Blackjack (13 page)

“In the trunk, boss. Right next to the RPGs.”

“Okay. We might as well clean up the bear-claw thing. Chang’s expecting a visit—his spot’s right above that Chinese restaurant. The building is only two stories. He’s got all kinds of protection on the first floor, and the upstairs windows overlook the street, so their lookout will see us the second we show—they all know this car.”

“So they see it. So what? You’d come by to pick up your money in person, right? Besides, I’ll be ready to launch ten seconds after you hit the street.”

“Yeah. We really got no choice. Chang thinks we did the job on Viktor. Maybe there’s all kinds of questions about how those Russians got splattered, but nobody doubts they’re gone. All of them. That’s gonna make him nervous. Chang’s the kind of guy who hates loose ends. That’s why I have to just walk in. Coming to pick up my money, that
is
what he’d expect. So seeing me might calm him down some. And we don’t need him calm for long.”

“
I HAVE
your payment, Cross. In that silver case, over to my right. But, before you pick it up, would you indulge an old man by answering a question?”

“Depends on the question, Chang.”

“Ah. You are a man who never changes, Cross. Very well. There is no question but that you have earned your fee. But one question remains unanswered:
how
did you do it?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“And why would that be so?”

“Trade secret.”

“To be sure. But do not friends sometimes share their secrets?”

“They might. But we’re not friends. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have my payment—payment I already
earned
, remember—sitting between those two gunmen of yours.”

“I have insulted you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I apologize. Perhaps we are not
yet
friends.” The old man snapped his finger. One of the men who had been guarding the silver case picked it up and brought it over to Cross. He placed it on the floor, and then returned to his post. “But friendship between us, that remains a possibility?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you would like to open the case?”

“Why would I disrespect you, Chang? You are a man of your word, as am I.
That
was what we both respected when we reached our bargain. This is something we share. So I leave as I came, with promises kept on both sides.”

“I understand,” Chang said. He moved his head a fraction of an inch. Cross returned the gesture, bowing more deeply, but never below the range of his eyes.

Then he picked up the silver case and walked out of the room.

STANDING BEFORE
the passenger-side door of the Shark Car, Cross spoke very softly. “This case weighs more than the other one.”

“If it’s a trick, it’s the last one he’ll ever pull,” Buddha’s whisper came from under the car. By the time Cross had his door opened, the first RPG launched.

The second floor exploded in a burst of flame. The next two rounds hit the restaurant below. The fourth went back to what was left of the second floor.

Buddha slid into the driver’s seat. The Shark Car disappeared, paying no more attention to the sirens that tore the night air than did the men in their death-throes inside the building.

“Where’s the RPG tubes?”

“I left them behind, boss. Take too long to pull ’em out, stick them back in the trunk. But they’ve all got timers. Three minutes from launch, each one’s going to turn into metal dust.”

“Timers …” Cross said, looking down at the silver case he was holding in his lap.

“Toss it?”

“There’s supposed to be about three hundred K in here, Buddha.”

THE SQUAT
little man’s touch on the steering wheel was as delicate and skilled as that of a concert pianist. The Shark Car ripped through the city, heading for the Badlands. When it crossed the barrier and slid to a stop, Cross jumped out, yelling “Condor!”

A teenage boy with a blue Mohawk haircut popped up,
bending his body around the roll of razor wire that topped a chain-link fence in the pose that had earned him his name.

“See this?” Cross held up the silver case. “I’m going to lob it over. You take it and put it someplace nobody’s going to stumble over. Then get away from it as fast as you can. Don’t come back to wherever you stash it until I show up again—it could be a bomb, with a timer on it. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Cross held the case in both hands, swung it back and forth to build momentum, and released his hold on his last forward swing. Condor caught it in both hands and took off, running through the darkness as if he had infra-red eyesight.

The Shark Car pulled away.

THE OLD
man’s white hair flowed down to his shoulders. He was sitting in a lotus position, smoking a pipe that looked to have been carved from bone.

“You were not expected,” he said.

“I didn’t want to say anything on the phone. And I knew I’d be recognized.”

“You have something for me, then?” the old man said, smiling a murderer’s grin. His gray teeth turned the gesture into an even more deadly grimace.

“I have Chang.”

“You are holding him?”

“No. Nobody will ever hold him. I have his life. He’s gone.”

“I heard nothing—”

“You will.”

“We did not retain such a service.”

“Consider it a gift. A gift from a friend.”

The old man immediately handed his pipe to Cross, who took a deep drag without hesitation before returning it.

THE NEXT
day, Unit 3 assembled in the War Room. It was obvious that they had been discussing something for a long time: the place was littered with coffee cups and food wrappers. They all looked various degrees of disheveled, except for Tracker.

“You really think he’s worth it?” The blond man’s question was directed at the room, not at anyone in particular.

“I believe he … understands them,” Tracker said thoughtfully.

“He doesn’t care,” Wanda said. “He will regard it as any bounty hunter would. Only, this time, the ‘dead or alive’ is limited to ‘alive.’ ”

“Look,” the blond man snapped, “we don’t have time to keep arguing with each other. We’re still ‘Unit 3’ to the spooks, but the reality is, we’ve stepped over the line too many times already.…”

“
You
stepped over the line, Blondie,” Percy fired back. “And you took me and Wanda right along with you. One more mess like over in Indiana …”

As Percy spoke, everyone else in the room had a mental picture of him standing spread-legged on a ghetto rooftop, a surface-to-air missile launcher braced on one thick shoulder. He staggered slightly under the kick of the weapon. They saw the vapor trail of the rocket as it unexpectedly veered off-course, its heat-seeker attracted by a closer target. That turned out to be a small private jet, which disintegrated immediately on impact.

They also saw a newspaper headline:

TERRORIST ATTACK AT GARY AIRPORT!

“Things happen,” the blond man said, unruffled. “We know they use some kind of heat-seeker themselves. It only made sense to turn the tables.”

“I didn’t sign on to waste civilians,” Tiger said.

“Civilians? That plane was carrying a load of dope dealers, on their way back from Vegas. And if you don’t like us bringing Cross in, you can split. Take the Indian with you, too,” the blond man told her. “We’re on our own now. And we don’t have a hell of a lot of time, right, Wanda?”

Wanda checked her computer, nodded. “No. TRAP
will
figure out that we’ve been mobile-accessing its closed-level data. In fact,” she hypothesized, “it probably could have found us already, had we been Priority One.”

“And we’re not,” the blond said, “so what does that tell you?”

“What it
always
tells us,” Percy threw in. “We pull this off, the brass says all is forgiven. We don’t—we get erased.”

The blond got to his feet and started pacing. He turned to Wanda, apparently the one person with whom he had any sort of affinity. “Could we make it happen, what that man wants? Immunity for a future crime?”

Wanda worked over her keyboard. “Some places, yes. Detroit, Cleveland, too. And New York for sure. As for Chicago … you know how it works here.”

“That’ll have to do,” the blond said, to no one in particular. He had adopted this habit many years ago, relieving himself of the unwanted feeling that no one was listening.