Visitors to New York City tended to think of Canal Street as the epicenter of Chinatown, but the bustling restaurants and markets of East Broadway in the shadow of the bridge could have easily been parts of Beijing or Shanghai. English was a second language here — or not spoken at all.
It was warm for May. Cherry trees were shedding the last of their blossoms just a few blocks away, but here, the odor of fish and overripe fruit mingled with the stench of garbage and gas fumes drifted upward, making Chavez thankful for the aromatic tea.
A leather messenger bag hung from a strap over his shoulder. He held his cell phone in his free hand. Six moving dots were superimposed on the screen — a COP, or common operating picture, of the two rabbits and four members of his team.
Jack Ryan, Jr.’s voice buzzed in the tiny, flesh-colored bud in Chavez’s ear.
Chavez shot a glance at John Clark, who stood beside him, looking over the rail, holding a cup of coffee. Plain coffee. No rubbery tapioca globs. Clark gave him an it’s-your-show shrug.
Chavez took a sip of tea.
“You’re half right,” Clark said. “People are just strange. Period.” He took a deep breath, blowing it out hard the way every older man Chavez had ever met did when remembering a particular story. “I once watched two Vietcong for five full minutes while they took a smoke break less than five feet in front of my hide. I could have reached out and touched their Ho Chi Minh sandals.” Clark breathed out hard again, settling the memory. “I’d been in country long enough I could understand a little of what they were saying. It took me a minute, but I realized these two guys were telling jokes. Funny, but I never thought of them joking with each other, laughing about the same sort of dirty stuff we laughed at…”
“What happened?” Chavez asked, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips. He was a soldier. He knew better.
“War happened,” Clark said simply. “And that’s no laughing matter.”
Even after two decades of working with John Clark, and being married to his daughter, the dude could still send a chill up Chavez’s spine. At the same time, though he was pushing fifty years old, Ding couldn’t help but think he wanted to be John Clark when he grew up.
Ryan’s voice broke squelch on the radio again.
Jack Ryan, Jr., was the boss’s boss’s boss’s son. Athletic and smart as anyone Chavez had ever seen, he could think on his feet and read a given situation with near lightning speed. Yeah, he’d been a bit of a rogue, known to chase tail when he should have been focusing on, well, just about anything else. Hell, he’d been all but fired twice — grounded for sure, stuck behind a desk — and that was as good as being fired once you’d tasted fieldwork. Ding and Clark had both vouched for him — and he’d stepped up. All signs indicated he’d finally matured to match his intellect.
And now he was seeing bogeymen.
There wasn’t any countersurveillance team. Chavez knew it. He’d set up the operation.
Ding enjoyed putting together training, but he missed pounding the pavement, acting several different parts, masking his hunter/killer persona so he could blend in on the street and not look too aggressive. There were few joys in life better than bringing justice to the bad guys — putting warheads on foreheads, they called it. As much fun as it was standing around drinking bubble tea with his father-in-law, he missed being out there with his team.
