To The Lions - 02 (42 page)

Speaking
accented Catalan, he told her to close her door.

Feeling
the blade puncturing her skin, and unflinchingly realizing this was probably
her end, her passageway to reunite with her beloved Mateo, Señora Moreno,
queerly excited by this dangerous liaison, found the door handle and pulled the
door shut, her mind running through her narrow series of options.

The
man, keeping the blade on her throat, reached to the driver’s door, mimicking
her actions.
 
He wore a beard, neatly
trimmed, over his richly tanned face.
 
He
had one of those sneering smiles, trashy but handsome, and could have been a
famous athlete, an actor or even the sleazy womanizer who barked for the Ferris
wheel at the carnival.
 
But most
prominent, even in the shadows of the darkened car, was the conspicuous tattoo
on the man’s neck—it was the tattoo of a smoking revolver.
 

Los
Leones.

The
man moved his tongue around his lower teeth, his wet mouth audible with the
movement.
 
Suddenly, he pricked her
throat, sending a sharp pain through her body before he asked, “Who are you,
lady, and why are you working a confidence game with that tall blonde on Cortez
Redon?”

“What
tall blonde are you talking abo—
ayeee!
”
Señora Moreno squealed, unable to control herself as the blade of his knife
twisted on the skin of her neck.

“Now
that
, my dear, is just a flesh
wound,” he murmured, pulling the knife back and sounding completely at
ease.
 
“I can honestly tell you I don’t
get my kicks from harming old women but,” he said, moving his right hand behind
her neck as the flat black blade of the Smith & Wesson M&P knife was
held in front of her eyes, “I won’t hesitate if you lie to me.
 
Redon is a gutter-dwelling piece of shit—that
I won’t argue.
 
So, please, dispense with
your lies and tell me about this hustle.”

Her
mind briefly clouded by pain, Señora Moreno gasped for breath, trying to
determine an angle for proceeding.
 
What
she came up with was surprisingly lucid.
 
The goal today was to entrap Acusador Redon.
 
And Justina’s boyfriend, Gage, was at odds
with Los Leones over Navarro’s money.
 
This knife-wielding man was with Los Leones, so bringing Navarro’s money
into it would be the incorrect pathway.
 
It would incense her aggressor and make the situation worse.
 
She’d be better off to put him on the wrong
track.
 
She chose the first idea that
came to her mind.

“That
girl you saw…we work together.”

“How?”

“We
run schemes against men in public places.”

“What
kind of schemes?”

“All
kinds.
 
It just depends on our target’s
proclivities.”

“Really,”
he said flatly, clearly not a question.

“As
you said, Redon’s not a good man…an easy target for a girl like her.”

“Then
why were you talking to him first, in the café?”

After
years of real estate deals, Señora Moreno was an expert at ferreting out
liars.
 
She knew the telltale signs, the
hesitations, the tonal changes.
 
Rather
than appear distressed by his questioning, she tried to make herself look
disappointed, like a sullen teenager who’d been caught with cigarettes but was
too old, too experienced to be entirely scared of the coming punishment.

“Why?”
he asked, shaking her neck and lifting the blade.

“Like
I said, we have a process.
 
I approached
him, telling him I’m her aunt and her brother is awaiting trial for
robbery.
 
Then, after wending my way
through the story, I offered her to him, sexually, in exchange for his
intervention, so the charges against her brother might be dropped.”

“So,
there is no brother?” he asked.

“Of
course not,” she said.
 
“And now we will
have pictures of him, naked, in a hotel room.”

He
smiled with mouth only.
 
“Poor Cortez.”

Señora
Moreno eyed her captor.

His
smile faded.
 
“You know what?
 
You’re a magnificent liar.”

“Why
do you say that?”

“Because
I know you called Redon about Ernesto Navarro’s money.”

Oh no…

Feeling
the tension change in his controlling hand, Señora Moreno futilely resisted as
the blade ascended, pointing between both of her eyes before he lowered it,
pushing it between her lips.

Just
before he sliced her face, in his British-accented Catalan, he said, “Time to
tell the truth, old lady.”

Despite
her absence of fear, Señora Moreno was unable to control her screams as he sawed
through her flesh.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Gage
clomped down the prison hallway, shield over his face, baton in his right hand—
this is how the guards walk
, he reminded
himself.
 
Swaggering.
 
Arrogant.
 
Uncaring.
 
He recalled first
entering through this same hallway, having no idea that he’d be stabbed soon
thereafter.
 
And while he could certainly
feel the prick of the scabs over his still-healing wounds, it was now his upper
buttocks and kidney area that screamed with each step.
 
Gage knew he needed to get a strong
antibiotic into his system—once they were free and clear of Berga.

The
double doors were just ahead and to the right.
 
According to Angelines, her car was just through the doors, situated
behind a screen of boxes.
 
As he pushed
through the door, he heard someone calling out from down the hallway—a man’s
voice.
 
Without hesitating, using the
mechanical clicking of the door’s metal latch as a reason to not hear the
voice, Gage walked straight through.

Damn it!

As
soon as he’d passed through the doors, he lurched to the left.
 
With Angelines’ car in his peripheral vision,
Gage wielded the baton from the shadowy blind spot.

Don’t follow.
 
Please, don’t follow.

Gage
waited, silently cursing their luck.
 
If
the guards learned that Angelines was in on this, the game was up.

A
droplet of sweat collected on Gage’s nose under the mask.
 
Quite a bit of time had passed.
 
Maybe whoever had yelled had dismissed Gage’s
coming into the warehouse.

The
door latch clicked.
 

The
door opened to the inside, beaming antiseptic light into the darkened
area.
 
Without any discernible caution, a
guard in full armor stepped through.
 
He
didn’t look left but walked straight ahead, as if he were routinely headed out
into the warehouse.
 
He must have been
one of the guards who’d been mustered in the main bay.
 
Gage reasoned the guard didn’t suspect him; he
probably assumed Gage was one of the tower guards.
 

There
was one problem: according to Angelines, the warehouse guard was required to
remain at his post at all times.
 
If this
guard stepped out into the warehouse, the warehouse guard would see him.
 
They would talk and then this one would ask
where the guard who just came through the double doors went.
 
The warehouse guard wouldn’t know who he was
talking about.
 
Then suspicions would
rise and all sorts of bad things would happen.

Gage
had no choice.
 
He lunged forward,
smacking the guard in the back of his neck, right where his spine met with his
skull.
 
It was a dangerous blow but, because
of the guard’s protective helmet, Gage was limited in his places to
strike.
 
As the baton had come whipping
across, Gage took a little bit off his swing.
 
The blow itself, even at eighty percent, knocked the guard out cold.
 
He went down in a heap, his helmet clattering
on the floor.
 
Gage whipped a thick
orange zip tie from his belt and secured his hands behind him.

The
door flung open again.
 
Gage whirled,
jerking the AutoMag from its unmatched holster, his finger on the trigger.

It
was Angelines.

“What
happened?” she asked, her hair still dripping as she stared at the downed
guard.

“He
was behind me in the hallway.
 
The muster
that you called must be over.
 
Now we’ve
got to haul ass before someone finds him, or us.”

She
clicked her key fob and the trunk automatically popped up.
 

“Let
me drive,” Gage said.
 
“This jig is about
to be up.”

“No,”
she still insisted.
 
“They’re going to
come after us with the same gusto, regardless.
 
And with me driving, if we can get out peacefully, it might buy us an hour
before they figure out what happened.”

Gage
climbed into the trunk.
 
“If something
happens, gun the gas and don’t let up.”
 
He tapped the piece of plastic leading to the back seat.
 
“Open this pass-through so you can hear
me.”
 
That done, he held the trunk lid
down with one hand and the AutoMag in his other.
 
When she started the car, he asked if she
could hear him.

“Yes,
clear as a bell.”

“Can
you tell the trunk is unlatched?”

She
peered out her door.
 
“No.
 
Now be quiet.”

Faster
than he would have liked, she backed from the wall of cardboard boxes as her
tires lightly squealed on the painted floor.
 
There was a light chirp from the brakes as she stopped reversing.
 
They drove forward a bit before stopping
again.
 
Gage heard the window going
down.
 

“Gotta
hurry, Pito,” she said, sounding routine yet irritable.

“What
happened to you,
capitana
?
 
You’re soaked,” came the distant voice.
 
“We heard on the radio that there were bottle
bombs on the second terrace.
 
Were you up
there?”

“That’s
why I called the muster.
 
I had one
thrown at me, too, and I got covered in some sort of acid.”

“Are
you okay?”

“I
will be once you open this door.
 
I tried
to wash it off but regular water won’t remove it completely.”

“But
capitana
, the infirmary…they have
something to neutralize acid.
 
Don’t
waste time driving to—”

“I’ve
already been to the infirmary and their stuff didn’t work!” she yelled.
 
“My skin’s on fire so I’m driving to the
hospital at Manresa and, because I think there could be more to the riot, I
didn’t want to pull anyone from the infirmary staff to go with me.
 
Now, can you open the damned door?
 
I’ll be back as soon as they treat my skin.”

“
Sí
, right away.”

The
mechanical sounds of the motorized door began, followed by her rolling up her
window.

“Good
girl,” Gage whispered.
 
She’d played that
well.
 
Then, just as she’d begun to pull
forward, he heard a distant sound from the back of the car.
 
It was a clunking sound, like a door being
open and shut.

Following
that was an urgent yell, in Spanish.
 
“Alto! Alto!”
 

“Alto,”
of course, meant “stop.”

Gage
pressed his face to the pass-through, yelling for her to go.
 
No sooner had he gotten the words from his
mouth than he heard the alarm, a whooping tone intermingled with a low,
menacing buzz.
 
He was thrown to the side
as the Opel lurched forward and into a fast turn.
 
He raised the trunk, risking being shot to
gage the situation.

Above
him, having passed through the threshold, Gage could see the guard Angelines
had just been talking to.
 
He was
brandishing a rifle, fumbling with it.
 
Aiming to the right of the man, though with the wheeling car his aim
would almost certainly be foul, Gage squeezed off a single .44 round, watching
the aluminum puncture several feet from the guard’s head.
 
Predictably for a poorly paid civil servant
who’d probably never been in a firefight, he scurried back inside his guard
shack.

“Hold
on!” came the warning from the front, followed by a calamitous boom as the car
blasted through a gate, sending a shudder through the Opel.
 
Gage heard the crackle of machine gun
fire.
 
He yanked the trunk lid back down,
latching it, just before they went through a second gate, this one sounding,
and feeling, more formidable against the light sheet metal of the car.
 
Then, as the machine gun fire faded, the car
accelerated onto a smooth surface.
 
It was
only a second or two before he felt the thumping.

“One
of my tires is flat,” she yelled.

“Ten
minutes until response?” he asked through the pass-through, fumbling for the
mechanical catch that would fold down the rear seat.
 
He glimpsed the depleted airbag fluttering in
her lap.

“At
least ten.
 
There will be two police on
duty in Berga, and one each in Cercs and Gironella.
 
They’ll be called and the Catalonian police
from Manresa—they’ll send a chopper.”

“You’re
headed towards Cercs.”

“That’s
what you said to do.”

Finally
the seat released, pushing forward.
 
When
Gage climbed through, he crouched in the back seat and pushed the seat back
into its original position.

“How’s
the car driving?” he asked, peering over her shoulder at the gauges.

“Pulling
hard to the right.”

Gage
rolled down the window, putting his head out.
 
“It’s your right rear tire.”

“What
now?” she asked.

He
recalled this stretch of two-lane road between Berga and Cercs.
 
It was rural, with scrub land on both sides
and not much else.
 
With the flat tire,
the car was laboring to do eighty-kilometers per hour.

“Can
you go faster?”

“The
pedal is in the floor.”

He
eyed the tachometer, finding it nearing the engine’s redline.
 
Then, at once, a cluster of red warning
lights came on.

“Shit!
 
They hit more than the tire.”
 
Gage glanced back, seeing dark smoke trailing
in their vortex.
 
His eyes moved upward,
noticing shredded threads hanging from the roof liner.
 
Bullet holes.
 
Then he noticed the cracked hole in the driver’s window, and that’s when
his eyes went to Angelines’ left leg.

It
was crimson, and her left hand was clamped on it.

“How
bad?” he asked.

“The
hole feels big but, oddly enough, it doesn’t hurt that much.”

Gage
pushed his hand back through his hair, reckoning that it had been two minutes
since their bust-out.
 
Assuming the call
to Cercs, which is where they were headed, had just taken place, the policia
there were jumping in their car right now.

The
turnoff to the lake house was about two kilometers ahead.
 

Was
there time?

“How
far from here to the town of Cercs?” he yelled.

“I…I
don’t know.
 
Maybe six or seven
kilometers?”

“Are
you sure?” he yelled, shaking her headrest.

“As
sure as I can be!” she yelled back over the whining engine.

He
glanced at the instrument cluster.
 
The
car was now only making forty kilometers per hour while the tachometer was in
the redline.
 
The rear wheel, grating on
the asphalt, was probably nearly gone and the car was struggling to keep
plowing forward.

The
engine would seize up soon and they’d be left out here on the barren road, like
an ugly red zit on an otherwise clear face.

A
small blue car passed them in the opposite direction, the driver peering at
them with curiosity.
 
Gage turned.
 
Thankfully the blue car kept going.
 
But Gage could see that the smoke from the
Opel had increased, whirling from the vortex created by both cars.

Then,
without hesitation, he leaned into the driver’s area and yanked the wheel to
the right, causing the Opel to careen off the road and down a steep
embankment.
 
Seeing a tree in their path,
Gage whipped the wheel left, causing the car to spin ninety degrees where it
came to a smoldering stop.

“Turn
off the car and get out.
 
If you see a
fire start from the heat, throw dirt on it.”

“But
my leg is—”

“Just
do it!” he yelled.
 
He lurched from the
backseat, scrambling back up the hill, twenty feet above the copse where the
car sat.
 
The area was wooded and hilly,
probably a hundred meters higher in elevation than the lake house which sat on
the valley’s hillside, north of their current location.