by Alex Archer
“I’m depending on you to get me out of it. If you don’t, I’ll consider terminating you.”
“Me? I thought you have Emil there.”
“I do, but he’s plan B. I’d much rather go with plan A and not get blindsided.”
“What’s the severance package like?” Despite the attempt at humor, Garin heard the tension in the woman’s voice. She took her job very seriously.
“You don’t want to find out. Where’s my ship?” Garin had called in a salvage ship he owned under one of his subsidiaries. The vessel was crewed by men who were loyal to him, and who had stood by him during difficult and bloody situations before. They were his own private pirates.
“Kestrel is an hour and a half out as of this moment.”
“Good. Now be quiet and let me work.” Garin reached the corner and turned east to walk toward Troiai’s place of business.
* * *
A HIGH FENCE surrounded the salvage yard proper. Razor wire topped the fence. On the other side of the barrier, several boats and yachts of different sizes sat up on blocks in various states of disrepair. A handful of men worked on some of the larger pleasurecraft, and the dull tang of diesel lay over the area, some of it from the immediate vicinity and some of it from the ships lying at anchor.
The salvage shop was housed in a large warehouse that fronted the water. Terns roosted along the peaked roof and added to the excrement already streaking the red tiles.
Garin waited at the large gate that opened onto the cross street. After a moment, he took out his phone and called the number he had for Sebastiano Troiai.
The man answered on the third ring. “Salvage.”
“We have an appointment.”
Troiai hesitated before clearing his throat. “Where are you?”
“Waiting at the gate. Evidently the men working on the salvage are too busy to see what I want.” That actually relaxed Garin. If one of the men had addressed him immediately, the behavior would have been suspect.
“I’ll get someone there.”
By the time Garin put his phone away, Troiai had opened one of the multipaned windows on the building and shouted orders in an irritated tone.
One of the young men in a stained coverall stopped working on a diesel engine sitting on sawhorses and came to the gate. Without a word, the mechanic unlocked the gate and slid it aside.
Garin stepped through and headed for the building. He took in the salvage yard, looking for anything that didn’t belong, any movement that appeared too sudden.
Amalia whispered into his ear. “I have you. You’re clear here, but I’m going to lose you inside the building. They don’t have any kind of CCTV.”
“Understood. You’ll still be with me audibly.” Tension knotted Garin’s stomach. Sometimes he still had nightmares about that night he’d gotten to Roux only minutes ahead of Melina Andrianou’s hounds.
Roux had been in bad shape, more dead than alive. Garin had sat beside the old man, cleaned him, bandaged him and watched over Roux because he didn’t trust anyone else to do the job half as well as he did. Less than two weeks before that, Garin had tried to kill Roux himself. That night, he’d wanted nothing more than to find the person who had hurt Roux, but the old man had never given him the name until yesterday when they’d been talking to Annja.
Garin’s relationship with Roux was very complicated, partly because they had lived so long, and partly because they were so different, yet so much alike. That relationship balanced on the edge of a knife on good days.
Still, finding the sword, adding Annja Creed to their intimate circle, had tempered that relationship somewhat. The push-pull nature of their relationship was still there, but they hadn’t tried to kill each other in a while. Things were getting better.
Except for instances when one of Roux’s mysteries interfered. Those were enough to get either of them killed. Maybe both.
And Annja, too.
That wasn’t a pleasant thought. He quite liked Annja, troublesome though she could be.
Sebastiano Troiai met Garin at a door labeled Office. He was a short, stout man with massive forearms and a complexion bronzed by the sun and the sea. Gray stained his unruly hair and the small mustache that curled up slightly at the corners of his mouth. He smelled of diesel and cheap cologne, and a wedding ring glinted as he cleaned his hands with a red rag.
“Welcome, welcome. Sorry about the gate. Those guys...” Troiai shook his head as he headed back into the building.
Garin nodded and followed him inside the small office where an older woman sat at a small desk and worked at an ancient computer. Trophies from salvage finds, some worthwhile and some evidently tangled remains of expensive yachts, hung on the otherwise plain walls.
“I would have been happy to meet you anywhere you wanted.” Troiai kept on through another door into a large work bay that contained five powerboats and two yachts. Three of the boats and one of the yachts hung from chains attached to rigs on the high ceiling beams.
“This is fine.”
“You said you wanted to talk to me about something I salvaged?”
“I do.”
Sighing, Troiai stopped next to the hanging yacht, a sixty-two footer trimmed in teak and brass and looking like it was more someone’s showpiece than a working vessel. “Look, I gotta ask, you know, if you’re some kind of policeman.”
Garin grinned. “Not even close.”
Troiai pursed his lips. “The reason I had to ask, I know that you’re supposed to claim all the artifacts you find and sell so the government can tax you on them, but I don’t always do that.”
“Government tends to cut deeply into the profit margin. I’m not a fan.”
A relaxed smile split Troiai’s face. “Excellent. Then what can I do for you?”
“A few days ago, you found this.” Garin took out his phone and showed a picture of the clockwork butterfly to the man.
“Ah, the bug.”
Garin put his phone away. “It’s not a bug, it’s a butterfly.”
Troiai shrugged. “Okay, a butterfly. You bought that thing?”
“I did.”
“How much did you give for it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I do.”
Troiai swore. “I knew I didn’t charge Eyuboglu enough for it. I should have known because he kept talking the bug down. Butterfly. He talked the butterfly down. But he made sure he didn’t leave without it that day. And for him to already have sold it to you, and for you to come here looking for it, that thing must be worth something, huh?”
“What else did you find when you found the butterfly?”
“Not so much. A few odds and ends I knew I could sell. Things that always go to somebody. I didn’t get a real find on that salvage.” Troiai looked slyly at Garin. “Except maybe I did, didn’t I?”
“Can you tell me how you found this?”
“Out near a site I work every now and again after an earthquake. There are seven wrecks out there. All of them have paid off a little bit, but nothing significant.”
“Seven wrecks?”
Troiai nodded. “A lot of ships have gone down out in the Mediterranean. Back in the day, Genoa was on one of the major trade routes. A lot of cultures sailed through these waters. Not all of them got where they were going.”
“I’d like you to take me to that site.”
Troiai looked around the warehouse. “I can’t do that right now. I have a lot of work here to get out. A lot of people are depending on me. The only reason I was out there that day was because I had to pull up that boat.” He pointed at one of the pleasurecrafts. “The owner’s son went out there drunk, ended up running into a container ship while trying to impress the girls he was with. Boat went straight to the bottom. The owner called me, wanted me to get his boat bac
k. I did. Now he’s not sure he wants it in the shape it’s in. He’s thinking maybe he wants to trade up. The insurance company will pay me a finder’s fee, but it won’t do much more than cover the cost of the salvage, even if I get to sell off the parts.” He shook his head. “I need to work. I have a family to feed.”
“I’ll pay you fifty thousand euros for playing guide for a week. Deposited into your bank. Or I can pay you cash.”
That got Troiai’s attention. “Cash?”
“That way you don’t have to worry about the government taking a big bite of it. I’ll give you half up front.”
Once Troiai had it in his mind to do something, he moved quickly. “How soon do you want to leave?”
“Now.”
“I’ll have to get my ship set up to go out.”
“We’re taking my ship. It’s already en route.”
“Fifty thousand euros and we’re using your ship?”
“Yes. I’ve got more equipment aboard than you probably do.”
Troiai gnawed on a thumbnail. “What was that thing I found?”
“I don’t know, but I want to find out. Are we leaving or not?”
“Sure, sure. Let me get the guys here squared away. Then I have to tell my wife I’ll be gone for a week.”
Garin nodded. “I’ll wait for you outside.” He walked back to the small office and Amalia called him over the earbud.
“Okay, you’re in trouble. I just identified Melina Andrianou closing in on your position.”
“Where?”
“Three intersections up in an SUV. She’s going to be on top of you any second, and she’s got six, no...ten men with her.”
Garin peered through the smoke-stained window at the street near the front gate. “Emil?”
“I heard. We are on our way. I have four men across the street who will engage her.”
Garin turned back to the desk where Troiai was speaking to the secretary. He grabbed the shorter man by the shoulder to get his attention, then focused on the secretary. “You need to leave.”
The woman gaped at him. “What?”
“Leave.”
She looked at Troiai for support. He hesitated.
Garin pulled the Glock from the back of his belt and fired a round through the ancient computer monitor, scattering plastic and glass across the desk and floor.
The woman got to her feet and fled.
Troiai tried to leave, too, but Garin kept hold of him. “Is there a back way out of here?”
22
Melina tapped the brakes at the intersection to slow the SUV’s headlong pace just enough to keep it from flipping over as she rounded the corner. The tires screeched as they fought to keep traction. Her colleague riding shotgun grabbed the seat belt and braced himself against the dashboard.
The other three armed men rode in the vehicle with her. None of them said anything.
Melina straightened the SUV, narrowly missing a delivery truck. She’d had no choice but to act quickly once Garin had been discovered on-site at the salvage yard because her quarry had a habit of disappearing. She’d hoped that Roux would also arrive.
The old man hadn’t showed, though. Maybe he’d been more injured in yesterday’s attempt on his life than she’d been led to believe. She hoped so because that would slow him down, but she also hoped he was still well enough to agonize over the torture she intended to inflict on him. The torture she’d put him through six years ago should have crippled him for life, yet he was able to kill trained soldiers yesterday and escape.
“There.” The man in the passenger seat—she really should learn the name of her grandfather’s employees, but she burned through them so fast, she didn’t want to go to the bother—looked up from the GPS he held and pointed at the plain-looking warehouse behind the high security fence. He put the GPS away and readied his assault rifle.
Without a word, Melina steered for the fence. Metal screamed as the vehicle forced the fence back. Support posts pulled out of their concrete bases. Then the fence ripped just before she crashed into one of the boats and knocked it from the blocks.
Workers who had been aboard the boat tried to abandon ship, but they threw themselves overboard too late. The powerboat rebounded from the charging SUV and swung around, falling on top of two of them.
A large yacht blocked the way ahead. She stopped the SUV, killed the engine and grabbed the AK-47 between the seats. Snapping the safety off, she clambered out of the vehicle.
“Where is Garin?” she asked into the air.
“Still inside the building,” one of her team stationed down by the piers responded through her earbud. “I do not have a shot at him.”
Melina canted the rifle up, holding it in both hands as she closed on the building. She wore Kevlar from her neck to her knees under her pants and thigh-length jacket.
Sudden movement to her right brought her around. She saw a man duck behind a boat and fired a three-round burst that ripped into the vessel’s gunwale. Seeing the man’s legs beneath, Melina took aim again and squeezed the trigger. The rounds tore through the man’s calves and knocked him to the ground.
He lay helpless and stretched out thirty feet away. His cell phone lay just out of his reach, but Melina could see enough of the screen to know that the police would be here soon.
Melina shot the man in the head, then blasted the phone to pieces. The dead man’s blood pumped out onto the ground for a few seconds before his heart got the message that he was gone.
Melina caught a glimpse of Garin Braden through the multipaned window at the front of the warehouse as he aimed a pistol in her direction. She dropped into a crouch immediately and yelled a warning to her team. “Down!”
The man standing next to her wasn’t as lucky as the rest of them. Two rounds tattooed his Kevlar-covered chest and the third tore through his neck, ripping out his larynx and leaving him drowning in his own blood. One of the mercenaries behind the wounded man put his rifle to the back of the guy’s head and pulled the trigger to put him out of his misery. They kept moving in a crouch as the man fell.
The man behind Melina then opened fire on the window, burning through a full magazine in a continuous, thundering roar. The bullets demolished the other panes that Garin’s bullets hadn’t already, and ripped away the latticework. Glass spun and shone as it spilled free and caught the light.
Emil’s people across the street opened fire on Melina’s team, but their field of fire was blocked by the SUV and the scattered marine vessels. As they started to pursue Melina, her second team of shooters in the other SUV engaged them. The driver put his vehicle sideways at the entrance to the salvage yard to help block shots as her second team got out and returned fire on Garin’s men.
Melina picked up the pace to a jog as she closed on the front door. She waited beside the open entrance until one of the two men with her stepped into position on the other side. Then she swung around and advanced, following her assault rifle into the building, taking in the exploded computer monitor at a glance. Bullet holes decorated the wall opposite the window.
There was no sign of Garin Braden, but there was another door at the back of the office.
“Do you have Garin?” her grandfather asked through the earbud.
“Not yet. We have him cornered.” Another team covered the rear of the building. “We’ll have him soon enough.” Melina kept advancing with short, tight steps. She peered through the doorway into the work area proper. Whether she took Garin Braden alive or dead didn’t matter to her. Once she had him, Roux would come to her.
* * *
GARIN KNEW HE was in a desperate situation. He’d missed the woman when he’d shot through the office window. Thankfully one of her shock troops was down and not getting up again.
He kept hold of Troiai’s arm as he guided th
e man through the building’s maze of boats and yachts. He swept the surrounding area with his gaze, telling himself he was going to make it out of the ambush alive because that was all he could do.
“Garin,” Amalia said into the earbud, “there are more men covering the back of the warehouse. They’ve killed Emil’s observation team.”
“I understand.” Garin stopped in front of a row of metal shelves holding solvents and other chemicals. He scanned the Italian labels. Even if he hadn’t been able to read the language, he could see the manufacturers’ warning flames plainly enough.
When Garin took his hand from Troiai, the man started to run.
“If you go out there, they’ll shoot you.” Garin holstered his pistol and grabbed a couple of the alcohol-based solvents in five-liter plastic containers.
Troiai stopped and stood there nervously, poised to flee again. “Then what are we to do?”
“Get out of here.” Garin opened the solvent and poured it over and around the chemicals. “Help me.”
Grabbing the other solvent container, Troiai also began dousing the shelves. “What are you going to do?”
“You have insurance on this place?”
“Yes.” Understanding dawned in the man’s expression. “Wait. You can’t set the building on fire.”
“Sure I can.” Garin produced a lighter, struck it, locked the button and tossed it onto the spilled solvent. The chemicals ignited with a soft surge and blue and yellow flames gently lapped at the shelves.
“My insurance isn’t going to cover all of this!”
“Then be glad that I’m underwriting your insurance today.” Garin grabbed him by the arm and pulled him behind the storage shelves.
“We’re going to be trapped back here.”
Already the flames were climbing the walls and spreading out across the floor in pursuit of the spilled pool of solvent running across the warehouse. Smoke clouded up instantly, acrid and thick.
“No, they’re going to be trapped back there.” Garin looked around the back of the warehouse and found the four acetylene tanks he’d seen chained to the wall earlier. Four oxygen tanks stood clearly marked beside them. “We’re going to make our own door.”
