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?’
Chapter 35
It was dawn when they returned to their base, Broker up and waiting for them, and when they all turned to go in, Elaine Rocka stood pointing a Colt 45 at them.
‘Whoa,’ Broker exclaimed, raising his hands in the air. ‘We’re on your side, ma’am.’
She lowered the gun. ‘I heard voices and came down to investigate.’ A flicker of amusement swept across her face as she read their expressions. ‘I grew up on a farm in Texas. I was hunting foxes with an air-gun when I was seven and went hunting with my dad when I was ten. I can handle guns.’ She turned and left and threw another over her shoulder, ‘And I can make them count.’
Broker looked pointedly at Bwana. ‘Maybe we should induct her in our team. Bet she’d shoot better than this lug.’ A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he turned to see Tony leaning against the door Rocka had just vacated. ‘Some guard you are. She came down to see what was up. Bet you were resting your ass… and your head.’
Tony grinned good-naturedly. ‘Boss, I had her in my sights, was behind her. But I loved that look on your face when she pointed that cannon at you. Priceless.’ He stuck his gun in his waist and jammed his fingers in his ears to ignore Broker’s swearing.
‘If I‘ve made your day, why don’t you rustle up coffee for us, and we can listen to what these guys have been up to?’ Broker growled.
He listened silently as Chloe outlined the night, interrupting her just once to fetch his laptop and check that the trackers were active. Leaning back when she had finished, he sipped his coffee appreciatively. ‘He would make some woman happy. Best danged cook I ever met.’ He smiled at Tony’s snort from the kitchen.
‘Let’s observe them for a night or two more. We don’t want to be tracking the wrong car and go to Alaska.’ A plan was taking shape in his mind, two plans actually, but they had to verify that Cruz stuck to his routine and used the same vehicles.
Bwana and Roger were on surveillance the next night, the six-foot-four black man almost dwarfing his companion, who wasn’t short himself, an inch over six feet. They carjacked the vehicle in front of the Chevy, Roger occupying it while Bwana made himself comfortable in the Chevy. Roger whispered, ‘You comfortable, bro?’
‘Compared to some places we’ve been, this is the Ritz,’ Bwana drily replied through his mic.
The black Cherokee swept in, right on time at eleven at night, and the men Bear and Chloe had mentioned unloaded. The activity level of the packers and loaders increased, and three hours later, on time again, the three SUVs repeated their passes of the street and finally went in.
Cruz and Diego stuck to their routine of the previous night, and when they’d left, Roger and Bwana unlimbered themselves, stretched to loosen the kinks, and walked back to the same block, where Bear and Chloe were waiting for them.
Broker was on his laptop when they returned, notes filled with his scribbling spread out in front of him.
‘What?’ Chloe asked him when she saw his expression.
‘I got something.’ There was the slightest trace of hope in his voice. ‘Werner’s narrowed down the thirty to three.’ He qualified his comment. ‘Werner returned twenty names in the first pass, and I refined the search and anomaly pattern, and it returned three.’
‘This is based on that number nine?’ Bear raised his eyebrows.
‘Yup.’
‘Hell, Broker, the nine could mean anything. I’m sure the number nine figures in everyone’s lives in the world!’
Broker nodded sagely. ‘Why I further refined the search and made Werner home in on the number that had more than a mundane existence in their lives!’
‘So who are they?’ Chloe asked impatiently.
Broker turned one of the sheets around for them to read.
Becky Pisano, Rick Stonehaus, and Floyd Wheat were underlined twice on the list. ‘Pisano’s youngest daughter was born on the ninth, Stonehaus’s dog died on the ninth, and Wheat, his hobby is base jumping, had his first jump on the ninth.’
‘Well, now,’ Bwana said in satisfaction, ‘shall we pick them up?’
Chloe rolled her eyes. ‘We’re still going after Cruz while you do whatever you have to do to dig into those names further?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Nothing’s changed, other than having the glimmer of a string for us to pull at and see what unravels.’
‘Good.’ She turned to Bwana and Roger. ‘We take them down tomorrow.’
Bwana grimaced. ‘Us four against them eleven? Not fair is it.’
‘You have a better idea?’
‘Rog and I could go. Just the two of us.’
Chapter 36
The takedown would happen outside the city, late at night, on an open road that would be clear of traffic at the time they were planning it.
Broker had arranged for two contractors they knew to stay round the clock with the family. Pieter Traut and Derek Coetzer nodded at all of them when they entered the home. The two South Africans slapped hands with Broker, Bwana, and Roger, who they’d met on previous assignments.
Broker had given them a tour of the house, introduced them to Tony and Eric, and had gone through schedules and details with Elaine Rocka, their professionalism and experience both apparent and comforting.
Chloe would be riding her bike the night of their attack, following the three-SUV party, to confirm that Cruz was in the motorcade and keep the rest of them updated.
She would also take out the last vehicle in their motorcade.
‘In New Jersey, on US 130, I know where,’ Broker decided as he brought up a map of the route Cruz had taken the previous nights.
‘Why so far? Why not take them down in the warehouse?’ Roger asked him as he calculated the distances, working out the logistics rapidly.
‘We’ve hit them thrice now at their places of business. I don’t want us to be predictable. Besides, gunshots in the city are bound to attract attention. If we take him in the warehouse, I expect a prolonged firefight, quite different from our rapid entry and exits earlier. On top of that, I want to know what’s in NJ, and the closer to their destination we hit them, the quicker we’ll find out what and why.’
The rest of them would be in two vehicles and would deal with the remaining Patriots. Tony and Eric had their roles to play too.