Blood Trust jm-3

by Eric Van Lustbader

  He felt the world drop away from him. All that existed was the two of them, locked together, falling through space and time, back to when they had been together in the Ukraine last year, before the betrayal that was still a betrayal, but on another, slighter order of magnitude. A betrayal that could be forgiven without damages being assessed.

  The pines above them shook and shivered, clouds passed by overhead, and the velvet evening seemed to wrap them in its cool embrace.

  How quickly hate returns to love, he thought.

  As they were about to get into the car, he said, “Annika, about you and Xhafa.”

  “Later, my love. I’ll tell you everything.”

  * * *

  BALTASAR CLOSED his phone and went back to his surveillance of the Dementieva woman.

  “Everything all right?” he said to Asu.

  “They went into the line of pines.” Asu, the driver, put his field glasses down and pointed.

  They were in an armored vehicle similar to the one that had brought Arian Xhafa and the Syrian from the air base to the compound. It was still light enough to see the stand of trees. The pines looked delicate in the gathering twilight, like a Japanese watercolor.

  “What are our orders?” Yassin said from behind them.

  “The woman is to be taken to the safehouse in the western district of Vlorë. The other three are to be killed.”

  Baltasar could feel Yassin’s excitement coming off him in waves.

  “Now,” he said. “As soon as we determine—”

  At that moment, the huge car slid out from behind the trees and headed off to the east.

  “Go,” Baltasar said. “Go!”

  Asu started up the vehicle and put it into gear. The advantages of the vehicle were many, including its inch-and-a-half-thick armor plate and its two .30 caliber machine guns, mounted fore and aft, its maneuverability over any sort of terrain, and its storehouse of other weaponry, including tear-gas grenades, a handheld rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. On the other hand, it was noisy, relatively slow, and not as maneuverable as a car on normal surfaces. Even so, Baltasar favored it over the other forms of ground transport at the Syrian’s disposal.

  The large car ahead had its head- and taillights on, but Baltasar instructed Asu to keep theirs off. They were phenomenally lucky that the 737 had landed at sunset. Now, in the twilight’s uncertain illumination, they could follow without fear of being detected.

  The car bumped down country lanes into larger streets and then took the ramp onto the ring road that circumnavigated Vlorë. There was no telling where it was headed, and Baltasar was anxious not to lose sight of it.

  Yassin leaned forward, body as tense as a drawn bow. “We should drive them off the road,” he said.

  “Wait,” Baltasar said without turning around.

  “And then, as they come out of the car, use the flamethrower to incinerate them one by one.”

  Now Baltasar turned to him. “And what do you think the others will do while the first one is roasting, sit on their thumbs and wait to be set afire?”

  Yassin grinned. “There’s always the thirty caliber. Poum, poum, poum!”

  “All good things come to those who wait, Yassin.” He handed Yassin the specially reconfigured U.S. Army M24 SWS sniper rifle. “Check the magazine and get ready.”

  * * *

  FOR THE first forty-five minutes after the 737 took off from Vlorë, Dennis Paull reviewed what he himself knew about the multiple murders in D.C., beginning with the torture-killing of Billy Warren. He married that with the new information Jack had given him, including the damning evidence against Peter McKinsey from testimony from both Naomi and Chief Detective Heroe. The news that Naomi had been murdered by her partner had shaken him to the core. The very idea of such a thing was so alien he’d had to spend several minutes trying to get his mind around it. He’d been in the intelligence services long enough to have experienced or heard about various kinds of betrayals. All were heinous by their very nature, but this was in a category by itself. If there were, indeed, levels of hell, he hoped to God that McKinsey was inhabiting the lowest.

  He took out a pad and pen and began jotting down notes. He also tried to make a perp tree, as they called it at Metro, of all the principals involved in the multiple-murder case. After some long and hard contemplation, plus some overseas calls, he had to admit that Jack’s instinct was right. Middle Bay Bancorp was the nexus point for everything. Henry Holt Carson’s bank, InterPublic, was in the process of buying Middle Bay—its books were even now being vetted by a team of forensic accountants led by John Pawnhill. If Jack was correct, Pawnhill was Mbreti, the American kingpin of Arian Xhafa’s sex trade empire. He thought a moment, then jotted down the name “Dardan Xhafa” with a question mark after it. If Pawnhill was the kingpin, what had Arian’s brother been? Or had he been there to keep an eye on Mbreti? Blood was thicker than water to these people, he knew.

  But how did Middle Bay figure into the equation and what was Carson’s involvement? Alli’s discovery of the take-out menu from First Won Ton, the restaurant below which Xhafa’s slave market auctioned off its cherries, as they were called in slang, meant that her uncle was somehow involved in all this. But how? And, most baffling and frightening of all, why had President Crawford himself fast-tracked the buyout through the federal regulatory process?

  Thinking of Alli put him in a depressed mood. He rose and went into the toilet to splash water on his face. He’d acted abysmally toward her all during the mission. He’d made himself believe that it was because her presence on a clandestine wet-work mission was highly inappropriate. He’d made himself believe that he was pissed that a tiny slip of a girl could best him in hand-to-hand combat. And those reasons might have been legit until he’d seen her in action. Both her courage and her prowess under extreme conditions were exemplary. He’d actually been proud of her, but he’d quickly tamped down on the feeling, preferring instead to keep needling her.

  Now, staring at himself in the mirror, he was forced to admit his intense jealousy. The close relationship Jack had with her was what he’d always dreamed he’d have with his own daughter. Instead, he had driven her away and the fact that she’d returned, his grandson in tow, only underscored what he hadn’t had with her.

  The truth was, Paull didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He had come to a point in his life when, inevitably, he had begun to look back and rue his mistakes, failings, and failures. It was a bitter time for him, made all the worse by his inability to readapt to field work. The only saving grace was that he’d yanked himself out of the field before Jack could suggest it.

  Back in his seat, he lost himself in work and, an hour later, he had the skeleton of a plan he thought would work. He called Chief of Police Alan Fraine, and together they went over iterations of the plan until both of them were satisfied that, though far from perfect, it had the best chance of success. Both of them knew that they were up against powerful enemies bent on keeping the reasons for the murders secret. The murder of Naomi Wilde and subsequent arrest of Chief Heroe was proof of their enemies’ utter ruthlessness.

  When at last all his work was, for the moment, done, Paull closed his eyes and slept for an hour. When he awoke, he was ravenously hungry. He rose and went directly to the galley to fix himself a sandwich. On the way, he took the time to confirm that the children were okay.

  That was when he realized that Edon Kraja was missing.

  * * *

  EDON HAD chosen her moment carefully. She had slipped out of the 737 while Paull was deep in conversation with Jack, while Alli was talking with Thatë. With everyone engaged in their own private dramas, she had grabbed her opportunity to slither away, unnoticed.

  Turning her back on the plane, she had jogged through the woods. She knew precisely where she was, knew intimately the cluster of small houses a half mile away. From the backyard of one of them she stole a bicycle, and, bending low over the handlebars, began her journey into Vlorë, to search for h
er sister Liridona.

  Her first stop would be her parents’ house. She had no way of knowing whether Liridona was still at home or whether she had also been sold to feed their father’s insatiable gambling lust. Cycling as fast as she could, she prayed to Jesus and the Madonna that her sister was still free, that she’d be able to extricate her from home and take her far away from both their father and Arian Xhafa’s people.

  The thought of what had happened to her happening to Liridona was a goad that drove her to pedal faster and faster. Xhafa was a brilliant organizer, she had learned. But he was also a ruthless killer and, even worse in her experience, a world-class sadist. For him, pain and suffering were the aphrodisiacs he needed to satisfy his sexual needs; without them, he was impotent.

  From the moment he’d become aware of her, he’d taken an unhealthy interest in her. Weeding her out of the latest bowl of cherries, he had begun her “training,” as he called it. She called it torture. It wasn’t on the order of what the other cherries who’d come in with her suffered through—the gang rapes, the beatings, starvings, and then more gang rapes. He hadn’t wanted to strip her of her individuality, her humanity, as was being done in a coldly methodical way to the other cherries all around her. Culled out of the herd, she had been isolated. She had seen only him. He’d trained her to crawl on her knees to him, to lick his dirty feet clean, to grovel when she wanted food. Oddly enough, it was he who washed her every day, as tenderly as a parent bathes his infant, caressing her as he cleaned every gentle mound and shadowed dell of her body.

  When she had completed the first stage of her training, he had begun to hurt her, first in small, subtle ways. Then the bruising began. He seemed to love looking at the bruises even more than causing them, as if she were a canvas and he, the artist, periodically standing back to admire—or, sometimes, adjust—his art. Pain as art, that defined the Arian Xhafa she knew. He had spent hours on end with her, as if she were to be his masterpiece.

  And then he had marked her—branded her, more like it. He used a stiletto reserved for the occasion, whose tip he heated in the flame from a bronze brazier surmounted with strange bas-relief sculptures until it glowed cherry red. He had her lie flat on her stomach on the thin pallet he provided for her to sleep on. She wasn’t strapped down or bound in any way; he had trained her too well. Straddling her, he’d applied the glowing tip of the blade. One long wound a night for five nights. Five parallel lines, running red, to prove that she belonged to him.

  Very few girls received this privilege, he’d told her. Less than a handful. She was among the elite of his empire, a concubine. She would never be sold; she was his forever.

  “Count yourself lucky, Edon,” he had said the night it was over. “You’re one of the few. You’re my special little cherry.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  “BEHIND US,” Annika’s driver said. “And the exit’s coming up.”

  “Right.” Annika smiled. “Let’s go.”

  Jack turned around and stared out the blacked-out rear window, but he could see nothing. “Who’s following us?”

  “Xhafa’s death squad.”

  The car veered into the right lane and, a quarter mile later, took the exit ramp off the highway. The driver turned left, went beneath the highway’s overpass, and a half mile later turned right. Almost immediately, they were in a densely forested area.

  “One mile to the bend,” the driver said.

  “Slow down,” Annika said. “We don’t want them to lose us.”

  Alli shivered. “And you want them to follow us?”

  Annika turned to her, her expression wolfish. “How d’you think we’re going to find Xhafa?”

  * * *

  “WHERE THE hell are they going?” Asu said to no one in particular. “This is dead vacant wilderness.”

  “Don’t be dense,” Yassin said. “Where better to have a safehouse?”

  Baltasar fitted a tear-gas grenade to the adapter at the end of his rifle. “It doesn’t matter; we’re thirty seconds from taking them.”

  Asu was using the car’s headlights to see where they were headed. “There’s a bend in the road coming up,” he announced. “The road dips down and then it’s straight as an arrow.”

  “Perfect.” Baltasar popped the hatch over his head. “As soon as it straightens out come up behind the car to within fifteen feet. Keep a steady pace while I deliver the payload. Yassin, you’ll pick them off as they exit the car. The darts will put them to sleep so get all of them, including Annika Dementieva. Then, when they’re down, you can put a bullet in the back of the heads of the other three.”

  The car ahead entered the bend in the road. As it dipped into the swale, Asu momentarily lost sight of it. Baltasar stood up so that his head and upper torso were above the vehicle’s roofline. Fitting night goggles over his eyes, he looked out at the landscape ahead. He saw no sign of lights, front or rear, and he adjusted the goggles. Several moments later, he saw the headlights, then the car. Immediately thereafter, Asu accelerated, and the vehicle shot ahead.

  Baltasar counted the seconds as Asu closed the gap. He was an excellent driver; Baltasar had absolute confidence in his abilities. Nevertheless, something was bothering him. From his elevated position, he should have been able to pick up the headlights even while the car was at the bottom of the swale.

  Now they were on the straightaway. The acceleration leveled out, steadied, and, bracing his elbows against the rooftop, he took aim at the rear window of the car. He counted slowly to three, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

  The tear-gas grenade smashed through the glass and detonated. Now it was only a matter of waiting until the driver lost consciousness. The car would begin to weave, then veer off the road as the driver lost control. Perhaps it would come to rest in a ditch or sideswipe a tree. In any event, Yassin’s turn would come. It was a beautiful thing, Baltasar thought, when everything proceeded according to plan.

  He waited, but the car did not weave. It slowed. Asu put on the brakes and the military vehicle paced the car. Baltasar frowned. He wondered whether the driver, in his semiconscious state, had the presence of mind to step on the brake. But the moments of losing the headlights still bothered him, and he couldn’t rid himself of the nagging notion that something was wrong.

  The next moment, the car stopped. Baltasar unscrewed the grenade launcher and changed magazines to regular rounds. All the time he kept his eyes glued to the car.

  “Let’s go! What are we waiting for?”

  He heard Yassin’s whisper from just inside the hatch. Yassin was right; they should be on the ground now, approaching the car. But something stayed Baltasar’s hand.

  He ducked back down and said to Yassin, “Change in plan. Take one of the AK-50s and go over to the car. Asu will cover you with the thirty caliber.”

  Asu popped his head out of the open hatch. He flipped the safety off the forward machine gun, then signaled that he was ready.

  Yassin climbed out of the hatch and dropped to the ground. He circled the car warily, crouched down, the AK-50 at the ready. It was loaded with heavy, maximum-grain ammunition. Except for the chirrupping of insects, there was absolute silence. No traffic, and whatever wind there had been had died.

  Yassin had made half a circuit around the car without seeing any sign of life. Then, a single shot caused him to spin around. Asu lay sprawled across the roof, his head a bloody pulp.

  Yassin, instantly calculating the direction of the shot from the way Asu’s body lay, opened fire with the assault rifle while darting behind the protection of the car.

  A second shot, coming from directly behind him, pitched him forward. He struck the rear fender of the car, then slid off onto the ground. He did not move. His blood became a black pool around him.

  At once, the military vehicle rumbled into life, swinging around to face the spot where the second shot had come from. A thin whine was followed by a long gout of flame that penetrated the first line of pine trees with a blast of searing heat.
First, the flames set the carpet of fallen needles alight, but soon enough the trees themselves were engulfed in flame and dense, black, chemical smoke.

  * * *

  FOR WHAT seemed like several moments after that, nothing happened. Then a figure, black and peeling beneath a hellish coat of flames, rushed from the smoking trees. Halfway to the military vehicle, it jerked upright, as if on a leash. Then it collapsed onto its knees, slowly folding over onto itself, forming at length a pyramid of crisped flesh and cracking bones.

  The vehicle came to a halt, the rear battle slits snapped open, and a hail of machine gun fire bit into the trees on the other side of the road. In that moment, Annika ran from cover near the smoldering trees, primed a grenade, and slammed it between the front wheels. She was almost back inside the tree line when the blast blew the near-side wheels off and a hole appeared in the vehicle’s armor plate, into which the stinking smoke from the blast was drawn as if down an open flue.

  Seeing this, Jack broke cover, sprinted across the road, and leapt into the back of the vehicle, which was stalled and hotter than an oven. As the top hatch popped open and Baltasar emerged, eyes streaming, Jack grabbed him and hauled him bodily out of the vehicle, throwing him down onto the road, where Annika was standing.

  Baltasar grunted as he hit the pavement on his left shoulder. Annika kicked him in the stomach, and he flopped over. By this time, Jack had checked to make sure the vehicle was empty. Now he dropped down beside Baltasar. Together, they dragged him over to the pile of bones within which tiny flames still flickered and danced. Mostly, though, the superheated chemical fire had turned everything to brittle ash. But the nauseating stench of roasted meat was still in the air.

  “Vasily!” Annika called.

  Jack looked up to see Vasily, the remaining grupperovka member, striding over. Right behind him were Thatë and Alli. Jack could see how protective of Alli the kid was, and he was grateful.