The lobby of the apartment building was a small room with mailboxes built into the wall. Eloise made her way up the stairs, her heels clunking loudly on bare wood. I followed, cautiously, heart racing, feeling exposed. There were no cameras that I could see, only the clunk of Eloise’s shoes, the scent of her perfume, and the incessant buzzing of fluorescent lights.
On the third floor, we turned down a carpeted hall, so our approach was a lot quieter. The hall was, thankfully, deserted, and apartment 3B was the first one on the right. This was it. I drew the CZ 9mm from my belt and screwed the suppressor onto the muzzle.
“That is not a policeman’s gun.”
“Interpol standard issue.”
My heart rate slowed as I did so, my senses seemingly heightened. I noticed every detail of the hallway; the carpet was a dark blue, a light at the end flickered irregularly. The doors were heavy wood, and there were eight apartments on the third floor. Eloise was suspicious of me now, but kind of stuck. She shifted nervously, but seemed more collected than I expected she’d be. It was odd.
I was ready. I was calm.
“Let’s do this,” I said quietly. I positioned myself to the side, so that I couldn’t be seen from the peephole. Tailor spoke into my earpiece, telling me he was on foot from a block away, having finally found a parking space. I clicked the mic to acknowledge, but didn’t say anything. I held the pistol in both hands, tucked tightly to my chest, as Eloise softly knocked on the door. Footsteps approached. Click, clack, locks were undone. The door swung inward.
“Ello,” Eloise said.
Calmly and smoothly, I pushed her aside and went past, raising my weapon as I moved. The man that had opened the door was young, probably in his twenties, with dark skin and short curly hair—that isn’t Georges Mertens—and he was aiming a gun right at me.
I’d walked right into a goddamn trap.
I just reacted. He’d been ready to shoot me, but I was faster. Somehow, Eloise knew to duck. As the prostitute hit the floor, I pushed the gun out in both hands and shot him three times.
The gunman went stumbling away. Behind him, there was a short entryway that opened into a larger room. Another man was standing there, and he didn’t even wait for his friend to fall out of the way before he started shooting. His shotgun blast tore a chunk out of his associate and the frame next to my head. There were more people moving behind him. I thought one of them might be Mertens, but he’d already disappeared around a corner. Bullets zipped past me. I fired a barrage into the apartment, as they took cover amid the cloud of plaster dust and gun smoke.
Reaching down, I grabbed Eloise by the arm and pulled her to her feet. “Come on!” I yanked her away as a hail of gunfire echoed throughout the building, bullets peppering the wall on the other side of the hall. I squeezed my throat mic. “Compromised! Ambush! Get up here now!”
“I’m at the lobby!” Tailor said. Glass shattered as he smashed through the door two floors below me. I kept my gun trained on the doorway to the apartment as long as I could, firing off a shot whenever his men tried to poke their heads around the corner, until we were out of view down the stairs. Even then I tried to keep my body between their bullets and Eloise. Footsteps thumped on the wooden stairs as Tailor ran up to meet me.
“Eloise, you need to get the hell out of here. Run!” She went down as Tailor came up past me, suppressed VP9 in his hands. He popped off several muffled shots as one of Mertens’ men came blundering into the hall with a short-barreled shotgun. That one was dead before he hit the floor.
The terrified occupant of apartment 3A cracked her door open. I was certain some of the stray rounds had gone through her wall. “Interpol,” Tailor shouted with authority, and then a rapid bunch of half-mangled French that was probably lock your door and stay down. Whatever he said worked, because the lady fled. “Come on, Val, we gotta get out of here. This has gone to shit.”
“I think he’s still in there. We can—” A cylindrical object flew out of the doorway, bounced off the opposite wall, and hit the stairs.
The flashbang detonated before I could even warn Tailor.
LORENZO
The first thing that went through my mind when the bullets started flying was that I’d told Valentine not to fuck this up.
I had been tailing him all evening. I’d even been watching Valentine while we had been speaking on the phone, sitting under an awning at a brasserie a hundred yards away enjoying a cappuccino and his lame attempt at blending in. Valentine was one hell of a soldier, but he would have made an awful thief. When the other guy had picked him up in an Audi, I’d followed on a used Ducati I’d bought for cash.
They had never even come close to making the tail. Paris was a motorcycle-friendly city. There were thousands of them here, so I didn’t stand out. Bikes made sense, since you could cut through their awful traffic, parking sucked, and for me in particular a helmet kept my face off of the security cameras. Sure, riding was miserable and dangerous in the rain, but many of the locals just used these zipup leg covers to keep the water out of their laps, and called it good.
When the mystery driver had dropped Valentine off, I parked. And unlike them, I could park damn near anywhere. I picked another building down the street with an awning to keep out of the rain, and hung out there. When the cops Valentine had avoided walked by, I simply wished them a pleasant evening in perfect French. I don’t normally smoke, but carried a pack and a lighter anyway, so to Paris’ Finest I just looked like a regular dude having a smoke break while avoiding the worst of a shower. Once they were past I went back to watching.
Valentine would probably be torqued if he found out I was following him, but unless something went wrong, he’d never even know I was here.
So of course, something went wrong. Valentine is a shit magnet.
A couple minutes after Valentine and the hooker went inside somebody started shooting. My first thought was I told him not to fuck this up. Then his friend—I still didn’t know who he was—ran up and kicked in the front glass. I checked the other way, the cops had turned the corner and hopefully mistook the noise for thunder. That wouldn’t last long. “Damn it, Valentine,” I muttered as I tossed the cigarette and reached for the little plastic Steyr subgun stashed in my bag.
But then I realized something was up. The door had opened on one of the apartment buildings across the street and four men had come running out, heading directly after Valentine and his buddy. They had their hands down at their sides or inside their jackets, trying to hide their weapons. They’d been camped this whole time. This had all been a setup. But how—?
Before I’d even finished thinking the question, I got my answer. The hooker ran outside, but rather than getting gunned down, the man in the lead shooed her out of the way, and neither of them seemed surprised to see the other. She had tipped off the Montalbans.
The Kat I knew, if warned beforehand, would have just left a claymore in the apartment and blown them all to hell. The fact that she hadn’t—and this was a relatively restrained amount of gunfire for her people—suggested that she wanted to take somebody alive, probably because she was curious who had killed Diego and Varga. Was it someone moving in on her business? Was it personal? Or were they poking into Blue? She’d want to know.
So technically, since Valentine hadn’t been smoked immediately, by raising those questions in Kat’s head, it was like I’d done him a favor. And since I was now walking toward the four armed men who were about to storm the lobby, I was about to do him another.
I ran, crouched, along the parked cars, keeping my gun low so hopefully they wouldn’t see it until it was too late. A flashbang went off inside and the window over the second floor stairwell blew out. The four dudes must have been waiting for that as a signal, because three of them rushed through the broken glass. The gunfire had really picked up to an unmistakable level, so those gendarmes that had been here a minute ago were probably calling for backup and hauling ass back. This was about to get really complicated.
I ran toward the entrance, but out of the corner of my eye I thought I someone in the shadows off to the side. White skin and black eyes. I spun, ready to fire, but there was nothing there but rivulets of water pouring from a broken gutter. For just a split second I thought the Pale Man had been there.
CRACK.
The bullet passed through the air where I would have been if I’d not stopped. It smacked into the concrete and fragments flew. I dove behind a parked car, cursing myself as I realized that the men hadn’t come out of the lobby across the street. They’d been waiting in one of the apartments above it, and they’d left a shooter in the window to cover them. Using something big and semi-auto, he went to town on the car I was using for cover, pounding rifle rounds through the sheet metal as I hugged the gutter. The burn on my chest ached when it landed in the cold water.
I glanced back the way I’d come from. The two cops were running this way. They had drawn their pistols and were heading directly toward the sound of gunfire, balls to the wall. It was brave as hell, but Kat’s men would have no compunction at shooting the police. I shouted a warning and tried to wave them back, but the Montalban shooter had already seen them. He turned on the police, and bullets started smacking the walls around them. One cop got hit in the leg and crashed. His partner skidded to a stop, and by some miracle didn’t get hit as he dragged the wounded man behind a planter.
It sucked for them, but I used the distraction to scramble up and bolt for the entrance. By the time the rifleman had swung back toward me, I was already through and heading for the stairs.
VALENTINE
That had been one hell of a bang. The stairwell was filled with so much smoke it was hard to breathe. All I could see was flashing purple lights. I could barely hear Tailor shouting over the ringing in my ears. There were men above and below us, and they fired a bunch of rounds through stairs to let us know they were there. We were surrounded and there was no way out. One of the men below was shouting something in French.
“What’s he saying?” I asked. “And when the hell did you learn French?”
“Asshole wants us to surrender. I told him I was Interpol. Didn’t faze him. Guy’s a pro.”
There were tears in my eyes as I kept blinking, hoping my vision would clear up in time to shoot somebody. One of the men yelled something else. “What’s that?”
For once, Tailor sounded worried. “He said there’s two of us, but his boss only needs one alive. They’re going to count to ten, and then start shooting.”
“I’m not getting taken alive. Not again. Call their bluff, let’s see how brave they really are.”
Tailor shouted back something in French, then for my benefit said. “I told him his mom gives lousy head. We only got a second here. Up or down?”
The man downstairs started counting.
It was a bad situation to be in, but I was calm. Down was the most obvious direction to go in. Down would bring us to the street and give us room to maneuver. Trouble was, we didn’t know how many of them were below us. I thought I had seen Mertens above, there couldn’t have been too many stuffed into that little apartment, and we’d already killed at least two of those. There would be a fire exit or at least a window at the back. Antoine was covering that side, and if we could get to him, we had our egress route. By the time the count had reached trois I had made my call.
“We’re going up.”
LORENZO
“Quatre!”
I didn’t know why the jackass at the base of the stairs was counting, but he was armed and jumpy. The other two were ahead of him, further up the stairs, so all I could see were their legs. They were all focused in the other direction. They must have thought my shots had come from the man they’d left guarding the door, and that he and their rifle guy still had their asses covered. They assumed wrong.
Before he could say cinq, all hell broke loose. Val and his friend must have gone for it, because there was a chain of suppressed pops, the sound of feet pounding stairs, and somebody above started screaming bloody murder.
“Merde,” the man muttered, right before I bashed him upside the skull. Plastic guns make shitty clubs, but I still hit him hard enough that he spun around and crashed into the mail boxes. Before he could shout a warning, I throat-punched him with the hot muzzle of the Steyr. This thing had a vertical foregrip too, so with both hands I really put some oomph into it. He went down hard enough to bounce his face off the tile floor.
By the time I looked up, the other two were gone, chasing Valentine. I went after them. Taking the stairs two at a time, I caught them just as they were drawing a bead to shoot Valentine in the back as he ran down the hall. Valentine’s little friend had been faster, and had already dived over a dead guy and through an open door. I opened up, stitching the rest of my magazine into Kat’s men. Valentine heard the shots, spun around, and fired a suppressed pistol at them. One of Kat’s men went down spraying blood all over the carpet, and the other flipped over the railing to plummet back into the lobby.
The instant Val’s pistol had locked back empty, he’d switched guns, and I had that big stupid shiny revolver aimed at me again. The dude was quick, I’ll give him that.
“Point that somewhere else or I’ll stick it up your ass,” I warned as I reloaded.
“Lorenzo?” He lowered the hand cannon. “What’re you doing here?”
“Cleaning up your mess.”
“Val! Mertens is getting away!” His friend shouted from inside the apartment. “There’s stairs down the back!”
Valentine went in. I followed. I would have loved to get back to my bike and get out before half the cops in Paris descended on this place, but I didn’t know how dedicated the rifleman across the street was. He might have run at the first sound of sirens, but I didn’t want to risk getting my head blown off if he was feeling stubborn.
There were bodies in the hall, and another in the entry. It smelled like blood and smoke. The apartment was small, but there was a back balcony. The glass door was open, the curtains were billowing, and rain was coming inside. There was a circular metal staircase leading down into the alley. Valentine started talking into this radio, it sounded like to Antoine. I pushed past him and hit the stairs. They were shaky, wobbly, and slicker than snot in the rain, but I managed to bound down the steps, two and three at a time, without killing myself. I spotted a shape that had to be our guy, twenty yards ahead, leaping over garden fences like they were nothing. Geroges must have been a track star. Valentine’s friend was already at the bottom and had taken off after him.
The rain was really coming down now. Beyond that rumble was the sound of sirens, lots of sirens. The neighbors had heard the gunfire and there were a lot of faces pressed against windows, trying to figure out what was going on. Unfortunately for us, this back area was lit, so witnesses were sure to see the four of us having a foot chase, and they’d vector the cops right in on us.
I sprinted after Georges. That son of a bitch was fast. He’d already reached the end of the block. Lucky for me, rather than turning right or left and heading down the sidewalk, he crossed the little side street and entered another foot path between apartment buildings. Montalban connections or not, he didn’t want to get busted by the cops. Valentine was coming down the stairs behind me, shouting directions into his radio. Valentine’s friend reached the street and nearly got creamed by a passing car. They hit the brakes, he wound up in their headlights, briefly, before sliding across their hood like T. J. Hooker. Somehow he stayed on his feet and kept up the chase as the car honked at him.
We cleared another street. There were flashing red and blue lights zipping through the intersection at the end. Don’t look this way. Don’t look this way. One of their own had just got sniped. They were going to be pissed. I’d almost caught up with Valentine’s friend, who was soaked, gasping, and starting to lose steam. Ahead, at the end of the next block, Georges was damned near out of sight. He’d already crossed another street, and this block was mostly shops and hotels with living quarters above. It would be really easy for Georges to dart into one of the buildings and disappear. He turned into a skinny alley behind a café. I pushed myself harder to keep him in view.
A van appeared, tires sliding on the wet street, as it took the corner way too fast, and followed him in. I sure hoped it was the Exodus guys and not Montalban reinforcements. It was too close to drive far inside, and I saw brake lights. Luckily, I learned it was Exodus when Shen leapt out of the passenger side while the van was still screeching to a halt.
This was it. This street was clear. I didn’t see anybody looking at us. The cops were going in the opposite direction. There would be some confusion before they were pointed our way. We had a few seconds where we could still pull this off.
By the time I reached the back of the van, our quarry was stopped in the headlights. There was a chain link gate behind him, he didn’t have time to make it over, and Shen had him at gunpoint. Antoine had the driver’s door open and was using it for cover. Georges’ chest was heaving from the exertion. The bodyguard slowly turned around.
Alliance of Shadows (Dead Six Series Book 3) Page 19
