Текст книги "Adrenaline"

Автор книги: Jeff Abbott

Соавторы: Jeff Abbott
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

61

AUGUST ARRIVED AN HOUR LATER. Alone. I was at a back table in the Rode Prins, near the curtain screening the corridor that led to the kitchen. He sat heavily across from me. I’d kicked him in the side of the head and a purplish bruise stretched from temple to jaw. I could see the heft of a bandage underneath his jacket.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like hell. Howell’s gone to a meeting and I told them I needed fresh air.” He stared at me. “Sam. What in God’s name are you doing?”

“One of the crime families the Company had an interest in are the Lings. They’re based here. One of the Langley guys mentioned them in London.”

“Okay. They behind the grab on Lucy?”

“No. But I need to know if they are still being tracked by the Company.”

“What for?”

“I need to know where their shipments are. I need to steal one.”

His mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Insanity doesn’t agree with you, Sam.”

“It’s the only way for me to get close to the guy who took Lucy. He… he has a hostage, August, so I can’t force my way in. I have to draw him to me. But I need to know what we know about the Lings’ routes.”

“You’re crazy, Sam. I can’t imagine what you’ve lost. I can’t. But I think your grief has damaged you. Badly. And you have to accept—you’re not getting Lucy and the baby back. They’re gone. You know they wouldn’t have kept her alive for months. They wouldn’t have been saddled with a baby.” He stopped, as if horrified by his words.

I stared at him.

“This is all… for nothing,” August said. “You’re not getting them back. I’m sorry, man, sorrier than you will ever know. But I—”

“Please just do as I ask. If we were ever friends.”

“Friends don’t put friends in positions like this, man. I could lose it all.”

“You could. I already have. August, I know that you, as a decent man, are going to help me. You can’t not help me.” I wanted to say I saved your life today but I couldn’t play that card; he hadn’t seen me and it wasn’t fair.

“Howell will have my head.”

“Howell left a group of women behind in that machinists’ shop.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you and the other agent were hit, and he chased me out, did he secure the building?”

“He did.”

“Did he tell you there were a group of sex slaves being held captive in the back?”

August paled, dragged a finger along his unshaven jaw. “No. I didn’t know. I swear.”

“I believe you. Because Howell is Ahab, and I’m the white whale,” I said. “He’s losing perspective, August.”

“I… I don’t know.”

I took a deep breath. “I knew about you and Lucy seeing each other before Lucy and I dated. She never mentioned it. You both kept it secret and I don’t blame you; the Company doesn’t need to be in your business. But I knew. And you didn’t dump me as a friend for going out with your ex,” I said.

“Lucy and I weren’t a good match,” he said. “It only lasted a month.”

“Why?”

“I never trusted her.” He put his hands into his coat pockets and I wondered what I would do if he pulled a gun on me. I honestly didn’t know. August felt like the last strand of my normal life, and now I was asking him to do a job that was incredibly dangerous. I didn’t know what he was suggesting to me about my wife. I just couldn’t go there.

A long silence, and then he said, “Can I call you on this number if I find out about the Lings?”

“Yes.” I tried to keep the relief from my voice. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. No promises.” He turned and walked out of the Rode Prins without another word.

I sat and drank Henrik’s good coffee and closed my eyes and thought through how I would steal the shipment, given what I could guess about the limitations I would face.

Five hours later August called. “We have an informant inside the Lings’ operation. The Lings’ trucks stop at a sweatshop in France. You do not hit them at the sweatshop, you hear me? You do not. You’ll dirty up a current investigation into them.” He gave me the address. “Their trucks are marked as being part of a company called Leeuw en Draak. Lion and Dragon.”

“Thank you,” I said. And meant it.

“Don’t call me again, Sam. Good luck.” And he hung up. Now I’d lost my best friend as well. I mourned for all of ten seconds.

Then I called Piet. “I have what we need.”

62

THE NEXT DAY, we waited in the rain, just north of Paris. It had taken us nearly five hours to drive south from Amsterdam, to the locale August had given me. It was early afternoon and the day was gray and sodden. Piet sat next to me, sharpening his wakizashi sword on a whetstone. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. It made the flesh on my neck jerk. How sharp could you make a sword?

The sweatshop was off the E19/E15 expressway, hidden in a gray huddle of buildings. I wondered how pleasant it would be to be rid of Piet. Very soon, I thought. Very soon. We sat and watched absolutely nothing happen at the sweatshop. Hours passed; twilight began to approach.

“How does a Canadian soldier get into this business?” Piet asked, breaking the silence.

I glanced at him. “I was bored. How did you get into trafficking women?”

He smiled. “I needed money for art school.”

“I didn’t expect that answer.”

“An annoying percentage of young people in Amsterdam harbor a secret desire to be Van Gogh or Rembrandt. Anyway, I knew a guy. A friend of my mom’s. He needed help getting girls to Holland. I helped him buy a van so we could move them, and eventually I took over the route.”

“Took over?”

“He got married and thought he shouldn’t traffic girls no more. What, you thought I’d killed him?”

“Yes.”

“No. Known him since I was twelve.” He rubbed at his bottom lip. “He owns a coffee shop now.”

I really didn’t want to know Piet as a person, but some instinctive need to understand took control. So I asked, “Why the sword?”

“The sword is who I am.”

“But it makes you memorable. I thought the idea was to stay under the radar.”

“It honors my mother.”

“She was Japanese?”

“Yeah. She came here for love. Boyfriend brought her, dumped her, she stayed.”

I remembered Nic called Piet a whoreson. Perhaps he meant it as more than an insult, as a description. His mom might have been a worker in the Rosse Buurt; many of the women there were not Dutch.

“I thought I wanted to study art, do Japanese-style stuff, like netsuke or watercolor painting. My mother did that in her spare time.” He shrugged. “But art school didn’t work out. They hated me there and a girl made trouble for me. Assholes. So I left.”

I had not thought of Piet as someone with smothered dreams. He read my expression. “Eh, you thought I was just a snake.” He laughed.

“Well, I—”

“Man, we’re all snakes. Gregor likes to pretend he’s shed his skin, been reborn as an honest soul, but his scales are still there. And I suspect you’re a very crafty snake, Sam.”

I shrugged. “Sure. I got run out of the army. I spoke some Czech from my grandmother’s side of the family. I couldn’t find a real job in Prague so I made my own there. So you went straight from art school into trafficking?”

“Not right away. I used to do contract work for the police department in Amsterdam, designing their websites and brochures,” he said. He gave a long, low laugh. “Then I saw how much the opposition paid.”

I glanced at him. “That’s a switch.”

“You make serious money by being a player. If I’d stayed with the police, then I would have been a cog in their operation. I paid attention. I wanted to own cogs—not be one.”

“So you picked girls for your commodity.” My mind kept saying shut up, but it was a strange thought to sit here, making conversation with a monster in the shape of a man.

He shrugged. “Good profit margin. Growing demand. Not likely to run out of raw materials.”

It was brutally cold accountancy. I wondered if it was a sort of twisted revenge on his mother. “You sell people, Piet.”

“You sound like a schoolmaster.” He shrugged. “I think of it as selling comfort and convenience.”

“Not to the people you sell.”

He flicked a smile. “They don’t have money. They don’t count.” The smile turned greasy. “You know, they live better here, even as whores, than they do back home. I’ve done them a favor, I have.”

“It would be one thing if they chose it. But most don’t.”

He gave me a look of disapproval. “I didn’t know I’d offended your sacred morals.”

I had overstepped. I could show my loathing for him when I killed him, not before. “I just think counterfeit merchandise is a lot easier to control than people.”

“I like the control.” His voice became a low slur of gravel. “You should try it. I’ll treat you to the choicest morsels from my next batch from Moldova. Got some girls coming in four days, an order from a house in London. You and me, we can break one of the girls in. You get a taste for this business, then fake goods will pale.”

If I looked at him I would kill him on the spot. And I needed him. So I watched the sweatshop parking lot.

He misinterpreted my silence. “Ah. Maybe you don’t like the girls. We get boys, too, not so many, but I know a couple of boys back in Amsterdam you might like—”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Not interested.”

“You’re weird,” he said, “worrying so much about people. Other people don’t matter; all that matters is you. You judge me. But you are no different than me, Sam. You lie, you kill when you have to, you live under a false name. I never shot anyone down the way you did Nic.”

“I did you a favor with Nic.”

“True.” He rubbed his lip. “I keep thinking that I will be arrested any moment, because I don’t know what he was transmitting, or who he was talking to. I need a big payday, Sam. I need to be able to run and hide. That’s a great luxury, to hide well. That’s the mark when you’re not a pawn no more, when you’re a player.”

“Tell me about Edward,” I said. “Is he a player or is he more?”

“What do you mean, more?”

“You said he’s moving experimental weapons.”

“I think he’s pulling corporate espionage—stealing from one company to sell to another.”

“What’s he want to put into this shipment, Piet?”

“Not for you to worry about.”

“If we get caught I’d like to know what I’m serving time for.”

“You’ll never see the light of day if we get caught on this job.” Piet’s gaze went back to the warehouse. “Ach, hello.”

A truck, marked with a stylized lion and dragon, pulled into the back of the warehouse where the sweatshop sat. Three Chinese men spilled out. Two wore black trench coats. Another, more portly, wore a regular tan jacket and blue jeans. He walked to the bay of the warehouse.

The two in trench coats stayed close to the truck.

“Let’s go,” Piet said.

“No,” I said. “They’ve got shotguns under the coats.”

“How can you tell?”

“See the way the fabric bulges, right below the arm? One guy was riding in the cab, but the second came out of the truck itself. They won’t go into the building. They’re guards.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do?”

“We can’t grab the truck here. They’re picking up extra goods—they’ve already dropped off fake cigs along the route. We go in now, while they’re parked at a friendly spot, the Lings get a phone call.”

“Not if we kill them all.”

“I didn’t sign on for a massacre,” I said. “And it’s bad business practice.” Interference with profit was the only argument that might sway Piet. “The Lings would start hunting for us fast. We need to tackle the truck crew alone.”

“So how do we steal the shipment?”

“We don’t,” I said. “We hijack it.”

63

AUGUST WAS SITTING IN THE HALLWAY of the safe house, waiting for the pilot flying him to New York, when he heard an exchange between Howell and one of the operations techs:

“Mr. Howell, we have a match on the description of the man at the warehouse based on the description you and August gave. Is this him?”

“Yes. Who is he?”

“Piet Tanaka. Dutch national, formerly a contract employee for the Amsterdam police.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He’s dropped out of sight, sir. No listed address, no listed occupation.”

“August!” Howell called.

August got up and walked to the computer screen.

“This the guy you saw in the warehouse?”

August nodded. “Yeah, distinctive face. That’s him.”

Howell turned back to the tech. “Find this guy. He’s got Sam Capra working for him.”

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” August said.

“Don’t you have a plane to catch, Agent Holdwine?” Howell said.

August left and found the pilot downstairs, ready to take him to the airport; Howell didn’t wish him well or thank him for taking a bullet. Treason poisoned the air; they all felt it since Howell had seen Sam Capra leaving the scene of murder and trafficking. Treason put people in a sour mood.

64

AFTER LOADING SEVERAL BOXES, the Chinese truck pulled back out onto the highway and we followed at a distance, three cars back. Piet was good; he knew how to tail.

“How are we going to get this truck grabbed before they stop again?”

“We force them off the highway.”

“What, in broad daylight?”

“Yes. In broad daylight. Right now, they’re split up—two in the cab, one back with the goods—and they are more on guard when they’re stopped. They won’t expect an attack now.”

“That’s because attacking them on the highway is stupidity,” Piet said. “What do you suggest we do?”

“Get behind them, then go past them,” I said. “I want a better look at the cargo door.”

He inched up past the two sedans between us and the Ling truck and swerved back over. I studied the back of the truck. A sliding door, secured at the bottom by two separate padlocks. Hard to pick, roaring along at seventy miles an hour.

“Now go past them.”

He floored the van and hurtled past the truck. The cab door appeared to be normal, no modifications. I didn’t give it more than a glance; I didn’t want to attract the driver’s attention. But I saw him, and he was laughing.

“Stay ahead of them.”

I studied the map, unfolded on my lap. There was another highway intersection, cutting across northern France, perhaps fifteen kilometers distant.

“Floor it. Get us there now. I have an idea.”

“This is insane,” Piet said, but he smiled. The Ling truck would be here within minutes, and the van was parked on a bridge over the expressway.

“You understand what to do?”

He nodded. “If this fails, you’ll have wrecked everything.”

“If this fails, I’ll be dead. So don’t bitch. Just do what you’re supposed to do.”

“Good luck.” He offered me his hand. I dared not show my revulsion for him. So I shook hands.

“They’re coming,” he said, looking south. I could see the truck approaching in the heavy gray mist.

I put my legs over the side of the overspan and I heard Piet’s van roar off, but my mind was on counting.

The truck should pass under me at fifteen.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…

I was wrong. The Ling truck hurtled beneath me at fourteen and if I hesitated I would miss it, landing onto unforgiving asphalt, tumbling into fast-moving traffic. I threw myself off and caught the last third of the truck, trying to land on all fours and roll with controlled parkour grace. A roll would be far quieter than hammering feet against the roof.

But my legs slipped and the truck veered slightly. I started to go off the roof’s edge, on the passenger side. My legs danced in the air.

I swung myself hard, every muscle in my arms screaming, thinking, If they see me in the wing mirror I’m dead. I yanked myself up with a jerk that felt like I’d torn flesh from my arms and settled into the slight depression in the truck’s roof.

Then I lay very, very still.

Had they seen me? I had to assume radio communication between the cab and the guy in the hold of the truck. Either could have reported an unexpected sound, or the passenger in the cab could have seen my blue-jeaned legs swinging out into the empty air when I struggled for a grip. Maybe they’d take the next exit, search for a place of privacy, then dispatch me.

No. I saw the next exit sign pass. A light rain began to fall from the granite-gray sky. The truck pressed onward.

I started to crawl along the length of the truck. Slowly, steadily, keeping my head down. I didn’t want a motorist to see me. I risked a glance behind me. Piet had rejoined the highway and his van was there, staying close but not too close.

The rain increased, slicking the metal. I needed a firm grip for the next step, and nature had just made my job harder.

I reached the forward edge of the truck. The cab’s roof was about two feet below my hands. I could ease onto the roof, but I’d be more visible to anyone in approaching traffic. Cell phones were everywhere; I didn’t want the French police getting reports of a crazy man truck-surfing the expressway.

The other choice was to ease down between the cab and the truck, into the narrow space, so that’s where I went, feet first, my back to the cab. The truck jolted over a rough patch of road and my right foot slipped. Gravity seized me and I caught my hand in the jumble of cables at the cab’s rear. My foot landed on the metal strut connecting the cab. Below me I could see the road passing between the crushing wheels.

I steadied myself. Now or never.

I inched my arm, holding Piet’s gun, around the cab’s corner. I planned to grab the passenger door, wrench it open and yank myself inside. All without the cab’s guard shoving me back out into empty air at seventy miles an hour. The wind whipped hard around me, the rain seeping into my eyes.

I put my head around the corner and stared into a man’s face, leaning out of the window.

65

THE PASSENGER’S EYES WERE BRIGHT with shock that someone stood behind the cab; he looked to be about forty, heavyset.

Time froze for three seconds. Then his shoulder made a sudden hard shrug, bringing up his arm.

I jerked my head back around the cab’s edge as he fired. The bullet made a bright spark against metal, ricocheted out into the rain.

The truck veered hard, shuddering into the other lane, then whipped back.

They were trying to throw me off. I gripped the rain-slick metal and saw Piet’s van race up to the driver’s side, a spray of water fountaining from the tires. A muffled shot, from the truck, aimed at Piet.

I took a risk that the driver wasn’t driving and firing at the same time—that it was the passenger shooting at Piet. All I had now was force, calculated and vicious. I went back around the corner and heard another crack of shot. I yanked on the door just as a hand from inside tried to pull it back.

I threw myself forward, the door’s handle in a death grip. Then my feet gave way on the wet metal of the doorstep, my legs shot out and my shoes dangled inches above the tarmac.

I dropped my gun. It clattered onto the metal, onto the road, and was crushed under the wheels.

The window, inches above my head, exploded. Shards blew out, stinging my scalp. The passenger, firing in panic. I wrenched my hand, shifted my weight, pulled my legs against the door for leverage, covered my head with my arm, all in one fluid move, like I was jumping onto a public-housing railing in London.

I threw myself through the window, head first, my back slamming against the edge of it. I wriggled, trying to get leverage, elbowing the passenger hard in the throat, knocking him into the driver.

I had five seconds to win this fight. The driver whipped a gun from his left hand to his right, toward me. He fired, and the bullet skittered a path along the very top of my scalp, hot and vicious. I seized the gun’s barrel and pushed down; he had to keep one hand on the wheel and he pulled the trigger in reaction. The next bullet hammered into the seat by the passenger’s leg. He screamed and, in panic, wriggled past me. I threw a kick at him and he slammed into the door and crumpled.

Now I barreled hard into the driver, shoving him into his door. Where the bullet had grazed me, the pain was like a burning match dragged along my skin.

He knocked me back, but my heels hit the windshield and I powered back into him. I threw hard, fast punches into his throat, eyes.

The truck veered wildly and he dropped the gun, but I felt the tires leave the asphalt and brush along an unpaved surface, grass, a skid beginning.

I levered my foot up, snaked an arm around his neck. “I’ll break it,” I said in Mandarin. “You listen to me. The man with me, he will kill you. I will not. All we want is the cargo. He will kill you if you do not cooperate. I will let you live. Do you understand me?” And I gave his neck the slightest wrench. He nodded.

I grabbed the gun and pressed its heat to the driver’s ribs. “Drive. Normally.”

The driver settled the truck, guided it back onto the highway. We earned a roaring honk from a Mercedes that powered past us, the driver shaking a fist, blind to the struggle inside the cab.

The van pulled alongside us, like a teenager sidling up to the dream girl at a dance. A bullet hole marred its roof. Piet leaned forward—with extreme caution. I waved.

“The man in the van will kill you,” I said again. “Do you speak English?”

“A little,” the driver said.

“Don’t let him know you understand. He’s crazy. I’m your only hope right now, you got me?”

The driver nodded. The passenger, unconscious, did not contribute to the discussion.

“Tell the guard in the trailer that we’re pulling over, and he’s to lay down his weapons, come out with hands up. You tell him any different, I shoot you in the knee.”

The driver obeyed, speaking into a walkie-talkie.

I gestured for Piet to drive behind us and, at my order, the driver took the next exit. I blinked away wetness on my face. We pulled four kilometers or so down the road. Now I saw empty stretches of land with a shawl of gray mist hovering above the ground. Cows grazed. Maybe a dairy close by. No sign of people, and the road was an old, narrow affair, rough around the edges. In the distance I saw a rough stone building; it looked like a storage facility.

I said in Chinese, “Remember, do what I say, no matter what I say to the man in the van. We will walk to the storage shed and then we’ll take the truck. You understand me?”

The driver nodded.

Piet crept up from where he’d parked the van, a gun at the ready. I pulled the driver out, keeping the gun on him.

I turned and heard a creak of metal. The back of the trailer opening, Piet jumping back. The driver called in Mandarin, “Do what I told you.”

“Don’t shoot!” the guard yelled. He came out, hands raised.

Crime is a kind of war. But while soldiers will die for their country, few people will die for lords like the Lings. Loyalty is a smoke that inches up from the ashes of greed in this world. A change in wind scatters it.

“How do I know you won’t kill me?” the driver said in Chinese.

“Because you’d already be dead if we wanted you dead,” I said.

Silence while he decided. He opted to trust the calm in my voice. The guard was maybe forty, tired looking, a little heavy. His mouth trembled as he blinked at the cows on the soft turf.

“Here,” Piet said, handing me his gun. “Kill them.”

“Not out here,” I said. “Shots will echo across an empty field, and I’m not dragging dead weight into the woods. I’ll take them to that shed. You check the cargo. If there are any GPID chips on there to trace the goods, tear them out. The Lings could be monitoring the shipment. I’ll take care of these guys.”

Piet looked at the Chinese and smiled. “God, they’re dumb. Standing here while we talk about killing ’em and they don’t have a clue.” But maybe the guard did. He looked like he was about to break into a panicked run.

“Calm down,” I said in Mandarin. “It’s okay. Come with me.” Then I told the driver to haul down his unconscious friend and carry him. He obeyed, putting the knocked-out passenger over his shoulder.

The guard said, in stuttering Mandarin, “This is my first run. I used to be a schoolteacher, my brother-in-law, he got me involved, I don’t know much about doing the runs…” He wore a Yankees baseball cap.

They walked ahead of me, and we went over the fence and toward the shed. I glanced back. Piet had vanished into the truck.

The shed was old and when I kicked the door the weathered lock shattered. I gestured them inside.

“Please,” the guard said. “Please don’t.” Terror ragged his voice.

“Sit down,” I said. They sat, the driver laying the unconscious cab guard down first.

“He has to think you three are dead. You understand? But I am not going to hurt you.”

They nodded. Their eyes stayed on the gun.

I took a step back. “You,” I said to the guard. “Toss me your hat.”

He pulled off the Yankees cap and threw it at me. I caught it and covered up my bloody hair with it. “Your wallets, your papers.”

They tossed them over to me, trembling, and I studied them. “Stand up now. Turn around.” Slowly they did, shivering, and I quickly hit each one of them, hard with the butt of the gun, and they collapsed. I punched both until they were out cold. I left the unconscious guy alone. Then I fired three shots into the rotting wall. Motes of wood and dust danced in the air before my face. I wiped the blood off my knuckles, in the dirt.

I walked back to the truck. Piet studied papers. The manifest on the truck indicated these were Turkish cigarettes, bound for London. Of course they weren’t. They’d been made in China, most likely in a factory half-hidden in the ground.

“Any tracking chips?” I asked.

“No,” Piet said. “Nice cap.”

“Then let’s go.”

“I want to see the Chinese,” he said.

“Well, then, go look,” I said. I would have to shoot him. He studied me.

A small blue farm truck suddenly appeared on the road, inched past us, the driver—an old woman—giving us a long, curious stare as she went by.

It rattled him. “Let’s just get going. Get you bandaged up, clean off the blood in the cabin. I’m driving the truck. You’re driving the van.”

And we drove away. I kept my eyes locked on the little shed in the rearview mirror. No one came out of it.

We arrowed into Belgium, past the empty buildings of the old border station, and the lights along the expressway, activated by the cloudy day, glowed white in France, yellow in Belgium.

I had no cell phone—Piet had insisted, still nervous that he might be betrayed again. No way to contact Mila. There was no built-in phone in the van but there was a GPS. I wouldn’t have the weapons; I wouldn’t be able to set a trap. I felt dizzy from the loss of blood from my scalp wound.

And I decided I wasn’t going in blind.

It was time to see if Mila had been telling me the truth.