The Brimstone Series

by Robert McKinney

  I’m halfway through the river of overheating, half-stalled and semi-parked cars that choke the R. Rainha Ginga Highway when I notice that the man has started to come towards me. Like me, he’s wading through the stalled stream of traffic, and now stands five, maybe six, car lengths away. The man must think that I make a good target. While the state of my clothes is a hint that I make less than the Lexus drivers I’m walking around, I’m still a blonde girl by herself in a foreign country. In some places, including here, I may as well be wearing a sign that says please rob me.

  Carjackers, like most criminals in search of money instead of respect, will often look for less alert prey. If you let onto the fact that you can see them coming, they may not think it worth the risk. With this in mind, I make eye contact with the carjacker. I hold his gaze and then shake my head no with a firm, curt little motion.

  I don’t really expect it to do wonders. Just give him a pause, really, that I can use to cross over to the other side of the road. I’m not too surprised when he shakes his head back and keeps walking in my direction. I am surprised, however, when a sea breeze twists its way through the car choked street, and flutters the carjacker’s jacket as it passes by. The fluttering wind opens the jacket a bit, and when it does, I see the shape of a collapsible stock M249 - a light machine gun - hanging from a strap under the approaching man’s armpit.

  Oh … shit. Double shit. There’s machine guns, and then there’s machine guns. This man is carrying the latter, which is really damn odd. Carjackers in Luanda don’t carry those. Hell, most soldiers don’t carry those save for those windswept nights when they’re hopping out of planes. Machine guns, even compact ones designed for paratrooper jumps, are so heavy that no one bothers carrying them unless they’re expecting the kind of company that can only be held back with overwhelming force.

  I doubt I qualify as that.

  An unpleasant surge of fear returns to my stomach. It starts slow but that’s still enough to set my teeth on edge and make my hands shake. The idea of being somewhere else is now very appealing, so I reach down into my pocket and grab onto my lighter.

  It’s hot in Luanda, and every part of my body is covered in sweat despite having been here for less than a half hour. That’s not bad in itself, I’m a big girl and know how to put uncomfortable things out of my mind for a time. Problem is, sweat gets slippery, so much so, in fact, that the metal surface of the knockoff Zippo is slick in my hands when I try to bring it out. I bobble the damn thing and it drops to the ground before clattering and skipping down the street and out of my sight.

  Shit, shit shit. Without that lighter, without a flame, I can’t do a drop. If I don’t find it, I’ll be trapped here, in Luanda, with a gunman coming closer and closer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I don’t see where the lighter lands, so I go down to my knees. I can see that there’s still a few lanes of stalled traffic separating the man who’s definitely not a carjacker from me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to track the lighter down soon and drop the hell out of here. Failing that, I’ll at least have a few tons of metal between my soft parts and the man with the machine gun hunting me down.

  From my hands and knees I look under the car that I’m hiding behind and out on as much as the rest of the street that I can see. The boots of the not-carjacker are still coming closer and it won’t be long until he gets a clear line of sight on me.

  I also catch a gleam in the corner of my eye, and turn to see my lighter. Its scuffed, battered shape is under the car, too far away to reach with my hand, but maybe close enough if I go down even lower onto my belly.

  Hesitation is the enemy in situations like this, so I go down onto my front and slither under the Lexus like a snake making its way through Eden. I scrape my chin on the asphalt, and bump my head on a carburetor, but I manage to get the damn lighter back in hand.

  I crawl back from under the parked car and move a little to take a peek around the edge of its bumper. I can see the not-carjacker only one car length away, his hand gripping the stock of his machine gun in the folds of his jacket. By the look on his face, he’s ready to shoot. I don’t want to be crouching behind a luxury car when that happens, so I lift up my lighter, flick it once, and make another drop.

  Drops are funny things. While they can take you anywhere in the world that you want, it really, really helps to be specific. All I really want to do is skip this machine gun infested traffic, so I don’t actually take the time to decide exactly where I want to land beyond “somewhere inside my secretary’s office building.”

  That’s why I’m only a little surprised when, after a flash of heat as I take a shortcut downstairs, I find myself crouching in a broom closet in my secretary’s building. I peek my head out of the door and see that I’m somewhere in the lobby. I stick my head out a little farther to see if the coast is clear, then step out and start limping to the elevators as casual as I can be.

  Both the floor in the lobby and the elevator are set with patterned stone that looks like marble. Pricy stuff, I think for a moment, as I press the button for the twelfth floor. One moment is all I have to spare, because I have other, more unpleasant things, like math, to consider.

  One floor in this building takes up maybe fifteen vertical feet. Multiply that by twelve and you get about 190, eh, maybe 200 feet of distance between my destination and the lobby where I’d made my landing. 200 feet isn’t much distance when it comes to making drops through the deep. If I have to get out of here with my lighter in a hurry, there’s a good chance I’ll have another visitor waiting for me in the pit when I do.

  The elevator pings and comes to a stop on my secretary’s floor. The door opens, and I limp out onto plush thick carpeting lining the short segment of hallway outside of the elevators. There are two thick glass doors bracketing each end of the hallway. I can see the edges of an open office space beyond them. On a different day, I may have been in trouble, because the doors at the ends of the hallways are made of thick misted glass and appear to be keycard locked. Luck must be on my side, though, because the one nearest to me has been propped open with a small heavy box.

  It’s quiet on the floor, like, library quiet. The roadways of Luanda were a cacophony of blaring horns and growling engines that I could even hear in the lobby downstairs. It’s different up here, and I can’t tell if that’s because of the distance between me and the ground, or if this office has been outfitted with exceptionally good windows.

  Both of those theories go out of the window when I realize that there’s also a lack of voices in the place. Most office spaces would have stifled laughter, arguments, or even the hushed tones of gossip. This place doesn’t, and I can feel the silence weighing down on this place like a blanket.

  I limp towards that door for a bit and stop as I get closer. The box turns out to actually be a brick, and not a clean brick at that. The stone is chipped at one edge and covered in grime, as if the person who’d placed it there had just grabbed it off of the street outside and carried it upstairs to prop open the door. I’ve never been an office worker myself, but I’m pretty sure that this kind of behaviour would get your desk jockey chewed out, or even fired at a place this swanky.

  Whoever placed this brick here didn’t give a shit about getting fired. The way my day has been going, that’s not a good sign.

  I drop and crawl on hands and knees the rest of the way down the hall to the propped open door, and stick my head around the corner slow and easy. I can see a wide open floor plan of desks with not a cubicle in sight, but no people. A sinking feeling grows stronger in my belly, and the voice of caution is now shrieking in the space between my ears. I ignore it, for the most part, and peek my head around the corner. I won’t lie. I’m really not a fan of what I see.

  Standing in the middle of the room is a man, this one a white guy in a tailored business suit. In his hands is a shotgun, a Kel-Tec KSG, that’s about as far as one could get from the machine
gun that I’d encountered downstairs. Where the M249 would do well at mowing down crowds at long range, this shotgun is custom made to dismantle solo targets with overwhelming force.

  It won’t do well if it comes down to taking out multiple targets, but I doubt that’s a comfort to any of the people cowering on the floor at his feet. There’s dozens of them, office workers mostly, with fingers laced together on the back of their heads and cheeks pressed into the floor’s plush carpet.

  My heart is beating so hard when I pull my head back from around the corner that I can feel it pulsing in my ears. Hostages. Whoever these guys are, they’re more than quick on their feet, well informed, and ready to hit places hard. They’re also willing to take hostages, which is a whole level beyond ballsy in the world of back alley meets and dirty deals. Hostages are the kind of things that gets words like “special forces” involved, along with others like “manhunt” and “million dollar reward.”

  If they were good enough to do this without anyone else in the building knowing, and determined enough to pull it off, then they’re definitely here for something more valuable than a ransom. My home has been attacked, along with the buyer I’d last had contact with. Someone has been coming after those I have contact with, which means that the assholes here are after my secretary. I don’t know how they’ve pulled all this shit off faster than even someone like me can move. Not knowing doesn’t matter though, not now at least. What matters is getting to my secretary before one of these guys adds him to the pile of bodies they’ve been leaving.

  I take another peek and don’t see him on the floor along with the other office workers. I do, however, see a different suited and machine gun armed man walk out of a corner office that he’d apparently just searched. He nods towards the other one standing guard in the room and makes his way over to the next closed office door. They’re still searching the place, which means that I still have a chance to get to my secretary first.

  While the open office floor lacks cubicles and other sightline blocking creations, there’s a good number of desks and chairs between me and the suited gunman. They won’t completely block me from the man’s line of sight, but if I’m lucky, he may not notice me if I move in between them.

  I crawl over to the nearest bank of tables and then the next, and then the next, using my ears to keep track of the guard gunman’s breathing and the rustle of the other still searching other office rooms.

  My secretary’s door is on the far side of the room from them. I make it there without being seen, though for how long I don’t know. His door is one of those false wood and varnish affairs, and for a second looks like it would come down in one push from a good sized man. I know better, though, because the guy who’d upgraded my house was the same one who’d done similar work on the secretary’s private office. The hinges of the door, reinforced and three times the size of what’s usually the case for a house, are made to endure a powered battering ram with a shrug. This is definitely his office. I just need to get inside.

  I know that I can’t just knock on his door, no matter how lightly, so I take out my phone, log into my banking app, and slide the whole thing under the crack between door frame and office carpet. I hear a few soft moments of rustling inside, and after a few seconds, the door cracks open a few inches.

  The barrel of a machine-pistol - an old scratched up Micro-Uzi of Israeli make - faces me from the other side of the door. A moment later, I hear a voice pitched barely above a whisper, drift out from beyond the reinforced door frame.

  “Come inside, Ms. Robinette Kohl. It’s about time that you and I spoke.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  My secretary is a small man, maybe five foot three. His skin is dark, but not like that of the Angolans in the office or out on the streets. If pressed, I’d say that he was Turkish, or maybe a Kurd. If one of those, I hope it’s the former. While I’ve met my fair share of Turks during my time in the arms trade, I’ve never met a Kurd in the business who couldn’t put rounds on a target.

  In hindsight, none of that matters at the moment, because at this range it would be harder to miss me than not. I decide that doing what he says is a very good idea, so I raise my hands up and follow my secretary inside. He holds the door open just long enough for me to come in, then the door closes behind me with a soft click. My secretary jerks his weapon towards the wall and then back to me. I get the message, and settle down in one of the chairs there.

  “Hello Ms. Kohl. Good to see you Ms. Kohl. Anything interesting to chat about Ms. Kohl?” There’s bitterness in his voice when he speaks, which spikes in intensity every time he repeats my name. I’m not used to it. He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who could keep his calm better than me. The gun in his hand never wavers despite the emotion in his voice.

  I lean back into the chair, less out of an attempt to find comfort, and more, much more, to put him at ease. I also glance at the reinforced door of his office, wondering how long we have to chat before we’re interrupted by the gunman nearby. They’ll be outside the office any moment, so I’ll have to get straight to the point.

  “Someone took my sister.” I say. “I’ve put together a team, and we’re going to get her back. The only thing else that I need is a location. If you help me with that, I’ll owe you big time. Any favor. Any job. No questions asked. If you won’t help me, I’ll leave peacefully, but I’ll remember that the answer is no.”

  My secretary just stares at me for a full minute after I say that. Then he snorts.

  “The nerve on you.” he says. “Like a bull in a damn china shop. I should have known that you were too direct to try something as underhanded as this.” He waves his free hand toward the door, indicating the ongoing hostage situation.

  He lowers the barrel of his miniature submachine gun.

  “I just wish you were as watchful as you are bold.” He continues. The bitterness is out of his voice, now replaced by something else. Sadness, and a little fatigue.

  “The hostage takers outside?” Now it’s my turn to snort. “They’re kind of hard to miss.”

  “No, Ms. Kohl.” says my secretary. “Not the kind men outside. I’m referring to the others who’ve been visiting your friends over the course of the last hour.”

  “But. What?” I ask, too confused to be angry. Too shocked to be worried.

  My secretary places his micro-Uzi on his desk and walks over to the wall next to me. It’s lined with heavy metal filing cabinets, each equipped with a lock. He opens one, rifles through a long tray of files inside, and starts tossing folders on the desktop alongside his gun.

  “I keep track of your people,” he says, still pulling out folders, “because most of them are my people as well. Most dead in the last hour. Most of them hit hard in their homes.

  I stare back at him, stunned. The people I’d called and convinced to come help me are not lightweights by any stretch of the imagination. They’re dangerous, careful, and in some cases, devious, people. They were not the kind of people to get killed easily, if at all. My secretary has to be wrong.

  “But how could someone do that? My guys are professionals. They know how to stay hidden.”

  “Hard to stay hidden if someone is tracing their calls.” Says my secretary as he closes the file cabinet door. He picks up a briefcase from the floor and lays it awkwardly on the desk. Then he starts transferring those files to a briefcase on his desk.

  I shake my head while he works.

  “My phone is encrypted, and theirs were as well. Even if someone was listening in, all they’d hear from us was gibberish.”

  “Hearing what you and your friends had to say would have been nice. I’ll admit it. But I don’t think the men outside cared much about the details of your conversations. All they really wanted was who you were speaking to, and where they were when they spoke. You’ve been set up, Ms. Kohl, your friends along with you.”

  My secretary closes
his briefcase, picks it up, hefts his weapon, and keeps talking before I can think too much about that.

  “The only good news is that you didn’t betray me, Ms. Kohl. I’m almost fond of you, to be honest. It would have been a shame to mark you down for revenge.”

  He chooses that moment to start walking towards the door. An instant later, someone on the other side chooses that same instant to open up on the office door with a weapon set to full automatic.

  The noise of it, the sheer almost physical wave of the machine gun’s thunder, makes my ears ring, even from the other side of the door. I see several divots and dents get punched into the steel, which gives way a moment later with a hissing screech.

  Both my secretary and I throw ourselves to the ground the moment the sound of gunfire kicks in. I’m apparently a little faster getting there than my secretary is, because he grunts once, then twice, before he makes it to the carpet.

  He rolls over, revealing a growing dark stain at the base of his torso. More bullets smack through the closed door, and when I look up, I see that the bullet holes are melted and smoking at the edges.

  I exhale and decide to count this as a piece of good luck. Armor piercing ammunition with an incendiary coating gets a bad reputation in most medical circles, but I’m grateful that the asshole outside decided to use the incendiary variation instead of the vanilla option. The rounds that hit my secretary have cauterized his flesh a little while passing through. It won’t be enough to keep him from bleeding out indefinitely, but it may be enough for him to live long enough to get aid.