Viper Moon (28 page)

“I don’t know. But I don’t think anyone is going to deliver the kids to his doorstep.”

Dacardi said nothing. He didn’t speak again until we turned off River Street and drove into the industrial area along the river. Warehouses with massive unloading docks lined every inch of the riverbank. Crestline Warehouse parking lot. “Too much going on here,” he grumbled. He cut the Mercedes’s engine. “My wife, she used to go to that place, the . . . Angel?”

“Archangel.”

“She talked about him, that man, like . . . like he was a god.”

I agreed. “He has that effect on some people.”

“But not you.”

Damn, I didn’t want Michael to be part of the conversation, but I had to give him some answer. “I’ve been around the Barrows long enough to be wary of everything.”

He studied me with dark, steady eyes. “You don’t trust him?”

“At this point, everyone in the Barrows is an enemy until he proves he’s a friend—and I’ll keep a damn close eye on my friends.”

Dacardi nodded. “You’re like me, bitch, not like that cop. Good man, Flynn. Better watch out for that. I married a good woman. She can’t deal with some things.”

Relationship counseling from Carlos Dacardi? The bad part? I knew he was right.

“It sucks, Dacardi. But what else is there when you love someone?”

“Yeah. What else?”

Inside the warehouse, the second shift loaded pallets of boxes on trucks. They shouted, laughed, and cursed, trying to force their voices over the noise of industry.

Dacardi led me to a door and into a cool, dark cave illuminated by multiple monitors. Two men sat watching the screens, but both quickly left when he and I entered.

“I own nine warehouses,” Dacardi said. “Lease most of them out. Keep two cameras hidden in each building. Like to keep watch on things. Don’t usually look at everything, but I was down here the other night and saw this.” He pointed at a monitor.

The screen showed nothing more than stacks of boxes on pallets in an empty warehouse.

“There’s no one there?” I asked.

“Wharf security checks the outside,” he said. “Most stuff is too big to carry out without heavy equipment, so it’s not that easy to steal.” He chuckled. “But it can be done. Bunch of guards on a single building would make people suspicious anyway.” His voice dropped a notch. “Something’s strange. Got a good eye for numbers. Numbers on those boxes are the same. Nothing’s moved for a month. I charge through the ass for that building. You want to store something a long time, you move it to a cheaper place. What you think?”

“Who’s leasing the space?”

“Corporation. Malison Dividend.” He bent to study the screen. “Second year, five-year lease.”

“So what we see here could have come in a little at a time?”

Dacardi straightened. “Yeah.”

“And you think it’s guns? Plastic?”

He nodded, his eyes on the screens. “Seen boxes like that before. Same construction. See how the corners are put together? The way the straps are crossed. Maybe coincidence, but it feels wrong.”

“Could I get in? Have a look around?”

He lifted a plastic card out of his pocket. “My warehouse. My lease.”

The sun had almost set when we arrived at the warehouse. Dacardi kept in phone contact with his men, who in turn followed the wharf security vehicle making its rounds. One of his men drove us to the warehouse in the Mercedes and let us out at the front door. The metal building, one of the larger ones on the block, towered over us like a dirty green temple to the gods of industry. Enormous bay doors on the front allowed big trucks in and out. Equally large doors and a massive lifting apparatus would be on the dock behind for goods loaded and unloaded from barges. A sign mounted on the wall by a small door proclaimed OFFICE. NO SOLICITORS.

Dacardi swiped a plastic card in the lockbox attached to the door. The lock clicked and he jerked it open. We quickly stepped inside.

“Sorry, fuckers,” Dacardi said. “Had the codes changed like they didn’t think I’d programmed in a master. My property. I come here when I damn well want.” He stepped up to a panel with a digital readout and keypad mounted on a wall, punched in some numbers, and all the lights on the pad blinked green.

“I hate fucking computers,” Dacardi said. He sneered at me like I was personally responsible for the electronic age. “I hate that bastard who takes care of mine. Have to pay him more a year than I pay my second man.”

“What are you going to do if it is weapons?”

“Don’t know. Get some men and trucks down here, move ’em . . . Don’t know. Gonna take the fall no matter what.”

I agreed. Dacardi owned the warehouse, and no matter what happened, no one would believe he didn’t own the guns.

The office had an empty water cooler and a clean desk, a room not used in some time. It fit with Dacardi’s assertion of inactivity.

We entered the hushed confines of the main warehouse. Though we were the only living beings in this steel cave, menace hung in the air like the ghost of violence. Dacardi carried a powerful flashlight. Nothing but numbers marked the crates, stacked five high, two by two in rows. They reached the metal ceiling far above us. None were open like the one at yesterday’s site. “I don’t know, Dacardi. Look for pallets set apart, away from the crates.”

“You mean like those?” He flashed his light between two rows. Sure enough, five pallets sat near the back wall like tombstones clothed in shrink-wrap. More C-4.

We approached cautiously.

“What do you think?” Dacardi spoke like he knew the answer to his own question.

“I think we should probably leave here now.”

“Yeah. Too many for me to get them out without somebody seeing. I’ll call my lawyer, then be a Good Samaritan and call the cops.”

“Best you can do, I guess. Don’t tell them I was here, or you’ll need more than lawyers.”

“You been a bad girl, huh?”

“No. Guilt by association. Like a crime boss owning a warehouse full of guns that aren’t his. I’ve blown up one cache and found another. My credibility level is in the basement.”

“Your cop?”

“I think he likes me. And believes me. But he’s only one man.”

Dacardi grunted. “Crime boss. You know how hard I worked to get rid of that—”

The sound came, soft, the opening of a door, a slight change in air pressure, then the sliding of a shoe on concrete. Someone had come in the front. Someone with a key and all the codes. I glanced at Dacardi. He switched off the flashlight. As he did, the main warehouse lights flashed on. Ten men moved toward us across a hundred and fifty feet of open space. They’d spread out. One wore a security guard uniform, but the others looked like dockworkers. I doubted they’d be dumb and drugged like the Bastinados.

I was sure they’d be armed. Would they shoot? The guns and ammo really weren’t much of a danger, but the four pallets had the potential to blow us all to hell. Overwhelming us with numbers would be their best bet.

“Is there a back door?” I asked.

“ ’Bout fifteen feet behind us.”

“Will your card—?”

“Back door should open.”

“You carrying?” I asked.

Dacardi nodded. “Little .38 in my pocket.”

I drew my gun. “Let’s go. I’ll hold them back while you open the door.”

We quickly backed away to the door. The men coming toward us slowed when they saw my gun. They jerked to a stop when I pointed it at the four pallets, confirming my suspicions of their contents. C-4 wouldn’t likely explode from a single bullet, but they obviously didn’t know that. Or it was something more volatile than C-4.

Dacardi cursed from behind me where he worked at the door.

“Got it,” he said as the door opened.

We rushed out the door and onto the docks. Our only escape was the river. I could swim, but the Sullen ran deep and cold here. And it was at least thirty feet down to the water.

Dacardi slammed the door. The lock clicked shut, but would probably open from the inside unless . . .I scanned the area. The docks themselves were clean and clear except for the winches and other loading equipment, but six-foot strips of heavy angle iron lay piled near the building. I grabbed a couple and wedged them against the door.

“How are we going to—?”

“Swim. You swim, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m not much on diving.” Not thirty feet anyway.

“Don’t know much, do you?”

“Not about docks.”

He grinned. Great Mother, the crime boss was having fun.

We ran to the end of the dock, where a ladder dropped to a smaller floating platform.

I jumped at the whir of the big bay doors on the back of the building opening.

Dacardi had already started down the ladder.

I turned back. Our pursuers, crouched low, hurried toward us. I couldn’t shoot and climb a ladder, so I holstered the gun and started down. I made six feet when one of the men pounded across the dock. I glanced up. The barrel of a pistol pointed straight down at me.

Out of the blue, two shots cracked into the night. The gunman standing over me collapsed as the top of his head popped off. A splash of warm blood hit me and ran over the dock’s edge. His weapon, released by nerveless fingers, hit the river below with a small splash.

I hurried on down the ladder. Blood and brains? No problem. I needed a bath anyway.

The last rays of sunset painted the sky, and the automatic security lights flashed on.

I jammed my gun into my holster as tight as it would go. As one, Dacardi and I made a running dive into the black water of the Sullen River. Water closed over my head as I entered a cold, silent midnight envelope.

Too quiet. They should have been shooting at us by now.

I stroked as far and fast as I could underwater, trying to reach the current in the main channel and ride downstream. Finally, I had to surface. When I did, my eyes burned with the dirty, petroleum-filled water. I had to fight to stay up. My boots dragged me down. If I had shoes, I could kick them off, but I’d laced the boots tight, all the way above my ankles.

“Dacardi,” I yelled, gulping a mouthful.

He surfaced beside me, spit out some water. “Swim!” he shouted. He surged ahead of me.

We struggled on. Still no shots followed us. I glanced back.

The dock suddenly flashed with fire. Not an accident, I’d bet. Someone would rather burn the warehouse than have the weapons taken by the police.

I swam harder without making much headway. I called on all the strength the Mother gave me, pumped my arms, and willed my heavy-weighted feet to kick faster. My legs felt like tree branches loaded with ice in a sudden storm.

Dacardi fell back to swim beside me, though only the Mother knows why. He’d been wearing shoes and had probably long since shed them. Sirens sounded in the distance—the far distance, I hoped. No one needed to be close, not as close as we were.

Flames lit the night now. They had spread to sheet the warehouse’s back wall. I jerked at an explosion. A small one. Probably a fuel tank or something. We’d finally caught the current, and the Sullen dragged us downstream—but not fast enough.

The warehouse exploded with a catastrophic blast louder than anything ever heard in Duivel. Someone had detonated the C-4. Dacardi’s hand seized the back of my neck. He made a powerful dive for the river’s bottom. We plunged down into the cold, dark depths filled with death.

When I was a kid in school, they told us not to tap on the aquarium tank because it hurt the little fishes’ ears. They suspended me for beating the shit out of a boy who kept pecking at the glass with a ruler. Now I played the fish.

Sound, incredible sound, more felt than heard, vibrated my bones. The river convulsed in a great shock wave. Caught in the throes of its giant spasm, I tumbled and rolled like a surfer losing a battle with a mighty wave. For a brief moment it tossed me high out of the water. I caught a glimpse of an inferno burning like the mouth of hell before gravity plunged me back into the roiling river.

I gulped one breath before water closed over my head again. The river churned around me like a giant washing machine. Light blazed as the river, the oily surface, caught fire. A flash, only seconds, but it warmed the water around me. Darkness enveloped me again.

My lungs burned. Just a few moments and . . . maybe it would be quick. Like going to sleep, I’d read once. Like the person who wrote those words knew.

My body jerked. Something seized my arm and dragged me through the darkness. I should help . . . should kick my feet . . . My head popped out of the water. I gasped and sucked in some water, but it had air mixed in it. I coughed, choked . . . My head went under again, and was immediately jerked back, this time by my hair.

“Come on, bitch,” Dacardi shouted in my ear. He had my arm, and he slung it over a white foam cylinder, the kind they use to keep boats from hitting the dock. Thank the Mother. I locked onto it. My boots tugged at my legs, but I clung tighter.

Dacardi moved us toward the shore. Pieces of burning debris and other unidentifiable objects floated around us. We’d been pushed out of the main channel. If not, we’d be on our way to the Mississippi. Blood seeped from a cut in his forehead, and with each breath, he gave a small gasp of pain. I kicked with my iron-weighted feet. My legs protested by sending tremors of fire through the muscles.

The inferno upriver lighted the sky like a second sunset. Occasional smaller explosions cracked now and then. That was probably the ammunition. The blast and the surge of water, combined with the river current, had taken us a quarter mile downstream.

My feet touched bottom. Soft, mushy stuff clung to my boots like a giant bowl of toxic pudding. The bank, only a small place between warehouses, made a short, slick incline. They built no docks here because the channel cut to the river’s other side and it wasn’t deep enough to bring the barges this far.