‘You forget, I work in the mayor’s office. I know about this. Has this been signed off by the Commissioner, the FBI?’ she said tartly.
‘Yes, ma’am. We’ll need to complete lots of formalities, but it’s all done.’
She stood up abruptly. ‘Do it. My babies need to get their childhood back.’ She stalked away, a lioness protecting her brood.
‘Remind me never to cross her.’ Broker looked wryly at Roger as they left.
‘It can’t be done. Not unless you mount a full frontal attack and cut off the rear. We need a small army for that,’ Bear said when they returned. ‘Of course, Bwana and I are the equivalent of two armies’ — he winked — ‘but we’ll need more than that.’
They were studying Kelleher’s home in Queens, a mere ten-bedroom residence with a swimming pool and a surrounding wall. They were going to keep relentlessly on the gang till something gave, and the chapter head of Queens was their next target.
Broker drummed his fingers, going through their options. ‘Let’s try out some toys.’
They split up, taking three cars; Broker — shrugging off Bwana’s look that asked, Just how stinking filthy rich are you? — led them.
He took them to an office block, with a basement parking lot, a corner of which was a tennis-court-sized walled-off block with shutters. Broker entered a code at the door, swung it open, flipped on the lights and gestured grandly.
One section of the block was a car mechanic’s dream come true — a fully stocked garage housing three Escalades. The garage was not what had them gaping. The remaining section of the block had shelves that ran lengthwise, stocking gadgets and weapons.
Bwana went to one of the shelves and picked a model car — this model was electric and had a spy camera and a recorder fit in it. The device next to it was an inflatable weather balloon, one that conducted surveillance.
He closed his mouth. ‘This yours?’
‘Yes. Actually the whole building is mine.’ He started to say more but held back, looking embarrassed.
‘What?’ Chloe asked him bemusedly; they had never seen him lost for words.
‘It’s ours,’ he blurted out.
‘Say what?’ Roger shouted incredulously, his words echoing inside.
Broker shifted on his feet, refusing to meet their gaze. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said finally.
Bwana and Roger pulled four folding chairs for all of them to rest themselves. ‘Make it simple, Broker,’ Roger said pleasantly, all the time in the world for them to hear Broker’s astonishing revelation.
‘You remember we rescued that girl in Morocco?’
They nodded, an assignment they remembered well.
They had taken down a terrorist cell in Morocco, and during the mission had discovered a hostage, a young girl who was shared among the men, a girl whose ordeal had turned her mute. They had freed her from the terrorists, wiping out most of them, taking the cell leader alive, and had brought both of them stateside for debriefing.
The cell leader had died during an attempted escape, but the girl had survived, and after two months of healing, medical care and psychiatric attention, she uttered her first words. Words that had a profound and positive impact on the Agency.
The girl turned out to be the daughter of a high-ranking royal in a Middle Eastern country, a country that the US was desperate to have warm relations with. The grateful royal met Clare and presented her with a check that made her raise her eyebrows. ‘Shall I increase it?’ he asked, reaching for his pen.
‘He refused to take the money back, and Clare gave the check to Zeb and me to do as we pleased with it. We formed a company with the six of us as equal owners, invested the money, and a few years back, we bought this, outfitted it’ — he waved his hand around — ‘and this is it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us earlier? Or Zeb, why didn’t he?’ Chloe regarded him curiously.
‘There wasn’t a right moment. Bwana and Zeb disappeared on assignments, Bear and you got assigned by Clare… then Zeb died. This is the first assignment we have all been together in a long while.’
‘I was also scared,’ he said after a pause.
‘Of?’
‘You guys are my family. I was scared this would alter our relationships with one another.’
He fidgeted under the weight of their gaze, all poise and sophistication deserting him, more nervous than he had ever been. He tightened as Roger stood and glanced at the rest of them and approached him. Behind Roger, Chloe giggled, and then Roger was doubling up, and they were all laughing.
He stared at them and staggered back as Roger punched him in the shoulder.
‘For all those brains, you can be amazingly dumb. We knew all along about this place; we just didn’t know where it was.’
It was Broker’s turn to gape at them, his fog clearing as Roger explained, ‘Zeb told us about the company and the investment, that time in the Catskills when you guys were camping with the Balthazars. He also told us you had this stupid fear of this impacting us, so we decided to play you along.’
He hugged Broker. ‘We don’t do this for the money, bro. This doesn’t change anything.’
Behind him Chloe nodded vigorously. Roger was speaking for all of them.
‘Right, let’s see the toy I brought you here for.’ Broker returned to form. He reached to the top of a shelf and showed it to them. It had wings, wheels, and various attachments.
‘A drone, the latest in countersurveillance, has zoom video, all kinds of hearing gizmos that can hear a fly fart, and night vision. It can stay up for twelve hours, will self-destruct if tampered with, and noiseless from over ten feet away.’ He patted it proudly and gestured at five other drones on the shelf. ‘We’ve enough of them and can get more. The manufacturers also supply the NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency.’
Bwana inspected it, looking at the various attachments. ‘Will it carry weapons? Can it fire?’
‘Nope, too heavy, and remote warfare is not really what we guys are about.’
Kelleher’s residence was in a relatively quiet neighborhood nestled snugly in its walled oasis, many large residences in its vicinity. A section of the wall ran along the street, leafy trees bordering it on the inside, carefully pruned to remove any overhang. The wall curved inwards leading to black metal gates, ten feet tall, which opened to a driveway that joined the street.
Most of the house was shielded from the street except for a few high windows.
‘You’ve no other info on this residence? What kind of security? Dogs? Any idea about which businesses this chapter owns or runs? Bars, gas stations, anything?’ Bear stroked his beard as he looked at the neighborhood map.
‘If I had all those, you think I wouldn’t be sharing?’ Broker grumped. The chapter had little ‘leakage’ — information on its places of operation — which was a stark contrast to Hamm’s gang. The only alternative available to them was to track Kelleher’s movements, find a pattern, and then work out a takedown plan.
They needed to know which wheels he rode in.
A police cruiser whispered down the street at midnight, paused a moment outside the wall, and drove out slowly. If watchful eyes were around, they would’ve noticed a dark shape rising in the air, disappearing in the shadows of the trees.
That time of the night, the only alert eyes on the street were in the cruiser.
The cruiser crawled away, parking behind a DOT, Department of Transportation, truck that was parked a street away, in a perimeter of traffic cones. Roger hopped out of the cruiser and woke Broker in the truck, the warm smell of coffee enveloping him as the truck’s window lowered. The drone could be operated by two pilots, each able to pass control to the other, and Broker’s controls flickered to life as he took over. He’d connected the video and audio feeds to his laptop for detailed study.