Yang Ming melted into the rainy night of Hell's Kitchen.
Rain poured down, pattering heavily against his pitch-black windproof coat. The standing water rose above his ankles, yet his tactical leather shoes barely splashed as he stepped through the puddles.
In his mind, the [World-Class Firearms Mastery] the system had just instilled was working at full tilt.
It wasn't merely shooting technique. It encompassed an entire set of special-operations survival instincts. Wind direction, humidity, the ballistic resistance of cover-even the blind spot beneath the streetlamp at the corner ahead-automatically became precise tactical data across Yang Ming's retinas.
He avoided the three NYPD patrol cars racing down the main road. Following fire lanes and abandoned sewer maintenance passages, he headed west.
Ten minutes later, the outline of Pier 47's enormous gantry crane loomed through the rain and sea fog.
The air reeked of gunpowder and charred meat. The chain of secondary explosions Frank had triggered earlier had turned half the pier into a mountain of scrap. Twisted shipping containers belched black smoke, hissing as rain struck them.
Like a black cat skimming along the ground, Yang Ming climbed onto a stack of shipping containers three stories high.
He lay flat against the cold sheet metal, peering through the rain to survey the ground below.
The boundary between Zones C and D.
Three conspicuous green military crates sat in a relatively sheltered corner, surrounded by crooked shipping containers. The Stark Industries anti-counterfeit markings sprayed on their shells gleamed a ghostly blue in the faint firelight.
Around them stood roughly twenty fully armed gangsters.
Frank had been right. The explosions had taken out half the guards.
The survivors were like startled birds. Clutching HK416 assault rifles, they nervously scanned the surrounding darkness. More than a dozen mangled bodies still lay on the ground. No one had the inclination to collect them.
Yang Ming calculated silently.
Eight minutes at most before Kingpin's reinforcements arrive.
Time was tight.
He didn't choose to rake them with his Thompson submachine gun from above. Its muzzle flash would be far too conspicuous at night. Once his position was exposed, the crossfire from twenty assault rifles would turn his container into a sieve.
Taking out the trash called for a silent scalpel.
Yang Ming flicked his right hand. The silver Optical Camouflage Medical Blanket dropped over his head.
His entire body instantly blended into the night.
He leaped down.
Three stories. Yang Ming adjusted his posture in midair, bent his knees deeply on landing, and flowed into a tactical forward roll.
Not a sound.
Like a ghost that didn't exist, he hugged the shadows along the ground and slipped into the gangsters' outer defensive line.
First target: a gangster standing beside an abandoned forklift, trembling as he tried to light a cigarette.
The lighter's flame had barely flared.
A hand clad in a black Kevlar cut-resistant glove reached out of thin air and clamped tightly over his mouth and nose.
Before he could struggle, a dark gray titanium alloy blade slipped between his first and second cervical vertebrae with surgical precision.
His medulla was severed.
The gangster's brain shut down before his pupils even had time to dilate.
Yang Ming withdrew the blade. The dark silver ring at the base of his right index finger glimmered.
Whoosh.
The body vanished into thin air. Not a single drop of blood splashed onto the ground.
With a hundred cubic meters of subspace, stowing a few bodies took no effort. It also kept the smell of blood from alerting the others.
Yang Ming stepped past the forklift and approached his second target.
The essence of surgery lay in absolute familiarity with anatomy. Killing was no different.
Sever the hamstring, pierce the subclavian artery, destroy the cervical sympathetic ganglion.
Yang Ming danced in the downpour.
In just two minutes, all eight sentries on the perimeter vanished without a trace. No screams, no gunshots. Only rain washing over the empty concrete.
The remaining twelve men huddled around the three weapons crates.
"Johnny? Where the hell is Johnny?!" A man who looked like their leader finally realized something was wrong. He roared into his radio, but only piercing static answered.
"Fuck, he was just over by the forklift!" Another gangster raised his gun and swallowed, waving the muzzle aimlessly at the dense fog around them.
Fear of the unknown slithered up their spines like an icy snake.
Just as they stood back-to-back, trying to tighten their defensive circle-
Ten meters away, a strange ripple shimmered in the air.
The thin silver blanket was flung aside.
Yang Ming stood in the rain, the hem of his pitch-black coat snapping in the wind. He held the mud-spattered old Thompson submachine gun in both hands, its stock pressed firmly into his shoulder.
The gangsters froze for half a second.
That half second decided who lived and who died.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-!
A half-meter tongue of dark red flame erupted from the muzzle.
This wasn't blind spraying. Every pull of Yang Ming's trigger came with exquisitely precise adjustments of his muscles.
Controlled bursts. Short, two-round bursts.
The .45-caliber brass rounds became the razor-sharp scythe of death.
The first bullet blew off the leader's skullcap. The second shattered the throat of the machine gunner beside him.
Not a single bullet missed. Not a single bullet struck a bulletproof vest.
Every shot hit between the brows, in the face, or in the exposed major arteries of the neck.
Before the muscular signals to pull their triggers could even reach their fingers, all twelve men fell into pools of blood like wheat flattened by a gale.
The gunfire stopped abruptly.
Only scorching shell casings remained scattered across the ground, hissing white steam in the standing water.
Yang Ming lowered the muzzle. His thumb pressed the release, and the half-empty drum magazine came free with a click. He casually replaced it with a fresh one.
He walked up to the three green Stark weapons crates.
Up close, the three crates were astonishingly large. Each measured over two meters in both length and width. High-strength composite armor plates reinforced their shells, and eight heavy hydraulic latches secured their edges.
"Three hundred pounds? Frank was being far too conservative." Yang Ming tapped the crate with his fingers, listening to the dull echo. "This thing weighs at least half a ton."
Without a crane, even a special-operations squad couldn't hope to move them quickly.
But for Yang Ming, it took only a thought.
He extended his right hand and pressed his palm against the first crate.
With a thought-
Whoosh.
The half-ton weapons crate vanished into thin air and settled securely inside the ring's subspace.
The second. The third.
In just three seconds, Stark Industries heavy weaponry worth tens of millions of dollars became Yang Ming's private property.
"Restocking complete."
Yang Ming dusted off his hands and turned to leave.
The instant he took his first step-
Whump-roar!
Without warning, a savage thunder of rotors tore through the clouds and curtain of rain overhead.
Yang Ming snapped his head up.
Two pitch-black attack helicopters swooped in at low altitude like steel beasts. On their fuselages, the Kingpin organization's signature dark markings flickered into view beneath the lightning.
Two blinding beams from high-powered searchlights swept across the pier, crossing like swords descending from the sky.
In an instant, the area around Yang Ming was lit as brightly as day.
"Armed suspect below, drop your weapon immediately! Put your hands on your head!" A deafening mechanical voice blared from the loudspeaker beneath a helicopter.
These weren't NYPD police helicopters.