by Dana Haynes
“The garage door’s closed,” Fiero said.
“They gotta get the kids inside.”
“Last time we passed by here, we saw a ramp leading to the basement.”
Fiero smiled. “Gravity’s our friend.”
“Roll cages on those BMWs are sweet.”
“Shall we?”
Fiero reached for her door handle and climbed out of the car.
Finnigan adjusted his seat belt.
C54
Lt. Akil Krasniqi stood his ground, unwilling to capitulate to the crooked head of the Belgrade Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit. “I understand, sir, but—”
“Half of the fucking journalists on earth are screeching at us for answers, Lieutenant! The New York Times! The London Times! The Washington Post!” The man vibrated, his jowls and belly shaking. “The fucking Montreal-fucking-Gazette! All because you idiots captured a fucking journalist!”
Inspector Petrovic pointed a nicotine-yellowed finger back at his BMW X5 and the three heads barely visible behind the seatbacks.
“Get rid of them, Lieutenant! Don’t do it in Belgrade, and don’t do it in Serbia. Take your mongrels back to Kosovo and cook them, for all I care! Then tell Major Basha that our deal is being renegotiated! Am I making myself clear, Lieutenant?”
Krasniqi saw no advantage in continuing the argument, here on the pavement, with the sun rising and the traffic picking up. He had every intention of contacting Major Basha as soon as he could get this confrontation inside the building and off the street.
Krasniqi had heard from KSF Operating Base Šar, of course. He knew that armed insurgents had stolen his other sixteen refugees. According to Corporal Agon Llumnica, the insurgents represented another army unit that wanted in on their profits. That meant any deal cut with the Belgrade Police was now suspect. It was time, the lieutenant thought, for their forces to regroup and reconsider their options. That meant killing everyone currently connected to their operation: the stolen kids, the crooked cops—even Lazar Aleksić.
“Take them into the garage,” he told the inspector, avoiding the use of sir or the man’s title. “We’ll transfer them to our vehicle.” He drew his walkie-talkie. “Open the door.”
The garage door began rolling upward on well-oiled tracks.
Inspector Petrovic marched around to the passenger side of the BMW and damn near sprang the door hinges before climbing in, the shocks wobbling under his girth. He growled at his driver. “Get them inside.”
The driver checked to see that the garage door was sufficiently high, then put the car into gear. He turned ninety degrees, the front tires reaching the lip of the ramp. The BMW’s nose dipped.
Finnigan swerved the stolen Wrangler out of the morning traffic on Kneza Miloša and slammed into the rear of the Beemer.
Petrovic, the driver, Jane Koury, Amira, and the Afghan boy—everyone’s head snapped back. Finnigan gunned it, and the two cars began rolling down the concrete ramp.
Petrovic’s driver screamed and stomped on the brakes. The BMW began to glide sideways, relative to the ramp.
Finnigan tapped his own brakes, creating a little air between them. As the left side of the BMW came around, he punched it again, slamming back into the car, which now screeched sideways down the ramp, tires belching blue smoke. Finnigan saw the driver and the children in back, screaming in shock.
The BMW, now acting like a snowplow in front of the Jeep, rumbled downhill, tires bursting, rims screeching, and slammed sideways into a support pillar.
Up top, Lieutenant Krasniqi and his corporal stood on the sidewalk, gawking, shocked. Neither even noticed as Fiero strolled up the sidewalk toward them. Krasniqi drew his gun and began moving downhill.
As she drew abreast of the corporal, Fiero swung her elbow and clocked him in the temple. The man’s eyes rolled up in his skull. Before he could fall, she grabbed him by the lapels and hip-checked him down the ramp. His body bowled into the back of Krasniqi’s heels like they were tenpins. The lieutenant had been picking up speed and was off-balance to begin with. He stumbled, falling, trying to arrest his impact by letting go of his sidearm. But he was too late, and his wrist broke badly as he hit the concrete.
In the Jeep, Finnigan coughed talcum and shoved away the deflated airbag. Having rolled down all the windows prior to hitting the SUV, he undid his seatbelt and climbed out through his window, sliding onto the crumpled hood of the Jeep and bracing his boots on either side of the busted-out driver’s window. He reached through, between his own legs, and hauled out the police driver. The man’s head lolled. Finnigan clocked him once, just to be sure, and dumped him over the side of the Jeep’s hood. The man slid over the edge but one foot got tangled in his seatbelt, and he hung off the side like a landed fish.
The fat man with the walrus mustache leaned forward, blood pouring out of his nose, his eyes closed.
In back, the children looked petrified but largely unhurt. The BMW is a marvel of safety, Finnigan thought.
He glanced back and saw Fiero march down the ramp, stepping over two unconscious soldiers.
He looked around. The garage could hold a hundred cars, maybe, but today housed only a handful of hot, expensive, and pristinely washed cars, including a Jag and a gold Hummer. Somebody once said that crime doesn’t pay. Finnigan thought that person was full of shit.
Fiero reached the bottom of the ramp and drew her SIG.
A soldier came running from the direction of the elevators, and she shot him once in the chest. The man stumbled, falling forward. He wore body armor but a .45 is a .45, and the hydrostatic shock of the hit likely broke some ribs. She looked back the way they’d come. No pedestrians had stopped. Traffic on Kneza Miloša continued as if nothing had happened.
A moment later, Mohamed’s expressive face appeared at the garage door.
Fiero whistled and signaled him down.
She turned and marched over the guy she’d shot, stopping long enough to clock him behind the ear with the butt of her gun. She rose and headed to the three-car elevator bank. She found the controls for the garage door and hit down.
Mohamed, still near the top of the ramp, stood with his eyes and mouth forming an almost perfect circle. Finnigan could guess what he was thinking: Muslim women in Europe aren’t what I expected!
But then the sight of Amira climbing out of the BMW caught the boy’s eyes, and he sprinted downhill.
Jane Koury climbed out as well as she could with her wrists cuffed behind her back. So did the Afghan boy who’d been taken with them.
Finnigan retrieved a handcuff key from the cop he’d KO’d and got the three refugees freed. Mohamed, Amira, and Jane hugged and wept. There was much crying and rapid-fire Arabic, so Finnigan backed off the scrum.
Fiero came his way. “Elevator’s locked out, as we were told.”
Finnigan jutted his chin at the lieutenant, halfway up the ramp, who held his broken wrist and rocked onto his back, moaning. “Think he’ll help?”
“We can ask nice.”
Jane broke free of the group hugs and came to them. Tears streamed down her grubby face, and her hair was askew. She spoke English. “Excuse me, please. Who are you?”
Finnigan produced a packet of Kleenex from his cargo pocket and handed it to her. “St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking.”
She blew her nose. “I don’t even know what that means. I’m Jane Koury. I’m a reporter for … I’m an independent reporter. You’re Americans?”
Fiero said, “He is,” and headed uphill toward Lieutenant Krasniqi.
“I can’t thank you enough. These kids, they’re my responsibility. I was trying to get them to safety.” She started crying again.
“And you did, kiddo. Give us a bump.” Finnigan put his fist out, knuckles forward. She burst into a hybrid sob-laugh and reached up to tap her knuckles against his.
She
produced a cheap flip phone. “I called my editor at the Irish Times. I told them where we were; what was happening. I think that’s why the police got involved here.”
“We were wondering who bought us the time to catch up.”
“Catch up?”
“We were at the base in Kosovo. We got the other sixteen kids out.”
Jane started crying into the wad of Kleenex again.
Finnigan grinned at her. “You are one badass reporter, Jane Koury.”
C55
Guns N’ Roses woke Lazar Aleksić up at shortly after six. Welcome to the Jungle … In truth, he’d slept fitfully throughout the night, anxious for the experience that his partnership with Major Driton Basha would bring him today.
He thought back now to the Epiphany of the Stripper. Lazar called it that, and he thought it rather clever. He remembered the stacked blonde whom he’d brought home from Club Obsidian. He remembered all the things he’d done to her, and ordered her to do. The slut had performed her role admirably. But in truth, a couple dozen whores had performed as well or better since Lazar got his business up and running. The whores had been there when he sold weed. When he’d sold coke and heroin. And when he’d found the network of buyers for the filth. As long as Lazar Aleksić was young, handsome, and rich, he’d have all the whores he needed.
But none of that had given him the experience of the Epiphany of the Stripper. That look in her eyes as she’d sidled up to Major Basha, all slink and kink. But everything about her had changed as Basha shoved the ice pick into her heart.
The widening of her eyes—all hookers are taught to do that, of course, at the height of passion. But not like this. The sudden intake of breath—they’re taught to do that, too. The gasp, the shudder. The well-choreographed but also well-trod path of synthetic emotion. None of it, none of it, held a candle to that moment. The ice pick. The death. The truth of it.
Lazar was hard, anticipating the moment.
Axl Rose screamed from his speakers, and Lazar leapt out of bed. It was Basha—who else ever touched his sound system? He pulled blue jeans up his long legs and over his narrow hips. He crossed the room to his gym bag, unzipped it fully and slowly from one end to the other. He pulled out the new ice pick his posse had shoplifted from the restaurant supply store. It was almost ten inches long, including the black anodized aluminum handle. The spindle itself was more than four inches in length and a quarter inch in diameter. It smelled just a little of linseed oil. It was pristine. It would not stay so for long.
Welcome to the jungle.
Barefoot, bare-chested, Lazar strutted out into the living room of the penthouse suite.
The very first person he saw was a refugee girl, maybe eighteen or twenty. She wore grubby clothes and her hair was a mess. She also carried a smart phone, held up in both hands, horizontal, as if she were taking a picture or a video.
Lazar started to smile, then noticed the lieutenant who sometimes led his security detail was standing by the butterscotch couch, stiffly, almost at attention. His nose was broken, his upper lip split, and yellow half-moons were forming under both eyes.
He heard the iPhone in the refugee girl’s hands. She’d snapped a picture of him.
How weird.
“That’s a good angle.”
Lazar’s lusty tunnel vision dissipated. He saw the speaker—a woman, maybe five-ten, dark and slender, wearing all black and with a pistol holster strapped low on her long right thigh. It was a big holster for a big gun, but that thigh seemed to go on for miles. Her T-shirt showed the shadows under her clavicles and outlined small breasts and a long, straight torso.
He spotted another man—wavy hair, several days’ beard, also wearing all black, but with a cocky grin.
Two Arabic boys and an Arabic girl, all in filthy, ripped clothes, stared sullenly at him.
The lieutenant still hadn’t moved, although blood dripped off his chin.
Lazar’s hard-on faltered.
The wavy-haired man lowered the volume on Lazar’s sound system. He grinned, all lopsided and overly friendly. He moved with the rolling gait of a sailor.
He nodded to Lazar’s right hand. To the ice pick. “What’s this?”
The refugee girl snapped another photo of him.
“Who … what the fuck …” Lazar tried to catch up to events, his brain vapor-locked.
“This yours?” the man said, and Lazar realized he was American. “What is that? Is that an ice pick? You got ice in here? You’re, what? Making daiquiris?”
Lazar looked around. The bleeding lieutenant, the tall woman with the cowboy holster, the refugee kids, the girl shooting photos. He looked toward the elevator and saw a pair of boots and trousers; someone down and not moving.
“Who the fuck are you?” He winced as his voice broke.
“Us?” the American asked. “Who’re you?”
Lazar felt both fear and anger, but subdued by a blend of power that came from wealth and youth and privilege—the jet fuel that had propelled every encounter in his life. And this guy was asking who he was?
“I am Lazar Aleksić! This is my place! What the fuck are you doing here?”
The tall woman turned to the girl with the camera. “Get it?”
She nodded. “Got it.”
Lazar thought: Everyone just smiled.
But … that couldn’t be right.
The bleeding lieutenant hadn’t smiled. Nor had the trio of quiet, glaring refugees. The girl with the camera wasn’t smiling. And the American had never stopped grinning like a fool.
So when Lazar’s brain registered everyone just smiled, what it meant was, the tall woman just smiled.
The smile of a predator.
The smile of fang and claw.
Welcome to the jungle.
C56
St. Nicholas told Aleksić they wanted Driton Basha.
Lazar gave them Basha. He gave them routes and schedules and the names of buyers. To hell with Basha. Lazar Aleksić could buy a hundred Bashas. And his father would fix this problem easily enough. They want Driton Basha? Lazar would add ribbons, bows, and a gift receipt.
Finnigan asked for access to Lazar’s computer. But that was a bridge too far. That was unthinkable. The evidence on his computer would be more than even his father could sweep under a rug. Access to his computer? Now it was Lazar’s turn to smile. “Fuck you, bitch! No way.”
Finnigan turned to Fiero. “Did he just call me bitch?”
“Seems that way.” She smiled, turned to Lt. Akil Krasniqi, who was dripping blood on the hardwood floor of Lazar’s penthouse. “You,” she nudged Krasniqi forward. “In the bedroom.”
She turned to Lazar. “Join us, would you?”
She led both men into the bedroom and slid shut the rolling door in their wake.
Jane turned to Finnigan. “What’s she doing?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He made eye contact with the Afghan kid. “English?”
The kid blinked at him.
Jane said, “I think he’s Afghan. Poor thing.”
“Your media friends are coming?”
“The Irish Times reached out to every reporter, correspondent, and freelancer in the region. They’re on their way. We can—”
A strangled cry erupted, low and keening, from the bedroom. “What was that?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Finnigan pointed to the Afghan kid. “Call your buddies and see if we can get someone here who speaks … whatever. Pashto …?”
“Dari,” Jane said. “Sure. Good idea.” She switched Fiero’s phone from camera mode and dialed.
The door to the bedroom slid open. Fiero escorted Lazar Aleksić, who walked stiffly—and a little unevenly, like a drunk trying desperately to look sober. He moved directly to his laptop computer and input codes to wake it up.
He looked unh
urt, but as scared as a human can be and still function.
Lieutenant Krasniqi did not emerge.
Fiero nodded to Finnigan. There was … something, in her eyes. In the languid movement of her neck and shoulders. Something liquid. And feral.
Jane said, “What happened to—”
Fiero retreated into the bedroom, closed the door behind her.
Finnigan said, “Don’t worry about it.”
The Irish Times got the exclusive and a twenty-minute head start.
Reuters was the first wire service to pick up the story, which meant every news outlet on earth had it within an hour, and hundreds of them led with it.
It was too good a story not to lead with: the Serbian sex-trafficker, Lazar Aleksić; his connection to a specific unit of the Kosovo Security Force; and of course, his father, Miloš Aleksić, director for the Levant Crisis Group of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Television crews circled the Ragusa Logistics building on Kneza Miloša in Belgrade. Other crews were tipped off to sixteen rescued children being handed over to the US embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Those children told a tale of a massive Viking with an amazing beard, who swept in to rescue them with his band of pirates. When asked, some of the children said he called himself St. Nick. The media chalked that up to the children’s post-traumatic stress.
Still other reporters made a beeline north to the Brussels and Paris offices of the UNHCR and its Levant Group. Public information officers issued a couple dozen no-comments, saying UN officials had no knowledge of the wild stories coming out of the former Yugoslavia.
Director Miloš Aleksić was unavailable for comment.
The rule was St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking never, ever contacted Judge Hélene Betancourt. The partners didn’t have her telephone number or her private email address. They’d never left any electronic trail connecting their illegal and unsavory business with the senior-most jurist of the International Criminal Court.
Thomas Shannon Greyson served as their single point of contact.
Shan, who’d been tasked with getting the partners and the rescued children over the Serbian border, but who hadn’t. And who, now, wasn’t responding to phone calls, emails, or texts.
