I couldn't believe my ears. Here I was trying to find my daughter and Dobo wanted to tell me some soap opera cum psycho tale? "What the hell does th—"
Dobo said, "It's Christine Gamboa, Sam."
Minutes later, I opened the door and there she was, the initial focus of my case, the investigative thread that had taken a back seat to more fruitful areas of inquiry: the impossibly beautiful Christine Gamboa. No makeup, dressed in worn-out jeans and a T-shirt, and still breathtaking. I gestured her in, then closed and relocked the door.
"What's this about?" I said.
"Who are you?" she said, then looked to Dobo in his SPACE Security garb.
Dobo said, "Christine, I don't think we've met before, but I'm Hank Dobo. This is Sam Flatt, an investigator. Whatever you have to tell me, he can hear."
"Are you sure?" she said to Dobo.
I said, "Here's what I'm sure of, Miss Gamboa. You're in my room, which makes you my guest, and if you don't have something really important to say, I'm very busy and will ask you to get the hell out."
"Okay, okay!" She turned back to Dobo. "There's something very illegal going on in the basement of this place, a big computer operation and more."
My turn: "How would you know that?"
"I'm the one who sold them the access into the SPACE network."
That's where the big pile of money in her bank account had come from. How could someone so intelligent be so stupid as to do something like that and then put the money in the bank? "What else?" I said.
"You have to understand, I had nothing to do with the other part. Nothing!"
"What other part?" I said.
"They're selling girls down there."
"They sure are," I said. "How long have you known about this and did nothing?"
"These people are scary. I was afraid, but I'm here now. I want to help."
"So far you haven't told us a single thing we didn't know, so how is it you think you can help?"
She pointed at my computer screen, still displaying the wireframe architectural drawing. "I can show you how to get inside there."
"I've been to the computer room," I said, hoping her next words would confirm what I’d finally seen on the wireframe myself.
Gamboa shook her head. "Not the computer room. The other part of the building down there."
Now she had my full attention.
DOBO WAS GONE. Out of sight, not out of mind. He sounded sincere, and I think he was. Irrelevant. There is no trust. There is no compassion, no consideration. There is nothing now but black that glows with a thick red edge waiting to blossom and consume. The burner phone rang. Meyer or Nichols, I didn't know.
Meyer: "Sam?"
"Check your email," I said. "See what this is really all about. I know where they are. I'm ending this."
"I've seen the email, Sam, the screenshots. I have teams ready to go. Tell me where you are and we'll be there."
"No."
"You can't do this alone."
"Thank you for behaving with honor. We all make mistakes. You've corrected yours. Goodbye, Courtney."
CHAPTER 140
LAS VEGAS
COURTNEY MEYER
MEYER HUNG UP THE CALL, rather addled by the conversation with Flatt. Who the hell was this guy? After so many years of experience, how had she so misread, so underestimated someone? How had she been so—did she dare say it?—naive? Without government resources, he had run investigative circles around her. And not just her. How had one computer guy learned so much that she and so many man-hours of assistance had failed to find? No, “man-hours” didn't come close. She had been on this case for almost two years, with help. But no, she knew with certainty that this guy was no computer nerd with a pocket protector. She had crawled completely up his ass with background checks and, yes, he looked like nothing special, but it was…wrong. She had spent her adult life so certain of so many things. What else had she gotten…wrong?
And did he really know where this operation, these people, did he really know where they were? She had no reason, no evidence, to believe him. But she did believe him. She had hit him with the most despicable thing she'd ever done in her career when she threatened his daughter, the daughter who was now in the hands of evil, and yet he had just thanked her for being honorable?
She laid her phone down and looked at Console Agent. "Can I still reach the team leader on the headset?"
He nodded.
After switching to two-way comms, Meyer held one of the earpieces to her ear and pivoted the microphone to her mouth. "Take Sultanovich. Take the sonofabitch now."
CHAPTER 141
SPACE
I HUNG up the call with Jimmy the Geek and walked through the “Platinum Portal” into the VIP gaming area, head on a swivel, absorbing everything. The Chinese guy with the pained look and the bloodshot eyes, pushing a stack of brown chips—chocolate chips worth five grand each—at the dealer. The dealer saying just loud enough for the pit boss to hear, "Coloring down," and pushing back a larger stack of thousand-dollar chips—bananas.
The liver-spotted octogenarian with the twenty-five-year-old at his side, shoving five-hundred-dollar coins into a slot machine. The chick who was young and shapely with a face made pretty only by makeup, looking bored out of her mind, because she was.
A craps table with a redneck shooting and making it all too clear he was a redneck with his "hootin' and hollerin'." At least his woman was a match; she had CRIMSON TIDE splayed across her chest, an elephant head in the middle with its trunk disappearing into her sagging cleavage. God bless the SEC. Hotty Toddy, Roll Tide, and throw in a pinch of LSU voodoo. Circle of Life.
The VIP elevator, the one the "common folk" never saw, was ahead and around a corner. It ferried the rich, famous and not, to the palatial suites above. A SPACE security man near the elevator glanced my way, then did a double-take, probably because of my blacked-out tactical gear, complete with Kimber on my side. The kid couldn't be much over twenty. In a show of magnanimity that surprised even me, I touched the elevator button, then turned and looked him in the eye. I gave the tiniest shake of my head and held the gaze. His Adam's apple bobbed, his eyes widened a bit, and he looked away. Good boy.
The elevator doors opened, I stepped inside, and they closed. According to the architectural drawings, this elevator only went up; the bottom of the shaft terminated here at the ground level. According to Gamboa, that wasn't so. She swore the elevator also went down. Time to find out if Hank Dobo the Hornet driver was friend or foe. I located the glowing SPACE logo above the touch-screen of floor numbers on the left, and tapped my bracelet on it four times, very quickly. According to him, if anything at SPACE had "secret" capabilities, this activated them. A single icon appeared on the screen below the existing numbers. Not a number. A large icon, a high-res graphic depicting a woman in flowing robes with a sword held high above her head. In a different situation, I might have smiled a bit at the symbology. I touched her and felt the elevator descend.
CHAPTER 142
LAS VEGAS
COURTNEY MEYER
MEYER HAD NOT the remotest intention of letting this asshole out of her sight until he was locked behind American bars. She sat on the hard metal bench across from Sultanovich in the back of the transport van as it hummed and bounced along the Las Vegas streets. Given the hour, not to mention the east-to-west jet lag that had wracked her body and mind, she was beyond exhausted, but it didn't matter. Eighteen months. A year and a half of her life had been devoted to the pursuit of this man, and now she had him.
She opened a file folder on her lap and removed the prints she made of the screenshots from Flatt. Looking at Sultanovich with every gram of contempt she could muster, she said, "You sell human beings like they're cattle. What kind of monster are you?"
He raised his eyes to meet hers. They were bloodshot and rheumy, not sharp and bright like they'd been earlier in Memphis. Now he looked ancient and spent. He shrugged and said, "Prostitution is legal in Nevada."
Sultanovich looked at the page for ten or fifteen seconds. "I know nothing of this."
"Sure you don't," Meyer said. She pointed toward the front of the van. "How would you like it if that little girl riding up front—Tatyana, right?—was on a page like this? Huh? Different when it's your granddaughter, I guess? Or maybe not, with you hauling her around with you and your sorry ass. Why would you do that?"
"I know nothing, and Tatyana is no business of yours."
She put the pages back into the folder and slipped it into the briefcase beside her. "I hope they fry your decrepit old ass till your eyeballs boil."
Sultanovich lunged toward her but the chains that tethered his waist-chain to the van wall caught him. He stood there, leaning, his face jutted out, and snapped his repulsive yellow teeth at her.
CHAPTER 143
SPACE
I PREFERRED stealth until I sized up the opposition. As the elevator slowed, I readied myself. The fog of electric crimson filled my body and soul now, crackling through nerves and neurons. My hands were by my sides, each holding a SOG Desert Dagger. The doors parted.
A thick-necked brute dressed in a black suit and white shirt stood just outside the elevator. It took a couple seconds for his brain to process the figure before him as a threat. By the time it did, I was digging the tip of my right dagger into the soft flesh on the underside of his chin. His eyes went wide as I pushed him back against the bare concrete wall behind him. I did lightning glances left and right. It was just Thick Neck and me. I moved in within six inches of him and whispered, "How many more?"
"Two." His accent was thick, the voice tight, squeaky, and way too high-pitched for such a beast of a man.
"Where?" He tried to turn his head and I pushed the tip of the knife into the skin. "Tell me with your mouth."
"One left. One right. Little inside room."
"Thank you." I put an angle on the knife and looked into his eyes as I drove the razored steel up and back, through the throat and into his brain stem. I slid the knife free and let him fall.
I was standing in a concrete corridor that stretched left and right, the elevator at my back. It looked exactly like the others in the bunker. I should've picked up on the spatial contradiction the night I visited the hackers' computer workroom. It was far too small to consume the unallocated space depicted on the architectural drawings. But I hadn't seen it until minutes earlier. I now knew that the computer room was directly behind me, just past the concrete wall and elevator shaft. I was standing in the remainder of the unallocated space, this area totally isolated from the other rooms.
My shoes were the quietest I'd ever found, Clark Wallabees. I padded to the right, not making the slightest sound. This was a good-sized space, the corridor about sixty feet end to end. When I got to the end, I found a doorless opening on my left that led into a room. Just inside the opening—he was almost blocking it—stood another big guy in a suit. This idiot was gawking at something inside the room, paying zero attention to what was going on behind him. I rammed the knife into the back of his neck, right at the base of the skull, then caught him under his arms as he fell and dragged him backward through the opening and into the corridor, where I dropped him to the floor. Two down, one to go.
I should have been watching my own back. Something knocked me at least three feet forward. I turned and saw that the third guard had clubbed me in the back of the head with a fist the size of a ham, and now he bull-rushed me. This brute was massive, at least six-and-a-half feet and three hundred pounds. He hit me and kept driving until my back slammed into the concrete wall at the end of the corridor. It knocked the breath out of me and by the time I refilled my lungs, he pinned me to the wall by the throat and cut off my supply of air again. Then he started kneeing me in the stomach. When I tried to fend off those blows by hacking at his knees, he moved in and jammed himself right up against the front of my body.
It would have taken the Jaws of Life to pry his massive hands away from my neck. I didn't have one handy. Color faded from my vision as my brain became more and more deprived of oxygen. I would be unconscious in seconds, then dead. Although I still had a knife in each hand, both hands were now pinned between my body and his, which felt like a slab of rock. His height advantage was such that his chin was resting on top of my head, his tattooed neck mashing my face so hard that it would have been suffocating me if I weren't already being choked to death. I had one move left and I made it.
I opened my mouth as wide as I could, then bit down on his neck with everything I had left, catching him an inch or so above the hollow of his throat. The sensation of biting through flesh registered, followed by the taste of blood. The pressure on my throat released first, as his reflexive instinct was to use his hands to pull me off him. I sucked in a great gulp of air and finally—while it was probably no more than three seconds since I'd bitten, it felt much longer—the force of his torso against my hands eased.
Still anchoring his head in place with my teeth, I brought my right hand up high and drove the blade straight into his right ear, up to the hilt. He started a violent twitch that lasted much longer than I would have thought possible. Only when he went limp did I open my mouth to release him. Instead of crumpling to the floor like a cut sack of potatoes, he stayed vertical a moment, then fell straight back.
Hands on hips, I drew in deep breaths, feeling my wits return as my brain sucked in oxygen. Three down. None to go. Showtime.
CHAPTER 144
SPACE
NOT A SOUL in the room showed the slightest awareness that anything had happened. Instead, they were all clustered toward the center of the room and facing the back wall, talking among themselves. The crowd, which looked to be wholly male as far as I could tell, had an excited buzz about it, waiting for something big. I looked around the room. In contrast to the Spartan atmosphere of naked concrete that defined the decor elsewhere, this room was posh. Tables loaded with food, flowers, and ice sculptures sat along the long wall that divided the room from the corridor.
Sticking near the wall on the right, I made my way forward. When I was far enough up to see what was going on, I stopped and studied the surreal scene. The crowd was indeed all men, forty to fifty of them. On a raised platform along the room's back wall, girls sat on barstools. I worked my way through them and at the center of the line, there she was, my baby girl. She looked dazed, as if she had absolutely no idea what was going on. The expressions on the faces of the other girls varied from tears, to sad resignation, to defiance. Seated to Ally's immediate right, I recognized Daria's sister, Anya.
Next I studied the crowd. It was very international and, of course, very wealthy. Asians. Several Arabs dressed in the white robes popular in Saudi Arabia. Not many obvious Slavs. A few who looked American. The ages of the men ran the spectrum from twenty-somethings to octogenarians, and everything in between. And as I'd feared, a number of them had bodyguards. I couldn't believe none of them were looking at me. Every guy in the crowd seemed totally consumed with ogling the poor girls arrayed before them. This was the downside of operating in an underground bunker; the illusion of invisibility and security made them complacent, lax.
A man in a tux appeared through a door at the far end of the room and walked to the platform. He stood and patted the air with his hands, and the buzzing crowd faded to quiet. Then TuxMan said, "We will begin the sale with the beautiful Elena." He looked toward the far end of the girls and gestured to the one on the last stool. "Stand up and come to the ring, dear." He gestured to a spot beside him that had a three-foot-diameter circle painted on the floor. The girl approached, her whole body trembling in fear. According to the web page I had seen, Elena was twelve years old.
I looked back to the crowd, identifying as many of the bodyguards as possible.
My plan was to enter the crowd from the back, pick a central location, and quickly pick off as many of the protectors as I could. Everything would be easier when the muscle was gone.
Then it all went to hell because I wanted to take one more look at my daughter before the melee began. When I looked at her, she happened to be looking my way. I looked into her eyes and gave a small, slow shake of my head, a desperate signal to not react. Her current mental state just wasn't capable of such subtleties.
Ally sprang to her feet and said, "Daddy!" She started moving toward me, arms outstretched.
Every eye in the room turned to me, and one of the bodyguards at the front of the crowd, one who was guarding one of the robed Arabs, grabbed Ally. By the time I had my Kimber in firing position, he was behind her with a gun to her head. She still reached forward, a look of hope on her face.
The crowd was backing away. A couple of the other bodyguards had separated from their charges and were drawn down on me from the ten o'clock and twelve o'clock positions. The strategizing and planning were done. Only action remained. Ally was at one o'clock. The only view I had of her captor was the right edge of his face and his right eye, peeking out from behind his human shield.
I shot him in the eye. The .45 RIP round was designed to fragment and fan out on impact, and his brain was now a shredded mess, switched off like a light. With zero hesitation, I pivoted to twelve o'clock, fired, to ten o'clock, fired. While their bodies were still sinking to the floor, I scanned the crowd for more threats and saw nothing immediate but kept my gun trained that way.
I said, "Ally! Girls! Let's go! Now!" Using my head, I gestured toward the door.
Ally didn't hesitate, but she also didn't go to the door like I said. She ran to me and threw her arms around my waist. "I love you, Daddy. I knew you'd come for me."
"Love you too, sweetie." I went one-handed on the gun and extended my left hand to her. "Take that bracelet, put it on." When she'd done that, I said, "Now go, get yourself and the other girls out of here. There's an elevator in the hallway. Touch the bracelet to the call button and take the elevator to the casino. Got it?"
Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) Page 29
