The Force. Don Winslow
Russo orbits the block again. Coming back around on 146th, he hits the gas, races up to the mill and slams the brakes. The lookout hears the tires squeal but turns around too late—Malone’s out the door before the car stops. He shoves the lookout face-first into the wall and sticks the barrel of the Sig against his head.
“Cállate, pendejo,” Malone says. “One sound, I’ll splatter you.”
He kicks the lookout’s feet out from under him and puts him on the ground. Billy is already there—he duct-tapes the lookout’s hands behind him and then slaps a strip over his mouth.
Malone’s crew press themselves against the wall of the building. “We all stay sharp,” Malone says, “we all go home tonight.”
The Dex starts to kick in—Malone feels his heart race and his blood get hot.
It feels good.
He sends Billy O up to the roof to come down the fire escape and cover the window. The rest go in and head up the stairs. Malone first, the Sig in front of him, ready. Russo behind him with the shotgun, then Monty.
Malone don’t worry about his back.
A wooden door blocks the top of the stairs.
Malone nods at Monty.
The big man steps up, jams the Rabbit between the door and the sill. Sweat pops on his forehead and runs down his dark skin as he presses the handles of the tool together and cracks the door open.
Malone steps through, swings his pistol in an arc, but no one’s in the hallway. Looking to the right, he sees the new steel door at the end of the hall. Machata music plays from a radio inside, voices in Spanish, the whir of coffee grinders, the clack of a money counter.
And a dog barking.
Fuck, Malone thinks, all the narcos got ’em now. Just like every chick on the East Side has a yapping little Yorkie in her handbag these days, the slingers got pit bulls. It’s a good idea—the spooks are scared shitless of dogs and the chicas working in the mills won’t risk getting their faces chewed off for stealing.
Malone worries about Billy O because the kid loves dogs, even pit bulls. Malone learned this back in April when they hit a warehouse over by the river and three pit bulls were trying to jump through the chain-link fence to rip their throats out but Billy O, he just couldn’t bring himself to pop them or let anyone else do it, so they had to go all the way around the back of the building, up the fire escape to the roof and then down the stairs.
It was a pain in the ass.
Anyway, the pit bull has made them but the Domos haven’t. Malone hears one of them yell, “Cállate!” and then a sharp whack and the dog shuts up.
But the Hi-Guard steel security door is a problem.
The Rabbit ain’t gonna crack it.
Malone gets on the radio. “Billy, you in place?”
“Born in place, bro.”
“We’re gonna blow the door,” Malone says. “When it goes, you toss in a flashbang.”
“You got it, D.”
Malone nods to Russo, who aims at the door’s hinges and fires two blasts. The ceramic powder explodes faster than the speed of sound and the door comes down.
Women, naked save for plastic gloves and hairnets, bolt for the window. Others crouch under tables as money-counting machines spit cash onto the floor like slot machines paying off with paper.
Malone yells, “NYPD!”
He sees Billy through the window to his left.
Doing exactly shit, just staring through the window. Jesus Christ, throw the grenade.
But Billy doesn’t.
The fuck’s he waiting for?
Then Malone sees it.
The pit bull’s got puppies, four of them, curled up in a ball behind her as she runs to the end of her metal chain, snapping and growling to protect them.
Billy doesn’t want to hurt the puppies.
Malone yells through the radio. “Goddamn it, do it!”
Billy looks through the window at him, then he kicks in the glass and lobs the grenade in.
But he throws it short, to avoid the goddamn dogs.
The concussion shatters the rest of the glass, spraying shards into Billy’s face and neck.
Bright, blinding white light—screams, yells.
Malone counts to three and goes in.
Chaos.
A Trini staggers, one hand to his blinded eyes, the other shooting a Glock as he moves toward the window and the fire escape. Malone hits him with two rounds in the chest and he topples into the window. A second gunman aims at Malone from beneath a counting table but Monty hits him with a blast from his .38 and then a second one to make sure he’s DOA.
They let the women get out the window.
“Billy, you okay?” Malone asks.
Billy O’s face looks like a Halloween mask.
Gashes on his arms and legs.
“I been cut worse in hockey games,” he says, laughing. “I’ll get stitched up when we’re done here.”
Money’s everywhere, in stacks, in the machines, spilled on the floor. Heroin is still in coffee grinders where it was being cut.
But that’s the small shit.
La caja—the trap—a large hole carved into the wall, is open.
Stacked, floor to ceiling, with bricks of heroin.
Diego Pena sits calmly at a table. If the deaths of two of his guys bother him, it doesn’t show on his face. “Do you have a warrant, Malone?”
“I heard a woman scream for help,” Malone says.
Pena smirks.
Well-dressed motherfucker. Gray Armani suit worth two large, the gold Piguet watch on his wrist five times that.
Pena notices. “It’s yours. I have three more.”
The pit bull barks wildly, straining against her chain.
Malone is looking at the heroin.
Stacks of it, vacuum wrapped in black plastic.
Enough H to keep the city high for weeks.
“I’ll save you the trouble of counting,” Pena says. “One hundred kilos even. Mexican cinnamon heroin—‘Dark Horse’—sixty percent pure. You can sell it for a hundred thousand dollars a kilo. The cash you’re seeing should amount to another five million. You take the drugs and the money. I get on a plane to the Dominican, you never see me again. Think about it—when’s the next time you can make fifteen million dollars for turning your back?”
And we all go home tonight, Malone thinks.
He says, “Take your gun out. Slow.”
Pena slowly reaches into his jacket for his pistol.
Malone shoots him twice in the heart.
Billy O squats and picks up a kilo. Slicing it open with his K-bar, he dips a small vial into the heroin, gets a pinch and dumps it into a plastic pouch he takes from his pocket. He crushes the vial inside the test bag and waits for the color to change.
It turns purple.
Billy grins. “We’re rich!”
Malone says, “Hurry the fuck