China White

Instead of answering, a voice he didn’t recognize said, “Rumor has it that you lost a piece of luggage earlier today.”

The frown turned to a scowl, but Mei-Lun kept his voice in neutral. “Luggage?”

“I suppose you’re more concerned about the contents than the bag,” his caller said.

Cell phones were dangerous, their airborne messages fair game under the law for anyone who intercepted them. “Sorry,” Mei-Lun replied. “Wrong number.”

“Okay, then,” Mack Bolan said. “I’ll speak to Mr. Chan directly, shall I?” He rattled off the Dragon Head’s unpublished number in Hong Kong without missing a beat, as if from memory.

A trick? Undoubtedly. But if the stranger knew that much and Mei-Lun brushed him off, he might indeed call Ma Lam Chan. And that could be the end of Paul Mei-Lun.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” Mei-Lun said. “If so, I would be willing to discuss it.”

“Small talk doesn’t interest me,” the caller told him. “I’ve got merchandise to sell.”

“I see.” There’d been no mention of the heroin, nothing that would incriminate Mei-Lun so far. “What figure did you have in mind?”

“Wholesale, I understand it runs around six hundred thousand. Call it half a mil and we’re in business.”

Mei-Lun wished that he could reach out through the cell phone, grasp the caller’s throat and strangle him, but he restrained himself, controlled his voice. “That is within the realm of possibility,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll call you back with details for the drop.”

And he was gone.

Flushing, Queens, New York

KHODA HAFIZ, an Afghan social club and quasi-covert headquarters of Wasef Kamran’s organization, stood near the corner of Franklin Avenue and Colden Street, in a neighborhood occupied mostly by South Asian immigrants. Some old-time residents called the neighborhood Little Afghanistan, while others dubbed it Little India. Kamran, these past four years, had simply called it home.

The club’s name translated in English to “May God protect you,” but He had not smiled on Wasef Kamran lately, and it angered the mobster.

The loss of three good men plus failure to secure the Wah Ching shipment he had sent them to collect had Kamran simmering with rage, augmented by frustration since he had no one to punish for that failure. With no outlet for his fury—and despite the strictures of his faith—Kamran had pacified himself to some extent with a small glass of homemade liquor that included alcohol, hash oil, sugar, nutmeg, a bit of cinnamon and cloves.

It had begun to work, soothing his nerves enough that Kamran thought he was prepared to face the second-worst part of his day: reporting his losses to Khalil Nazari in Kabul. He knew approximately how that call would go, and Kamran knew his only saving grace was that the conversation would occur long-distance rather than in person, where Nazari could slit his throat.

Killing the bearer of bad news was still in fashion with some Afghan warlords, a tradition hard to shake. Kamran had done the same himself, a time or two. Why fix what was not broken, after all?

He thought about another glass of liquor, then decided it would be too much. He wished to sound composed and in control, not high and babbling incoherently. If he appeared unstable, or Nazari surmised that he had lost control, his fate might well be sealed.

No further stalling, then.

Kamran picked up his encrypted sat-phone and was just about to speed-dial Kabul, when the smartphone beside his elbow chirped its ringtone, playing the first three bars of Farhad Darya’s “In a Foreign Land.” Kamran set down the larger instrument and checked the smartphone for a number. He found it blocked and answered anyway, against his better judgment.

“What?”

“Your people missed today,” a strange voice said, raising the short hairs on his nape.

“Wrong number,” Kamran snarled, and was about to cut the link when his caller said, “That’s what I heard from Paul Mei-Lun.”

“Oh, yes?”

“He wants to buy back the suitcase. I’m wondering if you’re prepared to beat his price.”

Kamran considered what he’d heard so far. Police were fond of stings in the United States, but this seemed far too subtle and innocuous. With no mention of contraband per se, he could discuss the generalities with no fear of indictment or arrest.

“What was his price?” Kamran inquired.

“Five hundred thousand.”

“That’s a lot of money for a suitcase.”

“Or the property inside it.”

He ran the calculation quickly through his mind. Buying the heroin cost more than stealing it, but even so, he had a chance to make a killing here—and not only financially. If he could meet this caller and determine if he was responsible for dropping Kamran’s men...

“I can improve on that by...shall we say ten percent?”

“Fifteen sounds better,” said the caller.

That was more than Kamran wished to pay, but still some twenty-five thousand less than Paul Mei-Lun would have shelled out for the merchandise. Call it $2.4 million and change in clear profit—and the drugs might cost him nothing, if the hijacker was dumb enough to bring them on his own, without backup.

“Where shall we meet, and when?” Kamran inquired.

“I’ll let you know,” the caller said, then broke the link.

Central Park, Manhattan

BOLAN HAD SOME time to kill while he decided on a meeting place—he was determined not to start the party until after nightfall. Seated on a stone bench within sight of where his former life had ended and the new one had begun, he ate a hero sandwich and perused a guidebook to the city that was once again his battleground, if only for a little while.

Phase one of his campaign would end this night and he’d move on, assuming he survived. He could have skipped the New York interlude, left it to normal law-enforcement agencies, but shutting down Wasef Kamran and Paul Mei-Lun was part of Bolan’s larger plan. It was step one in rattling some larger cages, putting more impressive predators on the defensive, kicking off a psy-war that would keep them guessing, sweating, while he homed in on another kill.

New York was one end of a global pipeline pumping heroin into the States. On second thought, make that two pipelines. One reached across the Middle East, Europe and the Atlantic, from Afghanistan. The other ran across the vast Pacific, from its starting point in Southeast Asia, to deliver poison on the West Coast, and from there across the continent. The only way to cripple both, however briefly, was to play off the existing competition between drug lords, bring it to a head, and take the top men down in flames.

Manhattan was a test case; Bolan’s master plan conducted on a smaller scale to see how well it played. And so far, even with the shooting match outside Chinatown, it seemed to be on track.

Next up, he needed someplace where the warring tribes could meet without endangering large numbers of civilians, someplace midway between Flushing and Chinatown, a spot with combat stretch, where he could set his trap and lie in wait for whoever showed up. Three million dollars’ worth of heroin made Bolan confident that both sides would attempt to grab the prize.

The second map he studied did the trick. Roosevelt Island, two miles long and three hundred yards wide, lay in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. At various times in its 377-year history, it had supported a prison, a lunatic asylum and a smallpox hospital. The mostly unoccupied northern tip of the island boasted Lighthouse Park and the historic Blackwell Island Light. Access points included East 66th Street passing under the river from Manhattan, the Roosevelt Island Bridge serving Queens. Once on the island proper, a person could drive around or take the tram to see the sights.

Bolan would be arriving from the west, using the tunnel, after he’d made sure no one was tailing him. From there he’d take the island’s West Road all the way, until it terminated, some three hundred yards from Blackwell Island Light, which put him in the kill zone. He would start at dusk and be in place before he made the calls directing Kamran and Mei-Lun to the appointed drop site, neither one expecting that the other would be there.

One question still remained in Bolan’s mind: would either of the top men show in person? He believed the odds were good, particularly if he made delivery contingent on their turning up to make the payoff. Naturally, they’d come with heavy backup, hoping to eliminate the stranger who was vexing them and claim the heroin without paying a dime. Bolan was counting on both sides to try their best at cheating him. He needed soldiers on the ground to help him with the mopping up.

And if he missed Kamran, Mei-Lun or both...well, he could take a little extra time to visit them before he moved on to the second phase of his campaign. Why not?

Anything worth doing was worth doing well.

Chinatown