“You’ve got it,” I said, sliding down low behind the front seats. “Now let’s go.”
I slipped out of the car the moment it came to rest and moved backwards into the shadows until my shoulders touched the wall of the dilapidated building. The two guys remained in their seats, sitting still, staring straight ahead, and doing nothing to invite a bullet. I counted the seconds in my head. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Nothing stirred. We reached thirty. The driver raised his hands from his lap and started to reach for the centre of the steering wheel, but before he made contact I heard a harsh metallic squeal to my left and the door to the warehouse was flung back on its hinges. The side of the car was bathed in light. Boots crunched on gravel. A man appeared. He was a shade over six feet tall, broad, with a completely shaved head. The reflection of his face in the car window put him in his early forties. His clothes looked expensive - black Armani jeans and a ribbed, zip up sweater made from ultra fine cashmere. He was holding a radio in his left hand. And a folding-stock Kalashnikov in his right.
The man paused for a moment, then approached the car. I fell in step behind him, and just before he reached the driver’s door I reached my right arm over his shoulder, wrapped it across the front of his body and grabbed a handful of soft wool just below his left armpit. My left arm snaked up from the other side. My hand looped all the way around to the back of his skull. It kept going till I brushed his ear. Then my fingers clamped down and I pulled back hard in the opposite direction till I heard the telltale crunch of a pair of his cerebral vertebrae being torn apart.
Fresh bodies are always awkward to move on your own. They’re slack and floppy - before rigor sets in, anyway - and their weight seems to multiply tenfold. That one was particularly uncooperative. I couldn’t get a decent grip on it, anywhere. Its arms and legs kept escaping. The head was almost uncontrollable. In the end I felt like it took me an hour to bundle it in through the rear doors of the car.
“Is that the same guy who met the taxi, earlier?” I said, finally moving round to the front and pulling out two more flexicuffs.
“I think so,” the driver said, after taking a deep breath. “But wait. You can’t leave...”
“Hands out,” I said, feeding the tongue of the first cuff through the one binding his wrists, then looping it around the steering wheel.
“You too,” I said to the passenger.
He didn’t argue, so I secured him in the same way.
“Now listen,” I said, taking the keys then reaching across and wrenching the rearview mirror off its mounting. “I’m going inside. You’re staying here. And you’re going to stay silent. You’re going to make absolutely no noise at all. Because if I hear one single sound, I’ll be back out. And you’ll both be joining that guy on the back seat.”
Chapter Two
The sentry’s Kalashnikov had fallen next to the car during the scuffle so I retrieved it, used the mirror to make sure no one unfriendly was lurking on the other side of the door, and then stepped through into a corridor. It was wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, and extended all the way to an emergency exit at the far side of the building. A line of doors was set into the left hand wall. There were five. They were unevenly spaced, and all were standing open. The first led to an empty room. I guessed it had been an office, based on the shapes of the worn patches on the lino. A pile of squashed cigarette butts lay on the floor next to the window, and I saw that the board covering the glass had been pried away at both lower corners. That was probably where the sentry had been keeping his watch, but there was no one else in the room, now.
The remaining four rooms - a kitchen, two bathrooms, and one other, perhaps a staffroom - were deserted as well. That only left a pair of double doors on the opposite side of the corridor. They were closed. A keypad dangled on its wires from the frame, so I was confident they weren’t locked. I stood and listened for a moment. There was nothing to be heard, so I moved silently to the far end, then turned, took out the phone I’d taken from the driver, and dialed the emergency number he’d given me outside.
The call was answered on the first ring.
“Yes?” a man said, in German. “What?”
“Quickly,” I said, whispering to make my voice less recognisable. “Six guys. Front of the building. All armed. Looks like they mean business.”
“On our way,” the man said, then the line went dead.
I switched the rifle to semi automatic - Kalashnikovs are famously reliable, but notoriously hard to control on full auto - and lay down on my front. Five seconds passed. Then the double doors burst open. Two men charged though and started racing away from me, towards the exit. They were tempting targets, but I waited. They covered half the distance to the outside world. Three quarters. Then two more men emerged, running hard, and I finally squeezed the trigger. Four times.
The nearer pair had no chance to react. The other two slowed down a little. The final one even managed to half turn around before the three shells hit him. That was more of a chance than they gave their ‘customers,’ I thought, as I blew the stinging cordite out of my nostrils.
The main warehouse was a broad rectangular space, maybe 5,000 square feet all in. The walls and roof were bare metal, with an exposed skeleton of beams and girders. There was no merchandise left. No boxes, or containers, or even debris. Whoever had cleared the place out had been thorough. But they’d also been in a hurry. They hadn’t unbolted the redundant shelf legs from the floor. They’d just chopped them off about three inches above the surface, leaving scores of jagged L-shaped uprights sprouting from the concrete like the shoots of uniform metal plants.
The only item not physically attached to the ground was the table that held the two piles of drugs. It was standing at the exact centre of the giant room, almost glowing in a pool of moonlight that spilled through a jagged hole in the roof. Three people were in front of it. The two Marines. And Kevin Truly.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” I said, approaching the group.
“Sir,” the biker Marine said, stepping back from Truly but not lowering the gun.
“Any more of his friends around here?” I said.
“There was one outside in the corridor, sir. And the four who just went running out of here, a second ago.”
“They’re all accounted for. Seen anyone else?”
“Not inside, sir. But I think our cab was followed by two guys from the hotel bar. They might be around somewhere.”
“They’re outside. Not in a position to trouble anyone, though.”
The Marines glanced at each other.
“So, then, what we do with him?” the Marine said, gesturing to Truly.
“He’s coming with me,” I said. “A couple of my people are waiting to chat with him.”
“Couldn’t we just... you know?”
“You know, what?”
“Slot the bastard. Get it over with. Here and now.”
I took a long, hard look at the Marine, and then turned to his colleague.
“After what he’s done to us?” the biker Marine said. “He deserves it.”
“And it’s his gun,” the other one said. “It’s not traceable to either of us.”
For people trained to find swift, decisive solutions to problems like this, you could see how the idea would appeal to them. Specially when their heads were on the block, and he was the star witness against them. So for a second, part of me – a tiny part – wished I could just look the other way.