Fox Hunter

by Zoe Sharp

  The trucks were unlocked, but the keys were not in any of the ignitions, sadly. I jumped down from the cab of the last in line and turned a slow circle, wondering where the logical place would be for them. Near to hand but out of the way.

  I rounded the front of the truck and found another doorway in the middle of the end wall, where it had initially been hidden from view. The door itself had once been painted white, but it now bore grimy smears about chest height, where too many dirty hands had pushed it open. Alongside the door was an internal window of meshed safety glass. An untidy desk and filing cabinet were just visible in the gloom beyond.

  I didn’t want to go in there—it was a dead end, too far away from the main doors, too easy to become a trap. I took a last look behind me and went inside.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  INSIDE, THE OFFICE WAS MUCH AS I EXPECTED. SMALLISH, A DESK covered with slightly crumpled paperwork and a sheen of oil that seemed to coat every surface. The ergonomic typing chair had rips in the seat, both arms repaired with duct tape. I guessed that the upholstery had once been some kind of dull tweed, but it was now shiny from years of greasy overall-clad bums sliding across it. I did not sit down for fear I’d stick to the surface. The whole place stank of cigarettes.

  A pegboard on the back of the door held numerous sets of keys, but without being able to read the labels dangling from them, I had no idea what belonged to which vehicle.

  I scanned the desk. There was a charging station for a walkabout phone, but it was empty. It took a moment for logic to tell me that they wouldn’t take the phones away, lock them up, or deliberately hide them. I lifted a pile of brochures for snowmobiles, a catalogue for suspension bushes, and a hard-core porn mag—the usual garage reading fare—and found the phone handset discarded underneath.

  I assumed with a place this big there would be some kind of networked phone system, but I juggled the buttons until I managed to get a dial tone. I punched in Madeleine’s number because it was the only one I knew off the top of my head. She answered on the third ring, a wary “Hello?”

  “Madeleine, it’s me. Where’s Hamilton?”

  “Charlie! Are you OK?”

  “Fine—for the moment, anyway.”

  “Glad to hear it. Hang on, let me put you on speaker . . . OK, go ahead.”

  “Hackett and three of the trucks have turned up. What happened to the others?”

  “Five of ’em drove into Transnistria—it’s a kinda autonomous region along the border between the Ukraine and Moldova,” Hamilton said without preamble. “They play by their own rules when it comes to import and export charges. Anyway, five went in; only three came out. Could be simply the local tax system at work.”

  “So, why would Hackett lie about the numbers?” I wondered. “Surely Gregor’s brought stuff in by that route before, so he must know how things are done?”

  “Could be Hackett’s done a deal along the way and is splitting the proceeds, or keeping them for himself.”

  And what about Sean? Why did he lie for Hackett? What did that achieve beyond stitching me up?

  I shook my head, keeping back from the window and watching for anybody moving around near the trucks. I couldn’t see the entrance to the garage from here. The feeling of sitting in a dead-end trap returned.

  “How are things at your end?” Hamilton asked. “You wanna give us a sitrep?”

  Where do I start?

  “Gregor’s losing his grip, so any safe passage I might have hoped for is up the spout,” I said. “And Parris knows you’re here. He says your budget’s been slashed and you haven’t got the clout to stage any kind of intervention to come in and get me. That so?”

  Silence greeted me down the phone line. But outside the window I heard the sound of booted footsteps, the murmur of voices entering the workshop. I ducked back out of sight. The office held no places big enough to hide.

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” I said quickly, keeping my voice low. “Look, Aubrey, your looted antiquities are sitting here, still in their trucks, with a load more besides in the neighboring storerooms. If you want them, come and get them. I’ll make my own way out.”

  “Charlie—”

  But I stabbed a thumb onto the End Call button and shoved the phone back under the porn mag on the desk. The bend it caused to the front cover made the unfeasibly well-endowed girl pictured there look like she was pushing her chest out even further.

  A shadow passed close by the window, then the door handle rattled slightly and started to turn. I stepped to the side nearest the hinges and tucked into the corner. I had nowhere to hide, so that left only one course open to me.

  Attack.

  I slid the other magazine—the one where the models wore slightly more clothing—out of the pocket of my stolen coat, furled it tight in my fist. I shrugged off the coat, letting it drop. It might offer a bit of extra padding if I got hit, but it would also slow me down. And besides, I wasn’t planning on getting hit.

  Already, I had played through what my adversary might do as he entered. He might walk straight in. He might turn away from me, toward the desk. Or he might turn toward me, maybe reaching for a set of keys from the back of the door. I overlaid each image with a grid map of strike points, had time for one deep breath.

  The door opened. A man, wearing a fleece but no heavy outdoor coat, stepped inside. He began to turn away from me. I stabbed the blunt end of the rolled magazine into his right kidney, putting weight and muscle behind it. His legs gave out on him and he started to fold, reaching for the desk as he fell.

  He dragged in a breath as if to shout. I moved over him, shouldered the door closed, and grabbed a handful of hair on his crown. Yanking his head back, I slashed the magazine across his larynx, hard enough so that the only sound he could make was muted gargling.

  Hands to his throat, he went all the way down. And as he did so, I got a good look at his face, and I recognized him.

  Hackett.

  I told myself that the reason I added strikes to his elbows, wrist joints, and knees was to temporarily disable him, but I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure I was telling the truth. All I knew was that as his eyes swiveled up to mine, they widened with realization and fear, and in that moment I won back a small measure of what he’d once taken away from me.

  It wasn’t enough.

  I renewed my grip on the magazine. Nobody ever thinks something made of paper makes such an effective weapon, but back in the days when I used to teach self-defense classes, it was something I always advised people—especially women—to carry. It looks inoffensive, unthreatening, and certainly wouldn’t be taken as going equipped in a court of law. But rolled tightly like that, you could punch one through an internal door—or into an internal organ if it came to that.

  Hackett was certainly going to be pissing blood for a few days from the kidney strike.

  If he was lucky . . .

  I readied, saw him flinch in reflex. I brought the magazine flashing down, aiming for an area just behind the temple, where four major bones meet. At one time I would have been able to name them. Now I simply knew where to aim to hit the precise spot—the weakest point of the skull, with an artery running beneath. The impact point that makes boxers bounce off the mat before they realize they’ve lost the fight.

  I landed the blow. Hackett slumped. He wasn’t getting up again.

  I stood over him, breathing harder than I needed to for the effort I’d just expended, fists aching with the need to keep pounding at him.

  The blood ran so fierce in my ears that I hardly heard the door opening again until I caught it in my peripheral vision.

  I crouched and spun, but someone grabbed both arms and piled me back into the corner behind the door.

  “Charlie!”

  Even as I remembered Sean’s voice, I still didn’t—couldn’t—let myself relax.

  “For fuck’s sake, don’t kill the bastard,” he growled. “We need him.”

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  “
NEED HIM FOR WHAT?” I DEMANDED.

  “To nail that bastard Parris to the fucking wall.”

  He tossed the words over his shoulder as he bent toward the man on the ground, lifted one eyelid.

  I gaped. “Hackett told you that Parris ordered . . . everything that happened?”

  Sean shook his head. “No—Clay did. I found the poor sod like that. Bleeding, dying. He wanted me to know . . . like his last fucking confession.”

  Hackett’s limbs moved in feeble circles, the way a sleeping dog still chases rabbits in its dreams. I wondered what Hackett might be chasing in his and decided I didn’t want to know. And what was more, I didn’t care.

  Sean slapped the man’s face, not particularly gently. It did not wake him. Sean swore under his breath.

  “So . . . everything you said to Gregor was . . . ?”

  He threw me a quick, dismissive glance. “What—you thought I meant it?”

  I moved sideways so I could keep a check through the meshed glass. It also gave me a good excuse not to have to look him in the eye.

  “Well, let’s just say you were very convincing.”

  He sighed with a weariness that held disappointment rather than surprise.

  “I had to be. You know how much undercover work I did back in the army—so did Parris. If he’d thought I was faking it, I’d be in a hole under the snow by now.”

  “He must like you then. He threatened to give me to Ivan, gift-wrapped.”

  Sean’s glance was sharp, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he slapped Hackett’s face again. “Come on, soldier, snap out of it!”

  Hackett groaned a little louder, legs and arms beginning to thrash, though still without any force.

  “He was only in here for a second,” Sean said. “What did you do to him?”

  I shrugged. “Probably rather more than was good for him. But far less than he damn well deserved.”

  “With that?” Sean nodded to the magazine I hadn’t realized was still clenched in my hand.

  I nodded, dropping the weapon into the waste bin, where it uncoiled slowly and resumed its utterly inoffensive air. Only when I’d done so did I see Sean’s shoulders relax slightly. I hadn’t time to process quite what that meant.

  Instead, I asked, “Where did you catch up with him in the end?”

  “Jordan—just before he set off for the border.” His mouth gave the faintest twitch. “One of his drivers was, ah, suddenly taken ill. They needed another, fast.”

  “And he trusted you?” I said, skeptical. “Why?”

  “Because the others were hired grunts—they’d do what they were told and ask no questions. He knew that without some backup, Parris would probably have him killed after he got back here, just to make sure Gregor never found out about those two extra truckloads.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. “And if he didn’t come back, Gregor would have had him killed for failing to deliver.”

  “Yeah, so he was stuffed either way.” He pinned me with a gaze I couldn’t get a reading on. “He killed the guy you found in the bathroom, by the way—back at the villa. He told me that after what happened to Clay, he daren’t leave anyone who might lead Ivan to him.”

  I glanced down at Hackett. “He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”

  I might have moved in closer, but Sean blocked me, saying, “Look, I’ve told Hackett I’ll keep him alive—get him out of here.”

  I glared at him, said with feeling, “Oh. Shit.”

  Hackett was still not entirely conscious, although his movements were gaining more coordination now. Still, he was in no state to get on his feet. “Well, you might have to carry him.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that.”

  On the floor, Hackett began to retch weakly onto the stained tiles. It did not make them look any worse. I jerked my head in his direction.

  “How were you planning to get him out of here?”

  “Snowmobiles,” Sean said with a grimace. Hackett was in no fit state to stay aboard a snowmobile, even as a pillion passenger. “But I need to get some kind of confession out of Parris first.”

  A pity he hadn’t been up in the guest suite when Parris had told me the truth of what happened, without a hint of duress . . .

  “The security monitors,” I said suddenly. “They record, presumably—not just a live feed?”

  “A rolling week, so I understand.”

  “In that case, we don’t need to put the thumbscrews on Parris,” I said. I nudged the still-puking Hackett with the toe of my boot, hard enough to elicit another groan. “Or him, for that matter . . .”

  I’m not sure what Sean thought I might be preparing to do, but he grabbed my wrist. I was halfway to a countermeasure before he said quietly, “I gave him my word I’d get him out of here, Charlie.”

  I twisted out of his grasp. “All right,” I said, aware my tone was sullen. “What do you want to do with him while we go find the security discs?”

  If I’d been hoping he might suggest we lock him in a small cupboard, I was destined to be disappointed. Sean grasped Hackett by the scruff of his jacket and hauled him to his feet.

  “He comes with us. It took me long enough to find the fucker. I’m not letting him out of my sight now.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  WE WERE ALMOST AT THE SECURITY CONTROL ROOM WHEN ALL HELL broke loose.

  Somewhere horribly close by, a siren started to screech. Even with fingers stuffed into my ears I heard echoes of others, outside in the central courtyard, elsewhere in the building.

  “Bugger,” I said. “I think they may have discovered I’ve become a fully paid-up member of the hole-in-the-wall gang.”

  Sean, forcing a dazed Hackett into a stumbling run, shook his head. “No offense, but they wouldn’t go off the deep end for a simple escape.” We caught the sound of automatic-weapons fire from outside, the chatter of a machine pistol, the answering crack of assault rifles. “I think you’re the last of their worries now—we’re under attack.”

  Hamilton?

  She had gone very quiet over the phone when I’d repeated Parris’s claim that she didn’t have the resources to stage any kind of rescue. What if that silence wasn’t because he was correct in his assessment, as I’d assumed, but because her guys were already on their way? She couldn’t be sure the line was secure, so better to say nothing, even if it pissed me off, than to put her men in danger.

  I didn’t bother voicing any of this. Sean had never met her—as far as I knew—so it would be rhetorical at best.

  As we neared the area where Ushakov had first brought me into the building, Sean shouldered open a side door and shoved Hackett through.

  Inside was a break room with a couple of kitchen units and a kettle, sink, and drainer holding washed-up mugs. There was a scarred table in the center, surrounded by mismatched chairs in only slightly better condition than the one in the garage office. On the table sat a crusty bowl of white sugar and the kind of red, brown, and yellow squeezy bottles you’d get in a cheap roadside diner, each with part of its contents congealing around the spout.

  Sean rammed Hackett down into the nearest chair with the command “Stay.” Then he looked at me.

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’m not babysitting him.”

  “Charlie, we don’t have a choice. I need to get those security discs, and I’m a hell of a lot less likely to be stopped doing it than you are. In case you haven’t noticed, Venko doesn’t run an equal opportunities program when it comes to personnel.”

  “’Cept the maids,” Hackett said, voice still croaky from the blow to the larynx. He gave a raspy chuckle. “Half of ’em are hookers who go like—”

  Sean gripped him by the throat, quite literally choking off what he’d been about to say. “Your life is in Charlie’s hands,” Sean said, giving him a shake before he let go. “Don’t give her the excuse she’s hoping for to finish what she started.”

  “Hey, you can’t leave me with that crazy bitch. You promised!” Hackett broke off into cough
ing.

  “You can trust her,” Sean said, his eyes boring into mine. “She’s a professional—aren’t you, Charlie?”

  “Sean—” I began warningly.

  He stepped in closer, murmured, “Please, don’t make a liar out of me . . .”

  I hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Just be quick, though, will you? I don’t know how long my resolve will last.”

  He gave me what might have been a smile, but it came and went too fast to be sure. Opening the door a crack, he checked the corridor outside, slipped through, and was gone.

  Leaving me alone again in a room with James Hackett.

  For a moment the only noise in the room was the buzz of the overhead fluorescent tube. Hackett swallowed, eyes darting into the corners as though in search of somewhere to hide.

  “So, what did happen to those two nonexistent trucks?” I asked abruptly. “The ones that never got off the boat in Odessa.”

  His face showed surprise. Of all the subjects I could have chosen, I guess this hadn’t been at the top of his list. He almost seemed relieved by it. Relieved enough to answer, anyway.

  “We left them parked in a secure warehouse, en route,” he said with a smug smile. “To be returned for at some later date.”

  “Why Transnistria?”

  His mouth opened and closed again as surprise turned to annoyance. “How the hell—?”

  “Just answer the question, Hackett.”

  He glowered for a moment, then said grudgingly, “It’s a small state—if you can call it that. The UN reckons it’s part of Moldova, but after the former USSR came apart, there was a minor civil war over it. The laws there can be more . . . flexible, shall we say. Ivan has been throwing plenty of money around, making lots of new friends.”