Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  "Tell me," I wheezed, "Why did you kill the girl in Katai's room?"

  "She was... collateral damage," Volkan said. I brought a baton down on the side of his head, sending him into unconsciousness.

  "I take it he is not a nice man," Sofiya said from the doorway.

  "He's a hired killer," I said. He came for your husband, though he probably would have killed you too." I was guessing at that, though Volkan did seem more like a blunt instrument. Sofiya's gaze went to Volkan, then to me, then to the gun on the floor.

  "You keep being so nice to me, and we just met," she said. "I was always told that Americans are nice people with lousy government."

  "Sofiya, would you happen to know where your husband is at this moment?"

  "He said he was going to Bilgewater, to trade with a harpy: some dogs for some keys."

  "Were those his exact words?"

  "Well, my English is not that great. But I was pretty sure it was the word for female dogs."

  "Sofiya, I hate to break it to you, those aren't dogs, they're hostages," I said. "Do you know where this trade is taking place?"

  She looked at Volkan again. "If I tell you, do you promise to break Kazor's face when you see him?"

  "Should the opportunity present itself."

  Sofiya gave a pained, hollow smile. "It is at a cannery, Rizzo's Fishworks."

  "Thank you, Sofiya."

  "You can take the elevator out, no one will stop you."

  The BHA could yank my license for leaving Grova's apartment while there was a suspect restrained on the floor and not handed over to the cops. There'd be an appeal hearing where I could claim the exigency of needing to get to the exchange and save the hostages. They'd counter with a query about why I didn't alert the authorities. Here's the thing, Weeks was not an outlier. Not some bad apple in an otherwise decent bunch. He was typical of the police in the area. Also, I had an ulterior motive. The four of them, the Sullivans, Evelyn, and Grova, had enough information between them to realize that I had all of the pieces should they be able to pool it. I needed to prevent them from having a civil conversation. The simplest way to do that was to do what everyone expects a costumed hero to do, which is to swoop in and rescue the hostages.

  On my way to Bilgewater, I stopped at a post office. I drew a lot of attention from the few people there, but I was able to post a letter to Dan Fullbright in Wyoming. I paid for the postage by swiping my BHA card. It wasn't that much, and the tiny bump in next month's bill wouldn't be noticed amid my current negative balances. I hit the road again. While the postal system was not the safest place to store a USB drive, I didn't want to risk having it swiped off my person. Especially now that it contained the decrypted data.

  The Bilgewater harborfront reeked of dead fish. It was everything that couldn't be canned being rendered down to be sold as fertilizer or fish food or some such. Not all of the canneries were still in business, and Rizzo's Fishworks was among those that had recently shuttered its doors. The building was three stories tall with a roof that peaked to four in the middle. It was a dull, blue-gray shade and made of reinforced concrete. The metal roof didn't help interior temperatures, but it had skylights that opened wide to vent the roasted air. With people clustered around the doorways, the roof was my point of entry. I noted that those whom I spotted around Rizzo's Fishworks were black. The vibrant shades of their attire and expressive hairstyles indicated their allegiance to one of the local Haitian gangs, one that wasn't above being muscle for hire.

  Peering in one of the skylights, I took stock of the situation inside. The upper floor sat on a mezzanine atop the heavy equipment. There were rows and rows of tables where fish used to be manually processed. The bits were fed into slots and down chutes to the more automated equipment on the ground floor. At the middle of the mezzanine, between two heavy steel pillars, was a line of SWAT officers in their tactical gear. I saw the standoff. The Haitians outnumbered the cops, but the cops had body armor and Army-issue automatic carbines in addition to two hostages. Becky and Evelyn were cuffed and gagged, on their knees in front of a wall of Kevlar and flab. I recognized Weeks' fat face and epic girth at the center of the police line. The whole scene looked poised to explode in an orgy of violence.

  I crawled along the apex of the roof until I was over the police position. I spotted Lana Sullivan only as she cast a quick glance in my direction. The stick figure woman looked almost comical holding a shotgun she was almost thin enough to hide behind. Almost. There was a lethal edge to her gaze that I couldn't shake. She was more than just capable of murder, she'd already committed it.

  I pulled a pair of stinger grenades off my harness and dropped the pins. Within the tension of the air, the quiet 'ting' of metal on concrete drew everyone's attention. Seeing two grenade pins, they looked up to find the source. I stood, upside down, under the apex of the roof, holding the grenades such that it was clear my thumbs were the only thing holding the spoons down. For those of you who don't know, stinger grenades are built like fragmentation grenades, only their casing and payload are made from rubber. At a distance, in poor lighting conditions, they looked an awful lot like frag grenades. Since most people have never heard of stinger grenades, the first thing that crossed a lot of minds below was that I was insane.

  "Who the hell are you?" Weeks asked.

  "I'm just an unfriendly reprobate with a couple of grenades looking to get a couple of hostages out of the line of fire," I said.

  "Foley, you asshole!" Sullivan said.

  "Oh, and I don't like being used to cover up for murder, Ms. Sullivan," I said.

  "You drop those and we shoot them," Weeks said.

  "You have that backwards," I said. "You shoot them and I drop these. You shoot me and I drop these. As long as the three of us remain un-shot I'm not going to be the one to initiate violence."

  "What are you trying to pull?" Sullivan asked.

  "This is the big damn hero moment where I swoop in an save the hostages," I said, smiling.

  "I had everything under control!"

  "Really? Because I had to take out Volkan the Turk, and letting a fat fucker like Weeks take your floor manager and bartender hostage sounds like the opposite of control."

  "You watch your mouth," Weeks said. Actually, he added the same invective he'd used at my apartment. He really needed a larger vocabulary of insults.

  "Mask has a point," a Haitian with dreadlocks and a machine pistol said. He pulled up his shirt to reveal an overdeveloped set of abs. "Least my boys work out. You look like a bunch of slop hogs."

  "I did not pay you to talk," Sullivan said. The Haitian shrugged and let his shirt drop back into place. As Sullivan turned back to me, her eyes narrowed, and her gaze focused on something behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. At the end of the row of tables stood a doughy-faced man in a gray suit. A large, chrome revolver sat in a white-knuckle grip. From the way the glow of the laser sight pulsed with each subtle shift of the gun, I guessed the dot was on my head.

  "Really, Grova?" I asked.

  "I'm outside the blast radius," Kazor said. He had a rather strong accent. Something East European.

  "I guess that means you don't need your hostages," I said. "Oh, well." I dropped the grenades. Kazor's eyes bugged out and there was a shriek of panic from the cops as the black rubber spheres fell. The 'ping' of the spoons flying free tied a knot in everyone's guts. I jumped, tucking my knees into my chest so that I would flip over as I fell towards the ground. A wave of rubber shrapnel caught my back and bounced off. Rubber pellets ricocheted off every hard surface, clobbering everyone indiscriminately. I landed amid the tear gas chaser the stinger grenades had left behind. Batons out, I began clobbering cops.

  There are few things as cathartic as cracking a nightstick across the jaw of a corrupt cop who'd laid the boot to you earlier that day. Take my word for i
t. Weeks and his goons were too close for their guns, and too slow for their batons. Swift blows and jolts left them mewling on the floor. Becky and Evelyn had run for it, leaving me in the middle of the room with Weeks and his men. Lucky me; they had more grenades. Squatting between Weeks and the next-fattest officer, I blindly chucked tear gas and flash-bangs. I also took a few moments to subdue and zip-tie any officer that had fight left in them.

  Grova's gunshot caught me between the shoulder blades. I staggered forward, and Sullivan winged me, catching my left arm with a spray of buckshot. As I tumbled to the concrete, I thought to myself that this armored hero suit had already paid for itself three times over. I was bruised to Hell and back, but that was better than the alternatives. I snagged a handful of grenades and made for the edge of the mezzanine. As I crawled away from the ring of moaning officers and tear gas, I heard a distant, panicked cry, "The Russians!" It was one of the Haitians. His alarm was followed by the throaty roar of a Kalashnikov.

  Up until this point, the Russians hadn't really been at the forefront of my mind. I'd known logically that they'd killed Kenji, and that the money had been taken from them. Beyond that, they'd been an abstract thing. That is, up until Sofiya had called them. I later found out that when Volkan had awoken, she'd asked him about why he'd been hired to kill her husband. Upon learning the tale of Wiley and Vincent Brooks, she'd phoned a friend of a friend from the old country. I want to be mad at her, but at that moment, I'd been surprised and horrified that the Russians were coming. They were not known for being forgiving.

  The higher-pitched rip of the Haitians' return fire had a fearful timbre to it. The somber, controlled bursts of Kalashnikov fire spoke of cold, callous professionalism. Everyone was scrambling for an exit, while I was just trying to get out of the crossfire. I slithered off the mezzanine and tumbled into a ladies' restroom. Becky and Evelyn glared at me. I stood up and hooked the grenades I was carrying onto my harness. My hands free, I unlocked their handcuffs.

  "You asshole," Becky said.

  "I'm riddled with welts," Evelyn said.

  "You're still alive," I said. They grumbled a bit and dropped the topic. There were no windows in the restroom, and the exterior wall would shrug off the breaching charges I had. They were meant for blasting locks out of doors, not cracking concrete. "Hiding won't do us any good with the Russians sweeping the building."

  Becky swore.

  "They're pushing in from the street side," I continued. "I would bet that there are some stationed by the wharf exit to catch people fleeing in that direction." I tapped one of the flash-bangs on my harness. "We can take them by surprise, incapacitate them, and then make a swim for it."

  "Swim for it? What?" Evelyn asked.

  "I don't mean across the bay, I mean laterally, under the docks. It will provide cover so long as we move quietly." The two didn't look terribly convinced, but didn't provide any alternate plans. I edged open the door and slipped into the main chamber again. Despite having a larger footprint, the main floor felt more cramped. Chutes ran from slots in the tables on the mezzanine into a variety of components in the apparatus that took up almost all of this floor. I couldn't begin to guess what most of the machinery did. I guess it packed fish into cans, cooked, and labeled them. The important part was that they also impaired visibility and looked hefty enough to stop bullets. The apparatus was not one contiguous object, and we wove our way through the machinery to the roar of gunfire.

  It was the sudden lack of shooting that put my nerves on edge.

  "Vassili," I heard Weeks say, still rather groggy from the clobbering I'd given him. The sharp double-tap from a pistol that responded didn't bode well for the cop. A few more footsteps rang out in the deathly silent room.

  "Kazor, you son of a bitch," an accented voice said. "You helped them steal from me."

  "Vassili, I--" There was the thwack of a foot meeting fat, along with an "Oof."

  "Where is my fucking money, Kazor!" The sound of shoe leather meeting flesh grew subtly more visceral as it echoed off the walls of the cannery. I saw unbridled fear on the girls' expressions as Vassili stomped repeatedly on Grova. His pause to bellow the question again was less disturbing than the noises that squelched through the air. The hoarseness in his voice from the lingering tear gas rendered him almost unintelligible in his rage.

  I motioned for us to continue on. The girls and I crept along through the machinery. I tried not to envision what was happening with Vassili and Grova on the mezzanine. My muscles tensed as we approached the wharf-side loading dock. There were three exits: a rolling door, a human-sized door, and the hole cut for a fish conveyor belt that fed the mezzanine. The human-sized door was the only real option. Raising a fist to motion for the girls to stop, I approached the door. I checked the lock and found it unlocked. Removing the two flash-bangs from my harness, I relieved them of their pins. The girls covered their ears and closed their eyes.

  I threw open the door and chucked the grenades. Slapping my hands over my ears, I let the lenses on my filter mask protect my eyes. The Russians fell prey to biology, their eyes tracked the suddenly-moving objects before their brains figured out what they were. I had only seconds after the grenades went off before their senses would return to them. It took no time at all for my hands to move from my ears to the handles of my batons on the back of my harness. The Russians' casual clothes provided no protection against either the shock electrodes or the blunt strikes. I moved in a flurry of shocking stabs and sharp sweeping strikes. I didn't savor the scene as I had with the cops, so I struck to incapacitate as swiftly as possible.

  Becky and Evelyn raced through the melee, taking the moment of disorientation to make their dives into the water. I was about to join them when my baton struck an unyielding wall of meat. The man was thick-necked, broad-faced, with a tall forehead. His chestnut hair was neatly combed and his white suit was custom tailored to his massive frame. It wasn't until later, much, much later that I learned that this was Sergei Krupkin. Had I known then what I know now, I would have wet myself and leapt into the water instead. I won't list off his epithets, but his most colorful was 'the Derailer'. The man caught a freight train the hard way, and it was the train that lost.

  Needless to say, Sergei shrugged off a baton to the face without flinching. The brief pause of surprise gave him time to get hold of my wrist and swing me into the building. I made a deep, Dan-sized dent in the aluminum rolling door. Coughing and sputtering, I barely rolled out of the way before his foot knocked the entire thing off its track. Amid the clatter, I heard Vassili call out something in Russian. Sergei answered with a dismissive wave of his hand. The complete lack of concern in his voice did not fill me with confidence.

  I was faster than the immovable object, but the only thing that even made him flinch was a full jolt of electricity from both batons to his gut. The casual ease with which he was ignoring my attacks was setting off all sorts of alarm bells in the back of my head. I was definitely out of my weight class here. I tumbled back to avoid a the downswing of a pair of fists that shattered the pavement. Fear clutched at my throat as I continued to back away. His comrades were starting to groan and roll about. In a little bit they'd be standing and shooting. I had to finish Sergei and make a break for it. Easier said than done to be certain.

  A spark of twisted inspiration born of desperation flared through my mind. I had one thing left that could hit harder than my batons. I had explosives, and I had speed on my side. Sheathing the batons, I went for my breaching charges and rushed Sergei. Ducking his swing, I slapped one against the small of his back and armed it. He tore it away, but it was still in his grip when I set it off. The blast staggered him long enough for me to plant another between his shoulder blades.

  A meaty fist nearly took my head off as I rolled away. Sergei growled, but the second blast sent him stumbling towards me. I planted the third charge on his forehead, right be
tween his eyes. I kicked off of his oversized chest to leap away. I set it off mid-somersault. Sergei's head snapped back and he sank to his knees, as I landed precariously close to the edge of the wharf. The massive man was stunned, but his comrades had recovered. A line of angry Slavs with assault rifles poured bullets into me. I tumbled off the edge into the water. It felt like my innards had been mashed, as I sank below the putrid waves, pain blotting out conscious thought.

  I sank like a stone, convinced that the hammering of Kalashnikov rounds had caused the armor to fail. Someone snagged my ankle and pulled me away. Another pair of hands got under my shoulders and lifted my head above the surface. I spat polluted, brackish filth into the inside of my mask. Becky pulled it aside so that I could clear my airways. As I did so, she put a finger to her lips to remind me not to make noise. One of the Russians emptied his magazine into the spot where I'd splashed down. The idiot didn't realize that low velocity projectiles transition into water better. High-speed rounds shatter on impact with the surface. Spears and arrows are a better bet than bullets to go for a suspected submerged target.