He reached inside his jacket, but by that time Colgrave was calling out a warning, and Brant squeezed off two rounds in rapid succession. The Woodsman placed them right where he wanted them, shoulder and thigh. The masked man flipped back and went down, a semi-auto pistol skittering away from his claw-like open hand.
Brant rushed forward under Colgrave's cover, her lips repeating a mantra of curses.
Before the wounded thug could even appreciate what was happening, Brant touched the hot silencer to his Elmer forehead and felt it melt the flesh-toned rubber and burn the skin below.
Brant swooned and almost collapsed on top of the thug.
With the pistol acting as a conduit, his mind was suddenly filled with images of Kit – sedated, manacled, and terrified – while the scumbag on the ground and others did unspeakable things to – to someone else, Brant thought with fervent hope, but he wasn't sure.
Damn it. He wasn't sure whether he was seeing Kit or seeing through her eyes.
His voice cracked in a horrifying whisper. "Where is she? Where's my niece?"
Elmer was bleeding out from both holes, the thigh and the shoulder. The entry holes were small, but a great amount of blood seemed to be pouring out of the thigh wound, soaking his clothes. Brant figured he'd clipped an artery. The thug had managed to stay on his knees, so now he looked as if he were praying. Brant repeated his question, the muzzle still sizzling the guy's skin through the mask.
The thug shrugged and stifled a cry of pain. Brant saw his eyes widen infinitesimally, saw the hand reaching for the ankle holster hidden by his body, saw the man's muscles bunch for a sudden spring, and Brant squeezed the trigger twice, deflating the cartoon face and the head below it.
"Jesus, Brant!" Colgrave lowered her pistol, staring at the thin splatters of blood on the hallway wall.
"He was gonna bleed to death, but he wasn't gonna talk," Brant said, leaning over. He wrestled a small Walther semi-automatic from under the thug's blood-soaked trouser leg and tossed it aside. It came to rest at Colgrave's feet. "But he would have taken us with him."
"Yeah," she said. "Some code of silence thing."
He turned to her with intensity. "I know Kit was here. I saw it when I touched him."
Colgrave nodded. She'd almost felt – or smelled – the strange connection herself, like the intoxicatingly cloying smell of welder's flux. "Now what?"
"I think they're gone. Warned. But not that long ago. This guy was here to guard their backs, but we've got to move to the next place on the list."
"What about Digger?"
"He'll be outside still, grabbing anyone running out the back. Like sometimes we'd double-team the multiple tunnel entrances Charlie had for every mile of network. Plus, he's not risking getting shot by us."
"Wise man."
"Usually." Brant pulled open the two nearest doors. The cells were empty. He had the impression of do-it-yourself prison cells – cots, chains, a metal toilet. Not much else.
Colgrave pulled open two doors near her, frowning at the smell.
On their way back, she pulled open one last door, both of them at this point convinced the room beyond would be empty.
Instead a screaming, flailing body flew out at her, sharp nails scraping her face and drawing blood, nearly gouging her eyes. She couldn't ward off the attack and fell back against the wall, the banshee wail following and the sharp talons exacting a price in torn skin.
Colgrave's hands were tangled up in the attacker's, who was jabbing and tearing at her exposed skin, forcing her to use her arms to ward off the talons – all of which made her gun useless as she tried to parry the savage windmill attack.
No matter how hard she tried to get up and fight back, she was now off-balance and all she could do was lean into the wall and tilt left and right, trying to avoid the claws that closed in on her eyes with each attempt.
"Freeze!" Brant called out. "Stop, now!"
But the wild-taloned assault intensified and the claws closed in on Colgrave's most vulnerable feature, her eyes, which she couldn't afford to close, but which were in danger of being speared by the long, bloody fingertips.
Finally, a single shot from Brant silenced the attacker, who flopped into a heap on the concrete floor at their feet.
"Jesus!"
Colgrave hissed out her breath and collapsed back into the wall, spent. Her face was covered with deep scratches and lacerations.
Brant rolled the body over with his foot. The first chance they'd had to really focus on what the attacker looked like. It was a young girl, maybe slightly older than Kit. He examined her, gun ready. She'd been manacled at some point, but now her hands were frozen into those jagged claws, bloody bits of Colgrave's skin still under her pointed nails. Her face forever fixed in a grimace of hate, her limpid eyes glazed as they stared into infinity below the small hole the Woodsman's souped-up .22 had made in her forehead. The slug had made hash of her brains by not exiting, but instead banging around inside her skull. Bloody tears leaked from her eye sockets and nose.
"Looks like a Cleopatra wanna-be," Brant said, his words hiding how unnerved he felt, having shot a young girl. He pointed to the bloody bandage on her foot, his face stricken. "Christ, look at that."
"I think she was a victim like the others." Colgrave swallowed audibly. "I think you just killed a victim of this whole fucking thing. But I think she was driven over the edge by it all." She examined her trembling hands, then reached up and winced, touching the deep furrows the girl had dug across her cheeks.
"Yeah, she may have gone crazy. She attacked you like an animal."
"Maybe that's why they left her behind." Colgrave shook her head. "I don't get it. They must have figured they'd be back, right?"
"My guess is they were warned and packed up. Cleo here was a liability, so they left her." His eyes assumed a faraway look. "Almost like a living booby-trap."
Colgrave straightened, then bent again and closed the girl's eyes. She shuddered. "This is not good."
"I learned in the tunnels that there's very little good anywhere. If she'd been armed, I might be closing your eyes now."
"Yeah."
Brant knew she wasn't convinced, but he couldn't undo the hasty defensive act that had taken the young girl's life. He knew he'd never outrace the guilt. It would be tacked on to all the other guilt he carried on his shoulders.
The last door at the end of the hall beckoned like a mirage in the desert. Brant felt no urgent Kit vibe from beyond the door, no more than what he felt about the whole warehouse, but the door called to him with a different sense of urgency. He turned away, but still it called.
"You all right?"
Colgrave wiped a sleeve across her cut face and winced. "Not exactly, but I'll live. Now what? Rest of the building or out?"
"A couple more doors, Sergeant."
"You know, I can almost hear you say that to your buddy Sarge almost forty years ago." She blushed. Maybe she shouldn't have referred to his age.
He took it well. "Yeah, except the rule was you only had to be point on two consecutive trap doors, then rotate to the next guy. But just those two doors could drive you crazy with fear." He pointed to the door at the end of the hall, the one he'd been eyeing. "Like that one is doing to me right now."
"Want me to go in first?"
"No. Feels like something I need to do."
"Kit? You think she's back there?"
He shook his head. "No, but something I don't want to see anyway. Or a trap."
KIT
They'd been walked up and down metal steps, through several low passages that also required them to lift their feet to step over prominent lips, down carpeted hallways, though normal doorways, and now they found themselves here, wherever here was. Kit had been handled so much that when one of the guards let his hands linger on her buttocks while pushing her along, she almost forgot to care. I'm becoming a slave, she thought glumly. I'm being conditioned to accept whatever they do to me. Anne Marie was even worse, having b
een reduced to a walking corpse who had to be positioned and manhandled in order to be moved. She's a zombie now, and yet we almost busted our way out of there.
Not that long ago, they'd had a gun and they'd almost made it out of the mouth of hell.
But there was worse, that was for sure. Look at Marissa, for instance. She'd become an accomplice but remained stubbornly unaware of her complicity. That had to be worse.
Kit looked around where they had been deposited, shoved inside, their legs chained again, and then the door double-bolted behind them. As a prison, it wasn't all that bad. Comfortable couches, armchairs, and a couple ugly lamps on side tables were centered and faced each other in the middle of the space. The girls were manacled and their legs chained so they weren't free to move, but the environment was a million times better than their dungeon cell had been. Kit figured this was a temporary holding cell before they were led to the real prison. There should have been other girls, too, so why were they being treated differently? But then she remembered the lion-haired man and his threats. They had been slated for those two giggling sick perverts, but then he had changed his mind and somehow bought them back. Seller's remorse? No, it meant he had other plans for them, that was all. Kit shivered. She still hadn't been able to warm up from when she'd been stripped, and now the thin clothing she wore did little to cut the chill from the cold December night, which seemed to be stretching its tendrils here into this ship's saloon. Kit wondered if she'd ever be warm again.
Ever be home again.
THIRTY-FIVE
As they drew closer to the mirage door, Brant's senses began to go haywire. His ears filled with a roar that might have been the sound of his blood coursing through narrowed veins. His nose was filled with the tang of molten metal, and his tongue thickened as if expanded by fever. He feared his eyes would blur and lead him to his death – as they could have so many times in his life, down in the tunnels or near the trick entrances. But why now? What waited behind the door that could so unnerve him?
The door was locked or bolted.
He drew his Glock and snapped on the suppressor. It would barely stifle the report, but his overheating senses conveyed that no one was left to challenge them. No one, except for whoever or whatever was behind the door.
Brant fired four rounds into and around the lock and they were forced to duck a couple of ricocheting slugs. A well-placed kick knocked the door nearly off its hinges. It swung open with the finality of a crypt.
An apt comparison, because immediately they were assaulted by the massively aggressive stench of death, and worse.
Much worse.
It was another charnel house, a despicable chamber of horrors much like the one he'd found in Goran's basement. But, like the whole complex, this one was larger. Brant took in the whole of he space with one glance-
And made eye contact with his brother's frozen stare.
Ralph had been hung on one of the sharpened meat hooks that ringed the walls. His mutilated genitals had bled profusely below him, turning his scrawny legs into grotesque chicken bones. His ribs seemed about to burst through his chest – a modern Christ skewered on a bent wall-mounted hook.
Beside him, Colgrave was sick again.
But Brant felt nothing. His senses calmed. The answer was here. What he sought was plainly visible in Ralph's final gaze. Brant strode up and closed his brother's eyes. The skin was still faintly warm. The blood was wet and sticky under his rubber-soled shoes.
He was getting much too good at closing dead eyelids, it occurred to him.
"Jesus, Brant," Colgrave said. "I'm sorry."
"He made his own bed. Let's check the other doors."
She nodded. There was nothing more to say.
They closed the door and in the next few minutes ascertained that the complex was empty, hastily evacuated not long before.
"Get Digger and let's get our asses to the next place."
Outside, Digger was nowhere to be found. They followed his footprints in the mud around to the rear of the warehouse, where they disappeared beside a set of tire tracks.
"Think he hitched a ride?"
Crouching, Brant examined the tracks. "Offhand, I'd say a pick-up truck. Maybe he crawled in back."
"Or maybe he was helped." Colgrave kept her pistol roving, ready to return fire if needed. They were exposed here, in the squared-off valley between buildings.
Brant snapped open his cell and speed-dialed. "Sarge, warehouse is clean, but it wasn't an hour ago, maybe less. We've got two very pacified locals and Digger's missing. You?"
He listened, keeping his eyes and pistol moving as well. Dark windows made him nervous, like the inscrutable blackness of a jungle tree line, and there were dozens of black warehouse windows facing them.
He muted the phone. "Says they got into the back of the club with the entry card. Kinky sex play for sure, but probably nothing more than heavy prostitution. They questioned one girl who says the Serb uses ships to get his more delicate merchandise out. You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Colgrave's eyes followed his. Behind a row of low warehouse buildings protruded the superstructure of a single mid-sized freighter. Puffs of smoke rose from its squared-off funnel stack, on which a colorful company logo or flag was painted.
The pickup's tracks headed between buildings, in the direction of that one occupied berth.
A mild winter meant the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway were open later than usual, allowing for business right up to the last moment before the Great Lakes iced over, assuming they ever would again – lately there had been few complete freezes. Shipping traffic normally halted in mid to late November, but the global warming phenomenon seemed to have extended shipping opportunities well into winter even in the Midwest. Here it was, late December, and a ship was docked. But the black smoke hovering over the stack indicated it was preparing to sail. The ship could very well be foreign, though Brant couldn't tell from here. If the vessel sailed in the next few minutes, that might be the end of his chances to rescue Kit.
If she had been taken aboard.
Brant unmuted the phone. "Sarge, I think we're going to need you and Smitty here. We've got a ship ready to sail not far from where we're standing, and Digger may be on it. Drop the next place on your list – I think this is now the heart of the Serb's operation."
He paused and listened. "Yeah, he's either spooked or he was planning to send out a last shipment for the year. Get rid of some of the evidence at the same time. We can wait, unless Digger's in trouble. He may just be scouting. We can scout the ship, we're gonna do it, though. Get out of that club and head here." Brant listened for a few seconds, clicked off and pocketed the phone.
They followed the tracks around the nearby row of sheds and loading docks. The coming holiday had reduced the area to a ghost town, but Brant's extra sense tickled his spine and made his head ache. The twitching inside the upper part of his chest and shoulder became more insistent as they rounded the farthest corner. Here they stood at the aft end of the ship. The vessel was docked in the harbor's oily black water, its bow facing land.
Portholes set in the block-shaped superstructure showed signs of life – a dull glow from behind some of the round windows lit the night air.
A whisper reached them. "Loot!"
Digger appeared from behind a crooked stack of used pallets that sat at dock's edge. He waved, gesturing at the ship's side and up, at the railing. Then he ducked out of sight again behind the pallets.
The guard faded in out of the darkness He was stationed at the ship's stern, high above the dock. Brant slid back into the shadows, pulling Colgrave with him. They watched as the guard lit a cigarette, tossed the match into the harbor, and headed forward.
"You figure this is Goran's ship?"
"Maybe the captain's his. Or he's bought the crew. Might as well be the same thing. We don't have time to do the research. The girls – my niece – may be on board."
Brant tried to reach out, like a real psychic, but he was
frustrated by the unpredictable nature of his extra sense. He couldn't generate even a single flash of insight. His chest tingled and he ignored it, as usual.
"Is he here?" Colgrave's face was black in the shadows, but Brant could have painted the doubtful look on her features. He realized that he'd gotten to like those features very much.
As if to answer the question, a set of headlights skimmed past them and they watched as two black sedans prowled around the far corner of the warehouse sheds and pulled up near the gangplank.
Brant pointed. "Goran," he said.
The crime boss climbed from the rear of the second sedan. Brant recognized a couple of the eight or nine thugs who got out with him. One was from the club. Two he'd seen with Irina at the apartment. One might have been at the house. He whispered as much to Colgrave, then waved at Digger to hunker down behind the pallets again.
Goran and his goons headed for the gangplank as a group. Brant worried that they'd leave a sentry with the cars, but they did not. He heard quiet, swaggering laughter and gripped the Woodsman tightly.
Laughter coming from them seemed strange. Had they heard of Brant's assault on the Goran household fortress? There was no way for him to know. If one of the hirelings had been at the house, then they surely did know. But Brant wondered about what they were doing – did Goran and his entourage plan to set sail and evade him that way?
"We need to get aboard."
Colgrave nodded, grimacing. "The gangplank's too lit up. That roving sentry up there might be back at the railing right when you're halfway up. You'd be a sitting target."
Brant said, "How good are you with that HK?"
She shrugged and he could barely see the movement.
"I'm excellent with my own equipment, my own weapons. I don't know anything about this thing except it probably sprays lead pretty good."
"How about your Glock?"
"Better," said Colgrave. "But it's not a guaranteed shot from here. And a Glock's not a fine competition shooter."
"Plus you have to use a suppressor," he said, as he dug one out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Savage Nights Page 29
