Each of the rooms I go to are unlit, but not dark, as the light from the afternoon still shines in from the windows. When I’m sure that the house is indeed empty, I take the time to do another, more careful sweep of the house. This time I confirm that none of the lights, and none of my scattered electronic devices, are working at all, save for for the discounted TV pinned to the wall in Mary’s bedroom.
I press the power button on her remote, expecting nothing to happen, and am startled when the screen starts glowing with a news feed. I recognize it as the same refugee camp from before, nestled on the edges of swamp lands which keep expanding on the coast. I frown when I see the overly lethal equipment used by security on the location, because it’s supposed to be charity, not a warzone. That thought, though, isn’t helping me with the problem at hand, so I turn off the TV and sit on the bed.
Mary is missing. Not under a bed or hiding in a closet. She’s been taken by someone. And judging from what I’ve seen, someone pretty bad.
The house is too trashed for this to have been the work of just a professional doing a job. There’s a special kind of malice in the damage done here. Whoever’s come for me, they did it because of something personal.
I try not to make enemies when doing my job, but that doesn’t mean that I’m always liked, or that I’m always polite. Less than an hour ago, I’d insulted someone with the resources to do something like this. The only thing unconfirmed is if he has an ego big enough, and bruised enough, to set this bullshit into motion.
I look up at the TV screen and see that I must have mindlessly turned it back on, because it’s still showing the news feed that I’d seen my buyer watching in the Philippines before. If he did this, there’s a chance that he’s still at that patio bar with his umbrella-less drink.
If he didn’t, there’s still a chance he could be there anyway. He said he had money, and money comes with resources that could maybe help me find Mary.
I grab a spare phone charger, get some distance, and drop back to the Philippines because there’s no use in me sitting still, wondering if this man is guilty or innocent. The buyer either did it, or he didn’t, and I’m going to find out which. God help him if he’s done anything to Mary.
CHAPTER SIX
This time, I remember to get some distance away from my house before making another drop. Devils tend to stake out places that are the site of too many trips back to back. It’s something I’d forgotten in my rush to get inside of the house. Trying to make one from my front porch was a mistake, and one I’d rather not make again.
I jog over about an acre’s worth of farmland before I decide that I’ve gone far enough, then flick my lighter in one hand with my phone in the other. I land a block away from the hotel in the Philippines, and rush over to the place as fast as my bruised and burned ankle will let me.
My progress is fast, but when I arrive it’s plain to see that I’m not the first to get there. The place seems a lot less ritzy this time, because there are a lot of people screaming, no, crying outside of the hotel. That alone would be bad enough, but the place is also crawling with what looks like Army infantry in black combat fatigues.
One of those soldiers comes over to me, and when he approaches I see that he’s not military after all. His shoulder carries the badge of the Philippine National Police. He speaks in accented but perfectly clear English, and asks me if I’m in need of medical assistance. I don’t get why he’s so adamant that I get help until I look down and see the burn marks on my jeans and the seeping stains from my burns underneath.
I thank him for his help and take him up on his offer. There’s an ambulance parked near the hotel’s entrance. It’s close enough that I’ll be able to take a good hard look at the scene without attracting more attention. The police officer helps me over to the vehicle, partly because I’m playing up the injury and partly because it really fucking stings. I sit down in the open back of the ambulance and try to see what I can see.
I can see blood stains by the front entrance, and the body of … yeah. The bellboy from earlier was definitely a fighter. Though his chest is riddled with a tight grouping of bullet holes, that hadn’t kept him from bloodying his knuckles before going down.
There are other bodies nearby. All guards, by the look of them. After a minute or two, a pair of medics comes out of the main entryway. They’re pushing a gurney, and though the body is bloodied and burned well past easy recognition, I’m still able to make out a pale hand clad in a red jeweled college class ring.
Fuck. I was hoping to get something out of this guy one way or another. With Todd the buyer dead, things are even less clear than before. I’m also not too slow to notice the timing of his demise. Whoever hit this place did so with speed that’s almost completely unseen, even in the circle of rebels, smugglers, and spies that I often trade in.
I wait around, but no other bodies save for two or three more guards are rolled out of the place. That’s a miracle in itself, because “tourists,” “died,” and “crossfire” are words that usually go together when a hotel this big takes a hit.
The crew that did this isn’t just fast. They were also unusually precise. Unusually clean. They’d been able to take down a man rich enough to spend a half million in a day, while he was inside a fortress that’d given pause even to someone like me. Whoever they are, I’ll need to come at them hard, in addition to fast. To do that, I’m going to need my own team.
Fortunately for me, and for Mary as well, I don’t do all of my work in this world alone. I have people I can call on and chips to cash in. They may not be the same kind of people who hit the hotel recently, but for Mary’s sake, I hope they’ll be enough.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I make a drop and land in one of my favorite places for this kind of thing. Central park is big enough for a person like me to land in a different spot each day of the week and still have enough space to not attract any attention while passing downstairs. There’s also enough trees and bushes in the place to let me do so without defying the laws of physics and creation in front of soccer moms and picnic lovers. On the rare occasion that someone sees me disappear into thin air, they can always convince themselves that I walked behind some shrubbery after the fact.
There’s also another advantage to the place. The traffic there is extremely congested, and I’m not talking about the cars, either. In any given day, literally thousands of people make phone calls, send texts and stream Netflix while catching shade under the tree cover. Picking a lone signal, my signal, out of the thousands here would be so hard that any analyst assigned to my case would beg for the relief of picking needles out of haystacks. When combined with the encryption already on my phone, it’s the safest place to make a phone call in my profession.
I lean hard on that extra comfort in the hour that follows, because I call every single contact of worth that I’ve ever done business with. Retired Army Rangers on permanent vacation in Bangkok. An old insurgent-turned-priest in the jungles of Vietnam. Bad guys. Good guys. I call them all and bribe, cajole, and on occasion, even beg, until I’ve got a crew of hard cases so tough they’d make a devil blush.
My last call is the most important out of all of them though. I have a man, my secretary, who helps me with my work. I don’t know his real name and I don’t fucking want to, because I’m pretty sure that the information is worth more than my life. He’s always been very clear on how he should be addressed or mentioned when speaking to others about him. Always “my secretary,” “your secretary,” and never “the secretary.” When it comes to wiretaps, he’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s even more paranoid than me.
I give him a phone call and keep it short and simple, as I’d been instructed to do so before.
“I need to talk.” I say, then shut up and wait.
For a minute, nothing answers me on the other side of the line. But then a voice speaks up.
“Thirty minutes.” it says. The line goes quiet.
I start moving the moment the
silence takes over the phone. It’ll take me at least five minutes to get far enough away from where I’d landed to make a safe drop, and maybe more than that once I’m close to my secretary’s office building. I put some hustle in my step, my newly bandaged leg throbbing the whole time. Thirty minutes to see the secretary. Maybe a few hours for my crew to scrounge up useful answers. Too much time for my nerves to handle unshaken, but not too much, I hope, for getting to Mary.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I hate Luanda. It’s not the heat, which is bearable for someone raised amid red Georgia clay. It’s not even the people, who are nice in the way that pretty much everyone on the planet is nice, and shit in much the same ways as well.
It’s the smell, like sea salt with a hint of raw sewage, blanketed in a healthy layer of diesel smoke and smog. That and privilege, the stench of which practically wafts off of the high rises that tower over the homeless, and the fortified expatriate compounds that butt heads and push out on the edges of slums.
The reek of all the above is pretty strong today when I land on a sidewalk a block south of my secretary’s office tower. The street running alongside me is choked with rush hour traffic, and I’m close enough to the central business district that at least half of the cars on the road are either limos or a lexus. Each sits in back to back traffic, belching exhaust. The fumes from that many cars jammed together gives me a headache before I’ve walked half a block. I ignore it and keep walking ahead.
What I don’t ignore, however, is the problem brewing nearby.
On the other side of the stalled Luanda traffic is a man on the sidewalk opposite from me. Dark skinned and tall, he stands with his back hunched and leaning down to the right, as if carrying something heavy underneath the armpit. The weight he carries isn’t what triggers my attention, though. It’s his jacket, hanging down to just above his mid thigh. The garment looks like it’s been made from thin, breathable cotton, and probably won’t be murder to wear despite the hot evening air.
But still.
It’s a jacket.
In the summer.
In Luanda.
My bet is that he’s a carjacker, or at least this town’s local approximation of that. Annoyance, and a sliver of caution, starts to slither through me. I’m far from an expert on crime in this country, but I do know that carjackers in Angola occasionally shoot first and ask for iPads later. I’m pretty sure that I can avoid any action he gives me, but that will draw the kind of attention I don’t want to deal with and take time that I don’t have to spare. Avoiding this guy would be best, so I duck my eyes down and start walking towards a crossing point further down the road from them.
I’m halfway through the river of overheating, half-stalled and semi-parked cars that choke the R. Rainha Ginga Highway when I notice that the man has started to come towards me. Like me, he’s wading through the stalled stream of traffic, and now stands five, maybe six, car lengths away. The man must think that I make a good target. While the state of my clothes is a hint that I make less than the Lexus drivers I’m walking around, I’m still a blonde girl by herself in a foreign country. In some places, including here, I may as well be wearing a sign that says please rob me.
Carjackers, like most criminals in search of money instead of respect, will often look for less alert prey. If you let onto the fact that you can see them coming, they may not think it worth the risk. With this in mind, I make eye contact with the carjacker. I hold his gaze and then shake my head no with a firm, curt little motion.
I don’t really expect it to do wonders. Just give him a pause, really, that I can use to cross over to the other side of the road. I’m not too surprised when he shakes his head back and keeps walking in my direction. I am surprised, however, when a sea breeze twists its way through the car choked street, and flutters the carjacker’s jacket as it passes by. The fluttering wind opens the jacket a bit, and when it does, I see the shape of a collapsible stock M249 - a light machine gun - hanging from a strap under the approaching man’s armpit.
Oh … shit. Double shit. There’s machine guns, and then there’s machine guns. This man is carrying the latter, which is really damn odd. Carjackers in Luanda don’t carry those. Hell, most soldiers don’t carry those save for those windswept nights when they’re hopping out of planes. Machine guns, even compact ones designed for paratrooper jumps, are so heavy that no one bothers carrying them unless they’re expecting the kind of company that can only be held back with overwhelming force.
I doubt I qualify as that.
An unpleasant surge of fear returns to my stomach. It starts slow but that’s still enough to set my teeth on edge and make my hands shake. The idea of being somewhere else is now very appealing, so I reach down into my pocket and grab onto my lighter.
It’s hot in Luanda, and every part of my body is covered in sweat despite having been here for less than a half hour. That’s not bad in itself, I’m a big girl and know how to put uncomfortable things out of my mind for a time. Problem is, sweat gets slippery, so much so, in fact, that the metal surface of the knockoff Zippo is slick in my hands when I try to bring it out. I bobble the damn thing and it drops to the ground before clattering and skipping down the street and out of my sight.
Shit, shit shit. Without that lighter, without a flame, I can’t do a drop. If I don’t find it, I’ll be trapped here, in Luanda, with a gunman coming closer and closer.
CHAPTER NINE
I don’t see where the lighter lands, so I go down to my knees. I can see that there’s still a few lanes of stalled traffic separating the man who’s definitely not a carjacker from me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to track the lighter down soon and drop the hell out of here. Failing that, I’ll at least have a few tons of metal between my soft parts and the man with the machine gun hunting me down.
From my hands and knees I look under the car that I’m hiding behind and out on as much as the rest of the street that I can see. The boots of the not-carjacker are still coming closer and it won’t be long until he gets a clear line of sight on me.
I also catch a gleam in the corner of my eye, and turn to see my lighter. Its scuffed, battered shape is under the car, too far away to reach with my hand, but maybe close enough if I go down even lower onto my belly.
Hesitation is the enemy in situations like this, so I go down onto my front and slither under the Lexus like a snake making its way through Eden. I scrape my chin on the asphalt, and bump my head on a carburetor, but I manage to get the damn lighter back in hand.
I crawl back from under the parked car and move a little to take a peek around the edge of its bumper. I can see the not-carjacker only one car length away, his hand gripping the stock of his machine gun in the folds of his jacket. By the look on his face, he’s ready to shoot. I don’t want to be crouching behind a luxury car when that happens, so I lift up my lighter, flick it once, and make another drop.
Drops are funny things. While they can take you anywhere in the world that you want, it really, really helps to be specific. All I really want to do is skip this machine gun infested traffic, so I don’t actually take the time to decide exactly where I want to land beyond “somewhere inside my secretary’s office building.”
That’s why I’m only a little surprised when, after a flash of heat as I take a shortcut downstairs, I find myself crouching in a broom closet in my secretary’s building. I peek my head out of the door and see that I’m somewhere in the lobby. I stick my head out a little farther to see if the coast is clear, then step out and start limping to the elevators as casual as I can be.
Both the floor in the lobby and the elevator are set with patterned stone that looks like marble. Pricy stuff, I think for a moment, as I press the button for the twelfth floor. One moment is all I have to spare, because I have other, more unpleasant things, like math, to consider.
One floor in this building takes up maybe fifteen vertical feet. Multiply that by twelve and you get about 190, eh, maybe 200 feet of distance between my destination and the
lobby where I’d made my landing. 200 feet isn’t much distance when it comes to making drops through the deep. If I have to get out of here with my lighter in a hurry, there’s a good chance I’ll have another visitor waiting for me in the pit when I do.
The elevator pings and comes to a stop on my secretary’s floor. The door opens, and I limp out onto plush thick carpeting lining the short segment of hallway outside of the elevators. There are two thick glass doors bracketing each end of the hallway. I can see the edges of an open office space beyond them. On a different day, I may have been in trouble, because the doors at the ends of the hallways are made of thick misted glass and appear to be keycard locked. Luck must be on my side, though, because the one nearest to me has been propped open with a small heavy box.
It’s quiet on the floor, like, library quiet. The roadways of Luanda were a cacophony of blaring horns and growling engines that I could even hear in the lobby downstairs. It’s different up here, and I can’t tell if that’s because of the distance between me and the ground, or if this office has been outfitted with exceptionally good windows.
Both of those theories go out of the window when I realize that there’s also a lack of voices in the place. Most office spaces would have stifled laughter, arguments, or even the hushed tones of gossip. This place doesn’t, and I can feel the silence weighing down on this place like a blanket.
I limp towards that door for a bit and stop as I get closer. The box turns out to actually be a brick, and not a clean brick at that. The stone is chipped at one edge and covered in grime, as if the person who’d placed it there had just grabbed it off of the street outside and carried it upstairs to prop open the door. I’ve never been an office worker myself, but I’m pretty sure that this kind of behaviour would get your desk jockey chewed out, or even fired at a place this swanky.
Brimstone Hustle (Brimstone Cycle Book 1) Page 3
