Shadow

by James Swallow

  It was a good hit. The pale woman let out a pained, animal cry and reeled away. Lucy went on the offensive, spinning the Glock around to use it as a knuckleduster, landing a punch that glanced off Axelle’s arm, tearing a rip in her leather jacket. Blood streamed from a cut there, and more of it was drooling out of the pale woman’s mouth, making her look demonic in the red light from the sizzling flare.

  Hits and blocks passed between them, one after another, and Axelle swayed, briefly losing a beat. Another opening was too good to pass up, and Lucy leaned in, swinging for it.

  Axelle’s error evaporated. It was a feint, a deliberate misstep to draw Lucy in, and she had taken the bait. The woman fired off two brutally pitched sideswipe kicks that landed on Lucy’s shin, exactly at the point where her stability was weakest. She lost balance and fell, down to the loose-packed gravel, hands splashing into the spilled fuel.

  The pale woman used her momentum to pivot into another attack, coming in for the kill. Her leg snapped up into a spin kick, a lethal neck-breaker aimed straight at Lucy’s throat.

  Lucy threw up her bleeding, lacerated arm and caught the leg before the hit could connect, trapping it and twisting it with a wet crackle of fracturing bone. The motion tore Axelle’s poise to shreds and she was forced into an uncontrolled tumble, slamming into the ground.

  The pale woman’s head struck the corner of a steel rail and she jerked as if she had been hit by an electric shock, but only for a moment. A low, long gurgle escaped her blood-colored lips and then she was still.

  Wincing from the pain in her arm and her leg, Lucy dragged herself up into a crouch and took a shaky step toward Axelle. Her opponent stared blankly at the ceiling above them, dark blood seeping out into the shingle from her cracked skull.

  Lucy clasped her wounded wrist, limping back toward the rear of the truck as the red flames from the flare abruptly shifted, throwing new voids of shadow across the walls. She heard heavy footfalls crunching on the gravel chippings and came face to face with the man she had shot through the knee.

  “Godverdomme doos!” he spat.

  He was red-faced with exertion and anger, supporting his ruined leg with a metal spar as an improvised walking stick. He brandished the crackling flare at her like it was a dagger.

  “Sorry, don’t speak needle-dick,” she shot back.

  “You can scream!” His English was thickly accented and sputtering. “I burn you alive!”

  “Fuck.”

  Parts of her jacket and trousers were soaked through with gasoline. If a spark from the flare came close enough to ignite it, she would be a torch in seconds.

  The guy saw the understanding in her eyes and he showed his teeth, revelling in the moment.

  But then a piece of the shadows came alive behind the man and swarmed over him. Lucy glimpsed a dark-haired guy in a black hoodie come from out of nowhere and snake his arms around the thug’s neck, dragging him away from her.

  Caught by surprise, the thug panicked and flailed, but Lucy’s silent rescuer pulled his arms into a lock and from a sleeve came the dull flash of light off a blade. The knife slid up through the soft flesh under the thug’s jaw, and that was pretty much the end of it.

  Twitching his last, the thug dropped in a heap, and the figure in the hoodie gathered up the flare before throwing it as far down the tunnel as he could.

  “Uh … thanks.”

  In the silence that followed, Lucy’s eyes darted around, looking for anything she could use to defend herself. The Glock had gone, lost in the fight with Axelle.

  The man in black rolled down his hood. A hard, Nordic face with soldier’s watchful eyes looked back at Lucy, and then she placed him. The last time she had seen this guy, they were in an unmarked police SUV on the tarmac at Keflavík Airport.

  “Loki,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “That’s not my name,” he told her, but he didn’t volunteer a correction.

  The Viking Squad officer knelt by the body of the man he had killed and checked the thug’s pockets.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Lucy demanded. “Don’t get me wrong, happy to have the assist, but—”

  “Did you really think that Larsson would let you and the Englishman leave, without some sort of assurance?” He didn’t look up. “We are not stupid. We concealed a tracking device in your bag. I was on the first flight to Brussels after yours.”

  “Just you, or did you bring the God of Thunder as well?”

  “Just me.” He paused. “This is low profile. Viking Squad has no authority to operate outside of Icelandic territory.”

  “And yet you did just kill someone.”

  “Arguably, a wanted terrorist responsible for crimes against my country,” he corrected. “And you are welcome. For the record, I was told to keep my distance unless civilians were directly at risk.” He found a set of keys and tossed them to her, nodding at the truck. “Here. Get them out.”

  Lucy walked back to the vehicle. The sounds from inside had gone ominously silent during the shooting.

  “You didn’t think about stepping in earlier to help out?”

  Loki—she couldn’t think of him any other way now—gave a non-committal shrug.

  “I followed you into the city. Kept you under surveillance. When you split up from Dane, I chose to monitor you, as you are the more dangerous.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “We need to inform the local police about this,” he went on.

  “Be my guest.” She unlocked her smartphone and threw it to him. “But just stick to the basics.”

  As he worked the phone, the latch on the back of the truck opened with a squeal of hinges, and Lucy had to duck back to avoid being hit in the face by a blunt piece of wood wielded by a terrified woman in a hijab. She yelled rapidly in her native language, cursing them with every damning epithet under the sun.

  “Whoa, sister!” Lucy held up her hands in surrender, catching sight of the teenage girl holding her little brother tightly in the shadows at the back of the cargo space. “I won’t hurt you!” she called. “We’re here to save you! I want to get you away from here, you understand? We’re going to get you safe and find your husband!”

  “Meddur?” The woman let her makeshift club drop, and spoke in halting English. “Where is he?”

  “Someone I trust is looking for him right now.” Lucy offered her hand. “I know you’re scared, but you have to trust us. Please, come with me.” She dug deep to recall the name of the wife from the data Saito had dropped on them. “You’re Sakina, right? The kids are Aksil and Tadla? My name is Lucy.” She jerked her thumb at the Icelandic cop. “You can call him Loki, like in the movies.”

  Sakina gathered her children to her and climbed out of the truck without any help, but then she stopped and took Lucy’s arm, giving it a quick once-over.

  “You are bleeding.”

  “It happens,” she agreed, glancing in the direction of Axelle’s body.

  “God will judge her for her sins,” said Sakina, her expression hardening as she saw the dead woman. Then she looked away, back to Lucy. “Your wrist, it must be bandaged. I am a nurse, I know this.”

  “We need to go,” insisted the Icelander. “The police are on the way. I have a car up on the road. If we stay, there will be many questions which none of us want to answer.”

  He crouched in front of the little boy, offering to carry him and smartly distracting the kid from the sight of two dead people behind him. On a nod from his mother, Aksil climbed into Loki’s arms and the five of them made their way back up the ramp.

  “Where is father?” said the wide-eyed girl, trailing along on her mother’s arm. “Did they kill him?”

  “I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Lucy said firmly, even as stone formed in her chest, accreting around the words.

  Another promise made, said an acid voice in the back of her thoughts. Can you keep this one?

  “They sent him away to die,” said t
he teenager, tears streaking her face.

  “That is not true,” said Sakina, putting on a brave face for the girl. “These people are going to help us, Tadla. They will bring him back.”

  A sudden thought occurred to Lucy as they reached a rented Nissan SUV parked on the curb.

  “Sakina … do you know where Meddur is going?”

  “No.” The woman ignored the Icelander as he beckoned them into the vehicle, instead grabbing the Nissan’s first aid kit to dress the cuts on Lucy’s arm. “Those animals, they think we are stupid because our skin is a different color than theirs.” She hesitated, holding back tears as she relived those moments. “But I saw something … The pale one had papers on her. A map.”

  Lucy didn’t wait, and she bolted back down the ramp, the half-done bandage on her arm trailing off in streamers of white.

  “Keyes!” The SR officer shouted after her. “There’s no time! I hear sirens!”

  Lucy heard them too, distant but getting closer by the minute.

  “Don’t wait for me!” she called. “Get on the road, I’ll catch you up!”

  Loki muttered something irritably under his breath and he jogged away. She paused briefly to haul one of the stowed SR400 bikes on to the railbed between the tracks, and then crouched by Axelle’s body.

  Lucy searched the dead woman. Just as Sakina had said, there was a folded-up tourist map in her inside jacket pocket, the kind that sat in leaflet racks in bars, hotels and restaurants. She flicked it open, revealing a color-coded plan of central Brussels. Pre-planned exit routes from the city via road and canal were marked in red ink, along with three street intersections. One was the location of the waterfront warehouse, the second the disused métro tunnel.

  The third was the target.

  TWENTY

  The first grasping claws of raw panic scraped over Marc’s chest as he cast around the cobbled pedestrian street. He tried to look in every direction at once, feeling the cold run up through his veins. Wasting time dealing with the Lion’s Roar thugs back in the shopping arcade had taken too long.

  Marc swallowed hard, feeling sick inside at the thought of the horrors that would unfold if Meddur al-Baruni carried his deadly payload to its ultimate destination. The death and pain that had been unleashed on the streets of Benghazi would be repeated here in Brussels.

  An awful paralysis threatened to engulf him.

  Did I buck the odds one time too many? Is this fate balancing it out? Marc shook his head, angrily dismissing the bleak thought. No. There’s still time. We can still stop this.

  He threaded around the back end of the shopping arcade, past more fenced-off areas where construction was still under way on thick concrete pilings sunk into the ground. The narrow street opened out into a wide avenue, and the sound of jaunty music came up on the breeze. Somewhere ahead, a band was playing and people were clapping along.

  Marc remembered the students he had seen before with their instruments, and the brightly colored leaflets being handed out. The festival taking place today was a freestyle celebration of the city’s musical heritage, past and present. He followed the tune toward the growing numbers of a large crowd moving in the same direction, and those razor claws around his chest gripped tighter.

  It became starkly obvious where Verbeke intended to trigger the second Shadow device. Before Marc was the perfect target—Grand-Place, the venerable old city square where temporary stages had been set up for bands to play their songs, where hundreds of people thronged together in close proximity. It was an ideal ground zero for a germ warfare attack.

  Marc pushed through, weaving around the slow-walking tourists and the relaxed locals, entering the square from Rue Charles Buls on the southern side. On one axis, the city’s town hall thrust a baroque tower toward the sky, rising from an arcade of arches and ornate windows. Along the other flanks of the square, guildhalls dating back as far as the 1600s shimmered in the sunlight. Intricate gold detailing and elegant statuary stood out on every frontage, designating houses dedicated to carpenters, bakers, brewers and other trades. It was an elegant and beautiful space, but that was lost on Marc in this moment. He saw a vast kill box, a corral enclosing countless more potential victims for the Shadow virus.

  The square was thick with people. Around the edges, busy cafes and pubs spilled out on to open-air benches, and in the center a crescent-shaped dais formed the locus for the music festival. The band currently at play were blasting through a pacy jazz-fusion number and the crowd around them clapped along enthusiastically. The vibe in the square was crackling, positive energy, but for Marc it drummed into his skull like the pressure wave before a deafening crash of thunder.

  He jumped up on to the edge of a vacant bench to look out over the heads of the crowd, but there were too many people for him to see across Grand-Place from one side to another. A police officer in a blue jacket looked in Marc’s direction with a questioning stare, and he dropped back down before he drew too much attention. The Glock pistol was in the leather satchel he had snatched from the arcade, and the last thing he needed was to have some dutiful cop come and take a look.

  Marc ducked into the closest of the old guild houses. The ground floor was a Starbucks and it was busy, with a thick line of people queued up for their coffees and pastries. Marc strode quickly past them to the toilets at the rear of the building. He made a smart turn through a door marked ALLEEN WERKNEMERS and found himself on a landing with stairs leading up and down. Taking the steps two at a time, he reached the second floor and shoved a pile of spare chairs out of his way, finding his way to the windows.

  From up here, the span of Grand-Place was visible, and Marc scanned the crowd, looking for al-Baruni and the dark shape of the pack he carried.

  His smartphone buzzed and Marc seized it. Another message. The mirror program had picked up the signal being sent once more, which meant the man had to be close at hand. Marc was right on top of him.

  The directive on the phone screen was chilling.

  “Take off the pack,” Marc read aloud. “Carry it to the town hall.”

  His head jerked up and he stared into the crowd.

  There!

  The man’s worried aspect briefly appeared in a gap among the other faces, and Marc watched him set off in the direction of the old building, slipping the black nylon daypack off his shoulder.

  At a full-pelt sprint, Marc raced back down the stairs and bolted through the coffee shop. Emerging into the bright daylight again, he made a split-second choice to go around the edge of the square rather than press through the crowd after al-Baruni. The satchel over his shoulder banged against his back as he took the pace, moving as fast as he dared. The police officer who had spotted him before was still in the area, and if he ran, Marc’s profile would stick out a mile.

  As he approached the arches of the town hall, Marc caught sight of al-Baruni once more, shuffling slowly through the crowd. The man’s face was fixed in a morose cast, his shoulders hunched as if an impossible weight was bearing down upon him. Around them, people were singing along as the band on the stage approached the high point of their performance.

  Now or never, Marc told himself, and he stepped out in front of his quarry.

  “Meddur al-Baruni!” he called, loud enough for the man to hear him. “I just want to talk.”

  The other man saw him and jerked to a halt. He turned deathly white as the color drained from his face.

  “No…” he began, desperately looking around. On all sides, locals and tourists sang along, unaware of the drama unfolding among them. Al-Baruni put the black backpack down at his feet and held up his hands. “Please, don’t get in my way.”

  Marc came closer, until he was almost within arm’s reach. He kept his hands at his sides, but the satchel was open and if he needed to, Marc could have his pistol out in under a second.

  Don’t make me do it, mate, he thought.

  “You know what they want, right?” Marc nodded at the pack. “You know what that is?”
r />   The other man blinked. “I think so.”

  “I need you to give it to me.”

  “No!” Al-Baruni shrank back, shaking his head, snatching up the pack and holding it close. “They will know! I can’t…” He wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow with the heel of his hand. “Please, my family—”

  “He took them.” Marc concentrated on maintaining a level, moderated tone to his voice, even though his heart was hammering in his chest. “Noah Verbeke. He made you do this. He told you he would hurt them if you refused.”

  “Yes!”

  “Meddur, I am here to make sure that doesn’t happen. Let me help you.”

  “How?” The word was almost a sob.

  Cautiously, Marc removed his smartphone.

  “You want to be sure your family is okay, yeah? If I can prove that to you, will you give me the bag?”

  The man eyed him with suspicion.

  “I heard them. Through this.” He showed Marc the smartwatch around his wrist. “They are his prisoners!”

  “Maybe not.”

  Marc tapped the speed-dial icon for Lucy’s smartphone and held his breath. He had no way to know if she had been successful in her part of the plan, and the fact Lucy had not already contacted him to confirm that was a bad sign. Everything was happening so fast, Marc could only hope that they could still make it through this day without more loss of life.

  He held the phone to his ear. Each buzz-buzz of the ringtone seemed to take forever, and Marc let his hand drop to rest on the satchel.

  If this doesn’t work, there’s only one other way this is going to end.

  The phone clicked as the line connected and Marc let out a held breath.

  “Lucy! It’s me, do you have them?”

  “Is that Dane?”

  A man’s voice asked the question, and the shock of hearing him brought Marc up short. The accent sounded familiar, but Marc couldn’t place him. The close background noise indicated the man was inside a moving vehicle.