Grunewald cried out in pain, but Lucy was already rolling herself off him, spinning violently around so that the right arm of the metal chair and the zip-tie securing her wrist to it cracked against the deck plates. She rocked back and did it again. The second time, the tiny block of plastic that acted as the zip-tie’s lock fractured and the binding loosened.
She caught the oiled snap-clack of the shotgun’s slide being worked and a second boom of fire, followed by a third and a fourth. Ragged holes appeared in the cloth partitions hanging across the operating theater, and trays of bandages were shredded into downy confetti by the wild blasts as Marc fired at the other guard.
She was aware of a hot fuel-oil odor in her nostrils, and saw the blowtorch searing a partition, fire jumping up its length. Grunewald was back on his feet and she tried to swing out and block him, but the mercenary kicked her and dove for the bench where he had left his pistol.
The second guard fell hard, another shot from Marc ripping into him, and he collapsed against one of the cases of drug ampoules. Lucy snapped off the tie holding her right ankle and turned awkwardly, still half-bound to the metal chair.
Grunewald snatched up his weapon and spun around, shooting wildly. Bullets cut the air and Lucy ducked, catching sight of Marc as he pumped the shotgun’s slide once more. A dead cartridge tumbled out of the ejector port and he pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a hollow click.
“Idiot,” growled the mercenary, and he sprinted for the far hatch, leaving them both to the hissing, spitting flames that swarmed across the discarded medical equipment and the flimsy cloth dividers.
Marc dropped the empty shotgun and came toward Lucy, throwing off his stolen goggles. “Hold still!” he shouted, and from a pocket he pulled a small silver multi-tool. A keen knife flicked out and made short work of the remaining zip-ties.
Lucy booted the chair away from her with a grimace and coughed. The compartment was rapidly filling with smoke. “We have to go after him.”
Marc was nodding, pulling at the bodies of the guards, searching their pockets. He found a short-frame Ruger revolver and claimed it. “He’s going to know where the bomb carriers are.”
“We can hope.” Lucy’s eyes lit up as she came across her Mark 14 EBR, lying on a bench where Grunewald’s men had discarded it.
Fighting back another racking cough, she slipped through the hatch, aiming with the rifle. Fast footfalls echoed above her, and she saw a shadow moving up the zigzag tiers of the support gantries. Grunewald hesitated for a second in the middle of his ascent to fire back down toward them, the shots ringing as they rebounded off the hull. A thin sliver of light, bright like a strobe, briefly blazed somewhere up there, cutting a purple after-image on her retina.
“If he gets off the boat, if he gets reinforcements, we’re buggered,” Marc was saying.
Lucy didn’t feel the need to voice her agreement and grabbed the rungs of the ascent ladder. She started upward in pursuit, lungs scratchy with the smoke. Marc was right behind her, the wheelgun in his hand clanking against the rungs with each step.
“Trick with the goggles…” She managed, as she climbed. “That was clever.”
“Yeah,” he panted. “Got his taser turned round on him. Swapped my gear and vest with the poor bastard.” Marc gave a weak chuckle. “Not much of a disguise, but down here in the shadows…” He trailed off. “Thanks.”
“For what?” Lucy said, out the side of her mouth. They reached a companionway and a set of steel stairs leading the last few meters up to the deck.
“For being pissed off that I was dead. Most people don’t seem to give a toss about me these days.”
“De nada,” she shot back, but her words were lost in a slow rumble of noise that came from the hatch ahead of them. All at once Lucy’s brain caught up to the constant rattling noise, and she kicked open the hatch, ducking out of sight as she did so.
A blast of torrential rain gusted in through the open doorway, propelled across the deck by the winds that had brought a storm from New York City. A deluge of water lashed down, sheets of it moving across the weather deck and ringing off the empty cargo containers.
“Advancing!” Marc shouted, and he bolted out of the doorway, still clutching the revolver. Lucy came up with her rifle and saw movement further down the deck. Grunewald’s attention was on the Brit, and he fired twice, trying to bracket Marc as he ran.
The Mark 14 bucked against her shoulder and the round was a near-hit. Yellow sparks flashed off a container wall near the mercenary’s head, making him flinch away. He put a shot in her direction and ran as quickly as he dared along the suspended walkway over the weather deck’s mid-line.
“He’s going for the stern,” Marc called out. “There’ll be more of them in the island.” He was pointing at the towering section at the rear of the ship, atop which stood the freighter’s bridge and crew decks.
Between Grunewald and the island was the open maw of the number three cargo bay, now sheathed with flexing sheets of tarpaulin while the unloading was temporarily halted. The cranes on the dock couldn’t operate in conditions above a certain wind speed, and the storm was moving fast. Under the cover of the rain, Marc and Lucy ran quickly, weaving back and forth so as not to present easy targets.
At least, that was the idea. In reality, the mercenary was fixating on Dane, shooting at him every time he got a clear line of fire. Lucy was soaked through, drenched by traveling the distance across the deck in the teeth of the storm, and she fought off shivers. Dropping to one knee, she let Marc press forward and brought up the rifle again. In the cold and the pouring rain it was difficult to keep her hands steady, but as Grunewald surfaced from cover to make one more attempt to put a bullet into Marc’s skull, lightning lit up the sky and she had him in her sights. Clear as daybreak.
Her shot hit him in the outside of the left thigh, ripping out a chunk of flesh, and through the rain she heard the man’s scream.
Grunewald vanished behind a support stanchion, and she saw Marc hurdle it, before he too was lost from sight.
* * *
At the edge of the open cargo bay where the catwalk connected to the suspended companionway, the rain was already sluicing away the blood Lucy’s shot had released. Marc came carefully to the lip of the bay, the Ruger leading him, and there he found the Swiss mercenary.
A few feet below the frame of the massive cargo hatch was a maintenance ledge, and it was immediately clear that Grunewald had slipped down on to it. The rain made it treacherous, and the wind had given him an unexpected push. He was bleeding badly, color draining from his cheeks. The mercenary’s nickel-plated Sig Sauer lay out of reach, lost on the weather deck along with his footing.
In desperation, Grunewald was trying to climb back up on to the lip of the hatch, but his left leg was nothing but dead weight, unable to push him that last meter to safety. Marc could see he was hanging on by his fingers, clutching at the iron hull braces as if he could dig into them by sheer force of will.
Grunewald gasped and spat rainwater. “Don’t,” he snapped, seeing the revolver. “Help me.”
It was a long drop from the gantry to the bottom of the cavernous cargo bay. Marc moved closer, trying to find a place where he could brace himself and take the mercenary’s weight, if it came to that. “Make it worth my while.” He was oddly surprised at the tone of his own voice. It seemed flat, the words coming out of his mouth disconnected from him. “You told me up on the mountain that you were a professional, yeah? So act like it. I’ll trade you this…” He held out his hand a length shy of the man’s grip. “For Al Sayf. Targets. Routes. Names.”
Grunewald nodded, a defeated look in his eyes. “I only know what vehicle they took. Pull me up and I’ll tell you. I will tell you. I didn’t lie about your sister, I won’t lie about this!”
“Tell me first.” Some decent human fraction of Marc’s soul wanted to reach out and grab Grunewald before he could fall. Being party to the death of a person in the act of trying to k
ill you was one thing, that was survival. But looking on as someone inched toward their end was very different.
He resisted the urge to take Grunewald’s hand. It would make him seem weak in the other man’s eyes. This had to go to the edge. He shot a look over his shoulder. Lucy was coming. He had to do this before she got here. “Deal?” he asked.
“Schysse!” The curse burst from the mercenary’s lips. “All right! A school bus, Michigan state plates, southbound on I-95. Now help me!”
“Cheers.” Marc nodded his thanks. Then, very deliberately, he drew back his hand and folded his arms across his chest.
Grunewald’s eyes widened, and the last of the cool, superior aspect he wore finally crumbled away. It revealed fear and fury beneath, as the mercenary bellowed at him. Grunewald scrambled at the metal in a last, frantic attempt to haul himself up from the fatal drop below.
Marc sat watching him, unmoving. That moment of brief empathy had been remarkably easy to silence. It wasn’t a surprise, after all the things the Combine and this man had done to try to end him and the people he loved. “I know we made an agreement,” he said, watching Grunewald’s grip ebbing away. “But I can’t be as professional about this as you are.”
The gantry gave a shuddering clank and Grunewald was gone, spinning silently into the floodlit depths of the cargo bay. The sound of his body striking the keel was swallowed up by another grumble of thunder.
* * *
Halil leaned forward until his head was resting on his knees, but the throbbing sensation in his temples did not lessen, and the sickly pressure in his stomach grew worse. He gulped in air, feeling dizzy.
Adad and the others on the bus were avoiding him, not meeting his gaze, not daring to speak to him. Halil’s disobedience in the warehouse had marked him as toxic and they did not want to share in the commander’s displeasure.
He looked away, sliding closer to the windows, trying to catch some fresh air through the open slat near the top. Outside, he saw a brightly-lit veranda and rows of fuel pumps. The bus was parked at the furthest pump from a nearby garage, and Halil couldn’t make out much inside the building. The American with the dead eyes was nearby, a cap pulled low over his head. He was feeding the bus’s tank and never once looked up.
Halil could only guess at where they were. They had been driving along this highway for hours, hemmed in by walls of tall trees, back-lit by the slow crawl of a gray dawn. Once or twice he had seen a road sign for somewhere called Pennsylvania.
Some distance away from the gas station he saw another building, low and close to the road. It was faced in shiny chrome and glass, with lines of red and blue neon that danced in the windows. A café of some kind, he guessed, but bigger than any he knew from his home.
Thinking of food made him blanch, and Halil turned away, becoming aware of Khadir looking in his direction. Standing at the front of the bus, his arms were folded across his chest.
New pain prickled Halil’s gut and he let out a low gasp, rubbing his face to hide the watering of his eyes.
Then he thought of Tarki, poor gullible Tarki and all the others who had been “sent back.” Had they been sick like he was now? It was too much for him and his shoulders began to shiver, involuntary jerks of his throat making Halil heave and choke. He felt acid bile rising up in his throat and slapped a hand to his mouth, trying to keep it down.
Suddenly Khadir was pulling him out of the chair, shoving him down toward the open door at the front of the bus. “You will not foul this vehicle,” he snapped.
Halil held it until he stumbled down the steps and then threw up the meager breakfast they had been given after departing the docks. He had been punished with only a half-ration, and now it was all on the tarmac, a mess of thin drool and undigested bread.
“Shit,” said the American, as he returned, his nose wrinkling. “What’s wrong with him?”
Khadir ignored the question and gave Halil a shove, addressing him in Arabic. “Get back on. Do not add to your shame.”
Halil nodded weakly and stumbled aboard. His joints ached and he dropped into the first seat that was free, near to the open door. He ducked his head to try and breathe in the outside air, and heard the two men speaking in English.
“What did you do to them?” said the American. “That kid’s got a face like curdled milk. Like he’s gonna die.”
“All soldiers die,” Khadir replied coldly.
“Uh-huh.” The other man shrugged. “Well, that one ain’t going to make it.”
“He will serve the work.”
“Right.” The American zipped up his jacket and climbed into the bus. “How much did you put in all of them, anyhow? Stuffed them like turkeys, huh?”
Halil’s jaw dropped open. How much did you put in? The question hit him like a splash of freezing water, and his hand dropped to his stomach again, the pricking pain gnawing at him in response.
He pressed harder than he had dared before, gritting his teeth, and he felt something foreign inside him.
The teachers had not cut them open to help them. They had not taken something out of them, they had put something in.
Halil retched again, but he had nothing to bring up. He felt a great fear settle upon him, stronger even than the day when he had learned his parents were dead.
“We did what was required to make them warriors,” Khadir was saying, dismissive of the American’s questions. He turned and met Halil’s gaze—and the lion’s feral instinct flashed in the commander’s hooded gaze. “You…” He advanced toward Halil, who stumbled back out of the seat and into the walkway down the length of the bus. “You are listening…” Khadir searched his face, and Halil was shaking his head in terror. In that moment, he felt like glass, as if the commander could see right into him. “You were listening!” Khadir bellowed the last words at him and swatted Halil with a powerful backhand blow.
It was only then that Halil realized Khadir had still been speaking in English. He babbled out a fawning apology in Arabic, but it was too late. In his fear, Halil had revealed the truth and doomed himself.
“In the orphanage,” Khadir spat, towering over him, “You were hiding in that room. A whore’s son spy, listening to our secrets. Who did you tell, boy?” He hit him again, drawing blood. “Who did you tell?”
“No one!” he cried out. “I never spoke of it!”
There seemed to be no limit to the commander’s fury, and when he met his gaze Halil knew that the man was going to murder him, wring his neck and abandon him in some roadside ditch in this alien country. He begged, but Khadir didn’t hear him, and all around the other youths were a silent audience to this brutal moment.
“This is a liar and an animal,” the commander told the rest of them. “I offered greatness, a purpose … In return there is only lies!” He raised his hand for a blow that would shatter bone.
“Watch it!” The American called out from the front. “Company!”
Outside, a car was pulling into the gas station, rolling to a halt outside the garage. The vehicle was white, with a dark stripe along its length, a cluster of lights on the roof and a heavy black bumper at the prow. Everyone inside the bus froze, and Khadir’s hand dropped to his side.
Policemen looked toward the bus as they climbed out, looked away and went inside the garage workshop. Halil seized on the moment of distraction and threw himself at the emergency exit door at the back of the bus, out of Khadir’s grasp. The door gave under his weight and he tumbled out and on to the tarmac, landing badly on his hands and knees.
Desperately, he pulled himself up and into a stumbling run. This time, he told himself, I won’t stop. No pain will stop me.
* * *
Khadir came to the yawning door and stopped on the threshold, throwing a wary glance toward the police car, and with each second that he hesitated, Halil was staggering further down the highway, making for the truck stop a few hundred meters distant. The garage door opened again and the two police officers—State Troopers, judging by their u
niforms—paused to discuss something. Neither of them were looking in the right direction, neither of the men saw the youth skirting the pathway and making his bid for freedom. But they did look toward the school bus, and for longer than Khadir wished.
He snagged the handle of the emergency door and slammed it shut, then turned and glared at Teape. “Start the engine. Pull out to the road.”
“But, the kid…” The American worked the lever that closed the front door and put the vehicle in gear. “You’re gonna let him go?”
“Of course not.” Khadir stalked to the front of the bus, ignoring the questioning looks of the other youths and his men. The latter he gave a burning glare, turning his anger on them for failing to stop Halil from making a second escape bid. “He betrayed us,” he told them all in Arabic. “For that he will die.”
The bus lurched on to the highway, but Khadir tapped Teape on the arm. “Drive past the truck stop, keep going for a short distance. Then pull in.”
“What do you want to do?” Teape asked flatly, as the truck stop flashed past. “We don’t have time for complications.”
“I am aware,” Khadir shot back. He pointed at a section of shoulder by the side of the road. “Stop here.”
Teape studied the rear-view mirror. “Cops are still back there. Not following.”
“Yet,” he added. Khadir made a decision and went to the backpack he had brought with him. “One of us will stand out,” he told the American. “It has to be you.”
“You want me to go bring him back?”
Khadir paused, then shook his head with grim finality. “That opportunity has passed. The boy is a liability now, that is apparent. But he can still be of use.” From the pack, he removed a bulky smartphone and a black zip-case the size of a book. He offered the case to Teape, who opened it and studied the contents blankly.
It took only a moment to explain what was required. As the American stepped off the bus, Khadir switched on the phone and navigated the screens with swipes of his finger, finding a custom program and activating it. The phone gave a soft ping as its wireless connections initialized.
Nomad Page 36
