39. Omar
Omar
We moved at midnight.
Devon had the Flatbush location mapped down to the inch.
A second-floor unit above a laundromat on Church Avenue, three rooms, two exits.
The staircase from the street went up the side of the building to a landing with a metal door.
One guard on the landing, one inside. The cash was in the back room in lockboxes that Supreme's people rotated every month.
According to Asha, the new rotation had started the week before she left.
James took his team to East New York simultaneously. Devon ran comms from APEX, monitoring both operations on split screens, scanning Supreme's crew frequencies for any chatter that might indicate they knew we were coming.
I had three men with me. All Baptiste, all vetted, all quiet. We parked two blocks away on a residential street and walked to the location in pairs, keeping to the shadows on the south side like Stone had suggested. The camera coverage on the main road didn't extend past the bodega on the corner.
The guard on the landing had his back to the stairs, leaning against the railing scrolling his phone.
He didn't hear us until we were on him. I put my arm around his neck from behind, locked it tight, and held him there until his legs buckled.
He went down without a sound. One of my guys zip-tied his wrists while I took his weapon.
The door was locked. I stepped back and put my boot through it just below the handle. The frame gave on the second kick and the door swung inward.
The hallway was dark. A strip of light came from under a door at the far end.
Music playing low from somewhere, R&B, a woman's voice singing about something I didn't care about.
The inside guard came out of the first room on the left when he heard the door go.
Young, maybe twenty-two, wide-eyed, a gun in his hand that he hadn't even taken the safety off.
"Put it down," I told him.
He raised it instead. I closed the distance before he could decide what to do with it, knocked the barrel aside with my left hand, and hit him in the throat with my right.
He dropped the gun, both hands going to his neck, choking.
I hit him again in the temple. He went sideways into the wall, then down to the floor.
My guy zip-tied him while he was still trying to breathe.
The back room was where the money was. Two lockboxes on a table, a counting machine, stacks of bills sorted by denomination.
A third man was in the room sitting behind the table with a laptop open.
He looked up when I came through the door, assessed the situation in about two seconds, and put his hands on the table.
"I ain't armed," he said.
"Smart."
My guys secured him while I went through the lockboxes. Cash, all of it. Maybe eighty thousand in mixed bills. Supreme's collection money from the Flatbush territory, sitting there waiting to be cleaned through the shell companies and pumped back into his property portfolio.
I photographed the laptop screen before closing it. Devon would want the data.
"We're taking the lockboxes," I told my guys. "And the counting machine. Everything that's got prints or data on it, we take."
"Those lockboxes are heavy as hell," one of them said, lifting the corner of one. It didn't move much.
"Then lift with your legs." I grabbed the other side.
The metal box weighed at least forty pounds, packed tight with bundled bills.
We hoisted it off the table and carried it between us to the hallway, the weight pulling at our shoulders, our feet finding the dark corridor by memory because nobody was turning on lights.
The staircase down to the street was narrow, steep, the metal treads slick from the night air coming through the gap at the bottom.
I went first, backing down one step at a time with the lockbox between us, the edge of it digging into my palms. My guy on the other end was breathing hard, his grip shifting, trying to keep the weight balanced.
"Watch the last step," I said over my shoulder. "There's a lip."
We got the first lockbox to the bottom. Set it down on the sidewalk, both of us flexing our hands. My second guy was already coming down with the counting machine in a duffel bag, the weight of it swinging against his thigh. The third was behind him with the laptop bag.
"Second box," I said, and went back up.
The second lockbox was heavier. More bills packed tighter, the metal handles cutting into my fingers.
Halfway down the stairs my foot slipped on the wet tread and the box lurched sideways.
My guy caught his end, braced his shoulder against the wall, and we held it there for a second before finding our footing again.
"Easy," he muttered.
"I got it."
We made it to the street. Two lockboxes, one counting machine, one laptop.
All of it sitting on the sidewalk outside a building we'd just taken by force in a neighborhood that belonged to Supreme.
I checked the street both ways. Empty. A car passed on the cross street, headlights sweeping the intersection, then gone.
A dog barked from behind a fence three houses down.
"Cars," I said. "Now."
We split into pairs. One lockbox per car, the counting machine and laptop in mine.
The cars were parked two blocks away on the residential street.
We moved fast, staying close to the buildings, keeping the lockboxes low.
The weight slowed us down. Forty pounds of cash in a metal box isn't something you jog with.
My forearms were burning when we reached the first car.
My guy popped the trunk and we loaded the first lockbox. I carried the second to my car, got it into the back seat, threw a jacket over it. The counting machine went in the footwell. The laptop bag on the passenger seat.
I got behind the wheel, started the engine, and checked the mirrors. Empty street. No movement behind us. No headlights following.
Devon's voice came through my earpiece as we pulled away from the block. "Flatbush is clean. You're clear on all surrounding streets. James is thirty seconds out on East New York."
I drove north toward Bed-Stuy while Devon fed me updates from James's operation.
The East New York location was a storage unit near the expressway, heavier security than Flatbush.
Four guards, two outside and two in. James had more bodies with him and the approach was different but the objective was the same: cash, records, lockboxes.
"James is in," Devon reported. "Two outside guards down. He's breaching the unit now."
I parked on a side street and sat with the engine running, both hands on the wheel, listening to Devon's voice through the earpiece.
"First inside guard is down. James is moving to the back."
Then a sound that made my grip tighten on the steering wheel. Two shots, rapid, muffled but unmistakable through the comms. A shout, cut off halfway. Something heavy hitting the floor.
Then nothing.
The radio went dead. No static, no voices, no Devon narrating. Just silence in my ear and the engine humming and the streetlight casting orange through the windshield.
"Devon."
Nothing.
"Devon, talk to me."
Silence. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. My thumb found the comms button again. Thirty seconds of dead air. My hand went to the gear stick. I was calculating the fastest route to East New York when I pulled out of the parking spot, already driving.
"Devon, what the fuck is happening?"
Forty seconds. Forty-five. I was on the road heading east, running through every scenario. James down. Multiple casualties. The operation blown.
The radio crackled.
"Clear." Devon's voice came through, level but faster than usual. "East New York is clear. James is good. One guard pulled a weapon, James put him down. Everybody's breathing."
I pulled over and sat there for a moment. My hands were tight on the wheel. I loosened them one finger at a time.
"What happened to comms?" I asked.
"James knocked out the power going in. Killed the lights, killed the signal booster. I lost him for about forty-five seconds until his phone reconnected to the cell tower."
"Don't ever let me lose comms for forty-five seconds again."
"Wasn't my call, Omar. James made a tactical decision. The guard couldn't see to shoot in the dark. It was the right move."
I breathed. "Casualties?"
"One guard took a round in the shoulder. James's team is clean. Lockboxes secured, financial records recovered."
No bodies. Guards down but breathing. That was the plan: disrupt the money, take the records, leave Supreme's people alive to report back to him that his financial pipeline had just been ripped apart in two locations simultaneously.
Once Supreme heard about it, we'd already be planning night two.
I drove to James's location to check the haul myself.
The storage unit was a concrete box behind a chain-link fence near the expressway on-ramp.
James was standing outside with his team, two lockboxes on the ground beside them, a stack of files under his arm.
Four guards were zip-tied against the interior wall, two of them bleeding from the face, one holding his ribs.
"How much?" I asked.
"More than Flatbush." James kicked one of the lockboxes with his boot. "Hundred and twenty, maybe more. Plus financial records going back months. Devon's gonna lose his mind over this."
I looked at the guards through the open door. One of them stared back at me with blood running from his eyebrow, trying to look defiant despite his hands shaking behind the zip ties.
"You tell Supreme something for me," I said to him. "Tell him his money's gone, his locations are done, and the Baptiste family ain't finished yet."
The guard didn't reply. I wasn't expecting him to.
We loaded the lockboxes into James's car. His team drove out first, then James, then me. Three separate routes back to Bed-Stuy. Standard protocol after any operation.
I met Kadeem at Ma's house. The kitchen was dark except for the light over the stove. He was already there, sitting at the table with two glasses and the whisky from Ma's cabinet. He poured without asking and slid one across to me.
"Both locations cleared," I told him, sitting down. "Flatbush had about eighty in the lockboxes. East New York came in heavier. James reckons a hundred and twenty, plus financial records from both sites."
"Any problems?"
"Clean run. In and out, no shots fired. Guards went down quiet."
We drank in the quiet kitchen with the stove light casting shadows across the ceiling. The house was warm around us, Ma asleep upstairs.
"Devon's pulling the laptop data from Flatbush right now," I continued. "Combined with what James pulled from East New York, we'll have Supreme's entire collection operation mapped out by morning."
Kadeem swirled the whisky in his glass. "Supreme's gonna wake up tomorrow and find out his money's gone from two locations he thought were untouchable. His crew's gonna be calling him all morning. He'll be rattled, unfocused, trying to figure out how we knew where to hit."
"Good. Rattled is what we want going into tomorrow night."
Kadeem set his glass down. "Tomorrow night."
"Tomorrow night."
"Supreme's warehouse. Crown Heights. The main operation."
"The man himself."
Kadeem looked at me across the table in Ma's kitchen, the same table where Pops used to sit before he disappeared. The same kitchen where Ma made us breakfast every morning before school. The same house where everything Baptiste started.
"Tomorrow we finish this," Kadeem said.
I finished my whisky and set the glass in the sink. "I need to check on Asha before tomorrow. Make sure she's good."
"Go. Get some rest. I need you sharp."
"I'll be sharp."
I drove to the apartment. The streets were empty at this hour, Brooklyn quieter than usual. I parked outside the building, checked the block, went upstairs.
Asha was asleep on the couch with the TV still on. Nene was in the bedroom with the door closed. I turned off the TV, put a blanket over Asha, and sat in the chair across from her.
My phone buzzed. Devon: Laptop data is gold. Full transaction history for Flatbush going back eighteen months. James found similar at East New York. Supreme's entire financial pipeline is in our hands.
I read it, put the phone down, and looked at Asha sleeping on the couch. Tomorrow night Supreme's operation would be finished. The warehouse, the product, the records, the man. All of it coming down.
I let myself think about what that meant. Asha free. The territory secured. Pops' disappearance one step closer to answers.
And Supreme, who'd kept my girl in a cage for three years, would be answering for it.
Tomorrow.
I closed my eyes for a minute. When I opened them the first light was coming through the blinds and Asha was still sleeping.
I didn't wake her. She'd need the rest for what was coming.