by Brian Drake
Neither spoke as they started forward again. They crossed the road, and stopped at the plant’s perimeter fence. Another open field lay between the fence and the building.
“Did you bring wire cutters, Raven?”
“I can run to Ace if you want, or—”
“They didn’t go in the front door, yeah.”
Raven and Tracy traveled along the fence, scanning for threats. Raven. He hoped Clark Wilson brought the cavalry soon. But he couldn’t sit and wait. Aaron had used him. He had more than a personal stake in the matter.
They followed the fence for fifteen yards. Raven spotted where somebody had cut the chain link. He pulled back one side for Tracy to slip through. He followed without getting caught on one of the clipped links. Tracy took a knee ahead to scan for danger. Raven joined her. She started to rise but Raven stopped her. “Look.”
The shape he pointed out didn’t fit the flat ground. It looked like a person stretched out. They approached and knelt beside the dead rent-a-cop. Somebody had shot him twice in the chest.
“He won’t be the only one,” Raven said. “Come on.”
From Raven’s review of the facility, they were on the west side of the building. The loading dock, where he’d seen the lights, was the north side, and faced the train tracks. As they neared the north side, Raven motioned for Tracy to stop and get down. Another fence blocked access to where the lighted activity took place. The combo of barbed and concertina wire, with its razor edges, made scaling the fence a losing proposition.
“We’ll have to go through the front,” Raven said.
They rose and altered course for the front of the building. Tracy stole a glance back. “Raven, down!”
Raven dropped prone in the dirt. Tracy landed beside him. He turned his body to look back. A Jeep rounded the back of the building. Two men aboard. They drove alongside the second fence at a slow speed. The man in the passenger seat held a portable spotlight. He probed the field with the bright beam of light.
“Are they expecting us?”
“Who cares?” Raven said. Any thought he had of abandoning the attempt to stop Aaron vanished from his mind. There was no turning back now. The raiding party had already murdered one innocent person. They wouldn’t stop until they had everything they wanted.
25
Raven braced the .45 in both hands. He fired twice. The spotlight winked out. The man holding it let out a scream cut off almost immediately by the second bullet.
Tracy fired the submachine gun. The windshield cracked, the driver’s head snapping back. His body jerked as more rounds smacked into him. The passenger fell from his seat to the ground while the driver remained in place. The Jeep idled forward.
“Let’s catch a ride,” Raven said.
He sprinted for the Jeep, jumping onto the driver’s side skid. Raven unbuckled the driver and let the body fall out. The driver was white, his face smeared with black cosmetics. Black fatigues and combat boots completed the ensemble of a man with bad intentions. A magazine pouch on his belt went with the M4 automatic carbine on the floor of the Jeep. The weapon sat between the front seats. Raven grabbed the mag pouch and driver’s walkie-talkie. He found a key card to the building in the man’s shirt pocket and tucked it in his own.
The hand-held radio bleeped.
“Kovalenko.” A voice Raven didn’t recognize came over the speaker. “What’s the shooting?”
Tracy joined Raven as he pressed the Talk button to reply. “Where’s Osborne?”
“Who is this?”
“Tell Aaron it’s Sam Raven and we have business.”
Raven dropped the radio on the ground and shot it to pieces with a blast from the .45.
“Raven.”
He climbed behind the wheel. “What, Tracy?”
“How pissed off are you?”
“Enough.”
“Enough to get us killed?”
“You can leave.”
“I might,” she said.
“What’s your problem?”
“You know better than to go charging in there,” she said. “We need to wait for Clark. If anything happens to me, the last thing we need is a dead CIA officer in this mess.”
“You wait. I’m going.”
“Raven—”
He stepped on the gas and the growl of the Jeep’s engine drowned out her reply. He left her standing there. Hell with her. She could go and hide. He had work to do and nobody was going to stand in his way.
Raven’s face showed a hard mask of fury as he headed for the front of the building. He stopped the Jeep at the lobby doors. The exterior was glass and steel framework. The lock clicked when he held the key card in front of a sensor. Raven opened the left-side door and moved inside with the M4 at shoulder level.
Empty reception desk ahead. To the left, a sitting area. A pair of double doors were at the far end of the lobby.
Raven cursed. Tracy had a point. The situation was spiraling out of control and he was one man against an unknown number. He never should have gone this far. But he was too furious to listen to Tracy’s reasoning. Rage blinded Raven because Aaron had betrayed his trust. He wanted to get even. And it was too late to retreat.
The double doors crashed open and a trio of gunmen stormed the lobby. Raven moved for cover and flattened on the tiled floor behind a couch. Bullets ripped into the fabric, stuffing flying. He fired around the side, a blind burst which burned through the magazine. The weapon locked open, empty. Raven traded the M4 for his pistol and fired in rapid succession. One gunman dropped. The Nighthawk flashed flame again. Second gunner down, his left knee splitting like a cracked egg. He smeared the floor with red. The third gunner slipped on the blood spill, crashing on his rear end. Another .45 slug opened his chest.
Raven put away his pistol and reloaded the M4 as he ran. He reached the knee-shot gunner and knelt beside him. “How many more?”
Pain etched the gunner’s face as he struggled to break away.
“How many?”
The gunner reached for his side arm and Raven shot him through the neck.
Raven jerked his head up as two gunmen stopped in front of the lobby doors outside. They blasted the glass, shards spreading out in a puddle-like pattern. Raven rolled behind a wide support post. Bullets swarmed inside like angry hornets. Raven aimed around the post but only saw the backs of the gunmen as they retreated.
Raven ran to the reception desk and scanned the building map. He crossed the lobby to the double doors and pushed through. Long hallway with thin carpeting. Offices on the left, conference room and kitchen to the right. At the end of the hall a right turn into the warehouse. Raven’s mind raced to grapple with how much opposition he faced. And when Clark Wilson might show with backup.
Gunners toting M4s rounded the corner ahead. Raven ducked for an open doorway on his left. He fired at the incoming gunners. Commotion behind him. The two shooters who’d shot out the lobby glass pushed through the double doors. Raven reversed his position and fired. Both gunmen fell in the doorway and blocked the doors from closing. Raven spun around again. He caught the incoming shooters in the open between the hallway walls. He squeezed the trigger and fired two short salvos. The shooters fell.
Raven ran forward. He stepped over the bodies and took the corner too fast but no threats met him. Through another swing door and he was in the warehouse.
The warehouse was huge. Concrete floor, only a few lights, the brightest light coming from the open sliding doors in the rear. Crates sat stacked in the open. More crates filled tall steel shelves which created aisles on the warehouse floor.
Raven went left. Feet shuffled in the maze of aisles. Raven froze and waited. Then he heard a voice he recognized.
“Is that you, Sam?”
Osborne!
26
An hour earlier, Aaron Osborne didn’t say goodbye to Raven as he entered his hotel room. He and Tracy stepped into their room, and he slammed the door.
“That punk.”
Tr
acy agreed. “What he said was uncalled for considering—”
“Shut up.”
“Hey!”
“I’m done talking for the night.”
“Now who’s the punk?”
Osborne turned away. He didn’t want to look at her. He wanted to be mad and his clenched jaw and slow breathing reflected his mood.
Raven hadn’t simply been shooting off his mouth.
The bastard knew!
But how?
It wouldn’t matter in another ten minutes. His father had texted him the building codes during the drive back. With Raven at the wheel and Tracy looking out the window, he’d forwarded the codes to Draco.
Draco texted back saying “a friend” would knock on the door as soon as they returned to their room. He was sending the “friend” to keep Raven and Tracy occupied until they completed the job at the plant. Aaron hadn’t planned on built-in scapegoats; they provided a happy bonus. The FBI wouldn't look for him or Draco if they spent their time wondering why Raven had tried to steal US ordnance.
“Aaron.”
He turned. She scowled at him with her arms folded.
“We’re not done.”
A knock at the door.
“Yes, we are,” he said. He brushed past her to answer. Draco’s friend entered. He was big and wore black. Osborne shut the door.
Tracy said, “Who the hell is this?”
“Take her. Make it quick.”
The big man stepped forward and took hold of her left arm. Tracy, breathing hard, sweating now, shot wide-eyed looks between the two men.
“Get Raven next door. Do whatever Draco told you.”
“Aaron—”
“Shut up!” Osborne raised a hand. She recoiled but couldn’t move far because of the big man’s iron grip. He didn’t strike her. He jerked a thumb at the door and the big man dragged Tracy out of the room.
Osborne called Draco on his cell.
“Are they in custody?” Draco said.
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Waiting for you in the parking lot.”
“On my way.”
Osborne had no equipment to bring. Draco had everything he’d need. Without another look around the room, Osborne exited. He found Draco’s black Suburban where the merc said it would be. He climbed into the back seat next to the man he’d met while guarding oil rigs.
Yakiv Draco had the typical Slavic “resting bitch face”. He always appeared uninterested, bored, or mad. He was neither. He regarded Osborne without comment. The Ukrainian was shorter than Osborne, wiry, with a chiseled jaw and bony chin.
Osborne said, “What are we waiting for?”
Draco grunted an order at the driver. The driver put the Suburban in gear and left the parking lot.
“Where’s my gear?” Osborne said.
“In the back.”
“I’ll change when we get there. Your men set?”
“They have breached the perimeter fence and dealt with security.”
“Fine. Codes work?”
“Everything is satisfactory at this moment.”
“You’re a barrel of laughs, Draco.”
“Your delay was not a welcome development.”
“It’s not my fault I couldn’t get any mercs in Paris to sign up. Raven coming along was a lucky break. And stop complaining. We have him and Tracy to lay the blame on. We’ll be across the world before the Feds begin to put the pieces together.”
“We would have been successful without your friends.”
“We’d still have Tracy to deal with,” Osborne said.
“If you had followed my instructions in the beginning, you never would have taken up with her.”
“I had needs. She was an ex willing to give it another go. What’s the problem?”
“You Americans are always sloppy. You have no discipline.”
“Draco, you won’t get what you want without me, so I suggest you change your tone.”
Draco said nothing more. Osborne scoffed. They had a plan to re-start a war currently on pause for cease fire talks. It wasn’t business as usual; it was the war business. The best and most reliable profit center ever created. Raven had not been wrong. Whoever died in the crossfire didn’t matter. As long as both sides kept killing, they would need tools with which to kill. Aaron’s father made the tools. Aaron had to get the tools into the hands of the combatants and keep them coming back for more.
They rode the rest of the way to the plant in quiet contemplation. Osborne was about to change his life. Forever. There was no coming back from this. But the money he made would secure a nice lifestyle anywhere in the world. He had no particular love for the United States anyway. He could live wherever he wanted when they finished the job.
Stealing from his father’s plant was a tactical necessity. The old man had supplied his cut outs with unmarked weapons before, but none currently had the bulk required to kick start the operation. The alternative was to take from the source, and Aaron knew where the crates containing scrubbed ordnance were. His father had set them aside purposefully for the theft. The plan was for his father to avoid suspicion by being a victim of a massive robbery. The old man and Chumachenko cooked up the idea themselves. Leaving Raven and Tracy to take the blame would keep the heat off until they accomplished their tasks. But after? Aaron had lingering doubts the charade would hold long-term, but his father had been doing illegal deals for a long time. He knew what he was doing. Or so Aaron hoped.
Aaron’s responsibility was to not fail on his part of the mission. With Draco sitting beside him, and Draco’s men already at the plant, he at least knew he wouldn’t walk away empty-handed.
“Is that you, Sam?”
Raven bit off a curse and dropped behind a pair of crates.
The lights began winking out, plunging the warehouse into darkness. Raven stretched out on the cold floor to get his bearings and listen for movement.
Raven’s eyes adjusted to the dark but it didn’t help. The only advantage he had was the enemy was blind too.
Footsteps. Off to the left. Another to the right. He dared not waste ammo trying to hit targets he had no ability to see. He crawled around the crate and angled to the left. He swept his free hand in front of him. Nothing but cold floor and no obstructions.
Another step. Raven couldn’t detect where the threats originated. He started breathing faster. Steady. He closed his eyes, counted to five. Where the hell was Clark Wilson and his backup? Raven finished counting. He decided to accept help might not be on the way. The only person able to even the odds now waited beyond the perimeter fence. Unless Aaron and his goons had already found Tracy. But Raven figured Aaron would gloat if he had. His silence indicated he didn’t know where she was.
Easing to his feet, Raven heard more of the pounding of his pulse than any further footsteps. He felt along the corner of a crate, moved behind the crate to reach the wall. He kept his back to the wall as he inched left. Whispered voices reached him. Men getting closer. They thought they had him zeroed. If he could find a different place to be when they made their move, he might get the drop on some of them.
He moved a few more feet and bumped into a pipe attached to the wall. He felt along the pipe. It continued upward. He moved his back over the pipe and continued his slide.
A shuffle of feet, grunts. Raven dropped to a squat and stretched out on the floor again. A flashlight snapped on, bright in the darkness, illuminating his former position. The glare showed him parts of the two men who had hoped to find him there. Raven fired the M4. One of the men dropped, not the one with the flashlight. As the gunner with the light turned, he brought the beam online with Raven’s new spot. The M4 cracked again. The gunman fell. The light hit the floor and spun. The beam came to rest pointing away from Raven. In its brief circuit, the light revealed a little of what lay beyond.
Raven jumped up, staying low, moving a little faster as voices yelled. When no answering call came back, somebody shouted for gunners to swarm the area and
flush Raven out. Aaron’s voice joined the shouted orders. He yelled, “I want him alive!”
27
Raven stopped at a shelf. He felt the metal edge with his free hand. He wanted a look in the crates for another weapon, a smoke grenade or two. He didn’t want a conventional grenade with which to set off the entire stock. He moved forward. The voices and shuffling bootsteps had stopped. Raven had no doubt the enemy was closing fast, hungry sharks who smelled blood, eager for a kill.
Well, so was Raven. And he wanted the big fish in charge of the little fish too.
Raven reached the end of the shelf and felt around the corner. He eased to the right, peeked down the aisle. Who had owned the footsteps he’d heard from this side?
A scrape behind him.
Raven ducked and pivoted as a butt stock swished over his head. He stabbed forward with the muzzle of the M4 and met hard resistance as the barrel struck a man’s abdomen. The gunner let out a cry of surprise. Raven jerked the trigger twice. The flash of flame from his M4 left a spot in his eyesight. The gunner collapsed without a sound. Raven fired another two rounds into the fallen man to make sure he stayed on the floor.
He turned up the aisle.
The flashlight blinded him. He screamed in surprise, trying to bring up his left arm to block the glare. Somebody grabbed his M4 and somebody else moved behind him to bash Raven on the back of the head.
As he fell, Raven’s last thought was he couldn’t tell which direction to turn for his next counter blow. He could not see anything.
They’d switched the back lights on again. Raven awoke from his forced nap. His head hurt. He retched a little but kept dinner down. Raven spat. He raised his head. Two men stood guard over him. They’d left him on the pavement. He looked up. Men in black fatigues hurried to load a box truck with wooden crates from the warehouse.
Aaron Osborne, dressed like the rest and with Raven’s Nighthawk Custom .45 jammed in his belt, walked over. “He awake yet?”
