Terrorist Dispatch

“So? What does it say?” Melnyk demanded.

“It’s printed in Russian, like on some kind of computer. I could read it pretty well, though.”

“Dimo.”

“Yeah?”

“I asked you—”

“Right, Boss. It says, ‘You are finished in New York.’”

“Say that again.”

Levytsky repeated it, his voice gone wary, as if he feared Melnyk would blame him for the insulting note’s content. No worries, though, on that account. Melnyk already knew exactly who to blame.

“Goddamned Alexey.”

“I don’t know, Boss.”

“Eh? You don’t know what?”

“Um, well, I know we’re having trouble with him, but it seems odd, Brusilov leaving a note like that. I mean, it points right to him, like he’s signing off on it. Now the cops’ve got it, and they’re bound to pull him in.”

“He won’t mind that,” Melnyk replied. “They question him each time a babushka falls down and skins her knee. He’s used to it. I bet he even likes it. Big, tough man.”

“But Boss—”

“This way, he rubs our nose in it, knowing the NYPD can’t do squat. They won’t find any CSI crap on the paper, bet your life on that. He skates on this for sure, unless we hold him to account for it.”

“So, that’s a war, then.”

“Five of our guys dead? You’re goddamn right it’s war. We gotta—” Melnyk’s other line distracted him, a little cricket chirping in his ear. “Hold on a sec. I got another call.”

He didn’t recognize the number on his cell phone’s LED display. Melnyk answered, a curt “Who’s this?”

“Me, Boss.” It was Arkady Cisyk, from the Flame club.

“Where you calling from?”

“The phone in the pawn shop, down the street.”

“The hell?”

“We got hit, Boss. Some guy comes in the back, drops Taras and Dimal, then grabs up some cash off the crap tables and splits.”

Melnyk’s mind focused on the money first. “How much did he get?”

“I don’t know,” Arkady said. “The place was pretty full. This time of night it could be ten, twelve, maybe fifteen grand.”

“Son of a bitch!” Another thought struck Melnyk. “Did he leave a note?”

“A what?”

“A note. You know, a piece a paper. Writing on it? Like a freaking note?”

“No. Was he supposed to?”

Melnyk bit his tongue. Dealing with idiots was like Chinese water torture. “Are the cops there?” he inquired.

“Just rolling up. I better get back.”

“Play it smart, eh?”

“Sure, Boss. I went out for smokes and didn’t see anything. Don’t worry. I have it covered, Boss.”

Cisyk broke the link and Melnyk switched back to his other line. “Dimo?”

“Right here.”

“Some prick just took down the Flame club.”

“Holy shit! Another sniper?”

“This one walked in, smoked a couple of the boys and robbed the tables.”

“Son of a bitch! That Brusilov. What are we going to do?”

“Chill out, right now,” Melnyk replied. “And then start planning for a trip to Brighton Beach.”

* * *

BOLAN’S HAUL WAS thirteen thousand dollars and some change. Not bad for six or seven minutes’ work, plus something like two dollars’ worth of shotgun shells. So far, he had reduced Stepan Melnyk’s reserve of troops by seven men, subtracted from an estimate of fifty. Bolan thought it was a decent start, and he was far from finished for the evening.

The Melnyk outfit would be going hard soon, locking down while Stepan mounted an offensive of his own, but Bolan thought he still had time for one more decent strike, at least, before he shifted to the second phase of his New York campaign. He had already chosen from the list of targets Brognola had provided, picking a whorehouse Melnyk operated on East Ninth Street.

It was a short drive—everything in the East Village was close to everything else—and he parked a half block from the target, between a deli and a Mexican taquería.

The sky was drizzling when he stepped out of the Mazda, perfect cover for the raincoat he was wearing, which in turn concealed his Colt AR-15. The carbine was a semiautomatic version of the classic M16, identical in every way except for the omission of selective fire. The one he’d purchased was the “Sporter” model, with an adjustable stock and twenty-inch barrel, loaded with a STANAG magazine containing thirty 5.56 mm NATO rounds. It couldn’t match the parent rifle’s full-auto cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, but the Executioner didn’t plan on tackling an army division.

He walked back to the brothel, suitably disguised as an apartment building, and rang the doorbell, waiting until a well-appointed woman of a certain age appeared to greet him with a practiced smile, asking the stranger on her doorstep, “May I help you?”

Brognola had furnished Bolan with the phrase that opened doors. “I’d like a bowl of borscht, please,” he replied.

“Of course,” the madam replied, beaming at him. “We have a full menu of delicacies. Please, come in, sir.”

Bolan waited for the door to close behind him, then showed her the carbine. “No alarms,” he told her. “Your life depends on it. Play straight with me and nobody gets hurt.”

“I would be happy to cooperate, of course, but—”

When her eyes flicked to the left, he swung in that direction, just in time to meet a charging buffalo head-on. The carbine’s barrel cracked a solid skull and the man dropped. Bolan stooped, relieved the heavy of a .45 and tucked it in a pocket of his raincoat.

“Anybody else?” he asked the lady of the house.

“Only the girls and customers,” she said.

“Okay, then. Where’s your fire alarm?”

Confused, then frightened, she led Bolan to the main salon, showed him the red pull station mounted on a wall between two reproductions of Van Gogh’s Flowering Orchards and Picasso’s Guernica.

“And where’s the kitchen?”

“Through that archway,” she directed.

“Okay. Get the place cleared out,” Bolan ordered.

“But—”

He triggered three quick rounds into the floor. “No dawdling,” he advised her. “You’re about to have a fire.”

He left her to it, found the kitchen on his own and yanked the range’s gas line from the wall. It hissed and sputtered in his hand like an unhappy viper, until he laid it on the marble countertop, secured beneath a heavy skillet near the microwave. Next, Bolan shoved a small soup pot and two handfuls of silverware into the microwave, set it to cook for ten minutes and headed back for the salon.

An exodus was underway, including sleek women in lingerie and filmy robes, accompanied by men in sundry stages of undress whose forms and features weren’t the type to normally attract young beauties. Not, that was, unless they paid up front and very well for the attention they received.

This night, the johns were not going to get their money’s worth.

Approximately half the crowd had cleared the brothel’s doorway when the microwave exploded, touching off the broken gas line. Thunder rocked the place, a ball of flame erupting from the kitchen entryway lighting up the door frame, spreading quickly to the wallpaper and carpet. Newly motivated stragglers sprinted for the street, trailed by their host, with Bolan bringing up the rear.

The madam stopped to face him on the stoop. “What do you think you’re doing?” she inquired.

“Whatever Mr. Brusilov requires,” he said, and winked at her before he left her standing on the steps, backlit by fire.

3

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Bridge was free, but Bolan spent seven dollars and fifty cents of Stepan Melnyk’s money to leave Manhattan through the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, instead. It was North America’s longest continuous underwater vehicular tunnel, stretching for 9,117 feet under the East River at its mouth, emerging between Red Hook and Carroll Gardens. From there, he simply had to follow Interstate 478 to the Prospect Expressway, six lanes leading south to Brighton Beach.

The seaside neighborhood was wedged between Manhattan Beach and Coney Island. Russians began arriving in the 1940s from Ukraine’s third-largest city, giving the district its nickname of “Little Odessa,” changing over time to “Little Russia.” Known as a hotbed for the Russian mafia, Brighton Beach was first colonized by vor v zakone—“thieves-in-law”—during the early 1970s, and remained the outfit’s leading stronghold on the Eastern Seaboard.

Bolan had skirmished with vor v zakone before, several times, and he understood their mind-set. Anyone who kept them from a given goal was in for trouble, frequently extending to the target’s family without regard to age or gender. Any “code” imagined by romantic types who wrote about the underworld without inhabiting its sewer had no application in the real world, where the Russian heavies settled scores with blood and suffering.

A language Bolan understood.

Rackets in Brighton Beach were more or less the same as in any other New York City neighborhood—or any city nationwide, for that matter. Immigrant gangsters started out preying on fellow countrymen with loan-sharking, extortion, peddling drugs and luring young women into prostitution. When good boys went bad, the Mob helped them along, received their stolen goods and armed them to the teeth against their enemies, collecting “taxes” all the while from each illicit deal. When they were strong and rich enough, the syndicate expanded into smuggling contraband from other states and other continents, the latter commonly including weapons, human beings and narcotics. All of that was found in Brighton Beach, the only question for a one-man army being, where to start?

If Bolan had to pick one racket that he hated more than any other, he would cast his vote for human trafficking, a modern form of slavery. Any of the others could be rationalized to some extent: people loved to gamble and get high, they craved cheap merchandise, were fine with buying sex and hoarded guns they didn’t need because it was a grand American tradition. Human trafficking, meanwhile, involved abduction, rape and forced addiction, turning women and kids into hustlers with minimal shelf lives, spending their last years in abject sexual degradation.

Bolan had no feelings for the slavers, other than contempt.

They could expect no mercy from him in the end.

His first stop was an address on Brightwater Court. It was just another house, from all appearances, but this one was a house of horrors for its captive occupants. At any given time, as many as two dozen victims smuggled in from Russia, Eastern Europe and the Near East might be held within its walls while being “broken in,” a process that incorporated heroin and rape around the clock to weed out any stubborn vestige of humanity.

The vor v zakone considered it “schooling,” preparation for a foul career that, while short-lived for most, was still immensely profitable for its overlords.

Unfortunately for them, the scum who worked for Alexey Brusilov had no idea that Bolan was about to pull the plug and cancel “classes” in their “school” for good.

And any members of the “staff” he found on site were going down the hard way.

East Village, Manhattan

“IT’S ASHES,” DIMO LEVYTSKY SAID. “A total loss there.”

Stepan Melnyk ground his teeth to keep from screaming out his rage. He felt his temples pounding and wondered if a sudden stroke might free him from his misery. He managed, finally, to speak.

“One man?”

“That’s what Oksana says.”

The whorehouse madam. “What else did she say?”

“Not much. One guy, like I already told you, with some kind of rifle. She says M16, but what do women know?”

“Was he Russian?”

“That’s the funny thing.”

“Funny? Funny? You see me laughing here?”

“Funny unusual, I meant to say.”

“So, spit it out.”

“He didn’t have an accent, the way she tells it. Just a regular American, okay? But then she asked him something.”

Melnyk waited, then snapped, “Am I supposed to guess?”

“Sorry. She asked him what did he think he was doing there. And he said back to her, ‘Whatever Mr. Brusilov requires.’”

“That bastard! It was him!”

“Not him, but—”

“You know what I mean, idiot! He sent this guy. Maybe the same one who shot up the Flame and the restaurant.”

“Maybe. I guess.” Levytsky shrugged.

“Who does Alexey have hanging around who works like this?”

“No one I ever heard of,” Levytsky answered. “He’d have sent more guys, I think, except to snipe The Hungry Wolf.”

“Meaning he’s brought somebody in. A specialist,” Melnyk extrapolated from the meager evidence in hand.

“Could be.”

Most times, Melnyk enjoyed a yes-man, but Levytsky was getting on his nerves. “That’s it? ‘Could be’? You want to put some thought into this?”

Another shrug. “It’s obvious. We gotta hit him back. Hit hard.”

Melnyk nodded. “If we were sure.”

Now it was Levytsky’s turn to look surprised. “Sure? Who’s not sure? The guy leaves a note in Russian, telling us we’re finished, then he tells Oksana that he works for Brusilov. What more do you need, Boss?”

“Something.”

“Well...”

“It doesn’t seem a little bit too obvious to you, Dimo?”

“That Brusilov, he’s always been cocky.”

Melnyk could hardly disagree with that. The Russian was an overbearing bastard who liked to laugh when he insulted people to their face, so they’d feel stupid if they took offense. He might be dumb and arrogant enough to leave a note, or have one of his shooters dropping names, but—

“What if it was someone else?” Melnyk suggested.

“Someone else? Like who?” Levytsky inquired.

“I’ve got two thoughts on that, but I can’t prove either one.”

“Let’s hear them anyhow,” his underboss replied.

“One thought, it could be Georgy Vize.”

“His number two? Without Alexey signing off on it?”

“If Vize was hoping we’d take out his boss and help him get a leg up, maybe.”

“I don’t know. What was your other thought?”

“Somebody from outside.”

“Like where, outside? New Jersey?”

“How in hell do I know?” Melnyk growled. “Outside. Could be from anywhere, trying to start a war that hurts both sides. Create a vacuum, like they say, and let some new blood in.”

“Armenians,” Levytsky suggested, his dark eyes narrowing. “I hate those sons of bitches.”

Truth be told, there was no end of candidates when Melnyk thought about it. He and Brusilov alike had stepped on many tender toes while staking out their fiefdoms in New York, including the Italians, Irish and some Russian predecessors whom Brusilov had removed, feeding the fish in Sheepshead Bay. Then there were other ethnic gangs chafing to rise and conquer territory, even if they wouldn’t fit: besides Armenians and Chechens—who were just another breed of Russian, when you thought about it—there were Cubans, Salvadorans and Colombians, even Israelis waiting in the wings.

Levytsky wasn’t convinced. “I still say we should hit him back, before he hurts us any worse.”

“Do nothing until I give the word,” Melnyk replied. “We clear on that?”

“Sure, Boss. Whatever you decide.”

But was there something hinky in Levytsky’s eyes, as if he might go off and try some action on his own.

I need to watch that one, Melnyk thought, wondering if his trouble might come from inside, rather than without.

Brightwater Court, Brighton Beach

THE BROWNSTONE WAS a way station along a trail of abject misery. Behind its drab facade, atrocities were the routine. Its soundproofed walls held secrets locked inside and kept the neighbors from complaining to police—who got their weekly cut, of course, but who had to make a show of taking action if the straight folk bitched too loudly, for too long. Beyond the old three-story house lay routes of suffering that spanned the continent, carrying slaves off to Manhattan and Atlantic City, to Chicago and Detroit, Miami and New Orleans, San Francisco and Los Angeles, even Toronto and Vancouver, with a thousand other destinations in between.

The victims, brought here from their hometowns, sold by parents, or the tourist spots where they’d been drugged and kidnapped, would be women under twenty-five or children, either sex. They would have been selected by appearance first, and then with some thought given to their families. If they were being sold, that raised no problem. Otherwise, the spotters would be on alert for runaways and party girls, for wannabe celebrities, for the abused and lonely ones who gave off victim vibes. The hunters would be smart enough to pass on trust fund brats and anybody else whose families were well connected, likely to make trouble if their little darlings disappeared.

His latest target wasn’t like the brothel he had torched in the East Village. This place was a lockbox, a chamber of horrors, with no clientele but a handful of affluent freaks who dropped by, now and then, to unleash their demons in private. What happened inside stayed inside, or went into the bay.

No knocking, then. No small talk. Bolan climbed the concrete steps and pumped two 5.56 mm rounds into the front door’s locking mechanism, then kicked through it to a murky foyer, where a sleepy-looking thug was scrambling upright from a metal folding chair. He made it halfway, then another round punched through his forehead and he sat back down without so much as a grunt.

Bolan swept on, taking no prisoners. His gunfire brought two more goons on the gallop, one armed with a pistol, while the other held a sawed-off shotgun. Bolan dropped them with a quick one-two and started kicking doors.

Some of the rooms were empty. Others had bleary occupants sprawled on filthy beds, drugged out, some of them manacled. He left them where they were, no time for individual rescues, and watched for other guns along the way. A fat guy waited for him when he reached the stairs, blasting a pistol round into the wall near Bolan’s head before a clean shot from the Executioner punched into the gunner’s chest and put him down.

The second floor was empty. The third floor’s rooms were mostly empty, but those that were occupied offered glimpses of unimaginable suffering. Bolan found no more enforcers, no one standing by to take a heaping helping of his fury, so he made his way downstairs and outside, palming his smartphone as he cleared the house.

He had the number for NYPD’s Sixtieth Precinct, the cop shop serving Brighton Beach, programmed in. An operator picked up on the third ring, laughter in her voice until he said, “Shots fired, men down,” and spit out the address, then cut the link.

Seacoast Terrace, Brighton Beach

“SO OUR COUSIN from Kiev is having trouble, eh? I won’t lie to you, Georgy. This news makes me glad.”

Alexey Brusilov was seated at his desk, inside his private office on the second floor of Café Moskva, smiling broadly at his second in command. Georgy Vize, by contrast, did not seem to share his godfather’s excitement at the news.

“I’m hearing other things,” Vize said.

“What other things?”

“Our friend at Police Plaza says the restaurant shooter left them a note.”

“What kind of note?” Brusilov asked.

“In Russian.”

“Ah.”

“And so he thought of us,” Vize said.

“So what? Lots of people speak Russian.”

“There’s something else.”

“Tell me,” Brusilov ordered.

“Your name was mentioned at the bordello.”

“By who?”

“The shooter.”

Brusilov considered that and saw a pattern forming. “Someone’s playing games with us.”

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