in New York,” Brognola said by way of introduction. “There’s a drug war coming, and it has already claimed three civilian lives.”
Bolan decided not to ask why it was their problem instead of the DEA’s or the NYPD’s. Brognola liked to set the stage, and as he spoke, the giant screen behind him came alive with news footage of bodies on a sidewalk stained with blood, two uniformed policemen grappling with a Chinese man who tried to bull his way past them, tears streaming down his face.
“Mott Street,” Brognola said. “Manhattan’s Chinatown, two days ago. The target was a member of the Wah Ching Triad, who was carrying a key of heroin. In one shot there, you see some of it on the sidewalk.”
Bolan saw it, like a sugar dusting on the sidewalk mixed with blood. A pastry recipe from Hell.
“The shooters, we believe, are from an Afghan outfit that’s been growing since the DEA took down the Noorzai organization in 2008.”
Bolan knew the basics on Haji Bashir Noorzai, the widely touted, widely hated Asian counterpart of Medellín’s late Pablo Escobar. He’d battled Russian forces in the Reagan years and then served as mayor of Kandahar while selling weapons to the Taliban regime, then switched to aid the U.S. after 9/11, handing over tons of small arms and antiaircraft missiles to the CIA. Since then he’d made a fortune smuggling heroin, largely ignored—some said protected—by America’s intelligence community. Finally convicted in 2008, he had been sentenced to life imprisonment, leaving the remnants of his empire up for grabs.
“Who’s filling in for him?” Bolan asked.
“It’s a whole new crew,” Brognola said. “The man on top, we understand, is one Khalil Nazari.” Cue a string of mug shots, candid photos and a strip of video that showed a swarthy, mustached man emerging from a Humvee, flanked by bodyguards. “He’s forty-five years old and everything a drug lord ought to be. We all know what’s been going on with heroin since the invasion.”
More bad news. During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, regional warlords had financed their guerrilla war with opium, then kept it up with CIA support as they struggled to fill the power vacuum left by Soviet withdrawal in 1989. The Taliban had dabbled in drug trafficking, producing a bumper crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999, then collaborated with the United Nations to suppress the trade, encouraged by a $43 million “eradication reward” from Washington in early 2001. Everything changed that September, and the warlords had returned with a vengeance, pushing opium and heroin production to the point that drugs accounted for 52 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and an estimated 80 percent of the world’s smack supply. The Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan had eclipsed Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle in drug exports, and Bolan knew the triads weren’t exactly thrilled by that development.
In fact, it was enough to start a war.
And now, apparently, it had.
Brognola forged ahead, saying, “Nazari’s front man in New York, we’re pretty sure, is this guy.” Cue a younger thug on-screen. “Wasef Kamran, age thirty-one. Supposedly provided information on bin Laden to the Company, but nothing that panned out.”
“So they’re protecting him?” Grimaldi asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Brognola responded, “but I couldn’t rule it out, either.”
“Terrific.”
“On the triad side,” the big Fed said, pressing ahead, “their ‘dragon head’ or ‘mountain master,’ as they like to call him, is a character called Ma Lam Chan.” More video and still shots on the giant flat screen. “Home for him is Hong Kong, where it seems he’s reached some kind of an accommodation with the PRC authorities.”
Bolan translated in his head. The People’s Republic of China had reclaimed the teeming offshore island of Hong Kong in 1997, after something like 150 years of British colonial rule. Despite Washington’s fears that the Reds would wreak havoc on Hong Kong’s thriving capitalist economy, little had changed overall. The worst problems suffered so far had been unexpected outbreaks of disease, each claiming several hundred lives. Meanwhile, cash registers kept ringing and the drugs kept flowing to the West.
“Chan’s guy in New York—” pictures changed on the screen once more “— is Paul Mei-Lun. I’m never sure about his rank. He’d either be a ‘red pole,’ which is an enforcer, or a liaison officer, which they call a ‘straw sandal.’ Take your pick. Either way, he’s in charge on our end and he’s squared off against the Afghans.”
“Deport him,” Grimaldi suggested. “What’s the problem, if you know he’s dirty?”
“That’s the problem,” Brognola replied. “Somehow he came into Manhattan squeaky-clean, at least on paper. He has all the proper documents from Beijing’s end, and State saw no good reason to reject his entry visa. Now he’s here and all that DEA can say is that they’re working on a case against him. There’s nothing solid they can hang a warrant on.”
“Homeland Security?” Bolan suggested. “If the Reds have bent the rules somehow to smooth his way—”
“There’s still no proof of that. And while we’re working on it, Chinatown’s about to be ground zero in a war that’s making no allowance for civilians.”
“So, we’ll be putting out the fire,” Bolan observed.
“For starters,” Brognola agreed. “Beyond that, we should think about discouraging round two, three, four, whatever. Make them gun-shy, somehow. As for details...”
Bolan nodded, thinking that was where he came in.
* * *
THE SOLDIER’S “HOME” at Stony Man was modest; nothing but a bedroom with a private bath. There were a few books on a solitary shelf, mostly suggested reading from Kurtzman, a small TV with DVD player and a laptop with a DSL connection. When his downtime found him there, it was enough.
The only ghosts in residence were those that traveled with him—inescapable.
Bolan was working on the laptop now, absorbing details on his adversaries that had been archived for future reference. He started with the Wah Ching Triad, which had surfaced in the 1970s after a rift developed in its parent syndicate, the Sun Yee On. Ironically, that translated to New Righteousness and Peace Commercial and Industrial Guild, a mouthful of nonsense describing China’s largest triad “family” with some sixty thousand members worldwide. The Wah Ching faction had spun off on its own, as criminal gangs often did, and had survived the shakedown battles to establish an empire of sorts built on gambling and loan-sharking in Hong Kong and Macau, plus exports of heroin from the Golden Triangle to Canada, the States and Western Europe. Prior to the Afghan incursion on their turf, they’d fought a bloody war with soldiers from Mexico’s Juárez Cartel to keep a foothold in Texas.
In most respects, the Wah Ching was a traditional triad, with tattooed members who took the usual thirty-six vows prescribed since sometime in the eighteenth century. Their structure was familiar, from the Dragon Head down to the “Vanguard”—operations officer—and “White Paper Fan”—administrator—down to the oath-bound members known for some reason as “forty-niners,” and the uninitiated prospects called “blue lanterns.” Up and down the chain, each member of the crime family—an estimated six thousand in all—was pledged to sacrifice himself if need be, for the greater good.
Make that the greater evil.
