Flying the Storm (10 page)

“You’re right. It’s a small chance, but it’s the only one
I see.”

Tovmas did not look much heartened. Aiden looked around himself.
Through the crowd he spotted an unlabelled, unguarded door near to the bar. He nodded towards it. “What about through there? Fancy a look?” Tovmas nodded quietly.

After a little persuasion, the door opened
. Nardos went first, followed by Tovmas and Aiden. Inside was a strip-lit corridor running along the length of the warehouse side, terminated in a fire exit at the far end. Half-way along was another door, leading off to the side. It was there that Nardos, Tovmas and Aiden halted, and Nardos pressed his ear to the door. The three stood in silence for a short while, barely breathing as Nardos listened, his hand raised to halt them.

Suddenly, he held up three fingers,
and counted down slowly to one. Then with speed he barged open the door, colliding hard with something on the other side. Whatever it was instantly gave way and the three men piled into the room. The obstacle had been a person. He was a smartly dressed, moustached man, now sprawled backwards on the floor. He was dazed and groaning, his tie flung backwards across his shoulder.

Nardos was on top of him before he could
regain his senses.

He clamped a hand across the man’s mouth. “Hello, friend,” he said. “
We need to ask you a couple of questions.” The man’s eyes went wide, and he tried to shout. Thankfully, Nardos had muffled it.

“You shout and we’ll kill you. The only way you will survive this is if you answer our questions truthfully. Got that? You und
erstand English now don’t you?”

The man nodded, breathing
heavily through his nose. He was helpless and he knew it. Aiden shut the door quietly. There was no key for the lock. Tovmas was walking around the room, which appeared to be an office, flipping papers and opening drawers. Aiden crouched next to the captive, trying to look as menacing as possible. “Where’s the key for the door?” he demanded.

The man’s eyes flickered to his jacket. Aiden rifled through the pockets, producing a small brass key. “Perfect,” he said. “I think we’ll leave this unlocked just now, I imagine we’ll have to make a fairly sharp exit.”

“Now,” Nardos said, “at your auction yesterday, you sold some Armenians, didn’t you?”

The man tried to protest. Nardos struck him across the face. This time he nodded, whimpering.
Blood trickled from his nose.

“So tell me everyone you sold them to,” said Nardos.
He moved his hand an inch from the man’s mouth.

“But I can’t!
It’s all anonymous!” he hissed.

“Bullshit,” spat Nardos.

“By the way he’s dressed, I’d say he’s fairly high up the tree,” said Aiden. “I’d guess he’s the bloody owner or something.”

“What a
re you then?” demanded Nardos.

“I...” he glanced at Nardos’ raised fist, “I’m just the auctioneer
!”

“Then you can tell us exactly who bought the women
.”

“They do
n’t tell me that!” he squealed.

“Bullshit,” Nardos said again, and
once more back-handed the man in the face.

“Look what I found,” said Tovmas, walking over from the office desk. In his hand was a pistol. He pointed it at the
auctioneer’s groin. “I’ll shoot your balls off one at a time until you tell us who bought them.” He cocked the hammer. Aiden decided to leave them to it and headed over to guard the door. He really didn’t want things to get messy. Not that he thought the auctioneer had the guts to hold out any longer.

“You will ruin me! If I pass on names, no one will trade with
us again!” the auctioneer pleaded.

“What will ruin you more? Giving up the details of a few clients, or getting your
balls shot off?” Nardos asked.

“I’m losing patience,” Tovmas said, eyeing along the
gun sight, judging where the testicles were.

“Ok, ok! I’ll tell!
” The auctioneer caved. “There were three buyers the day the Armenians were auctioned: some Russians, Iranians and a Baku business. The Iranians only purchased one, probably a concubine for their boss. The city business bought two for a harem, and the Russians bought the rest to sell elsewhere.”

“We need names.
”

“I don’t know the
Iranians or the Azeris, but I spoke to the Russians after the auction. They stayed at the bar for a time. I caught one of their names...,” he paused, mumbling to himself, “Koy...Kroy....Kroikov. Koikov.”

“Koikov.
You’re sure?”

“Yes. He was
distinctive looking, long leather jacket, silver shoulders. Scar on his cheek.”

“Which side?”

“I can’t remember.”

Tovmas r
aised the pistol. “Which side?”

“I can’t remember! Please! I’m telling the truth!”
The man held his free arm out, shielding his face.

“I believe him,” said Nardos.
“Did Koikov have an aircraft?”

“
Probably, most of our clients do. His will be big; he seemed to have a big crew, along with the nine slaves.”

“Is he still in Sederek?”

“I do not know, maybe. It could be that he wants to buy more slaves.”

Nard
os thought for a second. Tovmas said, “And what about the other buyers? The Iranians, and the locals?”

“Like I said, I don’t know the
Iranians. The Azeri business is the Paradise Harem, in Baku. That’s all I know, I don’t even have an address.”

“Well, if that’s all you know, we no longer have a use for you.” Tovmas switched
off the pistol’s safety catch with a metallic click.

“No, please! You said I would live if I
helped you!” begged the auctioneer. His eyes were wide with terror. The blood from his nose had matted his moustache. Aiden felt sorry for the old man pleading for his life. It was like watching the skinny man dragged from his house in Zovashen, all over again.

“Lads,
come on!” Aiden interjected. “We have to go before somebody checks up on him. The auction is supposed to start soon.”

“But I haven’t decided what to do with this piece of shit,” replied
Tovmas, toying with the pistol.

“If you shoot him, someone will hear. Not a good plan.”

Tovmas looked irritated. He said something in Armenian to Nardos, who replied in a calm tone
; quiet, but stern. They had a short argument. Finally, Tovmas lowered the pistol. Aiden allowed himself to exhale. Maybe they’d get out of there without killing anybody. That’d be nice. “Find something to tie him with, we can’t just let him go running to the guards,” he said.

Tovmas stooped down and took the auctioneer’s belt.
Nardos covered the man’s mouth once more, and pinned his arms with his knees. Then Tovmas knelt down next to the man, wrapped the belt around his neck, slipped the end through the buckle and wrenched it as hard as he could. The auctioneer went purple, his mouth gawping like a fish as he fought for a breath. His legs thrashed wildly, but Nardos kept him down. Gradually, the man was dying under Tovmas’ iron grip. He yanked the belt just a little tighter, and the man finally went limp. His chest was still and his eyes were closed. Tovmas let the belt fall.

“The hell did you do that for?”
cried Aiden, aghast.

“He could
have identified us,” replied Tovmas. Nardos nodded. Aiden shook his head. He couldn’t quite believe it was happening again. A wave of nausea tightened his throat. Cold-blooded killing. More cold-blooded killing.

The three men slipped back out into the corridor.
Aiden locked the door behind them. They were heading for the fire exit when the door back at the other end of the corridor opened, and a suited man came through from the auction floor. He spotted the three men and shouted a challenge. He was just reaching inside his jacket when Tovmas shot him twice, the shots ear-splittingly loud and echoing in the narrow corridor. The man slumped against the wall, his pistol falling from his lifeless fingers. His blood left a crimson smear on the whitewashed breezeblocks.

Nardos, before Aiden had fully realised what had happened, was sprinting down to the body. He grabbed the dead man’s pistol, and then heaved the
corpse against the door. He came running back up the corridor.

“That might slow them down, b
ut not much! Go!” He pushed the other two towards the fire exit which, thankfully, opened. It led out into an alley between the warehouses, and much to Aiden’s surprise, some of Tovmas’ men were waiting there.

“Good, they have all the exits covered, like I asked,” said Tovmas, before giving them new orders in Armenian.
The men ran off in pairs, all in different directions.

Aiden
wished he still had the pistol Tovmas had given him. He felt vulnerable and useless. He’d brought a jacket to a gunfight. It wasn’t even a good jacket.

Tovmas had started running as well, with Nardos and Aiden in tow. “I’ve sent them back to the
aircraft, by different routes,” he said, tucking his pistol into a pocket. “We need to get back there too, before the place gets locked down with security. Nobody will know it was us.” Aiden didn’t feel all that reassured. He wished he was back at the
Iolaire
already. He ditched the jacket at the first opportunity.

Tovmas was leading them by a winding route, weaving around warehouses
and down seldom-used alleyways. He had a lot of stamina for an old man, Aiden thought. He just did not slow down. Eventually, they re-joined the crowds, about half a kilometre from the air docks. It had been too easy to get away. Aiden was wary.

He hoped the
size of the market and the sheer number of people in it would help them stay unrecognised. They had five hundred metres to go, and nothing but a sea of people to cross.

Blending in with a crowd was something that Aiden normally did well.
This time though, he felt very pale. His skin prickled with fear as he manoeuvred through the crowd. Tovmas and Nardos on the other hand were perfectly calm. Panic just wasn’t their thing. The three men spread out, each working their own way towards the air docks.

Through
the crowd ahead marched one of the heavily-armed bruisers. The big enforcer was cutting a path straight towards Aiden. Aiden kept his eyes on his feet. They passed within centimetres of each other, and he swore he could feel the security man’s gaze on his turned head.

Nothing was said, and the enforcer marched off through the crowd. Aiden risked a quick
look over his shoulder and saw the big man’s head with a finger pressed to an earpiece. He had stopped moving. Aiden’s pace quickened, still looking over his shoulder. The big man looked around himself, finger still pressed to the earpiece. He turned round to face Aiden.

Shit
.

Aiden s
napped his head back to face the air docks.

Black hair
,
just like everybody else
.

H
ow on earth could they know who to look for? His stomach dropped. The guards at the auction. They had left their guns behind, and disappeared from the auction floor. Pretty obvious, really, even to a meat-headed warehouse guard. And what about cameras? There were probably cameras everywhere.

What was he thinking? Why the hell did he listen to
Tovmas? The man was obviously unstable! Now it was likely Aiden would be caught or killed or worse, all because of that damned fool. It bloody well might have been better if they’d just gone in guns blazing and shot the damned place up. It seemed to work at Kakavaberd and Zovashen, but even then Tovmas had managed to get six of his men killed.

Six
militia, two dozen slavers, two auction workers and the skinny man in Zovashen; all dead; all to rescue three women. Sure, some folk got killed trying to find them, but hey, they’d be the heroes of Armenia now! Slaver-slayers, riches and glory.

Not that Aiden disagreed with the
cause; just it
really
wasn’t his fight. If there’d been a solid chance of good money at the end of it all, he’d have been all for a bit of guts-and-glory, but as it stood Aiden was struggling to see why he was involved at all.

The enforcer either didn’t see him, or wasn’t looking for him: Aiden had made it to the air docks.
He was doing all he could not to run across the concrete to the
Iolaire
as he weaved between the hundreds of aircraft: heavy transports, light transports, lifters, two-seaters, single-seaters, ex-SABA escorts. He listed off their classes as he passed, out of nervous habit. The
Iolaire
appeared at the end of the row. Aiden reached it, and punched in the code to lower the ramp. It couldn’t open quickly enough.

Inside,
he went straight for the cockpit, past the two militiamen Tovmas had left as guards. Aiden was first back. “Fred!” he shouted. There was no reply. The cockpit was empty; Fredrick was nowhere to be found.