Chapter 19: The Arsenal
The burner phone rang at 5:47 AM.
I was already awake—sleep came harder these days, with the Irish hunting and the team growing and the weight of everything I was building pressing down on my shoulders. Bear was on watch, Wire was doing whatever Wire did in the small hours when his anxiety wouldn't let him rest, and Elena had gone back to her apartment for the night to maintain appearances at the free clinic.
The caller ID showed the number I'd given Santos.
"I'm in." His voice was rough, like he hadn't slept either. "Meet me at the Red Hook docks in an hour. Not the warehouse—I don't want to know where you're based yet. Meet me first."
The line went dead.
"Cop paranoia. He wants to verify I'm alone before committing to a location."
I respected the caution. Santos had spent three years learning what happened when you trusted the wrong people. He wasn't about to make that mistake again.
Bear looked up from his watch position near the loading bay door. "Santos?"
"He's in. Meeting him at the docks in an hour."
"Want backup?"
"No. He needs to see I trust him enough to come alone." I checked my Glock—twelve rounds, chamber clear. "If I'm not back in three hours, assume something went wrong."
Bear nodded. He didn't argue, didn't question. That was the Ranger in him—follow the mission parameters, trust your commander's judgment. The TBI had taken a lot from him, but it hadn't touched that core of disciplined obedience.
The walk to the docks took twenty minutes through Red Hook's pre-dawn streets. February cold cut through my jacket, and I found myself thinking about the hospital again—that first morning in Marcus Cole's body, staring at hands that didn't belong to me, trying to understand what had happened.
"Thirty-three days ago. Feels like a lifetime."
Santos was waiting by a rusted shipping container, hands in his pockets, breath fogging in the cold air. He looked different than he had in the parking lot—steadier, more focused. Like the evidence I'd given him had unlocked something that had been trapped inside.
"You came alone." It wasn't a question.
"You asked me to."
He studied me for a long moment. The cop gaze, evaluating, assessing, looking for tells. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him.
"I read the file three more times. Called in some favors with people who still owe me. Reilly and Doyle are still on the Irish payroll—monthly deposits to offshore accounts I was never able to trace when I was on the job." His jaw tightened. "They're still protecting those bastards. Three years, and nothing's changed."
"It can change."
"I know." He pulled his hands from his pockets. "That's why I'm here. What do you need from me?"
[OPERATOR RECRUITED: ROBERT SANTOS]
[DESIGNATION: AEGIS OPERATOR #004]
[ROLE: SECURITY SPECIALIST / LAW ENFORCEMENT LIAISON]
[BONUS: +50 SP]
[CURRENT SP: 1,800]
[OPERATOR ROSTER: 4/5]
"Right now? Weapons. We've got two handguns and limited ammunition. That's not enough to run serious operations against the Irish."
Santos's expression shifted—the first hint of the cop smile I'd seen from him. "Funny you should mention that. I've been thinking about the same problem."
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket. A floor plan, hand-drawn from memory, with annotations in careful block letters.
"The 73rd Precinct in Crown Heights. I worked there for two years before I transferred to the 15th. Their evidence processing facility has a storage overflow—seized weapons waiting for destruction paperwork that never seems to get filed."
I studied the layout. The evidence locker was in the basement, accessible through a service corridor. One guard station. Security cameras covering the main approaches.
"The cameras?"
"That's the thing." Santos tapped a notation on the plan. "Camera three has been down for six months. Budget cuts—they submitted a repair request, but it's sitting in a queue with fifty other requests. There's a blind spot from the west entrance to the evidence room door."
"Guard rotation?"
"One officer, eight-hour shifts. Midnight to eight, that's usually Patterson or Williams. Both of them take smoke breaks at two AM, exactly fifteen minutes. Patterson goes out the east exit, Williams uses the loading dock."
The pieces were coming together in my mind. A surgical strike—get in during the smoke break, access the evidence locker, grab what we could carry, get out before the guard returned.
"How do we get through the evidence room door?"
Santos reached into his other pocket and produced a key. Tarnished brass, standard police issue.
"They never asked for it back when they fired me. The locks haven't been changed in eight years—city budget again."
"He's been planning this. Maybe for years, waiting for an opportunity to use what he knows."
"This is a serious crime. Breaking into a police facility, stealing evidence—if we get caught, there's no coming back."
"Cole, I haven't had anything to come back to in three years." His eyes were hard, determined. "You want to fight the Irish? You need guns. I know where the guns are. Let's stop talking and start doing."
We hit the precinct at 1:53 AM.
Bear came with us—his size made him invaluable for carrying equipment, and his combat training meant he could handle any complications. Santos drove, a rental car paid for in cash, license plates obscured with mud that would wash off in the morning.
The 73rd Precinct squatted on a corner in Crown Heights, a brutalist concrete block that had probably been built in the seventies and never updated since. The parking lot was nearly empty—three squad cars, one unmarked detective vehicle, the night shift skeleton crew.
Santos pointed to a side entrance obscured by overgrown hedges. "Service door. Maintenance access. Camera three covers this angle, but like I said..."
"It's been dead for six months."
"Welcome to the NYPD."
We waited in the shadows, watching the building. At exactly 2:01 AM, a uniformed officer—Patterson, according to Santos—emerged from the east exit, cigarette already in his mouth. He walked to a spot near the parking lot fence, out of sight from the main entrance, and lit up.
"Fifteen minutes," Santos murmured. "Go."
The service door opened with Santos's key. The corridor beyond was dim, emergency lighting casting everything in pale orange. Our footsteps echoed on linoleum that hadn't been waxed in decades.
Santos moved like he belonged here. Twenty years of muscle memory, guiding him through a building he hadn't entered in three years. Down a stairwell, through a fire door, into the basement level where the evidence processing facility occupied the south wing.
The evidence room door had a keypad lock—standard four-digit code.
"They change it monthly," Santos whispered. "But they always use the same pattern. Month and year, reversed."
He punched in 6102. February 2016, backwards.
The lock clicked open.
Inside, the evidence room stretched into darkness, row after row of metal shelving stacked with tagged items. Boxes of drugs, bales of cash, and—there, in the back corner—weapons.
Santos led us to the firearms section with unerring accuracy. "Take the ones with red tags. Those are scheduled for destruction but haven't been processed yet. They won't be missed for months."
Bear went to work with quiet efficiency. He grabbed four handguns—two Glocks, a Sig Sauer, and a Smith & Wesson revolver. Two pump-action shotguns. An AR-15 that had probably been seized from a drug dealer's stash house. Boxes of ammunition, mixed calibers. Three bulletproof vests that had been confiscated from a failed armored car robbery.
The whole operation took eleven minutes.
We were back in the car and driving away at 2:14 AM, one minute before Patterson finished his cigarette and returned to his post.
Santos's hands on the steering wheel were steady. Rock-solid, like he'd done this a thousand times. Which, in a sense, he had—just from the other side of the law.
"He's not nervous. He's relieved. This is what he was built for, and he finally gets to use it again."
"Next left," Bear said from the back seat. He was cradling the AR-15 like it was a long-lost friend. "Then straight on Van Brunt."
The warehouse came into view twenty minutes later. Santos finally got to see it—the concrete bunker that served as AEGIS headquarters, such as it was. His cop eyes scanned the exterior, noting the defensible position, the multiple exits, the industrial neighborhood that wouldn't ask questions about late-night activity.
"Not bad. Could use better perimeter security."
"Wire's working on it." I opened the loading bay door. "Welcome to AEGIS."
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