The Reluctant Warrior (Warriors Series Book 2) (17 page)

Tony, skinny and with thinning hair, jumped out of the Taurus and approached them when Broker parallel parked. He stroked his thinning hair. ‘I swung by your apartment and got all your kits packed in separate go bags.’

He blushed as he turned to Chloe. ‘Uhhh, ma’am, I put together some stuff for you too.’

Chloe smiled at him reassuringly. ‘We’ll do just fine, Tony. Thanks for your help.’

They transferred their weapons from the Rover to the Taurus, and Broker tossed its keys to Tony. ‘Get it back to the basement, Tony. I’ll be on my satellite phone; we all will be on ours, from now on. Hold the fort and run past my apartment every now and then. You know the drill.’

Tony nodded and gave them a salute as he drove the Rover away.

‘Good guy. He’s my number two. Don’t let his appearance fool you. Ex-Ranger. He’s ice cold under pressure and a master marksman who’s seen combat.’ Broker nodded in his direction. ‘All my guys are either ex-police or ex-military… cool heads when things hit the fan.’

He noticed Roger rummaging through his go bag. ‘Problem?’

Roger shook his head. ‘On the contrary. How the hell did he know my favorite stuff?’

Broker was incredulous. ‘I am in the
intelligence
business, Rog.’ He shook his head in despair as Roger disappeared behind the Taurus to change into a pair of jeans.

‘Why’re you changing?’

Bwana jumped in disgustedly, ‘Hell, he’s like that. Changes four or five times a day. Has to look as if he’s stepped out of
GQ
.’

Roger folded his discarded clothes, stuffed them in the bag, and approached them.

‘What?’ Bwana asked him, seeing the expression on his face.

Roger held out a phone. ‘I found this in my jeans. I was wearing them in the valley.’

Bwana frowned as he inspected the phone. ‘This must be from one of the bandits. We were searching them, and you must have slipped it in your pocket and then forgotten about it.’

He powered it on. ‘Nada. No juice.’

Broker took apart its battery and put it back again and powered it up. He shook his head. ‘Deader than that frog in my biology class in high school. This is a pretty basic phone. We’ll power it up later and see whether we can retrieve any numbers or messages off it.’

Roger looked at him doubtfully. ‘I think there was one number on it, but I don’t remember it.’ He looked at Bwana, who shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t we ship it to the Border Patrol?’

‘We will.
Afte
r we have played around with it.’

He clapped Roger on the shoulder. ‘Good find, even if it was a late discovery. Now let’s hope it yields some dirt.’

Chloe had been inspecting her bag and looked up impatiently. ‘Can we get out of here now? Broker, I presume you’ve arranged digs for us?’

‘You presume right, Chloe. A seedy place – an hourly hotel, between Little Italy and Central Park, will be our palace for a few days. Not exactly the Mandarin Oriental.’

He drove out of the basement lot and merged into traffic, which was moving slowly, dragged down by the after-office commuters.

The hotel was as seedy as Broker had promised. A wad of cash flashed by Broker ensured that the desk clerk didn’t glance at them, hardly looking up from the lurid magazine he was thumbing through.

Broker pulled out his iPad once they had settled in and assembled in his room. ‘One of their stashes.’ He enlarged a section of the map of Harlem. ‘About half an hour drive from the garage, the other end of Harlem, near the river. The gang bought a dilapidated plot having a couple of semi-detached houses a few years back and converted it to a storage and distribution center. They deliberately let it run down on the outside and on the inside demolished the separating walls and made it one large warehouse.

‘They receive drugs here, unpack them and pack them into smaller units for street distribution. They usually have fifty Ks there, and that’s just coke. They have other nasties there, meth, PCP, 2CP, all kinds of stuff people inhale, inject, and consume.’

He pulled up a series of images of the warehouse. ‘The warehouse is basically a long rectangle with one of the smaller sides facing the street. It’s surrounded by a wall, and there’s a gated entrance at street level. Front door is solid oak, a few inches thick, opens outward. Has a sliding slat that covers a peephole. A couple of barred windows either side of the door, a bit high up, and three windows each on the side walls. The rear is exactly the same as the front. Just the two exits, front and back. All windows are barred. Four corners of the house have CCTV cameras. As far as Joe Public is concerned, this place is some sort of civic or community center. A couple of heavies always at the gate to discourage Joe Public and to ensure that the
right
community enters the warehouse. Not that it’s a street Joe Public would frequent. It’s gang territory, and they know enough to keep away.’

Chloe frowned at the images. ‘What about the surroundings?’

‘Low-income apartment blocks, where a lot of single-parent families, broken families, reside. This is not exactly the neighborhood where you’ll find moms and kids or couples going for a stroll. If there’s anyone loitering on the street, chances are they’re hoods.’

‘How come the police haven’t pulled this place down? If you know of this, surely they do too? In fact, how did you know the chapters operate from all those places, that garage, for example? If it was so easy to find where the gang holed up, surely the cops would have been on them like a ton of bricks,’ Bwana asked him.

Broker counted on his fingers. ‘One, the cops cannot act until they have probable cause, for which they have to mount surveillance, monitor various gangbangers, all that shit, which can take days, weeks, months or years. Just because they
know
that the garage is Hamm’s office isn’t worth jack.

‘Two, the chapter headquarters are properties owned by the gang through a series of shell companies, which have offshore accounts. The cops need warrants and have to cut through international red tape to tie all those together and lead it back to the gang. Werner’ – he nodded at his computer – ‘doesn’t need all that shit. Werner goes where he wants to’ – the program was a living being for Broker – ‘does what he wants, and leaves no trace. I have some incredibly smart guys all over the world, like the Ukraine for example, who put the pieces together. There’s a lot of technology that goes into gathering such info. Using gangbanger sightings at various places, correlating street chatter, drawing radii of influences, running facial recognition programs, analyzing Facebook posts, reading financial statements… lots of geeky stuff.’

The middle finger came out. ‘I shared my dossier on the gang with the cops a long time back, and I’m sure the intel in it has helped their organized crime task forces, but like I said, they’ve got their constraints.’

Broker made a disgusted face. ‘One of my analysts came across
this
warehouse by accident when he was gathering juice on illegal arms shipments in the city. I fed the NYPD this intel, and they never did anything about it. I took it up with Clare, and she said the NYPD had politely told her that I should mind my own business. So I did.’

Roger looked up at him. ‘Are you sure the gang still uses the warehouse?’

‘Yup. Tony has been watching it for a few weeks now. In fact, there’s possibly a stash there; he saw stuff being unloaded. Came two days back and the gang hasn’t shipped out whatever came in yet.’

Chloe scrolled through the various images. ‘How many bandits?’

‘About eight heavies work inside the warehouse and cover it, two or three park their asses on the street usually. But Tony says now there are anywhere from twelve to fifteen inside and five outside. Guess Hamm must have told them about us.’

‘Shouldn’t we tip the cops?’ Roger asked.

Broker grinned. ‘Done. I’ve a friend there who’s pretty high up; I’ve told him. Have also asked him to give us a few hours before they hit the warehouse. We go a long way back, plus Clare has pulled strings. Dunno what yarn she has spun, but he knows juice when he hears it.’

Bear cracked his knuckles. ‘What’s the plan?’

Broker grinned. ‘We do some distribution ourselves.’

Chapter 22

They hit the warehouse at noon the next day.

Bwana cruised down the street, driving a bright red Ford SUV with dark windows, wearing a red cut-off tee that showed off his heavily muscled arms, a black bandana covering his head. His windows were rolled down, and music blasted away, audible at the next planet. Not exactly a gangbanger look, more like
dad-
banger.

‘Five hoods outside, three to the left of the gate, two to the right. All wearing our favorite gang tats. Gate is wide open. No signs of activity outside or inside,’ he murmured into his collar mic.

‘Roger,’ came Broker’s voice through the flesh-colored earbud.

Bwana glanced disinterestedly at the hoods and drove slowly on. Once past them, he arranged his inside mirror and made eye contact with Roger and Bear, who were in the rear of the vehicle. They gave him a silent thumbs-up, having heard his call to Broker.

Bwana drove around the block and re-entered the street again, driving slowly. ‘All clear, except for the hoods.’

‘Roger. You can see us now.’

From the other end of the street an identical SUV approached, heading his way.

The hoods had clocked the Fords, but their postures hadn’t changed, their butts firmly parked against the compound wall. Bwana’s gaze passed over them casually.
No weapons visible, but those lowriders are weighed down with something.

He drove past the first couple of hoods and idled to a stop a wheel length ahead of the three hoods. They straightened and stared balefully at him. In his mirror he could see the two hoods behind them looking their way.

He leaned his body across the seat, stuck his head out the window, and shouted above the music. ‘Say, bro, this where 5Clubs hang out?’

‘What?’ the one closest to him shouted back, stepping closer.

Big mistake.

His left arm blurred, a brown explosion of muscle and sinew, grabbed the hood by his tee and smashed his forehead against the A-pillar.

The other two hoods moved towards them, their hands darting inside their pockets and then jerked and fell to the ground as twin streams of electricity shot out from Roger and Bear, who had come from behind the SUV.

They turned off their Tasers, pulled out plastic ties, and cuffed the hoods’ hands and legs, and then duct-taped their mouths. Bwana got down from the vehicle and did the same for the hood whose face he had smashed. The three of them threw the three hoods in the SUV, slapping away their attempts to kick them.

The two hoods on the other side of the gate had started running towards their brothers when Broker slowed and Chloe slid out of their ride. The heavies were running too fast for her to unload the Taser, so she stood her ground and let them approach her.

A smooth step to the left, ducking beneath the gun that had appeared in the first hood’s hand and his wild thrust, she grabbed his wrist on its outward swing, twisted his arm, nearly dislocating his shoulder, and thrust him in the path of the hood behind him.

Both went crashing down, and swift kicks in their nuts took them out of combat. Broker hopped out and duct-taped their mouths, muffling their groans, and a minute later the two hoods were in the vehicle, immobile.

Broker looked up and down the street and across it. The street was quiet. No one came out of the apartment blocks opposite
. Probably seen and experienced enough to mind their own business.

He looked down the street at Bwana. ‘All done here,’ he said into his collar mic. Bwana gave him an acknowledging nod and climbed into his Wagon.

They drew the SUVs to the next street, where Tony was lounging against a large NYC Department of Transport truck parked sideways and sectioned off by traffic cones. He guided them to park in a rough triangle when they approached, closing the view to onlookers. Tony, dressed in blue overalls with the DOT’s logo, rapped the driver’s window. Another stringy man climbed out, similarly dressed, bumped fists with Broker, and silently helped them transfer the five hoods.

Broker took hold of the legs of the last hood and Bwana, his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask. That’s Eric, another of my guys,’ he replied when Bwana looked at the truck and back at him.

Tony drove away when they had finished.

‘He’ll keep driving till we tell him to RV with us,’ Broker said and then grinned at Chloe. ‘That was smooth work. You had them down before I could join you.’

She chuckled. ‘You’re old, Broker. You wouldn’t have been of much help in any case.’

Bear cut in before he could reply. ‘Let’s hustle, shall we? The gang will soon notice the absence of their street patrol.’

They climbed in Bwana’s ride, and he pulled off, merging in the traffic unobtrusively.

Bwana stopped a couple of buildings away from the warehouse, on the opposite side of the street, and stepped out. They had a clear view of three of the CCTV cameras on the corners of the warehouse from that spot. ‘Broker, you’re the one they would have seen the least of, since Chloe and you were away from the sight of the front door and windows.’

Broker got out without a word and then stuck his head back in the window. ‘Ageist, that’s what the lot of you are.’

He turned his jacket inside out in the shadow of the vehicle – most people tend to remember upper clothing – and walked down the street, which was still empty. An hour had passed since their first entry in the street, but it was still deserted.
Kids at school, guys either stoned or at work, moms at work.

He looked at the warehouse from the corner of his eyes as he walked past it and thought he detected sounds from inside and distant movement deep inside the window, but he couldn’t be sure. He went down to the far end of the street, pulled out a rolled-up newspaper from his jacket pocket and read it as he walked back. Nothing had changed in the second pass.

The other four were standing in the shade of the SUV when he reached them. All of them had turned their jackets inside out, and Chloe had tied her hair up and tucked it under a baseball cap. All of them were wearing dull-colored combat trousers with large pockets. The jackets concealed their guns in their shoulder or hip holsters, and carried their spare magazines, and their leg wear had large and deep pockets down the thighs, knees, and legs, for more magazines, a backup gun, duct tape, plastic ties and first aid kits. Each one of them had blades strapped to their chest or down their backs or trouser legs.