“Fuck y—” My elbow knocking out some of his teeth cut that right off.
“Talk.” I threw my knee into his side. I felt at least one rib break. As he slid down the metal, I put my palm on his forehead and used his face like a cheese grater on the rusty metal. Back and forth as Diego wailed in agony. He wasn’t going to be pretty anymore. I let him fall. “Where’s my brother?”
Diego was dazed and hurting, but the important thing was he knew he was beaten. His only hope of survival was my mercy—fat chance of that—or stalling until help arrived. “I don’t know,” he gasped. “That’s Anders’ deal.”
My eyes flicked to the camera. Any second somebody was going to look at the screen and Montalban goons were going to come out shooting. I retrieved Diego’s gun, a Glock 19, then went back and knelt next to him, but kept glancing at the door. “Tell me what I want, and I’ll call for an ambulance.” Blood loss made you stupid. He might believe me.
He laughed in my face. “Go to hell.”
From the amount of blood coming out the hole in the top of his chest, I’d severed his brachial artery. Diego was dying, he just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t have much time to get answers. “Look at me. Look at me, Diego. I survived Sala Jihan’s dungeons. I learned things about suffering you can’t ever understand. But I’ll share them with you, one by one, until you tell me where they are.” I stuck the knife into the meat of his thigh.
Diego bellowed as I turned it. The kicking and thrashing only made the wound worse. “I swear I don’t know! There’s a number in my phone if we need to speak.”
If he was lying, he was damned convincing. “Is Varga still here?”
“No.” I pulled the knife out, and moved it to his other leg but he hurried, hoping that giving me something would make the pain stop. “Anders sent him to Austria a year ago.”
I pushed the point of the blade into his leg, but stopped short of piercing his skin. “Where in Austria?”
“S . . . Salzburg!” he stammered, trying to talk while in agonizing pain.
It felt like the truth. Diego was beginning to fade out. “Hey.” I slapped him in the face a few times to bring him back to reality. “What’s Project Blue?”
“She took it on after Eddie died. It’s like her monument to him. That’s all I know. Don’t kill me. I don’t . . . Please . . .” Diego begged. He must have finally realized how badly he was bleeding out. “Nothing. I know nothing. She kept it secret. Please. I don’t want to die.”
“Too late.” Diego’s clock was running down fast. I stood up as he grasped at me uselessly with his ruined hand. “You died when you betrayed us at the Crossroads. You just didn’t know it yet.”
My trendy new suitcoat was ripped and covered in blood, so I took it off and threw it in the dumpster. The bike was closer and would be a faster getaway than my car. With luck, they’d think that Diego had just driven off and be unaware that anything had happened. By the time I’d taken his wallet, keys, and cellphone, Diego had passed out from blood loss. So I hoisted his body over the side of the dumpster and dropped him inside. He landed with a crash. I took a few seconds to cover him with trash bags. By the time I was done he’d stopped breathing. I smashed the nearest light bulb on the way out to leave the alley in shadows. Hopefully nobody would see all the blood until tomorrow.
The motorcycle racing jacket hid the fresh blood on my shirt and the helmet hid my face. I’d have to get out of Hungary, and Salzburg was on the opposite side of Austria, but I could be there by morning.
The Pale Man had kept calling me the son of murder. By the time I got done with the Montalbans I’d earn that title.
LORENZO
Salzburg, Austria
September 3rd
Stefan Varga had been easy for me to find. Criminal scumbags were sort of my peer group. Knowing the right kind of assholes to threaten could get you a list of Montalban hangouts, and there weren’t that many. Salzburg wasn’t that big. Big Eddie had run a much tighter ship than his little sister. While Eddie had preferred being quietly dreaded, Kat seemed to like flexing the muscles and being openly feared. It seemed like the only thing Kat was tight-lipped about was Project Blue. For the rest of her criminal empire, she liked a bit of flash.
One of the drug dealers I’d kicked the shit out of that morning had told me the top Montalban man in town spent a lot of time at a local freight company. Using legit businesses to cover for smuggling had been Varga’s bread and butter, so it fit. I’d lucked out and seen Varga getting into a car there, and tailed him. I’d had to hang back a bit when they’d gotten into these narrow, residential streets, but his Mercedes was parked just ahead of me in front of an old, but very nice, four story house.
Varga had a man with him, probably a bodyguard, not that I’d gotten a good look. There were an unknown number of people inside. The smart thing to do would be to play it cool, plan it out. Despite being a creepy, inscrutable motherfucker, the Pale Man had still acted like time was of the essence, but rushing in would only get me killed. Going after Diego in that alley had been stupid, and I’d been lucky I hadn’t gotten hurt, especially in my suboptimal condition. Careful planning was the only reason I’d survived as long as I had in this business. Going head to head against an unknown number of Montalban soldiers was stupid. I needed to wait, study it, find an angle.
Screw it. I got off the bike and walked straight to the front door.
Though I didn’t see any on the street, Europeans loved cameras, so I left the helmet on. I had two guns, Diego’s Glock, and an old double-barrel shotgun I’d taken off the drug dealer’s doorman. The barrels had been hacksawed off just ahead of the forearm. The stock had been cut down so that there was barely anything to hold onto. It would be awkward as hell to shoot, but on the bright side it fit inside a messenger bag. As I walked quickly up the front steps, I pulled the 12 gauge.
First, I tried the doorknob. Of course it was locked, but you never know. So I pressed the shotgun’s lopsided muzzle against the lock and pulled the trigger. The buckshot blasted a jagged circle of door and frame into pieces. I kicked it open and rushed inside.
A man in a suit had been sitting not too far from the door, but he’d fallen out of his chair when the shot had gone off. He was fumbling for the subgun slung across his chest, so I simply turned the shotgun on him and gave him the other barrel. With the choke cut off, the pattern was garbage and did more damage to the floor than his body, but he still got hit by a lot of double aught buck. He was still thrashing, so I pulled the Glock from my waistband and shut him up with a shot to the brain as I went past.
The helmet muffled sound, so I was lucky I heard the next man coming. He was sloppy, leading with his gun, and the muzzle cleared the corner before he did. I knocked his pistol down with a swing of the shotgun, and as his body followed around the corner I shot him, several rounds fast to the body, and as he stumbled, a final 9mm hollow point through the side of his face. That had been meant for his forehead, but I was out of practice.
I dropped the shotgun and helmet—I’d grab it when I left—and moved down the hall. There was noise above. Thumping, crashing, panicked people taking cover. I took the stairs three at a time. On the second floor landing, somebody started shouting a challenge in German. When I didn’t respond, he decided to fire a few rounds through the wall. I knelt down behind an antique table while he put useless holes in the wallpaper around me. He did a real number on the furniture, and the instant I heard panicked swearing as he ran his gun empty, I went through the doorway.
The shooter was an older, overweight, blond man—not Varga—so I shot him four times while he tried to reload his little pocket pistol. I was a little rusty, but shooting was like riding a bicycle, so you might suck, but it isn’t like you forget how. He fell across a desk, scattering papers and rubber-banded stacks of euros.
I ran up the next flight. I didn’t see anybody on the third floor, and I didn’t have time to look. There was more noise above, from the sound, at least two men,
moving in different directions. I moved to the side. If they were smart, they’d hunker down, call for help, wait, and blow my head off if I appeared on the next floor.
Luckily, they weren’t tactical geniuses. Instead of waiting, the bodyguard came for me. Sloppy. I heard him running down the stairs. I only had to wait a second for his feet and legs to appear, pounding down the stairs. I put the front sight on a knee and fired. Blood flew, and he fell, screaming, momentum taking him face first down the stairs. When he hit the landing, I waited long enough to confirm it wasn’t Varga before I shot him a few more times.
The Glock was at slide lock. I’d not realized I’d fired that many rounds already. I picked up the dead man’s gun, an FN 57, checked to make sure there was a round chambered, and started up the final set of stairs.
“Whoever you are, there is money and drugs downstairs. It is yours. Take it all. Come any closer and I’ll shoot you!” he shouted in German. It had been a long time but I recognized the voice. It was Varga. He repeated much the same thing in Russian, probably because he wasn’t sure who the hell had just massacred all his men, but it was clear he thought this was just a robbery.
While he talked, I crept down the hall. He’d placed himself in the back bedroom, probably behind something that would stop bullets. I didn’t know if he’d had time to phone for help or not. But I’d just made a lot of noise, and somebody was bound to have called the cops, so time was on his side.
The lower floors had been carpeted and nicely decorated. This floor was all bare and utilitarian. As I passed the other bedrooms, I saw they were filled with bunk beds, each one with handcuff rails and tiedown straps. Then I knew what this house actually was. This was a clearing house. They’d take in runaways or clueless immigrant girls, get them addicted and trained, then ship them off to be pimped out somewhere else. There was a medical cart in the hall, with needles, syringes, and medicine bottles on it. There was huge money in an operation like this. The fact they could get away with shit like this, in a quaint little picturesque neighborhood, extra pissed me off.
I hate these people so much.
Varga was still shouting, but he’d have a gun trained on the doorway, and there appeared to be only one way in. I needed to get his eyes off the door. If he thought the Russian mafia was moving in on him, I was going to give him Russian mafia. I spoke in Russian, but not to him, but rather like I was speaking to someone right next to me. “Granata?” Then I changed the pitch of my voice, and answered myself. “Da. Granata.” Because of course, the answer to grenade? Is always yes, grenade. Varga heard that and quit his yapping as he realized he was about to get fragged. Then I tossed one of the medicine bottles through the doorway. It made a very ominous noise rolling across the hardwood.
Since he thought he was about to get blown to hell, Varga instinctively ducked for cover. I used that chance to rush through the door. I found him cowering behind an overturned table. By the time he realized there was no boom and looked up, my stolen pistol was aimed right between his eyes.
Knowing he was screwed, Varga let go of his pistol and slowly raised his hands over his head.
I’d run up four flights of stairs, killed four men, and captured their leader in well under a minute. Not too shabby considering my sorry state and lack of recent practice. I hate to admit it, but it felt good to be on. But I couldn’t get cocky. I hadn’t cleared the place, so there could still be someone else downstairs waiting to fuck me up, or the cops could roll in. I had to make this fast.
I noticed his phone was lying on the floor next to him, and the screen was lit. He’d already called for help. Hell, if they could hear me, anything that might make the Montalban reinforcements hesitate was worth a shot. Keeping the gun on Varga, I picked up his phone and shouted in Russian, “Vladimir, send ten men to secure the first floor, and another ten to watch the street.” Then I hit End. I switched to English. “I’ve got some questions.”
Apparently, he didn’t recognize me. “You think you can rob me, asshole?” Varga hadn’t changed much. He was still a thin, heavy lidded, hook nosed scumbag, just a little more gray and with a more expensive suit than the last time I’d seen him. Keeping his hands raised, he got off his knees, and stood up, probably thinking he could bluster or threaten his way out. “This house belongs to—”
I casually raised the pistol and shot him through the palm of his hand.
He flinched, and even managed to blink a few times before the pain hit. The zippy little 5.7 round had blown a perfect hole through his palm, like a high-velocity paper punch. He was lucky it hadn’t hit a bone or it probably would have blown up in a meat cloud. He made an awful noise as he clutched his injured hand to his chest, but to his credit, he didn’t start screaming. He was tougher than I thought.
“I’m here because you work for the Montalbans.”
“You shot my hand!” Varga shouted, like I didn’t know.
“Each time you don’t answer, I put another hole in you. Where’s your boss?” I’d settle for either Kat or Anders.
“France!” I moved the gun toward his knee. “Paris! Don’t shoot! Katarina is working on something in Paris. I don’t know where. She moves from safe house to safe house. Nobody can touch her.”
“If Diego had been this forthcoming, he would have lived longer.” From the look on Varga’s face, they must have found his body in that dumpster. “Yeah, that was me. Don’t make the same mistake and force me to bust out my talking knife. Where is Anders holding Bob Lorenzo?”
“Who?” Varga seemed genuinely confused, but I aimed at his knee anyway. “Shit! I don’t know who that is! You’ve got to believe me!”
Good thing he talked fast, there wasn’t a lot of slack in this thing’s trigger. “Big, bald American. He mentioned your name in the Crossroads.” I moved to the window and checked the street. Two figures were moving this way. I couldn’t get a good look at them. Maybe Varga’s men? Maybe the law? Stupid curious neighbors? Either way it was time to go.
“Anders never told us his name. He was sedated and tied up when I got him. My men flew him to Paris. That’s all. Just a package. I move things. That’s all I do.” I thought about the empty beds down the hall, and resisted the urge to shoot him in the dick. “Anders’ men picked him up from my place by the airport. I swear on my mother that’s all I know.”
I moved back to the door and looked down the stairs. That was my only way out. I couldn’t get cut off. I had to make this fast. “Tell me about Project Blue.”
Varga was in pain and terrified of me, but when I said those words, his expression slowly changed. I knew that expression well, because every time I’d looked in the mirror since I’d gotten out of the Pale Man’s prison, I’d seen it in my own reflection. It was a fatalistic knowledge of certain mortality. As if me simply asking about Blue had sentenced him to death. Just like that, I’d just killed all his hope.
“I moved the cargo for her. As of last week everything is in place, but I never thought Katarina would actually go through with it. She wouldn’t,” Varga looked wistfully at the window. He’d been willing to give up his employers, but he’d rather try to escape that talk about Blue. “Millions would die!”
Millions? That made me sick to my stomach. “I’m going to stop her.”
“Kill her and the plan launches. That’s her insurance.” Varga looked to the window again, he was doing the math. Four stories onto cobblestones might not kill him, but anybody who knew about Blue certainly would.
“Wait—”
Varga went for it.
The glass barely slowed him.
Valentine
Salzburg, Austria
September 3rd
Salzburg was in chaos, the Polizei were setting up checkpoints across the city, and we had to get out of town while we still could. We had executed our emergency egress plan, the one we’d put together in case things went sideways. The BMW and the Range Rover had both been doused with gasoline and torched. We switched to backup vehicles we’d prestaged n
earby. Months of research and weeks of reconnaissance were all down the drain, thanks to Lorenzo.
Lorenzo who—I was surprised to learn—was somehow still alive.
Four of us were piled into a Mercedes Sprinter van. Antoine and Skunky were in a different vehicle, a tiny little Hyundai i20, leaving the city by an alternate route. Ling and I shared a bench seat behind Shen, who was driving. Behind us, Lorenzo sat by himself, leaning back against the wall of the cabin. His eyes kept darting back and forth, like he thought we were about to come at him.
No one spoke for a few moments. “Well, this is awkward,” I said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “I didn’t recognize you for a second there.”
Lorenzo watched me, but didn’t say anything. His eyes were different than I remembered, sunken into his skull a little more. He looked older. He looked like he’d been through hell. His hair was longer, and he wore a short beard now.
Ling turned around and met Lorenzo’s thousand-yard stare. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Mr. Lorenzo,” she said. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but may I ask how?”
Lorenzo shifted his gaze, staring off into space in silence for a moment. Ling looked back at me; I just shrugged.
“Jill is safe,” I said after a moment. That got his attention. “We got her out of the Crossroads and into Mongolia. I think she and Reaper flew home from there. I’m not Facebook buddies with them, but we e-mail once in a while. All encrypted and everything, Reaper set it up. Last I heard they were both doing okay. As okay as they could be, I guess.”
Lorenzo looked down at his lap for a moment, then up at me and Ling. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Ling insisted. “Many owe you their lives. We thought . . . we assumed you were dead.”
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 6
