by Matt Rogers
The rate of gunfire amplified, and people dropped left and right.
Xu ducked and weaved and zigzagged across the room, bouncing off bodies, taking wild punches and kicks with testosterone and terror behind them. One punch caught him clean on the side of the head and he wobbled, barely managing to slide past a man diving for a hold on him.
Despite the anarchy playing out all around him, he managed to stay focused on the sole imperative — based off what Lars had told him, those fleece jackets were leaving the port, overlooked entirely by authorities who’d been sucked into the mystery surrounding the nuclear bunker equivalent of a shipping container.
Xu assumed the decoy was either empty or housing useless goods.
And to piece this all together, he needed Velli.
The room was already emptying out as less courageous participants hurled themselves down the stairwell, allowing themselves to rack up all manner of superficial injuries to get the hell out of the townhouse as fast as possible. Xu heard them thundering down the stairs, and shouts floated up the stairwell as Velli’s guards on the ground floor panicked at the sudden onslaught.
Xu skirted around a fleeing Caucasian guy and threw a stabbing front kick into the chest of a man sprinting at him with teeth bared. The force of the kick took the guy off his feet, and he was stripped of his consciousness as the back of his skull smacked into the wood.
Xu’s muscles were recharging.
He could throw with reckless abandon now.
Across the room, he spotted Velli.
The imposing crime boss had his imported Makarov sidearm trained on Xu’s head.
12
Xu leapt away from the line of fire as soon as he recognised what Velli was trying to do — thankfully, amidst the pandemonium he managed to slip the shot fairly effortlessly. Velli fired regardless, pumping several rounds across the room. A man to Xu’s right dropped on the spot, his torso jerking unnaturally in one direction then the other as the lead rounds sunk into his chest.
Velli froze for a vital second.
Xu realised he must have known the man he’d just accidentally killed.
One of his own, perhaps.
Xu took every advantage he could get. He launched off the mark and drilled a round from the M9A3 through the top of Velli’s kneecap, punching through enough connective tissue to make the guy’s leg buckle. Xu caught him on the way down, trying not to duck as random gunshots flew past him. He had no idea who was firing, or even how many people were still in the room.
He could only focus on one thing at a time, and in this instance it was Velli.
He punched the Makarov out of Velli’s hand, uncaring as to whether he broke the man’s fingers in the process. The gun spun away into a far corner of the room. Xu then looped his free arm underneath Velli’s armpit, supporting the guy as he hobbled on one leg.
Velli’s face contorted in pain as he began to feel the extent of the damage in his knee.
Get out, a voice told Xu.
He listened to it. By now the gunshots had subsided and those left alive in the space were clustered in isolated groups, brawling for their lives. Xu wasn’t sure about the intentions of all the individuals in the room, but his ability to cause chaos had been confirmed as second to none.
He had incited a fatal riot.
Run.
He had no other option. If he spent too much time analysing and assessing and trying to find a path through the chaos, he would spend too long in one place and catch a bullet for his troubles. So he simply supported most of Velli’s weight and set off in a mad dash for the stairwell, ignoring anyone in the vicinity. One thug swung a punch at Velli, blindingly fast. It connected with a hollow thwack and Xu sensed the man stripped from consciousness.
He was suddenly carrying the entire deadweight of the mob boss.
Grunting in frustration, he kept hold of Velli with one arm and turned to swing a side kick at the guy who’d thrown the punch. He caught a glimpse of gunmetal, and the blood drained from his face.
Not worth it.
He pulled back on the kick and instead blasted the man’s face apart with one shot from the Beretta. He didn’t even have time to see the corpse hit the ground, because as soon as he saw the man was dead he was on the move again, bobbing and weaving and hauling Velli’s unconscious body across the room.
A few seconds later, the mob boss returned to semi-consciousness, and Xu helped him through the motions of getting his good leg underneath him, hurrying him along with less effort.
They tore down the stairs. Xu knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but nothing in this business was. He’d been anticipating a traffic jam at the narrowest point of the stairwell, and his suspicious were confirmed when he hurtled down the first few steps to see a logjam of thugs beating each other senseless halfway down the staircase. A couple of them were Velli’s men, trying to force their way up to the second floor to secure their boss.
Don’t bother, Xu thought. He’s right here.
As soon as he realised he didn’t care about Velli’s health, he simply hurled the man down the stairs, putting enough force into the throw to send the guy catapulting head over heels.
Thanks to his bad leg and his semi-consciousness, Velli hadn’t been able to offer an ounce of protest. He spun like a rag doll into the cluster of hostiles, and Xu hurried straight down the stairs as a procession of four or five men tumbled to the foot of the stairs in a tangle of limbs.
Several members of the group were badly hurt. Xu could tell by the way a handful of the men lay still as they rolled to a halt. Heads had clattered off stairs. Bones had been broken. Consciousness had been stripped. Perhaps one or two of them were dead.
Xu couldn’t care in the slightest.
If he showed any mercy over the next few moments, he would die.
He hurried down the last few steps and wrenched Velli out of the group. A couple of them were clambering to their feet, but Xu moved too fast. A hand snatched out to latch onto Velli’s coat but Xu battered it away. He got the same arm looped around Velli’s torso and continued hurrying the man along the corridor, leaving the injured men to pick themselves up and sort themselves out.
The front door hung wide open, and Xu heard commotion out on the street. His hearing was returning, piece by piece, and he used the slight break in action to tune his ears to what was happening out in suburbia.
This was ordinarily a quiet residential street, and to the neighbouring residents it must have sounded like World War Three had broken out in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The police would descend on the suburb within minutes. Already Xu could hear vehicles firing up and tyres screeching on asphalt.
Everyone was fleeing.
For good reason, too.
Xu knew he had to join them. But the rundown sedan he’d travelled in from LaGuardia Airport wouldn’t achieve much, especially considering he would be screaming toward the port as fast as the engine would allow. He had a feeling the containers were already out on the road, and he had no idea what secrets they held.
Distribution rights.
That’s what Velli had said.
Xu didn’t like where this was headed.
With no time to do anything other than move, he burst out onto the portico, hauling Velli in tow. The rain had intensified during the time he’d spent in the townhouse, now beating down relentlessly in great sheets of grey. Xu squinted to try and make out the shape of his sedan. He spotted it, but something made him hesitate.
Velli had to have got here somehow.
And he didn’t seem like the type to avoid approaching in style…
Xu scoured the street, ignoring the clusters of thugs and underworld figures sprinting in separate directions, heading for their vehicles. He saw an enormous SUV across the street, parked directly opposite the townhouse. It was a big, modified, imposing beast of a truck, and no-one seemed to be heading in its direction. Its position in relation to the townhouse signified the owner was important.
That was enough for Xu
to make a decision.
He jabbed a thumb in the SUV’s direction. ‘That’s yours, isn’t it?’
Velli was barely conscious, but still alert. He mumbled something under his breath.
‘Yeah,’ Xu said. ‘That’s yours.’
He fished around in Velli’s jacket pockets for anything resembling a set of keys. Velli offered no protest — blood was pouring down the leg of his suit pants, and his face had turned white as a ghost. He’d been seriously debilitated by the bullet wound.
More horrifying cracks sounded from upstairs, making Xu flinch. He finally found a key fob deep in Velli’s right pocket and wrenched it free. Moving as fast as he could, he found what looked to be a car remote and thumbed one of the buttons. It didn’t work. He stabbed another one.
Across the street, the SUV flashed its lights.
Unlocked.
Xu grinned. ‘What do you say we get the hell out of here?’
13
It only took them a handful of seconds to cross the street, but the rain fell at such a rate that Xu found the blood washed off him by the time he made it to the SUV.
As he approached he scrutinised the vehicle, and realised what he’d simply chalked up to a strange set of modifications had actually transformed the big truck into a tank on wheels.
He couldn’t understand how it was road-worthy — the entire structure had been customised and all branding had been stripped, to the point where Xu couldn’t even identify the make of the vehicle. It held the rough shape of a Mercedes G-wagon, but the exterior had been fitted with some kind of opaque body armour. The SUV was gunmetal grey, with windows tinted to the highest degree and giant ram bumpers attached to both the front and rear of the truck.
Xu thanked his lucky stars and threw Velli into the empty passenger seat.
He glanced into the interior to check whether Velli had access to any weapons — the coast seemed clear. Besides, the man seemed to have lost a significant amount of blood over the course of the last few minutes, and Xu wondered whether his attempts to extract the mob boss from the townhouse would all be in vain.
He slammed the passenger door closed and circled around to the driver’s side. Something whistled past his ear and he ducked low, suspecting the worst. Sure enough, the roaring crack of a gunshot followed a moment later. They were firing on him from the portico — Xu didn’t have time to identify the hostiles. He assumed a couple of Velli’s men had made it through the wild brawl and were now chasing after their boss.
Thankfully, Velli had built himself a metal bunker on wheels.
Xu hurled the driver’s door open and ducked inside, firing up the engine with the push of a button. It roared into life, and he realised the modifications hadn’t been isolated to the outer shell of the truck. There was serious horsepower under the hood. He slammed the door closed, sealing them into the cool interior. The truck seemed brand new — Xu couldn’t spot a single blemish in the dark grey cabin.
A couple of bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the passenger window. Xu ducked instinctively, then widened his eyes in surprise — they were bulletproof.
‘How much did this cost you?’ he muttered as he stamped on the accelerator and roared away from the sidewalk.
The townhouse disappeared. Xu took a moment to concentrate on the road ahead, running through everything that had happened over and over again in his mind, reeling from the chaos.
You should be dead.
None of it seemed real. Despite the fact that he’d barrelled his way through an incident that should have resulted in the grisly deaths of everyone in the townhouse, he couldn’t snatch onto even the slightest shred of relief.
Not yet.
He was nowhere near done.
‘You awake?’ Xu said, his words cutting through the silence of the cabin. Outside the rain beat down, but the truck must have been soundproofed too, because inside Xu could have heard a pin drop. His hearing was in the process of clawing its way back to full capacity, but the tinnitus still remained, whining in his ears like an incessant mosquito that wouldn’t leave.
A side effect of spending half his life in combat.
‘Yeah,’ Velli muttered.
Even from the single syllable, Xu sensed a bundle of deflation. The gunshot through the top of his kneecap had either brought on such a massive dose of pain as to render Velli useless, or perhaps he had never experienced true adversity before and was wilting under pressure.
Xu imagined it was the former.
One didn’t get into Velli’s position without having nerves of steel. So perhaps he was close to death. Regardless, Xu would worm as much as he could out of the man before he succumbed to blood loss.
He was fairly adept at that kind of thing.
‘You’re a big shot,’ Xu said as he drove, twisting through narrow residential streets, heading south in the general direction of the Port of New York. He didn’t know what on earth he’d do once he got there, but he had made it this far without a game plan, and he wasn’t about to stop. ‘Which means you’re also a smart guy. You know about putting your best interests first. So I’m guessing you want to make it through this alive.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you’ve got two options.’
Before he elaborated, Xu took the Beretta off his knee and pistol-whipped Velli in the face, keeping his eyes trained on the road at all times. The asphalt sped past underfoot, and Xu concentrated on keeping the SUV headed in a straight line instead of focusing on the blood that lurched from Velli’s mouth. The handle of the Beretta must have knocked a few teeth loose — Velli spat in the footwell and then drooped back in the seat, moaning in pain.
‘That’s for putting me in that room with a guy you knew would kill me,’ Xu said. ‘Anyway, first option — you keep your mouth shut. I’ll give you about ten seconds to start speaking and if I don’t get a response I’ll put a bullet in you, because you’re not really all that necessary. Second option — you talk. You tell me everything you know about what’s happening at the port and you hope that I manage to sabotage your entire operation, because that’s the only way you’ll make it out of this alive. You can start over from scratch, but you can’t take back a bullet in your brain. Got it?’
‘Got it.’
‘So start speaking.’
‘What do you want to know?’
Ever the survivalist, Xu thought.
Velli seemed ready to hand over his secrets on a silver platter. He’d sensed an opportunity to stay alive in a doomed situation and capitalised on it.
‘The payload of fleece jackets,’ Xu said. ‘What’s in them?’
Velli shrugged. ‘Drugs. Guns.’
‘Doesn’t sound all that different to what already goes on. Why are you so special?’
‘Because of the quality.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I import stuff. I know the shipping industry. I know the loopholes. There’s gaps in the system a mile wide. What do you think happens when three million shipping containers pass through the Port of New York and New Jersey every year? You think they have time to check all of that?’
‘I know the flaws in the system. I don’t see how you’re exploiting it in such a unique way.’
‘Like I said. Because of the quality.’
‘You’re not from here, are you?’
‘I’ve been working all over. Mostly Africa and Russia. Parts of South Africa and Europe, too. There’s always a demand for drugs and guns.’
‘This is something else, though, isn’t it?’
Velli paused, but only momentarily. He saw Xu’s hand darting for the Beretta, and promptly held up both palms in protest. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll talk. Fuck. Yes, this is something else. This is a co-ordinated effort to make shit hit the fan.’
‘How so?’
‘You should see the arsenal I’m bringing in. Stuff I’ve spent years acquiring. I pooled together a bunch of my most ruthless contacts, and the rest is history. There’s enough firepower in those containers
to tear New York apart.’
‘Seems a little drastic.’
‘You don’t know what’s coming in. This is top-of-the-line shit, and I was going to sell it dirt cheap to the masses.’
‘Why?’
‘I thrive in chaos.’
‘So do I,’ Xu said. ‘But we probably have very different definitions of thriving.’
‘I spread the arsenal I’m importing through the city. Sell it to whoever wants it, for a massive discount. I’ll do the same thing with the drugs I’m bringing in. Heroin, cocaine, meth — all the purest stuff you could imagine. If you think crime in the underworld is bad now, just wait until my shit hits the streets.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I take over. I’ve done it before, in other countries. That’s how I made my wealth. There’s nothing like a destabilised region to create massive profits for those who know how to seize it.’
‘So you’d take over territory? As the gangs shoot themselves to pieces with your new gear?’
‘Think of a corporate takeover artist on Wall Street. Then apply it to the underworld.’
‘You’re a real piece of shit.’
‘You can talk.’
‘I can, actually.’
‘You know how many men you probably killed back there?’
‘A fraction of my total kill count,’ Xu said. ‘And that’s not about to change anytime soon. So long as people like you keep walking around, I’ll keep it up. That’s how the world works.’
‘Suit yourself.’
‘You’re sounding pretty damn smug.’
‘What — you really think you can have any effect on this?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re trying to make it to the port before the shipment gets cleared, but it was scheduled to come in an hour ago. It’ll be deep in the city by now. I operate in a very patient manner. I don’t start anything like this without all the pieces being moved into place beforehand. There’s nothing I have to approve. No-one’s waiting on me. Everything will go through the motions. You can’t stop this.’
