Operation Hell Gate - Marc Cerasini [17]
"We have a situation on our hands, Milo. Get busy. You and your girlfriend can kiss and make up some other night."
* * *
10:28:52 P.M. EDT
Queens, New York
The tavern was called Tatiana's — a seedy dive situated at the end of a dead end street in an industrial section of Queens. A cinder-block building with thick, glass-brick windows, Tatiana's was trimmed with electric-blue neon and topped by a skylight and a satellite dish. Its litter-strewn parking lot was crammed with a mixture of pimped-up SUVs, tricked out high-performance cars, Harley-Davidson hogs, and, oddly, a late-model black Mercedes with New York plates.
Tatiana's was the epicenter of activity in this lonely area of urban blight, and it was Dante Arete's destination after escaping Federal custody. Running from the chaos at the airport, Arete had slipped through JFK's perimeter fence, crossed a busy highway, and passed through a neighborhood of run-down two-story row houses. Finally he entered a forsaken industrial area of concrete, grime, and graffiti — the last of which appeared to be gang tags. Small factories and automotive repair shops lined either side of the potholed street, occasionally interrupted by a long stretch of chain-link fence capped by barbed wire or an abandoned building shuttered tight.
An unseen shadow in the warm, close night, Jack Bauer had stalked the fugitive's every step. Though he wasn't certain where he was in relation to Manhattan, Jack knew he was still close to JFK because, every two minutes or so, airplanes roared low overhead as they made their final approach. Soon Jack would activate the GPS system embedded in his CDD communicator and determine his exact location. But Jack couldn't risk stopping for any reason. Dante Arete was moving fast, and Jack was determined to shadow him until he reached his final destination.
Shells of abandoned cars littered this stretch of road, along with various parts from a variety of models — seats, bumpers, slashed tires, steering columns. Chop shop heaven, he assumed, which explained the clientele when he finally reached Tatiana's. Jack watched his fugitive walk down the middle of the deserted street, toward the neon brilliance of the bustling tavern. Old-school rap music spilled through the door as a young olive-skinned man with strong Italian features stumbled outside wearing baggy jeans and a muscle T-shirt, climbed aboard a Harley, and revved it up. In a cloud of dust the chopper roared out of the parking lot, past Dante Arete and up the street.
Jack was forced to duck behind the skeletal remains of a gutted Lexus to avoid the headlights. Next to the automobile shell, a cracked, rusty engine block sprouted weeds. Dante Arete's gaze followed the motorcycle, his eyes lingering on the darkened street long after the chopper was out of sight. Finally, Arete turned when shouts came from the shadows. Out of the mass of parked cars, a group emerged. Jack counted five Hispanic men, all in their early to mid-twenties, all clad in baggy denim and loose blue buttoned-down shirts worn open over white muscle Ts. Blue bandanas were worn in various styles — as headbands and kerchiefs. And each had a coil of bloody thorns tattooed around his neck.
The group had all the markings of a street gang — the same style clothing, the same color bandanas and tattoos. Jack's stint with LAPD SWAT had given him enough of a primer on the basics: the hand signals, the postures, the tags, the colors. From his proximity to JFK, Jack knew he was still in Queens. The Latin Kings were known to be the most active gang in that borough. But this crew approaching Dante Arete wasn't sporting the trademark five-pointed crown on their body tattoos or clothing.
Los Angeles had been awash in gang activity for decades. The Bloods and Crips alone had made the city the drive-by shooting capital of the world. Still, those drug-dealing gang-bangers had active "sets" or chapters in almost every state in the country; and although they were predominantly black