The fractured, p.32
The Fractured, page 32
part #12 of Jonathan Quinn Series
He released his foot, descended the ladder until he was dangling from the last rung into what turned out to be a hallway, and quietly dropped to the floor.
To his right, five meters away, was a set of stairs heading down, and to his left, doorways along either side. Only one door was open, the one at the far end, and from it drifted the faintest sound of movement.
Quinn crept toward the noise.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Drake paced the main warehouse floor, phone pressed to his ear. “What the hell do you mean they’re not there?”
“I’m standing in his room right now,” Havel said. “There’s no one here. And there’s no one in their other room, either.”
Drake had called Havel during the drive to the warehouse and sent him and Imrich to the St. Regis Hotel, sure that Sandstrom had been involved with St. Amand’s kidnappers. The timing was too close to be coincidence. And given that they weren’t in their hotel rooms now, Drake was more convinced the whole meeting had been some kind of setup.
“Did they even check in?” he asked.
“Yes. And they were in the rooms. Or someone was. All the beds have been used.”
“Find out where they went!”
“Imrich is checking video now. I’ll call you back as soon as we know something.”
Drake hung up and turned to Georgi. “So?”
“They’re on their way,” Georgi said.
“How many?”
Georgi hesitated.
“How many?”
“Four.”
Drake stared at him. “Only four?”
“The team we sent to Napoli wasn’t due back until tomorrow. I called them, and they’re on their way now, but it’ll be at least three hours until they get here.”
Drake felt the urge to toss his phone into the wall, but he resisted. St. Amand had a robust security team of fourteen men. Even with the six that had gone to Naples, the eight remaining should have been more than enough to deal with any trouble. Now three of those eight were either missing or dead, and Havel and Imrich were chasing down Sandstrom, leaving Drake with only three. And none of them, including himself, had been able to keep their boss from being taken.
“Neno, there should be a Taser in Bianchi’s office. Bring it to me. I’ll be in talking to our guests. Nikola, watch the front door and make sure no one comes in who shouldn’t. Georgi, you’re with me.”
The ground-floor office space covered the same footprint as the floor above, but instead of a central hallway with offices on both sides, the ground floor’s hallway ran along the outside wall of the building and had rooms only on the warehouse side. Because of this, the lower rooms were twice as large as those above. And it was in one of these empty storage rooms that they’d left the prisoners.
The first thing Drake noticed when he entered was that the man had wiggled closer to the girl. He’d probably been trying to wake her up, but it appeared he’d failed.
Georgi grabbed the man by the hair and yanked him into a sitting position. Drake had to admire the prisoner’s spirit, as not once had the man’s eyes left Drake’s since he walked in.
“Where did they take him?” Drake said.
The man said nothing.
Drake nodded, and Georgi pulled the man’s head back and punched him in the face. For a second, the man’s gaze strayed, but as soon as he’d absorbed the punch, it returned to Drake.
“Where did they take him?”
Another punch. Another stare down.
“Where did they take him?”
As Georgi brought his fist back to deliver another blow, the man finally spoke. “You’ll have to be a little more specific.”
“The man you and your friends kidnapped,” Drake said.
The man parted his lips in a bloody smile. “You mean Mr. St. Amand? I have no idea.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed. They knew who they had. That was not good. “Again,” he said to Georgi.
Georgi smashed his knuckles into the man’s face.
“Where did your friends take him?” Drake said.
The man spat a wad of blood onto the floor. “Dude, I wasn’t in charge of knowing the destination.”
Georgi looked at Drake, waiting for the go-ahead to hit the guy again, but Drake shook his head. “You work for Sandstrom, don’t you?”
The man almost laughed. “Sorry, that’s classified.”
Drake was right. This did have something to do with Sandstrom. “What is he? CIA?”
This time, the man did laugh. “You’re not even close.”
Drake’s lips pressed together. In his experience, the majority of people were weak. Most would have given up what they knew by now. This guy showed no signs of doing that anytime soon. Clearly, it would take more to break him.
Drake walked over to the woman and rolled her onto her back with his foot. She looked a little like the woman who’d been with the Chinese tourist whom he’d scared off outside the office. It had been dark and he’d been more focused on the man, but she was tiny like that woman.
A swift kick to her head might rip it right off, but there was no need to go to that extreme yet.
He set his boot on her ribs. “Where did they take him?”
“You’re kind of slow, aren’t you?” the man said. “See, the more you hurt us, the less likely your boss stays alive. You kill either of us and I guarantee that’ll be the case.”
Drake pressed down on the woman. A long groan escaped her mouth. She twitched and tried to roll out from under him, but Drake held her in place.
“Where did they take him?”
“I. Don’t. Know,” the man said.
Drake shifted his weight back to the foot on the woman, but before he could push down, the man jumped to his feet and launched himself at Drake.
Drake tried to move out of the way, but the man caught him in the waist with his shoulder and they both fell to the ground. Before the prisoner could regain his feet, Georgi jumped on him and pinned him to the ground.
Drake scrambled up, seething. “You think this is a game?”
He had Georgi roll the man onto his side, and Drake kicked the guy in the stomach.
“Where did they take him?”
Unbelievably, the man laughed again. Drake gave him another kick, but this seemed to only increase the man’s joy.
Drake took a step back, breathing deeply. If a kick wasn’t going to work, maybe a jolt of electricity would. He looked toward the door, wondering what the hell happened to the Taser.
“Go find Neno!” he ordered Georgi.
Georgi hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t need me to stay here?”
“I can fucking handle him. Go!”
Georgi shoved the prisoner and hurried out of the room.
Drake crouched down just out of the man’s reach. From the way the guy was holding his ribs, Drake was sure the guy wouldn’t be getting back on his feet anytime soon. “Last chance before things get really fun. Where did they take him?”
The man locked his gaze onto Drake’s. “Who were we talking about again?”
*
In most cases, Orlando liked to observe a location for at least a half-hour before moving in, but she and Daeng didn’t have that luxury this time.
They made their way to the corner of the building in which Jar’s phone was located. Orlando used the gooseneck camera to look around the corner. The area was still unoccupied, the SUV in the same spot it had been on the video.
She and Daeng crept around the corner and slunk down the side to the door she assumed the others had used to go inside. She sent Daeng to check the SUV while she tried the door handle. Locked—two deadbolts and the knob. All would be easy enough to pick, but best to find a less conspicuous place to enter.
Daeng clicked his tongue, so she snuck over to see what was up.
He pointed at the front tire. It was flat. He pointed at the back one. Flat, too.
“The others?” she whispered.
“Same.”
She ran a finger over the rubber and discovered the cut on the sidewall, right where an experienced saboteur would have made it.
“Quinn,” she said.
Daeng’s grin was cut short by the sound coming over the comm of someone entering the room Nate and Jar were in.
When Orlando and Daeng heard flesh hitting flesh, they sprinted to the door, no longer thinking about finding a less conspicuous entrance. But as Orlando pulled out her lockpicks, she heard the squeal of rubber and the roar of an engine.
She glanced toward the road and saw headlights from a vehicle still hidden from view.
“Hide,” she said.
Daeng sprinted toward a stack of crates on a loading dock at the back of the building, Orlando right behind him. He ducked behind the boxes and she slid in next to him just as a sedan raced into view.
The light swung through the parking area, illuminating the loading dock before swerving back toward the side of the building. There, the sedan screeched to a stop.
With the gooseneck, Orlando peeked around the crate. The sedan had parked at an angle near the SUV, and all four of its doors were now open. Three of the men who’d been inside approached the SUV, while the fourth man stood guard, scanning the parking area.
The first to reach the SUV crouched next to one of the tires, then said something to his friends. They checked the other tires, and the four of them huddled. When they broke, two headed to the building’s entrance and knocked loudly on the door, while the other two turned on flashlights and began searching the parking area.
The sounds of Nate’s interrogation continued over the comm. Though he seemed to be handling it well enough, things could get a whole lot worse in a hurry. Quinn might’ve been in position to do something, but with no way to communicate with him, they couldn’t count on it.
Orlando and Daeng needed to act.
One of the men at the door said something in a loud voice. It opened, and he and his companion crossed inside. Meanwhile, the two searchers were following the building back toward the loading dock.
She whispered into Daeng’s ear. After they pulled out their guns, she mouthed, “Three, two, one.”
They swung out in unison from behind the boxes, their guns pointed at the searchers. When one of the men saw them and started to bring up his weapon, Orlando said, “Don’t.”
The guy’s partner, who had been looking the other way, twisted around. The first guy hesitated, then tried to whip his gun the rest of the way up.
The thup of Orlando’s gun was quieter than the sound of the dead man’s body falling to the pavement.
His friend was smarter, but only to a point. He dropped his gun, but started running toward the building’s entrance.
Orlando put a bullet through his calf before he’d gone five steps, sending him crashing to the ground.
She and Daeng rushed over to make sure the guy didn’t yell for help or do anything else to draw the attention of his colleagues inside. But it seemed he was too consumed by the pain to do more than lie there, writhing and groaning.
Daeng clamped a hand over his mouth anyway, while Orlando checked the wound. He wasn’t going to bleed out, but with a shattered tibia, he was in for a long recovery period.
She used her knife to cut off the bottom half of his pant leg, then used it as a makeshift bandage. She administered a quarter dose from one of the two remaining syringes.
She and Daeng loaded the unconscious man and his dead friend into the back of the SUV, in case anyone else showed up. They gave the sedan’s tires the same treatment those on the SUV had received and then moved over to the building.
This time nothing interfered when she picked the locks.
*
Quinn sneaked down the hallway until he was just outside the open doorway. Pressing against the wall, he inched forward and chanced a peek inside. A man was behind a desk, looking into one of the drawers. He shoved it closed and opened another one.
From the sudden smile on his face, Quinn guessed the man’s search had ended. As he reached into the drawer, Quinn pulled back out of sight.
The man’s steps tapped across the floor, toward the door.
The moment the man appeared on the threshold, Quinn launched himself and smashed his shoulder into the guy’s chest, slamming the man into the doorframe, and sending whatever the guy had been holding clattering to the floor.
Before the guy could react, Quinn grabbed him by the head and yanked it down, hurling the guy’s face into Quinn’s knee. Cartilage crunched. But the man could barely get a yell started before Quinn had him in a headlock, cutting off his voice and the blood flow to his brain.
In quick order, the man was unconscious.
Quinn carried him into the office and laid the guy on the floor. He took the man’s gun and used power cords to tie him up. He considered gagging him, too, but with the broken nose, doing so might kill the guy.
He popped the mag out of the man’s weapon and removed the bullet from the chamber. He pocketed the ammo, and tossed the now useless hunk of metal into a rubbish bin.
When he exited the room, he looked around for the item the man had dropped, and spotted it a couple of meters from the door.
A Taser.
He had a pretty good idea who its intended victim was.
As he snatched it up, he heard someone on the stairs at the other end of the hall. He shoved the Taser into his pocket, slipped back into the office, and hid behind the door.
Steps in the hallway now, one person heading toward Quinn’s position.
“Neno, let’s go,” a male voice said near the door. The person stepped inside. “Drake’s waiting—”
His colleague lying on the floor stopped him. “Neno?”
As the man hurried across the room to his colleague, Quinn fell in behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
The man whirled around. “Who—”
Quinn punched him in the larynx. Gasping, the guy backpedaled into the desk. Quinn matched him step for step, then whipped the grip of his gun into the man’s head.
The man fell sideways onto the desk. Quinn caught him and lowered him to the floor, next to his buddy.
With no broken nose to worry about this time, Quinn removed the man’s suit coat and stuffed one of the sleeves into the guy’s mouth. In the desk, he found a set of military-grade handcuffs, and used them to cuff the man’s hand above his head and around one of the heavy desk’s legs. It would take at least two people to move the damn thing, so the guy wasn’t going anywhere fast.
Quinn returned to the doorway, wondering if someone else might show up, but this time the hallway was quiet.
He stepped over the threshold to the stairs.
*
Havel finished his fruitless search of the rooms Sandstrom and his men had been staying in and headed down to the lobby. He found Imrich sitting in a quiet area, looking at his phone.
“Their IDs are gone and no computers, either,” Havel said as he walked up. “I have a feeling they’re not coming back.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” Imrich said. He’d been tasked with using St. Amand’s data expert, Lorenzo Conte, to break into the hotel’s security system.
“You found something?”
Imrich held up his phone. On the screen was an image of what looked like the hallway outside Sandstrom’s room. When Imrich played the video, Havel saw he’d been right. A couple of seconds into the footage, Sandstrom and his companions walked into the hallway from the elevator area. They stopped and talked for a moment, then went to their separate rooms.
“What time was this?” Havel asked.
“Just after they were dropped off.”
“So, when did they leave?”
Imrich selected another file and hit Play. It was the same hall, only empty. Havel waited, but when nothing changed, he said, “You’re wasting time. Show me when they came out.”
“This is when they came out.”
“What are you talking about?”
Imrich played a third clip. “This is the exact time when you went into their rooms.”
The hallway remained unoccupied.
“That’s the same clip you just showed,” Havel said.
“It is not. Not like you mean.”
“Then Lorenzo must have gotten the times screwed up.”
“He didn’t. He says it is a ten-second loop.”
“A loop?” Havel looked at the screen again, hardly believing it.
“Yes. It began not very long after Sandstrom entered his room.”
Havel’s anger grew. “Those bastards covered their tracks so we wouldn’t figure out when they left. There must be other cameras. They couldn’t have looped everything.”
“There are, and they didn’t. Only the they who created the loop weren’t Sandstrom or his men.”
Imrich was the perfect partner most of the time, but there were moments such as this one when he relished doling out information slowly, like a badly directed stage actor.
“Goddammit, just tell me,” Havel said.
Imrich played a fourth clip. This was a different hall, without any of the decorative elements seen elsewhere in the hotel. At the very start, two women in hotel uniforms walked through the frame. A moment after they disappeared, a luggage cart rolled into view at the far end of the hall, being pushed by a man not in uniform. An outside service worker, perhaps, using the cart to transport equipment or something similar. The large box on the cart supported this theory.
