The fractured, p.31
The Fractured, page 31
part #12 of Jonathan Quinn Series
The man huffed several times, in a mix of anger and fear.
“Don’t fight it,” Quinn said.
The guy ignored the suggestion, but within seconds, Quinn was dragging his unconscious body into a recess for rubbish containers at the end of the building closest to them.
Quinn used the man’s tie to bind his hands together and secure them behind his back to a pipe along the bottom of the building. He took the guy’s wallet, phone, and radio.
After shoving a wadded up paper sack into the man’s mouth, Quinn hurried back to the intersection and crouched at the same spot as before. As he’d hoped, the SUV was still down the street, only now all the doors were closed.
In his hand, the radio barked again.
*
“Stefan, where the hell are you?” Georgi asked from the front seat.
No response.
“Stefan?”
More dead air.
“Again,” Drake said. He was sitting in the backseat, rubbing his wrists where they’d been tied, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his ribs, the sting of the cuts on his face, and the pounding headache that still clouded his mind.
Georgi clicked the mic button. “Stefan, respond.”
Still nothing.
“Who’s with him?” Drake asked.
“Neno.” Georgi raised the radio again. “Neno, are you there?”
A second passed. “I’m here.”
“Isn’t Stefan with you?”
“We split up. I’m supposed to meet up with him in three minutes.”
“Where?” Drake asked.
Georgi relayed the question, and Neno gave him the location.
“Tell him we’ll meet him there.” Drake turned to Nikola in the driver’s seat. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
*
While Quinn didn’t catch everything that was being said, he understood enough to get the gist. Including the part about a guy named Stefan, which, not so coincidentally, matched the name on the ID Quinn had taken from the man he’d just put to sleep.
As soon as it became clear the SUV was about to leave, he whipped around, searching the street for a vehicle he could appropriate. On the sidewalk, tucked against the next building down, was a trio of motorcycles.
He sprinted over and hotwired an old Yamaha with a cracked seat and a nearly full tank of gas. Two tries and he had the engine purring.
By the time he was on the road, the SUV had moved out of sight. He knew which way it had been headed so he flew down the street, checking each intersection he passed.
Three down, he spotted the SUV’s taillights nearly ninety meters away. As he turned the corner, the vehicle took a left and moved out of sight again. He cranked the accelerator, reached the intersection within seconds, and caught sight of the SUV again.
He started to speed up more, but when the SUV swerved toward the curb, its brake lights glowing, he slowed. The back passenger door swung open. A man ran out from the shadows and jumped inside.
The aforementioned Neno, apparently.
Even before the door closed all the way, the SUV sped back onto the road.
Quinn leaned low over the handlebars and jammed on the gas, matching their speed.
*
As Neno was getting into the SUV, Nikola asked Drake, “Where to?”
Drake had been thinking about that since they picked up the two hostages now lying in the cargo area.
He was pretty sure the unconscious woman was the one with the Asian guy who’d been taking pictures outside Mr. St. Amand’s office building the night before. That pissed him off.
There was something vaguely familiar about the other guy, too, but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He felt confident, though, the guy would know where Mr. St. Amand was being taken. Drake needed someplace quiet where he could pull the information out of the guy. Ideally, he would have taken his prisoners to his fully outfitted basement workroom where he’d questioned the courier a few days earlier, but it would take them over an hour to get there. He needed someplace closer.
When it came to him, he smiled.
“Bianchi’s warehouse,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“It’s just up ahead,” Orlando said. “That building with the arches along the ground floor.”
“I see it,” Howard said.
Orlando checked the tracker as the van neared the building. Quinn’s dot was glowing from somewhere inside, same as it had been now for nearly fifteen minutes. She tapped the dot and brought up the precise location information. The phone was transmitting from the back half of the ground floor, toward the east end.
With no place to park, Howard flicked on his hazard lights and stopped as close to the building as he could get. Orlando scanned the street for anything suspicious.
“Seems quiet,” Daeng said, propped between the seats.
Orlando switched on her comm. “Quinn?” She waited, but the radio remained silent. “Drive around until we call you,” she told Howard, and looked at Daeng. “Let’s go.”
She opened her door and hopped outside, Daeng right behind her. The moment they were clear of the van, Howard drove off.
The street was indeed quiet, the only sounds those drifting on the breeze from a busier road in the distance.
Orlando motioned for Daeng to stay put and approached the building alone, in case the calm was a ruse. She reached the door and did a visual check before trying the handle.
Upon hearing the latch release, she raised an eyebrow.
She pulled the door open and slipped inside. A small, deserted lobby, with a directory of businesses on one wall listing each company’s suite number. Straight ahead was the staircase to the upper floors, and right before that was a corridor running left and right.
She crept up to the hallway and peeked in both directions. Not a soul in sight.
She returned to the entrance and waved Daeng in.
The tracker app led them down the hall to the last door on the right. Orlando jiggled the doorknob. Locked.
She pulled out her lockpicks and solved the problem. Before pushing the door open, she and Daeng pulled out their guns and checked that the suppressors were securely attached.
Orlando turned the knob again and gave the door a push. As it swung inward, they saw the place was not in use.
Orlando could hear nothing.
She and Daeng moved inside. The tracker pointed them to a small room near the center of the office suite. Instead of Quinn, they found Christophe St. Amand lying on the floor, hog-tied and unconscious.
Daeng reached him first, and pulled a phone and a piece of paper out of St. Amand’s pocket. On the paper was written the letter O. “I’m guessing this is for you.”
Orlando took it and opened the note.
N and J have been taken. Doing what I can to get them back. Stick to the plan and take this package and the other ones to rendezvous. Will catch up as soon as I can.
Q
“That son of a bitch,” she muttered.
“Quinn?” Daeng asked.
She handed him the note and turned on her mic. “Orlando for Steve.”
“Go for Steve.”
“Circle back. We’ve got more cargo.”
*
After St. Amand was deposited in the back of the van, Orlando injected him with Beta-Somnol and then crawled up front, where Howard waited in the driver’s seat.
“Nate and Jar are in trouble and Quinn’s gone after them,” Orlando said. “I think Daeng and I should go help him, but that means you’ll be making the run on your own. You okay with that?”
“Of course.”
“I’m hoping we’ll be there before the plane arrives, but I can’t promise anything. You just need to make sure you’re at the airfield well before two a.m.”
“Got it,” he replied.
“If you even have the smallest suspicion that you’re going to run into trouble, call me immediately.”
“I will.”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be leaving you alone like this.”
“Yes, you should. And don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
She leaned over and gave him a hug. “Thank you.” When she released him, she turned for the passenger door, but stopped. “Here.” She handed him a kit with two syringes and some spare needles. “Give each of them half a dose when you get to the airfield. That should hold them until long after they’re in the air.”
“Will do. Now get out of here and find the others.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
She climbed out of the van and joined Daeng on the sidewalk. “We need to find a ride.”
Knowing they would need something that could carry the whole team save Howard, they settled on a BMW X3 SUV. Orlando hacked into the car’s computer, disabling its alarm and tricking it into thinking her phone was an authorized key.
The dot representing Jar on the tracking app led them northeast, into an industrialized area on the outskirts of the Italian capital.
“Take a right at the next street,” Orlando told Daeng, “and slow down.”
Daeng eased back on the accelerator and made the turn.
Small factories and warehouses sat along either side of the road. Here and there, floodlights illuminated empty parking lots beside the structures.
Orlando switched on her comm. “Orlando for Quinn.”
Like with his phone, there was no answer.
She looked back at the tracker. Jar’s dot had remained static for the last ten minutes.
“Next intersection, go left,” Orlando said. “The place is forty meters from the corner, so keep our speed steady and don’t look around. At the intersection after that, go left again and we’ll find someplace to park.”
Orlando switched from the tracking app to her camera, and placed her phone against the door with the lens above the window frame. As they turned the corner, she hit the Record button and faced forward.
When they drove by the building, she tried to pick up what she could out of the corner of her eye, but there was little lighting and nothing stood out.
At the next block, Daeng turned again and pulled into a darkened parking area. Orlando stopped the recording and played the footage.
In the dim area next to the target building sat an SUV, very close to what appeared to be an entrance. The vehicle looked unoccupied, and no one was around it.
She shoved the phone into her pocket and activated her comm again. “Orlando for Quinn.”
Same as before.
“Orlando for Quinn.”
Still nothing.
“All right,” she said to Daeng. “We’ll walk from here.”
As she reached for the door handle, a quiet, strained voice said over the radio, “Orlando?”
“Quinn?”
“No…Jar. Where…where am I?”
“Are you okay?”
“I...I do not know. We-we were in a—”
A muffled whisper from a different voice. Then Jar saying, “What?” and the other whisperer again. “Orlando. On the comm,” Jar said. “I…I think so. Hold on.”
Movement and grunts and a muttered “Ouch.”
“Orlando?”
This voice she recognized immediately. “Nate. What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“She hears you,” Jar said.
“This is Jar’s comm,” he explained. “Mine fell out in the crash. We’re tied up, so I can’t take her earpiece.”
“Crash? What the hell happened?”
Jar repeated the question.
“Later,” he said. “Have to be careful they don’t hear us.”
“We’ve tracked Jar’s phone to a warehouse at the north end of the city. Do you know if that’s where you are?”
“We’re in a building big enough to be a warehouse. They brought us into a store—” His volume dropped. “Someone’s coming.”
“Hang tight. We’re going to get you out.” She glanced at Daeng. “Let’s get moving.”
They exited the sedan and sprinted across the street.
*
Quinn killed his headlight soon after the SUV entered a quiet area of warehouses and businesses. But the light wasn’t the only thing that could give him away. With no other traffic, the sound of the motorcycle’s engine carried far. So, even driving dark, he maintained a large gap between himself and the others.
Every time the SUV turned a corner, he sped up so that he wouldn’t lose them, and then let the gap grow again once he had them back in sight.
The plan had worked fine for a while. But the SUV turned again, and when he’d raced to the corner and looked down the intersecting road, the vehicle was gone.
Had they seen him? Were they hurrying out of the area on some other road? Or doubling back to surprise him from behind?
Before he could even guess, the red glow of brake lights spilled out from a gap between buildings on the right side of the road.
Quinn killed the engine and rolled the bike off the street, around the side of the building at the corner, where it wouldn’t be seen easily. He then snuck along the front of the building toward the lights.
He was a bit over halfway to the gap when the lights went out. He tensed, ready to race back to the bike if the SUV reappeared. When several seconds passed without it showing up, he continued on until he reached the corner of the building. He crouched down and peered around it.
The SUV was parked beside the next building down—a warehouse, with a loading dock toward the back large enough to accommodate at least half a dozen trucks.
The hatch of the vehicle was open, and several people were standing nearby. Included among them was the driver Nate had knocked out when they apprehended St. Amand. One of the men reached into the back and pulled Nate out. Quinn’s partner had his hands tied behind his back. Another man removed Jar, who still looked unconscious. The entire party entered the building.
Quinn waited to make sure everyone was gone before he slipped around the corner and crossed over.
As he’d guessed, the door to the building was locked. But warehouses had dozens of ways in.
Before he went searching for one of them, he pulled out his knife and cut the sidewalls of all four tires.
He jogged over to the loading dock, dismissing the roll-up doors as an option. Even if one had been unlocked, opening it would have created way too much noise. What he was interested in was the stack of crates at the near edge.
He climbed onto the top, jumped up, and grabbed the edge of the roof. He pulled himself over the lip and surveyed his new surroundings. The roof was divided roughly into thirds—the flatter section he was on, and the arching two thirds that made up the rest. Vents and pipes were scattered across the flat side, and dominating the remaining roof were long and dirty skylights, spaced every four meters. He had hoped to see an entrance to a stairwell, but there was none. At least nothing obvious.
There had to be a way to get inside from up here.
He checked the nearest skylight. Below the grime-encrusted pane was a big open space all the way to ground level, a drop of eight meters, if not more. Though there was some grid work near the ceiling, it was dubious he could use it to get anywhere safe.
From this higher portion of the roof, he had a much better view of the flatter third, and now noticed the vent near the front of the building was larger than he’d thought.
He moved down to it and realized he was wrong about something else. It wasn’t a vent, but a hatch more than wide enough for a person to use.
He slipped his fingers under the lip and searched until he found the latch. Unfortunately, without some specialized tools, he couldn’t release it. His fingers weren’t designed for the twists and turns they would need to make.
Not ready to give up, he checked the hinges, and smiled. A little wiggling, and the short metal rod that had held the first hinge together was sitting in his hand. The second hinge took more effort, but soon its pin also fell free.
He raised the unhinged end of the hatch to peek inside. Light glowed from below, revealing a shaft a bit larger than the hatch opening. Mounted to the side across from Quinn was a ladder.
He raised the hatch higher and backed in, belly up, legs first until his feet were pressed against the wall next to the ladder. Carefully turned until he was facing downward, brought his whole body into the shaft, and lowered the hatch, which had been resting on his shoulders, into its frame.
Slowly, he rotated around the walls of the shaft until his hands were on the ladder. Keeping his left foot pressed against the opposite wall, he lowered his right leg so that it dangled below him. Now, when he released the left, the dangling leg would have only a short distance to travel to the ladder, preventing it from smashing against the rungs.
Before he could execute his plan, he heard someone walking in the room below. He froze and stared down the shaft. A man walked into view, going left to right, and disappeared. Ten seconds passed before Quinn heard a door open and all went quiet.
