China White. Don Pendleton

said I’d be there, didn’t I? The park, out by the lighthouse, right?”

      “That’s it,” the caller said. “If you decide to change your mind, the bag goes to Kamran.”

      “Hey, now—”

      But he was talking to dead air.

      Standing beside him, almost at his elbow, Kevin Lo asked, “Well? What did he say?”

      “Midnight, Roosevelt Island. At the lighthouse park.”

      “This whole thing smells.”

      “You think I don’t know that?”

      “It has to be some kind of setup.”

      “Obviously. But it’s not the pigs,” Mei-Lun declared. “No mention of the H at all, so far. I show up and they bust me, I can always claim somebody called about my uncle’s missing suitcase.”

      “Okay. It’s the Afghans, then.”

      “Three of their men got wasted, right along with ours. If they already had the bag, why call me?”

      That stumped Lo, but he still was not satisfied. “So what’s the angle, then? This can’t be straight.”

      “His angle doesn’t matter,” Mei-Lun answered. “Only ours. He wants to dance, we call the tune.”

      “We go in hard?”

      “As hard as diamonds, brother.” Mei-Lun checked his Movado Swiss Automatic SE Extreme watch and smiled. “The meet’s at midnight. That gives us four hours to get there. I want a dozen of our best men here in half an hour, dressed to kill.”

      “No problem,” Lo assured him. “You’re still going with us?”

      “Kevin, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Get moving now and set it up.”

      Lo bobbed his head and left the office, cell phone already in hand. Mei-Lun considered changing his command to make it twenty soldiers, rather than a dozen, but that felt like overcompensating. From the early eyewitness reports, one guy had done the killing on Canal Street by himself, and he would likely come alone to claim his payoff for the stolen heroin. But if he showed up with a friend or two, so what? Mei-Lun would have his soldiers waiting at the drop well in advance of midnight, primed to waste this fool on sight.

      No, scratch that. They would have to chat a little with him first, to make sure that he’d brought the merchandise. Killing the bastard without getting back the skag would be a waste of time—and it would leave Mei-Lun at risk from Ma Lam Chan when he admitted to the loss.

      A sudden thought disturbed him. What if Chan already knew about the heist? He almost certainly had eyes and ears inside Mei-Lun’s Manhattan cadre, someone who would tip him off to any problems Mei-Lun tried to cover up. If word had reached the Dragon Head at home, would he reach out to Paul Mei-Lun, or simply send a team of his enforcers to correct the situation, meting out the punishment Chan deemed appropriate?

      Mei-Lun peered at his watch again, counting the hours since the slaughter on Canal Street, guessing how long it would take to have a team airborne from Hong Kong to the States. As he remembered it, the flight to San Francisco took approximately fifteen hours, then they’d face another seven hours in the air, if they were fortunate enough to catch a nonstop flight from Frisco to LaGuardia or JFK. If they were airborne now, Mei-Lun shouldn’t expect to see them nosing around Chinatown until sometime tomorrow afternoon.

      No sweat.

      He’d have the problem solved by then, the merchandise in hand, and they could tell Chan that he’d taken care of business without any interference from the East. And if that didn’t satisfy the Dragon Head, perhaps they ought to meet and talk about it, face-to-face.

      Maybe, Mei-Lun decided, it was time for him to think about advancement in the Family.

      Flushing, Queens

      “THIS MAKES NO SENSE, WASEF,” Ghulam Munadi said.

      Wasef Kamran shrugged in response. “This man stole heroin we planned to steal, and now he wants to sell it. What confuses you?”

      “First, that he knows the number where to reach you.”

      “Anyone can find a number nowadays,” Kamran replied. “The internet is free to all, and this man has skills.”

      “Too many skills,” Munadi countered. “He is some kind of policeman. I’m convinced of it.”

      “Some kind? What kind? He asks for money to return an item that was stolen. There is nothing to incriminate us, eh?”

      “Until we claim the bag. Then they arrest us.”

      “Think, Ghulam! Would the police kill six men in the public eye, then steal the drugs just to arrest us?” Kamran did not wait for his lieutenant to reply. “Of course not! If this person is a cop, he’s more like us. Trying to save a little for retirement, eh?”

      “And what if it’s a trap?” Munadi asked.

      “I can assure you that it is. We seem to take the bait, then close the noose around his neck. With fifteen men, what can he do?”

      Munadi frowned. “I don’t like going to this island.”

      “Tell me what you do like, Ghulam. It’s a shorter list, I’m sure.”

      “What I would like is to forget this business. Since we can’t do that, I’d like you to remain here under tight security until the bag has been retrieved and this is settled.”

      “Stay at home and miss the show this bastard has planned for me especially? I wouldn’t think of it.”

      “You’ll wear the Kevlar, though?”

      “Of course. I’m not an idiot,” Kamran replied.

      He would be armed, as well, with his usual sidearm for a start, a Heckler & Koch P30 chambered in .40 S&W, with a 13-round magazine. To back it up, another favorite: the Spectre M4 submachine gun with its casket magazine containing fifty 9 mm Parabellum rounds, less than fourteen inches long with its metal stock folded above the receiver. With the Spectre he could lay down 800 rounds per minute, killing anyone or anything that stood between him and his goal.

      Including this killer who believed that he could dupe Kamran somehow, perhaps make off with Kamran’s hard-earned money, and the heroin besides.

      “Good luck with that,” he muttered to himself.

      “What did you say?” Munadi asked.

      “Nothing. Go and make sure the men are ready. We should leave soon.”

      “But it’s only—”

      “Yes, I know the time. I want to be there, waiting, when our friend arrives. Let us surprise him, eh?”

      “As you wish it, Wasef.”

      He was looking forward to the meeting with this stranger who had robbed him—or, in truth, who’d robbed the Chinese Kamran had meant to rob. He felt a sneaking kind of admiration for such courage and audacity, but it required a harsh response to salvage Kamran’s reputation as a man whose enemies enjoyed short, miserable lives.

      This one, whoever he might be, would have been wiser to go hunting somewhere else, perhaps rob the Jamaicans or Dominicans, maybe the damned Armenians. He was about to learn a lesson that Afghanis had been teaching Westerners since 1839. Kamran’s people could not be vanquished in their homeland—not by England, Russia or America—and now they were expanding into every corner of the planet to assert themselves and claim their proper share of wealth.

      This night, Roosevelt Island. This time next year, perhaps Manhattan. And beyond that...who could say? It was a whole new world, beyond Khalil Nazari’s wildest dreams from Kabul, where the old ways mired him down. Perhaps a younger, stronger man was needed to command that new domain and bend it to his