by Jeff Abbott
“Floor it. Get us there now. I have an idea.”
“This is insane,” Piet said, but he smiled. The Ling truck would be here within minutes, and the van was parked on a bridge over the expressway.
“You understand what to do?”
He nodded. “If this fails, you’ll have wrecked everything.”
“If this fails, I’ll be dead. So don’t bitch. Just do what you’re supposed to do.”
“Good luck.” He offered me his hand. I dared not show my revulsion for him. So I shook hands.
“They’re coming,” he said, looking south. I could see the truck approaching in the heavy gray mist.
I put my legs over the side of the overspan and I heard Piet’s van roar off, but my mind was on counting.
The truck should pass under me at fifteen.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…
I was wrong. The Ling truck hurtled beneath me at fourteen and if I hesitated I would miss it, landing onto unforgiving asphalt, tumbling into fast-moving traffic. I threw myself off and caught the last third of the truck, trying to land on all fours and roll with controlled parkour grace. A roll would be far quieter than hammering feet against the roof.
But my legs slipped and the truck veered slightly. I started to go off the roof’s edge, on the passenger side. My legs danced in the air.
I swung myself hard, every muscle in my arms screaming, thinking, If they see me in the wing mirror I’m dead. I yanked myself up with a jerk that felt like I’d torn flesh from my arms and settled into the slight depression in the truck’s roof.
Then I lay very, very still.
Had they seen me? I had to assume radio communication between the cab and the guy in the hold of the truck. Either could have reported an unexpected sound, or the passenger in the cab could have seen my blue-jeaned legs swinging out into the empty air when I struggled for a grip. Maybe they’d take the next exit, search for a place of privacy, then dispatch me.
No. I saw the next exit sign pass. A light rain began to fall from the granite-gray sky. The truck pressed onward.
I started to crawl along the length of the truck. Slowly, steadily, keeping my head down. I didn’t want a motorist to see me. I risked a glance behind me. Piet had rejoined the highway and his van was there, staying close but not too close.
The rain increased, slicking the metal. I needed a firm grip for the next step, and nature had just made my job harder.
I reached the forward edge of the truck. The cab’s roof was about two feet below my hands. I could ease onto the roof, but I’d be more visible to anyone in approaching traffic. Cell phones were everywhere; I didn’t want the French police getting reports of a crazy man truck-surfing the expressway.
The other choice was to ease down between the cab and the truck, into the narrow space, so that’s where I went, feet first, my back to the cab. The truck jolted over a rough patch of road and my right foot slipped. Gravity seized me and I caught my hand in the jumble of cables at the cab’s rear. My foot landed on the metal strut connecting the cab. Below me I could see the road passing between the crushing wheels.
I steadied myself. Now or never.
I inched my arm, holding Piet’s gun, around the cab’s corner. I planned to grab the passenger door, wrench it open and yank myself inside. All without the cab’s guard shoving me back out into empty air at seventy miles an hour. The wind whipped hard around me, the rain seeping into my eyes.
I put my head around the corner and stared into a man’s face, leaning out of the window.
65
THE PASSENGER’S EYES WERE BRIGHT with shock that someone stood behind the cab; he looked to be about forty, heavyset.
Time froze for three seconds. Then his shoulder made a sudden hard shrug, bringing up his arm.
I jerked my head back around the cab’s edge as he fired. The bullet made a bright spark against metal, ricocheted out into the rain.
The truck veered hard, shuddering into the other lane, then whipped back.
They were trying to throw me off. I gripped the rain-slick metal and saw Piet’s van race up to the driver’s side, a spray of water fountaining from the tires. A muffled shot, from the truck, aimed at Piet.
I took a risk that the driver wasn’t driving and firing at the same time—that it was the passenger shooting at Piet. All I had now was force, calculated and vicious. I went back around the corner and heard another crack of shot. I yanked on the door just as a hand from inside tried to pull it back.
I threw myself forward, the door’s handle in a death grip. Then my feet gave way on the wet metal of the doorstep, my legs shot out and my shoes dangled inches above the tarmac.
I dropped my gun. It clattered onto the metal, onto the road, and was crushed under the wheels.
The window, inches above my head, exploded. Shards blew out, stinging my scalp. The passenger, firing in panic. I wrenched my hand, shifted my weight, pulled my legs against the door for leverage, covered my head with my arm, all in one fluid move, like I was jumping onto a public-housing railing in London.
I threw myself through the window, head first, my back slamming against the edge of it. I wriggled, trying to get leverage, elbowing the passenger hard in the throat, knocking him into the driver.
I had five seconds to win this fight. The driver whipped a gun from his left hand to his right, toward me. He fired, and the bullet skittered a path along the very top of my scalp, hot and vicious. I seized the gun’s barrel and pushed down; he had to keep one hand on the wheel and he pulled the trigger in reaction. The next bullet hammered into the seat by the passenger’s leg. He screamed and, in panic, wriggled past me. I threw a kick at him and he slammed into the door and crumpled.
Now I barreled hard into the driver, shoving him into his door. Where the bullet had grazed me, the pain was like a burning match dragged along my skin.
He knocked me back, but my heels hit the windshield and I powered back into him. I threw hard, fast punches into his throat, eyes.
The truck veered wildly and he dropped the gun, but I felt the tires leave the asphalt and brush along an unpaved surface, grass, a skid beginning.
I levered my foot up, snaked an arm around his neck. “I’ll break it,” I said in Mandarin. “You listen to me. The man with me, he will kill you. I will not. All we want is the cargo. He will kill you if you do not cooperate. I will let you live. Do you understand me?” And I gave his neck the slightest wrench. He nodded.
I grabbed the gun and pressed its heat to the driver’s ribs. “Drive. Normally.”
The driver settled the truck, guided it back onto the highway. We earned a roaring honk from a Mercedes that powered past us, the driver shaking a fist, blind to the struggle inside the cab.
The van pulled alongside us, like a teenager sidling up to the dream girl at a dance. A bullet hole marred its roof. Piet leaned forward—with extreme caution. I waved.
“The man in the van will kill you,” I said again. “Do you speak English?”
“A little,” the driver said.
“Don’t let him know you understand. He’s crazy. I’m your only hope right now, you got me?”
The driver nodded. The passenger, unconscious, did not contribute to the discussion.
“Tell the guard in the trailer that we’re pulling over, and he’s to lay down his weapons, come out with hands up. You tell him any different, I shoot you in the knee.”
The driver obeyed, speaking into a walkie-talkie.
I gestured for Piet to drive behind us and, at my order, the driver took the next exit. I blinked away wetness on my face. We pulled four kilometers or so down the road. Now I saw empty stretches of land with a shawl of gray mist hovering above the ground. Cows grazed. Maybe a dairy close by. No sign of people, and the road was an old, narrow affair, rough around the edges. In the distance I saw a rough stone building; it looked like a storage facility.
I said in Chinese, “Remember, do what I say, no matter what I say to the man in the van. We
will walk to the storage shed and then we’ll take the truck. You understand me?”
The driver nodded.
Piet crept up from where he’d parked the van, a gun at the ready. I pulled the driver out, keeping the gun on him.
I turned and heard a creak of metal. The back of the trailer opening, Piet jumping back. The driver called in Mandarin, “Do what I told you.”
“Don’t shoot!” the guard yelled. He came out, hands raised.
Crime is a kind of war. But while soldiers will die for their country, few people will die for lords like the Lings. Loyalty is a smoke that inches up from the ashes of greed in this world. A change in wind scatters it.
“How do I know you won’t kill me?” the driver said in Chinese.
“Because you’d already be dead if we wanted you dead,” I said.
Silence while he decided. He opted to trust the calm in my voice. The guard was maybe forty, tired looking, a little heavy. His mouth trembled as he blinked at the cows on the soft turf.
“Here,” Piet said, handing me his gun. “Kill them.”
“Not out here,” I said. “Shots will echo across an empty field, and I’m not dragging dead weight into the woods. I’ll take them to that shed. You check the cargo. If there are any GPID chips on there to trace the goods, tear them out. The Lings could be monitoring the shipment. I’ll take care of these guys.”
Piet looked at the Chinese and smiled. “God, they’re dumb. Standing here while we talk about killing ’em and they don’t have a clue.” But maybe the guard did. He looked like he was about to break into a panicked run.
“Calm down,” I said in Mandarin. “It’s okay. Come with me.” Then I told the driver to haul down his unconscious friend and carry him. He obeyed, putting the knocked-out passenger over his shoulder.
The guard said, in stuttering Mandarin, “This is my first run. I used to be a schoolteacher, my brother-in-law, he got me involved, I don’t know much about doing the runs…” He wore a Yankees baseball cap.
They walked ahead of me, and we went over the fence and toward the shed. I glanced back. Piet had vanished into the truck.
The shed was old and when I kicked the door the weathered lock shattered. I gestured them inside.
“Please,” the guard said. “Please don’t.” Terror ragged his voice.
“Sit down,” I said. They sat, the driver laying the unconscious cab guard down first.
“He has to think you three are dead. You understand? But I am not going to hurt you.”
They nodded. Their eyes stayed on the gun.
I took a step back. “You,” I said to the guard. “Toss me your hat.”
He pulled off the Yankees cap and threw it at me. I caught it and covered up my bloody hair with it. “Your wallets, your papers.”
They tossed them over to me, trembling, and I studied them. “Stand up now. Turn around.” Slowly they did, shivering, and I quickly hit each one of them, hard with the butt of the gun, and they collapsed. I punched both until they were out cold. I left the unconscious guy alone. Then I fired three shots into the rotting wall. Motes of wood and dust danced in the air before my face. I wiped the blood off my knuckles, in the dirt.
I walked back to the truck. Piet studied papers. The manifest on the truck indicated these were Turkish cigarettes, bound for London. Of course they weren’t. They’d been made in China, most likely in a factory half-hidden in the ground.
“Any tracking chips?” I asked.
“No,” Piet said. “Nice cap.”
“Then let’s go.”
“I want to see the Chinese,” he said.
“Well, then, go look,” I said. I would have to shoot him. He studied me.
A small blue farm truck suddenly appeared on the road, inched past us, the driver—an old woman—giving us a long, curious stare as she went by.
It rattled him. “Let’s just get going. Get you bandaged up, clean off the blood in the cabin. I’m driving the truck. You’re driving the van.”
And we drove away. I kept my eyes locked on the little shed in the rearview mirror. No one came out of it.
We arrowed into Belgium, past the empty buildings of the old border station, and the lights along the expressway, activated by the cloudy day, glowed white in France, yellow in Belgium.
I had no cell phone—Piet had insisted, still nervous that he might be betrayed again. No way to contact Mila. There was no built-in phone in the van but there was a GPS. I wouldn’t have the weapons; I wouldn’t be able to set a trap. I felt dizzy from the loss of blood from my scalp wound.
And I decided I wasn’t going in blind.
It was time to see if Mila had been telling me the truth.
66
I DID A SEARCH on the van’s GPS monitor, entering in the name Roger Cadet. Mila had said that would show me her employers’ bars that I could use as a safe house.
One result: Taverne Chevalier, off Avenue Lloyd George, in the diplomatic district. As we edged into Brussels I flashed the lights. Piet pulled over and I walked up to the cab.
“I need a drink and a meal, and I need to make some phone calls.”
“What phone calls?” Piet said. “We keep going.”
“This isn’t the only deal I’ve got. Either we stop or you decide to trust me with a cell phone.”
“No calls.”
“I have to work the next deal after this one. And I have to work it now.”
Greed lit Piet’s eyes. “What is this deal?”
“Military goods. High profit margins.” I was already thinking of the call I needed to make.
“Where do you want to stop?”
“I know a place.”
Taverne Chevalier was one of those places that looked rather humble but was zealously guarded by posh types as their private, unpretentious discovery. The bar itself was a finger of dark mahogany. Taps for a large assortment of Belgian and Dutch brews lined the bar, and it looked like some ales were being served in old-fashioned ceramic pitchers. I heard a variety of languages bubbling from the crowd. Hipsters in their requisite black-framed eyeglasses, men and women who wore the carefully neutral smiles of bureaucrats. Brussels was a city of diplomats and dealers, and I thought that if Mila and her mysterious bosses had half a brain between them they would have planted bugs on all the tables, recorded every conversation.
“Not the time for a drink, and if we need to eat, we could get fast food.” Piet did not sound happy. We had parked the truck in a lot a few blocks away, and he was very nervous about leaving the shipment.
“I know the owner here,” I lied.
“You can’t do business here. Too many people.”
“Trust me,” I said.
Piet laughed. “I like it when you make a joke.”
I leveled him with a stare. “What are you drinking?”
“I think I should go back to the truck. We can be in Amsterdam in a couple more hours.”
“And we will be. Follow me.” We went to the bar, waited for a waitress to take our order. I ordered two Jupiler lagers, and when she brought them I slid money to her and said, “I’d like to see the manager, please.”
“She’s busy, sir.”
“She’ll make time for me, I think. Mila sent me.”
The waitress vanished into the back of the bar, and a few moments later a stout, fiftyish woman appeared, a frown on her face. “Yes, sir?”
“I’m a friend of Roger Cadet’s,” I said, using the pass name Mila had given me back in Amsterdam.
She nodded. “Any friend of Roger’s is welcome here.”
“Is Roger here? I’d like to speak to him alone.”
Her glance slid to Piet. “I can find out if he’ll see you.”
I turned to Piet. “Stay here, drink your beer. I’ll just be a minute.”
“No. You could be calling someone, telling them where the shipment is. We stick together.”
I put my mouth close to Piet’s ear. “This is a byway, a stop. I have private business w
ith him on this weapons deal, but I can use your help and you’ll earn a cut. We’re partners, yes?”
He was torn; he wanted the money but he didn’t want me apart from him. “I don’t like this, Sam.”
“Listen to me. I took the risk back on the truck. I’m not messing you over. We’re solid, Piet, all right? I must pay respects. Do you understand? You could bolt out the door and steal the shipment while I’m in there, and I’m trusting you that you won’t.” Lose Piet and I might well lose Edward for good. But I had to take the calculated risk. “I won’t be but a minute or two.”
The manager cut through the crowd of diplomats and skinny beautiful people and we went upstairs. She glanced back at me. “You’re new.”
“Yes. And in trouble. I need weapons, a cell phone.”
She unlocked a door to the left of the landing. I glanced back down the stairway. No sign of Piet.
I stepped inside the door.
“I’m Eliane,” the manager said after she shut the door. “You’re supposed to call first.”
“I couldn’t. No phone.” The small room was lined with shelves, some of which contained weapons. A cot, neatly made up, stood in the corner. I wanted to fall on it and collapse. Instead I searched the shelves. Found two Glock 9 mms, spare clips, silencers.
“What else do you need?”
“I have to fight a large number of people,” I said. “They will be heavily armed and I’ll be alone. So I guess I have to kill them.”
Eliane blinked. “You’re going to kill them all?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know.” Hell. Was I? If I left some of the group alive, couldn’t I leave them for the Dutch to interrogate, possibly to glean useful information? Zaid’s insistence that everyone be killed to protect Yasmin’s good name nagged at me. She had been brainwashed. That wasn’t a crime. His reputation might survive.
Eliane moved to a box, opened it. The box was marked with a logo I recognized. Militronics, Zaid’s company. Gear from his own company would help free his daughter.
“Do you have restraints?” I asked.
