by Blake Pierce
But he gave the faintest shake of his head. Backup would only result in more people he had to look out for. The kind of backup that arrived this late wouldn’t be useful in a firefight anyway.
John felt the steady weight of his weapon in his hand, and he inhaled through his nose, calming himself. He quickly moved across the courtyard, into the shadow of the warehouse behind the autobody shop. The shade from the building obscured them as they moved around the edge of the red brick.
His skin tingled as he maneuvered. He felt alive. If Adele hadn’t been there, this would have been as easy to him as a dance, as beautiful as making love. He’d been in this position before; he adored it. Others complicated such matters, like voyeurs in a bedroom.
He could feel the bulge in his shirt from the rolled up bills he’d taken from Francis. He hadn’t done it out of greed so much as a desire to punish Francis. John hated that man. He hated how he’d gamed the system. He’d been allowed to escape with his crimes. John had seen firsthand what Francis and his crew had done to their victims. They had preyed on the homeless, and those with little more than the shirts on their backs. They had taken the bloody organs, and then refused to pay the money they’d promised. Half the people they’d operated on had died. Not that they had cared. They’d made their profit regardless, selling the organs on the black market to whoever would buy them at an exorbitant fee.
John aligned his body so it presented as small a target as possible as he moved with his left shoulder ahead of his chin. He kept his gun raised, moving towards the side metal door pressed into the red brick of the warehouse. Above them, steel plates had been welded into place over a gap in the wall as a temporary fixture against weather damage.
He could smell the odor of water and damp. He could also smell something else. He frowned, taking another long whiff. Chemicals.
A slow trickle of excitement crept up his spine. The burn mark along his throat and down his chest began to itch. It often did when he found himself on the verge of conflict. Some people said their hair would curl when rainstorms came. In John’s case, his burn would itch when heralding imminent violence.
He couldn’t resist the small smile tugging up his cheeks as he moved toward the metal door, and with his elbow, he lowered the handle, pushing the door with his shoulder. It didn’t move at first. Stuck.
He exerted an extra push—a quiet creak, and the door dislodged. It swung open, ushered forward by his body. He followed it in, using his shoulder while keeping a grip on his weapon, swinging his line of fire which revealed the area before him.
He could hear Adele moving behind him.
For a moment, caught there in the doorway, halfway in and half out, he considered the American agent. He wasn’t sure what to think of her. The last time they’d met, things had been strange. Perhaps he had been avoiding her. He had jumped at the first case that arrived when he heard she was coming back.
John frowned, pushing the door open even more. The first room was clear. No sign of adversaries. Small stone steps led up to an office building with glass windows.
He pointed with his head toward the stairs, hoping Adele would understand the quiet message. And then he continued forward, keeping his gun braced, and moving toward the rectangular stone pillars jutting up and holding the warehouse aloft.
Four doors occupied the back wall, two of them large, like barnyard doors. Footprints scattered the dust everywhere. The smell of chemicals was even stronger now.
“They’re in here,” he said quietly, his voice a ghost of a whisper.
Adele’s eyes flashed in the dark, and she nodded once. She moved along with him, also trying to follow his posture, trying to remember her training. John knew amateurs when he saw them. And while the Adele was no amateur, she wasn’t comfortable with her weapon. This concerned him even more. She knew how to use her firearm, though, and there were few investigators as sharp as she was. He admired her for it. She would follow the lead wherever it took them. Whatever the cost.
His brow furrowed. No, perhaps not whatever the cost. She had boundaries. Another thing he admired about her. She was a woman of conviction. There weren’t many of those left.
For a brief horrible, tantalizing moment, he thought of their swim back in the private pool on Robert’s estate. He thought of coming near her, breathing the smell of chlorine on the air, but a faint, vague residue of her perfume still lingering on the breeze. He remembered leaning in, trying to kiss her. He thought of the way she had recoiled, surprised. He wasn’t sure if she’d been horrified, or simply stunned.
Did it really matter? Either way, she’d drawn back. Clearly she hadn’t wanted the attention. He’d misread the cues. She thought of him as a buffoon, a jester. Someone she didn’t take seriously.
That was fine. What did John care anyway. Colleagues were just that, colleagues. Women were just that, women. A source of companionship, perhaps. In the same way a sip from his distillery was a source of companionship. Forgettable, replaceable.
He nodded, trying to convince himself of thoughts he didn’t fully believe. The last time he had a team, the last time he had any real friends, anyone he was close to…
John shook his head, forcing his mind away from the desert, the chopper blades in the air, the shouting, the gunfire.
No, this wouldn’t be like that time. He would make sure Adele lived. If he had to die for her to survive, that would be a fair trade. He’d experienced the alternative before, and it was no way to live.
John continued to move forward, pressing toward the double doors that served to occupy the center of the warehouse wall.
He didn’t look back at Adele this time. Distractions now would prove fatal. Distractions would cost them. He would have to trust her to pull her weight.
John moved foot over foot, stepping with movements more rehearsed than those of any ballerina. He noticed a glimmer of light, a blue sliver through the crack in the door. He nodding his head, to see if Adele had also noticed.
She returned the nod. Together, they eased against the door, pressing their shoulders and putting their eyes against the slit.
John peered into the room and gritted his teeth.
A familiar scene of horror.
He could feel Adele next to him, tensing. She held her breath and took a couple of steps back, weapon raised, body tensed as if preparing to surge forward and kick the door in.
John held out a hand, halting her, then returned his guiding hand back to his weapon. He shook his head. And held up a finger against his gun. Wait.
***
Adele breathed, but it was a difficult chore. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she continued to stare at the crack in the door, witnessing the horrible scene within.
A single, bright blue light from an umbrella fixture stared down at an operating table in the dank, dusty warehouse. There were two IV bags, one filled with clear liquid, bubbling, the other with a strange brownish-red substance. There was a heart rate machine, with blue and green lights zipping across the digital face. Four men stood around the operating table. Two of them had guns, which they held against their hips, waiting impatiently. The other two men wore white masks and the blue-green outfits of operating surgeons.
Adele heard quiet murmuring from within. She wanted to burst in, but John was still holding up his hand, the finger resting against his gun, telling her to wait.
Adele watched as one of the men leaned over the body on the table. The doctor had a scalpel in his hand. He was murmuring quietly, and Adele realized he spoke German.
The doctor began to press the scalpel against the victim’s flesh. The patient, though, was moving slightly.
Adele heard more muttering. The second man, also with a face mask, muttered in German as well. Adele leaned in, listening, translating in her mind.
“…anesthesia hasn’t fully taken effect,” the man said, quietly. “He’s still conscious.”
Adele shivered, and the sensation had nothing to do with the cool air of th
e room. The first man, with the scalpel, hesitated, glancing back. His voice came faded, distant from the room, but Adele could still make out the words. “How much longer until he’s out?”
“No telling; I’ve never operated in this setting before.” The second man was fidgeting with frantic movements, glancing up and down, his eyes especially settling on the guns in the hands of the two men behind him. He looked uncomfortable; clearly, he was younger than everyone else in the room, perhaps only in his mid-twenties.
Despite his face mask, Adele could tell he was panicking. “Calm yourself,” the first doctor said in German, his voice calm, soothing. A voice practiced in eliciting whatever emotion he needed in volatile situations. “It’s fine, it’s going to be fine.”
The younger doctor was shaking his head, but seemed to settle at the pacifying tones from the first.
Adele brushed against John, glaring. But John held up a finger, still waiting, still shaking his head.
“We need to go in now, before they start cutting,” she whispered in a hiss.
John turned on her, his eyes wide, scary. Adele had seen this before. John was usually carefree, irreverent. But sometimes, in moments of action, he would zero in, focus. It would be like adrenaline possessed his body, and he wouldn’t fully register what she was saying. He shook his head again. He held up two fingers, then gave his gun a shake. Then he held up four fingers on his guiding hand.
She frowned. Of course there were four of them. She could see that. Five if they counted the one on the bed.
She began to protest again, but just then, she heard more voices. The sound of boots against dusty floors heralded two more men with guns emerging from behind the separating wall where they had been standing out of sight.
John nodded now, his eyes narrowed, his gun still raised.
Adele felt her heart skip. She hadn’t even noticed them. That’s what John had meant. Four attackers. Four. If it had been up to her she would’ve gone right away. It would have cost them both.
She felt a tingle along her fingers and noticed her hands trembling. Adele squeezed her fingers around her weapon, trying to settle the sudden surge of horror.
John pressed his hand against the door, easing it open even further.
One of the new arrivals shouted in French, “What are you waiting for?”
The older doctor replied, his French accent broken from German syllables as he tried to speak. “The patient isn’t under yet. Anesthesia is still taking effect. He’s not numb.”
There was a pause and a muttered exchange in a language between the gunmen which Adele couldn’t understand. One of them, a bearded fellow with dark, dangerous eyes, shook his head with a quick jolt. “Start now. We don’t have time.”
The doctor, in a wheedling tone which threatened condescension, said, “You don’t understand. The man will feel it. It will compromise the kidney. His body could go into shock.”
The bearded Serbian paused a moment, trying to understand the words, despite the broken accents. Then he snarled, stepped forward, and raised his gun, pointing it at the doctor’s forehead.
The doctor squeaked, quickly raising his hands, the scalpel glinting in the floodlight from the umbrella fixture. “Okay,” he said quickly, “just give us a few minutes. A few minutes and the anesthesia will take effect.”
“No,” said the man with the gun and the beard. “No minutes. Now.”
The older doctor shook his head, muttering to himself. The younger man in scrubs was trembling, shaking his head from side to side.
The older doctor tried to speak again in a reasoning tone, saying, “You don’t understand, if I start cutting now, he will feel it. Anesthesia hasn’t taken effect.” He spoke slowly this time, with deferential tones, as if hoping a sudden courtesy in his posture would elicit the response he wanted.
But men with guns, in Adele’s experience, weren’t particularly fond of manipulation. The bearded man glared at the doctor, paused, glanced at his Serbian friends, and muttered something. One of the others replied. And then the bearded man turned his gun on the second doctor and fired. A loud blast boomed in the warehouse.
John didn’t even flinch, his hands still steady. Adele, for her part, jolted, her own weapon tapping against the metal door. Thankfully, the sound was drowned out by the response from the room. The three other Serbians seemed to have known what was coming. The doctor, though, yelled in horror as his assistant fell over, a bullet hole in his left eye, blood spreading out on the dusty floor.
“What did you do?” the doctor shouted. But the older German surgeon quickly fell silent and backed up again as the gun leveled on him once more.
“Now,” said the Serbian in broken French.
Muttering to himself, the doctor turned toward the trolley, trying to soothe himself with quiet, muttered comments. He raised his knife and pressed it to the chest of the man on the table.
The man fidgeted uncomfortably and emitted a quiet croaking sound. Not quite words, but they had the cadence of speech, as if he were trying to talk but couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Adele heard the German doctor mutter. He pressed his scalpel against the victim’s chest.
“John,” Adele said in a deadly serious voice, “now.”
John was already on the move. He shoved the door open with his shoulder, pushing it into the well-lit section of warehouse.
John fired once, twice. Two bodies hit the ground in quick succession. The two men whom Adele had spotted last, including the bearded man, collapsed onto the doctor he’d shot, their blood mingling with that of their victim’s.
For Adele’s part, she shouted at the top of her lungs, “DGSI! Hands in the air—we have you surrounded!”
A brief moment of consideration passed where everything seemed to freeze for that fraction of a second where vital decisions were made.
The two remaining gunmen had half-turned, facing John and Adele. But at Adele’s shouts, they both seemed to reach the same decision, and their hands jolted to the sky, stiffened.
“Weapons down!” Adele shouted, voice swelling the room. She spoke with far more confidence and authority than she felt.
The men with the guns slowly began to lower the weapons. They bent at the waist, and at last put their weapons on the ground and straightened up again, their hands skyward.
Adele and John moved further into the room. The two Serbians turned, scowling when they realized it was only two agents approaching. One of them began to move toward his gun again, but John barked, “Don’t.” The gunman’s eyes met John’s and he went stiff, as if staring into the reaper’s own gaze.
Pale-faced, he retracted his hand from the weapon and put it back in the air.
“Interlock your fingers behind your head!” Adele continued to shout. Again, the men seemed reluctant to comply, especially now they realized they weren’t outnumbered, but again, John’s weapon and Adele’s presence forced compliance. They interlocked their fingers, and after another series of instructions dropped to their knees, still glaring daggers.
Once they were both on the ground, John moved with three rapid strides, far faster than Adele thought anyone his size should be able to move, and he reached the men. He kicked out twice, sending both of them sprawling onto their bellies, their hands still behind their heads. The tall agent dropped on the first man, shoving a knee deep into his spine and then pulling out his cuffs.
“Keep them there,” John said, looking up at Adele. His eyes were still vacant, swimming with adrenaline and rage.
Adele steadied her weapon on the second man. Her gaze flicked over to the heart-rate monitor. The doctor still stood by the operating table, his scalpel having been discarded moments ago. Two shallow cuts slashed the bare-chested man on the table, but beyond that, he seemed unharmed. Adele pointed to the victim. “Is he hurt?” she demanded.
She spoke in German, and the doctor’s eyebrows rose. He replied in German, shaking his head. “This is all a big mistake; no, he’s fine. This is voluntar
y. He volunteered,” the doctor kept repeating, pointed to the man on the table.
“Shut up,” Adele snapped.
The German doctor began to protest even more, but then her gun swiveled from the second man on the ground toward him, and he fell silent. Adele reached back and unhitched her own cuffs from her belt, lifting them from behind her jacket and tossing them to John.
The tall agent had already moved over and was jamming his knee into the back of the second Serbian. The men in cuffs were looking at their fallen comrades, muttering beneath their breaths in a foreign language.
John’s aim had been true; he’d caught two corpses with bullets straight to their heads.
Adele shifted, turning away from her partner and glancing to the table with the victim. He had dirt beneath his fingernails, and his hair was matted. His clothing looked old, where it lay discarded beneath the table, next to an open cooler.
Adele stared at the clothes and her eyes darted back to the man. “I think he’s homeless,” she said to John.
But at just that moment, John let out a shout. Adele whirled around to face him, but realized he was lunging toward her. She took a startled step back, then felt a sudden flash of pain across her cheek, and rounded again to find the German doctor breathing heavily, scalpel in hand.
He was cursing at her in German, shaking his head wildly, declaring, “A mistake! Just a mistake.”
John was cursing and clutched at his hand. Adele glanced down and noticed he had caught the brunt of the scalpel against his palm. Blood seeped through his fingers from where he had inserted himself between the blade and Adele. She leveled her weapon on the doctor and began to shout, but at the same time, the gunman who John had been trying to secure only had one wrist cuffed.
Seizing this opportunity, the gunman lurched for his weapon. Adele spotted this the same time as John, and both their eyes widened. The Serbian, screaming at the top of his lungs, raised his weapon, aiming at John, and he fired.
Adele didn’t have time to think. She didn’t have time to plan. Like a coin flip, at the same time as the Serbian’s weapon rose, Adele’s own hand brought hers up. There were simultaneous blasts of gunfire.
