When he was six feet away from the vehicle, he stuck another putty-covered bug to the front of the cigarette and blew on it. The bug flew from the cigarette-shaped blowpipe and stuck to the roof of the Rover, looking like debris from the road. So long as Broker didn’t remove the debris or take the Rover to a car wash, the Watcher would have ears on the vehicle.
Having eyes on his movements was easier given that Broker’s vehicles were fitted with custom LoJacks.
LoJack was a well-known manufacturer of vehicle tracking and recovery systems that enabled stolen cars to be recovered. The manufacturer installed small radio transceivers in vehicles that emitted a signal to tracking units. The NCIC, National Crime Information Center system used by federal and state law enforcement agencies, talked to the LoJack database, and thus stolen vehicles could be quickly tracked and recovered by the cops.
The Watcher, while walking across, had another NSA gadget in his pocket — a battery-operated miniature spectrum analyzer that rapidly scanned thousands of frequencies in milliseconds. The NSA had the frequency ranges used by manufacturers such as LoJack, and by the time the Watcher had passed the Rover and exited the building, he had the frequency to the vehicle.
The Watcher put his eye back to the scope to see the last of the police roll out their tapes across the gate and the door, and drive away leaving silence and an empty warehouse behind. He waited. The sounds and smells of dinner being prepared drifted through the block, the liquid laugh of a woman wafted and hovered and slowly broke up, and still he waited, the silence of the apartment a second skin.
It was close to midnight when the sedan nudged its way through the street and stopped in front of the warehouse. Doors opened and thumped shut quietly, and through the scope he saw three figures head to the warehouse.
Forty-five minutes later, the figures returned, the two on either side of the central figure doing a lot of nodding and head shaking. The Watcher zeroed in on the central figure, Hamm, who turned to his left, to Quinn. Find them. Put the word out.
Quinn nodded. What about the other warehouses and businesses?
You’ll get more people.
He slid inside the rear of the sedan, doors thumped again, and the sedan drove off.
The Watcher waited a couple of hours more, and in the deep of the night, he left the apartment as soundlessly as he had entered, the rifle folded neatly in a noise-and-shock-proof sling across his shoulder, a smaller backpack resting on his back.
He approached the warehouse in the shadows, vaulting over the wall in the furthest corner, approaching the rear. The rear door was still intact, the brace gleaming in the dark. He turned on a red nightlight and saw that it would take too much time, make too much noise, to remove it.
He walked around the building, pausing in the shadow of the front. The night slept. He ducked under the tape and, stepping to his left immediately, hugged the wall.
The warehouse smelt heavy; fear and sweat mingled with the odor of CS gas and the flash-bangs. Mingled with it was the smell of drugs. Furniture was strewn across the floor, large tables lying on their sides, some of them smashed, cardboard cartons and rolls of unused baggies strewn all over.
The Watcher reached into his backpack and removed four time-delay incendiary flares and, setting the delay on them, tossed them in the corners of the warehouse.
He had reached the end of the street when the warehouse went up with a loud whoosh, outlining his form briefly before he merged into deeper shadow. He walked on without breaking stride and pulled out his phone.
‘911? Reporting a fire.’
He flipped his untraceable phone shut. That was a good move by Broker. Switching vehicles. Where could they be?
Bwana and Roger were wolfing down sandwich rolls for breakfast in a Subway a block away from their hotel when Broker, Bear, and Chloe joined them the next day. Bear and Bwana filled the café with just their presence.
Chloe looked at the roll in Bwana’s hand and grimaced. ‘Bwana, you do realize it’s called breakfast for a reason, and not lunch?’
Bwana took a larger bite. ‘Yup. But I’m a growing boy and need all the vitamins. You’re all growed out, so you don’t need them.’
Bear stifled a chuckle at Chloe’s glare and headed to the counter to get nourishment for the rest of them.
Broker had his laptop running when he returned and was replying to Roger. ‘We lie low for a day or two while we decide which other place to hit.’
Bear paused while handing out their drinks. ‘What about Isakson? Is he in the loop? Does he know about yesterday?’
Broker shook his head. ‘Nope and nope. He might put two and two together, but we have carte blanche to do things our way. That was the condition I insisted on for helping him.’
He went back to studying his laptop. His intelligence business did not need his full-time presence, and he used a light touch with managing Tony and his other managers, but he still studied all the intelligence reports that were collated overnight, and commented on them before they got distributed to various clients.
His phone rang, interrupting his reading. He glanced at it and picked it up. ‘Tony? What’s up?’
He listened for a moment. ‘Did the NYPD approach you?’
‘All right, keep me posted.’ He leaned back and gazed out of the window for several moments, not registering the inquiring glances from the rest.
Chloe finally broke the silence. ‘Spill it, Broker. We’ve been properly respectful for long enough.’
He turned to look at her, grinning. ‘If you guys had been really respectful, you’d have allowed me to speak first.’
He turned his gaze on Bwana and Bear. ‘The warehouse was burnt at night. Late night. The NYPD suspect it’s arson. They’ve found traces of incendiary devices at the site, and the official line is that they’re pursuing all lines of inquiry. Unofficially, they don’t give a damn. They’ve got the gangbangers, they’ve got a shit load of drugs, and they’ve got the limelight. The case will be buried and closed later.’
He held his hand up to forestall them. ‘That’s all we know, guys. Tony is looking into it and will let me know if he has more intel.’
‘Could 5Clubs have razed it to the ground?’ Bwana asked curiously. ‘Maybe they’ll claim damages from insurance.’
Broker shrugged halfheartedly. ‘It’s possible. I’m just wondering why they’d want to bring attention to themselves, if that’s what they’ve done.’
They went at it for a few more minutes without any theory taking shape. Bear said disgustedly, ‘They wouldn’t be a gang if they acted rationally, would they?’
And on that, they put it behind them.
Broker folded his laptop to tablet mode and pulled up Google Maps. He zeroed in on three addresses — in the Meatpacking District, East Harlem, and in Midtown West.
‘The first is another crack warehouse, very similar to the one we busted. The second is a gas station in East Harlem. They own this station… a lot of their customers end up reporting card fraud. They probably use card skimmers to rip the numbers. They use the gas station to also consolidate their daily take from their local businesses. The last one, in Hell’s Kitchen, is a high-end strip club. Business types from Wall Street, corporate honchos, media guys… you know the kind, they all head there.’
Bwana tilted the tablet toward himself to see better. ‘Why don’t we hit all three?’
Bear shook his head immediately. ‘Let’s turn the screw slowly. Let’s do one and then another a few days later.’