Chapter 34

‘You have interesting friends, Broker.’ Bear broke the silence on the way down in the elevator. ‘This Oborski… think even we would find it tough to go against him. Yet 5Clubs have encroached their business. Doesn’t figure.’

‘Oborski has rules; this new gang doesn’t. That’s the difference. Eventually their lack of rules will also be their downfall; surviving in a jungle needs rules.’

Broker smiled inwardly while they digested Roger’s take. They were a unique bunch, not just exceptional operatives, but they also brought very high intelligence and reasoning skills to the mix. Roger read philosophy in his spare time while Chloe was a science nut and Bwana and Bear were Mensa members, a fact they guarded more zealously than their weapons.

Bwana looked admiringly at Roger. ‘Always knew it. You’re the complete package, bro. Brawn, beauty and brains.’ He ducked the punch Roger threw at him.

The Meatpacking District was a twenty-square block in Manhattan, with Chelsea Market on the North and Horatio Street in the south. In the early twentieth century, the neighborhood had close to two hundred and fifty slaughterhouses and packing plants, which delivered a third of the country’s dressed meat. With the improvement in transportation and distribution, the building of the interstate system, and the decline of shipping in the Hudson, several of the meat-associated businesses moved out to the Bronx or New Jersey, and the neighborhood declined. Neighborhoods don’t die in New York, they transform, and replacing the meat businesses came nightclubs, restaurants, high-end boutiques, and the district got its makeover to become one of the trendiest hoods in the city.

There were still a few meat businesses remaining in the hood, and it was one of those warehouses that Bear and Chloe watched that night. Chloe had glared at Bwana and Broker when they picked up the key to another Chevy and had snatched it from them. ‘Why do you get to do all the fun stuff?’

Bear smiled as they surrendered meekly without protest. A Chloe glare could melt tungsten.

The Chevy they were in was wearing the signage of a grocer two streets away. Tony had rustled the vehicle and the signage in quick time, and the grocer was the richer for it. They had to be on the move constantly, and switching vehicles was a must if they were to stay ahead of the gang.

Through windows lowered an inch, they could smell fresh meat as cartons of it were moved from warehouse to delivery vehicles. The watch was three hours old, and it was just past supper, no sign of Cruz, the chapter head. They had seen the odd bruiser, recognizing them from the laundry, so they knew they were in the right place, but all they saw was a lot of foot soldiers, no chief.

‘The night’s still young,’ Chloe commented; Bear just grunted, his reclining form not moving. Chloe looked at the occasional vehicle that passed by, some of them having kids in them, the solitary couple walking hand in hand. ‘You think we’d ever be like that?’

Bear opened one eye fully and regarded her quizzically. ‘You would have gone bat-shit in two days… probably shot me.’

She thought about it, but knew the answer already. She wasn’t made out for the white picket fence and two and a half kids. She wouldn’t have joined the army if she was.

‘What do you think it means?’

Bear sighed and straightened his long frame and brought his seat forward. He knew what she was referring to.

There was one last page in the journal that Broker hadn’t told the cops about.

He’d torn out that page, made copies of it for all of them, and only then had handed the book to Rolando.

That page had Shattner’s last entry, the day he left the kids with Elaine Rocka.

Forgot to tell Kirkus their messaging system, and now it may be too late. Our next call is not due for a few days. The system is simple. We all call a number and leave a voice mail on it and then text the other guys a password. The password can be anything, numbers or letters, or a combination, but has to have the number nine in it somewhere. Where the nine appears doesn’t matter, it just has to be there. Asked Diego about it once, and he looked evilly at me, and I thought we were going to do the gun-forehead routine again. I don’t know why the nine and why not any other number, but the nine in the password means that it’s an authentic gang message.

Broker had thrown Werner at it but wasn’t hopeful. You can’t crack a code on just one facet, you need some more. ‘At least this way, the gang won’t know that we know… and just maybe will still have the same system. All that we need is to pick up a few brawlers important enough, knock their heads, and we’ll know what it means, and then we go listening to their messages… that messaging number’s the same one we found on that phone Roger picked up in Arizona.’

 

‘Dunno.’ Bear shrugged. ‘Broker has that thing of his chomping away at it, so we might find something.’

‘That brain of yours hasn’t a clue?’ Chloe teased him.

Bear scratched his beard, embarrassed. Most people looked at him and went, all that meat must mean the brain’s small, and he was more than happy for them to think that. During his Special Ops days, he had learnt it was better to be underestimated than overestimated.

‘I did give it some thought. Bwana too, but we didn’t get anywhere. Thing is, a random number is impossible to break unless you have the context to it or clues to that.’

A Cherokee with blackened windows swept inside the open entrance of the warehouse and unloaded four men, not warehouse workers, unless warehouse workers had suspicious-looking bulges underneath their tops.

‘Lots of them now,’ Bear murmured, glancing at the clock in the dash, eleven p.m. ‘I reckon about fifteen.’

At two a.m., three Patriots, all identical, with black, darkened windows and dimmed headlights, passed once down the street, Bear and Chloe squeezing themselves down below the window line. They saw the dimmed lights returning in the distance and, pushing their seats back, lay prone and pulled dark linen blankets over themselves. Just in time, as the lead vehicle turned on two spotlights on its roof, playing on both sides of the street, and moved slowly, looking for vehicles with occupants. They passed the Chevy without any break in speed, and at the end of the block they could hear the three engines fade out and then increase as they U-turned and returned. One more pass down the block, the searchlights probing and finding silent rows of unoccupied vehicles, and then the lights turned off, and the Patriots wheeled inside the warehouse.

The warehouse doused all its exterior lights, and in the darkness they could hear the soft thuds of doors opening and closing. They raised themselves up cautiously and, through night vision, saw the first set of wheels had spilled out four armed men, the last, another four. When the eight were all out, the vehicle in the center spewed its passengers – the driver, who held the door open for Diego, who was followed by a hatchet-faced man. Jose Cruz.

Seven men formed a circle around Cruz and Diego, and at a hand wave from Diego, the warehouse emptied, the men from the Cherokee herding workers to a bus outside. Some gunmen accompanied the workers, and when the last had boarded, it shuddered to life and nosed down the street, the rest of the gunmen following it in their ride.

Eleven left, must be the inner circle. Bear observed the circle, the way they stood and moved. Forces, for sure, but slack and out of training. Wouldn’t last an hour in the Farm. The Farm was the Agency’s secretive training ground, where they honed their skills, and kept up with the newest weapons, technology and tradecraft.

The circle shaped itself and moved inside the warehouse, two men staying out to roll shut the large sliding doors. The doors, well oiled, rumbled as quietly as doors their size could, shutting the gang leader and his number two from the outside world. A light turned on inside the building, silhouetting the two outside, one of them leaning against a SUV and puffing deeply on his smoke, the other circling aimlessly.

After an hour, one door rolled open a crack, and a voice asked something sharply and got an indistinct reply. Satisfied, the voice disappeared, and the door slid back. Checking they aren’t sleeping, Chloe mouthed at Bear.

Bear reached back for his backpack and slid something in his pocket, moving carefully so that his heavy frame didn’t rock their wheels. He shook his head, Nothing, when Chloe looked questioningly at him.

After another half an hour, he started timing every ten-minute block in his mind, and at the third block, he eased open his door and slid out, ignoring Chloe’s whispered shout.

Using the wheel well and the rear mirror as cover, he peered out, waiting, counting down the ten minutes.

In the last third minute, the smoker flicked his second smoke to the ground, said something over his shoulder and disappeared around the corner of the structure. The second man laughed, and he walked to the other corner, but kept walking straight ahead till he reached the wall.

A cool night, nothing to occupy the mind except the bladder. Unzip, relieve, zip, and wipe hands, sigh, and job done. Fifteen seconds to turn around.

Bear raced across the street, through the entrance, his thin rubber-soled shoes whispering no louder than the wind, reached the first Patriot, leaned down, straightened, one single move, moved to the next, and then the third, and raced back. The first guard had rounded the corner when he reached the shelter of the Chevy, and the second had joined him when he climbed inside.

He shushed a furious Chloe, who had unlimbered her gun, ready to provide covering fire if he had needed it. Each of them had tracking devices in their backpacks, fitted with a specially designed magnet. A sliding switch turned them on, and they latched on to the undercarriage of the vehicle till the end of eternity, or till they were detected and turned off.

An hour later, one of the men came out on the street and stood there looking up and down, the night light gleaming dully off an automatic rifle across his chest. He removed a flashlight from his pocket and started checking cars randomly on both sides of the street. The Chevy was the tenth set of wheels he inspected, his light reflecting off the window, revealing a pockmarked face and thin moustache. He walked on, checking cars behind it, doubling back to inspect a few ahead of it, and when he was satisfied, he rapped on the sliding door.

Cruz, in the center of the phalanx, barked orders all the way to his ride, receiving nods in return, and his gang boss duties done, climbed inside, and disappeared in engine growls and exhaust.

Silence crept down, and in the darkness, a shadow detached from behind the driver’s wheel well and stood and stretched. Bear wiped his hands against his fatigues and waited for Chloe to join him. She had taken cover behind a vehicle behind him.

They walked a block in the shadows – the Chevy left behind to be part of the furniture on the street – turned a corner, walked three streets, and a Ford’s door swung open.

Bwana thrust hot coffee in their palms and smiled in the darkness, his teeth lighting up the gloom. ‘How many you shot?’