Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) (35 page)

S
PACE

C
ourtney Meyer

"
M
r. Dobo
," Meyer said, "open that door or stand back and I'll shoot the lock until it gives. If that doesn't work, maybe I'll shoot you and take that bracelet off your arm."

Dobo sighed and touched the bracelet to the reader on the door.

Meyer entered the room and started a frantic search for anything that would lead her to Sam. His computer sat on the desk, screen open and showing what looked like a diagram of a building. She went to it and looked closer.
Damn, damn, damn.
She dug in a pocket and came out with the infernal reading glasses.

"What is this?"

"Looks like an architectural drawing of this tower," Dobo said.

Meyer stared at Dobo, then back to the screen. "You know where he went. I see it in your eyes. I know you think you're helping him, but he's in danger. He needs help."

"Not so sure about that."

"I am!" Meyer said. "He's acting on bad information! Now for the love of God, help me save him before it's too late."

A voice from the direction of the bathroom said, "I'll help you." Meyer looked and couldn't believe her eyes. It was Christine Gamboa.

S
PACE

D
uring the distraction
of the girls heading for the door, a corpulent man had entered the room through the door at the far end of the room, the same one TuxMan had used earlier. Once the girls cleared a path, the bastard had shot me.

"Everybody must to stop!" the man said.

The girls stopped walking and I saw Ally look to me for instructions I didn't yet have. Blood from my shoulder ran down my arm and fell to the floor in a steady procession of fat drops. A pit-faced man who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties walked through the door and approached FatMan. I tried to assimilate and process what I was seeing. I failed.

I still had my gun up but I was one-handed. I knew the guy could shoot, and he already had a bead on me.

Then the situation grew stranger still: Christine Gamboa walked into the room from the corridor, the same way I'd entered. Had she followed me? But she hadn't needed to, had she? She was the one who had told me how to get here.

Gamboa looked at the man with the gun, then looked at me, then back to him. "Sasha? What are you doing?" She pointed at me. "He's one of the good guys, here to help."

"Shut up, Chrissy. He is not 'good guy.' He is big maker of much trouble for Sasha."

Gamboa tilted her head and looked at him, her mouth slightly open, eyes squinting, calculating. After a bit, she said, "Oh my God. I thought it was Max, but it was you? You're the one behind this? How could you?"

He laughed, his barrel chest and big belly shaking, but neither his eyes nor his gun left me. "Max is stupid old man. Oh, he steal much money with computers, but then he so stupid with the girls, wants only to use them as whores. He thinks is big deal to charge fifty thousand dollars to fuck virgin first time. I make this! Me, Sasha Maslov! I make millions on millions."

Even at this distance, I could tell Gamboa was tearing up. She looked devastated. "Oh God, oh God. I was such an idiot. The deal with the FBI, everything, it was all a lie. You evil, evil man."

"Ha! FBI woman with ass like Lada automobile." He started laughing again. "You know old saying, keep enemies close. Stupid woman tell us everything. But you know, Chrissy, does not to matter right now. Right now, we finish sale!"

"No!" Gamboa said. "You can't do this, Sasha! Please!"

"Sasha can. I think if you do not to like this, is maybe time to sell you, Chrissy."

I saw his finger tightening on the trigger. He was about to shoot me again. Everything around me shifted into slow motion. I was diving right, my own finger contracting on the trigger for a shot. Then Maslov pitched forward like a whale falling back into the water. Standing behind him, the pit-faced man was wiping down a leather slapstick.

He looked at the crowd and said, "Nobody move a muscle."

Then he walked toward me and said, "Reaching for ID." He slowly withdrew a small wallet from a pocket inside his jacket, then flipped it open to reveal a badge and said, "Edward Bulgakov, Interpol."

Gamboa was literally in slack-jawed shock, standing there looking at this man.

I lowered my gun and looked to the group of girls. I think every one of them was crying, including Ally. She looked up, saw me, and broke into a run. She fell into my arms—okay, more like fell into my one good arm—sobbing and saying, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy," over and over. I just held her.

W
ithin a couple minutes
, Meyer arrived in the room like a cyclone, gun drawn. She shot a scowl at Gamboa. “That was stupid! You were supposed to stay at the elevator!”

Gamboa folded her arms over her chest and said nothing.

The Interpol agent had hung his badge on a chain around his neck, and when Meyer saw it, she had pretty much the same reaction Gamboa had. Apparently this guy had played his undercover role very well.

After the two agents introduced themselves, apparently not for the first time, I heard Bulgakov say, "These scum were here as buyers."

Someone from the direction of the crowd started saying, "Diplomatic immunity! I have diplomatic immunity!"

I looked and saw that it was one of the robed Arabs. I called Meyer over. When she got there, I whispered in her ear. She squinted her eyes and looked at me for a few seconds, then said, “Sorry, I can’t leave you with a suspect.”

I sighed. Two can play the pressure game, and my P.I. is very good at digging up dirt. The kind that ends FBI careers. I whispered in her ear again, this time for about thirty seconds.

Her eyes narrowed and burned, but she said nothing. Instead she nodded once and walked over to Bulgakov and said something.

Then she approached the group of hugging and crying girls. "Okay, ladies," she said, "let's get you out of here."

The girls gravitated toward her. I looked at Ally. "Sweetie, go with Agent Meyer, okay? I'll be up in a few minutes." She squeezed me in a long, fierce hug, then let go and joined the others.

Bulgakov had a gun out now and was rounding up the crowd, including a very pissed-off-looking Maslov. He stood in the opening to the corridor, and once all the girls had been elevatored up, he motioned the gaggle of human filth to exit the room. As the diplomat walked by him, Bulgakov grabbed his robe and pulled him out of the line. "You stay." Then he brought up the rear and followed the rest of them out into the corridor.

RobeMan looked smug, standing there with a semi-sneer on his face. I stood in the opening, watching the room and the corridor. In a couple minutes I saw Dobo step from the elevator. He had come to help ferry the prisoners upstairs in manageable groups. That took twenty minutes, and then it was just RobeMan and me, alone in the quiet.

I walked over to him and said, "Diplomat, huh?"

He sniffed and nodded, standing there with his chin stuck out like he was posing for a sculptor. "I demand to be released and my embassy notified immediately."

"You're an arrogant prick, aren't you?"

"How dare you sp—"

My uppercut caught him right on the bottom of his chin, and it was a good one. It had that satisfying feeling, like the thwack you get when you connect just right with the sweet spot of a baseball bat on the ball. He staggered backward, flailing around in his robe as he tried not to fall. He wound up on his knees.

I took my time walking to him. He was addled but certainly aware enough to understand that things weren't going his way. His eyes got wider as I grew closer. "Bet you intended to bid on my little girl, didn't you?"

He violently shook his head. "No, no, I had no idea what this was! I would never—"

"Shut up." He did, and I continued. "In your world, there is no justice for piles of shit like you." I slipped the Desert Dagger from its sheath on the right side of my tactical vest.

"Wh-what are you doing?"

I gave him my most charming Sam Flatt smile and said, "Welcome to my world. Let's get acquainted."

S
PACE

I
refused
to go to FBI headquarters to give my statement, and Meyer didn't push it. Instead, after I said farewell to Nichols and thanked for all his help, I met her in Rings of Saturn, where we were situated in a quiet booth at the back of the room After I gave her my version of all that had happened—the version I was able to share—I needed some answers myself. "What will happen to Gamboa?"

Meyer blew out a long sigh. "She sold access to her employer's network for a half-million dollars. She's facing serious charges."

"No deal for testimony?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. Not my call. You know, I shouldn't be discussing any of this with you. And I
certainly
shouldn’t have left you with the Saudi Arabian."

"Kind of like I shouldn't have been disclosing my client's business to you without a warrant or court order? You started the pressure game. As far as I’m concerned, we’re even. I say we put it all behind us and consider it a job well done."

She puffed out her cheeks and blew out a long breath. “What I say here goes no further, right?"

"Of course not."

"If her info is good, she'll probably get off with probation."

I nodded. "What about Sultanovich and Maslov?"

"They'll never see life outside an American prison again if I have anything to do with it. Looks like Sultanovich had no idea about the sales angle. That was all Maslov."

"Speaking of those two, it had to piss you off that the Interpol agent was operating here without notifying you guys."

I could see the red rising in her face. "That's an understatement."

"Why'd he do that?"

"Claimed he was afraid the bureau was compromised, someone might blow his cover. I think he's just an undercover hot dog who wanted the bust himself."

"You think he knew about the trafficking operation?"

Meyer shook her head. "I don't think anybody knew about them selling girls, before you found it. I think the Interpol asshole was chasing the hacking and prostitution ring, no more."

"You have anything on the ones who abducted Ally? I know Sultanovich was behind it; I'm talking about the actual operators."

"We tracked the car back to a chop shop run by a Hispanic gang. We think the Eastern Europeans use them for muscle around here." Meyer looked at me over the top of her boat anchor of a laptop. "And to be clear, you're sure you know nothing at all about four Hispanic bodies in the men's room at SPACE?"

I chewed, shrugged, and shook my head.

She did a spate of typing, then looked up again. "And tell me again what happened with the Saudi?"

"There was a struggle. Bastard tried to take my knife." I slathered butter on my Renduvian Roll and took a bite. "Have you tried these rolls?"

"And in this…struggle, he was accidentally disemboweled and castrated?"

"He was a lot bigger than me, and I'd been shot. Must have been an adrenaline thing."

Meyer typed a little more, then closed the lid on her computer. She cocked her head a bit, squinted, and said, "Who
are
you?"

"Unclavius Samuel Flatt, ma'am, but you can call me Sam."

T
HREE MONTHS
LATER

"
I
t's critical
, Jimmy. These people have been through enough," I said into the phone. "I want to be sure these Russian and Ukrainian gangsters have no records of who the families of these people are. I don't want them to go through life scared shitless."

Jimmy the Geek said, "Dude, whatever data those assholes used to have, they ain't got no more. Told you, I found that data. Dumbasses had it sitting on a hard drive in a spreadsheet. It's gone. And for the record? Just about everything else they had that was digital? That's gone, too. Once I was into their network, I cleaned house."

"All right. You rock, man."

"Where you been, by the way? I did all this freaking forever ago, the night you called me about it."

"Call it a sabbatical. This is the first time I've been in range of a cell tower. Listen, gotta go, bud."

"Later, dude."

I touched END CALL and dropped the phone back into one of the saddle bags. I stroked Johnny's neck and breathed in his beautiful equine aroma while I looked out over a spectacular scene of Colorado mountain forests turning a thousand different colors. Crystal blue lakes lay nestled in the huge valley below.

"Ready to ride, Johnny?"

Johnny snorted and tossed his head. The phone rang again and I fished it out of the old leather bag. "Hey, Abby."

"You okay?" she said. "Been months since we heard from you."

"Yeah. I'm great, Ab."

"Listen, back when those men took Ally, you said something to me, something I never answered.

"I remember."

"Sammy, I love you, too."

I smiled and said, "I know."

T
HE END

T
hanks for reading Unallocated Space
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appy reading
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