The Warriors Series Boxset I Page 19

He looked across the room to check if his children were still sleeping and then called the garage first and then Diego. He got no response from either of the numbers and pulled apart the phone again and slipped it into his pocket.

  He woke his children and spent a couple of hours with them, pushing back the real world as long as he could, but finally it was time to get them to the daycare center and check them in.

  An hour later, he was driving a yellow cab, after paying its driver handsomely for the day, driving back to Brooklyn. In the passenger seat was a map of Brooklyn with six red crosses marked on it.

  5Clubs had stashes for the crack and meth and stuff they moved all across the borough, and those red crosses were the stashes that Shattner knew of.

  If the warehouses were operational, the gang was operational.

  The stashes were not your conventional warehouses. They were apartments in which families lived.

  The occupants were usually gang families or connected to the gang in some way and got to live free in the apartments in return for having the drugs stashed in their homes. It was a neat setup by Cruz and worked so well that not once had any of his warehouses been raided. His genius lay in the location of those apartments. Some of those were in the most run-down, deprived neighborhoods of Brooklyn, such as Brownsville, and some were in the wealthiest neighborhoods, such as Brooklyn Heights.

  Shattner drew up to the first address, a single-family home that housed a gang member and his wife and three kids, a two-storied building off Christopher Avenue and Newport Street in Brownsville. As soon as he drove on Newport Street, he realized this was a bad idea.

  He was the only white male driving a cab in the neighborhood, and if he stepped out of the cab, he would stick out and be remembered. He drew near as slowly as he could without drawing attention, spotted the house on his left ahead, and slowed down further.

  Nothing. No one.

  He debated coming back up the street for a second pass, but discarded that thought and headed to the next cross.

  He made his way past upmarket cafés and bistros till he came to an imposing apartment block in Brooklyn Heights. The apartment was on the third floor and was occupied by a lawyer who represented 5Clubs. The apartment was guarded whenever it housed a load.

  Shattner parked his cab a block away and hoofed it across to the apartment block, grabbing his caffeine fix on the way. He walked past the block, his cap pulled low, and peered inside the entrance through the corner of his eyes, but couldn’t see anything. He knew the block had CCTV coverage, and he reckoned he could make a couple of more passes safely before he attracted attention.

  It was on his third pass, when he had almost given up, that he saw Aleksander, one of the gang’s hit men, talking with the concierge in the entrance. Aleksander was a nasty piece of work; Shattner had seen him casually break the knee of a bystander near the garage just because Joe Bystander had stopped in his tracks to make a phone call and Aleksander had bumped into him from behind.

  Aleksander’s presence indicated the gang was still operational, so the garage was closed for other reasons.

  Maybe Shattner was suspected of being a snitch by Diego and Cruz, and hence the garage was closed till Shattner was taken care of. Shattner didn’t know and didn’t waste time speculating. He glanced at his wrist. Just past noon and still time for his next visit, one he was not looking forward to.

  Elaine Rocka was born with a scowl and an opinion and never failed to display either or both at the slightest provocation. Which explained why she had run through three husbands and had no children. Husband number three had left her a sprawling five-bedroom home in the Bronx where Elaine now lived with a couple of cats and dogs for company. If her opinions bothered her pets, they didn’t let on.

  Elaine Rocka was Shattner’s sister-in-law.

  She had never liked him and hadn’t ever hidden that dislike. She thought her sister had ruined her life by marrying him.

  Elaine Rocka had one redeeming quality in Shattner’s eyes.

  She loved his kids and never lost an opportunity to keep them with her. Shattner drove the cab to Pelham Bay in the Bronx and wove his way to Laurie Avenue. He parked outside the short driveway, climbed the few steps and banged the knocker, fully knowing she didn’t like it banged. He could hear the deep silence in the house, and then a dog barked from its deep interior, and he could hear steps approaching the door.

  Elaine flung open the door, robustly built and elegantly dressed; her scowl threatened to split her face apart when she saw Shattner.

  ‘Prick,’ she said by way of greeting. She turned her back on him and polished the brass knocker, which was shining brighter than a mirror, with a cloth tucked away in her waistband.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked coarsely. ‘Ran out of bread and come begging again?’ referring to the one time Shattner had asked her for financial help after his discharge from the army.

  ‘The kids,’ Shattner replied, stuttering a little in her formidable presence, ‘could you keep them for a few days while I sort out some issues at work?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘In deep shit again, are you? Right, I forgot. That’s where you wallow normally, don’t you?’

  ‘Elaine, please… I need your help. Can you take them in just for a few days? I wouldn’t have come to you if I could put them up with someone else.’

  A wrist shot out and grabbed Shattner’s shirt. ‘Put them with someone else, would you, you prick? Where are they?’ Her eyes moved past him and searched over his shoulder.

  ‘They aren’t here. I’ll bring them in the evening,’ Shattner replied as he tried to pry himself loose from a grip that was suffocating him.

  ‘What about that tight bitch? What have you told her?’ Elaine asked him, politely referring to Mrs. Harwood.

  ‘That they’re unwell and that they’re visiting you for a few days.’

  ‘Six p.m. Don’t be late. They need to be fed,’ she said as she stepped back into her home and started shutting the door in his face.

  Shattner dug into his pocket and brought out a roll of bills and handed them to her. The heavy hand pushed him back, and he stumbled on the steps.

  ‘I don’t need your wad, you prick. Only the kids.’ The door slammed in his face, her dogs barking a contemptuous chorus in farewell.

  Shattner went to his cab and sat a long while. He observed the slight trembling of his hands, the tight band of pressure around him taking its toll. He picked up the phone to try the garage and then dropped it when it rang, the shrill tone unexpected and grating in the confines of the car. He looked at the display and saw that it was an unknown number.

  He held it to his ear. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Chollo, we have to meet tomorrow, come to the place where we did the first transfer, at eleven.’ Diego’s voice was harsh, brooking no refusal.

  ‘Diego, where the fuck are you, man? The garage has shut down, and you aren’t picking up your phone. What’s going on, man?’

  ‘Tomorrow, eleven.’ Diego hung up, ignoring his questions.

  Shattner took deep breaths, calming himself, and looked at his hands. They were still trembling. They always did when the threat level went off the scale. He looked at Elaine’s house and thanked himself for making the arrangement with her.

  Shattner brought his kids to her house promptly at six in the evening. They were ecstatic when they heard they would be spending a few more days away from school, with their aunt Elaine.

  She doted on them and spoiled them silly, and they took full advantage of that.

  Lisa unbuckled and scrambled out of the car even before he had turned off the ignition when they reached Pelham Bay. By the time Shawn and he had got their bags out, she had leapt into Elaine’s arms, the dogs yelping and running excited circles around her.

  ‘Prick,’ mouthed Elaine silently in Shattner’s direction and then bent down and crushed Shawn in a hug.

  ‘Cookies and milk first, homework second, and play afterwards. You know my rules,’ she to
ld Lisa and Shawn sternly, and then she grinned widely, ‘and you know what I think about stupid rules!’ She high-fived them and shepherded them inside and then turned back and stiff-armed Shattner outside the door as he was stepping inside.

  ‘Not you, prick. Your job is done,’ she hissed, out of earshot of the kids.

  ‘But, Elaine, I need to–’

  ‘You need to disappear,’ she said, cutting him off and slamming the door in his face.

  Shattner, his face burning, banged the door again till she flung it open, stony faced. From inside he could hear the excitement in the kids’ voices as they reacquainted themselves with her dogs and cats.

  ‘There’s a mobile in Shawn’s bag with some instructions. He should use the phone only in an emergency. Lisa’s stuff is in her bag. I left a locker key in her bag, with some instructions. I’ll be back in a couple of days and will keep you posted… I’ve closed the loop at school for them. Let me say bye to them,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Bye. I’ll tell them.’ The door slammed in his face again.

  Shattner stood there looking at the door, a wave of helpless anger sweeping over him. He forced a deep breath and walked back to the car. As he turned the key, he looked back at the house, hoping to see Lisa and Shawn in the windows, but knew that Elaine’s warmth had temporarily displaced him from their minds.

  Elaine hated his guts, but would take care of his kids.

  Forever, if she had to. If he did not return.

  Part 2

  Chapter 7

  Broker stretched his long legs ahead of him and admired his Louboutin shoes. Broker was dressed in an immaculate gray suit, a white shirt of the finest Egyptian cotton and those shoes. With his shoulder-length shaggy blond hair, blue eyes, and executive threads, he was New Age surfer dude – equally at home in the boardroom as on the beach. He drew second glances from women and grinned unabashedly at them when their eyes met.

  Broker was just that, a dealer who traded in information. The intel he traded in was sought after by governments, politicians, oil companies, intelligence agencies, security companies; in fact, just about anyone who could afford him. He had a real name, but Broker had stuck to him for so long that it was what he went by.

  Lobbying firms came to him to know about the sexual peccadilloes of senators. Government agencies approached him to cross-check their intel on nuclear material on sale. Politicians consulted him to see which Middle Eastern leader was supportive of government policy. Oil companies wrote him blank checks to find out which African despot preferred which oil company. Russian oligarchs consulted him on which banks in the world offered the most secure and anonymous deposits. Mercenaries or private military security firms came to him to get the lie of the land in the most dangerous hot spots on the planet.

  Broker was an equal opportunity vendor of information, with a few iron-clad rules. No trade with the dark side. No trade in information of any kind on women and children. No trade in anything against the national interest. Broker preferred to deal with those who used his information for the greater good, and he had often thrown clients out if he felt they were misusing his intel.

  Broker had grown up in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, with foster parents who had brought him up as their own child. They had lost their only daughter to a rare form of blood cancer when she was six, and when young Broker came into their lives, they showered all their love on him. His father was the county clerk and instilled a strong sense of right and wrong in his son, a set of moral values that were reinforced by his homemaker wife. They were the proudest parents in town when Broker enlisted, and they organized civic receptions for him whenever he visited them, much to his embarrassment.

  Broker’s ties to the town were severed when his parents were killed in a car accident. A drunk had lost control of his truck on an icy road and had rammed into their compact.

  He had started his career as an intelligence analyst in the US Army, and his unique way of analyzing, identifying patterns and correlating seemingly disparate incidents had not only secured him a fast growth through the ranks, but also put him on first-name terms with four- and five-star generals in the Pentagon.

  Broker had been one of a kind as an intelligence analyst since he also got deployed with Special Forces covert and overt missions to read the local situation. It helped that he could handle a long gun much better than the average soldier.

  He had injured his leg in his last mission and still had the faintest trace of a limp. He had retired from the army after that mission, set up shop as a trader of information, and had discovered a natural flair for business that had made him immensely wealthy. He had an army of analysts working for him, and the best paid informants and hackers in various parts of the world. He still got actively involved in certain projects, and one such project had brought him to the small coffee shop in Dupont Circle in Washington.

  Broker let the aroma of hot coffee and the ebb and flow of conversation in the café wash over him, creating a moment of suspended time. The white door swished in and Broker’s meeting stepped in. The man took a sidestep and paused, waiting for his eyes to get accustomed to the darkened interior of the café.

  Washington, D.C., was home to only two animals.

  Ones who were important and others who thought they were. General Daniel Klouse belonged to the former species.

  He stumped across the café on spotting Broker, pulled out a chair, and sat into it heavily, glaring at Broker. Washington was hell on his left leg.

  A high-velocity concrete slab had taken a shine to it when a suicide bomber had driven through the gates of the US Marine battalion headquarters in Beirut with a truck bomb. It was many years back, but at times like this, in the heat, it felt like yesterday.

  Despite his leg being nearly crushed by the concrete slab, General Klouse had dragged himself out of the rubble, using a metal pipe as a makeshift crutch, had taken command of the aftermath, and secured not only the safety of the survivors, but also had mounted a defense. His swift, courageous handling had taken him to the rarefied air in the Pentagon, and when the White House was looking to make a high-profile yet experienced appointee, General Klouse’s name was the only one on the short list.

  General Klouse was the National Security Advisor. He was also that rarest of animals in Washington, an apolitical one, and because of that, he was the President’s most trusted confidant.

  ‘This stuff you gave me about the North Koreans,’ the General began without any preliminaries after pulling out a sheaf of papers from inside his jacket, ‘where did you get it? The NSA and the others were gagging for it, threw their best at it, and came up with the big fat zero. So how come a nobody analyst like you got it?’

  ‘General, I got a few things going for me that none of your agencies have. Mine is a private enterprise, for one. I pay big bucks for my information. And lastly, I am trusted. My sources know they will never be fingered or subpoenaed or WikiLeaked if they work with me.’ Broker smiled at him.

  He added, ‘The Pentagon and many intelligence agencies around the world wouldn’t agree with your description – a “nobody” analyst.’ Broker was modest.

  The General grunted and leafed through the documents. After a while he looked up. ‘These are genuine?’

  Broker spread his arms and gave him a what-else-did-you-expect look, but Klouse was staring off into the distance and didn’t notice his gesture. Broker ordered them another round of coffees and waited for the General to finish his thinking. This meeting had been requested by the General, and Broker was curious to know why one of the most powerful people in the country wanted to meet him. Broker had given him the North Korean intel to prove his credentials even though he knew it wasn’t required.

  ‘I believe you’ve heard of Isakson.’ General Klouse turned to him after taking a sip of his coffee.

  Broker shrugged noncommittally. ‘We have met.’

  ‘That wasn’t the way he put it to me.’ There was a ghost of a smile on the General’s face.

  Bro
ker had run into Isakson, a Special Agent in Charge in the FBI, when rescuing Lauren Balthazar, the wife of a prominent journalist, and her son, Rory, from a group of rogue mercenaries.

  Broker and his ex-Special Ops friend, Zeb Carter, had been pursuing Carsten Holt, the ringleader of the rogue mercenaries, who had fled to the US after committing horrific atrocities in the Congo.

  Zeb and Broker hadn’t known that Holt was cozy with the FBI.

  Isakson had asked them to back off when he’d found out about their pursuit, but the situation became a clusterfuck when Holt grabbed the hostages.

  Zeb and Broker, ignoring Isakson’s by-the-book approach, had mounted a rescue and had secured their release.

  Isakson was not on Broker’s Christmas card list.

  ‘Isakson is tipped to be Deputy Director of the FBI,’ the General continued, but was interrupted by Broker.

  ‘Director Murphy signed his appointment today, in the early hours of the morning, an official announcement yet to be made. But then I’m sure you know that.’

  That ghost of a smile appeared fleetingly again. ‘Yes, I can see why you are so well spoken of. Isakson got appointed because of one quality of his that outweighed the better credentials of the others in the fray. Isakson is incorruptible. Totally.

  ‘You need to talk to him again. I think he could do with some help.’ The General sipped his coffee.

  ‘I think we know Clare in common.’ General Klouse nodded at him, and Broker nodded back, now knowing who had referred him to the General.

  ‘Clare speaks highly of you… and a few other associates of yours.’

  Clare was the Director of the Agency, an agency that did not exist in any form. It had no paperwork, no legal entities, no personnel, nothing. The Agency ran the most clandestine black ops in the most volatile or strategically important hot spots in the world and worked with a rarefied set of contractors. Broker and his associates were that rarefied set. Clare had the nebulous title of Director of Strategy and reported directly to the President.