by Rob Hart
“Fine.”
“And do me a favor. If something happens, my mom is on Facebook. Find her and get a message to her. Tell her I’m sorry and I love her. Make sure she knows I was trying to do a good thing. I doubt it’ll be much comfort.”
“You will come through this,” Kaz says.
It actually sounds like he believes that. I want to ask him how he knows but figure it’s better if I don’t. Because he can’t. I could very well die in this building. And maybe I should be afraid, but I’m not.
What I feel is clarity.
“One last thing,” I ask. “Do you have your phone? And does it have Bluetooth?”
He nods, takes it out of his pocket, hands it to me. I turn off the ringer and stick it in my pocket. I’ve got the makings of a poorly formulated idea. Something to serve as a distraction.
Kaz hugs me again. “I am sorry, my friend.”
I pat him on the back. We hold like that for a few moments and then pull away.
“You still smell like a French hooker,” I tell him.
He smiles. “You are jealous.”
“Ready?” I ask.
He nods, and we take off at a run through the open space between the construction site and the building, dodging the occasional trench or piece of equipment or pile of cinder blocks on the ground.
There’s a small padlock on the door, so I pull out the lock picking kit that Sam got for me. Slide in the tension wrench, go to work, visualizing the clear lock, the way the guts looked, the way the pins lined up, how if I nudged them right and put enough tension on the wrench…
The lock pops. I pull it off and push the door open. We both slip inside. There’s a staircase leading up and down. Kaz heads down, I head up.
My plan was to have Kaz cut the power and I would crash down through the skylight I noticed in their main room, taking everyone by surprise. Luckily for me, Kaz did insist on coming, and then dissuaded me of this very stupid idea.
We spent a lot of the ride over talking video games.
Specifically, two main styles of action shooters.
There’s Halo, in which you run into a room full of alien monsters and you fire gigantic weapons, expending thousands of rounds of ammo, and throw a bunch of grenades, and if you die, you die. Then you re-spawn a few minutes later back at the checkpoint. You’re free to try as many times as it takes to clear the room.
Then there’s Splinter Cell, which is about stealth. You sneak around and hide in the shadows and there are some levels you straight out lose if someone detects your presence. You carry a silenced pistol with a finite number of rounds and a couple of gadgets. You get shot once or twice and you’re dead.
Splinter Cell strategy is probably the way to go since I don’t get any re-spawns.
At the top of the stairs, I check my watch. Ten minutes until Kaz is supposed to cut the power. Hopefully enough time to get into position. I move carefully but my boots crunch on the floor. I am not a great fan of this, but there’s not much I can do. Still, I wish I was wearing sneakers. The things you realize only when it’s too late.
The night vision goggles come in handy. The hallway is pitch black. It takes me a second to get them comfortably over my head and figure out how to turn them on, but when I do, everything is cast in a sickly green light. The view is crisper than I would have thought.
As I move down the hall, my heart rate increases gradually, until it tops off somewhere around the speed of a jet engine.
Off in the distance I can see the hallway leading into the computer room. I duck into an empty room alongside me. It smells like mildew and dust, light barely trickling in through the windows. I consider dropping my coat but figure it’s easier to leave it on. It’s a little heavy but the way it spreads out around me when I move might provide me with some cover. Plus, I’d rather keep the stun knuckles in my pocket until I need them.
And then there’s the matter of my new special little toy.
That’s strapped to the inside of my coat.
I creep down the hallway, stop on the edge of a pool of shadow, a few feet from the door of the stairwell we entered through when Roman brought in Sam and me. At the mouth of the long hallway, I can hear voices and see shapes in the distance. The construction lights hanging from the fixtures are all individually plugged in. I don’t think there’s a common switch that will kill them all.
Glad I brought Kaz’s phone. Time to see if my backup distraction plan will work.
The Bluetooth speaker I noticed earlier shows up in the settings menu. I scroll through Kaz’s playlist, figure on playing something loud to disorient them. It’s not much, but even if it covers my footsteps, or makes someone turn their head for a moment, it’ll be worth it.
I’ve never been in a fight where I’ve gotten to pick a playlist.
It raises the question of what I should pick.
I could go old-school. AC/DC or Metallica. Plenty of that. Kaz has a nice punk collection, too. He’s got Cock Sparrer on here. “Take ’Em All” is the kind of song that makes you want to pound a beer and clear a bar full of hooligans. That’s my top pick but I give the list one more swipe to be sure I’m not missing anything.
Then I find it.
The perfect song.
So perfect it makes me smile like an idiot.
I pull the song up, pause it, and crank the volume so it’ll come on at full blast.
Okay, now, need to map out the route.
There’s the hallway, about sixty feet long, with three empty offices on each side. All the doors are ajar. That’s helpful. I can duck in and out and it gives me plenty of cover.
There were six men in the room Roman marched us through. Could be less but I doubt there’s more because there weren’t a lot of seats and it’s not a big room. So six, plus Vilém, Fran, and Roman. That makes nine. I would like to not have to go after Vilém because he was nice to me and bought me a beer. But this is a take-no-prisoners type of scenario. I’ve got to incapacitate as many of these goons as I can with enough time to get Sam.
As for Roman, I should probably kill him.
I wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t kill people.
Too bad for Roman, I will kill for my mom.
The lights click off.
Guess Kaz figured it out.
Showtime.
I flip down the goggles. There are some herky-jerky beams of light at the end of the hallway. Flashlights. Frantic voices, too. Someone comes marching down the hall. A guy I don’t recognize. I step into the office opposite the staircase and peek out. He’s got something in his hand. At first I think it’s a gun and the sight of it freezes me. He’s walking slowly, using his other hand to guide the way. Must be going downstairs to check the power.
He stops and slaps the thing in his hand against his palm. A little beam of light erupts out of it before it goes dark.
He gets close to me. I slow my breathing, try to keep from giving away my position. Slip my hand into my jacket and grip the stun knuckles.
Once he’s within a foot of me I hit the button on the side with my thumb. There’s no arc of light, no crackle of energy, just a gentle hum I probably wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t paying attention. That’s almost disappointing.
I make a clicking sound with my mouth. He turns to look in the office. I pop up and hit him in the shoulder. There’s no sound and nothing happens to indicate it’s turned on, but he goes stiff and tries to scream but his muscles have seized, so it comes out as a groan. I grab him with my other hand and pull him into the office, drop him to the floor. I pull a zip tie out and lash his hands together, and then his feet. Pull off his boot and then a sock, which I cram into his mouth.
The whole thing happens quickly, and doesn’t make enough noise to alert anyone. I drag the guy into the corner. He’s whimpering but the shock took the fight out of him.
That leaves eight.
Eight against one.
Still sucks, but better.
Someone calls down the hallway
in Czech. Calling to the guy I just took out, I think. I peek out again and see another guy coming down the hallway, this one with a working flashlight. I duck into the office before the beam of light hits me.
I press up against the flat of the wall until the guy is close, then pick up a shard of sheetrock from the floor, toss it against the far window and it makes a clink noise. He comes in to investigate. A punch to the abdomen and some more zip ties and a sock in the mouth and we’re down to seven.
I notice a fire alarm on the wall above me. It was a good idea when Sam did it at the Crash Hop building. I’m not sure I want to alert the authorities, though, in case it’s hooked into some kind of broadcast system. I’ll save that for later.
I check the hallway again and hear Roman’s voice. “Where is everyone?”
“Anton and Konstantin went to check the generator,” a voice replies. “Ivan and Jakub are still assigned to McKenna.”
“Have either of them reported in?” Roman asks.
“Ivan, yes,” the voice replies. “He has seen nothing. Jakub has not reported yet. I will call him again.”
“You do that,” Roman says. “And you, go see if you can help them with the generator.”
Not seven, five. Maybe fewer than five.
It’s about to be four.
Footsteps come down the hallway. I pick up another piece of sheetrock, crouch down, toss it against the far wall. The guy turns into the room but swings his flashlight up so that the beam hits me in the face. There’s an explosion of white, like turning on a bright bathroom light in the middle of the night.
Fuck, I got cocky. I pull the goggles off my head and blink away the blue lights hovering on the edges of my vision as the man yells and drives his knee into the side of my head.
At the same time, the overhead lights snap on.
Either there’s a backup generator, Kaz fucked up, or he’s been compromised.
I go down hard and land on my back, but sweep my legs to the side and manage to catch the man with enough force to send him tumbling. He nearly falls on me, and I roll off and over until I’m on top of him, drive my fist into his face a couple of times. No stun knuckles this time. He’s not a bruiser and the fight goes out of him quick. I lash his wrists and hear more footsteps coming down the hall and I guess I’ve lost the element of surprise. I put on the stun knuckles, than take out Kaz’s phone, click on the song.
The hallway fills with Nena’s “99 Luftballoons.”
Time to work.
I turn the corner and Fran is coming at me, a gun held with both hands, pointed at the floor. But he’s looking over his shoulder, trying to find the source of the music. I jab him hard in the chest with the stun knuckles and he screams and arches back.
His hands stay gripped to the gun so I stand to the side, out of the firing range, pry it out of his fingers, then fling it into a corner. I slip off the knuckles and zip-tie him.
I charge into the room with the computers and find Vilém standing over a small man with a rat-tail haircut and a bad mustache, typing furiously on a laptop. He sees me, shakes his head like a father disappointed in a son.
“I told you to go,” he says.
I slip the stun knuckles into my pocket. It’s a little ridiculous, but I feel like I owe Vilém a fair fight.
“Before we do this, did you kill Evzen?” I ask.
He nods. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
He reaches behind his back for his gun. Well, if that’s how he wants to play it. Before he can get the gun all the way up, I pick up a heavy glass ashtray and fling it at his face. He turns to the side so it glances off his back but I’m already coming at him too fast, driving into him and pushing him into the wall.
The gun goes flying. He tries to swing at me but I’m too close to his midsection so he has no leverage. I hop back and throw my fists into his stomach. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth blow he leans forward and I spring up with an uppercut that snaps his head back.
Vilém looks more angry than hurt so I pick up a folding chair and hit him over the head with it. His face goes red and he throws a fist at my face. I duck just in time for it to slam a hole into the sheetrock wall behind me. I back up from him, stumbling and landing on my ass. Sliding backward, trying to put some distance between us.
“I am sorry,” he says. “But this is the job.”
I’m thinking of something clever to say back when a red dot appears on his chest.
He looks down, sees the dot, and his face turns into an expression of confusion.
The window on the far end of the room shatters as a bullet tears through his chest.
I slide across the floor, behind a desk, out of view of the window. Vilém tumbles to the floor and hits it hard. His body is limp, eyes vacant.
Even though he killed Evzen, even though he would have killed me on Roman’s orders, I feel bad. He had a family.
Before I can dwell on it, the computer guy stands up and his head explodes in a spray of red, sending a hot splash of viscera across my face.
Seems like Chernya Dyra found us.
Which is good.
That means all of this ends one way or another.
I crawl over to the computer where he was working, pull it off the desk and down onto the floor with me. The thumb drive is sticking out of the side. I find the password prompt screen and type in the final letter – F. A folder opens. I expected something dramatic, like a cascade of flashing documents. I click some buttons and pull the drive out, and crawl to the other side of the room, looking back to make sure I’m not visible to the window.
Once I’m clear of that room, I stand up. Find the bathroom I was held in. No one inside. There’s another hallway branching off the main room. I slip the stun knuckles on my right hand and head down the hallway until I get to the room at the end.
It’s another gutted bathroom, the tile pink, harshly lit by construction lights. Sam is sitting in a wooden chair, her hands tied behind her back and ankles zip-tied to the legs. She’s stripped down to her bra and jeans. The wound on her shoulder is open again, the skin jagged. It looks like the staples were pried out.
There are small puddles of blood underneath her. Some fresh, some not. Next to her is a rolling cart, laden with wadded-up paper towels in varying shades of red and brown. She doesn’t appear to be conscious, but she also doesn’t appear to be dead.
Roman is standing behind her, one handing holding her hair to tilt her head back and expose her throat, the other holding a scalpel against her neck.
I stop. Put my hands up. Calculate the distance between us. He’ll open her throat before I get halfway across the room.
“There’s more going on here than you could possibly understand. Do you know how many people would lose their jobs? Do you know how much suffering this would cause? You put these people out of business, the ripples are going to be catastrophic.”
“That’s your argument,” I tell him. “We should let someone do an evil thing because of the collateral damage? You want to talk about collateral damage? How about all the innocent people Ansar al-Islam is going to kill?”
“They’re a bunch of dumb kids trying to make a buck.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
He tenses like he’s about to draw the scalpel across her throat. I wave my hand to bring attention to the flash drive.
“What about this?”
“Useless. I was about to destroy it. That was the job anyway.”
“But you wanted the password.”
Roman pauses.
“Yeah, funny thing,” I tell him. “I have the password.”
“The one you found didn’t work,” he says.
“Actually, it does work,” I tell him. “I just didn’t give you the full key. So here’s the deal. Back off and leave her alone. I’ll tell you what the full password is and you can open the drive and do whatever the fuck you want with it.”
Roman’s face goes red.
“You… asshole,” he says
, his voice rising and shaking. “You fucking asshole. I can’t… why… for her? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Roman, please,” I tell him. “That kind of language is uncouth.”
His eyes go so wide they nearly fall out of his head. His hand tenses. I get ready to charge forward when I hear movement behind me. Roman looks at something over my shoulder. I throw myself to the side as something explodes. A bullet strikes Roman in the chest and his arms fly up, flinging the scalpel.
Three more bullets strike in succession.
The adrenaline tearing through me makes time slow down. The way Roman falls, backward, face pointed to the ceiling, palms spread, is almost graceful.
I press myself against the wall and prime the stun knuckles.
As soon as I see the gun clear the door, I grab the barrel and drive my fist into Chernya Dyra’s forearm.
As I’m doing this, I’m thinking, hey, this worked out pretty good.
Then I realize I’m holding her gun.
Mostly I realize this when every muscle in my body tenses so hard it feels like I’m being torn apart. I fall back, my hand still holding onto the gun, pressing the stun knuckles into her forearm, the current traveling through the gun and into me.
Feels like being back in the Vltava.
But hot.
We both hit the floor. I can move, but barely. Feel like I’m drunk, except without the fuzziness. Hopefully it hit her harder than me.
Really should have thought that through.
I manage to crawl over to Sam, pull my knife out, and cut the zip ties holding her legs to the chair, then the ones binding her wrists behind her. She falls to the floor and groans, doesn’t open her eyes. She’s alive, but not by a wide margin.
Roman, on the other hand, is definitely dead. His head is facing me, his eyes staring through the wall behind me. The final expression on his face was one of confused fury. I don’t care enough to try to close his eyes.
Good riddance, fuckhead.
When I turn, Chernya Dyra is climbing to her feet, pulling the shovel from her back. Seems she wants to do this the old-fashioned way.
