Luthecker (31 page)

“In other news, Chinese and Russian officials met in closed-door meetings in order to discuss their own energy policy, sparking rumors that they, along with Iran, were actively seeking to remove themselves from the U.S. dollar standard for oil trade, in spite of the recent terror attack, which sent the dollar tumbling against the Euro. Officials from all three governments denied the talks, and the State Department had no comment.”

“Shit.” Brown said, briefly forgetting whom he had on the other end of the line. He pointed the remote at the screen and shut the news feed down.

“What’s the inside take?” Brown asked.

“That they’re serious.” Mason answered. “I thought our recent actions were going to discourage this kind of activity, Richard.” Mason continued, his soft Southern manner again masking the gravity of the conversation.

“We lose the dollar, we lose everything.” Mason continued.

“We’re not going to lose it, Alan.”

“We can’t sell another war to the people. Not now. Nor can we afford it. Or win it. Not with the Russians and the Chinese.”

“We won’t have to, sir. I think I have something.”

“You think you have something.”

“New reconnaissance technology. Give me seventy-two hours. I’ll have a better understanding by then.”

There was an impatient pause on the Defense Secretary’s end of the phone.

“Fair enough. I expect you in my office in seventy-two hours, explaining to me this new technology that you think you may have.”

“Yes Sir.” Brown answered, before he heard Mason hang up.

The Russians and the Chinese were being far bolder than expected, Brown thought. That complicated things. They seemed unfazed by the carefully orchestrated terror attack in Saudi Arabia, or the increasing number of Carriers the act was designed to draw into the region. The strategic movement of the eleven U.S. Carrier groups that roamed the seas usually served as a firm reminder to the world as to who provided for its safety, which in turn protected the U.S. dollar itself. It was a relationship that had proven mutually beneficial since the end of the Second World War. However if these two rising economic powers broke from this tradition and removed themselves from the U.S. dollar standard, particularly in regards to oil, the act itself would be devastating. It would be tantamount to a declaration of war. The dollar would plummet to nearly zero in value, no different than when both the Ruble and the Soviet Union fell near simultaneously. It would effectively be the end of the United States.

He needed to be sure about what was going on in those meetings between the Russians and Chinese. He needed to know what they were thinking. He needed to have a clear sense of what the options for the future were. He needed Alex to watch those videos. He would go down to his holding cell today, and force the issue himself if he had to.

Brown looked up at the sound of knuckles wrapping on a doorframe.

“You wanted to see me sir?” Wolfe said as he stood just outside Brown’s office.

Brown took a deep breath. Mason’s call had caused him to briefly forget that he had called this meeting with Agent Wolfe. He would find out very quickly whether or not he blew two assets, or one, Brown thought.

“Yes. Please. Come in.” He said to Wolfe, who did as he was told.

DELIVERY

C
amila Ramirez and Chris Aldrich watched point, standing outside the decaying phone booth as Yaw Chinomso punched numbers on the well-worn silver touchtone pad of a pay phone. Located on West End Avenue and 90
^th
street, the pale metal box decorated by rust and graffiti now belonged to a different time, and this barely functioning unit was one of the last four remaining outdoor freestanding phone booths in the entire city.

Yaw put the receiver to his ear and waited. The phone rang twice before someone on the other end picked up.

“Fed Ex.” Yaw said.

“Wait.” Was the abrupt reply, and then the line went dead.

Yaw hung up, stepped free of the booth, and nodded to the others.

“It’s on.” He told them.

Payphones were still monitored by NSA computers in Langley, but their priority was very low, as drug dealers were not yet a concern and encrypted satellite phone technology was the choice for most foreign operatives. However since dedicated scanning software would still roam the hard lines for key words and flag them, coded messaging was still required.

Couriers always used the commercial and therefore neutral slogan “Fed Ex” when they called in, and the reply of “wait” was a coded response that meant exactly that. Someone would be along shortly to receive them.

Yaw instinctively stretched, contracting back and wincing as he did, briefly forgetting the bullet wound, which, although bandaged and beginning to heal, was still quite painful.

“How’s your side?” Camila asked.

“How’s your wrist?”

“Fool.” She said with a smile.

The trio had made the journey from Arizona to New York in thirty-six hours, choosing to drive straight through the night in shifts. They knew they were let go to be watched, but they weren’t sure how.

“How do you think Alex is doing?” Camila asked, as she scanned across the busy street, eyes like a hawk.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement, a small cluster of three humming birds, flying in close formation, dancing around the buildings as they darted about in choreographed perfection. She marveled at their speed and coordination as they suddenly zipped by overhead.

“I don’t know.” Yaw answered her question. “But we finish this job, we find him next.”

“They’re tracking us. The question is how.” Chris warned.

“I don’t know. But we want them to see what we’re up to now. See that we’re doing some good. We can work on dumping surveillance after.”

“Before they try and pick us up, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“They’ll be waiting.”

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

“Guys.” Camila interrupted.

They looked at her before following her line of sight, which led to the other side of the street, to a late model sedan parked two blocks north of where they stood. Three large men exited the vehicle, dressed in black leather jackets, brown khaki pants, and black leather shoes, trying to look casual but achieving anything but. They spotted the three couriers and slowly began walking in their direction, trying to make it look natural.

Yaw quickly shot a glance South: Two more just like them were on the sidewalk, already on their side of the street, laughing with one another, feigning distraction, fast approaching.

“Not our guys.” Yaw thought out loud.

“Nope.” Chris added.

“Let’s move.” Camila replied.

“Parking lot.” Chris nodded.

All three eyed the parking lot across the street and its sea of cars, all parked in a perfect grid.

“Split between the cars. C-Ram you take the middle. Chris, you and I will double back. We’ll pick’em off.”

Camila adjusted Yaw’s backpack as he spoke, made sure his aluminum Kali sticks were easily available, as Chris did the same for her.

Yaw did the same for Chris as the three of them began to cross the street. Yaw looked to the north, and saw that the men were now running towards them.

“Stay low.” He said, before a shot rang out and a bullet whistled by, exploding off a lamppost.

The three ducked low and broke into a full sprint, each splitting off in their own direction and disappearing between the multitudes of cars in the parking lot, not unlike children dispersing in a cornfield.

One of the pursuers approached from the north side of the lot, a knife-faced giant half a foot taller than his companions, swearing at the shooter in Russian for opening fire too soon. He then gave a quick, sharp whistle to get the attention of the other two men approaching from the south, pointed to the parking lot, did a half circle with his hand, indicating for them to loop around to the other side of the lot. After what appeared to be a brief discussion between the two of them, they did what they were told, pulling weapons, and sprinting to the other side of the small field of autos.

Camila ducked low between the cars, keeping out of view, until she was roughly in the middle of the lot. She tried to control her breathing so as to not make a sound. She carefully pulled her three-foot long aluminum sticks free from the holster on her back, like a bowman pulling arrows from a quiver. She peeked her head up, peering through windows of the car she hid behind.

She saw three men wading between the cars, guns drawn, looking, wary. The tallest one barked at the other two in Russian, and they split up, guns drawn, beginning their search between the vehicles, slowly, car by car. She smiled, sticks ready, and waited.

Chris stayed low and darted between the cars with cat-like speed and agility, zigzagging right and left, occasionally touching down with either hand for balance as he cut around the corners of the vehicles. He was headed to the southeast corner of the lot, knowing that Yaw would head to northeast, and Camila would take the middle. He reached his destination and dropped down on one knee, watching as two short, heavy-set men huffed and puffed their way around to the other side of the parking lot. He saw one wipe sweat from his forehead, pull what looked like a 9mm, and start into the lot and between the cars from the east side and to his left. He watched as one man pointed, and his partner split off from him, unknowingly headed towards Yaw. They’re separating, he thought. These men were enforcers and not experienced tacticians. They did not rely on tactics and training, but on brutality and intimidation. They had no idea what they were in for. He slowly pulled his sticks free from their holster.

Yaw carefully watched from a crouched position as a barrel-chested man around six feet tall who looked to go about two-fifty squeezed between the cars, slowly making his way towards his position. The man led with his gun, moving carefully from car corner to car corner. Yaw ducked low, moving silently between the cars, doubling back around and behind his would-be assailant.

Yaw was quickly one car behind him. He could judge the man’s distance by his labored and nervous breathing. He doubled back around a Ford F-150 pickup truck. He was now directly behind the gunman. Sensing it, the gunman turned, only to catch an aluminum stick across the jaw, breaking it, on the wrist holding the gun, breaking it and sending the weapon skittering underneath the truck, and yet again across the temple, breaking the orbital bone around the eye, and knocking the man unconscious right where he stood.

The three strikes hit in such quick and fluid succession that the man fell to the ground face first, his body dropping as if he’d been shot in the head. Yaw disappeared between the cars again before the unconscious man’s limbs settled to a stop on the pavement.

Chris heard the scuffle a quarter of the parking lot away, and knew he had to move. Almost on his man, he lunged around the corner of a late model Chevy Malibu, striking and shattering the gun-wrist of his hapless pursuer with one stick before spearing him in the mid-section with the other, causing the man to double over, and followed by striking him in the back of the head, knocking him out cold. Done in less than two seconds. A shot rang out and a bullet shattered the car window behind him just as he dropped down out of view.

Camila was on it. She crept cat like behind the shooter, striking his right shoulder from behind, not on the “meat” of the trapezius muscle, but on the nerve endings near the bone, causing the entire arm to go slack and the gun to drop free from the hand. She then wrapped her arm and stick around the man’s neck, put her knee in his back and pulled him down from behind, completing the choke out in less then twenty seconds.

The Russian who stood half a foot taller than the rest heard the commotion and turned in Camila’s direction just as Yaw leapt over the hood of a Nissan Sentra and tackled him. The bear of a man slammed against the side of a Mercedes sedan, smashing the mirrors and driver’s side window, the car keeping him on his feet in the process. The big Russian let out a roar and shook Yaw off, but Yaw landed low and balanced in a perfect three-point stance, immediately launching from his position and striking the man in the testicles with his fist, all his leg strength behind it. It literally lifted the man off his feet, allowing Yaw to easily but forcefully guide his landing, face-first through the windshield of the Mercedes.

Yaw sprang to his feet and immediately looked for Camila. He spotted her and she nodded that she was unharmed as they both heard sticks on flesh and muffled cries of pain, followed by a body-thud on pavement, all happening in less than three seconds.

Chris poked his head up from ten cars away. All three looked at one another.

“Is that it? Is that all of them?” Chris asked.

• • •

“It’s not going to be that easy.” Said the gaunt-faced man with the black wool knit cap pulled low over his ears. “They’re going to come after you. The Russians. Now that they know someone has their merchandise.”

“So let’em.” Yaw said defiantly.

“How’d they know we were here?” Chris asked.

“Looks like they’ve been watchin’ that phone. It’s dead now, tell your people don’t use it no more. I’m not surprised, their merchandise has been missing for three days, and they’ve been combin’ the streets twenty-four-seven.”

Camila carefully examined “Sam”, their contact, as the other two spoke with him. He was short, in his forties, skinny, and his clothes noticeably smelled of body odor. They had spotted him shortly after the parking lot scuffle, waiting on the corner by the phone booth. After a shaky introduction, he had led them to a large Public Storage building in Brooklyn. As they now stood outside the six-story building, she saw that he was shifting from foot to foot, nervous, but he never looked to his feet, instead he looked Chris and Yaw in the eye when he spoke. She detected no lies from him.

“So when can we see them?” She asked.

“Right now. Follow me.” Sam replied, as he turned towards the storage facilities.