Chapter 157: The Art of Negotiation
"Taha probably has 20 million in savings," Lola said seriously. "Dollars."
"How much did you say?" Ron turned his head in surprise.
"20 million, dollars."
"Tsk... it's just pocket change. I don't care at all, not one bit." Although Ron's heart was bleeding, he still put on a brave face.
"Do you still have the strength to hold onto the handle?" Ron tied one end of the rope to the heating pipe and carried Lola to the window sill. Lola nodded gently: "Then go ahead, someone will catch you over there."
"You won't come with me?"
"Hell no, I have to give these scumbags a farewell present."
And by the way, recover that 20 million dollars I just lost! Ron thought to himself.
With that, Ron loosened his grip, and Lola slid down the zipline. By then, the men guarding outside had already noticed something was wrong, but Ron had locked the door from the inside as soon as he had dealt with the people in the room.
They could only bang on the door. Ron fired directly through it, only stopping after emptying all four magazines.
The door to Taha's office was shot to pieces, hanging precariously from its frame. A little pressure could easily knock it over.
Ron knew it, and the drug dealers outside knew it too.
Through the holes in the door, Ron saw a large boot preparing to kick it open.
But just before they kicked, Ron had already pulled the pins on two grenades and tossed them the moment the door was kicked down.
Ron's throw was perfect, hitting the wall behind him almost simultaneously and bouncing off at nearly a 60-degree angle into the hallway.
"Boom!"
The hallway was engulfed in flames, and Ron casually picked up the rifle from one of the guards he'd just killed and walked out.
As expected, there wasn't a soul left alive in the hallway.
"Damn! Not one guy who can actually fight!" Ron's eyes were filled with disappointment he couldn't hide.
Compared to the drug dealers back home, these New York dealers were completely pathetic, lacking even the most basic tactics. Of course, this could also be because guns weren't as widely available here as in other parts of the country.
In Detroit or Chicago ghettos, every person has at least one gun. Almost every kid grows up surrounded by gang shootouts, learning basic survival tactics from childhood.
"Click-clack-click," footsteps echoed down the stairs. Sounded like more than one person. Ron ducked into the opposite corner of the stairwell, essentially a blind spot for anyone coming up.
"Rat-a-tat-tat..." As soon as the first person emerged from the stairwell, Ron's automatic fire cut them down. He pulled the pin on his last grenade and tossed it down.
"It's a frag! Take cover!"
"Boom!" Before the grenade smoke had even cleared, Ron burst through it, catching the remaining thugs off guard and mowing them down with his rifle.
"I'm getting bored!" Ron muttered to himself as he reached the ground floor, having cleared another floor of lowlifes.
It took him a little over half an hour to fight his way from the top floor to the bottom. This crew of thugs basically had no other moves except spraying bullets from the hip. None of them could actually fight.
Ron figured the guy with "K2" shaved into his head was probably the only one with any real combat potential.
"Ron," Matilda said, watching Ron emerge from the building without a scratch. She ran over, dragging the now-recovered Lola with her. "What did you do? They just let you walk out like that?"
"They wouldn't let me leave at first, but I negotiated with them, and they were persuaded by my argument and let me go," Ron shrugged, his tone casual.
"Negotiated? Impossible!" Matilda said incredulously. "What did you say to them?! Taha's crew are the most violent on the block. There's no way they'd just let you walk out."
"Maybe you're using the wrong approach. Maybe next time you should try using this to negotiate with them."
Ron clicked the safety, ejected the empty magazine, tossed it behind him, and loaded a fresh one. These were all the spoils from his intense battle in the building.
"You killed them all?!" Matilda covered her face: "There are over a hundred of his men in that building!"
"Over a hundred? Maybe you miscounted?" Ron raised an eyebrow skeptically: "I remember only taking out about fifty guys total."
Ron counted again in his mind. Yeah, fifty-six, and that's including Taha.
"The others might be chasing my brother." Lola, who had been quiet, suddenly spoke: "I saw several cars speeding out from downstairs earlier."
"Your brother?" Ron became more interested: "Where do you think he'd go?"
"I don't know, but I know he should be with that cop." Lola shook her head in confusion.
"Here," Ron handed her a cell phone. "You might want to give him a call. My number's programmed in there. My name's Ron. I respect your brother's skills. If he's interested, he can come work for me in D.C.
I forgot to mention—I'm Ron Cooper. I'm with the Treasury Department, and I'm here to collect back taxes from the Taha organization for their drug trafficking operations across state lines."
Ron made up a believable cover story, easily fooling the naive Lola. Matilda stared at Ron's back with suspicion.
"Aren't you here to eliminate witnesses?"
But she wisely kept that thought to herself. After all, with Taha dead, the secret would be buried forever.
"Well, my mission's complete. Catch you later," Ron said, and without looking back, led Matilda away.
"Wait! We're not going to deal with that big package anymore?" Matilda was confused by Ron's seemingly careless attitude.
"Didn't Lola just tell us? An undercover cop went with her brother to handle it." Ron said indifferently: "Now this isn't my problem anymore—it's the NYPD's problem, understand?"
Ron smiled cunningly: "I used to think Orlov's supplier was insane for daring to steal military nuclear weapons and sell them. But think about it—something this big, and the government only sends one undercover cop to deal with it. Does that seem reasonable to you?"
This kind of situation, in any country, would warrant at least a SWAT team deployment, handled with the utmost caution like a major terrorist threat. But what's the government doing instead?
Matilda thought for a moment: "What are you getting at?"
"I'm saying they deliberately let that device fall into the wrong hands, with the intention of having it delivered to this place, and then... boom!"
(End of chapter)
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