by Mike Maden
Jack inserted his wireless earbuds and put his phone on silent mode. “Call me if anyone shows up. Otherwise, I won’t be long, twenty minutes at most, once I get inside.”
“I’m still not crazy about this.”
“The sooner I leave, the sooner I get back.”
“Promise me you won’t attempt to get on board that ship.”
Jack held up two closed fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
A flickering sodium lamp high up on the weathered brick building behind them strobed her worried face in a ghostly yellow cast.
“Please be careful, Jack.”
“Always.”
Triple-checking that no one was in sight, Jack dashed from behind the dumpster and over to the corner of the warehouse building. In the dim light he saw that the green doors were padlocked shut. He had lockpicks—a lesson learned after Singapore—but the size and weight of just one of those doors was problematic and would make a helluva racket when opened. If locked, they were probably also alarmed.
He tried the small entrance door to his left. The door handle was locked, and the door itself was also padlocked shut with a heavy-duty hasp.
Crap.
He glanced up. One of the twelve cantilevered glass windows thirty feet above his head was open, but all of them, including the open one, were iron-barred against thieves. Even if he could find a ladder or some other means to scale the wall, he wouldn’t be able to get in. Worst-case scenario, he could set a camera in the window—but again, only if he could reach it. On the other hand, whoever had opened it in the first place might decide to close it tomorrow and find the camera, so that wasn’t a good option.
His last shot lay on the other side of the warehouse, facing the water. Jack made his way through the low, leafy branches of a fallen tree wedged against the building, then picked his way through the rest of the vacant lot strewn with old pipes, fittings, scaffolding, and bricks.
Moving as quickly and quietly as he could, he finally reached the rear of the building, his back pressed against the brick. He listened for a moment. The cold river water chucked against the steel hull of the ship he’d seen earlier. The acrid tang of cigarette smoke bit his nose, but he didn’t hear any footsteps or voices.
He crouched low and ducked his head around the corner. The stern of the ship was twenty feet away, and at least that high in the air. BALTIC PRINCESS and ST. PETERSBURG were painted on the hull. A mast light shone overhead, and a dim lamp glowed inside the bridge.
He also saw the faint red tip of a burning cigarette on the fantail. He pulled out his night-vision monocular and took a look. In the dim mast light, a smallish man in a dark woolen coat and watch cap leaned on the rail, staring out at nothing. If he was the night watch, then Jack wouldn’t have much of a problem getting on board later, his promise to Liliana notwithstanding. First, though, he needed to get inside the warehouse.
Jack scanned the rest of the ship’s deck but didn’t see anybody else. He took a long look down the length of the pier that fronted this side of the river. He saw one other ship with a few lights on but no human movement anywhere. He turned his attention back to the man on the stern just in time to see him toss his cigarette over the side, turn around, and disappear back into the ship.
Seeing his chance, Jack dashed around the corner. He couldn’t believe his luck. One of the two warehouse doors on this side of the building had been left open about four feet—just wide enough to walk in and out. Someone had been either too lazy or too careless to shut it entirely.
Jack slipped silently up to the entrance and crouched down low again. He listened. Nothing. His nose didn’t detect any sweat or smoke.
“Better to be lucky than good,” he reminded himself with a smile as he ducked in through the opening.
The warehouse floor, which he felt more than saw, contained a few rows of stacked pallets, but otherwise was mostly empty. The faint light from the mast outside barely reached into the dark, cavernous space. Still hearing nothing, Jack pulled out his smartphone and activated the flashlight feature, then advanced toward the far wall to place his first camera.
Passing the first row of pallets of bagged cement, he felt the faint rush of swiftly moving air. He ducked the swinging fist just enough that it only grazed the top of his head, but the heft and speed of the arm throwing it carried enough energy to spin him slightly clockwise.
Jack used that momentum to accelerate a driving left hook that landed with a punishing thud into the muscled chest of the monster he’d seen standing in the doorway earlier that day.
The big man had his own left jab, and Jack suffered mightily for it as the rock-hard fist crashed into his right ear, driving the earbud deeper into the ear canal, its hard plastic stabbing the soft, sensitive tissues.
Jack yelped at the sharp pain but used its energy and the adrenaline dump to drive an openhanded punch at the man’s meaty throat. He aimed for the larynx but missed, hitting the much taller man at the base of his neck, where it met the collarbone instead. The hulking giant gasped for breath but didn’t slow his attack until—
Crack! A pistol fired from the doorway, the sharp report ringing daggers in Jack’s ears as a nine-millimeter round slammed into the cement bag just above the taller man’s head.
“Stop! Policja!” Liliana shouted from the doorway. She was a black shadow behind the blinding glare of her pistol’s tac light.
Both men turned. Liliana approached slowly.
“Jack? Are you—”
But before she could finish her sentence, another shadow lunged from behind her, his hand held high, holding a truncheon. The force of the blow against her skull knocked the pistol out of her hand and sent it tumbling to the concrete floor, spinning the light like a strobe.
Her unconscious body slammed into the pavement as Jack shouted, “Lil!” and ran toward her, but two steps in, his own skull exploded in searing pain, blinding his mind an instant before he crashed into the oil-stained concrete.
60
BALTIC SEA
Each beat of Jack’s heart stabbed his brain.
His eyes fluttered open with the stench of solvents. He saw nothing in the darkness save random, jagged patches of dim light. His aching hands were bound with zip ties. He reached forward and felt the curve of the cold, oily steel wall.
He was inside a drum. His eyes widened with panic and his senses flared. He was suddenly aware of a slight undulation tossing his inner ear. He was moving.
A ship at sea.
The chemical smell became overpowering. His eyes watered and his nose ran as his breathing accelerated with panic. Voices outside laughed and shouted.
A sudden clang against the punctured lid startled him out of his stupor. Steel grinding on steel led to a metallic crunch, and suddenly the barrel lid flew away.
Cluzet’s smiling, farm-boy face peered down at Jack, the harsh sodium mast light forming a filthy halo around his head.
“Get him out,” Cluzet said to someone out of sight.
Moments later, rough hands seized him by the arms, nearly dislocating his shoulders as he was heaved up with cursing grunts. The weighted barrel hardly budged as Jack’s limp legs slammed against the rim; he was too tall to lift out completely. They dropped his feet to the steel plating, but his numbed legs gave way. Jack crashed to the deck.
“Help him up!” Cluzet shouted.
Jack shook his head, trying to clear it, but that was a mistake. He swore he felt his brain rattle against his skull as the Spaniard and the German hauled him upright and held him in place. Jack felt the cool sea breeze on his skin and smelled the tang of salt air. His numb legs suddenly ached and tingled as blood flowed back into them, but he could hardly open his eyes for the light.
“Jack? Can you hear me?” Cluzet asked.
A hand seized Jack by the hair on the crown of his head and jerked his face upward. “Jefe is talki
ng to you,” the Spaniard said.
“Who the hell is Jack?” the younger Ryan asked as he forced his eyes open.
As near as Jack could tell, they stood on the stern of a ship—the Baltic Princess, he assumed. A cloudless sky shone with a million bright stars, and the gleaming half-moon fluoresced the dark ocean. But it was the other barrel with air holes next to Cluzet that Jack’s eyes focused on. It stood on the edge of the deck, where there wasn’t any rail.
Cluzet grinned. He held a small pry bar in one hand and scratched his beardless face with the claw, as if thinking. Jack saw the tattoo on the Frenchman’s forearm. A wing with an arm and a sword. The man was a Foreign Legion paratrooper. Or used to be.
A rough customer.
“Jack? Jack!” Liliana’s muffled voice echoed in the barrel, the steel thudding with her impotent punches.
“You see? She keeps calling for Jack. But you? You registered under the name of Paul Gray at the hotel, and your passport photo matches your face. I’m so confused.”
“Don’t worry about me. Do you know who she is?”
“Ah, oui, certainement. Her name is Liliana Pilecki and she’s with the Polish ABW. Correct?”
Jack didn’t bother to answer. His blurry eyes caught sight of a big, bearded man standing off to the side. He wore beige maritime coveralls with captain’s epaulets on the shoulders of his jacket.
Cluzet grinned like a horse. “And she is your woman, yes, Jack? A very beautiful woman.”
The German and the Spaniard chuckled.
“So who are you, Jack?”
“What the fuck do you want?”
Cluzet smashed the pry bar into the barrel lid, his eyes raging.
“I ask the questions here, friendo. Not you.”
The strong fingers meshed in Jack’s hair tightened, almost ripping it out.
“Tell me she’s safe, and I’ll tell you who I am.”
Cluzet dropped the pry bar. It clattered to the deck as he whipped around and put both hands on the top of the barrel and began tipping it over the side.
Liliana screamed.
“ALL RIGHT! I’LL TELL YOU WHO I AM!”
Cluzet let the barrel fall back into place with a clang and snatched up the pry bar again.
“Tell me your name, Jack. Your full name. And don’t lie. I’ll know it.”
“My name is John Patrick Ryan . . . Junior. Jack is short for John.”
Cluzet shrugged slightly. “See, Jack? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“And who are you?”
“Oh, there you go, asking questions again.” Cluzet turned toward Liliana’s barrel.
“Stop! Please. Won’t happen again.”
Cluzet grinned. “I’m just playing with you, John Patrick Ryan, Jr. But what am I to do with her? Or with you?”
“She’s a federal agent of the Polish government. If you kill her, they will hunt you down.”
Cluzet turned to the captain, still standing in the back, and said to him, “You see? Now, that’s impressive!”
Captain Voroshilov answered with a smiling nod.
The ex-paratrooper whipped back around and pointed at Jack.
“Any other man in your position would have said anything to save themselves. But not you. You could have said you are an American citizen or that you have powerful friends like Senator Hendley to protect you. But you didn’t. Why not, I wonder?”
Another binary grin flashed across the boyish face. “CIA, perhaps? Or DEA?”
Jack didn’t bother to answer.
“No, I think not, Jack. Security types work in teams. But you work alone, or, should I say, work alone with the girl? No, there is something else that keeps you from trying to save yourself. I wonder what it is?” Cluzet paced for a moment, thinking. “You know, Jack, it is our loyalties that bind us to our fates. Don’t you agree?”
Jack answered with a withering stare.
“Of course you do. Most men are loyal only to themselves. Oh, sure, some claim to be loyal to friends or family, but in my experience, when pressed hard enough, those loyalties are quickly abandoned. Most people love their own skins more than anything else in the world.”
Cluzet stepped closer. “But you, Jack? I’m not so sure. Liliana said you were a money man—an analyst with some bourgeois financial firm, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Some men like you are devoted to money. But money is really about power, and power is about the self. Is that you, Jack?”
Jack knew the man wasn’t really looking for an answer.
“The noble few have no loyalties at all, not even to themselves. They are the divine ones, Jack. Men who don’t cling to the absurdity of this life and hold no delusions about the next. Only such men are truly free.”
Cluzet stepped even closer. “Is that you, Jack?” Cluzet sniffed the harsh chemical aroma on Jack’s clothing. His face soured. He shook his head. “I think not.”
Cluzet returned to his pacing. “Liliana told us everything. We’ve already changed our routes and distributors. What little you think you know is now utterly meaningless.”
Cluzet tapped the pry bar in his palm like a weapon.
“You can’t hurt us, Jack, but we can still hurt you.”
61
Hurt me?” Jack said. “Maybe. Maybe not. How about you tell these guys to back off and the two of us have a go at it? Or don’t you have the balls?”
“Oh! Balls! Yes, balls. I’ve got balls, Jack. Big, brassy ones.”
Cluzet charged forward, whipping out a spring-loaded blade. He flicked it open and pressed its razor-sharp edge against Jack’s left cheek just below the eye.
Jack didn’t flinch.
Cluzet grinned, then slashed down, slicing the plastic cuffs binding Jack’s wrists without touching his flesh.
“Better?”
Cluzet reholstered his blade as Jack flexed his numb hands, tingling as the blood flowed back into them.
“And don’t worry yourself about my balls, Jack. I think Liliana will quite enjoy them after I get through with her—”
Jack shouted and lunged at Cluzet, but Cluzet’s men yanked him back at the last second.
Cluzet grinned. “Oh, Jack. I’ve hit a nerve!”
Cluzet’s men laughed.
“How frustrated you must feel,” Cluzet said, stabbing the air with the pry bar. “Here you are, a rich, young American, obviously strong and, I would guess, possessing some level of combat skills, judging by the way you attacked my man Hult. And yet here you stand, helpless as a mewling kitten, your woman locked in a barrel, and your privileged life in the palm”—he tapped his palm with the pry bar for emphasis—“of my hand. There’s nothing anyone can do for you. Only me.” He laughed at his own joke. “I guess that makes me your savior now, eh, Jack?”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“What do I want? I want to atone for my sins.”
Jack frowned with confusion. “You’re mixing up your metaphors, Ace.”
“Come over here. I want to show you a little trick.”
Cluzet nodded at his two men. They kept a firm grip on Jack as they walked him over to the barrel.
The French paratrooper held up the pry bar. “Here, watch how I do this—are you paying attention, Jack? It’s very important.”
“I’m watching.”
“Good. Now, see here.”
Cluzet laid the claw of the pry bar against the release clamp that held the lid in place by a metal band.
“See this? The clamp is far too tight to be opened with a human hand. It’s a chemical barrel—no spills allowed, yes? So all we do is put the claw right here and—”
The release clamp popped open, the metal band slackened, and Cluzet pulled the lid off.
“Why, hello, there, beautiful. Did you miss me?”
Liliana spit like a cobra into his smirking face.
Jack stiffened. Her hair was matted with blood, as was her upper lip from her broken nose, purpled and twisted out of joint. Her eyes, however, were still bright with defiance. “Lil!” Jack charged forward again to help her, but the two thugs held him tight. Jack struggled, but in his weakened condition he couldn’t free himself.
“Jack—”
Liliana was cut off in mid-sentence as Cluzet slammed the barrel lid back into place and clamped it shut. Her muffled, angry curses were punctuated by her fists pounding on the lid.
“Quite a fighter, that one,” Cluzet said, wiping her spit off his face.
“You must be one hell of a coward to beat up an unarmed woman. Or maybe you just have mommy issues?”
Jack’s head snapped sideways at the force of Cluzet’s backhand. He raised the pry bar high over his head to drop a killing blow onto Jack’s skull, but hesitated.
“Oh, Jack. I must say, nicely played. It’s been a long time since I lost my temper.” Cluzet grinned again. “You amuse me. Now, it seems to me you asked me a question—What the fuck do I want?”
Cluzet returned to pacing. “On the one hand, the thing I really want is to watch my friend Hult kick you to death. Now, that would be very entertaining. On the other hand, there are people who are very interested in you and don’t want to see you harmed. But the truth is, I don’t give a shit about them. If I let you live, it will be because I desire it. The question is, what would give me the most pleasure?”
“Is this the point where I’m supposed to beg for mercy? Cuz that ain’t happening.”
“Not even for Liliana?”
Jack darkened. “I’m worth more to you alive than dead.”
“But is she?”
“Whatever deal we strike, she’s part of the bargain, or else no deal, and that means no money for you.”
“Yes, without question she is part of the deal. And you’re right, you would be worth quite a bit of money to your rich senator friend, I’m sure. And in exchange for not killing you, he must agree to not come hunting after us. I believe your friend John Clark has already made such an arrangement on your behalf.”