by Ty Patterson
He turned to bark orders to his henchmen and paused when Broker held his hand up. ‘How’ll you explain our deaths? There are too many powerful people who know about us and our involvement in this. They won’t rest till they get to the bottom of our deaths.’
Isakson gave a chilling smile. ‘I’ll personally lead the investigation. I’ll never rest till I find out who your killers are.’
He nodded at Scheafer, putting distance between them.
The glass wall shattered with a tremendous explosion, and a wave of air blasted in.
Something clattered on the floor, a voice shouted out, ‘Flash-bang,’ and the four of them threw themselves to the floor.
Chloe hurled herself sideways, bringing down Rocka and the kids, and covered them with her body. We know this drill. We train in this manner, she thought.
Isakson and the gang squeezed their eyes shut, bracing their body for the explosion, some of them covering their ears.
The five of them alone saw the masked, black-suited figure rolling in a split second behind the exploding glass.
The figure knelt, and two spits rang out from his shoulder, bringing down the hitters behind Broker.
The figure moved, and a shadow blurred through the air.
Chloe expertly caught the Sig, reversed it in one fluid motion, and took out the hitter over her.
The best of the Special Ops or SEALs have reaction and response times measured in fractions of seconds, training and combat honing them to knife-edge perfection.
The hitters were good, but their reflexes were dulled, and the deception slowed them down further.
By the time Scheafer had realized and opened his mouth to shout, Bwana, Roger and Bear were engaged with six of his men, hurling themselves underneath their rifle lines, Bwana flying horizontal, a fist going deep into a thug’s midriff, doubling him over, almost going through him, his feet crunching the groin of the one next to him.
He smashed the head of Midriff on the floor so hard that the glass in the room trembled.
He rolled over on top of him, snatched the dead man’s M4 and, holding it like a pistol, fired it point- blank in Groin’s head, then took out two more hitters who were pointing their guns at Bear.
Still lying on the dead man’s head, he swung the rifle on the remaining two thugs, and saw Bear and Roger had them well under control.
Bear had similarly gone under another hitter’s rifle, and had grabbed it by the barrel and pulled it toward his own body, catching the man by surprise.
The gangbanger stumbled forward, and Bear used the momentum to strike under his chin.
One hundred and eighty pounds of Bear, all hard muscle and rock, met an unprotected chin. No contest.
Roger dispatched his hitter even quicker.
He struck lightning fast, using the momentum of the upward swinging rifle against the hitter.
His hand caught the barrel and flung it up and into the face of the sixth man, breaking his nose, and head-butted him into unconsciousness.
He winked at Bear, and they turned on Isakson.
Isakson was down, out of action.
Broker had staggered to his feet and had thrown himself at Isakson, wrenching away the FBI agent’s gun from its shoulder holster.
All this before Isakson had realized there was no stun grenade, and by the time comprehension returned to him, Broker had hammered him on his chest and over his wound till Isakson lay bleeding and unconscious.
Scheafer was quicker and faster, a lifetime of war and danger bringing out the animal in him.
He spun toward the black-clad figure, his gun arm straightening, and staggered back and fell as a block of concrete – the Watcher’s spinning kick – smashed into his head.
He crawled back, then whirled suddenly and grabbed and pulled Elaine Rocka as a shield in front of him.
He wiped his face on her shoulder, baring his teeth in triumph as he saw the Watcher sheath his gun.
He reached down his side to pull his blade from its ankle sheath, but she saw her chance in the split second his attention had diverted, and she sagged suddenly, letting him bear her weight.
Off-balance for a second, he let her fall, and then the Watcher was on him, raining a hammer fist on his right shoulder, numbing it, and another hammer broke his nose, spraying them both with blood.
The Watcher’s left leg swung up and kicked Scheafer in the groin, and as the gang leader doubled over, another hammer fist slammed in the back of his neck.
Scheafer roared and bulled into the Watcher, head-butting him in his midriff, and his massive hands wrapped around the Watcher and squeezed like a vice, his barrel body exerting inexorable pressure.
The Watcher stepped backward to throw him off, raining blows on his back, but his heel tripped against Elaine Rocka’s ankle, and he fell, twisting his body at the last minute so that they fell away from her.
Scheafer fell on top of him but didn’t let go of his grip and, while falling, kneed the Watcher in the groin.
Scheafer pounced on the Watcher’s upper body like a cat and pinned his right hand with his left hand the size of a bear’s paw.
Simultaneously with a sinuous move, he pulled his knife and struck it at the fallen man’s chest.
The Watcher desperately blocked his knife arm with his left, the two men straining, sweat and blood dripping off Scheafer and painting the fallen man’s face.
The Watcher kicked up with his legs to dislodge Scheafer, but the 5Clubs leader held firm, his weight an immovable stone on the supine man’s midriff.
Scheafer hissed, ‘Now you die,’ and put all his body behind his knife hand, his eyes glittering as they bored holes in the Watcher’s eyes staring back through the mask.
The Watcher strained desperately, trying to free his mind from the white heat of the groin pain, trying to compartmentalize his ribs being crushed by Scheafer, felt his left arm give a millimeter, and then another millimeter, and felt Scheafer’s mouth go wide as he scented victory.
He focused on the pain and wrapped it in a ball and made it smaller and smaller and then shaped it into a point and flung it deep inside where life and death began, and lanced the ball of fire within.
The ball exploded, drowning out the pain, and the fire streamed through him, and he sagged back suddenly, his left arm going slack, and Scheafer fell forward on top of him, his knife point piercing the Watcher’s black skin suit.
Scheafer suddenly lost his smile and his eyebrows creased as the knife encountered resistance, the customized body armor underneath the Watcher’s skin suit blunting its cutting.
The Watcher reared forward and head-butted Scheafer.
He followed it with another vicious head butt that split the attacker’s right eyebrow, and blood flowed thickly down Scheafer’s face.
Scheafer howled as the Watcher freed his right arm and struck his eye, another hammer-fist blow crushed his ear, a rapid double blow to his eyes took away his vision, and he fell sideways.
The black-suited man slithered from underneath Scheafer and gripped his knife wrist in steel and twisted and turned it around, breaking the joint, and his free hand clamped on Scheafer’s neck.
He felt the ball of fire flow through him to his extremities, through his shoulders, down his arms and to his hand gripping Scheafer’s knife wrist. The knife reversed deep into Scheafer, all one smooth fluid motion.
The Watcher leaned forward and whispered, ‘I’ve been dead a long time.’
Bwana looked on awestruck – the two figures had been fighting so closely and so rapidly that they hadn’t risked a shot at Scheafer.
He glanced quickly at his companions and saw the same expression on their faces.
When he turned back, the masked man had risen to his feet.
He looked back at them, his eyes dark and expressionless through his mask.
The city peered over his shoulder through the broken window, holding its breath, and time slowed, even the breeze slowed.
The Watcher took a step bac
k toward the gaping hole, his gaze steady on them.
‘Wait, who are…?’ Broker’s words were lost in a loud explosion as the entrance disintegrated, and a NYPD ESU team broke in.
When they looked back, the Watcher had gone, and through the shattered glass, the lights of the city winked at them mockingly.
Chapter 45
‘Who is he?’ they demanded.
It took three days for them to wrap up with the cops and the FBI.
Three days during which they went through the events over and over again with Pizaka, Chang, and Forzini.
Three days during which Isakson turned from arch villain to innocent and then back to traitor.
Director Murphy went through phases of rage and disbelief, with a constant undercurrent of shock.
Isakson was handpicked by him and was his number two. His being a traitor was a bitter pill to swallow.
They made Broker walk through his putting together the jigsaw at the airport and made him go through the chain of events – his satellite phone call to Tony, who’d listened in for as long as the line was open and realized what was transpiring and who then had placed calls to Clare, who in turn had lit a fire under the cops.
Pizaka and Chang pressed hard for Broker to reveal the mysteries of his entrance door, asked him how a simple code could disable all its security and render it into an ordinary New York apartment door and thereby make a forced entry easier.
Broker gave them an in your dreams look.
Isakson had suffered no damage other than heavy bleeding and had been interrogated separately by the FBI and the cops, and he’d mounted a vigorous defense: ‘delusional, vested agenda, revenge’ were words he used frequently.
Broker was stumped when it came to Isakson.
They’d no evidence to support his claim that Isakson was the traitor. Any competent lawyer would laugh out of court his charge against the FBI man.
Floyd Wheat’s apartment had been broken into, and the money found as Isakson had said, but he explained it away saying that he’d investigated the agent once Murphy had told him about Broker’s uncovering him.
Broker could see the doubt creeping in Director Murphy’s eyes on the second day as Isakson hammered the point that they were out to get him for Zeb’s death.
Commissioner Forzini was more receptive, but he, too, needed proof to act.
The hooded man remained a mystery no one could shed light on.
Clare shrugged when Murphy pressed her about his identity, and said she knew no one of that description. She let the steel in her show just once when Pizaka and Chang asked her again.
In the late evening on the second day, a bicycle courier delivered a package addressed to Director Murphy, and two other packages were similarly delivered to Commissioner Forzini and Broker.
Later, they questioned the courier, but the description he gave was so generic that it could’ve fitted several million men in the city.
Each of the packages had a memory stick that contained an audio and a video file. The files filled Murphy with such a raging fury that it was said his office looked like a hurricane had gone through it.
He had a short call with Forzini that ended with, ‘If I could throw the bastard into Gitmo, I would.’
When Broker viewed the file with the others, he shouted, ‘Holy shit.’
The audio file captured everything that had happened in his apartment right from the time Isakson entered it to the ghost’s exit. The video file covered the events till the time the glass wall shattered, the explosion disabling the camera.
The files sealed Isakson’s fate.
They inspected the window carefully, Bwana leaning out dangerously, and even though they knew what to look for, the bugs and cameras took them half an hour to locate; their size and color were such that they blended perfectly in the remaining glass.
When they’d recovered and disabled them, they went to the roof after having worked out how the ghost could’ve planted them.
The scaffolding rig was still in place, and Roger, lying prone on the roof, could just see the broken window far below amidst the smooth glass wall. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said admiringly. ‘All that security shit you’ve got, and he comes up with such a simple idea,’ he told Broker.
Broker shook his head ruefully. The ghost had won his admiration long back.
The Marshals came and patiently endured the long wait Broker subjected them to as he checked and triple-checked their credentials. The first step to securing new identities for Rocka and the children was taken.
The children started counseling sessions with a reputed psychiatrist, the same one who had helped Rory Balthazar. The family would assume their new identities and new life once the counseling sessions ran their course.
Elaine Rocka glared at them when Chloe had suggested she undergo a few sessions herself, saying her only regret was that the ghost hadn’t castrated Scheafer before killing him. She’d turned her eyes cuttingly on Bear, Roger and Bwana when she heard their attempts to suppress their laughter and had smiled softly when they couldn’t hold back their guffaws.
The cops had matched the bloodstains in the abandoned site where Chloe and Tony had been taken, to Shattner, and had recovered Shattner’s body from the river.
Elaine Rocka didn’t want the children to witness Shattner’s burial. Broker had agreed with her.
He had hatched a plan that would bestow honor on Shattner.
Broker, Bear and Chloe spent an hour with Commissioner Forzini, with Broker and Chloe articulating their plea while Bear sat silent, glowering at him. Forzini heard them out patiently, without interrupting, and when Chloe had finished, he turned over a sheet of paper on his desk and presented it to them.
‘I authorized it last night,’ he said simply. They left, embarrassed.
‘You still dislike cops?’ Chloe teased Broker when they left.
‘Well, maybe not all,’ he reluctantly agreed.
They hadn’t yet told the kids the role their dad had played.
Elaine Rocka agreed with them that a formal occasion had to be made of it, one that stayed in their minds forever, a memory that would fill them with sunbursts of joy and pride whenever they remembered their father.
Clare avoided meeting them, knowing what they were after, ignoring Broker’s calls and messages; she finally gave in when he showed no signs of letting up even after a month.
They stood in her anonymous office, ignoring her gesture at the seats before them. ‘Who is he?’ Broker repeated again.
‘I didn’t send anyone to shadow you or protect your backs,’ she said truthfully.
They digested that, and Broker saw through it first. ‘That’s not what we asked. You know who he is. We too deserve to know who this ghost is.’
‘I don’t know who he is,’ she replied, the faintest emphasis on the word.
Chloe pounced on it immediately.
‘You can make a good guess, though, right?’
Clare had her game face on, which cracked finally when Bwana said with a straight face, ‘We might have a job for him.’
She laughed and sat smiling at them, a strange expression on her face, letting the silence build, looking at Broker and Bwana the longest. Something in her gaze and posture sparked the air, electrons and protons buzzed furiously and silently.
‘You know him well. Very well.’
Broker stared at her dumbly, then at Bwana, seeing the same uncomprehending expression in the other’s eyes, and felt the flutter deep in his belly, a lightness in his head. He shook his head as if awaking from a deep sleep, looked across at Bear, Chloe and Roger, and saw the same disbelief warring with lurking hope.
‘Zeb?’ he whispered, forcing the words through a dry throat.
‘But how?’ he asked stupidly as her smile grew broader.
He flashed back to the night they’d mounted the rescue.
Carsten Holt was holed up in a three-storied house in New Jersey, with five of his hoods and the two hostages.
Two hoods were patrolling the top floor; two, the ground floor; and Holt and another hitter were watching over Lauren and Rory Balthazar on the middle floor.
Broker and Zeb decided to counterattack at night, just the two of them against six hard mercenaries.
Zeb would enter the house through a skylight in the roof, take out the two on the top floor, and go down to the middle floor, where he’d deal with Holt and rescue the hostages. Broker would take out the rest of the hoods using a long gun from across the street in front of the house. The sentries passed in front of windows, frequently – hence the long gun.
The plan worked perfectly. Up to a point.
Zeb dispatched the two hoods at the top and crept down to the hostage room.
He waited for the sentry’s blind spot, and when it arrived, entered the hostage room, his Glock high and ready – and got the drop on Holt.
The plan fell apart then.
A door behind Holt opened, and a seventh gunman entered the room, firing at Zeb. He had to compensate for Zeb’s position, who had crouched, and his first shot missed.
Zeb’s didn’t. Zeb double-tapped him, and his third shot creased Holt’s right shoulder.
Holt dropped his gun, but his hand blurred behind his back and a knife split the air and buried deep in Zeb’s shoulder, his gun clattering to the floor.
Holt charged at Zeb with another blade, Zeb parried, attacked and in the thrust and counterthrust, he dislocated Holt’s right knee with a spinning kick.
Holt fell down heavily, but reached behind to grab a chair and hurled it at Zeb.
Zeb ducked, and as he was straightening, a steel band encircled his neck and a knife pierced deep in his ribs, searching for his heart.
The second hitter on the middle floor, who’d eluded Broker’s sniping gun.
His brain went into autopilot, shutting down all nonessential systems in his body. He tried to pull away the hand choking him, but it was iron, cutting off his air, the knife going even deeper.
Through the fog creeping in his mind, he heard Holt laughing as he lay a few feet away.
