Adrenaline (28 page)

Nic stood. The light in his eyes shifted. Darkened in rage, the anger of the trapped animal. “I don’t work for anyone but you and Edward. He’s tricked me. He’s tricked you. He planted that on me.”

I shook my head. But Piet raised the gun from Nic to me.

“I guess I have a choice to make,” Piet said.

C
ALL IN REINFORCEMENTS?”
August asked Howell. They sat in the van, half a block from the address provided by the Chinese student. It was a gray block of industrial space. Multiple buildings, but the complex looked mostly deserted. Two vehicles parked in front of one door at the end. The rest of the parking lot space was empty.

“You’re rather timid,” Howell said. “Surprises me.”

“One man’s caution,” August said. “I don’t want my friend dead when he’s more valuable to us alive.”

“I like the idea of moving now. No witnesses around,” Van Vleck said.

“I want this kept quiet. I don’t want to attract the attention of the Dutch authorities. What do we have in the van?” Howell asked.

“Four assault rifles, bulletproof vests, infrared goggles.” August looked at him with a scowl. “There’s only the three of us.”

“I can count, Agent Holdwine.”

“I think, respectfully, we should call in backup.” August glanced at Van Vleck. “Capra is trained. We don’t know about the other guy. We should go in with overwhelming force.”

“Two vehicles here. One van, that brought Capra and his contact. The other car’s small. There’s not an army inside.” Howell smiled. “Let’s go, gentleman. I am tired of Sam Capra being a problem for us.”

Van Vleck and August started putting on the bulletproof gear.

“Get that young man to his feet,” Howell said, gesturing at the Chinese hacker. “We’ll use him.”

M
ILA PARKED HER CAR
a few blocks away from the warehouse, at a small café. She pressed her earpiece and closed her eyes for a moment. She heard most of the conversation between Piet and Sam, the offer to Sam of one of the captives to rape. Her breathing grew very calm; a hot, hollow rage expanded in her chest.

She wore a black trench coat over her suit—she had a gun for each pocket and now she also carried a retractable baton. It was her favorite weapon, and she imagined beating Piet and Nic senseless with it. She hurried toward the machinists’ shop on foot.

She heard Sam’s advice to search Nic and the discovery of the microphone and knew what Sam had done. She applauded him. But he was cutting her loose, severing the one tie between them so as to delve closer to these monsters.

But if Howell blundered in now, he would ruin their chance to break inside the ring.

Mila watched the van, crouching from behind a corner a block away. She saw the back of the van open; the Chinese student they’d grabbed lurched out, hands bound. She could see the kid’s face was battered and bruised, a
wet smear of blood below his nostrils. Then the two thick-necked men. Then Howell. All armed.

The three men stopped at the door. She could see the Chinese boy shake his head. They’d stopped at an access keypad by the door. The Chinese boy, hands shaking, entered a code.

The four men entered. Mila hurried toward the van. They were going in full throttle, so they were more worried about their front than their back.

She slid under the van and began to count, watching the door. Her timing would have to be impeccable if Sam was to survive.

H
IM OR ME?” I ASKED
. Nic looked too shocked to speak.

“Or both?” Piet said. “I don’t need trouble.”

“But you still need help,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t even have bothered to talk to me. Nic thinks you’re a joke. He ever make fun of your sword?”

The corner of Piet’s mouth jerked. Sometime in those months, Nic’s disdain had been noted and filed. “Everything you said is correct,” Piet said. “Here. Fine.”

And he handed me the gun. “Kill him.”

Final test. If I was a cop or a plant, I wasn’t going to gun down an unarmed man. This was the line that no one with a shred of decency left would cross.

What decency did I have left? I raised the gun; my head crowded with Lucy and the baby. This man had helped kidnap and assault women, shipping them into slavery. He was smuggling weapons. He was hacking into government databases and stealing information. He was trading in photos of assaulted and abused children.

And I was what—a courtroom on two legs?

I guess I was.

Him or me. And with me, my family.

I fired.

The bullet caught Nic in the chest and he fell back. Bad shot. It didn’t kill him outright. Sorry, Nic. He looked at me with a wrenching stare of agony and hate and I fired again and his face didn’t matter anymore.

I wouldn’t see it again, except maybe in my dreams.

I pulled my shirt loose, wiped my prints off the Glock, and handed the gun back to Piet. My hand didn’t shake. And for one moment the past five seconds seemed like a life that happened to another man.

“Well,” Piet said into the silence. He stared down at Nic’s body.

“Well,” I said. Well, well, well. Who was I now?

“Let’s get to work.” He gestured at the goods. “I like your ideas, but I’ve already got a load of goods to use as camouflage. You reinforced my opinion as to what would work best.”

Nothing like brownie points from the trafficker. I inspected the boxes. Counterfeit cigarettes.

“You’re going to ship your super-duper top-secret stuff inside illicit cigarettes that you then sell in the United States and double your profit. Two birds, one stone.”

“I maximize my efforts.”

Piet was much smarter than he looked. He gestured at the boxes. “About a million euros’ worth.”

I pointed at the shredded, destroyed microphone. “You better hope there wasn’t a tracker in there. Whoever he worked for will be coming when contact gets cut.”

“Which is why we’re going to move everything right now. The women, the cigs.” He turned to the twins and started issuing hard orders in rapid-fire Dutch.

How could I get the women to safety without blowing my cover? Right now, I couldn’t. The thought hurt.

I heard a soft ping. A door opening. I couldn’t see the front door from here: the boxes and boxes of illicit cigarettes made a labyrinth between here and the front door.

I was counting on the arrival being Mila. Which meant I wanted Piet heading out the back with me, abandoning the captives and his goods. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“No,” he whispered. We leaned against the wall. Stacks of boxes barred part of our view. He gestured at the twins, who took up positions ahead of us, closer to the door.

I saw a figure step into view. Not Mila. A thin, young Asian man, walking in, wearing an ill-fitting jacket and loose jeans. He had thick black hair cut in a bad slash; tufts stuck up like little exclamation points.

“He works for Nic,” Piet said. “Hacker.” For some reason he retreated back toward the table.

The Asian kid stumbled forward into the dim light and I saw he’d been beaten. Really worked over. One of the twins—the bald one—said, “Hey, what are you doing here?”

The answer was a bullet that sang out and caught the bald twin in the throat. He sagged to the floor. His brother bellowed a shocked scream and started blasting the boxes with his assault rifle. Puffs of brown powder danced in the air: the fragments of cigarettes, tobacco exploding into miniature clouds by the impact of the bullets ripping through the boxes.

And someone, from cover near the front, shot out some of the lights. I saw the Asian kid scream and run, and then he caught a bullet and sprawled to the floor.

Chaos. Near darkness. I couldn’t let them shoot back—
this could be Mila. Piet ran around one corner of the stacked boxes and I followed him.

Ping
. Another light shattered. One light left, directly over the metal table.

I saw a figure standing near us, laying a round down toward the remaining twin. A dark-haired man. Piet fired before I could react and the man toppled, screaming in English. Both he and Piet raised to fire and I yanked Piet back, out of the line of fire. I needed him alive for now.

“God damn it, what the hell…,” Piet coughed.

“These have to be cops,” I said. “Who else would give Nic a wire like that? We need to get the hell out.”

We ran and an explosion of bullets tore through the cardboard maze.

I
HEARD A CLANG
, metal landing on concrete, and then a blast tore open the biggest stack of the cigarette boxes. Flame erupted from the flying debris; the hot, sweet scent of tobacco crowded the air. The thrum of the blast nearly deafened me. I turned as Piet fired back and I saw him drawing aim on a man through the tendrils of smoke.

August. The Company was here.

I grabbed Piet’s arm, spoiling his shot. The bullet pinged to August’s left and he ducked behind an unused machinist’s lathe. He hadn’t seen me.

“What the—”

“Just run, come on!” I shoved Piet toward the exit. I ran back toward the attackers, vaulted over the lathe and hammered both feet into the side of August’s head as he risked standing up. He sprawled. I didn’t think he had seen me yet. I had to keep it that way without killing him. I grabbed his gun.

The remaining twin ran toward me, expecting me to put a bullet in August’s head. Instead I raised the gun I’d just taken off August and fired right between the twin’s eyes. He had about a second to look surprised before he collapsed.

I ran like hell.

If Howell took me back into custody now, I was done. I would spend the rest of my life in a prison. I couldn’t prove that I worked for Mila’s secret do-gooders, that I was trying to infiltrate a criminal’s inner circle. I would just be a bitter ex-employee keeping company with a slaver. I would vanish back into Howell’s prison, sealed in stone. Or be dead and buried, unmarked, unmourned. Everyone who thought I was a traitor was going to think they were right.

I heard a roar from the lathe. Howell’s voice. Yelling.

I ran past Nic’s body. Piet reappeared, gun in hand, and laid down fire behind me, driving Howell back into cover. I could see Howell returning fire, and then—in a moment when Piet paused to reload—fire coming from the front door.