A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “What happens when there’s enough information to lower the hammer?” I said.

  “Then we bring that sucker down. But for our man, he’s free and clear. Protection and a new life if he thinks he needs it.”

  “A hell of a deal,” I said.

  “All of this hinges on whether our man has the kind of information we need. That’s where I’d need some proof.”

  “What sort?”

  “Start with a name. If it’s the right name, we’re off and running.”

  I finished my whiskey. How far to pull this thread? I wasn’t the hired gun Martens imagined me to be.

  But there might be an advantage to his task force thinking I was. At least long enough to confirm once and for all whether Sean Burke was as poisonous as his rep suggested.

  “Liashko.” I mouthed the word, on the off chance that there was a cell phone recording our talk from Martens’s jacket, placed so conveniently between us.

  “There we go,” Martens said.

  “And as far as we go. Until I see the details in writing.”

  “We will make that happen.” Martens pointed. He scooped his suit coat. “I gotta visit the can, meet you at the door.”

  I killed the chili-pepper lights and walked around to check that no one had left their belongings in the booths. Quiana let the last straggle of customers out. I bolted the emergency exit at the side for the night. Martens rejoined me at the door.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. We’re moving fast on this,” he said, plunging out into the cold.

  I watched him cross the street and hurry to his Acura, hunched against the wind.

  Something was seriously warped here. I didn’t fully buy Special Agent Martens’s offer to make me a confidential informant, out of the blue. Even odder, I was halfway to certain that he didn’t believe me when I’d told him I’d take the deal. So why in hell had he come all this way in the dead of night?

  I decided to take the truck from its space near Bully Betty’s and crash tonight at the marina, in my speedboat. Maybe talking to Hollis in the morning could help me make sense of this. I fetched my coat and said good night.

  My long-term parking spot for the Dodge was on Union, serving denizens of new residential buildings that had been built or converted to condominiums on the west side of the hill during the past couple of years. As my truck rattled down the ramp and onto the street, I passed a metallic-green Buick sedan, which had stopped to let a long-limbed dude hop into its backseat.

  I’d seen the guy before. This time he was wearing a hat pulled low and had the jacket collar popped to ward off the cold, but it wasn’t enough to fully hide his thick shadow of beard stubble. He’d been outside Sean Burke’s apartment building two nights before, smoking foreign cigarettes and watching the lobby.

  The smoker wasn’t alone this time. The Buick pulled out again, a hundred yards behind me. And closing.

  Thirty-Five

  Who were these bastards? Burke’s crew? Or working for Liashko himself?

  Whoever they were, I wasn’t going to let them follow me home. Shaking the Buick would be tough on the nearly empty roads at two in the morning. The grid of one-way streets in downtown might be my best chance. I turned left and at the next intersection jogged one block west to Boren. Not pushing my speed. Not yet. The Buick stayed with me, green paint glittering under the streetlamps. Like a blowfly keen to find a carcass. The Beretta in my pocket made a comforting weight.

  They followed me over the freeway and into downtown, drifting southward. I knew of an alley off Columbia that ran for two long blocks. If I could put some extra yards between me and the Buick, I’d veer into the alley without them spotting me and have my choice of half a dozen escape routes at the other end.

  I turned down the slope of Columbia. Two intersections away, the stoplight flashed red at 2nd Ave. The Buick drifted confidently behind me, one block back. I looked for a gap in the traffic, ready to run the light and leave them hanging.

  A black Taurus launched itself from the curb and past me in an instant, turning sharply to block my path. I jogged right by reflex. The truck’s grill slid off the Taurus’s fender with an agonized scrape.

  My engine sputtered and nearly stalled. The gas pedal felt as soft as butter. I downshifted and managed to keep the old Dodge moving, down the hill, more coasting than driving. Men were out of the Taurus now. Running to catch up. The truck’s engine finally gulped fuel and the Dodge lunged forward.

  The green Buick roared past me, trying to cut off my escape. I turned hard left and nearly brained myself on the ceiling as the truck bounded onto the sidewalk, then swung right again before I crashed into the building. The truck flew off the curb, screaming across 2nd, the Buick roaring after me through a blare of frightened car horns.

  The black Taurus caught up to me on my left side, the Buick now on the right. I couldn’t outrun them in the old Dodge.

  And ahead, a nightmare: Columbia Street closed to all traffic by a chain-link fence, readying for the viaduct demolition. If I stopped I was dead.

  I swung the wheel right. The side of the truck banged off the green Buick, once, twice, but the heavy car barely moved.

  I was out of road. All the way out.

  A chained gate blocked the on-ramp to the viaduct. The Dodge crashed through, sending the gate half off its hinges and links of chain flying like fastballs. I shifted again and the truck howled in protest as it tore up the ramp. Behind me, a screech and a low crunch of impact as the Taurus slammed into a solid plastic barrier at the side of the gate.

  The truck climbed, so slowly that I yelled at it out loud. Headlights in the rearview. They were coming.

  The on-ramp curved left to become the lower level of the abandoned highway, the southbound lanes. Demolition had already begun. I swung the wheel to avoid a pile of concrete rubble torn from the lanes above and left in pieces on this level for salvage teams to cart away.

  Another heap of debris ahead, a larger one. The truck bounced as I hit a loose chunk of old asphalt. Moonlight streamed through missing portions of the upper level, where tearing down the guardrails had also demolished huge shark bites of the pavement underneath.

  At the other end of the viaduct, a mile south, there must be another gate. A way out. The headlights of the Buick were closer now, the faster car eating up the distance despite the ragged road.

  I’d picked the wrong instant to check the rearview. The truck struck another chunk of highway and the wheel spun. Only stomping on the brake kept me from hitting the guardrail. I sped forward again, but the Buick was right on top of me.

  Ahead, just coming into full view in my headlights, a short wall of smashed concrete and twisted rebar blocked the entire road.

  No way around. No way over. The truck could never climb that crumbling, spiky mass, not even with all four wheels churning.

  I could make it on foot. I swung right to put the truck between me and the Buick. As I slammed the brake, the Beretta skidded from the seat where it had jostled from my pocket during the havoc and onto the floor of the truck. I unclipped my seatbelt to reach for it.

  A bullet shattered the passenger window, making me flinch from the flying shards. A second round punctured the door. I ducked and rolled away from the barrage, falling out of the truck to land next to the wall of destroyed highway.

  Shouts in what might be Russian or Ukrainian followed me as I half ran, half crawled up and over the bank of rubble, loose hunks tumbling and crumbling under my feet. One chunk tipped over, threatening to crush my ankle beneath it. I sprung away and fell to my hands and knees on the other side of the wreckage.

  Demolition of the highway was further along in this section. The road in front of me had become more a collection of huge mounds of cracked pavement than any kind of passable route. The night sky showed in patches ahead. I was up and running, even as I heard another pistol shot and more shouts from behind.

  The mounds of concrete would offer some cover. How many men would be chasing me? Fou
r, maybe five. Too many to fight even if I still had the Beretta. I’d have to run for it, all the way to the far end. Pray none of these thugs were competitive marathoners when they weren’t busy killing people for Burke and Liashko.

  No, I realized as I sprinted. Running was no good. There was no way to get off the viaduct until it ended all the way down near the stadium. Too far away, too many minutes to get there. They would send half their team with the car to head me off at the other gate. Maybe they already had.

  I was boxed in, just as surely as a bull in a slaughterhouse chute.

  Continuing to run would just exhaust my energy. Already my breath was tight in my chest, lactic acid building in my legs, the adrenal rush from the ambush having peaked. I needed a place to hide. Get a second wind. Attack with surprise and take a weapon from one of their crew.

  There. A taller pile of rubble than most, broken sections of roadside barrier heaped on their sides against one another, forming a crude low pyramid. I looked behind me to make sure none of my pursuers were in sight before I ducked behind the pile.

  I concentrated on slowing my breath. To ready myself for a fight, and so that I might hear something more than the pounding of my own heart. I peered between the leaning chunks of crumbled pavement to watch the road. Dust of decades-old cement filled my nose, as powdery as clouds from a chalkboard.

  They came at a fast walk. Two of them, one on either side of the four-lane highway. Both with handguns. Scuttling like spiders from mound to mound and avoiding the brighter spots of moonlit road. Searching. Maybe they’d found the Beretta and were more confident that I was unarmed. They circled each mound separately to flank anyone on the other side. Like me.

  I felt strangely calm. The part of my mind that emotionlessly calculated tactical options narrowed that list to one and ordered the rest of me to get on with it.

  I reached down to pick up a heart-sized chunk of rubble. With melting slowness, I made myself as flat as I could at the base of the outer side of the pyramid, near the guardrail, one leg coiled underneath.

  The two men were moving too fast to be silent. Each footfall made a distinct scrape on the pebble-strewn pavement. Twenty yards away now, checking the nearest mound of debris. Coming toward mine.

  They would move together around the pyramid where I lay. I listened as each rustling step closed the distance.

  A shoe landed three feet from my head. I sprung up, half blindly swinging the chunk of rubble in my fist with all my force to where his head should be. It nearly missed, striking the man high on his skull, tearing the fabric of his hood. He went sideways with a cry of pain and terror, almost leaping away in his panic. Away from me, and over the rail. He vanished.

  A second cry then, shorter and ending cruelly. There was surely a sound when he hit the street thirty feet below, but it did not carry.

  The other man shouted, “Stop!” behind me. Any instant now his bullets would rip through me, turning my heart and lungs into so much paste.

  They didn’t come. I turned. The lean dude with the midnight stubble stood twelve feet away, his face a sweated mask of hate.

  “You. Down,” he said, in heavily accented English.

  I stayed where I was. Might as well die on my feet.

  “Down.”

  I waited. He didn’t move, either. Maybe too smart to get close.

  Our little contest of wills didn’t last. A single headlight appeared to the south, weaving between the piles of debris. Their team had come through the gate at the far end. The Taurus stopped, its lone beam illuminating my angry foe and me, the other headlight and a good portion of the front grill crumpled by whatever the car had struck earlier.

  Three men scrambled from the car. All of them drawing guns, training them on me.

  A fourth emerged from the passenger’s seat. I didn’t need the moonlight to recognize his dark visage immediately.

  Sean Burke.

  He looked at me. The killer with the permanent five o’clock shadow said something to him in Russian. Burke walked to the rail and looked down at the body of his soldier on the street below.

  “Take him,” Burke said. His man stepped forward to whip a leather sap I hadn’t seen across my forehead.

  He got his wish. I went down, all the way. The last that any of my senses registered was a scouring rasp of grit against my cheek, and the strange sweet taste of powder from ammunition.

  Thirty-Six

  I woke to a shriek of metal against metal. Far enough into consciousness that I felt the brush of fabric shrouding my head. Hands grabbed me, lifted me out of a car—the clunk of the door closing, a thousand miles off—and the toe of my boot scraping dirt as they dragged me along.

  But I wasn’t truly alert until they threw me onto a table. Its surface frigid and so hard that the tap of my wristbone against it sent a crackle of pain up to my elbow. My bound elbow. My arms and hands were stuck tight to my sides. The stutter of duct tape coming off a roll snapped me to full attention.

  And brought the first wave of panic. I bit down on the rag that filled my mouth, stifling an instinctive cry of alarm. Where had they taken me? A more frightening question followed close on that thought: Why wasn’t I dead yet?

  The cloth bag over my head was infused with the sickly powder I’d tasted before blacking out. Powder from pistols, recently fired. The scent had filled my nose past the point of smelling it directly, to where I felt it like a physical mass in my forehead, pressing back against the ache of where I’d been sapped.

  A metal toolbox clanged down on the table by my ear. I tried moving my feet, without success. More tape at my ankles. Another pressure now, over my thighs, tightened until my quadricep muscles were crushed against bone. They were strapping me down. I sat up, lunging against the bindings. Futile. A hand gripped my throat and shoved me down so abruptly that my head bounced off the steel surface of the table. Before the impact stopped shooting sparks into my brain, they had me immobilized.

  Then came a ratcheting click. My feet rose, my head lowered. I yelled into the gag, a rasping caw barely audible above the machine sound. The table stopped halfway to vertical. Halfway to upside-down, my blood pounding my head from the inside.

  Someone pulled the bag off. I turned to see the tip-tilted world.

  Two men in twill workpants and zip-front athletic jackets pushed at a heavy rolling door, closing it. The squeal of tortured metal returned as the door’s wheels ground against their track. A visible square of night narrowed quickly to a sliver and was gone with a bang.

  Someone behind me swore in English. The lean killer with the heavy stubble came around where I could see him. He glared and yanked the rag from my mouth before walking away.

  The room was large, maybe twenty feet by more, depending on how far it went back behind me. Even craning my head, I couldn’t make out the far end of the room in my peripheral. Wooden rafters, high overhead, and a sloped roof like a barn. A floor of poured concrete.

  And a huge vat behind and to my left, pipes running from the vat into the wall. An acrid reek wafted from its direction, sharp enough to carve away the last of the powder smell.

  Think, Shaw. Two exits, one beside the rolling door and one to my left. No windows. I might have seen a flash of the green Buick before they’d closed the rolling door. If I could get free . . . They had removed my jacket and pullover, leaving only my T-shirt. Was my multitool with its blade still in the pocket of my jeans? I squirmed, trying to press my hip against my arm to feel it.

  The door to the outside opened and Burke walked in, another man with him. That made five. Burke was more sharply dressed than his thugs, in an ash-gray suit and black shirt.

  “Stepan. Have you called it in?” he said to the man with the stubble.

  “No.”

  “I’ll do it. Don’t start on him until I return. Anatoly may want to hear what this punk has to say, straight from the rat’s mouth.”

  Stepan nodded assent. Burke motioned to two of the other men and the three of them lef
t through the side door, to what I perceived was deeper into the interior.

  When Burke was gone, Stepan exhaled minutely. Burke’s reputation must have extended across both sides of the Pacific.

  “Scared?” I said.

  Stepan said something I assumed was another curse. “No one here is frightened of you.”

  “But you’re not all here, are you? At least one missing.”

  He glared balefully at me. Maybe deciding whether to cut my throat and be done with it. Instead he walked away to a table against the wall. I had to work to focus, the upside-down angle messing with my eyes.

  Stepan’s partner, a gangly man with a hoop earring in his right lobe, watched him and grinned. When Stepan returned he carried what looked like a gallon paint can. He set the can down close to my head. A puff of the bitter fumes I’d smelled before seared my nostrils.

  “Gennady was a good boy,” Stepan said. “Very excited about visiting America. His first time.”

  “A hunting trip.”

  “You joke. This is not funny.”

  “So do something about it. Cut me loose, and you and your buddy can beat the shit out of me like real men. If you’ve got any guts, even two against one.”

  “Not funny yet,” he clarified, waving a finger and then drawing a circle in the air to indicate the room. “Burke tells us about this place. Where he makes people go away. Even policemen.”

  Guerin had told me about the ATF agent who’d disappeared while working undercover on Liashko. Marcus Santora. This had been his last stop.

  “Look.” Stepan drew something from his chest pocket to show me. An eyedropper. His hand dipped to the can and returned, the dropper held delicately between thumb and forefinger.

  The open tip of the eyedropper showed a trace of milk-white fluid. A fresh reek rose from the disturbed can.

  Some kind of lye compound, I guessed. Sodium hydroxide or a similar mix. Readily available and incredibly corrosive, especially when heated.