They were armed to the teeth and stopping for no one, including police. There could be no explaining the weapons they carried, and Mei-Lun knew he was running a risk with the Hummers. CNN had told him they were ticketed by traffic cops five times as often as most other vehicles, and Mei-Lun himself had enough citations to believe it.
But anyone who tried to flag them down this night, Mei-Lun vowed, was shit out of luck.
Truth be told, he was amped for a killing. The skag heist, the loss of four men in a week... It was all bearing down on him, making him look bad, stretching his nerves like piano wire. He needed an outlet, and whether they got back the suitcase or not, someone was bound to die on the island.
Mei-Lun could personally guarantee it.
Once they’d cleared the tunnel from Manhattan—always claustrophobic for him, though he tried to hide it—they got onto Main Street near the tram station and barreled northward, past the interchange for 36th Avenue and the Roosevelt Island Bridge to Queens, rolling on until Main Street turned into East Road. A giant hospital bulked up beside them on the left, and they slowed down, continuing along the narrow road that led out toward the lighthouse on the island’s northern headland.
Looking at a map before he’d left the Lucky Dragon, Mei-Lun thought that Roosevelt Island looked like a giant condom afloat in the river, right down to what Trojan ads called the “reservoir tip.” He’d started laughing, and his soldiers couldn’t understand it, but he hadn’t bothered to explain. Better if they believed that he was laughing in the face of death than spotting crazy shapes on a road map.
Mei-Lun double-checked the QBZ-95 assault rifle he’d chosen for their little safari. It was the latest thing from China, a bullpup design chambered for the 5.8 mm DBP87 cartridge. Smuggled from his homeland in bulk, the QBZ-95 was selective-fire, feeding from a 30-round box magazine with a cyclic rate of 650 rounds per minute in full-auto mode. The 5-grain full-metal-jacket rounds traveled at 2,900 feet per second and delivered 1,477 foot-pounds of energy on impact, their streamlined shape and steel core designed for increased range and penetration.
Not that he’d be needing any kind of long-range skills this night. The meeting ground, according to his phallic map, was no more than one hundred yards across, its only cover the arc of shade trees screening the hospital’s north-facing windows from the glare of the lighthouse. Their target, whoever he was, should be clearly visible and easy to kill when the time came.
As soon as he showed them the bag filled with sweet China white.
“We’re almost there,” his driver said, and Mei-Lun grunted in reply. He had already seen the lighthouse standing tall against the skyline, sweeping the dark water with its beam to help the barges find their way. The Hummer’s headlights weren’t much competition, but they showed Mei-Lun the sweep of grass where this night’s action would play out.
“We’re early,” someone muttered from the backseat.
“As intended,” Mei-Lun said.
Then he addressed his wheel man. “Stop here. Kill the lights.”
A moment later they were sitting in the near dark with the Hummer’s engine ticking. From the back, again, one of his soldiers said, “Nobody here.”
Mei-Lun palmed the walkie-talkie, giving it to all of them at once. “Get out and take your places. Anybody fires before I give the word, he’s dead.”
* * *
BOLAN TRACKED THE Hummers through his AN/PVS-10 nightscope until they parked and Wah Ching soldiers started climbing out, all clutching long guns. Bolan counted off a dozen targets armed with automatic rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, picked out Paul Mei-Lun among them, then went back to watching for the other team.
The triad boss had played it smart, coming an hour early to the meet and staking out his men to cover both approaches, east and west of Lighthouse Park. It was a sound move, sensible, maybe the best that he could manage without formal military training or a sniper’s long view toward the waiting game. He had the park well covered, but he obviously hadn’t given any thought to checking out the nearby hospital.
Too public and too risky. Now, too late.
Before he’d come out to the island, Bolan had detoured past a vacant lot off FDR Drive, near the Queensboro Bridge, and dumped the stolen heroin, torching it with a can of lighter fluid he’d picked up in transit. The smack was up in smoke, long gone, but still working to Bolan’s benefit, drawing his targets into rifle range.
And now he saw more headlights sweeping toward the park, coming along West Road. A Lincoln Town Car led the new arrivals, followed by a matched pair of Volkswagen Phaetons. They rolled past the hospital’s northwestern wing, slowing as they closed in on the park and the lighthouse beyond. The Lincoln coasted to a halt beyond the tree line, and the Phaetons followed suit.
He waited, watching through the nightscope while doors opened on the luxury sedans and more men bearing weapons stepped onto the pavement, fanning out in a defensive formation. Bolan had no trouble picking out Wasef Kamran, the Lincoln’s shotgun rider, carrying a Spectre M4 SMG. The men arrayed around him were all similarly armed, mostly with variations of the tried and true Kalashnikov assault rifle.
Bolan counted fifteen Afghans below him, giving them a three-man edge over the Wah Ching team. He saw lips moving, couldn’t tell what they were saying, but he registered surprise on Kamran’s face when Paul Mei-Lun stepped from the shadows to reveal himself.
A frozen moment passed, then Kamran shouted something to his rival, probably a question, possibly a challenge. Mei-Lun shouted something back and stood his ground, confusion written on his face and shifting into anger as he registered betrayal, trying to decide who was responsible.
Bolan focused his night sight on the soldier standing just to Wasef Kamran’s right, placing his crosshairs on the hardman’s dull face two hundred feet in front of him. The range was virtually point-blank for his M-110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System—easy pickings—as he sent 175 grains of sudden death hurtling downrange toward impact at 2,570 feet per second.
The target’s skull exploded, its mangled contents splashing Wasef Kamran’s face and thousand-dollar suit. Kamran recoiled, raising an arm too late to keep the muck out of his eyes and mouth, looking dazed as he shouted something to his other men.
It was the signal they’d been waiting for: to open fire and turn the quiet park into a little slice of hell on earth.
* * *
WASEF KAMRAN COULD NOT believe his eyes when Paul Mei-Lun stepped from the shadows, cradling some kind of spacey-looking weapon in his arms. The Afghan mobster felt his gut churn, knew damn well the stranger he’d arranged the meet with had not been Chinese—but had Mei-Lun arranged the call? It seemed impossible, since he had lost the heroin that afternoon.
“What are you doing here?” Kamran called across the dark expanse of grass.
After a split-second delay, Mei-Lun yelled back at him, “I’m here on business. Why are you here?”
Kamran was considering an answer when it happened. To his right, Amir Sadaty’s head burst open with a sodden ripping sound, as if someone had struck a melon with an ax. Its contents flew in all directions, warm blood spraying Kamran’s shoulder, face and hair. He lurched away before the man collapsed, his legs folding under him, and snapped an order at his other soldiers.
