He trotted to the rear of the vehicle and removed the street signs, and Chloe did the same at the other end.
‘All quiet here,’ Broker commented when Roger removed the magazines from the guns and dumped them in the SUV and joined him at the front. ‘Not a peep from anyone within the warehouse. If they had, Bwana would have fired at and through the door, and that would have pegged them back.’
‘What about spectators from the apartments?’
‘Nah. I think they have learnt to leave well enough alone.’
Roger left him to help Bear and Chloe load the signs in the rear, and they all climbed in, a tight fit this time with Chloe perched on Bear’s lap, since Bwana was still manning the Remington.
Broker powered the ride and reached down to turn off the jammer. He twisted around to check they all were aboard and then called a number.
‘No names. You know who I am. It’s time to ride and claim your headlines,’ he drawled when he got a reply. ‘About ten, no thirteen or fifteen of them,’ he corrected when Roger mouthed at him silently.
‘Of course they’re alive. We don’t believe in killing,’ he said piously. ‘You’ll need to hurry, though. Those bastards are passive at the moment, but that might change, and also the gang might send more hoods.’
‘How’re they passive? Well, I dunno. Hoods have a siesta in the afternoon, don’t they?’
The phone squawked, and Broker cut in. ‘That’s all I can share. The headlines are all yours for the asking if you move immediately,’ and he hung up.
‘NYPD?’ Chloe asked him as she loosened her hair and tied it again and replaced the cap over her head.
‘Deputy Commissioner. I’ve done him enough favors for him not to ask too many questions.’
‘What’re we waiting for now?’ Chloe asked. ‘We shouldn’t be here when the NYPD arrive.’
‘We’ll wait till we hear their sirens,’ Bear replied in a muffled voice, Chloe’s back squashed against his face.
‘Huh, and who asked you to talk?’ she said, jamming her back further against him.
Bwana fired and reloaded immediately, the muffled clap of the shot loud in the confines of the vehicle, cutting off any further talk. He reloaded.
All of them peered at the warehouse. ‘Got someone?’ Roger broke the silence.
Bwana continued keeping his vigil through the scope. ‘Wasn’t aiming to. Saw a face at the slat and shot well high to discourage them. I don’t reckon they’re still in any shape to attempt an escape.’
He glanced sideways at Bear and Roger. ‘That brace will hold, you reckon?’
Roger nodded. ‘They’ll need a heavy battering ram to rip it off the door, and something tells me those guys in there are in no shape to lift a battering ram, let alone use it.’
No other faces appeared at the slat, though a few times some gangbangers fired from inside. That came to a stop soon enough when Bwana placed his shots in a tight grouping at the top of the door. Another ten minutes and they heard sirens coming closer, and Broker rolled the SUV.
He drifted down the street while keeping an eye on his mirror, and when he saw the first flashing lights, he sped off. Just as he turned into the next street, he rang another number and put the call on speaker.
The phone rang five times before being picked up. There was silence at the other end, though they could hear the person breathing in the distance.
Broker chuckled. ‘Hamm, is that how they teach you to create an aura? By keeping silent? You guys should write a book, The Badass Guide to Intimidating People. It would be a best seller.
‘But maybe not. I plumb forgot that reading isn’t exactly at the top of a hood’s hobbies.’
Silence still.
‘By the way you guys have a warehouse in Harlem, don’t you?’ He gave the address and got no response in return.
‘You had that warehouse.’ He hung up and drove.
Chapter 23
The Watcher stretched in his hideout and put down his scope for a moment.
He had a vacant apartment in the block opposite the warehouse, with a good view of the entire street and the warehouse. He had broken into the apartment at dawn, padlocked it from the inside, and had then set up his hide.
A Barrett mounted on a bipod, a Leupold scope and binoculars, water and rations, and he had everything he needed for the whole day. He had seen the five hoods make their way to the street, with a lot of backslapping and low-rider tugging, and park themselves against the wall. They frequently adjusted their guns and privates as women passed them by, and their loud and lewd comments reached him even over the distance.
He had seen Bwana and Broker driving up and the smooth taking down of the hoods. When they returned, he had trained the Barrett on them, adjusting the scope so that the crosshair was bang on target. He could have taken them out any time he wanted to. He lip-read them whenever they were on his side of the truck, and from their actions and the snippets of conversation, he knew what they planned.
It hadn’t been difficult to track them down. The voice on the phone had been most informative, and the Watcher had found Broker’s apartment block on Columbus Avenue easily.
Breaking in was out of the question since Broker’s security was unrivalled. The Watcher studied the block and Broker’s apartment overlooking the avenue, and a half day and several coffees later, he was still struggling for ideas.
He drifted off to a Thai food truck, and when he returned, he noticed the window washers abseiling down the apartment block.
Maybe there isn’t a need to break in.
He studied the livery of the window washers and hung around to see what time they clocked off work. They left their equipment on the roof after work each day, a bonus for him. A couple of days later, he approached the block wearing the livery of the window washers, rappelling harness on top of his coverall, walked past the concierge, who barely registered his presence, and after using a cloned access card, went to the roof.
The scaffolding rig was already in place, locked down, with weights loaded on it. He picked the lock and moved the rig across the roof to above Broker’s apartment and secured it. He donned the rest of his abseiling kit, and after attaching and securing his ropes, he rapidly dropped two hundred feet down.
Thick sheets of dark blue glass, twelve-feet-high and across the entire breadth of the apartment, fronted Broker’s lounge and a large bedroom. The Watcher dug out a small object the size of a dime, covered it in a sticky putty the exact shade of the glass, and stuck it in one of the upper corners of the lounge window. He walked across the face of the window and stuck a similar voice-activated bug in the other upper corner and stuck two more bugs, for good measure, in the two upper corners of the bedroom window.
The sticky putty, which muffled the radio waves emitted by the bugs and rendered them undetectable by the most sophisticated equipment available, looked like chewing gum and was the brainchild of NSA’s ANT division. It was so deeply classified that even Broker hadn’t got hold of it or was even aware of its existence.
The Watcher walked up the face of the block and secured the receiver to the underside of the air-conditioning unit on the roof, and attached a transmitting device that would take the signal from the receiver and broadcast it to a wider range.
After moving the rig back to its original location, he took a last look around before heading down to the basement.
Broker’s Rover was in a brightly lit corner of the basement facing a ceiling-mounted CCTV camera.
The Watcher rolled up the collar of his coverall and donned a baseball cap that he pulled low over his face. He pulled out an unlit cigarette and walked casually across the basement toward the Rover.