Rogue force, p.13
Rogue Force, page 13
It was a beautiful night, crisp and cold, with a hint of the coming winter in the air. He was from a warmer climate, so snow and ice were not for him, but he enjoyed the cool air of fall. Between the night, and the cigarette, and the two glasses of wine he’d had, it was a lovely sensation to just stand here, looking out at the buildings and the lights of the old town. But he was working.
In the darkness, it was not easy to see that in his free hand he was holding a thin but sturdy piece of rope. It extended away from him, off the side of the wall, and down three stories to the side street below him. There had been guards at the entrance checking for weapons, so they had been reduced to this.
Of course, it had been their fallback position all along. Abdyl had thought of this possibility ahead of time. Abdyl rarely got caught off guard.
Down in the narrow street, a man appeared. He was away from the stragglers at the front, who were still coming in. He was carrying a dark plastic bucket with a lid on it. As Antonio watched while appearing not to notice, the man tied the handle of the bucket to the far end of the length of rope Antonio was holding.
When the man was done, he gave the rope two yanks, then walked away down the street. He turned into an alleyway perhaps 20 meters further along. The streets around here were narrow, and each new turn was narrower and narrower still.
When the man was gone, Antonio put the cigarette in his mouth, and pulled the bucket up, hand over hand. He looked like a fisherman hauling a trap out of the sea. The bucket was heavy, a reasonable weight.
Antonio glanced around. There was a couple down the terrace from him, at the far end, smoking cigarettes and having what looked like an intimate conversation. They were paying no attention to him.
He brought the bucket up to the top of the wall, then set it down on the terrace in the shadow of the wall. He pulled the hard plastic lid off. Here were five loaded pistols from the Czech Republic. Good guns, clean. It was an innovative, simple solution to what could have been a difficult problem. Antonio reached into the bucket, took a gun out, and slipped it into his inner jacket pocket. He felt the weight of the gun there, making the jacket sag a bit.
Antonio glanced at the couple. They were making out now, pressed into each other’s arms, their lit cigarettes extended out and away. If they had been ignoring him before, by now they had forgotten he existed. Antonio smiled as he took another gun out of the bucket. This was perfect. Leave it to Abdyl.
Antonio worked quickly, securing the guns in his various pockets, then lowered the bucket over the side again. The man was waiting in the alley he had turned down. As soon as the bucket touched down in the street, he would return, pick up the bucket and the rope, and disappear again. No bucket, no rope.
The men got into the building with guns, but no one knows how.
Antonio took a deep drag of his smoke before he went inside. He savored it, holding the smoke in his lungs for a long moment. This was going to be an outrageous, audacious display. A woman from a rich banking family, abducted at gunpoint from her own charitable event.
Normally, Antonio felt that public displays were not wise. He had learned this point of view from his father, and his grandfather before that, who for decades had run small gambling, liquor, and cigarette bootlegging, and prostitution businesses, even under the communists, who frowned upon things of this nature.
“Keep things quiet.” That was Antonio’s grandfather’s mantra. “Don’t talk too much. Don’t make a stink about anything.”
He had died a free man at a ripe old age.
But there wasn’t much that could be done about this. Circumstances had changed, and it had become clear that Aliz Willems was going to be targeted by law enforcement, if not right away, then sometime soon. If not in Luxembourg, then in France, or Belgium, or Germany. If not in those places, the United States was sure to become involved, if they weren’t already.
Willems tended to hide herself away. And when she was hidden, she was hard to find. But not tonight. Tonight, she had broken cover. And her puny attempt at security had all but guaranteed the night’s outcome.
Antonio took one last drag of his cigarette then tossed the butt over the side. He looked down to where it had fallen. The bucket and rope were already gone.
He turned, without hesitation now, and carried the guns into the party.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
8:45 pm Central European Daylight Time
Cercle Cité
Place d’Armes, Ville Haute quarter
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Two big guards in sports jackets converged on Troy.
He still had Aliz firmly by the wrist. He had the beer bottle in his other hand. “It’s not gonna work,” he said to her.
But he wasn’t sure about that. He might have overstepped. Many people had heard the glass shatter. Easily 20 or 30 people were staring at them now, including Dubois, who had attached herself to a new group standing near a bright abstract painting in bold colors, red and blue and green.
It was nice. Troy liked paintings like that, paintings about nothing. He couldn’t say why they appealed to him; they just did. Large, splotchy, cube-y colors, utterly meaningless. He liked to read their names, usually something like Three Girls Dancing, though only a maniac could see three girls there. He liked to read about what the artist was trying to get at, often something about living in the moment after the mass destruction of World War I, or something along those lines.
Here came the guards, both about to reach him at nearly the same time. They were large men, bulky, both with either guns or tasers in their jackets.
Troy wasn’t sure what to do. His mind raced through the options. If he went limp, these two guys would grab him and probably walk him out of here. That would give Aliz the chance to disappear again, out another door, likely into a waiting car. He may never get this opportunity again. That was no good.
If Troy fought them, he was going to make a mess.
His grandmother had come to America from Ireland. He knew her when he was a child, and she had an old saying she was fond of.
“In for a penny, in for a pound.”
If he was going to make a mess, he might as well make a big one.
He released Aliz’s grip and threw his half-full beer at the first guard’s head. The man ducked, the bottle soaring over his head. As he ducked, Troy hopped, gained momentum, and kicked the man in the face while airborne. The man’s head snapped up and he flew backwards, hitting his head on the polished floor.
Ouch. Might have overdone that.
Troy spun, crouching low at the same time. The second guard was nearly on top of him, towering above him. Troy went down on one knee. He threw the right hand, the hard right, straight into the man’s groin. Then he came with the left, an uppercut, into the exact same spot.
In his head, he heard his old white-haired cornerman Declan, when Troy was a 16-year-old Golden Gloves fighter, singing out:
One-two, Troy! One-two!
He hit the man in the balls. Twice.
The second one, coming as it did from below, ended the fight right there. The big man went down sideways like a heavy sack of rocks, his hands cupped to tender parts. He was out of it, maybe for a minute, maybe for five minutes, but he had a weapon in that jacket, and when he regained his composure, he was going to be eager to use it.
Troy jumped up to his full height again. Aliz was still standing there, nearly frozen. His left hand snaked out and clamped onto her wrist again.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I need you to come with me.”
Her eyes were large, like a child’s eyes. “No!”
“Aliz…”
Suddenly, there was an even louder commotion behind him. A gasp, and then shouts and screams.
Troy spun, still gripping Aliz’s wrist. He was half-expecting to see more guards coming, or maybe the first guard oozing blood onto the floor from a cracked skull. But it was neither of these things.
A group of men in tuxedos were moving through the crowd with guns in hand. They were dark men, sun-kissed, like Greeks or Italians. Or Syrians. Or Tunisians.
Troy counted four, then five, spreading out, like a bank robbery.
One stopped, pointed his gun at the grand chandelier, and fired.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
People ducked away and ran as crystal shattered, and then the entire chandelier fell from the high ceiling and crashed to the floor. If the wine glass had been a bomb before, this was the Hiroshima bomb. Tiny glimmering shards sprayed through the air as giant chunks of crystal slid outwards along the floor.
The man still had his gun raised. “Everyone! Get down! On the floor!”
Then he shouted in French. Then he shouted in another language, Troy thought German.
Troy looked at Aliz. “Kick those shoes off. We gotta go!”
Her eyes were wide. Blank.
“Your shoes! Get rid of them!”
There was no way to run in those things. She nodded, getting him now. She kicked one off, then the next.
Troy glanced at the crowd. Dubois was running their way, darting in and out of party guests, some frozen, some who couldn’t get to the floor fast enough. Dubois had already kicked off her shoes.
“What is it?” Dubois said.
Troy shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe an art heist. I don’t know. Grab her other wrist and let’s go.”
Dubois seized Aliz’s wrist and the two of them dragged her toward the double doors to the foyer. Although she had kicked her shoes off, she was now dragging her feet across the parquet, sliding along. She didn’t want to stay, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go, either.
“You! Stop!”
Troy turned and one of the gunmen was pointing his way.
Then they all started moving, at once. This was not an art heist. This was not a shakedown of rich patrons at a fundraiser. This was… something else.
“Come on!” Troy screamed.
He stopped and slapped Aliz across the face. “Come on! Run!”
Dubois hiked her blue sequined dress up around her waist, freeing her muscular legs. Then they took off with Aliz again. She ran this time. The three of them tore through the bar area, stragglers diving out of their way.
A gunshot rang out!
BANG!
Troy didn’t even glance back. They ran for the central staircase. It was a problem, because it spiraled back around. If the gunman was behind them, the stairs would take them back towards, and below him.
They were flying now. Suddenly Dubois let go.
Troy didn’t even slow down. He and Aliz careened down the stairs, wrapping back around. He glanced up. Dubois was there. The gunman ran toward her. She had darted to the side, as if to let him pass. He didn’t care about her. He was getting ready to aim his shots down into the stairwell.
Troy caught a glimpse of Dubois leaping into the air, her body nearly horizontal, like a high jumper in track and field. Her legs kicked out and just about took the gunman’s head off. They both fell to the floor.
Troy got a sense of Dubois up again and moving like a cat, but then he and Aliz were at the bottom of the stairs and running down the long hall. His mind pictured that, behind Dubois, more dark men were coming.
This is NOT an art heist.
“You’re kind of popular tonight!” he shouted at Aliz.
The two guards who had been checking people for weapons appeared at the top of the wide main stairwell. They came running up the hall, their guns out.
“There are men with guns upstairs!” Troy said. “I’ll take care of her.”
The guards blew past, barely slowing.
Troy and Aliz barreled down the stairwell. Aliz slipped and fell, sliding upside down and on her side. They lost precious seconds as they slowed to a stop, and Troy dragged her to her feet again.
Behind them, gunshots rang out, then more gunshots.
It was the OK Corral up there.
Troy glanced back, and here came Dubois, hell bent, flying down the stairs like a missile. “They shot the guards!” she screamed. “Run! They’re right behind me!”
Troy renewed his iron grip on Aliz’s wrist. “You better run,” he said.
They ran through the stone tunnel and out to the street. The plaza was deserted. Something about gunshots made people call it a night. They ran across the plaza, Aliz half-limping now. They weren’t going fast enough.
“My feet! I have no shoes on! It hurts!”
“Run!” Troy said.
He dragged her along. He looked back. Here came Dubois. She was moving fast. In another couple of seconds, she was going to zoom past them.
Behind her, a man with a gun was also running.
Troy and Aliz reached the far side of the wide-open plaza. They ducked into the shadows along the tree-lined street. The car was right here… somewhere.
Troy reached into his pocket and pulled the fob. He clicked it and the car chirped, the brake lights blinking on and off. It was just ten meters ahead of them.
“Get in the back seat,” he said to Aliz.
Dubois was moving along the passenger side.
Troy went straight to the tire on the driver’s side and pulled out the small pocket pistol. He turned, and the gunman was almost on top of him. The guy was coming fast, full speed, his gun in one hand. He was going to crash into Troy.
Troy lifted the gun and…
BANG! BANG!
He shot the guy in the chest, which slowed him down, and then in the head, which dropped him.
Troy slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. He handed Dubois the gun.
“Hold this. It might come in handy.”
She stared at him. “Did you just kill that guy?”
Troy nodded. “Yeah.”
He put the car into gear and pulled out into the street. For a second, he held out hope that this might be okay. They might just quietly drive away from here down some side streets, cruise out of town, and take the subject somewhere to question her. Dubois must know a place.
Then he looked in the rearview mirror. Across the plaza, two small cars had just roared away from the building. Troy watched them. Just before their headlights came on, he thought he identified them as Mini-Coopers. Small, fast, highly maneuverable.
“Okay,” he said. “We still have a problem. They’re coming after us. We need to find a way to ditch them. Aliz, this is your town. How do we get out of here?”
She didn’t answer.
“Aliz?”
She didn’t answer.
He was tearing down narrow, winding streets, the buildings standing right on the road. He zipped around an old man bent over a cane.
“Aliz!”
“What?”
“Where are we going?”
She answered a question with a question. “Who are you people?”
“We’re the police,” Dubois said. She sat with the small gun in her tiny hand, watching behind them. She had pulled her blue dress back down, making time for modesty.
They rumbled uphill across some cobblestones. A fresh produce stand was on the street, unattended. It was a little late for that, wasn’t it?
He crashed through it, sending fruits and vegetables flying.
“Miquel said don’t hurt the car!”
“That didn’t hurt,” Troy said.
The Minis were gaining. Troy could only go so fast. The last thing he wanted was to hit any innocent civilians. These streets were too narrow.
Up ahead, a small building seemed to sit in the middle of the street. The roadway flowed around it on either side. The first Mini was right behind him now. The driver put his brights on, filling the Jaguar with light. He was trying to blind them.
Troy skimmed along to the right of the building. It was incredibly narrow back here. The car was sandwiched between the building to his left, and a high stone wall to his right. There were doorways all along here. Anyone could simply step out into the street at any second.
The car scraped the wall, sparks flying.
“Stark!”
“I’m trying.” He didn’t really care about the car.
The Mini was right on his tail. He had a hunch that…
The building ended, and to his left, the roadway came back together again. The other Mini was RIGHT THERE. It had hightailed along the left side of the building. They were going to…
CRASH!
The cars bounced off each other.
A window was down on the Mini. A man with a gun aimed at the Jag. Troy veered left, this time intentionally. He drove the other car up onto the narrow sidewalk, and into the building. The gunman disappeared, thrown around the cabin of the Mini. Troy kept going.
He lifted the forefinger of his right hand. His left was still on the wheel.
“Don’t say a word about this car.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The one Mini was still right behind him, lights blinding. He adjusted the mirror, trying to see if the second car was out of commission. No. As he watched, it rolled off the sidewalk and rejoined the chase.
“Dammit!”
Somewhere, he heard sirens. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. He and Dubois were cops too, but they weren’t supposed to make arrests. On some level, this was an abduction. Or some kind of…
The Mini crashed into the rear of the Jag, nudging it hard while they drove.
Dubois groaned. Just behind Troy, Aliz shrieked. The sound sent a shiver through his body.
“Aliz! No screaming. We’re not screaming right now, okay?”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice. “It’s just that…”
“No screaming,” he said again. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”
“All right.”
“I’m with Interpol,” Dubois said. “He’s with the New York City Police Department. You’re safe with us. There’s no need to…”
BAM! The Mini bumped them again. That one was harder. Troy was jostled. He nearly lost his grip on the wheel.
