Rogue mission, p.16
Rogue Mission, page 16
Stark pushed it all the way. Dubois shone her light.
Nothing. No one in there.
“Why did they lock it?” Stark said.
Suddenly, to their far left, a man burst out of another side door. A second later, another one did the same. It was so dark, they were hardly more than shadows, ghosts.
Dubois put her light on them.
Now she and Stark were running back across the warehouse.
The men sprinted ahead. They were wraiths, white against black, insubstantial in Dubois’s light.
“Freeze!” Stark screamed. “FREEZE!”
“Polici!” Dubois shouted.
Gallo and Goddard were converging from the north end. They must have wandered off to investigate something.
The first man ran through the open bay door. Just before he passed through, he slapped a large button on the wall. A red light turned on. Instantly, the door began to lower, rattling along its track. The second man ducked and went under it. He turned right, heading down the wharf toward that speedboat.
Goddard reached the door first. He ducked, ran under it, and turned right, also heading for the boat. In a split second, he was gone.
“Goddard, wait!” Stark shouted. “Oh boy.”
The door was nearly down.
Stark dropped to the ground and rolled under it just before it closed.
Then the metal clanked to the bottom. It connected with some metal groove laid along the concrete, and seemed to latch into place. It made a loud grinding noise, then stopped moving.
Dubois pulled up short. Gallo stood next to her. They were both breathing heavily.
Gallo went to the door and squatted by it. There was no handle on this side. He pressed his hands against the metal and tried to push it up, but it wouldn’t budge. Dubois flashed the light along the bottom. There was nothing to grab. She flashed the light onto the red button the man had pressed.
“Press that,” she said.
Gallo stood and hit the button. Nothing happened.
“All right,” he said. “We need to find another way out.”
Suddenly, all around them, lights clicked on. They were not bright, but they lit up the interior of the space well enough to see. The shadowy crates and boxes came into clearer view. Most of them were draped in heavy tarps.
“Hello!” someone called. “Don’t move.”
Dubois and Gallo looked up as one. There was an iron catwalk up on the third floor. It ran the length of the warehouse, and also crossed the width of it above their heads. About a dozen men were up there, lined along the railing. They were all armed with rifles, every one of them. The man had Dubois and Gallo covered from every angle.
There was nowhere to run.
“Polici!” Dubois shouted. “Polici!”
Someone fired an automatic weapon.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.
The noise was nearly deafening, echoing off the walls. The bullets rained around their feet. The concrete chipped into pieces and flew.
“That’s the warning,” a man said. “The next time we shoot you down, lady polici.”
“Piggies,” someone else said.
A few men laughed.
Two men moved along the catwalk, rifles held high. They reached a staircase, which came down to this floor. They were coming down.
To Dubois’s right, another door opened. It was a door made of what looked like heavy wood, which had been splintered with an axe. Three men passed through it. They emerged into the dim light. They were not armed. The man in the middle had long hair. It was Qemal.
Gallo grunted. He was watching the same thing.
“Here comes trouble,” he said under his breath.
“These are the ones who murdered Kelmendi,” Qemal said. “They killed the two Bardhis, and Dervishi. I alone survived.”
“And what did you do?” someone shouted.
Qemal shrugged. “I brought them here to you.”
The two armed men had reached the bottom of the stairs. They had dark hair, and were muscular. They were young. Their eyes were hard.
Dubois glanced at the locked bay door. Stark had picked a great time to leave. How was he going to get back in here? They needed him right now.
This was a trap.
She sighed. Of course it was.
One of the armed men raised his rifle and butted Gallo in the face with it. Gallo fell to the concrete, out cold before he hit the ground. He made no attempt to break his own fall. His head connected with the stone when he landed.
Dubois grunted. Gallo just kept getting hit like that. It couldn’t be good for his brain.
“Pig,” the man said, and spit down on Gallo’s prone body.
Now he looked at Dubois.
“Female pig,” he said.
Then he raised his gun again and butted Dubois in the face. The last thing she saw was the stock of the rifle, and the anger in the man’s eyes.
***
Troy ran down the dock.
Up ahead, there was a speedboat at the very end of the wharf. Goddard was ten steps ahead and running for it.
The two guys from the warehouse were in the boat. One guy was at the controls, the other was untying the lines. It was quick work. The guy cast off the lines, and almost instantly, a jet of water sprayed. Goddard leapt from the dock into the boat, crashing onto the man who did the lines.
“Goddard! Dammit!”
Troy accelerated. The boat was leaving without him.
He reached the gap without slowing down. He planted his right foot and dove out as far as he could go. He stretched, like a receiver diving for a pass. For a second, the dark water was below him. He landed on top of one of the outboard engines and clung to the hard plastic shell for dear life.
Goddard and the one guy were going punch for punch.
Goddard fought like a madman, throwing punches left and right. He rattled the Albanian’s head, back and forth, left-right-left. The man grunted, taking Goddard’s hammer-blows.
The boat was speeding away from the dock, headed for open water, leaving a trail of white foam in its wake. Troy crawled up toward the driver’s seat, trying to keep a low profile. The guy at the controls was focused on driving, gaining speed, and keeping the boat steady. He didn’t notice Troy’s approach. In one fluid movement, Troy jumped to his feet, yanked the guy’s head back by the hair, and slammed it against the steering wheel.
One hit didn’t do it. The guy was still awake. He was a hard-headed guy, so Troy slammed his head again.
The guy stepped back from the wheel, eyes unfocused.
Then he had a gun in his hand. He raised it and…
BLAM!
Troy shot him in the forehead.
The guy’s head snapped back. He lowered himself and sat on the gunwale for a second, as if resting there, as if he didn’t know he was already dead. Then he pitched over backwards and slid into the black sea.
A scream came from the back of the boat.
It was Goddard. His opponent had a knife out, a huge knife, like a Bowie knife from the 1800s, a knife that you would use to cut a man’s head off.
The man swung it at Goddard and sliced deep into his forearm.
There was blood, a lot of it. Goddard fell backwards, onto his butt.
“Goddard!”
Troy went to the back of the boat, planted his boot on the Albanian’s chest, and knocked him off balance. The guy leaned against the engines.
Troy had a gun on him, so the guy threw his knife at Troy. Troy flinched. The knife went end over end, like a knife in a magic show, whizzed past his head, and flew into the darkness.
That move bought the guy just enough time to reach under his arm. He had a holster there. He yanked out a small pistol, and in one motion he…
Troy fired.
BANG!
One shot.
BANG!
Two shots.
BANG!
Three.
He didn’t feel the recoil. Each shot went right into the guy’s chest. The guy’s face was slack and expressionless.
He dropped his gun, slumped against the engines, and then oozed to the floor.
Troy looked over at Goddard. He was on his knees, holding his arm.
The boat was still speeding along, bouncing over the waves. Troy looked up at the empty driver’s seat. Naturally, the driver had no kill cord.
“How’s your arm?” Troy said.
Goddard’s teeth were gritted. “Great.”
The knife had sliced through Goddard’s famous pig windbreaker and cut a gash in his arm. Troy inspected the cut. It was long and nasty, but not that deep. A line of blood ran from it.
“All right, we need to tie that off. Take that jacket off.”
“I know what to do,” Goddard said.
Troy climbed to the front again and took control of the boat. He eased off the throttle and put it in neutral. The boat lowered off its high plane and nestled into the water. It slowed to a stop. Now it jerked and moved with the motion of the waves.
Troy looked back at Goddard. He had already removed his jacket and torn the sleeve into strips. He tied his own arm off tightly at the elbow. Then he peeled off his long-sleeved T-shirt. He made a tear down the length of one of the sleeves, then another, and ripped the fabric away. He folded it into a pad and placed it against his arm to stanch the bleeding. Then he tied strips of the windbreaker around his arm in three places, holding the pad in place.
Now he was shirtless in the cool night. He turned to Troy.
“It would be nice if we had some kind of antiseptic, like rubbing alcohol, or even liquor, like grain alcohol.”
“We’ll stop back at that bar,” Troy said. “And order some.”
Now Troy sat in the driver’s seat. He carefully gave the boat more throttle and turned it around toward land. It was dark out here on the water, but they weren’t far from the wharf. Even at this distance, he could still see it in the dim light from the overhead lamps.
Goddard moved up and sat next to him.
The boat’s running lights were off. That was fine.
Troy powered the engines down again. There were people on the dock. They were milling around at the front end of the ancient rusting hulk of a cargo ship.
“What the…”
There was an old pair of binoculars on a low counter in front of Goddard.
“Let me see those.”
Goddard tossed them to Troy. Troy held them to his eyes. The magnification showed him something he didn’t want to see. There were about ten men on the wharf. Several of them had rifles strung over their shoulders. A couple of them had rifles drawn and ready.
Two men led Carl Gallo out through the open bay door. They were big guys, stationed on either side of him, holding him up. He looked like his feet were practically dragging along the ground. His head hung down.
“Oh, man. They have Gallo.”
The motorboat was about a hundred meters out from the dock. The Albanians hadn’t noticed it, at least not yet. Troy needed to make some kind of decision here. If Gallo was captured, that meant Dubois probably was, too. More guys came out of the warehouse, like clowns emerging from a car.
“Let me see,” Goddard said.
Troy tossed him the binoculars.
Goddard stared at the scene along the wharf for a long moment.
“Listen,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Go?” Troy said. “Go where?”
Goddard put the binoculars back on the counter. He climbed over the top of the counter, then stepped over the windshield to the front of the boat.
“Goddard!”
Goddard turned for a second. He raised his hands. Blood dripped from his arm.
“This is good news. They’re prisoners. Those guys are gonna take them to the girls. I have to go with them. I gotta get to my sister.”
“Goddard, just sit tight.”
“Call Jan Bakker from your office. He knows where I’ll be.”
“What?” Troy said.
“Just call him. He knows where I am.”
With that, Goddard turned and dove into the dark water. The dive was graceful, as though Goddard had been a competitive swimmer once upon a time. Knowing him, he probably had. For a long moment, he disappeared under the water and didn’t surface. Then he reappeared thirty meters closer to shore. He didn’t look back. He was swimming for the dock.
He was insane. He was about to give himself up on the off chance, a hundred to one shot, that these gunmen would take him to his sister.
Troy fought the urge to drive the boat forward in an attempt to get Goddard to climb back in. He also fought the urge to simply run Goddard over.
He put the boat in reverse and slowly backed away. The boat hardly made a sound. He backed it and backed it. He settled into the dark and watched through the binoculars, as the boat moved slowly ever backwards.
In the far distance, a small figure appeared in the water and climbed a ladder to the docks. He simply climbed up and stepped into the middle of the remaining gunmen. They forced him to his knees. A circle of them stood around them.
“Please don’t shoot him,” Troy said.
They did the next best thing. They smacked him in the head with a rifle butt.
Goddard keeled over sideways to the dock.
Troy sighed. “Man oh man.”
It had been a horrible night so far, and it was just getting started. He turned the boat around, gave it some throttle, and headed out toward open water.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Time Unknown
In the Dark
On a Boat
I have to get out of here.
Amy Hegel had no idea how long she had been sitting in this place. They had kept her drugged for what seemed like a long time. She had vague memories of darkness, then light, then darkness again. She could remember being carried over a strong man’s shoulder, as though she was a bag of rice.
They had moved her from one place to another, and under the influence of the drugs, she had gone along, as limp as a rag doll. She saw faces in her mind, the faces of men, men with dark hair, bald men, men with neat dark beards. Bobblehead men, men out of some strange nightmare, whose helium balloon heads seemed much too large for their bodies. They looked at her with the eyes of hawks, as though she was a slab of meat or some other commodity, stroking their chins and thinking, staring at her intently. They reminded her of guys looking over a used car.
They were trying to decide on a price.
She heard deep voices speaking in a language she couldn’t understand. More than that—she couldn’t even place the language. It wasn’t Spanish, it wasn’t French or Italian, it wasn’t German or Dutch. It was something else entirely.
Who were these men? Why was she here? Before, in the tunnels, when they captured her, she was sure she was going to be raped and murdered. But now?
She had nothing to go on. There was just that man, who had called himself something. Brandon something. Her head hurt, and she was blank on the details. It was like a form of amnesia, trying to piece these things back together. The images were fragments of shattered glass. The man was good looking, and funny, and generous, and he had taken her somewhere nice.
High tea. They went for high tea.
Then they had gone into a tunnel.
“That was dumb,” she croaked, out loud, and she realized she was awake.
Her throat was dry, her lips felt parched, and she was hungry. She didn’t know when they had fed her last, or if they had fed her at all. She didn’t remember drinking any water. She could die of thirst.
It was dumb.
Yes, it was. You shouldn’t go underground with someone you just met. Then again, he shouldn’t lure you down there, drug you, and kidnap you.
She looked around the room she was in. It was dark in here, deep darkness, an almost complete absence of light. But even so, her eyes were beginning to adjust. There was a sense that the ceiling above her head was low. There was also a sense that she was not alone.
She peered into the darkness. Then she gasped.
She wasn’t alone. There were others. They were all sitting or lying on the floor on their sides. Most of them seemed to be asleep, or passed out, like she had been until recently. She squinted and stared. They were girls, or young women, scattered around this room. They were…
They were chained to the walls. Each one had her hands clasped behind her back, and her wrists were bound. Here and there, Amy could see the metal of the chains, and of the handcuffs, reflected in whatever little bit of light there was.
Am I chained?
It seemed an odd question. Wouldn’t she know if she was chained?
She tried to move her arms, and realized they were pulled tightly behind her back. Her shoulders ached. Her wrists and forearms ached, and her hands were numb. She was. She was chained.
“Oh no.”
It was too horrifying. These girls were all chained, and so was she. Her mind went very blank for a long moment. It recoiled at her situation, and simply refused to think. There was something pleasant, almost blessed, about not having to face the reality of this.
The feeling didn’t last long.
“Are you awake?” someone to her right said. It was a woman’s voice. Amy looked over there, but the person was in total shadow. It was just a small, weak voice, emerging from the infinite black.
“Yes,” Amy said. “I’m awake.”
“Where are we?”
Amy thought about that. Things she had known for a while, but which hadn’t reached her conscious mind until now, began to appear.
“We’re on a boat. Like in the bottom, where they store things.”
Amy’s father was a sailor. She had grown up going on boats with him and her mother. She knew about being on the water. The boat they were on was rising and falling gently. She could hear the outside of it rubbing against a dock. There were seabirds calling, and the smell of the ocean at low tide. Somewhere in the distance was the sound of machinery.
“What kind of boat?”
“I’m not sure,” Amy said. “A container ship, maybe? But maybe not. Something smaller. Anyway, we’re not at sea. We’re not moving. We’re parked somewhere, like in a marina.”
