stonecrandall Chapter 32 Execution Codenamed End
Chapter 32 Execution Codenamed End
At 12:30 a.m., only the old fluorescent lights in the stairwell of the Clinton Gardens apartment building were still on.
Li En glanced at his watch, stepped onto the first step, and the wooden footboard made a familiar creaking sound under his feet.
That's how the stairs in this building are; every step you take makes a sound, the only difference is the volume of the sound.
He went up to the third floor, took out his key, and opened the door to room 301.
I closed the door, didn't turn on the lights, and walked straight through the living room into the bathroom, pushing open the movable wall panel hidden behind the tile grout.
The lights in the darkroom automatically turned on, casting a cold white light onto the photos and red lines on the thought wall.
Two enormous travel bags appeared out of thin air on the ground, slamming onto the concrete floor with a dull thud.
Li En squatted down and unzipped one of the bags.
A wad of bright green banknotes spilled out of the zipper opening, gleaming under the light.
The denominations were very varied, including hundred-yuan bills bundled into bricks, twenty-yuan and fifty-yuan bills tied into rolls with rubber bands, and loose banknotes simply packed in plastic bags.
He picked up a bag and weighed it in his hand; it weighed about 100 pounds.
The maximum weight limit for a single compartment in the space warehouse is this; anything over 100 pounds won't fit.
He originally planned to pack the entire Razor Gang safe into the warehouse and take it with him.
It's convenient; no need to count or pack.
As a result, the safe was overweight, and a red warning popped up on the warehouse interface without it even shaking.
But bundled and wrapped banknotes can be placed in the same compartment.
The same items can be stacked as long as they are packaged together.
But once separated, even just taking a wad of cash out of the bag and putting it separately, it will take up two compartments.
So the only option was to pack everything up and divide all the cash into two large packages.
He used the Razor Claws' dogs to test whether live animals could be put into the warehouse.
Move the bulldog tied up in the corner of the office to the storage room. A notification pops up on the screen:
It cannot accommodate living things, not even potted plants.
Li En carried a bag out of the dark room and placed it next to the only folding table in the living room.
I unzipped the zipper, counted out two thousand yuan and twenty hundred-yuan bills, separated them with my fingers to make sure they weren't stuck together, and placed them on the table.
This is prepaid rent.
Ding!
My phone rang in my pocket.
He took it out and answered the call; Brock's voice came through the receiver.
In the background noise, you can faintly hear the static of a walkie-talkie and someone shouting "Blockade line" in the distance.
"Li En, we have to work overtime tonight. More than a hundred people died in the Razor Gang's territory. Everyone from the departments has gone there first. I'll come pick you up."
There was something subtle in Brock's tone.
There was surprise, but underneath it all was an indescribable sense of relaxation.
He didn't believe that Li En could wipe out the Razor Gang in just over an hour.
It's more likely that another gang just happened to strike on the same night.
Hell's Kitchen is never short of opportunists.
"No need, I'll just take a Cayenne. You go ahead, I'll be right there."
Li En hung up the phone, got up, grabbed the money on the table, and went out.
I reckon I'll have to go back to the police station after this is all done.
The Razor Gang's warehouse still holds more than 300 people who were arrested; just taking their statements would keep the entire police station busy all night.
Even he and Brock were no exception.
Of course, with ample support, it's possible to return earlier.
He went into the bathroom and straightened his police uniform in front of the mirror.
Button up the collar, push the tie to the top, straighten the epaulets, and adjust the holster to your preferred position at the waist.
The outline of the mixed-race face in the mirror was clearly cut out in the mercury coating.
Open the door.
"Oh, Lee Eun."
A voice came from the end of the corridor, carrying the tremor unique to the elderly and an indescribable patience.
Li En turned and walked over.
Mrs. Hudson stood behind the doorframe, her door ajar.
Her golden hair appeared somewhat white under the dim lighting of the corridor.
He took the two thousand yuan out of his pocket and handed it over.
"This is the prepaid rent."
Mrs. Hudson took the money and slowly ran her fingers over the banknotes, the paper making a soft rubbing sound under her fingertips.
Her lips twitched slightly; it wasn't exactly a smile, but it wasn't expressionless either.
She gently patted the stack of banknotes twice in her palm.
"Is the port and warehouse district busy tonight?"
Li En glanced at her.
The old lady had probably been listening to the explosions all night.
The muffled thuds coming from the direction of the port could be heard for several kilometers.
With sirens blaring for most of the night, it's likely that no one in Hell's Kitchen got a good night's sleep.
"Mrs. Hudson, you should get some rest."
He turned and walked toward the stairs, and heard the door close softly behind him.
Mrs. Hudson stood behind the door, held the banknotes in her hand to her nose, and smelled them carefully.
The smell of paper, the smell of ink, and a very faint, indescribable lingering odor.
She gave a meaningful smile, folded the banknotes, put them in her apron pocket, and turned off the light.
The entire West 35th Street was cordoned off at the entrance to the Razor Gang warehouse.
The cordon was made of bright yellow plastic tape, which was tied to lampposts or temporary iron stakes driven into the ground every few meters.
The sea breeze blows and it stretches to one side, making a soft sound as if plastic is being stretched.
The searchlights on the warehouse's exterior walls were all on, illuminating the entire street as brightly as a cloudy daytime day.
Several police cars were parked across the middle of the road, their blue and red lights still flashing, but their sirens were off.
Rows of people were squatting outside the cordon.
His clothes were tattered, his hair was matted, and his face was covered in dust and dried tear stains.
Several people, wrapped in blankets given to them by others, huddled on the curb, drinking water from paper cups held in their hands.
They had just been released from the warehouse.
More than 300 people—that's too many. The police officers in charge of the scene could only have them wait on the roadside until the headquarters sent people to divert them.
A large number of reporters crowded outside the police cordon, their flashes going off incessantly, making the faces of the victims crouching on the ground appear even paler.
Someone was shouting for me to come in and do an interview, while someone was holding a recording pen and trying to stick it over the police tape.
As Li En crawled under the police tape, several reporters glanced over.
But after seeing the mixed-race face under his hat, their gaze shifted away; he wasn't the person they were waiting for.
The reporters were waiting for the bureau chief, the spokesperson, or anyone with a star on their epaulettes.
An ordinary patrolman isn't worth wasting your time taking a picture of.
But an older reporter wearing glasses stepped out from the crowd, holding a pen and paper, and walked slowly towards Li En.
Li En glanced at the name tag hanging on his chest:
Ben Urick, special correspondent for the New York Gazette.
Yurik's eyes were very clean.
He looked at Li En, but didn't put the recording pen to his mouth. He just held the pen above the paper.
"Officer, was the downfall of the Razor Gang really caused by internal gang warfare?"
Li En looked him in the eyes, her tone as usual.
"I don't know. I was sleeping at home until just now, and then I was called in to work overtime."
Yurik looked at him for two seconds, put down his pen, and wrote a few words on the paper.
"Thank you for your patience, officer."
He turned around and walked toward a woman who was squatting on the ground drinking water near the police line.
He didn't walk fast, and instead of holding the paper and pen in front of him, he squatted down to be at eye level with the woman before asking his first question.
"Li En!"
Bright stood at the warehouse door and waved to him.
As Li En walked over, Bright turned around and handed him a paper bag.
"Brock is in the warehouse, you can go straight in."
Li En took the paper bag, glanced down at it, and looked at him with some confusion.
"The scene was somewhat terrifying."
Brett's voice was half an octave lower than usual, and his face was unnaturally pale.
"You'll get yelled at if you spit it on the ground."
Li En folded the paper bag and stuffed it into his pocket.
Thanks.
He glanced around at the victims sitting nearby.
There were so many people that several police officers were squatting down next to an elderly man, translating for him, while another was handing out bottled water to children.
We can only make do with staying here now, but thankfully it's not cold at night.
As you step through the warehouse gate, the smell of gunpowder still lingers in the air, mixed with the stench of blood and another indescribable sweet odor.
Brock stood under the fluorescent light in the center of the warehouse, one hand on his hip, a cigarette between his fingers in the other.
Smoke leaked from the corner of his mouth, shimmering as a pale blue veil under the overhead light.
Li En walked to his side.
"What's wrong, Brock?"
Brock turned his head and looked Li En up and down.
The police uniform was very clean, with hardly any wrinkles, and the collar buttons were fastened neatly.
There was no strange liquid on the shoes, and the treads on the soles were clean.
He relaxed, his heart pounding for a moment, and a slight smile appeared on his lips as he reached out and patted Li En on the shoulder.
"Luckily, I had good luck today."
"Yeah." Li En nodded. "You're really lucky."
This time, they plundered a full two million from the Razor Gang.
One million of them were in hundred-dollar bills, neatly bundled together, presumably prepared by Jeremiah as a gift to someone.
Normally, a gang's hideout wouldn't have this much cash.
Even if money laundering is slow, it won't leave two million piled up in a warehouse.
But today is just before the transaction, and the money hasn't been diverted yet.
Brock turned around and led Li En deeper into the warehouse.
A tall, thin forensic officer was squatting next to a corpse, his back to them.
He was wearing a white lab coat, holding a vernier caliper in his hand, measuring something against the bullet hole between the deceased's eyebrows, muttering rapidly in a low voice, as if talking to himself.
"Barron, have you found anything?"
Upon hearing Block's voice, Barron's shoulders jerked, and he turned around.
His pupils were dilated, his eyes were bloodshot with excitement, and his lips were a little chapped.
He shoved the vernier caliper into his white coat pocket and pointed his right finger at the corpse on the ground.
"Officer Brock, based on preliminary assessment, all of these hundred or so people were dealt with by one person."
"To make it easier to understand, I gave it the code name—The End!"
"Huh?" Brock's eyes snapped to attention. "What nonsense are you spouting? The finish line? Are you still half asleep?"
He stood at the warehouse entrance without going inside, but just one glance was enough to tell that at least dozens of people were dead inside.
There were more than a dozen people lying in the entrance passageway alone.
One person? Fighting dozens?
Can one person clear out an entire warehouse with over a hundred bullets in two minutes?
Barron was not affected by Brock's tone; on the contrary, he became even more excited.
He squatted down and pointed to the two corpses in front of him.
"Look, these two were guards at the door at first."
"You can tell from the wound – the bullet entered right between the eyebrows, the entry edge was clean, and there were no burn marks from close-range gunshot wounds, indicating that the shooting distance was more than three meters."
"The weapon used at the finish line will most likely be a pistol, with an ammunition caliber of approximately 9 millimeters."
He stood up and drew a dotted line between the spot where the two men had fallen and the iron gate with his finger.
"The two people heard the knocking and went to check."
"The moment the door opened, the finish line fired two shots in quick succession, two bullets, two bodies, less than a second apart. They didn't even have a chance to draw their guns."
Barron turned around excitedly and took two steps to the center of the warehouse hall, pointing to the three rows of corpses lying in a fan shape on the ground.
"Look here again, these people should be the first batch of reinforcements who came after hearing the gunfire."
"Judging from where they fell, the distance between the first and second rows was less than two meters, and the third row fell at the aisle entrance, with their hands still outstretched towards the entrance."
"This means they had no chance to react and were all killed within seconds."
There were about ten people who fell in this location, and they were very close together.
From the moment they heard the gunshots and rushed out to check the situation until they all fell to the ground, they didn't even have time to raise their guns.
Barron waved to Block and Lien, then strode to the alleyway to the left-hand cubicle and pointed to the tin roof.
"Then the finish line was on the roof."
He took a small flashlight out of his pocket and shone the beam onto a dent in the tin roof.
The dent wasn't very large, and the edges were oval-shaped, exactly the imprint left by an adult male's foot pressing on the sheet metal.
"Look, here are the traces he left. The shoe prints here are exactly the same as the shoe prints when the warehouse was first put in."
He then swept the floor with his flashlight, showing several barely visible, faint footprints on the cement floor, with the toes pointing towards the cubicle.
"Judging from the footprints on the ground and this depression, the time difference was very short."
"Right after killing those ten or so people at the finish line, I climbed up to the roof of the cubicle in just a few seconds. There was no ladder, no running start, I went straight up from the ground."
Barron turned his head and smiled at Brock and Lee.
"By the way! Judging from the shoe prints, the finish line is about 1.9 meters tall, which is about the same as Officer Li En's height."
"Hmm?" Brock's pupils contracted slightly, and he glanced at Li En out of the corner of his eye before looking away.
Li En glanced down at the shoes and nodded to Baron.
"Barron, continue."
Brock swallowed hard.
He started replaying the images he had seen at the doorway in his mind.
Li En's police uniform was clean, there was no strange liquid on the soles of his shoes, and his walking posture was no different from usual.
No way, it can't really be this kid who did it, right?
He pulled himself back from the edge of his reverie and turned his gaze back to Baron.
Barron had walked to the center of the warehouse hall, pointing at the dozens of corpses on the ground, his tone becoming increasingly agitated.
"Look, the finish line is on the rooftop. They shot down all the reinforcements coming from the direction of the hall."
"All of their bullets were fired from above, with the entry point overhead and the warheads embedded in the concrete ground. The trajectory angles were basically the same."
"This indicates that the target moved laterally on the roof, but his shooting accuracy did not decrease due to the movement."
"Every shot was a headshot."
He crouched down, picked up a spent cartridge from the ground, and held it under the light tube.
"The cartridge cases are 9mm, Glock standard, and the magazine at the end should be modified to hold at least 30 rounds. There were no jamming or feeding problems during continuous firing."
He flipped the cartridge case over to check the primer. "The quality is good. It's not the kind of reloaded cartridge you find on the black market. It's from a legitimate military factory."
Barron stood up and led the two to the metal cubicle opposite.
More than a dozen people also fell here, all dying in the same way—shot in the middle of their foreheads.
But this time the trajectory was different; it came from the side.
"Look, their bullets are coming from the direction of the hall."
"In other words, after clearing out the hall, the endpoint immediately descended from the roof and circled around to the outside of this area."
"These people were hiding here preparing to ambush us, but he didn't come from the front at all; he came directly from the side."
"He reloaded while moving, and the interval between clearing the hall and starting to fire here was no more than five seconds."
He took a deep breath, almost shouting it out.
"That kind of marksmanship is simply foul."
Brock crouched down and examined it carefully.
Every single one of them, every single corpse, was shot in the head.
Without exception, there were no follow-up shots, and none of them hit the chest or neck.
Only the area between the eyebrows.
From the two guards at the entrance, to the dozens in the hall, and then to those hiding behind the cubicles, they all landed in the same spot.
He had spent most of his life at the Manhattan precinct and had seen people who were skilled with guns.
Those old guys who were retired Marines and turned into police officers could stack bullet holes on a 50-meter target into a plum blossom shape.
But that was a firing range, not actual combat.
In real combat, no one can maintain this level of precision while moving continuously.
Barron then led the two of them around the warehouse compartments.
He would crouch down to examine a corpse every time he rounded a plywood wall.
"The next step is to execute all these hidden gang members one by one."
"Look, this person is hiding in a single storage room, with his gun pointed at the door."
"The bullet entered his right temple, but the bullet was fired from the other side of the door. The man didn't even see him."
He squatted so long that his knees were covered in dust, but he didn't notice at all and continued talking.
"Hey, Barron," Brock raised his voice, "watch your step."
Barron paused for a moment, then realized what was happening.
Those words just now were already tinged with personal emotion; they were almost a technical summary of the murderer's actions, and there was even a hint of praise in them.
As a professional technician, one cannot submit a report that reflects emotions.
He licked his chapped lips, trying to suppress his emotions.
"Let's go to the second floor."
The three of them walked up the metal staircase.
Barron pushed open the tempered glass door on the second floor.
The glass still bore the bullet holes that Li En had just shot, with cracks radiating outwards from the holes like a spider web, but the glass hadn't broken.
Jeremiah Cross lay on his back less than two steps from the doorway, eyes wide open, mouth slightly agape, a smooth cut across his throat.
Blood trickled down from under his neck, pooling on the floor tiles. It was already half-congealed, and the blood film on the surface reflected a dark red light under the lamp.
Barron crouched beside the corpse, pointing to the incision.
"The reason I just said 'execution' is because of him."
"There will definitely be enough ammunition at the finish line. Even if we don't have any, there are guns lying all over the ground left by those gangsters down there."
"Rifles, pistols, shotguns, you name it."
"But the leader of the Razor Gang died by the blade."
Brock looked down.
The cut was abnormally clean.
The skin is pulled from the left earlobe all the way down to below the Adam's apple on the right side, with neat edges and minimal skin eversion.
Repeated sawing with a dagger will create a jagged cut, but this is not the case.
The blade is accelerated instantly over a very short distance, slicing through the skin, subcutaneous fat, and anterior tracheal wall in one stroke, reaching just to the bifurcation of the carotid artery.
He could even picture the scene:
Jeremiah gripped the razor he had had for twenty years in his right hand, swung the blade away, and swung it toward the door.
Then the other person's knife slashed upwards, first severing the handle of the folding knife, and then slicing across the throat.
Just one shot, only one shot.
"That Jeremiah guy," Brock lowered his voice, "made a name for himself with a folding knife, and ended up dying by it."
Barron nodded again, his eyes gleaming with barely suppressed excitement.
"Yes, that's why I gave that person the code name 'The End'."
"From the moment he entered the warehouse, he demonstrated extremely high marksmanship and combat skills, and that's not all."
"The shooting distance of those people on the first floor is between three and ten meters, which is the ideal effective range for a pistol."
"He didn't use a rifle at all; he deliberately kept every bullet from his pistol within close range."
"Until the very end, when he faced the leader of the Razor Gang, he didn't use a gun, he used a knife."
"Even within SWAT (Special Armed Forces), they'd definitely be the best!"
"Why are you bringing up SWAT?" Brock frowned. "Ordinary soldiers use knives too."
Barron quickly took his laptop out of his backpack, supported the bottom with his left hand, and flipped the screen open.
He opened a video file and turned the screen toward Brock and Lee.
"This is a surveillance video taken from the second-floor window of the building across the street."
The image is black and white, and the resolution is not high.
A figure dressed in a full black combat suit walked across the street with steady steps, making no attempt to conceal their actions, and simply swaggered to the warehouse entrance.
The surveillance camera captured his back.
The tactical vest has four white letters printed on the back: SWAT.
The man raised his hand and knocked twice on the warehouse's iron door, then stood still and waited.
The door opened, and as soon as the person inside poked their head out, he raised his hand and fired two shots.
Then he pushed the door open, went inside, and disappeared from the scene.
The entire process takes no more than five seconds.
Brock watched the video three times.
The height of the shoe print matches Barron's measurement, the combat uniform style is SWAT standard, and the words printed on the back are clearly visible.
Now he was confused.
If it's not Lee Eun, then who is this SWAT member?
When did special armed assault forces start getting involved in street gang affairs?
But if it's Lee Eun, where would he get SWAT equipment?
That set of equipment cannot be bought with money.
Suddenly, a thought popped into my head.
If this was really done by SWAT, then that's fine.
A military investigation team will take over the case; the police only need to cooperate, and the responsibility does not lie with them.
But if not...
If the combat uniform is counterfeit, and the letters on the back are fake, then there will be even more trouble later on.
Because he was able to break through the stronghold of a gang of over a hundred people single-handedly and escape unscathed.
The person who deliberately leaves behind a false identity is more dangerous than the entire Razor Gang combined.
Brock looked away from the screen and at Lee beside him.
Li Enzheng was looking down at the laptop screen, his facial muscles not making any extra movements.
……