The Alamo - John Milton #11 (John Milton Thrillers)

by Mark Dawson

  “Doing okay, Carlos. Be even better if one of you went and got me a scotch.”

  Acosta turned to one of the men, flicking his fingers toward the bar. The man levered himself off the couch with a grunt of resentment and slouched across to the bar.

  “What’s the score?” Haynes said, nodding to the screen.

  “Eagles just lost. Giants going to the playoffs.”

  Haynes was more of a Knicks fan and had no interest in football; he doubted that Carlos did, either, except insofar as he was making money out of the illegal books he ran.

  “I’m sorry about Shepard,” Acosta said. “I know you two went back.”

  “Yeah,” Haynes said. “We did. But he got sloppy. I don’t see there was another way.”

  “And thanks for keeping him in the loop about your boy’s investigation.”

  “You paid for it,” Haynes said. “You still want me to keep you in the picture?”

  “Sure. You come straight to me now.”

  “That works.”

  Acosta sat up straight. “What you doing here, Dickie? This ain’t no social call.”

  “No,” he replied. “It’s not. Your friend John Smith was arrested this afternoon.”

  “Shit,” Acosta said. “What for?”

  “They’ve been questioning him about the guy you had on him. The one who ended up in the dumpster up at Cypress Hills. They’ve got footage of them both coming out of the subway together.”

  “And they arrested him for that?”

  “Second dead body he’s been associated with in less than a week. Enough to pull his ass off the street for questioning, sure.”

  Acosta closed his eyes and exhaled impatiently. “I set the meet-up with him for two—”

  “It’s okay.” Haynes spoke over him. “Polanski called me. Smith told him he had to get out. He said you’ve got the kid and his dad and that you were going to call him back about a meet.”

  “Going to call him back? I already called. It’s tonight.”

  “So it’s all good.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Think about it, Carlos. He could’ve told Polanski that the meet has been arranged, but he didn’t. You told him to come on his own?”

  “What do you think?”

  “So that’s what he’s going to do. He has to get out, so he says to Polanski that he needs to be around when you call. He swears to Polanski that the moment he hears from you, he’s going to tell him. But if he had said that you’ve already called, and the meet is already set up, there’s no way Polanski lets him go back out on his own. Smith is smart. He’s thinking.”

  “So is he out or isn’t he?”

  “Polanski called me and asked me what I’d do. I said it was his call, but I said they got nothing on him, and that, if he lets him out, he can make him promise to call once he hears about the meet. I said that’s what I’d do if it were me. He agreed. They let him out twenty minutes ago.”

  Acosta nodded his satisfaction. “You think he’s gonna show?”

  “Yes. I do. But you want to be careful with him. Real careful. He’s dangerous. He’s already killed one guy you sent after him. Shot another and…”

  “Yeah,” he finished. “And he maimed my baby brother. I know what he did. Yeah, he’s dangerous. But I’m dangerous, too.”

  Haynes’s scotch was delivered. He took a sip, the warmth banishing some of the cold from outside. “Where’s the meet?”

  “Red Hook,” Acosta said.

  “You want me to sit in? Might be able to help.”

  Acosta laughed. “Shit, Dickie, I ain’t being funny, but how old are you? Sixty? Sixty-five?”

  “That’s it,” Haynes said, returning the younger man’s grin. “You just laugh it up. But I’ve got more experience in my little finger than you got in your whole body. I’d want me around if I was figuring this mess out.”

  “How much is it gonna cost me?”

  “I’ll give you this one for free,” Haynes said. “I need a favour later, I’ll call you.”

  Acosta made a show of thinking about the offer.

  “You’re on. We’re leaving in ninety minutes. You want to go and get a dance downstairs? Tell them I said it’s on the house.”

  PART VII

  SATURDAY

  114

  Milton collected the bag with the items that had been confiscated, signed the voucher, and hurried out into the street. It was midnight; he was already two hours late for his meeting with Fedorov and, if the Crimean wasn’t able to help, Milton knew that his carefully considered plan would fail. He took out his phone and dialled the number for the restaurant.

  Fedorov picked up. “Hello?”

  “It’s John Smith,” Milton said as he started to walk north toward Pitkin Avenue.

  “John—is everything okay?”

  “I’m sorry I’m so late. I had something unexpected come up—it’s sorted now. Can you still help me?”

  “Yes,” Fedorov said. “Of course. What do you need me to do?”

  “I need you to go to Atlantic Avenue. There’s a car wash on Washington Avenue. Do you know it?”

  “No,” he said. “But I will find it. When?”

  Milton reached Pitkin and saw a yellow cab approaching him. He stepped out into the road and waved it down.

  “Can you be there in an hour?” he said as the cab pulled over. “One o’clock?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I will see you there.”

  Milton ended the call and opened the door of the cab.

  “Coney Island,” he said. “As fast as you can.”

  The roads were quiet and, even with the treacherous conditions, the cabbie was able to make good progress. They reached West 24th Street just before 12.25 a.m. Milton paid the driver and ran to his block, taking the steps two at a time so that he was gasping by the time he reached his floor. He went inside. He took a small satchel and put three of the homemade smoke grenades inside. He put the satchel into the larger sports bag that he had taken from Rhodes’s house, adding the rest of the grenades, the Tannerite charge, the inspection camera, the UMP9 and two spare magazines. He picked up the Beretta he had used to shoot Rhodes, took a cloth and wiped away his prints. He used the cloth to pick up the gun by the edge of the grip and sealed it in a Ziploc bag. He put the pistol in the sports bag, too.

  He changed into the black clothes that he had purchased, took the sports bag, stuffed his balaclava into his pocket and grabbed his helmet. He paused, took out his phone and set it on the table. Then, finally, he ran back down to the street again. He put on his leather gloves, got onto his bike and rode north, opening the throttle as he crossed Coney Island Creek and merged onto the empty Belt Parkway. The wind rushed around him as he pushed the bike up to fifty, aware that, if he was stopped, police would find that he was carrying a bag full of explosives, a submachine gun and a pistol that could be tied back to the murder of a serving police officer.

  He had no choice: he had to be quick.

  He reached Red Hook and saw the huge grain terminal at the mouth of the Gowanus Canal. That was the rendezvous that Acosta had chosen. It was a twenty-minute drive from the club. Milton guessed that Acosta would leave no later than one thirty in order to be there to make the meet. But he might feasibly leave much earlier than that. Milton had to have put his plan into action before that happened or it would all be for nothing.

  Alexei Fedorov was standing next to the car wash at the junction of Atlantic and Washington, just as Milton had requested. He was stamping his feet against the cold, his head covered by a military-style ushanka, the flaps fastened around his chin to protect his ears, jaw and chin from the chill.

  Milton rolled the bike to the side and checked his watch: it was two minutes before one. He dismounted, removed his arms from the straps of the bag and wheeled the bike across the sidewalk to the car wash. There was a forecourt to the left of the car wash, and Milton locked the bike there. It was out of the way, and he would be able to pick it up again befor
e the business reopened on Monday.

  Fedorov walked over to him.

  “Thank you for coming,” Milton said, putting out his hand.

  Fedorov took it. “You are welcome, John.”

  “We need to be quick,” Milton said. “Can you walk with me?”

  “Of course.”

  They set off. The club was one block to the east.

  “What do you need me to do?” Fedorov asked.

  Milton unzipped the bag as they walked. He reached inside and, making sure that the road was empty, took out one of the grenades. “You know what this is?”

  Fedorov took it. “Explosives?”

  “No,” he said. “You light the fuse and they’ll make a lot of smoke. They’re not dangerous.” Milton removed the two remaining grenades from the satchel and handed them to Fedorov.

  “What do you want me to do with them?”

  “There’s a strip club on Atlantic Avenue, just up ahead on the right. The HoneyPot.”

  “Okay.”

  “The boy and his father are being held there. There are rooms upstairs. That’s where they are.”

  “And you will break in?”

  “That’s the plan. But I need a distraction.”

  “I see,” Fedorov said. He held up the grenades. “And this is it?”

  “Yes,” Milton said. “Get into the club and go to the back, somewhere you won’t be seen. Light the fuses and drop them under a table. They’ll put out a lot of smoke—it’ll look like a fire.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be in and out. It won’t take long.”

  Fedorov nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Thank you,” Milton said. “I appreciate it.”

  They approached the corner of Grand Avenue, passing beneath the scaffold that clung to the large building on the corner.

  Milton looked at his watch. “I’ve got ten past one,” he said.

  Fedorov checked his own watch, then adjusted it a little. “And me,” he said. “When do you want me to do it?”

  “In ten minutes.”

  Fedorov nodded. “I understand. Shall we meet at the restaurant afterwards?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Thank you. And be careful.”

  “And you,” the Crimean said. “Good luck.”

  He gave Milton a nod, waited for a sedan to turn off Atlantic onto Grand, and then crossed the road. Milton turned off and hurried to the yard at the back of the building. He would have to move fast.

  115

  Milton reached the rear of the block and looked through the fence. The Audi was there, parked in the same space as it had been before. Tracks from the wheels led to the gate and then out into the road. The snow was coming down more heavily now, and the tracks were slowly being erased. Milton could see the light from the windows of the building. It was too far away to make out much more than that, but he was confident that Acosta was present.

  Milton looked at his watch.

  1.13 a.m.

  Seven minutes to go.

  Milton trusted that Fedorov would do what he had promised to do; he just had to concentrate on executing his own part of the plan.

  He opened the bag and took out the balaclava and a pair of latex gloves. He put the balaclava on, tugging it down until it was snug, and then replaced his leather gloves with the latex ones. He went to the gate and pushed it open enough to pass his bag through. He wriggled inside, collected the bag again, and then hurried to hide behind the hood of the flatbed truck.

  He checked his watch again.

  1.15 a.m.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder, looked around the side of the truck, and ran to the boat. He paused there, listening for anything that might suggest there was someone else in the yard with him and, when he could hear nothing, he took another breath and then ran for the wall.

  He checked his watch once more.

  1.17 a.m.

  He clambered onto the dumpster, hefted the bag up and shoved it until it was on the roof. He reached up, grabbed with both hands, and hauled himself up after the bag. He took the bag and made his way up the roof garden until he was behind the tree that he had used for shelter when he’d scouted the set-up before. He opened the bag and worked quickly. He removed the UMP9 and one of the box magazines containing an additional thirty rounds of ammunition. He had sixty rounds with the magazine in the weapon and the spare. That ought to be more than enough.

  He took the hunting knife and attached the scabbard to his belt.

  1.19 a.m.

  Milton kept low and scuttled forward to the wall of the main building and the heavy wooden door that led inside. He lay flat on the roof. He took the inspection scope from its pouch and slid the camera beneath the door. He studied the display and saw the landing just inside the door, a metal door to the left and a flight of stairs up to the top floor directly ahead. The top floor was lit, with illumination spilling out of an open door onto the top landing.

  He opened the bag and took out the improvised breaching charge. He peeled away the wax paper, stuffing it back into the bag, and then pressed the sticky board against the metal door over the latch.

  1.21 a.m.

  It should be happening right about now. He watched the feed from the camera and waited.

  Fedorov checked his watch.

  1.15 a.m.

  There was no queue and he was able to walk straight inside. There was a booth with a Plexiglas screen and a slot at the bottom.

  “One, please,” he said to the woman behind the screen.

  She looked at him with lazy suspicion. “I ain’t seen you before. You from Brooklyn?”

  “Little Odessa,” he said.

  “What you doing up here?”

  “Business. I want somewhere to get a beer. Is that okay?”

  “Twenty,” she said, putting a piece of gum in her mouth and starting to chew.

  Fedorov took out his wallet, opened it, and pulled out a twenty. He pushed it into the little tray beneath the slot in the glass.

  The woman took the bill and put it into a cash drawer. “No touching the girls. You do that, there’ll be trouble. You understand?”

  “Of course,” Fedorov said.

  He looked at his watch.

  1.17 a.m.

  He went into the main room and looked around. The room was small. There were three men at the bar, a topless bartender looking at messages on her phone, and a dozen customers spread out around the central dais and the catwalks that reached away from it. A girl was upside down on the pole, her legs spread as she slowly lowered herself to rest on her shoulders.

  Fedorov made his way to the tables at the back of the room. He took out his phone and pressed SEND on a text message that he had already prepared.

  The reply came at once: “OK.”

  He checked his watch again.

  1.19 a.m.

  He sat down with his back to the wall. It was comfortably dark here, and he was able to take out the homemade grenades and obscure them beneath the lip of the table. He took his lighter, thumbed flame, and touched it to the three fuses. He reached down and rolled the grenades so that they skidded across the floor into the corner of the room, away from him.

  Smoke almost immediately started to billow up from the floor, a grey cloud that gushed up toward the ceiling.

  The dancer saw it first. “Fire!” she yelled, pointing at the expanding cloud of smoke. “Fire!”

  116

  Milton watched the feed from the inspection camera. He saw movement. A man emerged at the top of the stairs, calling back into the room as he started to hurry down to the landing and the door. The camera was small, and Milton had it pressed up tight against the frame of the door and a millimetre or two beneath it; it would be difficult to see, especially if attention was being drawn somewhere else. The man reached the landing and paused there. His white Nikes were just inches away from the scope, so close that Milton could see the stitching and the smudges of dirt on the sole. Milton couldn’t see what he was doing, but he
heard the sound of a heavy lock being opened and the bottom of the door scraping against the floorboards as it was pulled back.

  Milton was about to withdraw the camera when he saw a second man come out of the room at the top of the stairs and hurry down to the landing. He heard the man shout—it might have been an instruction to wait—and saw his feet pass by the camera as he went through the open door and started down the stairs to the ground floor.

  Now.

  Milton removed the camera, stuffing it back into the bag as he moved back. He made his way back to the raised brick planter, which was tall enough to offer him protection from what he planned. He aimed the UMP and fired a single round into the tub of Tannerite.

  His aim was true and the tub exploded. Using an impulse charge to breach a door was a simple enough principle that Milton had learned first-hand while he had been learning to jet-ski at the Special Boat Service’s facility down at RM Poole: the faster you hit a body of water, the harder that water would feel. The water spread the force of the blast into a channelled area, punching into the door with enough force to blow out the lock. Milton got up, kicked the door open and hurried inside.

  Milton knew exactly what to do and what order to do it in. He lit two smoke grenades, rolled the first down the stairs to the ground floor and then tossed the second up the stairs and into the room beyond.

  Smoke started to trickle from them both as the fuses burned, and then, as the flame reached the mixture of potassium nitrate and sugar, a thick gush of smoke billowed out of each.

  The door was on Milton’s left. It was composed of thick metal, hung on three hinges and with a reinforced latch. He pulled it shut and turned the key in the lock. The only way that the two men he had seen could get back to the top floor would be for them to go into the yard and then climb up to the roof and enter through the door Milton had just blown up. It would take time to realise what he had done, and more time to react to it.

  Milton did not intend to give them long enough to do that. He raised the UMP and hurried up the stairs.