Black Market Read Online Free PDF

Lebanese Butcher had been watching every person who came in from Atlantic Avenue.
    So had the restaurant's owner, an enormous two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man. He charged forward now, an enraged bull guarding his herd at mealtime.
    “Get out of here! You get out, bum! Go now!” the owner screamed. The diners were suddenly silent.
    Carroll tried to look lost, dizzily confused, as surprised as everyone else that he was inside the small neighborhood restaurant.
    He stumbled over his own flopping black sneakers.
    He weaved sideways before moving suddenly toward the right rear corner of the dining room.
    He hoped to God he looked cock-eyed drunk and absolutely helpless. Maybe even a little funny. Everybody should start laughing. If he did this exactly right, he'd have Hussein Moussa and the Rashids without firing a shot.
    Carroll groped down his body with both hands, graphically scratching between his legs. A middle-aged woman turned away with obvious disgust.
    “Bayt-room?” Carroll slobbered convincingly, rolling his eyes. “Gotta go to the bayt-room!”
    A young bearded man and his girlfriend started laughing. Bathroom humor got the youth crowd every time. This was the success lesson of modern Broadway and Hollywood.
    Hussein Moussa had stopped eating and was smiling. His teeth were a serrated blade of shining yellow. He looked like an animal, a brutal scavenger. He apparently thought this scene was pretty funny, too.
    “Gotta go to the bayt-room!” Carroll continued a little louder, sounding, he thought, like a drunken Jerry Lewis. But, Jesus, you had to be a decent actor in this line of street work.
    “Mohamud! Tarek! Get bum out! Get bum out now!” the owner was screeching hysterically at his waiters.
    Pandemonium had completely overtaken the Sinbad Star when suddenly, fluidly, expertly, Arch Carroll wheeled hard to his left. He whipped the Browning automatic out of the ratty, cumbersome parka. It was completely out of place in the family restaurant. Women and children began screaming at the top of their voices.
    “Freeze! Don't move!
Freeze
, goddamn you!”
    At that same moment, one of the Lebanese waiters hit Carroll hard from his blind side, spinning him in a fast half-circle to the right. He ruined the drop Carroll had on the three terrorists, and he turned everything into a complete, instantaneous disaster.
    Moussa and the Rashids were already scattering, rolling sideways off the red vinyl dining chairs. Anton Rashid yanked out a silver automatic from under his brown leather car coat.
    Movies sometimes show particularly violent scenes in very flowing slow motion. It wasn't like that at all, Carroll knew. It was a jumpy collage of loud, shocking still photos. The disconnected photos clicked at him now in random order. They stopped. They started. They stopped. They started again. It was as if someone with the palsy were operating a slide projector.
    “Everybody hit the floor!” Carroll screamed as he fired the Browning.
    The first bullet brutually uncorked the right side of Anton Rashid's throat, spilling his blood in pools on the floor.
    Hussein Moussa's gun flashed; it roared as Carroll dove across the backs of a couple already down.
    Seconds later Carroll peered over the table. He fired off three more quick shots. Two of the bullets drove stocky Wadih Rashid hard against a hollow partition wall decorated with black skillets. Twin rat holes opened in the terrorist's chest. The heavy skillets clattered noisily to the tile floor.
    “Moussa! Hussein Moussa! You can't get out! You can't get past me!” Carroll screamed.
    There was no answer.
    Somewhere in the front of the restaurant, an old woman was wailing like an imam. Several people were crying loudly. Outside, distant police and ambulance sirens screamed through the night.
    “Give up now, and you live… Otherwise I'll kill you. No matter what, Moussa. I swear it!”
    He was breathing hard. One, two, three. Carroll chanced another fast look.
    He saw