Brimstone Hustle (Brimstone Cycle Book 1)

by Robert McKinney

  Whoever placed this brick here didn’t give a shit about getting fired. The way my day has been going, that’s not a good sign.

  I drop and crawl on hands and knees the rest of the way down the hall to the propped open door, and stick my head around the corner slow and easy. I can see a wide open floor plan of desks with not a cubicle in sight, but no people. A sinking feeling grows stronger in my belly, and the voice of caution is now shrieking in the space between my ears. I ignore it, for the most part, and peek my head around the corner. I won’t lie. I’m really not a fan of what I see.

  Standing in the middle of the room is a man, this one a white guy in a tailored business suit. In his hands is a shotgun, a Kel-Tec KSG, that’s about as far as one could get from the machine gun that I’d encountered downstairs. Where the M249 would do well at mowing down crowds at long range, this shotgun is custom made to dismantle solo targets with overwhelming force.

  It won’t do well if it comes down to taking out multiple targets, but I doubt that’s a comfort to any of the people cowering on the floor at his feet. There’s dozens of them, office workers mostly, with fingers laced together on the back of their heads and cheeks pressed into the floor’s plush carpet.

  My heart is beating so hard when I pull my head back from around the corner that I can feel it pulsing in my ears. Hostages. Whoever these guys are, they’re more than quick on their feet, well informed, and ready to hit places hard. They’re also willing to take hostages, which is a whole level beyond ballsy in the world of back alley meets and dirty deals. Hostages are the kind of things that gets words like “special forces” involved, along with others like “manhunt” and “million dollar reward.”

  If they were good enough to do this without anyone else in the building knowing, and determined enough to pull it off, then they’re definitely here for something more valuable than a ransom. My home has been attacked, along with the buyer I’d last had contact with. Someone has been coming after those I have contact with, which means that the assholes here are after my secretary. I don’t know how they’ve pulled all this shit off faster than even someone like me can move. Not knowing doesn’t matter though, not now at least. What matters is getting to my secretary before one of these guys adds him to the pile of bodies they’ve been leaving.

  I take another peek and don’t see him on the floor along with the other office workers. I do, however, see a different suited and machine gun armed man walk out of a corner office that he’d apparently just searched. He nods towards the other one standing guard in the room and makes his way over to the next closed office door. They’re still searching the place, which means that I still have a chance to get to my secretary first.

  While the open office floor lacks cubicles and other sightline blocking creations, there’s a good number of desks and chairs between me and the suited gunman. They won’t completely block me from the man’s line of sight, but if I’m lucky, he may not notice me if I move in between them.

  I crawl over to the nearest bank of tables and then the next, and then the next, using my ears to keep track of the guard gunman’s breathing and the rustle of the other still searching other office rooms.

  My secretary’s door is on the far side of the room from them. I make it there without being seen, though for how long I don’t know. His door is one of those false wood and varnish affairs, and for a second looks like it would come down in one push from a good sized man. I know better, though, because the guy who’d upgraded my house was the same one who’d done similar work on the secretary’s private office. The hinges of the door, reinforced and three times the size of what’s usually the case for a house, are made to endure a powered battering ram with a shrug. This is definitely his office. I just need to get inside.

  I know that I can’t just knock on his door, no matter how lightly, so I take out my phone, log into my banking app, and slide the whole thing under the crack between door frame and office carpet. I hear a few soft moments of rustling inside, and after a few seconds, the door cracks open a few inches.

  The barrel of a machine-pistol - an old scratched up Micro-Uzi of Israeli make - faces me from the other side of the door. A moment later, I hear a voice pitched barely above a whisper, drift out from beyond the reinforced door frame.

  “Come inside, Ms. Robinette Kohl. It’s about time that you and I spoke.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  My secretary is a small man, maybe five foot three. His skin is dark, but not like that of the Angolans in the office or out on the streets. If pressed, I’d say that he was Turkish, or maybe a Kurd. If one of those, I hope it’s the former. While I’ve met my fair share of Turks during my time in the arms trade, I’ve never met a Kurd in the business who couldn’t put rounds on a target.

  In hindsight, none of that matters at the moment, because at this range it would be harder to miss me than not. I decide that doing what he says is a very good idea, so I raise my hands up and follow my secretary inside. He holds the door open just long enough for me to come in, then the door closes behind me with a soft click. My secretary jerks his weapon towards the wall and then back to me. I get the message, and settle down in one of the chairs there.

  “Hello Ms. Kohl. Good to see you Ms. Kohl. Anything interesting to chat about Ms. Kohl?” There’s bitterness in his voice when he speaks, which spikes in intensity every time he repeats my name. I’m not used to it. He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met who could keep his calm better than me. The gun in his hand never wavers despite the emotion in his voice.

  I lean back into the chair, less out of an attempt to find comfort, and more, much more, to put him at ease. I also glance at the reinforced door of his office, wondering how long we have to chat before we’re interrupted by the gunman nearby. They’ll be outside the office any moment, so I’ll have to get straight to the point.

  “Someone took my sister.” I say. “I’ve put together a team, and we’re going to get her back. The only thing else that I need is a location. If you help me with that, I’ll owe you big time. Any favor. Any job. No questions asked. If you won’t help me, I’ll leave peacefully, but I’ll remember that the answer is no.”

  My secretary just stares at me for a full minute after I say that. Then he snorts.

  “The nerve on you.” he says. “Like a bull in a damn china shop. I should have known that you were too direct to try something as underhanded as this.” He waves his free hand toward the door, indicating the ongoing hostage situation.

  He lowers the barrel of his miniature submachine gun.

  “I just wish you were as watchful as you are bold.” He continues. The bitterness is out of his voice, now replaced by something else. Sadness, and a little fatigue.

  “The hostage takers outside?” Now it’s my turn to snort. “They’re kind of hard to miss.”

  “No, Ms. Kohl.” says my secretary. “Not the kind men outside. I’m referring to the others who’ve been visiting your friends over the course of the last hour.”

  “But. What?” I ask, too confused to be angry. Too shocked to be worried.

  My secretary places his micro-Uzi on his desk and walks over to the wall next to me. It’s lined with heavy metal filing cabinets, each equipped with a lock. He opens one, rifles through a long tray of files inside, and starts tossing folders on the desktop alongside his gun.

  “I keep track of your people,” he says, still pulling out folders, “because most of them are my people as well. Most dead in the last hour. Most of them hit hard in their homes.

  I stare back at him, stunned. The people I’d called and convinced to come help me are not lightweights by any stretch of the imagination. They’re dangerous, careful, and in some cases, devious, people. They were not the kind of people to get killed easily, if at all. My secretary has to be wrong.

  “But how could someone do that? My guys are professionals. They know how to stay hidden.”

  “Hard to stay hidden if someone is tracing their calls.” Says my secretary as h
e closes the file cabinet door. He picks up a briefcase from the floor and lays it awkwardly on the desk. Then he starts transferring those files to a briefcase on his desk.

  I shake my head while he works.

  “My phone is encrypted, and theirs were as well. Even if someone was listening in, all they’d hear from us was gibberish.”

  “Hearing what you and your friends had to say would have been nice. I’ll admit it. But I don’t think the men outside cared much about the details of your conversations. All they really wanted was who you were speaking to, and where they were when they spoke. You’ve been set up, Ms. Kohl, your friends along with you.”

  My secretary closes his briefcase, picks it up, hefts his weapon, and keeps talking before I can think too much about that.

  “The only good news is that you didn’t betray me, Ms. Kohl. I’m almost fond of you, to be honest. It would have been a shame to mark you down for revenge.”

  He chooses that moment to start walking towards the door. An instant later, someone on the other side chooses that same instant to open up on the office door with a weapon set to full automatic.

  The noise of it, the sheer almost physical wave of the machine gun’s thunder, makes my ears ring, even from the other side of the door. I see several divots and dents get punched into the steel, which gives way a moment later with a hissing screech.

  Both my secretary and I throw ourselves to the ground the moment the sound of gunfire kicks in. I’m apparently a little faster getting there than my secretary is, because he grunts once, then twice, before he makes it to the carpet.

  He rolls over, revealing a growing dark stain at the base of his torso. More bullets smack through the closed door, and when I look up, I see that the bullet holes are melted and smoking at the edges.

  I exhale and decide to count this as a piece of good luck. Armor piercing ammunition with an incendiary coating gets a bad reputation in most medical circles, but I’m grateful that the asshole outside decided to use the incendiary variation instead of the vanilla option. The rounds that hit my secretary have cauterized his flesh a little while passing through. It won’t be enough to keep him from bleeding out indefinitely, but it may be enough for him to live long enough to get aid.

  I look around the room and see that the wall sized window of the office had shattered during the hostage taker’s barrage. If I wanted to, I could sprint through it, make a drop, and land somewhere safe before I’ve picked up too much speed. I may have company waiting for me between here and there, but that beats getting shredded by a hail of flaming machine gun fire.

  Glancing down at my secretary, though, I realize that I can’t leave him behind. He’s the last ally I have left in this business, and besides, as arms dealers go, he’s a half decent guy. I reach out and grab onto the back of his jacket collar and start dragging him, slowly, to the window side of the room.

  He ignores me while I do it, seemingly intent on the conflicting tasks of applying pressure to his stomach, holding onto his briefcase, and aiming his shotgun one handed at the door. I knock the shotgun from his hands, and try to do the same with the briefcase. He holds onto it tight, and then glares up at me.

  “Look.” I say, “We’re both gonna die if you don’t trust me. Let me get you to the other side of the room, and do not, for a second, let go of me.”

  He frowns at me as best as he can with his face twisted in the pain he’s no doubt feeling.

  “What are you planning?” he asks, as I drag him closer to where the blown out window frame meets the adjoining wall at the corner. He lifts his free hand to point at the door. “Do you have a claymore mine or something? Tight confines for that, but it could work, I think.”

  “Yeah, no.” I say “Nothing like that. And also, I’m sorry.”

  For a moment, my secretary’s face twists into an expression of arrogant, indignant rage.

  “You treacherous!” he shouts as I shove him to the side and through the empty window frame.

  He stops shouting, though, when he realizes that I’ve followed along with him - one hand gripped like a vise onto his own wrist.

  I look down, and see the ground coming fast towards me. My secretary sees it as well and starts screaming. At least this time, his yells are not aimed at me.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Here’s something to keep in mind for future reference. Lighters, even wind-proof almost-Zippos, are hard to ignite when you’re falling out of a ten plus story window. All of the air flying by is what gets you, stealing away sparks well before they can turn into flame.

  My fellow skydiver and I have fallen about a story before I get my damn lighter to work and start burning. I use the tiny dying embers it makes as a key between worlds and continue falling, my secretary still in hand, as we enter the red glow of hell.

  I was right about 12 stories not being enough distance to make a drop without attracting attention downstairs. Fortunately, I’d prepared a little for that. The speed you pick up while falling downstairs doesn’t translate too well when you land back in creation. The opposite, however, is definitely not true. I’d dropped at least a story or more before I’d been able to transition from creation to downstairs, and keep every mph of that madness with me during my shortcut.

  I feel an impact in my knees as I smack hard into something, but no claws or beating wings follow me down through the deeps. Somewhere above us floats a devil who’s probably still trying to figure out just what in god’s name hit him. I don’t worry about it once we’re gone. I’ve got a landing to make.

  Yelling and encased in a gout of black smoke, my secretary and I pop back into creation. For the second time in a day, I hit the floor hard and find myself tumbling until I hit a wall. My secretary lands atop me, and for a second I can’t breathe. I push him off me and start gasping, my whole body in pain.

  Like I said, momentum is a funny thing, especially when crossing between worlds. The speed you build up while falling through hell is mostly bled off when you come back to the world. The speed you carry with you while entering hell, however, has no problem sticking with you once back in the world.

  I climb to my feet to make sure that my legs can still hold me. They ache, but nothing folds under me. I’m lucky to have landed without breaking a bone, though considering where I’d aimed my landing, that wouldn’t have been as bad as it could be.

  Smoke from my shortcut has followed me again, and I can hear the shriek of a smoke alarm going off somewhere nearby. A fat man in scrubs shouts something at me in Portuguese. When I turn to face him, I see a hospital hallway stuffed with doctors, patients, and nurses staring at me. Speaking Spanish, because I barely know that, let alone Portuguese, I tell them all to stay away. I then turn back to where my secretary had landed in a heap alongside me.

  For a second I worry that the little man isn’t breathing, but when I touch him, he just starts cursing at me. I let him go on for a while before raising my hand to cover his mouth. He glares at me again, but keeps quiet long enough for me to speak.

  “We don’t have much time, so I’ll get through this quickly. Yes, we took a shortcut. Yes, that shortcut went through exactly where you think. No, you’re not dead. Not yet, so let the doctors help you.”

  I look up and see that some of the medical workers are banding together in twos and threes. It won’t be long for one of them to get some courage and come confront us directly. I keep talking to my secretary, keeping my voice low.

  “You’re at a hospital in a really nice part of Sao Paulo, Brazil, so try and be nicer than I was to the people who next come to help you. The doctors here will fix you up with no problem, but the moment they do, you’re probably going under arrest. Say nothing while you’re here. Too many people here speak English, and even if they don’t they can recognize the language. The cops will have a hard time figuring out who you are, even with finger prints. Give me your wallet while you’re at it, we don’t want make their job any easier.”

  My secretary chuckles a little when I
say that. Then he leans forward, his brow wrinkles, to whisper back to me.

  “Don’t worry about me, this isn’t my first disaster, and I have enough fallback identities to find a lawyer to free me. I don’t carry a wallet, but what I have in my briefcase will get me extradited to a dozen countries if the police find me with it. Take it.” he says.

  I take the briefcase from him, and grunt at the weight.

  “There’s a lot of paper in here.” I say. “What the hell was worth going through all the trouble to pack up with those assholes outside of your door?”

  He smiles.

  “Everyone linked to you has been killed in recent hours.” he says, patting the edge of the suitcase. “Everyone, save for you, and the other client whose information is locked up inside. Someone came for my people, and I was going to return the favor.”

  He sighs, and settles his head back down to the floor.

  “And now I’m shot.” he says. “Again.”

  I look down at the briefcase in my hands and think. Everyone save for one. The only reason I can think of to leave one of my contacts alive is if the survivor was the one behind all of the killing. Whoever he is, the bastard is probably the same one who took Mary.

  Still looking down, I also notice something else about the briefcase. It’s locked.

  I look back to my secretary, who’s been following my gaze.

  “Yes.” says my secretary. “You need what is in this case just as much as I did when you found me. I’ll give you the lock combination under one condition.”

  This case has information on whoever took Mary. I grit my teeth.

  ”Which is?”

  “The man inside this case sent his people out to kill my clients. To ruin my name. And then to kill me. My condition is simple. Find him, kill him, and make sure that his death does not come cleanly.”

  I sit back on my heels a little at that. I’ve killed people before. Not many, and never someone who wasn’t actively trying to hurt me. I’ve always kept it as clean and straightforward as I could, which isn’t saying much. Violence is hectic, and dirty, and never goes like you’ve planned, but that didn’t mean that I’d ever drawn anything out longer than it had to be. My secretary is asking for something completely different, though. He’s asking me to torture. He’s asking for me to be messy, to make it personal, on purpose.