by G. K. Parks
“Do you think it’s the Four Seasons?”
“It’s worth checking. Maybe they hired some local to get supplies, but it could lead somewhere. Police work is ninety-nine percent legwork, one percent luck.”
“Good luck, Detective.” I was skimming through the information on Naysley as Thompson was talking. Before I could hang up, he asked the question that I would have been wondering had I not just woken up and been preoccupied with less important things.
“Did Mercer call?”
“No. When he does, I’ll let you know.” We disconnected, and I printed out the basic facts on Naysley. Not wanting to sit at my desk a minute longer, I stood up and stretched. My bones popped and creaked, and I had a hell of a kink in my neck. Sleeping at my desk was not one of my better ideas.
After giving Naysley’s information the precursory read, I took a shower and changed clothes. While I was getting ready for the day, which was more accurately night at this point, I considered the dilemma Francesca Pirelli faced. If the leak was from the outsiders, then whoever hired them would be held at least unofficially accountable. Although, if the leak was on the inside, then someone who had possibly spent years at the company could be responsible for the corporate espionage, dating back months, years, or even decades.
Liam Naysley was facing foreclosure on his estate. The house was valued at two million, but he overextended himself with boats, cars, numerous vacation homes, and enough credit card debt to fund a small island. So far, I had only looked into one Hover Designs’ employee and the outside consulting firm, but both provided the possibility of guilt. This wasn’t as easy as I hoped.
I rummaged through my kitchen, drinking the last of the cold coffee left from the pot Thompson brewed this morning while trying to find dinner or breakfast. Time lost all meaning, and I honestly couldn’t be sure if I was coming or going. The phone rang again, but this time, I wasn’t startled and didn’t nearly jump out of my skin.
“I have information,” Mercer said without preamble or greeting. “There has been no contact, but we should meet in person.”
“When?” I asked, shutting my fridge and hoping he wouldn’t say now.
“Immediately at my flat.” Without waiting for a response, he hung up.
Rolling my eyes, I put on my holster and grabbed an extra clip. With Mercer, there was no telling why we were meeting, so it was best to be prepared. My flak jacket was in the trunk, and on my way out, I grabbed a granola bar. Hopefully, this only counted as breakfast and not dinner, or I’d be pissed.
On the drive across town, I considered calling Thompson, but since I didn’t know what Mercer wanted, it could wait. I finished the granola bar and regretted not bringing a bottle of water along for this journey. I suppose I could drink out of the tap at Mercer’s place. He ought to be bound by the Geneva Convention, even though I suspected he probably considered the sanctions more a suggestion than actual rules.
“Took you long enough,” he muttered, opening the door, and I entered the apartment.
“You wanted to talk so talk.” Not waiting for an invitation or standing on formality, I continued through the living room and into the kitchen. He followed, seemingly unfazed by my making myself at home. He had yet to speak as I opened a few cabinets, looking for a drinking glass. “Well,” I turned to him, after I located the glass and filled it with water from the sink, “what the hell is going on?”
“That couldn’t wait?” he questioned.
“No. It couldn’t.” I glowered at him. I heard Bastian in the other room with two other voices, presumably Hans and Donovan.
He narrowed his eyes, and I glimpsed the controlled intensity or maybe rage just beneath his impenetrable exterior. “Senor Estes is considering my request to bring you on board for future negotiations. At the present, Senor Santino is encouraging him to take a guarded approach before allowing others to become involved in his daughter’s recovery.” No shit, I thought but remained silent. “However,” Mercer turned and strode from the kitchen, leaving me no choice but to follow, “Hans spotted the Cale girl.”
I practically spat the water out. “What? Where?”
“If you would like to be part of the extraction,” his tone sounded condescending, “get your gear. We leave in twenty.”
“What?” I repeated. Extraction? Weren’t we negotiating? What was the probability of a safe recovery and not another blunder, tipping Catherine’s fate closer to death instead of life? What would O’Connell think?
“Are you stupid?” he snapped. “Bastian will brief you in the car. Get your shit so we can head out.” I noticed his fists clench as he left me alone in the living room while he went into the other room with the rest of his team. I wasn’t the obedient type. Deciding it best to be properly accessorized in case Mercer wanted to shoot me, I went to the trunk and put on my vest. Back inside, I went into the room where the four men were.
“Welcome back, love,” Bastian greeted. His tone was still friendly, but I could sense the pre-op jitters in his voice and posture. “Are you ready to rock and roll, like you Yanks say?”
“I’m not going anywhere until someone in this room explains the likelihood of a positive outcome.” I wasn’t backing down. Donovan continued to pull up schematics that he and the man I assumed was Hans were evaluating. Hans glanced in my direction, looking completely bewildered by my presence.
“Is she the pain in the arse you’ve been harping on?” Hans asked Mercer. Mercer let out a snort, the closest thing to a laugh that he was capable of.
Bastian stepped in front of me. “We’ll get your girl back.” There was nothing but conviction in his voice. “Want to step into the other room and we’ll have a go over the major points before we roll on this?”
“Fine.” I backtracked into the living room.
“Hans was scouting the Four Seasons prior location. The place was cleared out, but they left a cell phone behind. He pulled the SIM card, and using the GPS tracker, we determined a secondary and tertiary location. From our intel and recon, we have eyes on Catherine. She’s being held in a modified storage unit.”
“What the hell are we waiting for?” I asked. My mind was focused on one thing, calling Thompson.
“We don’t know if Adalina is there.” Bastian met my eyes. “It’s part of a climate-controlled self-storage unit. The lots are connected to one another. The only way in and out is through a steel door we believe to be booby-trapped.”
“How the hell are we getting in?”
“We accessed the schematics. We can breach through a different unit in order to get inside.”
“I can call this in.” It seemed more reasonable to have the bomb squad and professionals dealing with this, instead of a crack team of ex-SAS and a washed-up former OIO agent.
“No,” Mercer growled from the doorway. “It was just a courtesy I invited you to join us. If Catherine is the only girl there, we can’t afford to have the police fuck up our recovery, or the Estes girl could become collateral damage.” From his reaction, there was more to the story than what I was being told. “Either agree and get in the fucking van or go home.” The location had not been divulged. Their plan hadn’t been explained, and there was nothing solid to go on. Logically, going along with Mercer was the only way I could mitigate the possible danger Catherine faced if I left the mercenaries to their own devices.
“I might as well help you make someone else’s day miserable,” I retorted. Bastian let out a slight nervous chuckle, and Mercer and I remained locked in a staring match.
“You follow my orders,” he snarled. “Understand?”
“Aye, aye, sir.” My words bled contempt, but the response was satisfactory enough for Mercer, who strapped on a vest and grabbed a few extra magazines for his Sig before meeting the rest of his equally equipped team in the hallway and opening the front door.
“Bastian, you’re coordinating from inside the vehicle,” he remarked, and the five of us were on our way.
Twenty-seven
The van, as Mercer referred to it, was modified to resemble the surveillance vehicles most law enforcement agencies used. However, I assumed the equipment was vastly superior. Hans and Donovan were up front. Hans drove while Donovan assembled a sniper rifle and added an infrared scope. The fact they thought we needed a sniper rifle did nothing to quell my unease. Mercer was seated as far away from me as physically possible in the back, and Bastian was across from me.
“When we arrive, Hans will scout the area. He’s been here before. He knows what to look for.” I nodded at Bastian’s words. “If we have the all clear, we’ll determine an entry point and breach.”
“How many hostiles?” I asked. Thankfully, I had gone from zero to sixty on the situation and was poised to strike, along with the rest of Mercer’s team.
“We don’t know. We have a few toys that might give us a peek inside.” He smiled encouragingly. I rolled my neck from side to side, checked the clip in my gun, and took a deep breath, shutting my eyes and concentrating on my breathing and heartbeat. When I opened them, I noticed Mercer, silent and still. “It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it?”
I shifted my focus to Bastian. “Excuse me?”
“Never mind,” he stared at a monitor, hooked to the seat next to him, “if you don’t see it, then don’t worry about it.” My brow furrowed.
“He believes we’re cut from the same cloth,” Mercer spoke. His tone was sedate. The only time I saw him at peace, perhaps even congenial, was when danger was imminent. “I fail to agree.”
“Actually,” I snorted, “that might be the only thing you and I agree on.” Mercer’s eyes betrayed amusement, but he didn’t crack a smile. “As far as I can tell, we’re on complete opposite sides of the spectrum.”
“You just wish we were.” Mercer’s words were ominous. “You loath my actions, but it’s only because you’ve been forced to do the same.” I looked to Bastian, but he removed himself from the conversation. “I can see it in your eyes.” I wished Mercer would go back to being his monosyllabic, single word persona. “You’ve killed. Perhaps if you let yourself acknowledge it, you’d realize you even enjoyed it. Relished in it because you knew it had to be done, and so you did it to fix a problem or find a solution. But you’re afraid to let the demons out to play. You hide them away. Pretend they don’t exist. That they don’t live inside of you. So they fester. You’re probably plagued with nightmares. Which is worse? The one where you’re killing someone or someone’s killing you?” He lifted a questioning eyebrow. “You’re afraid if you acknowledge what you’re capable of, you’ll turn into a monster or turn into someone like me.” He actually grinned. It was a discomforting, vulgar sight.
“Wow, someone’s been drinking the Kool-Aid.” I looked away, focusing on anything but Mercer. I preferred him barking orders, instead of rambling nonsense in his adrenaline-induced euphoria.
“Suit yourself. Just because you don’t want to believe it doesn’t make it any less true.” I ignored him, and he went back to the silent stillness.
A few minutes later, the van came to a stop. Mercer stood, and he, Hans, and Donovan exited to run reconnaissance. Bastian flipped through satellite imagery and blueprints of the facility. His radio chirped, and Mercer gave the all clear. Bastian flipped a few switches and a lifeless monitor showed the heat signatures of the interior of a fairly large building.
“How the hell do you have military-grade technology?” I was astounded.
“Details.” Bastian waved the question away, calibrating a few switches. The entire inside of the van was alive with flickering lights and sounds. There were real-time cameras monitoring the outside of what appeared to be a very narrow warehouse. It wasn’t a warehouse at all, but many large, climate-controlled storage units all interconnected in a long rectangular row. There was a small heat signature in the center unit that resembled a human, which wasn’t moving. The first unit was completely lit up, and no human forms could be deciphered. The other six units had areas of hot and cold, but not in discernible shapes or forms. “It doesn’t appear there are guards inside, unless their heat signatures are masked.” He pointed to a few of the hotter areas on the screen. “Hard to say.”
The van door opened, and Mercer climbed back inside. “Donovan is setting up across the way.” He leaned over Bastian and pointed to an area on one of the maps. I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to both of us or if I was considered invisible once more. “Hans is scouting the area. There’s a vehicle here,” again he pointed to the map, “but no outside patrol. We checked the area for surveillance, but it’s too vast. It’s possible we aren’t seeing it.”
“I’m monitoring electrical output,” Bastian responded, “but nothing is spiking outside the storage units. Everything they are using is likely inside.”
Mercer turned to me. “We believe the main door is covered by a trip wire. There’s no way of knowing if it leads to an alarm or an explosion. We’ve found a possible entry point.” He pulled up the building schematics and pointed something out; then he turned and narrowed his eyes at me. “How much do you weigh?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he sighed, “you’re probably fifty-two kilos.” My conversion to the metric system didn’t go over so well, and I glanced at Bastian for help, but he was too busy to offer a number. “Do you think it’ll hold?” Mercer asked Bastian.
“It’s not the weight so much as the width.” Bastian turned and gave me his full attention. “Lose the vest. It’ll make your entry a bit easier, but it’s still a tight squeeze. I hope you aren’t claustrophobic, love.”
“Come.” Mercer jerked his head toward the van door and exited.
“Break a leg,” Bastian replied as I followed Mercer. “Actually, don’t.”
Outside, we were fortunate enough to have some cover in the dusk. The sun set an hour ago, and the dim light shielded our approach to the back corner of the storage unit block. If Mercer didn’t stop short, I might have run into Hans as I followed after him.
“The inside is still dark. Bastian, any movement?” Hans asked.
“Negative.” I heard the squawk through Hans’ earpiece.
“Donovan, any movement?” Mercer asked.
“Negatory,” he replied.
“Parker,” Mercer handed me an extra earpiece, “stay in contact, but maintain radio silence unless you have something to report. I don’t need to hear your idle chitchat.” I glared at him, but I wasn’t sure he noticed in the growing dimness. He climbed on top of an air conditioning unit and reached up and ripped a metal grate off of an air duct shaft. “Ladies first.”
Sighing, I tugged at the Velcro straps on my vest and wrestled it off, tossing it behind the air unit. Reattaching my shoulder holster and tightening it, I stowed my nine millimeter and climbed on top of the unit, next to Mercer. “This seems like a round peg in a square hole situation.” He looked quizzical. “I don’t see how you think I’m going to fit in there. In case you haven’t noticed, I have shoulders and hips.”
“Then scrunch together.” He leaned down and grabbed my legs, hoisting me up to the opening. I grabbed the edge and tried to pull myself inside. If this was the job, I should have signed up for Cirque du Soleil instead. Finally, I maneuvered my shoulders inside and pulled the rest of my body in. Leaning against the vertical shaft, my right leg was on one wall and my left on the other.
“Anyone got a light?” I called out the opening. Mercer reached up, and I barely managed to grab the flashlight. “How am I supposed to know when I get there?”
“Keep moving. Bastian will let you know when you’ve made it to the center room. There should be a few more grates between here and there. You’ll have to remove one and lower yourself down, then evaluate the door, and provide feedback so we can get inside.”
Sure, that sounds all well and good when you’re not the one crawling through a very small enclosed space. I swallowed. I wasn’t exactly claustrophobic, but I’d never been in such tight quarters either.
Moving vertically up the shaft, I tried to remember the basic premises of climbing. One leg on each wall, arms for balance, and back against the side. If nothing else, my quads were getting one hell of a workout. At the top, the air duct shifted from vertical to horizontal, and I had the arduous task of squeezing through again. Dragging myself in a military crawl through the horizontal duct was slow going. The problem was I couldn’t move. The flashlight was stuck between my teeth, and there wasn’t any room to do anything other than lay flat on my stomach and drag myself across the dirty and dusty duct. I tried not to imagine spiders or rats crawling through this same space.
“What the hell’s taking so long?” Mercer growled in my ear.
“I just thought I’d stop and take a break,” I muttered sarcastically through my teeth. “Maybe have a picnic.”
“Cut the chitchat.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed on. The metal creaked as I continued forward. Moving inch by inch was taking a lot longer than even I expected, and the metal would sporadically shift and groan under my weight. This wasn’t a good idea. Then again, everything involving Mercer wasn’t a good idea. I was letting him lead me around by the nose and following his orders. Why was I letting him call all the shots? I let out a sigh of frustration as my hips snagged again in the duct, and I shifted the left side of my body forward while keeping my right still in order to get unstuck. I was a size two trying to push my way through a double zero air duct. It just wasn’t working.
“You’re over the first unit,” Bastian remarked. “Two more to go.”
“Roger.” I replied, passing a grate and glancing down, catching the smell of wet earth and cannabis. Whoever owned the first unit was growing some grade-A marijuana. Maybe for shits and giggles I’d drop an anonymous tip to the narcotics division when this was all over with.
Continuing forward, I was internally debating the reason Mercer was in charge of everything, including me. It was simple. He was the K&R specialist with the information to boot. I didn’t have the resources, the toys, or the wherewithal to develop these leads. Until the police had a positive I.D. on the clinic thieves and managed to connect them to the kidnappers, I was forced to obey Mercer. After all, he had satellite imagery, military-grade surveillance equipment, and a team of highly impressive operatives, even if I would never admit any of these things to myself if I wasn’t stuck in a very tiny metal tube.
