Ops Files II--Terror Alert (20 page)

“Are you ready to do this?” Jeff asked, glancing at his watch for the tenth time.

“Sure. We should be fine,” she said. She’d walked the block at twilight, passing the warehouse with her head down, her methodical scrutiny of the premises disguised as the trudging of a tired worker on her way home. She’d seen no cameras, no guards, nothing to indicate the premises were in any way monitored. When she reported back, Jeff called in the preliminary assessment to headquarters and, after forty minutes, got the okay to take a closer look at the warehouse.

London was obviously skittish, no doubt because they were operating on foreign soil without official sanction and with no clear objective. Both Maya and Jeff were unarmed – which, while a necessary condition given their innocuous roles, placed them in jeopardy if their adversaries got wind of their interest, and Maya could sympathize with the case officer’s reluctance to put them in harm’s way.

They got out of the car and moved toward the warehouse. As they neared, Jeff slowed and leaned into Maya. “There are lights on inside. Stay out here. I’ll go take a look.”

“I can go with you.”

“You’re to stay put. No theatrics. This is a surveillance operation, not a seek-and-destroy mission. It requires a surgical touch.”

“Hard to have much more than that with no weapons.”

“That’s not the point. Keep an eye out.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, her voice flat.

Jeff disappeared into the yard while Maya waited near a towering pile of refuse. She cocked her head, listening, and moments later heard footsteps running from the building. Jeff appeared, breathing heavily, and whispered to her, “Stay out of sight. A vehicle’s coming out.”

“Who?”

“The paint. They used it to paint a truck,” he hissed as he pressed behind the trash heap.

“Not make a bomb?”

A motor revved from the warehouse. Big tires crunched on gravel and the distinctive form of a beer truck, its logo famous in the UK, roared past them, the entire vehicle freshly painted bright red.

“Apparently not,” Jeff said.

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. But I have an ugly suspicion…” He paused when the truck’s taillights blinked as it braked, and then they disappeared out of sight as it turned onto the cross street. “Damn.”

“Do we go after it?” Maya asked.

“By the time we get back to the car, it will be long gone.”

“Then what?”

“Stay put. I’m going to see what else I can find in the warehouse.”

“But if they were using the paint on the truck…”

“Just do as you’re told. I’ll be back.”

Before she could argue, Jeff had darted back onto the grounds, leaving her frustrated and annoyed with his dismissive arrogance. She bit back her anger and listened for his return, determined to follow orders in spite of her instincts. One minute stretched into two, and then she heard boots approaching – heavy, careful steps – not Jeff’s distinctive rubber-soled shoes.

She sprinted for the shadows on the far side of the lot and had just reached the low wall that circled the adjacent abandoned buildings when she spied a tall man sweeping the area around the trash with a flashlight – and unless she was mistaken, holding a handgun. Maya ducked behind the wall and didn’t wait to see whether the gunman would continue his search. That he had appeared and not Jeff was ominous enough. That he had a gun doubly so. It meant that whatever was hidden in the warehouse was worth risking the full weight of the British legal system to protect.

She edged to the first abandoned structure, a two-story building the size of an airplane hangar that was easily a hundred years old judging by its crumbling façade, and entered it. Nothing stirred inside, but the stink of urine and filth told her that it played home to some of the local vagrants.

Maya quickly sized up the fallen beams and partially collapsed columns, but saw nothing that would serve as a useful weapon against a pistol, even if she was lucky enough to get the jump on the gunman. Her eyes roved over the second level, and she spotted a landing. It was iffy, but it could work, depending on whether the man followed her in and where he stepped. She calculated the distance from the landing to the entrance and then was in motion, the scrape of boots outside all the warning she needed.

Water dripped from gaping rents in the roof, splashing in puddles on the refuse-littered floor as the gunman played his beam across the interior of the building from the entryway. The light stopped at one of the cavities along the wall, the darkness in the gap absolute. The gunman held the flashlight on the area for several seconds, and then took his first steps into the cavernous space, his pistol gripped in the other hand.

Maya was a blur as she swung down from above, a fragment of brick the size of a grenade in her hand. The gunman spun as she dropped, but too late, and the brick cracked against his skull with a sickening thwack. He crumpled to his knees, stunned. The gun fell by his side, and Maya followed through on the attack as she’d been taught, with a brutal strike to the nerve meridian at the base of the neck.

Training had predicted that would be enough to put the man down, but apparently nobody had told the gunman, because he struggled to rise instead of collapsing. Painfully aware that with his greater size and strength he could do serious damage if she didn’t take him out within seconds, she grabbed both sides of his head from behind and twisted with all her might.

His neck snapped, and his body shuddered and went limp. Maya stood over his collapsed form, and after confirming that he posed no further threat, scooped up the gun and flashlight. She checked the weapon – a 9mm semiautomatic with its serial number filed off – and extinguished the flashlight.

She now had no doubt that Jeff was in serious trouble, if still alive – the only source of hope being that she hadn’t heard a shot.

Yet.

Jeff’s head hung over his chest, his hands bound behind him, the hard wooden chair he was seated in threatening to fall over as he regained consciousness. Blood drooled from his open mouth and he groaned – it felt like he’d been mauled by a bear, and his head was throbbing with lances of pain that shot from his eyes into his brain with every labored breath. He coughed, a ragged hack, and tried to open his eyes.

The rough surface of a calloused hand slapped his face with a crack. He winced and forced his lids open, and saw the scowling countenance of a middle-aged bearded man glaring hate at him. The figure faded in and out as Jeff’s vision blurred, and he blinked rapidly to clear it.

“Who are you?” the man growled, his face inches from Jeff’s, the smell of garlic and onions on his breath threatening to choke him.

“Leonard Manning,” Jeff lied, using his operational alias.

“Who are you with?”

“I…I’m afraid I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“What were you doing snooping around here?”

“Looking for the owner. I want to rent space.”

“Liar!” Another slap snapped Jeff’s head to the side. “You will tell me the truth, or you won’t leave here alive.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Are you Israeli?”

“What? See here. I don’t know what the meaning of this is, but I can assure you–”

“Enough.” The interrogator held up a gleaming knife. “I see you’ll need some convincing. Fine by me.”

Jeff’s eyes widened and he switched approaches. “I’m with Scotland Yard. Your little plan is blown, and if you so much as lay a hand on me, you’ll be buried under the jail,” he said, his English public school accent exaggerated for emphasis.

His captor leered an evil grin at him and studied the knife blade before holding it against Jeff’s cheek. “Any more lies and I’ll filet you like a cod. Last time: who are you with?”

Jeff looked over the man’s shoulder and then locked eyes with him. “Put the knife down and I’ll see that you aren’t harmed.”

The man chuckled humorlessly. “You think I’m going to fall for that?”

The unmistakable sound of a pistol hammer being cocked sounded from behind him, and Maya spoke quietly. “I can put a round in your spine if you need convincing, and you’ll spend the rest of your miserable life in a wheelchair. Put down the blade.”

The man pivoted and lunged for Maya, but he was too far away, and she calmly shot him in the leg, shattering his kneecap. He screamed in agony and went down hard on the concrete floor, the knife skittering across the surface as he writhed in pain. Maya moved to the weapon and retrieved it, then closed the distance to Jeff, the gun trained on the wounded assailant the entire time.

She slashed his bindings and freed him, and then took several steps toward the fallen man, her expression placid as a mountain lake. “I warned you.” She knelt beside him and frisked him, pausing to withdraw a small nickel-plated revolver from his pocket before standing again. “Now, since you enjoy questions, I have some of my own. Let’s start with the truck. Why did you paint it?”

“I don’t have to answer any questions. I know my rights,” the man hissed through clenched teeth.

“Really? That’s an interesting thought. Rights. I mean, I suppose if I were the police, you’d have some. But I’m not.” She smiled. “Your associate won’t be coming back to help you, so it’s just us. Which means I can take your knife and slice you up like a Christmas goose, and nobody can help you. Is that what you want me to do? Start cutting, like you were ready to do to him?”

Jeff managed to stand. “We need to make a call. The home office will know what to do.”

“Fine. You make a call. I’m going to start with his fingers. Maybe by the time someone arrives, he’ll be down to just a torso.” She sensed Jeff stiffen, and fixed him with a hard stare. “Here’s how I see it: his buddy tried to kill me. This is his gun. This piece of garbage was preparing to flay you in order to get information out of you. I see no reason not to use the identical tactics to learn what we need to know from him. Do you?”

Jeff held her gaze for a moment and then turned away. “Do what you need to do.”

The man’s breathing stuttered as she held up the knife. “Hope you don’t have any plans on taking up the piano.”

“No,” he said, his voice low.

“Why paint the truck?”

“We were told to.”

“By whom?”

“A man. Our contact.”

She shook her head and leaned over him with the knife. “And let me guess. You know nothing about him, or where he is, or why he wanted a beer truck.”

“I…I know where they are taking the truck. That’s all.”

Maya exchanged a glance with Jeff. “Where?”

The man rattled off an address in Manchester.

“Why do I think you’re making this up?” Maya whispered.

“I swear I’m not. Please. It’s all I know.”

“What are they planning to do with the truck?”

“I have no idea.”

Jeff called out to her from a row of lockers mounted along the wall. “Take a look at this.”

Maya approached to examine the photos taped to the locker. She nodded and walked unhurriedly back to the wounded man. “I have a feeling you aren’t taking this seriously. That’s a shame, because now my job becomes convincing you that you’re in real trouble. Generally, having your kneecap blown off would do the trick, but it obviously hasn’t. So I guess you’ll spend the rest of your life on a pair of sticks, because in about three seconds the other one’s going to join the first one in hell.” She aimed the pistol at the man’s good leg, her hand steady.

“No. Please,” the wounded man begged.

“The uniforms in the picture. Why would you want examples of the brewing company’s uniforms…” Maya paused, the light bulb going on over her head. “They plan to smuggle something into the stadium.” She aimed down the barrel of the gun at the man’s good knee. “Isn’t that right? Now the question is, what?”

“A bomb,” Jeff whispered. “It has to be.”

“I…I swear…I don’t know. I just helped paint. That’s it.”

Jeff shook his head. “No, it’s not. You also assaulted me, and you were carrying a gun in a country that rather frowns on that. I’d say you’re part of a terrorist group that’s planning to carry out some atrocity. Is that close enough to the truth to get your attention?”

The man remained silent, his eyes clamped shut.

“Do you know what they do to terrorists in prison here? I’ll give you a hint. It doesn’t involve paradise or seventy-two virgins.”

“I don’t know anything more,” the man spat.

Jeff neared him and handed him a length of cord. “Tie that around your thigh or you’ll bleed to death.”

The terrorist complied, and then Jeff moved behind him with more rope and quickly secured his wrists. He tested his handiwork as Maya held the gun on the wounded man, and repeated the process with the terrorist’s ankles. When Jeff was done, he straightened and looked to Maya.

“Let’s go see what’s at that address. If he lied to us, we come back and boil him alive. If he told us the truth, we’ll have someone from headquarters pick him up, get him medical attention, and then interrogate him properly someplace more private.” Jeff turned to the man again. “You understand? That address turns out to be a chips shop, you’ll suffer the tortures of the damned, and it won’t change anything, because we know enough to stop your scheme regardless of what happens next. Last chance. Is that address correct, or do you want to learn why, after I’m done with my prisoners, they beg for death?”

“That’s where they took it.”

“And you have no idea why?” Maya demanded.

The man looked away. “No.”

Maya and Jeff exited the building, and she considered him with new respect. “You okay?”

“Little roughed up, but I’ll survive.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“I’ll call headquarters and have him picked up. He probably knows more, but right now there’s a limit to how effective fear and pain will be. I think we got everything we’re going to for the moment.”

“We also have the problem of a body next door.”

“You haven’t told me how you neutralized an armed man with your bare hands.”

Maya gave him an abridged version, and he stared at her for several long beats. “I’ll see to it that they send a cleaning crew. Wouldn’t want the locals to stumble across him and call the bobbies.” He looked around at the shabby area as they reached the car. “Not that those who would be wandering this area at night would be particularly friendly with the authorities, I’d wager. And since you clobbered him with a brick, they might just stay out of it altogether, fancying it was a drug tussle of some sort.”