by Matt Rogers
Velli went on, but his words fell on deaf ears. Xu was now out of Greenpoint, merging into the late afternoon traffic heading home on Interstate 278 after a long work day. He spun the SUV around a logjam of vehicles and veered straight into oncoming traffic — the government would pick up the fines. A cluster of approaching cars lit up their horns, but Xu spotted an opening in the nearest available lane and swerved back onto his side.
He jammed his foot against the pedal. ‘You’d better hope I can stop this. It’s your head on a stick otherwise.’
‘I think my head’s ending up on a stick regardless,’ Velli muttered.
14
Over the course of the drive Xu managed to worm out more details from Velli — the shipment had arrived at the Red Hook Container Terminal, which narrowed down the necessary search area. Nevertheless, with over four hundred thousand feet of warehouse space — at least, that’s what Velli told him — he couldn’t imagine chancing across the payload. He would have to force details out of somebody.
They lapsed into silence as Xu floored the SUV down Interstate 278, making for the port.
‘Velli,’ Xu finally said, breaking the silence, rolling the name over his tongue. ‘That’s Italian for fleece, isn’t it?’
Velli offered a wry smile. ‘Happens to be my specialty. You can hide so much in these shipping containers. Everything’s for sale in international waters.’
‘I was thinking Machiavelli. I should have realised right off the bat.’
‘Maybe if you’d put it all together in time you could have actually stopped this.’
Xu glanced over in disgust. ‘This is really a game to you, isn’t it?’
‘Life is just a long string of moving chess pieces around to suit you best. I happen to be particularly good at it.’
‘You don’t think about what the guns and drugs will do?’
Velli shrugged. ‘These people were always going to kill each other. I just help them do it faster. In reality I’m doing them a favour. This way it’s quicker. Less painful. Less drawn out.’
‘You really believe that?’
Velli smirked. ‘No. Not at all. I just don’t care.’
‘Thought as much.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, though. There’s no way I make it out of this alive.’
’So why aren’t you making a lunge for the door?’
‘You seen my fucking leg?’
‘Of course. I’m the one that did it.’
‘Yeah. I know when my time’s up. I try and jump out of this car, you’ll just turn right around and put a bullet in me. I can’t walk. I can’t fucking think straight.’
‘You are smart, then.’
‘So the real question is … if I know that, then why are you keeping me alive?’
‘Same reason you told me about your operation, even though you know you’re going to die. We’re both stubborn. You want me to know you’re not some third-rate drug dealer, even if it’s the last thing you do. You’ve got too much pride. And I’m stubborn enough to think I can worm some more information out of you. So why don’t we stop beating around the truth? Tell me everything. You want to.’
Velli said nothing, and for a moment Xu thought the man had succumbed to his wounds. Blood loss was a fickle bitch, and it wouldn’t surprise him to look over and see the pale corpse of the international arms dealer slumped against the door, his eyes glazed over.
Instead he glanced across — only for a moment, though, because he was still pushing the tank on wheels at close to eighty miles an hour along the two-lane road — to see Velli deep in thought, his features pale and clammy but his mental clarity intact.
‘Your call,’ Xu said. ‘You’re dying regardless.’
‘You’re not a normal government agent, are you?’
‘No. There was a guy in that townhouse. Wilkinson. The first man I fought. He was FBI. We didn’t co-ordinate it, and I have no idea where he is now. The war I kicked off probably killed him.’
‘You feel guilt about that?’
‘There was no way I was making it out of that house alive without causing chaos.’
‘So if you had no knowledge of the FBI guy, then you’re not official?’
‘You are smart,’ Xu repeated.
‘Which makes you what?’
‘Black ops. Usually my work doesn’t take place in the States, but sometimes it does. When Uncle Sam needs someone to be inserted with maximum deniability. There’s no record that I exist.’
‘Solo operative?’
‘Yep.’
‘I always thought those types were out there.’
‘They are. There’s others.’
‘What do you base it off? I’m curious. How’d you get recruited?’
‘Reaction speed, mostly. You’d be surprised how much of a factor that is over anything else.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me. I saw it in the house. Is Nguyen dead?’
‘Who?’
Everything had been thrown into such an uproar that Xu had temporarily forgotten who he was supposed to be impersonating. It didn’t matter anymore, in any case.
‘Oh,’ Xu continued before Velli could respond. ‘Yeah. He killed himself in custody. We caught him in a Manhattan bar running his mouth about some kind of tournament. That’s why I’m here. There was about an eight-hour window before the triad would catch wind of Nguyen’s disappearance, and I was en route back to New York anyway.’
Velli coughed blood and snarled. ‘Nguyen’s a fucking idiot. I knew something like that would do me in eventually. And he knew the triad would do much worse the second he made it out of jail. How’d he do it?’
‘Cyanide pill. He had it on him and they didn’t find it when they searched him. They found him dead in the holding cell a few hours later.’
‘Weak.’
Xu didn’t comment on that. His mind was still moving at a million miles an hour, processing everything Velli was telling him. In truth he hadn’t been expecting any kind of conversation in the slightest.
He had misinterpreted Velli entirely.
The man wasn’t unlike Xu — both wired, clinical, precise. If anything it only showed him how drastically an opposing set of morals could send two men down very different paths.
‘You’re not getting sympathetic towards me, are you?’ Velli said, breaking the silence. ‘You’d better fucking not be. I thought you were a tougher bastard than that.’
Xu smiled wryly. ‘Not at all. You obviously don’t know enough about me.’
‘I know you walked straight into that townhouse without knowing a single thing about what was taking place inside. That takes balls. That takes a different breed of operative. In another life you could have worked for me. We could have done great things.’
‘We define great things differently. What was that all about, anyway?’
‘What?’
‘The townhouse. The tournament. You just enjoy watching people beat each other up? Felix’s organisation already had the distribution rights, didn’t they? It was all a farce.’
Despite his battered condition, Velli managed to raise his eyebrows in surprise. ‘How’d you know?’
‘What — you honestly expected an upset with someone like that in the ranks?’
‘I don’t know,’ Velli said, and for the first time Xu sensed the smug demeanour cracking. ‘Fuck. I got complacent. Wanted to see a bit of bloodshed. I’d been so successful for so long. We’ve all got dark parts of ourselves.’
‘Not many have them quite like you.’
‘Fair play. Is that what this is, I suppose? Atoning for my sins at death’s door?’
‘I don’t think you’ll be able to manage that. Worth a shot, though. Whatever helps you out.’
‘When are you going to kill me?’
‘Right after I sort this mess out,’ Xu said, twisting the wheel as the giant SUV screamed into the industrial sector of the Port of New York and New Jersey.
15
Black Force had
endless advantages — namely, a near-infinite budget thanks to some creative accounting on the government’s part, as well as the ability for its agents to blend undetected into almost any location on the planet. No database search on earth would turn up any results regarding its operative — they did not exist.
Sometimes, that was crucial in survival.
And sometimes, it was inconvenient as all hell.
Xu knew he would have to do things the old-fashioned way. Shock and horror were valuable tools in the art of effective confrontation, and he had used them many times before in some of the most terrifying locations on earth.
Never on home soil, though.
Never on innocent dock workers.
He reinforced the fact that he wasn’t going to be causing harm to anyone, aside from the post-traumatic stress disorder that could arise from anyone having a gun shoved in their face. It wasn’t pleasant — almost nothing in his line of work was — but he had to weigh the consequences of losing the shipment in the bowels of Manhattan over scaring the absolute shit out of a tired dock worker.
Just like what he’d had to do in the townhouse.
He hoped Wilkinson had made it out alive.
He accelerated into a wide expanse of open concrete bordered by orderly rows of gargantuan warehouses, simply smashing straight through a flimsy unmanned barrier on the way through. It was awfully convenient that Velli had constructed this tank on wheels — Xu used it to its fullest potential to burst into Red Hook Container Terminal.
He was moving too fast for anyone to recognise what was happening. Instead of tactically approaching from a distance, he’d simply located the most vulnerable entrance point and barrelled through in an explosion of shredded wood as the barrier disintegrated. He knew nothing about the logistics or layout of the container terminal, or where exactly the cargo had been offloaded.
But someone would.
It had taken Xu many years to realise there was a rapid way to acquire information.
So he pointed the SUV in the direction of two unassuming dock workers milling around the vast entrance of one of the warehouses — the structure itself was nothing more than a single blip in the overall layout of the port — and stamped on the accelerator. The engine roared, seizing their attention. The SUV’s piercing headlights cut through the darkness, lighting up all of their features. Xu placed them as a couple of white guys in their mid-forties with wide eyes and weather-beaten faces — nothing else was really necessary.
He pulled the SUV to a halt alongside them and leapt out of the driver’s seat before either of the pair realised what was happening.
Xu held the Beretta double-handed, brandishing it in as imposing a fashion as he could manage, and puffed himself up as tall as his six feet of height would allow. At the same time he allowed a rabid expression to consume his facial features, twisting himself into something akin to a drug-fuelled madman.
He isolated the more nervous of the two dock workers and pointed the Beretta directly at his forehead.
Maximise shock and horror.
It was the only way to get answers fast.
‘A shipment of fleece jackets,’ he demanded. ‘It got held up because of a dodgy container. You would have heard about it. Where is it?’
The guy hesitated, pale and frozen in the glare of the SUV’s headlights.
Xu took a step forward. ‘Three seconds. All I need is information. Where’s the shipment?’
‘T-the one that got held up?’
‘Yes.’
‘It left. They’re investigating the suspicious container now.’
‘How long ago did it leave?’
‘Like … ten minutes ago.’
‘Who took it?’
‘Some private transportation company … I don’t know. The trucks just show up. Everything is scheduled.’
‘Where were they heading?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Actually — scratch that, I don’t need that. How many trucks?’
‘Five, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Five.’
‘Big rigs?’
‘Yeah. Two containers per truck.’
‘Ten containers?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You inspect them?’
‘Uh … no. Are you sure you understand how this industry works—’
‘I understand. You boys fucked up. There’s nothing in that container you held back — it’s a decoy. That’s all you need to know.’
He lowered his aim on the Beretta, turned away from the two workers, and was back in the SUV before either could muster up any kind of response to the fast-paced exchange of information. For a moment he thought Velli might sense a final opportunity to try something drastic, but one glance in the guy’s direction revealed a broken man. He was pale, sweating and shaking at the same time, eyes wide and posture crumpled.
At first Xu thought the gunshot to his leg might have severed an artery, but that didn’t make any sense. If it had, Velli would have bled out in three minutes.
Whatever the case, the man didn’t have long left.
And Xu didn’t feel a shred of pity.
He slammed the SUV’s door closed and twisted back the way he’d come, kicking up gravel as the massive tyres spun in place. On the way out he flashed a glance in his rear view mirror and saw the two dock workers standing in exactly the same place, as if frozen into statues.
He grimaced.
They would likely be reprimanded for giving over information so easily. Maybe even fired. It was hard to describe how one’s brain turned to survival mode in the heat of the moment, and Xu excelled at forcing vital knowledge out of unsuspecting people.
‘I need one last thing from you,’ Xu said in the sudden silence.
The SUV roared straight through the newly-created gap in the port’s security perimeter, running over the broken remnants of the barrier. Security systems were ordinarily designed to keep out common criminals, or at least delay them for long enough to alert authorities. There was nothing much the Port of New York and New Jersey could offer to hold back a tank on wheels driven by a government black operative. He had been in and out in a couple of minutes. So, although it had felt like a walk in the park, Xu didn’t blame the port for having such lax security measures.
He spent a few moments allowing Velli to consider his words, then glanced across once again.
What he saw spelled disaster.
16
Velli’s face had turned to stone. His features were still grey, and most of the energy had died from his eyes, but he was still very much alive.
He was simply set in his ways.
‘I’m not telling you a fucking thing,’ he said.
Xu tried not to panic. He could be as intimidating as he wanted, but when a hostage was so close to death there was very little he could do in the realm of physical punishment without killing Velli.
Nevertheless, he gave it his best shot.
‘You really want to go down that path?’
‘You were right before. I was telling you things because of my ego. I didn’t want to die with you thinking I was the pond scum of the underworld. I’m better than that. But why the hell would I give you enough detail to actually sabotage the operation?’
‘What does it matter? You’re going to die anyway. You don’t need the money.’
‘A man who only does something for money is a weak piece of shit.’
‘So it’s a legacy? That’s what it is?’
‘Of sorts. I have structures in place. I have successors. My men will carry on what I’ve managed to achieve. And this is my big power play. I’ll always be the guy who took over the shadows of New York. Even if I wasn’t around to see it.’
‘You’re old school, then? You have values?’
‘I wouldn’t have got where I am without them.’
‘So honour the tradition. Let me try and stop it.’
‘What?’
‘You’re a dead man wal
king. You know it. I know it. You’ll bleed out in a couple of minutes. Give me a rough location, and let me throw myself at it. I know you respect me. The way you talked about me going into that house without any knowledge of what I might find … you can respect a warrior. That’s what you are — you can’t relate to any of those amateur organisations in charge of distribution. That’s what I am — I’m a solo operative in the most elite government division on the planet. So give me a chance to stop it, even if it’s as slim as you can possibly make it.’
Velli said nothing.
‘You said it yourself,’ Xu continued. ‘You’re a man of theatrics. You like games. That’s what that whole tournament was about. Give me the tiniest bit of information, and if I can shut your operation down based off that alone, then it never deserved to succeed.’
Velli remained silent.
Xu couldn’t think of anything else to add — he’d said everything that needed to be said. It was his last wild swing at breaking the man. He hoped, amidst the light-headed haze and fog of pain that Velli was no doubt experiencing, that the guy would do something foolish.
He focused on the road ahead, merging onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in the general direction of Manhattan. He had nothing to go off but a vague hunch that the cargo would be transported into the heart of the city. He had no way of knowing for sure.
Unless Velli cracked…
And dead men did strange things in their final moments.
Xu knew that better than anyone.
Velli smirked — his first visible reaction in quite some time — and exposed bloodstained teeth as he glanced down at his watch.
‘Ah, fuck it,’ he said, his voice now hoarse. ‘You’re a fucking wild man, aren’t you? I can respect that. If the drivers picked up the payload exactly twelve minutes ago, then they’ll be heading along FDR Drive in two minutes. I know these boys — they’re professionals. As soon as the stuff is in their hands they’ll be accurate to the minute. If you can somehow get yourself over to Manhattan in the next two minutes, then fair play to you. You’ll probably die trying. But they’ll vanish into the underworld as soon as they’re off FDR. We have car parks. Warehouses. You name it. It’s the most vulnerable stretch of their journey. And — just a warning — if you get FDR Drive shut down without trying to prevent it yourself, then you’re the weakest piece of shit I’ve ever met. You’d better not have been bluffing.’
