by Greg Rucka
"Stay down," I told Alena. She was wearing her seatbelt, which reassured me somewhat.
"Who are they?" Alena demanded.
"No fucking idea," I said. "Don't suppose either of you have a gun?"
"Talk to her," Alena snarled.
"I told you, it's Ireland," Bridgett snapped back, her eyes dancing between the view out the windshield and the view in the mirrors. "They don't like people having guns here!"
"Let's hope whoever's trying to drive us off the road had the same problem," Alena said.
"I hate you," Bridgett told her.
Behind us, the car was coming up for another try. As it swung out, I saw a new set of headlights revealed behind it, a second car, following close on the first.
"Now there are two of them," I remarked.
"I can see that!"
"Don't you think you should lose them?"
"The fuck you think I'm trying to do?"
The Ford rocked again, and I heard something crack on either our car or theirs, and suddenly our wheels broke with the road and we were spinning and sliding. Headlights seemed to flash from impossible angles, Bridgett swearing a blue streak, and I heard the engine scream in agony as she tried to treat the automatic transmission like it was a manual. We flipped around, facing the opposite direction, still moving, now in reverse, and the motor was shrieking like it was about to burst.
"Try to PIT me, motherfucker?" Bridgett said, and wrenched the wheel again, stomping pedals and yanking on the shifter. The Ford flipped around in a J-turn, once more heading the right direction, and then there was a gunshot, and just as suddenly, instead of being on the road we were off of it. The suspension bounced us like kernels in hot oil, and I realized we'd lost a tire to a blowout. The car slewed crazily in soft earth, and both pairs of headlights were still coming after us.
Whoever it was, they had demonstrated their sincerity, even if they lacked skill. The PIT-precision immobilization technique-as Bridgett had called it, was used mostly by law enforcement to immobilize a target vehicle during a pursuit. When executed properly, the fleeing car would be nudged just enough out of line to force a spin that would bring it to a halt. When executed improperly, any number of things could happen, normally beginning and ending with the word "crash."
Which was exactly what happened to us next.
CHAPTER
Thirty-seven There was an air bag in my face when I came back, the dust from broken safety glass in my eyes and nose and mouth, and I didn't understand why. Then I did, and I started, felt pain in my right knee and lower back and head. The car was at an angle, its nose tilted down, and Bridgett groaned behind the wheel. I pushed at my door, got it open, but couldn't understand why I was having such trouble getting out. Then I remembered my seatbelt.
"Out," I said, and then, louder, "Out, get out!"
The soil beneath my shoes was soft and wet, and I went for the rear door, but Alena had already kicked it open. The back tires were in the air, the whole car canted like a javelin thrust into the earth, and as I pulled her free, the headlights found us again, both sets of them. I turned, keeping a hand on Alena, and with the light from the approaching cars could make out the field ahead and around us, sheep bleating and scattering in fear. The Ford had gone front-first into a creek, a four-foot drop, maybe ten feet across.
"Run," I told Alena, but I needn't have bothered; she'd read the terrain the same as I had, and was already moving.
I rushed around to the driver's door, met Bridgett as she toppled out of the car. Headlights made the blood on her face shine, where it was flowing from above her right eye and her nose. She was unsteady as I helped her to her feet, and she managed two steps, then went down to a knee. I pulled her up, got an arm beneath hers, and dragged her with me down into the water. It was cold and moving fast, and the first part, at least, seemed to revive her, so that by the time we'd crossed to pull ourselves up the opposite embankment, she was shrugging me off, saying she was fine.
I made it up before her, then turned back to see the two cars were still closing, but slowing. Bridgett pulled herself to her feet beside me, and together we ran after Alena, trying to make for the deeper darkness. Whoever was behind us, the creek would stop them as it had stopped us, force them to follow on foot.
We'd covered maybe twenty meters when they started shooting at us, two short bursts from automatic weapons. I didn't look back and I sure as hell didn't stop. Unless they were exceptionally talented marksmen, there was no way they were going to hit us at this range, certainly not with submachine guns, and if they were using assault rifles, we'd have been shot dead already.
We kept running, and the light behind us ran out, and out of the darkness ahead, I could see Alena, and she had veered off to the left, and after another second I saw why. An old barn resolved out of the night, ghostly pale stone and wood. By the time we'd reached it, Alena had already managed one of the two doors on the side, and I followed after Bridgett, again turning to spare a look at our pursuers. They'd left their headlights on, and now I could see there were only two of them, silhouettes making their way patiently toward us.
I pulled the door closed behind me, feeling along the wood in the deeper darkness until I found the locking bar. It resisted me, and I had to force it free before it would slide into place.
"Yeah, this is so much better," Bridgett muttered from somewhere to my left.
"There are two of them," I said. "Submachine guns. We've got maybe a minute before they reach us."
I heard motion off to my side, the sound of metal clattering on metal. Alena cursed. There was absolutely no light in the barn, nothing coming in from above. After another second, I heard metal on stone, knew that Alena had found the bolt on the other door and thrown it.
"Light," I said. "Matches, lighter, anything."
Bridgett laughed bitterly.
"Start feeling around," Alena said. "There must be something here we can use. A tool, something."
I put my hand out to the wall, feeling the stone cold beneath it, using it as a guide, fumbling like a blind man. My left foot hit something hard and I reached out with my free hand for it, was rewarded with the feel of cold metal, thinking of the old joke about the five blind men trying to describe an elephant. Behind me and to the side there was another clatter as either Alena or Bridgett knocked something over. I tried getting a grip on whatever it was I was feeling, found an opening at the top, managed to lift it up with one hand. It felt heavy and ungainly, and I couldn't imagine what it was. Maybe a milk can. Too awkward to use as a weapon. I let it go.
"Got something," Bridgett whispered. "Tools, I think."
"Keep talking," I said, coming off the wall and trying to find her by sound alone.
"Wooden handle, two wooden, no, three, four wooden handles… rake, one's a rake, think I've got a shovel, too, feels like it… maybe an axe. Something else."
My outstretched hand touched her body, and I felt her own hand take my arm, guide it to what she'd been feeling. It was, as described, a wooden handle, worn and smooth, and when I lifted it, the weight on the end was solid and familiar. With my other hand, I felt for the axe head, found it. The edge was dull. Not that it would matter if I got the chance to use it.
The handle on one of the doors rattled, checking it, then stopped. The darkness was disorienting, but I guessed it was the same one I'd locked.
Then a voice came floating in from outside, muted by the stone and wood, speaking in Russian.
"I know you're in there, David."
It was Arzu Kaya.
"I've been waiting for you, watching your women," he said, switching to English. It was the first time I'd heard him speak the language, and he spoke it well, and I wondered why he was using it, until he continued and I realized it was for Alena's and Bridgett's benefit, as much as my own. "You have very pretty women, David, even if they are too old to be worth anything."
His voice seemed to fall and rise irregularly, bouncing between soft and loud as it was deflected
by the stone. None of us inside our darkness moved, each of us trying to get a fix on his position by sound.
"The redhead," Arzu said. "The one you were kissing at the airport, she's pregnant, isn't she? Your wife, David? I know a few who pay extra for pregnant."
Carefully, I started sliding my feet forward, back toward the door I'd locked when I'd entered, hoping I wasn't heading straight toward it, and hoping more that Arzu didn't just decide to open up and spray the wood with his submachine gun. Behind me, metal scraped stone as one of the women took up another of the farm implements.
"Who is the other one, the dark-haired one? Some bitch to fuck when your wife says no?"
I half expected Bridgett to respond to that, but she didn't. One of them was moving, though, I could hear her, but with Arzu's voice outside and the acoustics inside, I was having difficulty fixing her position.
"Don't you have anything to say, David?"
I had a lot to say, but I wasn't going to say it right then. My foot hit the wall, and with my free hand I reached out, feeling for the edge of the door. I'd come in close to it, within a foot, and used that as a guide to get my back against the stone wall. I took the axe in both hands, wondering who in the world I was trying to kid. Unless I could get around behind him, by the time I had managed to raise and swing it, Arzu would have shot me a dozen times.
"Then I will say it." Arzu's voice seemed closer now, as if he was just outside the door. "You and your bitches locked in an old barn, and I am outside. If you had a gun, you would have used it already, so you have no gun. So you have no defense. But I have a gun, and if you make me come inside for you, David, not only will I kill you, I will kill your women, too. I will kill your child. But if you come out, I will let them live. You understand me?"
"You should have let it go," I said.
"Let it go?" Arzu's voice crackled with anger. "How do I let it go? The Russians, the Americans, everyone is looking at me because of you! They think I'm Bakhar, now, just like Bakhar! You did this, not me! You made this!"
"You'll let them live." I made no effort to hide my contempt.
"Yes, I will," Arzu said. "Or maybe I keep you alive long enough to watch what I do to them. Make you watch when I carve your baby out of the bitch's belly."
He went quiet, and the silence inside the barn weighed like lead. Then, just as emphatically, it broke.
From the opposite side of the barn came the sudden sound of wood snapping, and a door I hadn't known was there flew open, and a silhouette filled it, large and lean. Theunis Mesick from Amsterdam with a submachine gun in his hands, and whether he could see me or not I didn't know, but he had his weapon pointed straight at me, and I had nowhere to go and no move to make.
The sub came up to his shoulder, and then Alena slammed him in the face with the shovel she'd found, and Theunis Mesick staggered backward, finger heavy on the trigger, muzzle flash as a strobe light as bullets whined wildly off the stone walls and pierced the roof above us. She hit him a second time, knocking him to the ground, then brought the blade of the tool down and into the back of his neck.
I grounded the axe as Alena scooped up the submachine gun, caught it when she threw it to me, pivoting in place. It was an old Sterling, and I tucked it against my side. Arzu was shouting Mesick's name, trying to figure out what had happened, and when no response came, he threw a burst at the door he'd been standing outside, and I stepped away from the wall and returned it with one of my own. The sound of gunfire echoing inside the barn was ferocious.
With the light from the now-open door opposite, I could make out more of the interior. Alena was searching Mesick's body, and Bridgett had some tool of her own in her hands, was moving to her side. I turned from the door Arzu and I had just perforated, made for the other one along the same side, the one Alena had locked. Everything was down to speed now, the same as it had been for Tiasa.
I threw the bolt back and opened the door, exiting hard and twisting to my left, the Sterling ready, thinking that planting four or five rounds in Arzu's chest would end this once and for all. I would've been right about that, too, except for one small thing.
He wasn't there.
I'd started to turn when I felt the muzzle press into my right shoulder from behind, and I lost the sound of the shot as a bullet exploded out of me from in front. I dropped the Sterling and found myself following it to the ground. My right arm absolutely failed to support me, and I went face-first into mud. I couldn't get my breath, tried to raise my head, thinking that it would be better if the last thing I saw in this life was the sky. The muzzle returned, the metal hot, jammed into the back of my neck, but the shot didn't come.
"I told you," Arzu shouted at me, rage and glee commingled. "You should have taken care of your women!"
I managed to lift my head enough to look around and up at him, and he was leaning over me, the barrel of his Sterling still digging into my neck. I saw him, and I saw beyond him, and despite his gun and the bullet and the mud and pain, I had to laugh.
"The women can take care of themselves," I told him.
Then Bridgett Logan buried a pitchfork into his back.
CHAPTER
Thirty-eight In mid-August, Alena told me that she wanted to visit Tiasa. We had resettled in Vancouver, Canada, and she was well into her second trimester. She was in New York a week, leaving Miata and me alone to continue our respective convalescences and to pursue our slow search for a more permanent home. The night she returned, Alena said, "She wants to come live with us. She doesn't want to go back to Georgia."
"What do you think?"
"I think it's a good idea."
"You talk to Cashel about it?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?"
"She thinks that Tiasa will need counseling, therapy, for a long time to come. That she needs stability. Safety. Love. She wonders if we can give her all of these things."
"We can," I said.
"Yes," Alena agreed. "We can." In early October, Cashel and Bridgett brought Tiasa out from New York, to the house we'd purchased in Victoria. Alena and I met them at the airport. Tiasa hugged me when she saw me, and my right arm had recovered enough strength and mobility that I was able to hug her in return. She looked like a different person than when I'd last seen her in July. Somewhere along the way, somehow, she'd rediscovered her ability to smile.
Bridgett and Alena kept their mutual hostility almost cordial, more for Tiasa's benefit than mine. Bridgett stayed with us for only two days, but Cashel was with us a week. With her assistance, we were able to set up counseling and further treatment for Tiasa.
None of us had any illusions. On the last day of the year, at thirty-six minutes past three in the morning, Alena gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
We named her Natalya, in memory of another lost friend. All the while, even into the new year, I'd been following the news, trying to keep an eye on the various outlets I'd sent my FedEx packs to.
Some ran further with the story than others, and some ran with it not at all. Of the European outlets, Der Spiegel did the most with the material I'd sent, followed by The Guardian. In the U.S., as I'd seen, The New York Times took the lead, but in early October, The Washington Post began its own series.
It was, I knew, a drop in the bucket.
All I had to do was look at Tiasa, holding her baby sister as she sang Natalya to sleep, to see the memories still fresh in her eyes, to know the truth. Acknowledgments The research for this novel was some of the most painful I've undertaken, and the efforts of everyone who assisted me is greatly and sincerely appreciated. Of the many who offered their time, observations, knowledge, and assistance, the following are but a handful.
My thanks to both Eric Trautmann and Timothy O'Brien for research assistance. For an insight into the world of engineers, Andrew Greenberg-who really is a rocket scientist-was invaluable.
As he has done on almost every novel I've written, Jerry Hennelly provided firsthand tactical experience, professional know-h
ow, and a deeper understanding of everything from surveillance technology to firearm techniques. I remain, as ever, in his debt.
My agents, David Hale Smith and Angela Cheng-Caplan, continue to supply moral and creative support, and consistently provide that most crucial of aid: they know how to listen, and they do so exceptionally well.
Christina Weir took time from a busy schedule and an insanely difficult year to read the manuscript in progress and offer comment, constructive criticism, and encouragement. Mine's finished; where's yours?
A special note of gratitude to E. Benjamin Skinner, a man I've never met, but whose book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Day Slavery, reveals one of the greatest evils of our time, and our failings in combating it. In combination with H. Richard Friman and Simon Reich's Human Trafficking, Human Security, and the Balkans, as well as Kevin Bales's remarkable book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, these works formed the foundation for this novel. Not a single scenario as presented herein was fabricated from whole cloth: everything is based in fact to a greater or lesser extent, gleaned from publications, testimonials, interviews, and documentaries.
Finally, to Jennifer, who listened when she would rather not have done, and who lived with me as I went once more to the dark places; thank you, again, for being there when I came back into the light.
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Coming soon from Greg Rucka, the latest chapter in his acclaimed, searing QUEEN amp; COUNTRY series:
THE LAST RUN
COMING FROM BANTAM BOOKS
IN FALL 2010
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PREOPERATIONAL BACKGROUND CHACE, TARA F.