Читать книгу: «China White»

CHAPTER ONE

Manhattan Cruise Terminal

Waiting was the hard part, if you weren’t accustomed to it. Early on, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, had acquired the gift of patience, something schooled into him by his military training and experience in war zones where a hasty move meant losing everything. It came as second nature to him now, a part of life and every mission that he undertook. He couldn’t always be proactive. Sometimes it came down to sit, and watch, and wait.

Like now.

The ferry from New Jersey was on time, no problem there, and he’d picked out the guys who had been sent to meet it. The two young males were Asian, Chinese American presumably, although they could be FOB for all he knew. Fresh off the boat that was, in common slang, although their journey from Hong Kong, Macau or points west on the Chinese mainland would have brought them to New York by air, or maybe overland from Canada.

No matter.

They were here to do a job, the same as he was. Not the same job, but the three of them were waiting for the same boat and the same guy, carrying a suitcase full of misery.

Bolan wasn’t concerned right now with how the heroin had reached the States from Southeast Asia. He would find that out in time, by one means or another, and pursue the powder trail. This day, right here and now, his job was to follow this shipment to its destination somewhere in the heart of Chinatown and to make sure it went no further.

Ten keys, maybe twelve, as pure as any lab could make it. Ready to be stepped on and distributed to addicts citywide at a tremendous profit for the men in charge. At last report, a kilo went for sixty thousand dollars, wholesale. Cut to 50 percent purity with powdered vitamin B or some other nontoxic substance, it doubled in volume and was then packaged into thirty thousand single-dose glassine envelopes for sale to street dealers at five bucks apiece. That was ninety thousand dollars profit to the cutters, while the dealers turned around and sold each dose for ten to fifteen bucks, somewhere between three hundred thousand and four hundred fifty thousand on the street.

Simple arithmetic. Ten kilos would be worth three million, minimum, in street sales; maybe four point five, with any luck. Who could resist a deal like that?

There would be risks, of course. City and state police, the DEA and FBI, all would be hungry for a major bust to raise their profiles, justify their budgets and convince a weary public that the war on drugs was still worth fighting in these days when the United States jailed more people than any other nation on the planet, at a cost some said was hurting the already-bruised economy.

And then there were the hijackers. Why spend six hundred thousand dollars on a suitcase full of smack if you could rip it off for nothing? Make a score like that, you clipped the rightful owner for the wholesale cost and cleared a cool three million, minus whatever it cost to cut the product. All you had to risk was life and limb.

The pickup team would be well armed, and so was Bolan. On the shotgun seat beside him in his gray Toyota Camry, a Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun with a 100-round Beta C-Mag drum lay hidden in a canvas tote bag. Beneath his left arm hung his backup piece: a Glock 22 chambered in .40 caliber, with fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. In a crunch, Bolan could empty both guns in something like ten seconds, leaving devastation in his wake.

And he had something else the two young Wah Ching Triad soldiers couldn’t match: experience. He had been fighting for his life before the pair of them was out of grade school. He’d sent hundreds of mafiosi to their graves during his one-man war against the Cosa Nostra, by the FBI’s best estimate, and no one had been keeping score since he had pioneered the war on terrorism, operating on behalf of Uncle Sam.

All that since he had “died”—on paper, anyway—roughly a half mile from the spot where he was parked right now, in Central Park. Broad daylight, he’d been shot to hell, incinerated in front of a flock of witnesses.

Or so the story went.

And maybe it was true what people said. You couldn’t keep a good man down.

He saw the ferry coming now, making its slow and steady way across the broad East River. In the old days, Dutch Schultz and his ilk had dropped their adversaries into that gray water, their feet set in concrete. How many skeletons were down there, even now, their eyeless sockets gazing upward at the ferry as it passed?

Good riddance, Bolan thought. There’d always be a new crop lining up to fill the slots dead mobsters left behind.

As the ferry docked, he raised a pair of compact field glasses and focused on the gangway, waiting for his target to appear.

* * *

“WE SHOULD’VE SENT somebody with him,” John Lin said, watching the ferry as it nosed into the pier.

Smoking a cigarette beside him, Louis Chao said, “He was covered in New Jersey, all the way to boarding.”

“Still, after that shit with Tommy—”

“Nobody’s about to jump him on the ferry,” Chao said, interrupting him. “They can’t get off the boat until it docks, and there’d be cops all over, waiting for them.”

“Right. Sounds good, unless you’re dealing with a bunch of lunatics.”

“Hey, we’re the lunatics, remember?” Chao was smiling at him through a haze of smoke. “And payback’s gonna be a stone-cold bitch.”

“I don’t like all these cars around here,” Lin complained.

“We’re in a parking lot, for Christ’s sake. What did you expect?”

“I mean, they could be anywhere, you know? Just waiting.”

“Then you’d better keep your eyes peeled, Johnny Boy. Be ready for them.”

Lin was ready, even looking forward to it, with his Uzi cocked and locked, ready to rip if anyone looked sideways at the courier they’d come to meet. He was another Wah Ching brother, Martin Tang, who’d carried cash across the river bright and early, met his escorts on the Jersey side, and called home when the deal was done. Now he was on his way back with the skag, and it was Lin’s job to deliver both—the man and what he carried—to their boss in Chinatown.

So Lin was strapped, backing the Uzi with a sleek Beretta Px4 tucked underneath his belt, around in back, and for insurance, in an ankle holster, a little Colt Mustang .380. If none of that worked, he had a Balisong knife with a seven-inch blade in his pocket, sharp enough to shave with or to cut off some miserable lowlife’s head.

All that and Chao still had him outgunned. He’d brought a Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle, made by Remington, and wore a double shoulder holster bearing a matched pair of Glock 33s, chambered for .357 SIG rounds. That still was not enough for his partner, though. He also carried a 4-shot COP .357 Magnum derringer, and just for luck, had put two M-67 fragmentation grenades in the glove compartment of their black Ford Focus.

They were ready for war, and as much as John Lin ached for payback, he hoped they could make it back to the Lucky Dragon without killing anyone along the way. Or getting killed themselves.

“I see him,” Chao said. “He’s just starting down the ramp.”

Tang was younger than Lin by six months or so, but had proved himself in action for the Wah Ching Triad. Nothing super-hideous, a little cutting and a drive-by, but he’d passed the test and this was graduation day. He might be nervous, but it wasn’t showing as he ambled down the ferry’s boarding ramp, keeping it casual among the tourists and commuters, careful not to jostle anybody with his suitcase full of powdered treasure.

It had come a long way from the Golden Triangle, halfway around the planet, to wind up in New York City, where it would keep several thousand junkies flying high and looking forward to their next fix, and the next one after that. Between times, they could rob their neighbors, prostitute themselves, do whatever it took to raise the cash for one more in an endless series of departures from reality. Lin knew the drill and didn’t care what kind of suffering the product ultimately caused, as long as he was paid his share to make it happen.

He was all about free enterprise.

Lin thought of Tommy Mu again and scanned the parking lot with restless eyes. He had a fair idea of who had taken Mu down, and no one he had spotted so far looked the part. They might have hired white boys to do the dirty work, of course, but as Lin understood it, Afghans weren’t averse to bloody hands.

It was something they had in common with the Wah Ching brotherhood.

Tang had disembarked, had seen their car and was moving toward it at a normal walking pace. The trick was not to stand out in a crowd, whether you had a package to deliver or were closing on a hit in broad daylight. Look normal, even boring. Fly under the radar.

“Hey, man, how’d it go?” Chao asked as the courier put his bag in the backseat and slid in next to it.

“No sweat,” Tang replied. “This end?”

“We’re cool,” Chao said.

Lin thought things were okay so far, but kept it to himself.

Two minutes later they were rolling south along 12th Avenue, which would become the Lincoln Highway once they crossed West 42nd Street. From there it was a straight run to the juncture where Canal Street paralleled the Holland Tunnel, and a left turn through Lower Manhattan on their way to Chinatown.

An easy trip, unless you were at war and being hunted.

Lin drove well, obeying all the laws, watching the traffic up ahead and flicking frequent glances at his rearview mirror, watching for a tail.

Eternal vigilance was the price of running an illegal business in New York.

* * *

BOLAN TRAILED THE Ford south at a cautious distance. Taking out the couriers was not part of his plan. He wanted them to lead him home, show him the drop and let him scout the neighborhood for angles of attack.

It wouldn’t be the simplest job he’d ever done. White faces were anomalies in Chinatown. Locals could spot the tourists, often coming by the Gray Line busload, trooping in and out of cheesy shops to drop their money. But a round-eye snooping on his own meant cop or worse, and he’d get nothing in the way of information from the members of that closed community. Start poking into corners on his own, and he could meet resistance well beyond a simple wall of silence.

Picking up the Jersey shipment was a coup of sorts. He’d had to squeeze a dealer for the intel, then make sure his source was in no shape to rat him out to the higher-ups. Call that the first kill on his latest visit to New York, but not the last. Before they found the dealer’s body, Bolan reckoned he’d be finished in Manhattan, likely on his way to some more distant battleground.

But he was taking care of first things first.

There was a war brewing in New York City, ready to explode between the Wah Ching Triad and a gang of interlopers from Afghanistan. Two syndicates financed primarily by the sale of heroin produced in their respective bailiwicks had come to blows, and the prognosis was for worse to come. In other circumstances Bolan would have been content to stand aside and let them kill each other, but the action had already claimed civilian lives and that was where he drew the line.

Police were on it, sure, along with Feds from several agencies. For all he knew, the Afghan angle might be setting off alarms at Homeland Security back in D.C. That made it doubly dicey, jumping into the middle of a war and dodging cops of all persuasions in the process. It was nothing that he hadn’t done before, but still a challenge.

One more chance to do or die.

The Ford was making good time, rolling south with Lincoln Highway turning into West Street once they got past Barrow. Bolan knew they’d likely take Canal Street, veering off southeastward from the river on its way to Chinatown, just south of Little Italy. He’d spent his share of time in that vicinity, as well, when he was hunting killers of a different complexion, but the local Mafia—whatever might be left of it—was safe from him today.

Next week...who knew?

Part of the deal this day was to watch out for other tails. A shipment on the road, ten keys at least, made an inviting target for the other side. The last thing Bolan wanted was to get caught in a cross fire or, worse yet, to see the delivery go up in smoke before he marked its final destination. Later, sure, he’d torch the smack himself, and everyone associated with it.

So he was watching when the midsize SUV with three male passengers became a fixture in his rearview. Bolan made it as a Chevy Trailblazer, as black as the Ford that he was following, hanging behind him in no rush to pass. It could be coincidence, since Bolan hadn’t seen the vehicle at the ferry terminal, but he already had that itchy feeling he’d learned to trust in situations where his life was riding on the line.

A tail, maybe. He bumped it up to definitely when the shotgun rider shifted in his seat and let the muzzle of a weapon rise above the dash for just an instant. It was there and gone but Bolan caught it, and he didn’t think it was a pogo stick, a fishing pole or the antenna on a satellite phone. Those were hunters in the SUV. The only question now: were they on Bolan’s tail or following the heroin?

He got his answer as they closed in on Canal Street where it split, divided by Canal Park’s wedge of greenery between the west-and eastbound lanes. The Chevy made its move then, swinging out to pass Bolan’s Toyota, speeding up to overtake the Ford. Some kind of hit was going down in front of him, and Bolan had to make a split-second decision.

Should he intervene or wait to see how good the Wah Ching gunners were at self-defense? How many innocent civilians on their way home from a job or shopping errand would be placed in danger if he sat it out—or if he jumped into the middle of the game?

Scowling, he pulled his MP5K from its canvas tote and stepped on the Camry’s accelerator, playing catch-up on a one-way ride to Hell.

* * *

“YOU WANT TO take them here?” Babur Kazimi asked.

“Not yet,” Ahmad Taraki answered. “Wait until we’re past the park and all the little kiddies, eh?”

“Closer to Chinatown,” Kazimi told him in a cautionary tone.

“Not that far,” Taraki replied. “Just be ready when I tell you.”

Turning to Daoud Rashad in the backseat, he said, “And you, too.”

“I was ready when we started,” Rashad answered.

Taraki had taken some heat on the last hit about the civilians who’d been in his way when they’d taken down the target, but that was a risk of street fighting. The goal had been achieved regardless, and a message had been sent. The Wah Ching Triad was on notice that their days of peddling heroin outside Chinatown were coming to an end. There was a new force to be reckoned with, and the gang would have to step aside or face extinction.

Taking down this shipment from New Jersey, after it had traveled halfway around the world from somewhere in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, would drive home the lesson while putting a cool three million dollars, give or take, into the coffers of Taraki’s crime Family. If he went back without the drugs, there would be no forgiveness from Wasef Kamran. In fact, it would be better if he did not return at all.

Kazimi made the left-hand turn onto Canal Street, rolling past the park. Taraki saw the children playing there, some adults walking dogs, oblivious to what was happening around them. They existed in a world as different and distant from his own as life on Jupiter, believing that their trivial concerns were all that mattered. Braces on the kiddies’ teeth, a raise at work, a plastic bag for dog crap in a purse or pocket when they took a stroll. The daily grind for wage slaves in the city.

But somewhere within the next half dozen blocks, before the Wah Ching couriers had crossed the borderline of Chinatown, Taraki meant to give the drones around him a surprise. A little glimpse of life in his world, where the struggle for survival meant exactly that. If someone got between Taraki and his target...well, they’d simply have to die.

Stopping the Ford was no great problem. Shoot the driver, shoot the engine, shoot the tires. The operative word was shoot. But at the same time, even knowing that the Ford was bound to crash, its occupants riddled with bullets, getting to the heroin remained Taraki’s top priority. He couldn’t let it burn, and he would get no thanks if he returned the suitcase shot to hell, blood soaking through the plastic bags inside it. He’d been ordered to deliver, and the shipment had to be intact.

Case closed.

“Remember what I told you,” he advised Rashad, half turning in his seat.

“Head shots. No problem.”

Rashad could shoot, no problem there. Back home he’d been a member of the Afghan National Army Commando Brigade, created by the U.S. and its Coalition allies to hunt members of the Taliban. Taraki didn’t know how many men Rashad had killed before the brass cashiered him, citing his excessive zeal in clearing rural villages, but no one ever questioned his ability or willingness to pull a trigger. Stopping him once he got started was another matter, thus the warning in advance to keep it clean and not indulge in sloppy overkill.

“No damage to the suitcase,” Taraki said, driving home his point.

“I know the difference between a suitcase and a man,” Rashad gruffly replied.

Taraki let it go. Making his backseat shooter angry, seconds prior to firing on the enemy, would be a foolish move.

Instead he turned back to Kazimi. “No collision with their car, remember,” he commanded.

“Paint chips. FBI lab. Yodel-yodel.”

Meaning yada-yada, Taraki thought, but correcting the driver was a waste of time and energy. He’d never come to grips with English slang, habitually garbling what he learned from television.

They were approaching Hudson Street and its intersection with Canal. A block beyond it lay another park, this one located on Taraki’s right. The neighborhood was called Tribeca—meaning, as Taraki understood it, “Triangle Below Canal Street”—sprawling out immediately west of Chinatown.

This was their last chance for a hit outside Wah Ching Triad turf.

Taraki cocked his AKS-74U carbine, the shortest and lightest Kalashnikov made. It measured nineteen inches with its skeletal stock folded to the left side, and weighed six pounds without its magazine containing thirty 5.45 mm rounds. Its automatic rate of fire was 700 rounds per minute, but he’d set the fire selector switch for semiauto, playing safe. A clean shot through the head was better than a spray of fire to shred the driver’s body while the Ford went racing like a rocket sled across the park.

But could he pull it off?

Taraki hit the button for his window, instantly rewarded with a rush of warm air in his face, and twisted in his seat, tracking the driver with the V-notch of his weapon’s open sights.

* * *

AS SOON AS Bolan saw the rifles jutting from the Chevy’s windows, he immediately had a choice to make. He could hang back and let it happen, let the trackers and his targets fight it out, then maybe waste the winners, or he could attempt to intervene.

For what?

No matter how it played, once shooting started, the Wah Ching gunners would not be leading him to their HQ in Chinatown. That move was foiled the second that the third car joined their little caravan and made its move to strike. Beyond that plan, he didn’t care if the young gangsters lived or died—would probably have wound up killing them himself, in time—but he did care about the innocents going about their business, motoring along Canal Street as it turned into a battle zone.

He let the Camry drift, came up behind the Trailblazer and gave its right rear bumper just the slightest nudge, then backed away. It was enough to spoil the shooters’ aims, their first rounds jarred off-target, gouging shiny divots in the black Ford’s roof.