He settled in, pulled out his gun, and started checking it. “I just hope no one sees me like this. Not good for my reputation. Not good at all.” He grinned when he said it, but it was clear he wasn’t kidding.
“The only thing I care about is my laposhka’s safety,” Sokolov told him as he glanced at his gun. “You do whatever you have to do to keep her safe. You understand? She’s all that matters.”
“It’ll be fine.” Then he added, “Laposhka. You always call her that. What’s it mean?”
“It’s hard to translate. It’s just a word we use. That’s all.”
Jonny nodded. “Cool. I like it. Has a nice ring to it.”
Sokolov said nothing for a moment, then added, “You know I don’t have the money, right? I’d pay them if I did. But they’re going to want something instead, and that something’s going to have to be me.”
Jonny shrugged. “It’s not going to come to that.”
“Well, if it does, I’m okay with it.”
“You’re going to be fine, Mr. Soko. I know the docks. We do a lot of business down there. It’s a wide-open space, so we can control this thing like we want. And it’s nice and quiet, and far from prying eyes.”
“Sounds like it’s better for them than for us.”
Sokolov stared ahead as he motored on, deep in thought. Then his eyes narrowed, deepening the creases in his face.
“I just hope the ublyudki haven’t hurt her,” he added, almost under his breath. “Because if they have, you’re gonna need to control me, too.”
Jonny grinned. “Now, that I’d like to see, teach. But it won’t come to that. You’ll see. Jonny’ll take care of everything.”
“I hope so.”
Jonny didn’t reply at first. He just sat there and took a couple of long drags on his cigarette, then he flicked it out the window and turned to Sokolov. “You did the right thing coming to me. Like I told you before, you can read people well.” He paused, gauged Sokolov, then decided to carry on. “I wanted to go to college. Like you said. I did. Then one day Kim-Jee steals three keys of heroin from a local Jamaican crew and they mark him for dead. Almost killed him twice. But Kim-Jee wouldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t call the cops. He was too humiliated to tell his boss. He was just waiting for them to take him out. So I took them out first. It was my way in. And lucky it was, too. Without the protection of my crew, I’d be dead myself-many times over.”
Sokolov nodded slowly.
Jonny glared into the night. “Just don’t tell me it’s not too late to change, all right? I’ve had enough of that bullshit.”
“I won’t,” Sokolov told him. “Especially not tonight.”
Jonny shrugged and let out a slight chuckle. “Yeah, I didn’t think you would.”
IT WAS OPPRESSIVELY DARK and quiet all around us as Aparo pulled us up behind the waiting SWAT truck, which was parked about five hundred yards from the entrance to the deserted shipyard. Kubert and Kanigher pulled in behind us.
I glanced at my watch. It was quarter to nine.
Fifteen minutes till kickoff.
Aparo and I got out and walked over to the SWAT-team leader. Kubert and Kanigher joined us. We were out in Red Hook in South Brooklyn, virtually facing Governor’s Island. The location had been texted to the Sledgehammer, along with its GPS coordinates in a message we’d intercepted. They hadn’t given us much time to get here, but it looked like we were all set anyway.
The area around us was bleak and desolate. Rotting docks, old brick warehouses with rusting roofs, rickety chain-link fences, clusters of aging eighteen-wheelers and containers dotted around. I was surprised there wasn’t any tumbleweed rolling at our feet. The place had that kind of postapocalyptic feel to it.
The SWAT honcho was a new guy. I’d pretty much worked with them all, and he wasn’t familiar to me. Which wasn’t ideal, but there’s a first time for everything. I flipped my creds at him, and we did the quick intros. He said his name was Infantino and we shook hands, then went over the situation on the ground and the engagement protocols.
He pointed at the image on the laptop. It was a grainy, green-hued, night-vision live feed coming from a two-man advance team he had deployed to monitor the target site. It showed a big SUV with two guys standing beside it, one on each side. They were carrying.
“We’re dealing with four guys,” he explained. “Two standing, waiting for something to happen. They’re carrying MACs.” Which wasn’t great news. Machine pistols like MAC-10s or -11s could spit out close to twenty rounds in a single second. They weren’t necessarily the most accurate weapon for a face-off, but if handled by someone who knew how to curb his enthusiasm, they were very deadly.
“Two still inside the SUV,” he continued, “pissing themselves to Chris Rock’s Bigger and Blacker. They’ve got it on so loud they must be half deaf.”
I didn’t know what was harder to take in-that the heavies were into Chris Rock, or that the SWAT-team leader could tell one of his sets from another.
“Great. Let’s hope the drop stays as casual as their choice of CD.”
“They all seem to love this shit,” Infantino said. “That and Wu-Tang. It’s how they learn English.”
“And attitude,” Aparo added. “Wish they’d listen to Seinfeld or Justin Bieber instead.”
He got some weird looks, then we went over some specifics about the terrain. It was all flat and open, with old freighters and water on one side and stacks of containers on the other. When we were done, I tapped on the copy of the photo of the Sokolovs that he’d been given and reminded him, “If Sokolov or his wife show up, their safety is priority one. We want them breathing.”
Infantino adjusted the night-vision rig on his helmet. “Don’t worry about it. But you know how these things can play out, especially with these vodka chuggers. They shoot, we shoot back.”
I tapped the photo again. “They’re the mission. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Russian mobsters or whatever else is going down here tonight. This is about them.”
“Copy that,” Infantino said.
One of his guys handed us our comms sets. We slipped our earpieces in and confirmed comms-channel settings with the SWAT team’s tech inside the van-then the four of us fanned out to take up our positions. Kubert and Kanigher went right. We went left.
Aparo and I reached our position, the squat office building next to the open gate. There was no security at all. No passing cars. No cops or private security patrols. The place was a ghost town. Easy to see why they’d chosen it.
I peered out for a closer look and could see the SUV and the two armed bratki as described. I could even hear the faint laughter coming from inside the big car. Clearly, these guys weren’t too stressed about whatever was going down tonight. Which I took to be a good sign.
We hunkered down and waited for the other party to arrive.
30
As Sokolov eased the van past the large oil-storage tanks and across to the edge of the vacant lot, he saw a dark Cadillac Escalade emerge from behind a stack of containers on the opposite edge of the shipyard. The big SUV advanced so it was just visible, then rolled to a stop.
Sokolov hit the brakes and stopped too. They were about a hundred yards across the clearing from the Escalade.
The Escalade flashed its headlights three times.
Sokolov returned the signal, as agreed. Then he turned to Jonny without turning off the engine.
“Listen to me. Keep the engine running. And I want you to take these. You’re going to need them.”