The Reluctant Warrior (Warriors Series Book 2) (22 page)

You had to be patient with Snarky. He got to the point, but not in the way a crow flew.

Broker seated himself more comfortably and listened to a mix of science and philosophy, and eventually Snarky addressed his question.

‘Only one gang. 5Clubs. Came from nowhere, and now nothing happens without their knowing or permission. Ruthless. They want to be feared, and they are.’

‘They’ve a chapter here?’ Broker knew, but he wanted to hear it from Snarky.

Snarky nodded. ‘In Brownsville, which, as you know, is not exactly where you’d want to bring up your kids. Guy’s called Jose Cruz, and he has one real badass dude by his side. Diego, his enforcer. Real bad, that hombre.’

He reflected for a moment. ‘You know, I’ve been here a long time and seen gangs come and go.
These
guys are different.’

‘Different in what way?’ Broker moved his seat back a couple of inches. Everything was fair in a battle against odor.

‘They’ve written the book on best practices for gang survival. I’ve heard that this gang recruits from the military, but they’ve adapted to survive on the street.’

Broker didn’t reply.
This junkie probably knows the gang better than the JTF.

Snarky edged closer to Broker. ‘What’s your interest in them?’ He paused and then continued when Broker didn’t answer. ‘Keep your distance from them. They’re scum, but they’re disciplined about it and all the more dangerous.’

‘Where does this Cruz hang out?’

Snarky pushed the trilby back fully, exposing gray stubble and sunken eyes. The eyes were sharp. ‘They hung out in a garage a while back, but moved to the edge of Brownsville recently. Was that your doing?’

‘Where?’

‘A Laundromat. A big one. Used to be Chinese-owned one day, and the next day, Cruz and his gang had all but unfurled their flag over it. But they’re keeping very low-key about it. The garage saw a lot of their heavies coming and going, and some of them were always there… this one here, they’ve just three guys or four all day, and Cruz comes irregularly. Most of the time he comes at night.’

Broker dug into his pocket and pushed a roll of bills toward Snarky. ‘I need more than this drip feed. I want to know who and how many exactly is at that place, how often Cruz appears, who’s with him… the works. You know the drill.’

Snarky eyed the bills and wet his lips. They were enough to feed him, or his habit, for months.

‘Shit, man, why did you go and do that? Tempting me like that. What you’re asking me to do is too dangerous. Word gets to them about me, I’m dead. In their world, you’re either minding your own business, or theirs. If theirs, you’re doing it for them else you’re dead. And you don’t die easy. That family… I heard whispers… they’ve disappeared.’

He shivered and, wrapping his coat tightly around his skinny frame, tipped his bottle back and took a long pull.

His eyes shone brighter as he looked into Broker’s for a long time, knowing very little of what Broker did, but knowing enough, and his shivering slowed.

‘They’ve no idea, do they? No idea of the dragon they’ve poked,’ he whispered.

Broker said nothing, kept looking back at him.

Snarky caressed the bills, picked them up, and smelt them. His voice was steadier when he spoke. ‘How do I contact you?’

Broker gave him a number. It was a toll-free messaging number, totally unreachable by the gang. ‘Call that number from a pay phone. Where are their other hides? Their businesses?’

Snarky bared his lips, his version of a smile, the roll disappearing from his hand, and recited a long list of names. Some of those, the strip club and a couple of others, tallied with Broker’s intel.

Broker kept looking at his back when he left, the door swinging in the shadows.

I should warn him, but he’s survived the streets a long time. He knows what he’s getting into.

Broker walked back the way he came, deep in thought. Much later, that would be his excuse for not noticing the shadow across the street, behind him.

Chapter 27

The strip club had an anonymous façade, its sole distinguishing feature the full-size cutout of a nude woman. Its front had limited parking spaces, and small darkened show windows stared out either side of the large door.

The strip club had a narrow alley at one side, which led to a walled and valeted parking lot at the rear, a rear entrance linking the lot to the club. Parking was important. Business types didn’t like walking, and the rear parking offered anonymity. The alley side had an entrance, presumably for supplies.

The front of the strip club merged into storefronts for salons, convenience stores, Mexican take-aways… everything that men would need on the same street.

‘Three cameras facing the street, one in the alley.’ Bwana was driving, Chloe was in the front, Roger and Bear were taking notes in the rear. Bwana turned left at the lights at the end of the street, another left and a right, and he was driving up the street on the same side as the entrance.

Chloe glanced inside the alley as they drove past. ‘Can’t see much. It’s a dead end with just one drive leading to the lot. The camera is right on top of the alley entrance.’

Bwana drove to a gas station a couple of streets away and pulled into a vacant lot. He swiveled as Roger and Bear opened the building plan for the club.

‘Broker said it might not be recent, but this’s the only plan he could get.’

They studied it in silence for a moment. The front and rear entrances led the patrons to seating and the stage to the right, while a bar, changing rooms and restrooms took over the left.

‘Three entrances, the rear doubles up as the fire exit.’ Chloe traced them with a lacquered finger. ‘I bet the alley entrance is also the staff entrance.’

‘Night?’ Bwana asked hopefully.

‘Nah. Too many people and there’ll be enough goons to outnumber us,’ Bear replied.

‘So when?’

‘Evening, around four. They open at six, so that’s when they’ll be stocking up and have enough cash in the place, but not that many heavies.’

‘I was them, I’d have heavies round the clock,’ Roger commented.

Chloe turned off the iPad and handed it to Bear. ‘Which’s why we’ll recon all day tomorrow, hit the day after.’

Roger winked at Bear. ‘She bosses you all the time?’

Bear pulled a long face. ‘I’m not allowed to say.’

Roger arrived early the next day driving a cab and left it parked on the street, in the opposite lane, and placed an ‘NYPD. Impounded’ card on the dashboard with a number on it. Broker had tossed him the keys with an all-taken-care-of grunt in the morning.

He locked the cab and walked without a backward glance down an alley and behind the street. He thumped twice on a black Escalade and hauled himself inside when it opened.

The cab had a hi-res, hi-zoom camera rigged in its advert canopy, swivel mounted, with a sixty-degree turn capability and a parabolic mic. It fed images wirelessly to base and relay stations they had mounted the previous night, leading the feed and controls to the Escalade. Bear looked up when he entered and turned back to the display and control panel. He nudged the joystick, watched for a few more minutes, and then pushed back.

‘These gadgets would have saved us a lot of grief in Iraq and ’Stan.’

Bwana, lying on the rear bench, opened one eye and snorted. ‘You’d have ended up fat and lazy, a bottom broader than this truck.’

Bwana caught the balled-up napkin thrown his way and went back to snoozing.

‘Where’s Chloe?’

‘Should be back soon. Coffees and all that.’

When Chloe joined them, they seemed to be asleep, an impression that had cost many an ambusher dearly. The Warriors were used to recon and could go for hours, days, in silent stillness.
Zero to lethal in a second,
she thought as she surveyed them, glanced at the monitor, and settled herself next to Bear.

They broke off the surveillance late at night and watched the feed from the start.

The first employees at the club arrived close to midday, the kitchen staff, via the alley entrance. Then came a series of deliveries, drinks, groceries, maintenance guys, cleaners, the invisible operators of the club. At half-past three, a Camry rolled up, low on its wheels. Four toughs inside would do that. Three of them hopped off at the alley entrance, one carrying a heavy backpack. The fourth drove the car behind, to the parking lot, and disappeared from the recon cam.

Bear paused the video and zoomed in so they could see the bag, its shape and weight, and resumed the feed.

At four, the girls started arriving and a fifth heavy, who escorted them. Roger looked at the girls and started to say something… and kept silent when he felt Chloe’s steady gaze on him. At seven p.m. the last heavy arrived, this time at the front entrance. He rapped on the door and withdrew red rope barriers and their stands and laid them out in the front, went back inside, and the lights and hoarding on the front came on.

The club was ready for business, and its patrons started arriving at six.

They continued watching the feed till midnight, though there wasn’t much more to watch. During its busy hours, two of the thugs came to the front and acted as bouncers.

‘I count about ten staff not including the girls, and seven goons,’ Bwana said when Bear turned off the feed.

He looked around at all of them. ‘Let’s hit them when they’ve just the four heavies. I suspect we’ll have about twenty minutes before the other goons come in and maybe backup hitters rush to the club.’

They all nodded. ‘Yup. If we aren’t out of there by then, we’ll be in a whole heap of trouble.’ Chloe tapped a polished fingernail on the laptop. ‘Where would you guys position yourself, if you were them?’

‘At the rear. Most people go for the front entrance, and hence that’s always the one heavily manned. At this club, I’d go for a force at the back,’ Roger replied promptly.

‘Way I figured. So, assuming that, I’ll take the front; Bwana, you take the rear; and Bear will take the staff entrance.’

She noticed Bear frowning. ‘Don’t agree?’

‘They’ll be expecting us, won’t they?’

She nodded. ‘They won’t know when, but yeah.’

‘Let’s do the unexpected, then. Same approach, but different tactics.’ He outlined his plan.

They waited for the Camry to make its deposit the next day and then made their move.

Chloe, a leather coat cinched at her waist and large shades covering her face, fluffed her blonde wig and rang a discreet buzzer on the front entrance. Lots of cleavage did the trick.

She heard rattling at the door, and it opened a sliver to allow suspicious eyes to peer out. ‘Yeah? We open later.’

She tossed a grenade through the crack. The suspicious eyes tracked her, then the object, grew wide, and the door slammed shut. From inside she heard a muffled shout, sudden voices, and the door was flung open.

The people rushing out reversed suddenly, and the door slammed shut even quicker when she fired just above their heads, pockmarking the door horizontally.

‘Back,’ someone screamed from inside.

The back had Roger and Bwana, in their trademark black and masked.

The rear entrance was shut when they approached it. Positioning themselves either side of the entrance, Bwana, on the left, knocked on the slat. It opened a few minutes later.

Roger wordlessly tossed three grenades inside and stepped back, away from the line of sight of the door. Bwana stayed where he was, hugging the wall.

There was deep silence for a second, and then they heard the first deep yell from inside, and others followed.

The double doors flew open, and the stampede began, all of them screaming and cursing. Bwana let the staff go, grabbed the first thug by his collar and rammed his face in the side of the building. The second thug turned around, startled, his mouth wide open in a silent shout, his eyes seeing but not comprehending, and he folded when Bwana’s Glock met his temple.

Roger joined him and pulled the other two bouncers from the fleeing crowd. The first one didn’t give him any trouble once his mouth had opened to receive Roger’s SIG; the other needed a little more persuasion, like a knee in the nuts.

Minutes later they had the four thugs lying on the concrete, plastic-tie cuffed. Bear and Chloe, having sent the staff home by pointedly waving their guns, joined them and wordlessly hauled the men up to sitting positions and looked at Bwana, giving him the cue. Bwana nodded at Roger, who disappeared inside, and minutes later they heard the sound of furniture crashing. He came back lugging a heavy plastic sack. ‘Stuffed with bills, mostly small notes. Emptied the till under the counter too. Retrieved all the grenades.’

They gave one last look at the four. One of them had his nose smashed and was bleeding heavily, another was looking at them with glazed eyes, and a third was doubled up and moaning softly.

The fourth glared at them balefully. ‘Feel like men, huh? Guns in your hand, bet you do?’ he sneered.

Roger tossed one of the grenades to Bwana, who held it up in the air for the four to see. ‘Feeling stupid that you didn’t notice its pin was still in? Bet you soiled your pants.’

They often used sudden, simultaneous attacks to create pressure-cooker environments that left no time for rational thought. Animal instincts, fight or flee, kicked in. Even battle-hardened soldiers lost the fighting instinct when they saw a grenade clattering in, and these were thugs. Former soldiers, but still thugs.

The man flushed angrily as Bwana’s words registered. ‘If I wasn’t–’

Bwana didn’t allow him to finish. Tossing the grenade back to Roger, he glided across, and hauling him up, he cut him loose.

He pushed the man forward. ‘Tell you what. Since you’re such a man, I’ll take you on. No guns, no knives, nothing. Just you and me.

‘You man enough for that? Or do you prefer fighting women?’ he goaded the heavy. ‘If you beat me, we’ll let you go free. Not only that, we’ll cut all of you free and walk away. Without all that money.’

The gangbanger was gym fit, his arms and legs heavily muscled, his shirt tight against his chest. He boxed and honed his skills whenever the gang needed to control a recalcitrant victim. He had a couple of inches over Bwana’s six-three, and he was confident. He bared his lips and feinted.