Chapter 571

Inspector Grayson was forty-two years old and had been a police officer for a long time.

He was also quite certain that the past few weeks had been the worst period of his entire career.

Worse than the alien invasion of New York.

At least when aliens invaded, no matter how the blame was assigned afterward, the police weren’t going to be the ones taking the fall.

The current situation was different.

New York’s gangs had grown bold enough to have open firefights in broad daylight. Addicts driven half-mad by the shortage of drugs were running wild through the streets, and murders and assaults seemed to happen every other day.

Those were exactly the kinds of problems that landed on a police inspector’s desk.

Grayson wanted to deal with them.

He simply didn’t have the manpower to do it.

Even if he ignored the complicated interests and connections behind some of the gangs and decided to arrest everyone involved without compromise, there was still one rather serious problem.

The gangs had guns.

Lots of guns.

And when pushed hard enough, some of them could apparently produce heavy machine guns.

In New York City, the armed representatives of the United States government were actually losing firefights to organized crime.

Grayson had to admit that American gun control was working wonderfully.

He had since mobilized his entire family to attend rallies supporting stricter gun laws.

And just when the police had already lost enough face, someone else decided to step in and do their job for them.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

For reasons Grayson still couldn’t understand, S.H.I.E.L.D. had sent senior agents and large numbers of operatives racing all over the city, smashing gang operations left and right.

The message was practically written across every operation:

The police won’t arrest them? S.H.I.E.L.D. will.

The police won’t handle it? S.H.I.E.L.D. will.

If the police can handle it, S.H.I.E.L.D. will handle it.

If the police can’t handle it, S.H.I.E.L.D. will handle it even harder.

And apparently they had government authorization to do whatever they pleased.

Grayson felt as though someone had backed him into a corner and slapped him in the face forty-eight thousand times.

Fortunately, it hadn’t lasted long.

After the Mandarin incident, S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to shift most of its attention elsewhere. The teams they’d dispatched to clean up New York’s criminal underworld were pulled back.

In fairness, Grayson had to admit they had done the police one enormous favor.

After S.H.I.E.L.D.’s spectacularly aggressive campaign, most of New York’s gangs had been wiped out. The survivors had been scared into keeping their heads down.

So Grayson rubbed his sore face, swallowed his pride, and decided it was finally time to solve some of the cases piling up on his desk.

Maybe he could recover a little dignity.

Then disaster struck again.

His two most trusted and capable consultants resigned at the exact same time.

"For God’s sake."

Grayson stared at the resignation letters.

Something had to be cursed in his house. There was no other explanation for how everything could go wrong this consistently.

At this rate, he figured his career was probably finished anyway.

Then, on that very day, he received a new order.

According to intelligence, the leader of the Jamaican Voodoo Gang, Voodoo King, would be meeting with his senior lieutenants on the thirteenth floor of a hotel that night.

Grayson was ordered to take a tactical team and eliminate them.

His headache instantly doubled.

If his superiors wanted him out of the job, they could simply say so. He’d retire early. Fine. He could live with that.

But if they wanted to avoid paying his pension by turning him into a decorated corpse, that was another matter entirely.

The Jamaican Voodoo Gang was no pushover.

Rumor had it their eccentric leader, Voodoo King, actually knew some kind of voodoo magic.

Grayson was supposed to take his people in there and wipe them out?

For all he knew, they’d be the ones getting wiped out.

Still, an order was an order. Grayson couldn’t openly refuse.

So he decided to bring his team to the hotel and figure things out once they arrived. If the situation proved too dangerous, they’d take cover somewhere safe and call in the National Guard.

That was the plan.

Then, the moment Grayson and his officers reached the area around the hotel, another order came through.

They were to remain concealed and await further instructions.

For once, Grayson thought, his superiors had made a sensible decision.

Nobody was forcing them to charge headfirst into certain death in the name of patriotism.

Then his radio crackled again.

He was ordered to report to a designated location alone.

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Had someone accepted a bribe and decided to sell him?

Grayson arrived at the location with every nerve in his body wound tight.

It was a parking lot not far from the hotel. Thanks to the angle and surrounding buildings, however, the area was completely invisible from the hotel itself.

Every other vehicle had been cleared out.

Only two remained.

One was a medium-sized truck with a radar antenna mounted on top of its cargo compartment. It was almost certainly a modified command vehicle.

The other was a massive transport truck.

It looked rather like the truck form Optimus Prime took before transforming.

A black shipping container was attached behind it.

Ten men in black suits surrounded the command vehicle. Every one of them carried a standard-issue assault rifle, and their jackets bulged noticeably. Bulletproof vests, Grayson assumed, along with plenty of ammunition.

Seeing that level of security actually made Grayson relax.

This was clearly another classified government operation.

They had probably summoned him here to clean up afterward. Whatever was about to happen, he wasn’t expected to fight.

Still, whoever was inside that command vehicle clearly mattered.

Grayson had no idea how much.

The surrounding rooftops had already been occupied by sniper teams.

And the enormous transport truck wasn’t carrying security personnel at all.

Inside was a light armored vehicle equipped with an autocannon, its driver already seated and ready to burst from the container at a moment’s notice.

"Stop. Identification."

Three security personnel stepped forward.

One checked Grayson’s credentials and searched him while the other two covered him with their rifles.

Once they confirmed his identity and removed every weapon from his person, they escorted him behind the command vehicle.

One of them knocked several times on the rear door before opening it.

Grayson climbed inside.

He looked up.

Then froze.

There were five people sitting inside.

He’d expected important figures.

He hadn’t expected these kinds of important figures.

The two men in military uniforms immediately caught his attention. Their rows of service ribbons and decorations nearly seemed to run from their chests to their stomachs.

Of the other three, Grayson recognized one immediately.

Ross.

The hero of the New York battle.

And, more recently, the newly appointed mayor of New York City.

After the Battle of New York, Ross had announced that he was entering politics. His first target had been the mayor’s office, and with his popularity, winning the election should have been straightforward.

There had only been one problem.

The sitting mayor had been spectacularly incompetent.

When New York descended into chaos, he’d conveniently been away on vacation. The media had torn him apart for it.

Then New York suffered another terrorist attack.

That had been the final nail.

The former mayor was impeached and removed from office, and the hardline war hero Ross had been called upon to take charge of the city in its hour of crisis.

The remaining two people were women Grayson didn’t recognize.

Both wore wide-brimmed hats with veils.

Their clothing and bearing didn’t resemble government officials. If anything, they looked like wealthy aristocratic ladies.

But anyone allowed into a vehicle like this clearly wasn’t an ordinary socialite.

"Inspector Grayson, we’re short on time, so I’ll get straight to the point."

Ross made no attempt to introduce the others.

Instead, he went directly to business.

"Do you remember my inaugural speech?"

"I do."

Grayson nodded.

After taking office, Ross had made a hardline promise to the public: restore order to New York as quickly as possible and eradicate the gangs causing chaos throughout the city.

"But I know that simply pressuring the police to accomplish that would be asking too much of you."

Ross placed a hand on Grayson’s shoulder.

"I’m a soldier. I don’t send my own men into battles they can’t survive."

A hero really was a hero.

For the first time in weeks, Grayson felt genuinely moved.

Normally, a veteran like him wasn’t easy to impress. But his previous mayor had cared about nothing except political results. Whenever something went wrong, the police took the pressure. Their difficulties had never mattered.

Compared to that, Ross was practically a saint.

"That’s why I used some of my connections to bring in a few people who can help."

Ross’s gaze passed over the others in the vehicle, as though introducing them without actually bothering with names.

Grayson opened his mouth.

This didn’t exactly sound legal.

He closed it again.

Lately, legality had become a flexible concept in New York.

One more violation wasn’t going to change anything.

Besides, Grayson knew this wasn’t something Ross had arranged simply by calling in a favor.

Two generals didn’t come running because the mayor asked nicely.

If American generals could be casually borrowed to clean up organized crime, the country would have collapsed years ago.

"Not long from now, our people will begin an operation."

Ross glanced at his watch.

"Once it’s over, the Voodoo Gang will be dead. When that happens, you and your officers will go upstairs and clean things up."

He paused.

"Officially, your department will be responsible for taking them down."

Grayson’s expression tightened.

Ross noticed.

"This is a good thing, isn’t it? The achievement will go into your department’s records. You and your men will receive medals. There’ll be a bonus at the end of the year."

His smile sharpened.

"More importantly, the police finally get to hold their heads high again. Everybody wins."

"Yes, sir."

Grayson nodded.

He didn’t exactly have the authority to refuse.

To people like these, he was a small piece on a much larger board.

"One more thing."

Ross spoke as Grayson was about to leave.

"Keep your mouth shut."

Grayson stopped.

"I’d much rather pin that medal on your chest myself than see it placed on your gravestone."

Cold sweat prickled across Grayson’s forehead.

"I’ll remember that."

"Good."

Grayson left the vehicle.

"So, shall we begin?"

The clear, crisp voice belonged to one of the two women.

Salorlas.

Which meant the other woman beside her had to be her sister, Oleses.

"My warriors have been waiting for some time."

"We’re ready."

The slightly heavyset general spoke.

At once, every screen inside the command vehicle changed.

Live feeds appeared from multiple angles around the hotel.

And completely unaware that death had already arrived, Voodoo King was still celebrating with his men inside the hotel room.

The room was a scene of debauchery.

A naked man’s corpse lay nearby, his abdomen cut open.

They had performed a sacrifice before the festivities began.

It was their way of thanking the Loa for their protection.

Voodoo King himself sat on a sofa apart from the revelry.

He wasn’t participating.

Instead, he rolled a collection of sheep bones between his fingers.

I’ve been having some damn good luck lately.

The gang’s finances had nearly collapsed because of the recent shortage of their usual supply.

Then one of his informants had reported that a nightclub seemed to have a substantial stockpile.

The nightclub was called the Legacy of the Void.

Voodoo King had hesitated when he first heard the name.

According to everything he’d learned, the people protecting that club were extremely powerful, while nobody knew exactly who owned the place.

Normally, Voodoo King avoided people whose backgrounds he couldn’t investigate.

But the shortage had become desperate.

He had no choice but to take the risk.

Before the attack, he’d employed his most powerful voodoo technique.

Revenant Corpse.

He had also concealed a grenade inside the stomach of the reanimated corpse.

The plan had worked.

He successfully took several nightclubs and made off with a considerable fortune.

But what he’d found inside the nightclub had shocked him.

Five hundred kilograms of extremely pure product.

Voodoo King had been delighted.

He had also been deeply uneasy.

In his experience, material of that quality was normally controlled by drug lords operating out of the jungles of South America and the Golden Triangle.

It simply wasn’t supposed to appear on the streets.

Had he accidentally robbed an organization with connections to one of those kingpins?

But the nightclub had already been destroyed.

The drugs were already in his possession.

Even returning them probably wouldn’t erase the offense.

So Voodoo King had decided to go all the way.

He took the entire shipment.

Afterward, fearing retaliation, he pulled the gang inward, kept everyone quiet, and prepared his defenses.

He waited.

And waited.

No retaliation came.

Better yet, his decision to lie low allowed the Jamaican Voodoo Gang to survive S.H.I.E.L.D.’s first wave of crackdowns.

They were now one of the few gangs still standing.

Voodoo King was convinced it was the Loa protecting him.

He raised the sheep bones reverently.

"Great Loa, continue to guide us."

He scattered the bones across the table.

Then he looked down.

His expression changed instantly.

The blood drained from his face.

The divination was unmistakable.

A terrible omen.

Death.

Voodoo King was deeply superstitious.

He immediately intended to order everyone to leave.

Then he saw three tiny red dots arranged in a triangle across the chest of his second-in-command.

Laser sights.

"Get down!"

He never finished the warning.

A brilliant beam tore through the enormous floor-to-ceiling window.

His lieutenant’s upper body exploded into fragments.

The celebration ended instantly.

Years spent living by the blade had trained the gang members to react quickly. They grabbed their weapons and opened fire toward the direction they believed the attack had come from.

Bullets tore through the room.

But there was nothing there.

The enemy seemed completely invisible.

Then, without warning, the man standing at the back of the group was suddenly pierced straight through the chest.

His body was lifted into the air.

The posture was almost identical to a man impaled upon a spear.

The others spun and fired.

Nothing.

Their enemy was already gone.

A projectile shot from the side.

A net spread through the air and slammed one of the gang members against the wall.

The material tightened.

Then tightened again.

The struggling man screamed as the strands constricted around him, cutting deeper and deeper until the net reduced him to bloody fragments.

The invisible attacker changed weapons again.

A volley of throwing knives.

A spinning boomerang that cleaved a man cleanly in half.

A flexible whip that snapped around another man’s neck and separated head from body.

Every kill came from a different weapon.

No trick was repeated.

And through it all, the attacker never revealed himself.

Within moments, the room had fallen silent.

Only Voodoo King remained.

The gang leader removed his coat.

Bare-chested, he drew a long sword concealed inside his cane.

Perhaps it was the insignificant amount of voodoo power flowing through his body, but he could somehow sense the enemy’s position.

He stared toward the darkness.

Then he whispered:

"His base lies at the foot of the Holy Mountain..."

He tightened his grip on the sword.

"A warrior of the Loa never turns his back on an enemy."

Perhaps out of respect for his courage, the invisible warrior finally revealed himself.

Light flickered.

A figure emerged from the distortion.

He wore brilliant silver armor from head to toe, with a fully enclosed helmet concealing his face.

He lowered the spear in his hand.

A narrow, curved blade sprang from his wrist.

Then he charged.

One strike.

The curved blade shattered Voodoo King’s sword.

The next motion took his head.

The warrior said nothing.

He simply vanished back into the darkness.

Inside the command vehicle, the screens continued displaying the aftermath.

Oleses looked around at the assembled group.

"That concludes the demonstration of the Bio-Mecha Hybrid, the Predator."

She smiled faintly.

"Are you satisfied?"