He wasn’t smiling now.
Drake was surprised, however, that the man was still standing considering he had taken a bullet in the hip less than two days ago.
“Let’s see you walk away from this,” Drake said, raising the Tokarev pistol in his hand.
He fired three shots but wasn’t prepared for the increased kick of the Russian handgun compared to his nine-millimeter: all three bullets missed.
Despite his injury, the man turned and bolted.
Drake’s own internal turmoil was catching up with him, as well. He hurried after the Russian, but he was well aware that his pace had slowed and that the right side of his body was no longer in sync with the left.
And yet he pressed on.
Drake fired two more shots, one that embedded itself in the plaster above the man’s head, while the other hit him in the shoulder. The force of the impact was enough to send him reeling forward.
Drake sprinted wanting to take advantage of the twice-wounded man, but the Russian still had one more surprise up his sleeve. He unfurled as Drake approached, revealing a Tokarev of his own.
“Fuck!”
Drake lunged to his left as the man fired three rounds.
Like Drake’s first attempts, all three of the Russian’s shots missed as well.
But they had come close; too close. Drake felt one whiz by his ear, and his hair was filled with plaster from the other two that were embedded just above the top of his head.
The sound was deafening in the hallway and Drake was momentarily disoriented. Thinking that he only had another second or two before the Russian took aim again, he forced himself off the wall, bringing the Tokarev up in front of his face.
But the Russian had other ideas. He pulled a keycard from his belt and unlocked the door at the end of the hall.
Not again, Drake thought as the man slipped through. He ran for the opening, leading with the handgun; it closed on the barrel.
Instinct had taken over now, and Drake’s next actions barely registered in his brain. With his free hand, he grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, while at the same time shielding himself behind it.
Several more shots rang out, but all they did was pepper the hallway.
It was no longer just him and the squat Russian, Drake realized; he could hear shouts in different languages, with different accents coming from within the room.
It’s now or never…
He swung around the open door, leading with the Tokarev. His body wanted to empty the clip into the dark interior, but his mind convinced him otherwise.
There could be girls in here. Mandy and Veronica could be in here.
Drake pressed his back against the wall while he waited for his eyes to adjust.
Two more bullets erupted from the darkness, one of which tore the sleeve of his sports coat. Drake immediately dropped into a crouch and tried to ascertain from which direction they’d come from.
Only he was momentarily taken aback by what he saw.
The interior of the hexagonal-shaped room reminded him of a Las Vegas sports book. Only, instead of having the screens on one wall and chairs situated across from it, the TVs were arranged in the center. Surrounding them were booths made of some sort of semitransparent glass that ran floor to ceiling like boxed-in cubicles. Inside of each, he could make out the outline of a figure.
His first thought was that these were the girls, but when the outline in the cubicle nearest him rose and started to bang on the glass, he knew differently.
These weren’t the auction items, they were the buyers. And they appeared to be locked in their bidding rooms.
Drake scowled and he considered filling the man with bullets from the Tokarev.
And he might have, too, if it wasn’t for another shot that struck the wall to his left.
This time, Drake saw where it had come from. He realized that behind the bidder booths was a narrow track that followed the circumference of the room. And while the Russian had gone right after entering, he’d gone all the way around and was now on Drake’s left.
Drake emptied the Tokarev clip in the Russian’s direction. Several of the bullets struck the booths, but instead of shattering the glass, they made softball-sized rosettes.
The shouts from the bidders intensified, and it took Drake a moment to figure out that they were coming from speakers embedded somewhere in the ceiling.
But he didn’t give a shit about them; they could suffocate in there for all he cared.
What bothered Drake was that he could no longer see the Russian.
He tossed the spent Tokarev to the ground and pulled out his pistol. Then he started after the man, knowing that he was probably getting himself into a deadly ring around the rosy type, but no longer caring.
He was infuriated by the idea of this auction, by what had happened to those poor Colombian girls in the container. He was enraged for Veronica and Mandy and everyone else who preceded them.
“You better run! You better run, you asshole!” he shouted.
There was a tinkling sound from his right and he whipped the pistol around, his finger tensing on the trigger.
At the last second, he lowered the gun.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “What are you doing in here? Run! Run!”
Chapter 52
“Drake!” Veronica shouted as she hammered on the glass. “Drake!”
Despite the booth’s soundproofing, she could hear loud bangs coming from somewhere nearby and even thought she could make out some voices.
Veronica couldn’t tell what they were saying, but her mind filled in the blanks.
It was Drake; it had to be him and he was yelling her name, trying to find her. Her and Mandy.
To get them out of this fucking mess.
Veronica took a deep breath and then started pounding her fists on the glass with renewed vigor.
“Drake! In here! I’m in here!”
Chapter 53
It was just a cocktail waitress.
The woman who had rushed toward Drake was a cocktail waitress of all things. Wearing only her bra and underwear, she was still unbelievably holding a tray of drinks in one hand.
And Drake had nearly blown her away.
He grabbed the waitress and shoved her behind him, the tray crashing loudly to the ground. Then he swept his gun from side to side. It was impossible for Drake to cover the waitress and both sides at once; all the Russian had to do was sneak up from the side he wasn’t looking and with just a few bullets it would be game over for the both of them.
If only I could see through to the other side…
Drake focused his eyes on the monitors in the center of the hexagon, trying to catch a glimpse of the Russian.
But as he searched for the man, he found his gaze drawn to the monitors themselves.
And his heart sunk.
All of the screens that Drake could see showed the same thing: a naked woman standing in a room not unlike the bidder booths, bathed in a red glow. And in a strange irony, both the woman on screen and the bidders were all banging on the glass, begging to be released.
As haunting as this image was, it wasn’t so much what the naked woman was doing, as it was the desperation in her tear-streaked features that disturbed Drake most.
“Veronica,” he whispered. And then he started shouting. “Veronica! Veronica, I’m coming!”
Drake desperately wanted to put a third bullet in the Russian bastard, but his vengeance would have to wait. He also wished to take out every last one of the sick bastards bidding for Veronica’s life.
But he had a better idea.
“Where is that room?” Drake shouted over his shoulder at the now whimpering cocktail waitress.
“No entiendo!” she screamed back.
Drake cursed himself for not paying attention in Spanish class and then gestured with his free hand for her to move toward the door that he’d entered.
“Open it! Open it!” he instructed.
There was a pause
and Drake turned to look at the waitress to make sure that she understood. Evidently, she did, as the keypad beeped and turned green, but with his head turned, Drake didn’t see the Russian approach.
He heard the shots, though, and felt a sear of pain shoot up his right calf.
Drake whipped around and fired blindly into the darkness, but his bullets only embedded in the bulletproof glass.
The Russian was gone again.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Drake backed out the door, following after the waitress.
Once in the hallway, he slammed the door closed behind them.
“Te dispararon,” the waitress said, her wide eyes drifting to his right calf.
“No shit,” Drake grumbled, but he didn’t have time to assess his wound. Because he’d managed to hobble out of the viewing room, it couldn’t be too serious.
Or maybe it was.
In the end, it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting Veronica and Mandy out of this hell hole.
He gestured for the woman to back up and then squeezed off a single round.
The keypad beside the door exploded in a shower of sparks and as he’d expected, Drake heard a deadbolt automatically slide into place. Just to make sure, he grabbed the handle and pulled.
It didn’t budge.
“I hope you all suffocate in there,” he whispered.
Satisfied that neither the Russian bastard nor the auction bidders would be able to get out, Drake turned back to the waitress.
“The woman in the box with the red light,” he said, trying to speak as clearly as possible. “Do you know where she is? Do you know how I can find her?”
The waitress shrugged and shook her head, but Drake didn’t know if this was because she didn’t understand or because she didn’t know where Veronica was.
“Okay, okay, you run,” he said, pointing down the long hallway that led to the busted brick wall.
This, the waitress appeared to understand. As she turned, Drake reached out and snatched the keycard that dangled from her hip. The waitress didn’t seem to notice; she was already sprinting down the hallway.
“Run! Rápido! Rápido!”
Drake, his leg now soaked with blood as well as beer and spicy Asian soup, hobbled after her, but instead of making his way toward the van still embedded in the brick wall, he continued straight.
There was a single door at the end of this hallway, and he knew that that was where Veronica must be held.
Gritting his teeth against the agony in his side and leg, Drake scanned the waitress’s card on the keypad and pulled the door wide, leading with his pistol.
Chapter 54
The first thing that Drake saw was the girl, only it wasn’t Veronica.
She was nude, sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to the door. And yet, Drake thought he recognized her long blond hair.
“Mandy?”
The woman turned, and he realized that it was indeed Mandy.
The second thing Drake saw was the man sitting on the bed beside her. Like Mandy, his back was also facing the door.
But it was what was on his back that gave Drake pause: a massive black and white tattoo that ran from between his shoulder blades to the small of his back. It was an incredibly detailed depiction of a Cobra with a photorealistic eyeball in its mouth. It was the symbol for ANGUIS Holdings and similar to the one that Raul had on his forearm and the one on the sign for the Church of Liberation in Colombia, all those years ago.
“Mandy,” Drake repeated, and this time the man turned his head.
He had a thick black beard and shortly cropped hair that was graying at the temples. Even though Drake had never seen a picture of the man, he knew without a doubt who this person was.
It was Boris Brackovich.
There was something in his eyes and that, combined with the slight smirk on his lips that he shared with Ken Smith and everyone else who had fuck you money, that gave him away.
The tattoo was a fairly good indication, as well.
He was also the man responsible for all of this mess, for the sex auction, for the dead girls in the shipping container.
For Veronica being trapped in a glass box.
And while Drake recognized this man, it was clear that Boris also knew who he was.
“Damien Drake,” he said in a voice that lacked any accent at all.
Drake aimed the gun directly at the center of Boris’s back.
He felt like putting a bullet in the man then, putting an end to all of this. But that would be too easy.
And besides, it wasn’t part of the plan.
Drake wanted Boris, but he wanted Ken Smith even more.
“Guilty,” Drake said with a shrug. “Mandy, come over here.”
As he spoke, Drake took the two pieces of his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Mandy, come over here,” Drake repeated.
Boris might be tough, but if he could snap a few pictures of the man in this place, in a compromised situation, they would go a long way to getting him to flip on Ken Smith.
It would either be that or prison, and even men as well connected as Boris would have a difficult time surviving in Rikers, especially considering what he’d done to the girls.
Drake slipped the battery into his cell phone and it clicked into place. He waited for the screen to boot up.
“I know what you’re thinking, Drake, because I was once like you. Naive, broke, at the whim of others. You think you can snap a few pictures and that’ll be enough to put me away,” Boris chuckled, a dry, irritating sound. “Drake, you could take pictures of me strangling this Colombian shlyukha and it wouldn’t do shit. I’d get off and the best part? My lawyers would get you and all of the NYPD to issue a public apology. That’s what having money means. It’s pure, unadulterated power. Power to do what—”
Drake was only half listening when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
Mandy had a pair of scissors in her hand and she lunged at Boris.
“Mandy, no!”
She was aiming for his neck, but even though Boris had been focused on Drake, he managed to get his arm up in time. The scissors embedded in his triceps, but this didn’t seem to faze him. Boris’s other arm shot out with lightning speed and collided with the side of Mandy’s head. She fell backward off the bed and landed with a loud thunk.
Drake grit his teeth and strode forward.
“I won’t put you in prison, I’ll put you in a pine box, you—”
But now it was his turn to be cut off.
Something smashed into the back of Drake’s head, something big and hard. Something that sent stars across his vision.
Drake collapsed to one knee and then someone pressed down on the bullet hole in his right calf, and the stars vanished.
They were replaced by pure darkness.
Chapter 55
Drake couldn’t have been out for more than a minute or two, but in that time, his assailant had somehow managed to place him in a chair and bind his hands behind his back.
His eyelids fluttered and it took several seconds for his vision to clear.
Boris was standing in front of him, fully dressed now, holding Drake’s cell phone only inches from his face.
The man was smiling, a thin line of perfectly white teeth embedded in his dark beard.
“I guess we’ll never find out if your pictures would do any good,” Boris said, wagging the phone. “You fucked up, Drake. You didn’t take any pictures, didn’t even call the cops. My men will have this place cleaned up in under an hour. But you’ll be long gone by then. Nothing you did today matters, Drake. Don’t you get that? None of it matters. Tomorrow we’ll open up a new shop, with new girls, and more buyers than you can imagine. This is only the start of our empire. The beginning. With what—”
Drake started to laugh. He hadn’t intended to, but it just felt natural given the circumstances.
“Why are you laughing?” Boris demanded, his smile vanishing. Then he lifted
his head to somebody hovering over Drake’s left shoulder. “Why the fuck is he laughing?”
Drake craned his head to see who it was, who had knocked him out.
And then he laughed even harder.
“I should have known that you’d be here, you slimy bastard,” he said between breaths.
Raul stepped out from behind him and crouched down low.
“We could have worked together, Drake. That’s what Ken wanted. But now it has come to this. I’m afraid that your usefulness has run out—you and your brother.”
This only made Drake laugh even harder. He laughed so hard that his face got hot and he felt himself on the verge of hyperventilating.
Boris backed away from Drake.
“Raul, why the fuck is he laughing? Why in God’s name is he laughing?”
“Because—” Drake began, but couldn’t get any more words out.
Raul leaned back and slapped Drake hard across the face. But the laughter didn’t stop.
“Raul, what the fuck is going on here?”
Raul shook his head and said, “I dunno. But we should get out of here.”
Boris grimaced.
“Because it’s not—” but Drake broke down again before he could finish.
Raul leaned back again, but this time instead of slapping him, he placed his thumb directly on the bullet hole in his calf and pressed down.
Drake screamed in agony.
“Now are you going to tell us why you’re laughing, Drake?”
Drake hissed through clenched teeth.
“Because,” he finally managed. “This wasn’t about pictures, you fucking idiots. This wasn’t a photoshoot and I never intended to call the police.” Drake’s tone suddenly turned deadly serious. “I was relying on them to trace the phone that you’re holding in your hand.”
Boris’s face went completely slack and he dropped the cell phone as if it was suddenly scalding. Even Raul, who had the emotional spectrum of a slug, seemed to become agitated.
“That’s right, you fucking morons. Your buddy DI Palmer should be in here any minute. He’s gonna bring the Sgt. with him and I’d like to see you explain this situation. So, yeah, you should run. You should run as fast as you can. Because I’m going to get you. You and that bastard Ken Smith. I’m not going to stop until everyone involved with ANGUIS Holdings is either dead or in jail. And that, Boris, is true power.”
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 2 Page 35
