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