Staten Island. November 17th, 1995.
"Lieutenant said you didn't ask for time off this Thanksgiving." Jax nudged by Sonya as they waited in the car outside a rotted, nearly crumbled brick complex on a broken street in Staten Island.
"We need to bring down the Black Dragon." Her eyes never strayed from the front door until three more police cars began appeared over the horizon of the grime of the street.
"You need to see your family too, or did you forget you had one?" He eyed her and stretched the coffee from its foam cell and then set it down with a hot breath. "Damn if we don't find anything here."
"He's here." She was certain, her voice concise.
"So all the informants tell us." He wasn't as certain as she, but as far as he knew, all the strings lead here.
Her two way radio hissed and coughed between the two and sputtered out the words that assured them it was time.
"We're behind you, Stryker." She nodded to Jax and together, exited the vehicle and filed behind a team of police ready for their most dangerous operation.
Three lines behind, they waited with Stryker, the tall blond cop as between the two with his radio in one hand to send information back to the lieutenant, and a gun in the other, ready to abandon communication as they entered the battlefield.
"We're in." He radioed in and dropped the walkie at his side.
Both hands on the gun, Sonya followed the line in, one by one through the shattered door that took little effort to cave in. The cave inside, however, seemed as broken as the damage they did to the door. Already a mess, the apartment complex was a stairwell that climbed up four stories above three first level rooms.
The first room was empty. No tenants, no sign of life. Sonya looked into the void of human life to find settled dust along the floor, the edges of the room. When she pulled away, the ram had already broken into the second door.
shrill cries was silenced under the wave of screams and lights from the police.
Guns clicked, feet stomped and voices raised. Sonya peered in to find a hispanic family on the floor between couch and television. A child with her parents.
"Take them in." Stryker ordered and the family was seized.
The third room as empty as the first, but this one had been lived in. Inside, a table in front of a couch with no television. The kitchen was dirty and dishes caked with old food. Brown boots sat at the entry way with an odor of the work day they had carried someone through.
It was apparent that someone lived alone in this unit. Someone possibly lonely. There were no photos on the wall, and no sense of decor. It was bland and grey, Sonya likened it almost to her own apartment in Manhattan.
Lonely.
"Move on upstairs." Jax chimed into the noise of feet and comrades in their search for evidence of the Black Dragon.
"Nothing inside?" She needed certainty.
"Nothing of use." He was concise and moved on.
She wasn't convinced and leaned in the doorway to take a quick look. There was a couch which looked more lived in than the entire building. One window at the far end with broken blinds were closed and a desk beneath them. There was a door to her right which seemed like a closet, and the left lead to the small, odorous kitchen.
"Sonya!" He called out to her from above the apartment she leaned inside of.
She shook it off and followed.
The staircase curved until a new floor awaited them. Another three apartment rooms on the opposite wall of the first floor. Once she stepped foot by the first door, the three of them were open and the police were ready to ascend. There was unease that started to lift with the dust in these rooms. Disappointment began to settle in the men and women that passed her, and she could see it in Jax's eyes.
Did the informant's lie to protect the Black Dragon?
Did the lie for a worse reason than that?
Have they even scratched the surface of this building's hidden secrets?
There was no reason to question the force that moved upward. She needed to see it for herself, though. She took a look into the first room, empty, the other just the same and the third looked lived in, but vacant. Inside that room was a strange sight for her. No doubt for the others, but with a lack of people to mow down, may not have immediately picked up.
It looked lived in.
Inside the bathroom was a VCR Tape.
Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'.
She noticed it had been moved, possibly thrown. It was in the bathtub, a white clawfoot tub that was dry and curtains torn from the pipes that wrapped around the ceiling above it.
She took the tape and looked for a television, but this unit had nothing. It looked lived in, but perhaps by an older person, with a radio, but no television. Seemed strange to her to find a tape here.
Despite the unnerved feeling that crawled up her shoulders, she moved on.
Forget it, she thought.
Her comrades waited for her upstairs, but only in spirit. They had picked clean the next level and had already made their way to the top.
"We got 'em!" She heard and rushed up the staircase.
The middle unit had been shattered into. On the floor a man with pale white skin and a grizzly bead laid faced down in his own blood. Jax grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him up for Sonya to see.
"That's not Kano." She felt immediate disappointment, in her team, in this mission, but yet still felt this strange trickle of unease down her spine. There was something here, but this guy wasn't it.
"He's a member of the Black Dragon. We'll make him talk." Stryker passed her by, certain in their catch.
"What are you thinking?" Jax approached, but she stared at the pool with his question unanswered.
"This isn't it."
He noticed the tape in her hand. Revealed the title and snickered.
"Nice family film. Let's get out of here." He passed her by and she had a moment, she could join him and the police force and take their small victory, or she could linger.
"Hold on." She pushed aside. At the very bottom of the building was a unit with a television. Here, she could put the tape in, to settle her nerves.
"We don't got time for this, Sonya. Captain says we're done here." Jax pulled her from the hallway with his voice, but she wouldn't budge. Not until the advertisements at the front of the tape ended and suddenly the first scene showed an empty apartment unit, much like these.
A man in white tank and dirty blue jeans stood with his back to the camera. It was increasingly apparent the man had his dick out, pissing on the floor. She looked at the floor beneath her, but it wasn't this room.
"Don't worry, baby, it's long dried once you get 'ere." A zip followed the deep island twang of the Australian that turned to face the camera.
Behind him, someone sat in a chair, the piss collected on their clothes and face, but who they were could not be seen.
Stryker and Jax joined her in the room. As Jax stared with her, Stryker began to check the room more carefully. This was the unit with the closet to the right. The door was open when they checked it and clothing, shelves, the usual was inside. He checked it again, and then looked back into the room.
"Which apartment is that?" He asked, but neither answered.
Kano snickered, he had a bowie knife at his side, sheathed, but he would run his fingers over it as though he needed to remind himself it was always there, always a part of him.
"You think I'd bothah' to lose the fight for New York in this place, mate?" He snickered and then moved out of the way.
Bang!
Bang!
Stryker struck the boards behind the shelves to find hollow space. Each room was constructed differently, how could they have missed the bedroom in this one? Perhaps it was a studio, but as the pieces fell into a room the size of the living space Sonya watched the tape in, he felt a pit hit his stomach.
Inside, he found men, recognized as being part of the lower rung of the Black Dragon syndicate, but they were all taped together and taped to them? Explosives.
Behind Kano was something that clutched Sonya's heart and dragged her closer to the screen. Her father.
He couldn't speak. Duct taped and hands tied together.
"Sonya, I'll admit, you got me cornered there, but I'm smartah' than you blues. I got true family, ready to die for me, for the Black Dragon. That care about something."
Stryker had called in the forces, and Jax had joined him. She was alone in front of the screen, but the noise pulled her away. To see her father's eyes on the screen, she couldn't choose which direction to go.
The knife left his side, and tucked neatly in his right hand, as thought it had lived there since childhood.
"So, baby, what do you really care about?"