine appears doesn’t matter, it just has to be there. Asked Diego about it once, and he looked evilly at me, and I thought we were going to do the gun-forehead routine again. I don’t know why the nine and why not any other number, but the nine in the password means that it’s an authentic gang message.
Broker had thrown Werner at it but wasn’t hopeful. You can’t crack a code on just one facet, you need some more. ‘At least this way, the gang won’t know that we know… and just maybe will still have the same system. All that we need is to pick up a few brawlers important enough, knock their heads, and we’ll know what it means, and then we go listening to their messages… that messaging number’s the same one we found on that phone Roger picked up in Arizona.’
‘Dunno.’ Bear shrugged. ‘Broker has that thing of his chomping away at it, so we might find something.’
‘That brain of yours hasn’t a clue?’ Chloe teased him.
Bear scratched his beard, embarrassed. Most people looked at him and went, all that meat must mean the brain’s small, and he was more than happy for them to think that. During his Special Ops days, he had learnt it was better to be underestimated than overestimated.
‘I did give it some thought. Bwana too, but we didn’t get anywhere. Thing is, a random number is impossible to break unless you have the context to it or clues to that.’
A Cherokee with blackened windows swept inside the open entrance of the warehouse and unloaded four men, not warehouse workers, unless warehouse workers had suspicious-looking bulges underneath their tops.
‘Lots of them now,’ Bear murmured, glancing at the clock in the dash, eleven p.m. ‘I reckon about fifteen.’
At two a.m., three Patriots, all identical, with black, darkened windows and dimmed headlights, passed once down the street, Bear and Chloe squeezing themselves down below the window line. They saw the dimmed lights returning in the distance and, pushing their seats back, lay prone and pulled dark linen blankets over themselves. Just in time, as the lead vehicle turned on two spotlights on its roof, playing on both sides of the street, and moved slowly, looking for vehicles with occupants. They passed the Chevy without any break in speed, and at the end of the block they could hear the three engines fade out and then increase as they U-turned and returned. One more pass down the block, the searchlights probing and finding silent rows of unoccupied vehicles, and then the lights turned off, and the Patriots wheeled inside the warehouse.
The warehouse doused all its exterior lights, and in the darkness they could hear the soft thuds of doors opening and closing. They raised themselves up cautiously and, through night vision, saw the first set of wheels had spilled out four armed men, the last, another four. When the eight were all out, the vehicle in the center spewed its passengers – the driver, who held the door open for Diego, who was followed by a hatchet-faced man. Jose Cruz.
Seven men formed a circle around Cruz and Diego, and at a hand wave from Diego, the warehouse emptied, the men from the Cherokee herding workers to a bus outside. Some gunmen accompanied the workers, and when the last had boarded, it shuddered to life and nosed down the street, the rest of the gunmen following it in their ride.
Eleven left, must be the inner circle. Bear observed the circle, the way they stood and moved. Forces, for sure, but slack and out of training. Wouldn’t last an hour in the Farm. The Farm was the Agency’s secretive training ground, where they honed their skills, and kept up with the newest weapons, technology and tradecraft.
The circle shaped itself and moved inside the warehouse, two men staying out to roll shut the large sliding doors. The doors, well oiled, rumbled as quietly as doors their size could, shutting the gang leader and his number two from the outside world. A light turned on inside the building, silhouetting the two outside, one of them leaning against a SUV and puffing deeply on his smoke, the other circling aimlessly.
After an hour, one door rolled open a crack, and a voice asked something sharply and got an indistinct reply. Satisfied, the voice disappeared, and the door slid back. Checking they aren’t sleeping, Chloe mouthed at Bear.
Bear reached back for his backpack and slid something in his pocket, moving carefully so that his heavy frame didn’t rock their wheels. He shook his head, Nothing, when Chloe looked questioningly at him.
After another half an hour, he started timing every ten-minute block in his mind, and at the third block, he eased open his door and slid out, ignoring Chloe’s whispered shout.
Using the wheel well and the rear mirror as cover, he peered out, waiting, counting down the ten minutes.
In the last third minute, the smoker flicked his second smoke to the ground, said something over his shoulder and disappeared around the corner of the structure. The second man laughed, and he walked to the other corner, but kept walking straight ahead till he reached the wall.
A cool night, nothing to occupy the mind except the bladder. Unzip, relieve, zip, and wipe hands, sigh, and job done. Fifteen seconds to turn around.
Bear raced across the street, through the entrance, his thin rubber-soled shoes whispering no louder than the wind, reached the first Patriot, leaned down, straightened, one single move, moved to the next, and then the third, and raced back. The first guard had rounded the corner when he reached the shelter of the Chevy, and the second had joined him when he climbed inside.
He shushed a furious Chloe, who had unlimbered her gun, ready to provide covering fire if he had needed it. Each of them had tracking devices in their backpacks, fitted with a specially designed magnet. A sliding switch turned them on, and they latched on to the undercarriage of the vehicle till the end of eternity, or till they were detected and turned off.
An hour later, one of the men came out on the street and stood there looking up and down, the night light gleaming dully off an automatic rifle across his chest. He removed a flashlight from his pocket and started checking cars randomly on both sides of the street. The Chevy was the tenth set of wheels he inspected, his light reflecting off the window, revealing a pockmarked face and thin moustache. He walked on, checking cars behind it, doubling back to inspect a few ahead of it, and when he was satisfied, he rapped on the sliding door.
Cruz, in the center of the phalanx, barked orders all the way to his ride, receiving nods in return, and his gang boss duties done, climbed inside, and disappeared in engine growls and exhaust.
Silence crept down, and in the darkness, a shadow detached from behind the driver’s wheel well and stood and stretched. Bear wiped his hands against his fatigues and waited for Chloe to join him. She had taken cover behind a vehicle behind him.
They walked a block in the shadows – the Chevy left behind to be part of the furniture on the street – turned a corner, walked three streets, and a Ford’s door swung open.
Bwana thrust hot coffee in their palms and smiled in the darkness, his teeth lighting up the gloom. ‘How many you shot?’
Chapter 35
It was dawn when they returned to their base, Broker up and waiting for them, and when they all turned to go in, Elaine Rocka stood pointing a Colt 45 at them.
‘Whoa,’ Broker exclaimed, raising his hands in the air. ‘We’re on your side, ma’am.’
She lowered the gu
n. ‘I heard voices and came down to investigate.’ A flicker of amusement swept across her face as she read their expressions. ‘I grew up on a farm in Texas. I was hunting foxes with an air-gun when I was seven and went hunting with my dad when I was ten. I can handle guns.’ She turned and left and threw another over her shoulder, ‘And I can make them count.’
Broker looked pointedly at Bwana. ‘Maybe we should induct her in our team. Bet she’d shoot better than this lug.’ A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he turned to see Tony leaning against the door Rocka had just vacated. ‘Some guard you are. She came down to see what was up. Bet you were resting your ass… and your head.’
Tony grinned good-naturedly. ‘Boss, I had her in my sights, was behind her. But I loved that look on your face when she pointed that cannon at you. Priceless.’ He stuck his gun in his waist and jammed his fingers in his ears to ignore Broker’s swearing.
‘If I‘ve made your day, why don’t you rustle up coffee for us, and we can listen to what these guys have been up to?’ Broker growled.
He listened silently as Chloe outlined the night, interrupting her just once to fetch his laptop and check that the trackers were active. Leaning back when she had finished, he sipped his coffee appreciatively. ‘He would make some woman happy. Best danged cook I ever met.’ He smiled at Tony’s snort from the kitchen.
‘Let’s observe them for a night or two more. We don’t want to be tracking the wrong car and go to Alaska.’ A plan was taking shape in his mind, two plans actually, but they had to verify that Cruz stuck to his routine and used the same vehicles.
Bwana and Roger were on surveillance the next night, the six-foot-four black man almost dwarfing his companion, who wasn’t short himself, an inch over six feet. They carjacked the vehicle in front of the Chevy, Roger occupying it while Bwana made himself comfortable in the Chevy. Roger whispered, ‘You comfortable, bro?’
‘Compared to some places we’ve been, this is the Ritz,’ Bwana drily replied through his mic.
The black Cherokee swept in, right on time at eleven at night, and the men Bear and Chloe had mentioned unloaded. The activity level of the packers and loaders increased, and three hours later, on time again, the three SUVs repeated their passes of the street and finally went in.
Cruz and Diego stuck to their routine of the previous night, and when they’d left, Roger and Bwana unlimbered themselves, stretched to loosen the kinks, and walked back to the same block, where Bear and Chloe were waiting for them.
Broker was on his laptop when they returned, notes filled with his scribbling spread out in front of him.
‘What?’ Chloe asked him when she saw his expression.
‘I got something.’ There was the slightest trace of hope in his voice. ‘Werner’s narrowed down the thirty to three.’ He qualified his comment. ‘Werner returned twenty names in the first pass, and I refined the search and anomaly pattern, and it returned three.’
‘This is based on that number nine?’ Bear raised his eyebrows.
‘Yup.’
‘Hell, Broker, the nine could mean anything. I’m sure the number nine figures in everyone’s lives in the world!’
Broker nodded sagely. ‘Why I further refined the search and made Werner home in on the number that had more than a mundane existence in their lives!’
‘So who are they?’ Chloe asked impatiently.
Broker turned one of the sheets around for them to read.
Becky Pisano, Rick Stonehaus, and Floyd Wheat were underlined twice on the list. ‘Pisano’s youngest daughter was born on the ninth, Stonehaus’s dog died on the ninth, and Wheat, his hobby is base jumping, had his first jump on the ninth.’
‘Well, now,’ Bwana said in satisfaction, ‘shall we pick them up?’
Chloe rolled her eyes. ‘We’re still going after Cruz while you do whatever you have to do to dig into those names further?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Nothing’s changed, other than having the glimmer of a string for us to pull at and see what unravels.’
‘Good.’ She turned to Bwana and Roger. ‘We take them down tomorrow.’
Bwana grimaced. ‘Us four against them eleven? Not fair is it.’
‘You have a better idea?’
‘Rog and I could go. Just the two of us.’
Chapter 36
The takedown would happen outside the city, late at night, on an open road that would be clear of traffic at the time they were planning it.
Broker had arranged for two contractors they knew to stay round the clock with the family. Pieter Traut and Derek Coetzer nodded at all of them when they entered the home. The two South Africans slapped hands with Broker, Bwana, and Roger, who they’d met on previous assignments.
Broker had given them a tour of the house, introduced them to Tony and Eric, and had gone through schedules and details with Elaine Rocka, their professionalism and experience both apparent and comforting.
Chloe would be riding her bike the night of their attack, following the three-SUV party, to confirm that Cruz was in the motorcade and keep the rest of them updated.
She would also take out the last vehicle in their motorcade.
‘In New Jersey, on US 130, I know where,’ Broker decided as he brought up a map of the route Cruz had taken the previous nights.
‘Why so far? Why not take them down in the warehouse?’ Roger asked him as he calculated the distances, working out the logistics rapidly.
‘We’ve hit them thrice now at their places of business. I don’t want us to be predictable. Besides, gunshots in the city are bound to attract attention. If we take him in the warehouse, I expect a prolonged firefight, quite different from our rapid entry and exits earlier. On top of that, I want to know what’s in NJ, and the closer to their destination we hit them, the quicker we’ll find out what and why.’
The rest of them would be in two vehicles and would deal with the remaining Patriots. Tony and Eric had their roles to play too.
‘Chloe will be alone, without backup. You okay with this?’ Bwana shifted uneasily, looking at her.
‘Yup. That part was my plan if you recollect.’
‘Tony will be following at a distance,’ Broker said mildly, deflating Bwana’s tension. Bear looked bemusedly at him and shook his head. ‘All that badass routine… you’re just a softy underneath, aren’t you?’
Bwana gave him a look that chilled hardcore gangbangers, but it just raised a laugh from Bear.
‘What about traffic? We can’t be sure we’ll be the only ones on that stretch.’ Roger was frowning still.
Broker’s lips twitched. ‘We can. Eric will be driving a Freightliner with a container, an empty container, and it will develop some problems, if needed, and block the highway. I’ve made some calls, and we will not get attention so long as we can clear up the highway in half an hour. That should be enough for us. Tony will be backing up from the rear, a distance away.’
They took two custom-fitted Escalades from Broker’s garage: bulletproof glass, double armor- plated, run-flat tires, navigation system, impact proof, the works.
‘I have a few.’ Broker patted the roof when Bwana looked quizzically at him. They were colored a dull gray so that no shine reflected off them, and ran low on the wheels because of their weight, but the four hundred horses under the hood gave them enough muscle and torque to leave most other wheels behind.
Chloe’s ride was a favorite of hers, a Yamaha YZF-R6, fast, steady, jet black, and when she wore matching leathers, with her chest-strapped Glock, Bwana gave her a wide berth.
He shook his head admiringly. ‘That sight alone is enough to reform me. I pity those hitters.’ They loaded their weapons, Bear throwing Mossberg shotguns in the back of his Escalade, Bwana packing his long gun carefully, and when they were done, Broker placed hampers of rations in both the vehicles.
He shut the door and looked at them. ‘Let’s do it.’
Chloe went to their Chevy, a familiar friend by now, inserted herself in it, and checke
d her comms. ‘In position,’ she whispered.
‘Roger,’ came Broker, who had headed to US 130 a couple of hours earlier with Bwana as his wingman, the two of them catching a snooze, waiting for everyone to catch up and the action to begin.
‘Yup,’ Bear and Roger acknowledged, in their ride a block away.
The hoods repeated the same routine, the Cherokee coming, hitters spilling out, increasing the pace of activity in the warehouse, the three Patriots rolling in at two a.m., signaling the exodus of the workers, and then Cruz and his motorcade left at just after three a.m.
Cruz was in the middle set of wheels.
Chloe waited for them to clear the block and then unlimbered herself and jogged to the end of her street, rounding it, and reached into a dark alley for her bike. The roar, when it came, was muffled, the custom silencers doing their job. She tapped keys on her dashboard, and the navigation and tracker system sprang to life. She scanned the console swiftly, noting the three red dots, and eased out on her bike. ‘Bogeys identified and all rolling.’ She spoke normally, the days of shouting over the wind had long gone with the technology Broker had access to.
In his Escalade, Broker queried Tony and Eric, ‘You guys with us?’ and nodded silently when the affirmative replies came back. They would fall behind Chloe once they left the city behind.
Chloe zipped past dimly lit streets, the rare cab or police cruiser crossing her way. This was a different New York, silent and brooding before daylight came and restored it to its cheer and energy.
Keeping the last Patriot’s taillights in sight in the distance, her own lights doused, she followed them through Holland Tunnel, entering the Garden State, down Hoboken Avenue, then Newark Avenue.
‘I think they’re taking the US 130,’ she said in the wind.
‘Gotcha. That’s the route they took the last couple of nights. So far they’re sticking to habit, which’s bad for them, good for us.’ Broker’s baritone came back muffled, trying to clear sticky gum in his mouth.
