by Greg Rucka
There was a clank from the fence, and Xia was opening the gate, motioning us to her. Kekela moved first. I followed. The gate had a padlock, and Xia replaced it once we were through, but she didn't lock it.
"This way," Xia said. "Quickly."
She started immediately along the narrow alley between the blocks. Laundry lines made from scavenged work-site cable were strung between support posts, draped with clothing and bedding, obstructing vision everywhere I turned. Xia hurried, Kekela close after her. Every door we passed was closed, every window set high and made small, impossible to see or escape through.
"Over here, this way," Xia said.
We turned, came around the corner of one of the buildings into a courtyard, this one devoid of laundry or refuse. In the meager shade provided by the balcony above him, a man sat opposite us, beside a closed door. He looked in his twenties, wearing the traditional shirt-dress dishdasha that Emirati men favored, but this one was teal instead of the old-fashioned white. His head was bare, no gutra, his hair cut fashionably, just a little long. A cigarette burned in one hand.
"Here he is," Xia said, indicating me.
The man let a mouthful of smoke leak free as he looked me over. Then he showed me an anemic smile.
"Mar haba," he said.
"Al-salaam alaykum," I answered. Peace be upon you.
"Wa alaykum e-salaam," he answered. And upon you peace.
The insincerity was palpable to all of us.
He rose from his seat, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out with his toe, his attention, for the moment, on its destruction. He was wearing Nikes. They looked new. When he was certain he'd ground the butt to shreds, he looked up again, this time at Xia.
"You can go," he told her.
Xia took hold of Kekela's forearm, started trying to move her back in the direction we had come. "Come on."
"No," Kekela said. "No, I'm staying with him."
"Keke, please," Xia said, trying to move her again. "We should go."
I'd been keeping my eyes on the man, the same way he'd been watching me. There was no question, now, that Xia had set me up, and from her behavior, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she'd done so against her will. There had always been the chance this was how things would play out; the moment I'd handed over the picture of Tiasa, it pretty much guaranteed that the wrong people would take notice. But the wrong people for Xia were the right people for me, and I'd played the gamble willingly, and I'd settle it now, no matter the cost.
At least, no matter the cost to me.
"It's okay," I told Kekela. "You should go."
"No! What's going on?" She jerked herself free from Xia's grip, turning on her. "What did you do? What have you done, Xia?"
Xia didn't answer.
"I told him he could trust you! I told him because I trust you!"
"If she won't leave," the man said to me, "she's welcome to come inside with you. I have friends who would be happy to keep her company."
"I'm sure you do," I answered. "That's why she's going to leave."
"No, no I won't, I won't go. I'm staying with you, Danil!"
I broke from the staring contest, faced Kekela. She looked miserable, guilty and afraid. I put my hands on her shoulders, spoke in Georgian.
"Either they have Tiasa, or they know where I can find her, and that's why I'm here. You got me this far. You did everything I asked you to. But now you have to go."
"Oh God, oh my God." Her voice had gone tight. "This is my fault. It's all my fault."
"It's not."
"They're going to kill you. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?"
"First they'll have some questions for me."
"Oh God, oh God. No, no, I can't leave you."
"If you go in there, Kekela, they'll use you against me. It's like you said by the pool. I need to concentrate on saving one woman at a time."
It took her a second to parse, to remember, and then she half laughed, half sobbed.
"You are fucked up," she told me.
"Without question," I agreed. "Go. Please."
This time, when Xia took her arm, she didn't resist. I watched them round the corner, going out of sight. Kekela didn't look back.
When I turned again to face him, the man's smile was exactly as it had been before. He indicated the door he'd been seated beside. "Shall we go inside?"
"After you."
"No." The smile died, turned to ice in the middle of the desert. "After you."
CHAPTER
Fifteen Before I went through the door, I thought that I'd play it their way, at least for a while. They had questions, I was sure. At the very least, they wanted to know my interest in this fourteen-year-old girl they'd seen in the picture Xia had shown them. They wanted to know who I was, why I cared. If I was some crusading law enforcement officer, or someone in the business, someone trafficking, though the last seemed highly unlikely.
So I thought that I would let that run, let them intimidate and threaten and even hurt me, if that's what it took. Just to get them talking, just to see if Tiasa really was here, and if not, to find out if they knew her, knew where she was. It was risky as hell, but it seemed the best idea.
Then I stepped inside, into a spare and ugly makeshift waiting room with a couple of rundown chairs, some pillows in the corner surrounding a large sheesha pipe. Digital photos, printed on plain paper, were tacked to the wall opposite me, the menu of the day, the girls available. A single door, closed, led out of the room opposite me.
I took it all in as I entered, the man in the dishdasha closing the door after us even as another man stepped out from where he'd been against the entry wall. Maybe another Emirati, I couldn't be sure, this one dressed in loose linen pants and an overlarge white linen shirt. He had a shotgun in his hands, a stubby little pump-action Serbu model with an after-market gold finish. As soon as the door closed, the man in the dishdasha said something in Arabic, and the man with the shotgun stepped toward me, the barrel of the gun not quite in-line, and I could tell he was going to use it as a prod.
At which point I thought, Fuck it.
I swept my forearm up to clear the barrel of the shotgun, pivoting into him, catching hold of the weapon in my right hand. At the same time, with my left, I punched my fingers into his throat, just beneath his Adam's apple, then again, into his left eye. He lost the shotgun to me, choking as he staggered back.
I spun back to the entrance, saw that the best reaction the man in the dishdasha had managed as yet was to be stunned, which suited me fine, and frankly was kind of the point. He was still looking stunned as I kicked him in the knee with my left. Adrenaline turned the kick more vicious than I'd intended, and something in the joint buckled and broke, and he toppled, screaming in Arabic. Then he was on the floor, and I kicked him in the face, hard, and he cut to silence.
I flipped the shotgun around in my grip, turning again to the man I'd taken it from. He had fallen back against the wall, struggling to keep his feet, blood running from his eye, his face swollen with the need for air. His right hand was going behind his back, and I knew he was drawing on me, forcing an escalation that didn't leave me any option. I shot him point-blank, and whoever had loaded the Serbu had chosen birdshot for it, and it was as devastatingly messy as it was effective.
There was a half beat of silence as I went to the body, searching it. By the time I'd pulled the pistol from the dead man's hand, the first scream had come, childish and high-pitched. Footsteps pounded on the ceiling above me, at least two sets. The pistol was a semi-auto, a Beretta, and I tucked it into my jeans, then glanced back at the man in the dishdasha. He was semiconscious, bleeding and groaning.
The room I was in had only the two doors, the one leading out, the other leading deeper within. I needed to go deeper, because if Tiasa was here, that's where she'd be. But deeper meant more men with guns. Going outside would give up the initiative and lose me time, and I'd get neither back. Staying where I was wouldn't work, eithe
r; unless whoever was coming in response was either dense or mental, he'd pause outside to assess, rather than charging into the room headlong, because he couldn't know who had shot whom. Once he realized his friends weren't answering, he'd then as likely spray the room with bullets as not.
I jacked the next shell up on the shotgun, moving to the inner door, and opening it without hesitating. It wasn't that I was sure of myself; it was that I didn't have time to be cautious. The hallway was short, maybe fifteen feet, turned ninety degrees left at its end, rooms on either side. I closed the door behind me silently, listening to movement above, the sounds of whimpering, the hush of men's voices. The rapid movement had turned to caution.
I took the door on the left, as fast and as quiet as I could. It was a bathroom, broken tile and one shit-stained seat, the bowl half-filled with excrement and urine. The light was on, and I left it that way, shutting the door silently after me. I swung the front grip down on the Serbu and forced myself to breathe, trying to replenish and stockpile oxygen, listening hard for movement in the hall.
It didn't take long, cautious footfalls passing my door by within a handful of seconds, then a voice calling out, "Murab? Zafar?"
I took my hand off the front grip long enough to open the bathroom door, kicked it clear, and stepped out, facing the way I'd come. There were two of them, Western dress, each with an AK, each showing me their backs. They heard me coming. I fired, jacked, fired again, and the birdshot and the close range guaranteed I didn't need to do it a third time. Both of them fell, one hit in the back before he'd managed to turn, the other in the side, as he'd been coming to bear.
There was more screaming, and I realized some of it was coming from the room opposite me.
I dropped the shotgun, took one of the AKs. It, too, had a gold finish, and showed pride of ownership, complete with a hand-tooled leather carry strap. I slung the weapon, took out the Beretta, checked the chamber-loaded indicator, and verified there was a round waiting, then dropped the magazine into my hand. It was full. I replaced the mag.
The screams had stopped.
I could hear the whine of an air conditioner above me, but no more movement. With the Beretta ready, I moved to the first door in the hall that I'd passed, tried the knob slowly. It gave without resistance, and I went low, pushed it gently open. No one shot at me in response. I peered in, discovered it was a small kitchen, as filthy and potentially unsanitary as the bathroom had been.
I moved to the room from which I'd heard screaming, repeated the procedure, taking the soft entry, slow on the knob, gentle with the door. There was no noise from inside as it swung open. A mattress was on the floor, thin and naked with an old bloodstain at its center, no other furniture, not even a pillow.
There was a girl inside, Pakistani perhaps, not older than thirteen. She huddled in the corner opposite the mattress, in a T-shirt and panties, and when she saw me she wrapped her head in her arms, buried her face against her knees, attempting to disappear.
"It's okay," I whispered. "It's okay."
And because I was a liar and it absolutely wasn't, I moved on. There was another "bedroom" on the ground floor, this one occupied by two girls. As in the previous room, they were huddled together in fear, the arms of the elder around the shoulders of the younger. The younger appeared about the same age as the Pakistani girl I'd seen, though this one I thought was from India. The older girl looked CIS, maybe Russian or Ukrainian.
She was also visibly pregnant.
"Tiasa," I said. "Tiasa Lagidze."
Nothing in response. Their fear was palpable, it was something I could smell, something I could taste in the stuffy air. I checked the hallway again, looking toward the stairs, straining to hear the sound of any movement from above, then glanced back at the two girls. They were too afraid to even look at me.
"How many?" I asked, then repeated it in Russian. "How many men here? How many keeping you here?"
The pregnant girl raised her eyes. They were big and brown and maybe just a little bit hopeful. She held up her right hand, five fingers splayed.
One left, I thought.
"You're going to hear more shooting." I kept my voice soft, sticking with Russian. "Stay still. I'll come back when it's over."
I shut the door silently, checked the hall again. Above me, a floorboard creaked. The close air and the heat had me perspiring heavily, and I could feel sweat running down my neck, making my glasses slip on my nose. The stairs loomed at the end of the hall, narrow and dangerous and offering me no other choice. Stairs were a trap, one of the few tactical situations where nothing was on your side. They offered no mobility, no scope, no eyelines. The last man was on the floor above me, and he knew, like I knew, that the only way to reach him was the stairs, straight up the mother of all fatal funnels and into a blind turn.
I backed down the hall the direction I had come, watching the stairs until the corner. I turned, stepped over the bodies blocking the door to the front room, entered low. The man in the dishdasha was where I'd left him. I sidestepped over to the sheesha, lifted it in one hand and dumped the contents of the water pipe on him. He spluttered, gagging.
I put the Beretta to his neck and forced him to his feet. He nearly fell when he tried to put weight on his broken knee, his face creasing with pain.
"Stay silent, you might live through this," I told him.
He bit down on his suffering, nostrils flaring as he fought to control his breathing, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscles working. As much fear as the girls carried, he doubled it in hatred, and every ounce of that hatred was directed at me.
"We're going upstairs," I whispered to him. "You first."
Carefully, keeping the Beretta on him, we moved back into the inner hall. At the corner, I pulled him around, put him in front of me. He needed a hand on the wall to steady himself.
"Go," I told him. "Keep it slow. Not a word, not a sound."
He looked back at me with my gun, decided that was enough persuasion to do as I said, and began hobbling slowly toward the stairs. I followed a few feet before stopping, keeping distance, letting him lead me.
The stairs were hard for him, and his progress slowed even further. One step at a time, careful, painful, measured. It wasn't that different from how I'd have climbed the stairs, knowing what was waiting for me at the top.
Whoever was up there thought so, too.
The shots came at an angle, blowing through the drywall on the right-hand side, angled down, a long chatter from another assault rifle. Only a few hit the man in the dishdasha, and he slammed against the left wall, then tumbled back down the stairs in a heap, head over heels until he was sprawled on the floor, broken and dead.
I brought up the Beretta and waited. I didn't have to wait more than a minute, but it felt longer. Sweat slipped down my back and into my eyes, making them sting. Then I heard the floorboards creaking again, the rustle of movement, and I saw the feet on the stairs, black sneakers. Then the legs, the barrel of an AK, and that was enough for me. I put one from the Beretta into the left sneaker, heard the scream, watched the last man fall face-first down the stairs, onto the body of the man in the dishdasha. He'd managed to keep hold of the AK when he fell.
I shot him twice more, and made sure he'd never be able to use it again.
CHAPTER
Sixteen There were eight girls in all. The eldest of them was around seventeen. The youngest, I think, was eleven. I don't know. I didn't have the heart to ask.
Tiasa wasn't among them.
I went room to room, telling them to get dressed as quickly as they could, trying to get them mobilized. Aside from the pregnant girl, there was another who understood my Russian, and a third girl who could manage in pidgin English. I asked if any of them knew how to drive, and the pregnant girl did.
"Where are you from?" I asked her.
"Volgograd."
I gave her the keys to the Toyota SUV that I'd found on the man in the dishdasha.
"Go to the Al Maidan To
wer on Al-Maktoum Road," I told her. "It's easy to find, just follow the signs. Go straight there, straight to the Russian Federation Consulate, it's on the third floor. Take all of the girls with you. Tell them where you were, what they did to you. Leave me out of it."
"I understand."
Together, we hustled the girls out of the building, to the Toyota. The camp had begun to stir, and a couple of the men there watched us pass without expression or comment or apparent interest. The girls shuffled, some of them crying. Mostly, they seemed numb, very much in shock.
Before they were all loaded, I stopped one of the girls, the other one who'd understood my Russian. I'd seen her before, on Vladek's BlackBerry, the picture of her smiling as she believed his lies. It hadn't been more than ten days since he'd shipped her to Turkey, but all the same, I had to check the smartphone to be sure.
"Wait," I told her.
She looked at me with alarm, the fear that had begun dissipating instantly in evidence again.
I brought up Tiasa's picture on the BlackBerry. She cringed at the sight of the smartphone in my hand, perhaps recognizing it as Vladek's, perhaps simply because of the association it held. She started to bring a hand to her face, to hide it from the camera, before she realized that I was trying to show her something on the screen.
"This girl," I said. "Do you know her? Have you seen her?"
She shook her head, anxious.
"The man in Georgia," I said. "The man who sold you, he sold her, too. That man can't hurt you. He'll never hurt you again. It's all right, you can tell me the truth."
She bit her lip, then nodded.
"You remember her?"
"I remember her. Tiasa. She was… she cried all the time."
"I was told she was here, that she came with you and some others to Dubai. Do you know where she is? Do you know where I can find her?"
