by Ty Patterson
Roger looked back in his mirror – a silver car had slipped behind them, its driver boring holes at them through the darkened glass of the Escalade.
There was one passenger up front, and another in the rear, both of them armed, automatic rifles visible through the windshield. These were harder looking men with short hair, and even in the distance, through the traffic, Roger could make that aura.
‘These the A-team?’ Bwana ventured.
‘Possible. Certainly seem better than the military dropouts we’ve come across so far.’ He opened the glove compartment and tossed a cap and gloves to Bwana. The black balaclava cap was tight on Bwana’s head, the gloves snugly fitting. He supported the wheel as Roger donned his, and they bumped fists.
‘Evade first, action a last resort,’ Bwana commented, and Roger nodded.
The Ford slipped ahead of them, boxing them in, but he ignored it. A box worked only if it covered all sides and you respected them, and when he swerved in an alley, the car ahead was left with its occupants looking back at them.
The silver Nissan was a different proposition, handled by an experienced getaway driver. He followed them through all their tricks and turns, a determined wasp up their tail.
On a narrow street temporarily empty of any traffic, its windows rolled down, a hitter loosed off a few controlled shots aimed at their tires, all of them missing.
Roger headed back to traffic-heavy streets and noted the way the hitters concealed their weapons when they passed close to other traffic. Professionals. Don’t want to invite unnecessary attention.
He joined West End Avenue, glanced sideways, and saw Bwana taking another gun, its steel frame and barrel glinting dully in his lap.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked, keeping an eye on his mirror.
Bwana nodded, checked the magazine, and slipped it in his shoulder holster.
Roger drew on, passing several traffic lights, slowing at each of them, the Nissan closing the distance whenever Roger decelerated.
Their ride was the fifth vehicle from the next red light, and he inched forward as the cars ahead wheeled off at green. Bwana waited for amber, ignoring the honking from the long line of vehicles behind him, and just when it turned red, he floored it.
Horses lunged forward under the bonnet, surging their car ahead, raising another chorus of honking as vehicles from the sides came to a sudden stop furiously. He dropped speed once the junction was crossed, and in the distance he saw the Nissan move to the head of the line at the light behind.
Traffic flowed around them, ignoring their slow amble, and then six cars behind, he saw the flash of silver.
Timing was everything now.
In the distance he saw the next set of lights, about five minutes away, and six cars behind, the Nissan. He steered sedately, scanning the cars behind him, a white van and a people carrier behind it visible in their immediate wake. They followed him for a while, impatiently wheeled out and overtook him, and others slipped in their place. The flash of silver was now four cars closer.
Roger crossed the light, steered to the slow lane, allowing them to narrow that down to three cars, and then maintained enough speed to keep the train of cars in line.
They had their next break when a harried executive cut in behind them driving a Land Rover Defender, its tall body filling their mirrors temporarily. Roger gassed it to make space and saw that the Nissan had used the opportunity to fall behind the Defender.
He sped up and maintained a steady pace and the two cars behind followed suit. The business executive was oblivious to those ahead and behind him, oblivious to the weapons visible in the hitters’ hands.
Roger nudged their ride to the side, bringing the driver side of the silver car into their mirrors. Now that side of the Escalade was visible to the heavies too.
The light ahead was green, and he slowed, taking his time, and then it turned amber, and Bwana slipped out, opening the door a crack.
He ducked beneath their sight line, ran back, slipped in front of the Defender, and tapped the Escalade to let Roger know he was in position.
Roger opened his door and climbed out, his hand going near his shoulder holster, drawing his gun, capturing their attention, their windows rolling down, doors opening, weapons straightening at him, passersby screaming, shouting, ducking, cars swerving.
Bwana climbed on the Defender’s bonnet, ignoring the executive’s shouting, raised his balaclava-clad head above its roof, his Grach leading his eye, felt time and space slowing as the driver and passenger swung their eyes and rifles back to take this new element into account. That split second costing them as the Grach in his hand bucked, its armor-piercing bullets punching large holes in the windshield, fissures decorating the holes, punching through the first two hitters, a third shot going in the back. Bwana flowed down the Defender, glided back to the Escalade, and Roger gunned it through the lights and away from the Nissan, which was slumped tiredly to a stop.
The city’s traffic and honking came back into focus and moved swiftly under their wheels. Roger drove hard, cut through several lanes, circled several blocks to shake off any possible pursuers and finally slipped into a garage that Broker guided them to.
Wheeling into it, they jumped off, shut the metal gates behind them, and spent the next hour stripping the seats out of their vehicle. They would be incinerated, and new seating would be installed. The car would be fully valeted, spray painted with a new color, new plates, and back at Broker’s service the next day.
Chloe swung by in the late evening to pick them up.
‘Were they good?’ she asked.
Bwana shrugged. ‘We’re still here.’
Chapter 39
‘We’ll go tomorrow to the café,’ Roger told them when they joined Broker and Bear. This time Broker had found them a couple of rooms very near Hell’s Kitchen.
‘Nope.’ Broker clapped him on the shoulder, swiftly running his eyes over both of them. They had said they came out uninjured, but the two often carried minor injuries that they never declared.
He saw Bwana scowl. ‘It’s not the first time you’ve uttered an ethical lie.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d never heard that term till you coined it.’
‘The café – it’s not improbable that the gang is watching it. They aren’t stupid, and if Wheat is their guy and all that coffee drinking was a cover for passing messages, they might have some hoods hanging around it.’
‘So we just give up?’ Bear growled, his voice filling the small room they were in.
Chloe looked at him impatiently. ‘Let’s go to Isakson with this. They can put feet and eyes on the café.’
Broker’s phone rang just as he reached out for it.
‘Speak of the devil.’ He thumbed it, accepting the call, holding a finger up to hush them. ‘Isakson?’
He listened for a minute without interrupting. ‘No, not there. Somewhere else.’ He held the phone away as a torrent of words poured out.
‘I can’t confirm or deny that,’ he said, winking at the others. ‘Don’t waste our time. Find a neutral place for us to meet, and we’ll be there in an hour.’
He shook his head mournfully at them when he’d hung up. ‘Isakson is a good agent; he’s just too bureaucratic.
‘Let’s move. He’s got some news of some meth changing hands, the gang buying.’
They separated, took two cabs, and met Isakson at a midtown Starbucks, Broker liking the anonymity offered by it.
‘Easier to detect a hitter carrying an Uzi,’ he said when Isakson asked him about the location.
He made a ‘give’ motion with his hand. Isakson sighed, looked around, and leant forward.
‘Two million dollars’ worth of ice is to change hands in two days; the gang is buying from a Puerto Rican outfit. Ice is–’
‘A purified form of meth. We know. Carry on,’ Bear interrupted him.
Isakson glanced at him, swallowed his retort, and soldiered on.
‘We’ve been watching a gang sa
fe house for the last week and have seen the Puerto Ricans slowly build up a stash there of meth. We were planning to raid the place but held back when we heard talk of a deal happening. Three days back, we caught a couple of gangbangers talking on their mobiles, and using lip-reading experts and long-distance electronic surveillance, we know they’re selling the stash to 5Clubs. That deal is happening midday in two days’ time.’
He leant back in satisfaction. ‘This time no snitches, no intermediaries. Good policing and persistence has brought this to us. We aren’t going to screw it.’
‘You’ve cross-checked this with any chatter?’ Roger asked him curiously.
‘You don’t get a lot of gang chatter. It’s not as if gangbangers hit the Internet the way extremists do. However, from the street, we haven’t got a lot of talk from our snitches. I’m not surprised. Given the way you guys have been going hard at them, I fully expected both gangs to keep this as quiet as they can.’
‘How many are in the know?’ Broker asked him casually.
He grimaced. ‘The joint task forces, my team… a lot of folks. This came up through the task force; there was no way we could restrict the information flow.’
‘Your thirty guys been involved?’
‘Twenty-six. Four of them have been away for more than a month for various reasons.’
‘Which four?’
‘Santiago, Wheat, and two others. Santiago is expecting another child and is on maternity leave. Wheat plays basketball with a bunch of guys, dislocated his knee, suffered a hairline fracture, and will be out of play for some time. The other two had personal stuff come up.’
‘How does this work? Are these four kept in the loop even if they’re out of action?’
Isakson shook his head. ‘Nope. We don’t drown agents in stuff if they’re not able to do anything with it. Not one of them knows about this deal.’
He looked at them keenly. ‘Any of those four on your shit list?’
‘We don’t have a shit list yet. When we have one, you’ll be the first to know.’ Broker wasn’t ready to reveal his hand yet.
Broker was a great poker player, and Isakson’s probing look bounced off his game face.
‘Why don’t you guys join me as we crash that deal?’
They stared back at him in surprise and bemusement.
‘What value would we add?’ Chloe asked finally.
‘Why didn’t you tell him about that café? He could have checked it for us,’ Chloe demanded once they’d gathered back.
Broker gave a slow smile, letting her figure it out for herself.
‘Right. If this also turns out to be a no-show, then we cast a wider net?’
He gave her a thumbs-up. ‘I asked my East European guys to check if that café had cameras or if there were any in the vicinity. They trawled the dark corners and have come up with quite a few and are now running those through a face recognition program. Let’s see what they come up with.’
He gaped as Roger and Bwana left, returned with a large bag that clunked softly, opened it and started stripping and cleaning their hardware. ‘Starting a war somewhere?’
‘I always have a rifle in one hand and an olive branch in another,’ Bwana said piously as he posed with the Barrett and a white cloth in either hand.
‘I doubt you’d recognize an olive branch if it bit you on the ass,’ Broker retorted. ‘Seriously, though, where exactly are you guys going?’
‘Why, aren’t we going to watch the takedown?’ Roger asked innocently.
The gang apartment was in South Jamaica, Queens, sitting atop a boutique, facing a block of apartments and offices on the other side of the street. Stores lined either side of the street, selling everything that anyone would ever need, and some selling stuff they wouldn’t ever. The boutique was sandwiched between a Greek deli and a Laundromat. The Laundromat shared store space with a tax consultant and a storefront that proclaimed, ‘Come Clean.’
Broker had looked at street maps and building plans, had shaken his head in frustration, and had suggested they do a recce to get a feel. Hiring two family sedans, they had driven down the street from both ends, noting likely hides.
‘Isakson’s men and the cops will be doing the same thing. We don’t want to be tripping over them.’ Broker looked down in a cup of what passed for coffee, and spoke in the wind.
Chloe nodded as she tried on wigs in a store, Bear patiently watching her, and realized Broker couldn’t see her. ‘We aren’t going to engage unless they get ambushed.’ She wasn’t asking.
They waited for Bwana and Roger to chip in, a long wait as Roger navigated around a drunk, and Bwana perused the Greek deli, came out with a brown bag, and looked at the block across. ‘Probably best to be in one of those apartments or offices. The cops will have taken vantage points on rooftops, and the street will be crawling with them.’
‘We’ll need the space for the whole day; would be good if we could take the neighboring offices too,’ Roger added. If they had to open fire, the less innocents in the vicinity, the better.
Tony, recovered now, had rented two offices for three days, offices with windows that overlooked the street and had a good view of the gang apartment entrance, by the time they returned. He turned red when Chloe congratulated him on the fast work.
‘Go easy on the praise,’ Broker growled. ‘He’s bagged a date; those injuries came in handy. We wouldn’t want him to be full of himself.’
Bwana and Roger bivouacked in the office the night before the takedown, setting up the Barrett on a stand deep inside, lining the walls with double layers of mattresses that Tony brought in a truck. The mattresses didn’t get a second glance. Jamaica had seen everything and took everything in stride. The QDL suppressor knocked off a lot of sound, but not all of it; the mattresses would further deaden any noise.
The sun shone down brightly the day of the deal, shining equally on the cops and the gangs, indifferent to their affiliations. The first cops came, some of them as cab drivers, some of them street-side vendors, part of the ebb and flow on the street but obvious to their eyes. The way they held themselves, the loose yet tailored clothing giving them away.
‘You guys in position?’ Bwana asked.
Bear and Chloe were in a van sporting a courier company’s signage. Bear wondered idly if Tony had minions who churned out the vehicle guises. ‘We’re here, finding it hard to stay awake, since we have no role to play here.’
‘We go to the cavalry’s rescue if they’re in trouble. I’d like to see Isakson’s face if that happens.’ Bwana sighted down the Barrett one last time and then relaxed, settling for a long wait. Roger was a drunk lying in front of one of the shuttered stores, not in a position to join in their banter.
He could sense the tension creeping on the cops below as noon approached, could imagine the radio chatter, furtive checking and rechecking of weapons, Isakson and Rolando at some command absorbing the flow.
Noon came and went, and then another hour passed and then another half hour, and he could sense the frustration in the cops below, deflation and doubt in some of them. He could imagine orders being barked, some wiseass saying these are hoods, not known for their punctuality.
The ebb and flow in the street didn’t change; in the midst of the traffic a black Chevy Impala nosed its way from right to left, another decrepit car among the many others below. The Chevy made a return pass twenty minutes later, and interest rippled below, several eyes following it, trying to see through the darkened windows in the rear, paying attention to the two in the front. The two were alert, their eyes flicking constantly from side to side, mirrors to front, slowing fractionally in front of the boutique. Invisible currents connected the cops when the car made a third pass, and on its fourth pass, it nudged into a parking space as another car exited. Another gang car? Bwana mused.
The car stayed in position for a long time, the front two watching the street, their lips moving occasionally. The passenger got out, stood behind the door, ducked below, and said so
mething to the driver when he was satisfied. The driver brought a phone to his mouth, said a few words briefly, heard the other person out, and nodded once at the passenger.
The rear doors split open, spilling two men, average build, one stocky, the other leaner, their hands close to their bodies. Stocky led the way to the apartment entrance, passenger in the middle, Lean in the back, who walked backward for some time, watching the street. The driver didn’t look at them, his attention on the street, ahead, behind and around him.
The three disappeared in the shadow of the entrance, forty-five minutes passed before the feet of Stocky appeared, then the rest of his body, a black trash bag in his left hand. The passenger and Lean had similar bags, all three hurrying to the Chevy. The driver opened the trunk, and as the first man threw his bag inside, the street exploded.
Cops ran to the car, guns drawn, shouting, wearing the ESU vests of the NYPD’s elite Emergency Services Unit, some sporting FBI jackets. Some of them broke away, entering the apartment after calling out. Other cops formed a second perimeter fifteen feet away, training their guns on the hoods. A third perimeter kept onlookers back. One of the hoods, the passenger, made a move to his waist, triggering a burst of firing in the air by the cops. His hand fell away, then skyward, his second hand joining it. The driver, sucking on a Colt shotgun thrust through his window, kept his hands motionless on the wheel.
The ESU team leader tore open the trash bags, riffled through them, and sporting a broad grin, waved a thumbs-up in the air. The cops from the apartment returned, pushing three cuffed hoods ahead of them; all of them were bundled in a police wagon.
By now the media had arrived, TV cameras and reporters surrounding the team leader, other less fortunate reporters interviewing onlookers.
Bwana stripped his rifle down and put it away, lowered the windows, and spent fifteen minutes scrubbing away all traces of his presence. He hit the street, turned swiftly away from the scrum, and made his way to the courier van.
