Adrenaline (35 page)

I had five seconds to win this fight. The driver whipped a gun from his left hand to his right, toward me. He fired, and the bullet skittered a path along the very top of my scalp, hot and vicious. I seized the gun’s barrel and pushed down; he had to keep one hand on the wheel and he pulled the trigger in reaction. The next bullet hammered into the seat by the passenger’s leg. He screamed and, in panic, wriggled past me. I threw a kick at him and he slammed into the door and crumpled.

Now I barreled hard into the driver, shoving him into his door. Where the bullet had grazed me, the pain was like a burning match dragged along my skin.

He knocked me back, but my heels hit the windshield and I powered back into him. I threw hard, fast punches into his throat, eyes.

The truck veered wildly and he dropped the gun, but I felt the tires leave the asphalt and brush along an unpaved surface, grass, a skid beginning.

I levered my foot up, snaked an arm around his neck. “I’ll break it,” I said in Mandarin. “You listen to me. The man with me, he will kill you. I will not. All we want is the cargo. He will kill you if you do not cooperate. I will let you live. Do you understand me?” And I gave his neck the slightest wrench. He nodded.

I grabbed the gun and pressed its heat to the driver’s ribs. “Drive. Normally.”

The driver settled the truck, guided it back onto the highway. We earned a roaring honk from a Mercedes that powered past us, the driver shaking a fist, blind to the struggle inside the cab.

The van pulled alongside us, like a teenager sidling up to the dream girl at a dance. A bullet hole marred its roof. Piet leaned forward—with extreme caution. I waved.

“The man in the van will kill you,” I said again. “Do you speak English?”

“A little,” the driver said.

“Don’t let him know you understand. He’s crazy. I’m your only hope right now, you got me?”

The driver nodded. The passenger, unconscious, did not contribute to the discussion.

“Tell the guard in the trailer that we’re pulling over, and he’s to lay down his weapons, come out with hands up. You tell him any different, I shoot you in the knee.”

The driver obeyed, speaking into a walkie-talkie.

I gestured for Piet to drive behind us and, at my order, the driver took the next exit. I blinked away wetness on my face. We pulled four kilometers or so down the road. Now I saw empty stretches of land with a shawl of gray mist hovering above the ground. Cows grazed. Maybe a dairy close by. No sign of people, and the road was an old, narrow affair, rough
around the edges. In the distance I saw a rough stone building; it looked like a storage facility.

I said in Chinese, “Remember, do what I say, no matter what I say to the man in the van. We will walk to the storage shed and then we’ll take the truck. You understand me?”

The driver nodded.

Piet crept up from where he’d parked the van, a gun at the ready. I pulled the driver out, keeping the gun on him.

I turned and heard a creak of metal. The back of the trailer opening, Piet jumping back. The driver called in Mandarin, “Do what I told you.”

“Don’t shoot!” the guard yelled. He came out, hands raised.

Crime is a kind of war. But while soldiers will die for their country, few people will die for lords like the Lings. Loyalty is a smoke that inches up from the ashes of greed in this world. A change in wind scatters it.

“How do I know you won’t kill me?” the driver said in Chinese.

“Because you’d already be dead if we wanted you dead,” I said.

Silence while he decided. He opted to trust the calm in my voice. The guard was maybe forty, tired looking, a little heavy. His mouth trembled as he blinked at the cows on the soft turf.

“Here,” Piet said, handing me his gun. “Kill them.”

“Not out here,” I said. “Shots will echo across an empty field, and I’m not dragging dead weight into the woods. I’ll take them to that shed. You check the cargo. If there are any GPID chips on there to trace the goods, tear them out. The Lings could be monitoring the shipment. I’ll take care of these guys.”

Piet looked at the Chinese and smiled. “God, they’re dumb. Standing here while we talk about killing ’em and they don’t have a clue.” But maybe the guard did. He looked like he was about to break into a panicked run.

“Calm down,” I said in Mandarin. “It’s okay. Come with me.” Then I told the driver to haul down his unconscious friend and carry him. He obeyed, putting the knocked-out passenger over his shoulder.

The guard said, in stuttering Mandarin, “This is my first run. I used to be a schoolteacher, my brother-in-law, he got me involved, I don’t know much about doing the runs…” He wore a Yankees baseball cap.

They walked ahead of me, and we went over the fence and toward the shed. I glanced back. Piet had vanished into the truck.

The shed was old and when I kicked the door the weathered lock shattered. I gestured them inside.

“Please,” the guard said. “Please don’t.” Terror ragged his voice.

“Sit down,” I said. They sat, the driver laying the unconscious cab guard down first.

“He has to think you three are dead. You understand? But I am not going to hurt you.”

They nodded. Their eyes stayed on the gun.

I took a step back. “You,” I said to the guard. “Toss me your hat.”

He pulled off the Yankees cap and threw it at me. I caught it and covered up my bloody hair with it. “Your wallets, your papers.”

They tossed them over to me, trembling, and I studied them. “Stand up now. Turn around.” Slowly they did, shivering, and I quickly hit each one of them, hard with
the butt of the gun, and they collapsed. I punched both until they were out cold. I left the unconscious guy alone. Then I fired three shots into the rotting wall. Motes of wood and dust danced in the air before my face. I wiped the blood off my knuckles, in the dirt.

I walked back to the truck. Piet studied papers. The manifest on the truck indicated these were Turkish cigarettes, bound for London. Of course they weren’t. They’d been made in China, most likely in a factory half-hidden in the ground.

“Any tracking chips?” I asked.

“No,” Piet said. “Nice cap.”

“Then let’s go.”

“I want to see the Chinese,” he said.

“Well, then, go look,” I said. I would have to shoot him. He studied me.

A small blue farm truck suddenly appeared on the road, inched past us, the driver—an old woman—giving us a long, curious stare as she went by.

It rattled him. “Let’s just get going. Get you bandaged up, clean off the blood in the cabin. I’m driving the truck. You’re driving the van.”

And we drove away. I kept my eyes locked on the little shed in the rearview mirror. No one came out of it.

We arrowed into Belgium, past the empty buildings of the old border station, and the lights along the expressway, activated by the cloudy day, glowed white in France, yellow in Belgium.

I had no cell phone—Piet had insisted, still nervous that he might be betrayed again. No way to contact Mila. There was no built-in phone in the van but there was a
GPS. I wouldn’t have the weapons; I wouldn’t be able to set a trap. I felt dizzy from the loss of blood from my scalp wound.

And I decided I wasn’t going in blind.

It was time to see if Mila had been telling me the truth.

I
DID A SEARCH
on the van’s GPS monitor, entering in the name Roger Cadet. Mila had said that would show me her employers’ bars that I could use as a safe house.

One result: Taverne Chevalier, off Avenue Lloyd George, in the diplomatic district. As we edged into Brussels I flashed the lights. Piet pulled over and I walked up to the cab.

“I need a drink and a meal, and I need to make some phone calls.”

“What phone calls?” Piet said. “We keep going.”

“This isn’t the only deal I’ve got. Either we stop or you decide to trust me with a cell phone.”

“No calls.”

“I have to work the next deal after this one. And I have to work it now.”

Greed lit Piet’s eyes. “What is this deal?”

“Military goods. High profit margins.” I was already thinking of the call I needed to make.

“Where do you want to stop?”

“I know a place.”

Taverne Chevalier was one of those places that looked rather humble but was zealously guarded by posh types as
their private, unpretentious discovery. The bar itself was a finger of dark mahogany. Taps for a large assortment of Belgian and Dutch brews lined the bar, and it looked like some ales were being served in old-fashioned ceramic pitchers. I heard a variety of languages bubbling from the crowd. Hipsters in their requisite black-framed eyeglasses, men and women who wore the carefully neutral smiles of bureaucrats. Brussels was a city of diplomats and dealers, and I thought that if Mila and her mysterious bosses had half a brain between them they would have planted bugs on all the tables, recorded every conversation.

“Not the time for a drink, and if we need to eat, we could get fast food.” Piet did not sound happy. We had parked the truck in a lot a few blocks away, and he was very nervous about leaving the shipment.

“I know the owner here,” I lied.

“You can’t do business here. Too many people.”

“Trust me,” I said.

Piet laughed. “I like it when you make a joke.”

I leveled him with a stare. “What are you drinking?”

“I think I should go back to the truck. We can be in Amsterdam in a couple more hours.”

“And we will be. Follow me.” We went to the bar, waited for a waitress to take our order. I ordered two Jupiler lagers, and when she brought them I slid money to her and said, “I’d like to see the manager, please.”

“She’s busy, sir.”

“She’ll make time for me, I think. Mila sent me.”

The waitress vanished into the back of the bar, and a few moments later a stout, fiftyish woman appeared, a frown on her face. “Yes, sir?”

“I’m a friend of Roger Cadet’s,” I said, using the pass name Mila had given me back in Amsterdam.

She nodded. “Any friend of Roger’s is welcome here.”

“Is Roger here? I’d like to speak to him alone.”

Her glance slid to Piet. “I can find out if he’ll see you.”

I turned to Piet. “Stay here, drink your beer. I’ll just be a minute.”

“No. You could be calling someone, telling them where the shipment is. We stick together.”

I put my mouth close to Piet’s ear. “This is a byway, a stop. I have private business with him on this weapons deal, but I can use your help and you’ll earn a cut. We’re partners, yes?”

He was torn; he wanted the money but he didn’t want me apart from him. “I don’t like this, Sam.”

“Listen to me. I took the risk back on the truck. I’m not messing you over. We’re solid, Piet, all right? I must pay respects. Do you understand? You could bolt out the door and steal the shipment while I’m in there, and I’m trusting you that you won’t.” Lose Piet and I might well lose Edward for good. But I had to take the calculated risk. “I won’t be but a minute or two.”

The manager cut through the crowd of diplomats and skinny beautiful people and we went upstairs. She glanced back at me. “You’re new.”

“Yes. And in trouble. I need weapons, a cell phone.”

She unlocked a door to the left of the landing. I glanced back down the stairway. No sign of Piet.

I stepped inside the door.

“I’m Eliane,” the manager said after she shut the door. “You’re supposed to call first.”

“I couldn’t. No phone.” The small room was lined with shelves, some of which contained weapons. A cot, neatly
made up, stood in the corner. I wanted to fall on it and collapse. Instead I searched the shelves. Found two Glock 9 mms, spare clips, silencers.

“What else do you need?”

“I have to fight a large number of people,” I said. “They will be heavily armed and I’ll be alone. So I guess I have to kill them.”

Eliane blinked. “You’re going to kill them all?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know.” Hell. Was I? If I left some of the group alive, couldn’t I leave them for the Dutch to interrogate, possibly to glean useful information? Zaid’s insistence that everyone be killed to protect Yasmin’s good name nagged at me. She had been brainwashed. That wasn’t a crime. His reputation might survive.

Eliane moved to a box, opened it. The box was marked with a logo I recognized. Militronics, Zaid’s company. Gear from his own company would help free his daughter.

“Do you have restraints?” I asked.

“Yes, but I thought you were going to kill them, not take them hostage.”

“Let’s keep our options open. Let me have several sets.”

She showed me a thick banding of plastic wrist cuffs. “And this. A flash grenade,” she said. “Modified police issue. Do you know how to use it? Here is the activation button, here the timer.”

“Thanks. Where am I going to hide these?” I could hardly go downstairs loaded with gear in front of Piet. “My van is parked about a kilometer away. Can you get this stuff there?”

“Yes,” she said. “This man with you—he is not good.”

“He’s a cold-blooded murderer and a slaver. I have to ambush him and several others at a meeting.”