Shadow

by James Swallow

  “We’ve got company.”

  Marc held up his smartphone, staring at the image on the screen. The cameras up in their temporary office hideout beamed a live video feed via wireless signal to Marc’s device, showing a dark blue Renault Megane as it skidded to a halt outside the gallery. Three men boiled out of the car, clutching weapons, and a split second later they were pummeling on the front door across the room.

  This time, the building’s security was working in Marc’s favor.

  “Is there another way out?”

  He shot the blonde woman a look and she nodded fearfully.

  “Through the back of the storehouse!”

  “Get out of here,” Marc snapped, waving her away with the barrel of his gun.

  She didn’t need to be told twice, and the woman broke into a frantic run, discarding her high heels as she went.

  “You let her go?” said Lucy, as she grabbed Van de Greif and dragged him to his feet.

  “We don’t need her, just this dickhead.” Marc beckoned. “Come on!”

  “You heard him.” Lucy jabbed the antique dealer in the back. “Move your ass. Looks like we’re doing a snatch and grab after all.”

  Van de Greif wailed something about his broken nose, but he stumbled forward as she shoved him toward the archway door into the storehouse. Marc followed, still watching what was going on outside through the remote feed. The men from the car gave up trying to shoulder open the door and one of them unlimbered a pistol-grip pump-action shotgun ending in a fat sound suppressor, working the slide to chamber a round. He fired into the mechanism as Marc, Lucy and their prisoner reached the other doorway.

  Wood splintered and metal fragments scattered into the gallery as more shots blasted off the hinges. The front door fell in, crashing to the floor like a drawbridge.

  Short of the archway, Marc ducked into the scant cover of a glass display cabinet as the three men burst in. They had that blunt-faced, always-angry look he associated with thugs and football hooligans, shaven-headed and heavy with inky tattoos.

  The one with the shotgun came through first and saw Marc right away. The man had to rack a fresh round to open fire, and that bought him precious seconds. Marc brought his Glock up over the glass cabinet and squeezed the trigger. Both rounds zipped past the shotgunner’s head without connecting, but it made the man dive for the floor, giving Marc an opening. He rushed out of cover, sprinting toward the archway.

  Ahead of him, Lucy pivoted, one hand holding a clump of Van de Greif’s expensive suit jacket, the other aiming her MP9 at the men in the group. In the instant she fired, the antique dealer kicked her in the shin and hauled her off balance. The burst from Lucy’s weapon went wild, stitching bullet holes up the wall and into the ceiling, missing the targets. Before she could react, Van de Greif punched her and snaked out of his jacket, slipping away in a flash of white cotton shirt.

  The other two men had silenced pistols, and they opened up on Marc as he dashed across their field of vision. The guns chugged and glass shattered around him, hollow-point rounds echoing noisily off centuries-old brass castings. Marc blind-fired back, and a lucky hit caught one of the shooters in the shoulder, slamming the man into a table with the shock of the impact.

  He got to Lucy and the two of them moved through the connecting vestibule between the buildings. Lucy fired another burst behind them to discourage pursuit, and Marc grabbed at the automatic sliding door, trying to pull it shut.

  It didn’t budge a centimeter. Whatever mechanism opened and closed it was locked in place, and the metal security door was too heavy to move by brute force.

  “Forget it!” snapped Lucy. “Get him!”

  She jabbed a finger toward Van de Greif, who was already clattering down the spiral staircase to the basement level. On the far side of the storehouse, the doors to the loading dock and the back alley beyond were hanging open, where the dealer’s assistant had fled. Lucy instinctively aimed her MP9 to put shots into the man, but hesitated. They needed him alive if they were to find out where Noah Verbeke had gone to ground.

  Marc took a shortcut around her, avoiding the stairs and vaulting over the cast-iron banister. He dropped the rest of the distance on to a fat sack of polystyrene packing peanuts resting on the basement floor. The bag exploded under his weight, spewing plastic nuggets in all directions, and his off-kilter landing threw him forward. Marc used the momentum to race after the dealer, who was almost at the door.

  He caught Van de Greif as the man stumbled out into the morning air, grabbing his arm, yanking him back. His quarry spun wildly and clipped Marc in the temple with a closed fist, lighting sparks in his vision.

  The roar of an engine sounded behind them as a second car, identical to the one up on Lebeaustraat, screeched to a halt and blocked the alleyway. Three more Lion’s Roar thugs scrambled from the vehicle, and the first out was a narrow-eyed man carrying a cut-down Zastava carbine. The gunman reacted with instant violence, spraying a fan of 7.62mm bullets at waist level.

  Marc was already throwing himself toward the doors the instant the M92’s barrel turned in his direction. Untrained and unready, Van de Greif did not react in time and took rounds through the chest at close range, his white shirt suddenly marred with bursts of crimson. Marc hit the ground and rolled into cover, firing again, his rounds sparking off the flanks of the car.

  Inside the storehouse, Lucy’s SMG was snarling as she fired up the spiral stairs, forcing the men who had breached the gallery to hang back. She saw Marc and her eyes widened.

  “You’re hit!”

  “What?” He glanced down and saw red spatters across his jacket where Van de Greif’s blood had marked him. “It’s not mine.”

  Her face fell. “The dickhead?”

  Marc made a throat-cutting gesture with his thumb.

  “Shit!”

  To underline the dire turn events were taking, the Zastava kicked off again, bullets punching holes through the heavy wooden doors of the loading dock. Marc and Lucy returned fire, retreating deeper into the storehouse.

  The Glock’s slide locked open and Marc ejected the empty magazine, smacking in a fresh one.

  “These guys must have been camped out around the corner, waiting for the word.”

  “Verbeke’s smart,” Lucy said, hissing in the sudden quiet between the gunfire. “He wasn’t planning on letting Van de Greif live. We just moved up the timetable.”

  Marc cast around.

  “No sign of the printer in here. He wasn’t lying.”

  “Looks like,” she agreed.

  The men on the upper level tried to push forward again, and this time Marc and Lucy held their fire until the shotgunner was exposed on the upper landing. The storehouse was full of shadows and the guy didn’t see them at first, as he panned around with his weapon.

  Out in the alley, Marc heard the indistinct mutter of voices. The two teams were talking to one another.

  “We don’t want to be here when the cops arrive, and that won’t be long,” Lucy said in his ear.

  She braced her MP9 on a wooden crate, holding the gun’s fore grip tightly—and then fired. In the dimness, a jet of flame spat from the weapon’s muzzle and bullets bracketed the shotgunner, sparking off the iron stairs. The man took hits and fell, and one of his teammates ducked low, dragging his body into the vestibule before Lucy could reload. Immediately, more shots came streaking in from the loading dock.

  “Trying to keep us pinned,” Marc called.

  He dived flat on the concrete floor, and between the planks of a cargo pallet he saw combat boots shuffling forward, out in the daylight. Drawing a bead, he put a 9mm round through the broad side of the shooter’s leading foot, and the man screamed, crashing to the ground. Two follow-up shots went into the torso and kept him down.

  “Moving!”

  Lucy broke cover and ran for the foot of the spiral staircase.

  Marc sprang up and ran after her, catching sight of movement at the top of the stairs, at the entrance
to the vestibule. Orange firelight flickered in the shadows, and one of the gunmen tossed two liquor bottles into the air, each with an improvised wick down the neck and already burning. He grabbed Lucy and pulled her aside as expensive Tanqueray and Belvedere firebombs shattered against the crates and piles of packing material. The alcohol exploded into blue flashes, instantly catching the dry kindling. Flames roared to life, ripping around the basement and sucking in air through the open doors. The rest of the contents of Van de Greif’s pricey drinks tray came sailing down after, smashing against the walls and the floor.

  Then the gunmen drew back, leaving Marc and Lucy to burn. If they made a break for it out the back, they would be cut down. Going up through the vestibule would channel them into a kill box. The flames gathered in a crackling knot near the far wall and began to spread. They had seconds at best before the fire surrounded them.

  “Up!”

  Marc pointed to a wooden service ladder mounted on the storage racks, and Lucy acknowledged with a nod and a stifled cough.

  Above them, four stories high over the open drop to the basement floor, the canted roof of the storehouse had a square skylight. As Lucy began the climb, Marc pressed the cuff of his jacket to his face as a makeshift mask and fired into the window overhead, shattering the heavy pane. He dodged aside as jagged pieces of glass came raining down, and then started up the ladder after Lucy.

  Gusts of heat, channeled by the stone walls, turned the open interior of the storehouse into a chimney. The fire rolled forward, consuming other crates as fuel, and Marc heard the cracking of ancient ceramics as the flames destroyed the gallery’s secret stash. He had no time to lament the destruction, however. The lowest steps of the wooden ladder smoked as the fire lapped at them.

  Somewhere outside, the rising-falling whoop of a siren was coming closer, but Marc concentrated on putting one hand in front of the other, pulling himself up rung over rung.

  The black and pungent smoke made his eyes water and his lungs tense. He reached up and his hand grasped at nothing. Then he felt Lucy grab his wrist and she guided him over the top, on the highest level of the storage racks. Belatedly, the building’s sprinkler system kicked in, but the spray was angled down and away from them. Marc wobbled on the slim, slippery ledge at the top of the racks, and looked down. The fire sputtered and crackled beneath the sprinkler deluge but it didn’t die out.

  “Last step,” he coughed, lining himself up with the broken window. “Have to jump for it.”

  Lucy nodded. Neither of them needed to say that missing the sill would mean a fall that would kill.

  Dwelling on the danger would only destroy his resolve, so Marc didn’t wait. He pushed himself off the rack, feeling it sway alarmingly as he leaped. He hit the bullet-smashed frame hard with both hands, and hung on for dear life. Nubs of glass cut at his palms but he pushed the pain away, hauling his weight up through the broken skylight and on to the terracotta roof tiles. Rolling on to his front, Marc squeezed halfway back inside, and waved to Lucy, holding out his hands.

  She leaped like a wildcat and their arms slapped together. Marc’s heart almost stopped when Lucy slipped, but he held tight and so did she. In a mingled growl of effort, the two of them worked to get her out and into the cold air. Sprawled on the rooftop, they both fell into racking coughs as they cleared the smoke from their lungs.

  “Need to move,” he managed, crawling to the edge.

  The next building was a story lower with a flat top, and he dropped down on to it. Lucy followed a moment later, and found him peeking over the edge.

  “They’re gone?” she guessed.

  He nodded. “Two police cars down there. Fire engines will be coming.”

  “We need to move fast.”

  She pointed to the west, and Marc saw the bug-like shape of a white MD 900 helicopter vectoring in their direction from over Châtelain. She didn’t wait for him to agree, and set off across the rooftops, fast and fleet-footed.

  SEVENTEEN

  When the thick sackcloth bag came off Meddur’s face he flinched away from the bright light. Strong, gloved hands pressed him back into the plastic lawn chair he found himself in. The zip-tie holding his wrists together was cut off and he trembled.

  He looked around desperately, searching for any sign of Sakina and the children. In the vehicle that had brought them here, Meddur had heard them crying and whimpering in the darkness, but each attempt he made to speak to his family had been rewarded with a kick in the head. Now he saw no evidence of them, and his blood chilled.

  The lawn chair was sitting on the floor inside a large tent, the kind that rich people on television took into the woods for camping trips. The zip-flap door was closed, so Meddur couldn’t see outside. In front of the chair, a set of industrial lamps on a stand seared him with punishing light, and he could make out a folding table next to it, with a computer atop it.

  In the shadows behind the lamps, indistinct figures moved around, conversing in Dutch. Then one of them detached and came fully into view, a broad-shouldered white man with a shaven head and a grin like a shark’s. He wore heavy boots, denim trousers and a black vest. Complex sleeves of tattoos ran from his shoulders to wrists, over hard planes of muscle. Meddur’s terror grew as he realized that the people who had taken them were not the traffickers, not the police … They were something worse.

  “You speak English?” said the man.

  “Yes.” Meddur nodded.

  “The woman and the children, do they?”

  “No.” His first instinct was to lie, hoping to protect them. He shifted in the chair. “Please, where are my family—”

  That earned him an open-handed slap across the head, almost hard enough to knock him to the ground.

  “I ask the questions.”

  “Don’t hurt them!”

  The big man ignored his words.

  “Someone else could have done this,” he said. “I didn’t have to get my hands dirty. But I wanted to take a look at you. To see what you’re made of.” He stalked around Meddur, prowling as an animal would. “Just to remind myself that I am right.”

  “I do not understand.”

  The man crouched down so he was at eye level with his captive.

  “Why didn’t you fight? When they came into your home, threatened your wife and children, why didn’t you resist?”

  A cold, judgmental hatred simmered behind the man’s gaze.

  “They had guns. They would have—”

  “Coward!” He barked the word. “You’re weak, like all of your kind. A man would have fought, guns or not.” He leaned close. “A white man would have fought for his family, no matter the odds. But you gave up and let them take you. You people don’t know what courage is.”

  Meddur shook, feeling hot tears course down his cheeks.

  “No. No!”

  His stifling fear was briefly swamped by a potent rush of shame, and he hung his head. The terrible humiliation of knowing he had been unable to stop the abduction made him sick inside. It was the responsibility of a father and a husband to protect his family, and he had failed.

  The man spat at his feet.

  “You come here, spineless and grasping, after ruining your own country, and you bring your weakness to my home.” He jabbed Meddur in the chest. “You corrupt everything.”

  “I … We…” Meddur gasped, trying to form the words, holding on to his last shred of defiance. “We are looking for a better life—”

  Any reply he could make would have been wrong. The man slapped him again.

  “You don’t deserve that! This is our nation, not yours! You have no right to come here, begging for help when what you really want is to take what is mine!”

  He cocked back his fists, and Meddur saw the raw rage about to burst its banks.

  “Noah,” said a female voice in a warning tone, from out in the shadows. “Don’t break him.”

  Meddur blinked. He recognized the French accent. It was the hooded woman from the house.


  “Get out.”

  The man she called Noah snarled at the woman, and another of the shadows broke away and moved off.

  Meddur saw the tent flap open, glimpsing rusted metal walls outside before it closed again.

  Noah hovered on the brink of unleashing his hate on his prisoner, and then slowly he took a step back.

  “I’ll give you a chance to show you have courage,” he told him. “You can prove to your family that you are not a coward.”

  He snapped his fingers, summoning another man to step into the light. Meddur only saw the other one briefly, glimpsing an acne-scarred face with curly black hair, as he handed a sheet of paper to the bigger man. Noah studied the writing on the page as the second man moved something into view. A tripod, and atop it was a large camera with multiple lenses.

  Noah dropped the paper in Meddur’s lap.

  “Can you read that?”

  Cautiously, Meddur studied the document. His grasp of written English was adequate, but he had to work at it. His mouth moved silently as he followed the words with a finger.

  “Out loud, stupid,” said the other man, adjusting the camera so it aimed at the prisoner in the chair. He spoke with a coarse American accent.

  Meddur shook his head. “Please, I do not know what any of this means.”

  Panic surged in his belly. The words on the page were meaningless to him.

  Noah took his hesitation to be defiance, and with a swift movement he reached into the shadows, returning with a heavy, silenced pistol in his fist. He cocked the gun’s slide.

  “Which one do you care for the least?” He threw out the question. “The woman? The boy or the girl? Tell me, so the ones you love most will die last.”

  “No, stop!” Meddur bolted up from the chair, but Noah hit him in the sternum with the heel of his hand, and he crashed back, wheezing. “Don’t hurt them, please, I beg you! Kill me if you must but not them! Please!” He sobbed out the words.

  “Finally, a little bravery. I could kill you,” Noah said, toying with the idea. “Perhaps as a lesson. I think if I did, your wife would obey me when she saw your corpse.”