Solid Gold

by Stephanie Andrews

  Selena let go of my hand and pointed at herself, then pointed up in the air, then she pointed at me and then pointed down to the ground. While I was pondering what this meant, she held up four fingers and then folded them down one at a time in a countdown. Four, three, two, one.

  On one, she uncoiled like a striking snake, leaping six feet in the air just as the man came around the corner of the crates. She wrapped her left arm around his head, catching his mouth in the crook of her elbow, and swung around on to his back, wrapping her legs around his torso.

  Less elegantly, I rolled forward and wrapped both my arms around his legs, just below the knee. He flailed one arm back, over his head to try to grab Selena, while his other hand reached for the pistol in his shoulder holster. Selena reached back out of his grasp, which had the added benefit of pulling him backward. With his legs immobilized he began to fall, at which point Selena unwrapped her legs and planted them easily on the ground, catching his weight without releasing her left arm from around his face. Her right arm beat him to his holster and pulled his pistol up and high into the air, smashing it into his temple as the two of them sunk slowly to the floor, his immense weight slowly buckling Selena’s knees until she lay on her back on the wood floor with the unconscious man on top of her.

  The entire exchange had barely caused a sound, the loudest noise being that of the impact of the gun butt on the guard’s skull. I released his legs and sat up. About all I could see of Selena was her left arm sticking out from underneath the man, flopping frantically. Still kneeling, I got both hands under his left hip and heaved until he rolled off her and came to rest face down next to her.

  Selena gasped as the weight was taken off her chest, and pulled her right arm out from under the guard, his gun still clenched in her right hand. She looked at me and I gave her the thumbs up and winked. She sat up and rolled her eyes. Her white, skin tight body suit now had dirt all over it. Why she didn’t wear black I just don’t know. She laid the gun on the man’s back and used both hands to straighten and tighten her pony tail, then picked the gun back up and removed the clip. She checked the chamber to make sure it was empty, then she stood up and looked around. I pointed to the largest stack of crates and she nodded, then stepped on the guard’s back to give her enough height to put the clip out of sight on top of the highest crate.

  At her signal, we rolled the guard on to his back, and Selena laid two fingers against the side of his neck to see if he was still alive, though I could tell by the rise of his chest that he was. She gripped his neck with both hands, then looked over at me. I shook my head. I watched her eyes as her brain worked for a moment, then she nodded slightly and removed her hands. Selena didn’t like killing people any more than I did, but I also knew that she wanted severe punishment for anyone involved in the kidnapping of her sister. When we went downstairs, I knew that decisions would be made faster, and with less regard for the victims. But, for now, we seemed to be in agreement.

  I pointed to his big black boots. I took the left and she took the right and we removed the long black laces, rolling him back on his stomach to tie his hands and feet. I wasn’t worried about a gag, the other guards would know we were here long before this guy woke up.

  Selena finished tying his hands behind his back. Then, as if in afterthought, she grabbed his pinky finger and bent it back until we both heard it snap. Ugh, it made my stomach do a flip. She grabbed his third finger but I put my hand on her shoulder to stop her. She looked up at me and grimaced, but let go of his hand and stood up.

  We looked to our left and to our right, but there was no one else on the balcony. She pointed to the door that the guard had come out of, and then pointed at me. I pointed back at her and raised my eyebrow in the universal eyebrow sign for “What will you be doing?”

  Selena tilted her head toward the other end of the warehouse, and made a looping motion with her index finger. Whatever the hell that meant.

  We parted ways, both clinging to the shadowy brick wall of the warehouse. From this position, I couldn’t see down to the first level, but that meant that they couldn’t see me either. As I moved quietly toward the far end, I passed other stacks of crates, a pallet filled with cardboard boxes with Samsung printed on the outside, the whole pallet wrapped in clear plastic, and assorted other cargo. It seemed there was more being trafficked through here than women. Negron’s empire was ever-expanding.

  I reached the far wall of the warehouse. Straight in front of me was a big metal loading door. I guess that’s how they get cargo up here. I kept it in mind as a potential escape route, should that become necessary.

  I rounded the corner and cautiously approached the open doorway, my ears straining for the sound of footsteps. I could hear men talking indistinctly on the lower level, but the sound seemed to come from the other end of the warehouse.

  I moved through the door and into a dark stairwell. I steadied myself with one hand against the wall while I quietly removed my boots and set them next to each other in the corner. I took my socks off for good measure; slipping on the floor and wiping out would be unprofessional, and I wanted to be professional. Selena always seemed to consider me an amateur who was well meaning, and occasionally lucky, but that’s about all the credit she gave me. Except, of course, that she had asked me to help her. Why me? Didn’t she have anyone else in her life she could rely on? I said a silent thank you to Nick and Don and Marty and Ruby and El.

  As I rounded the landing and started down the last few steps, I could see out the doorway and into the large warehouse. Along the right hand side, where I had come from, the lower level contained more boxes, as well as shelves filled with dry goods, canned food, and towels and clothing folded and stacked. On the left side, the lower level wall was flush with the edge of the balcony, there was no overhang. Instead, doors were set into the wall every ten feet or so. Some of them looked like regular office doors, but three of them had serious locks on the outside and small square windows set at head height. These ones looked like prison cells, and they probably were.

  From where I stood in the shadows of the stairwell, I had to squint to see the far end of the warehouse, but I could make out a kitchenette, a hallway that probably led to the front door, and four guys sitting around a table playing cards. There was a guy standing at the entrance to the hallway, half alert while smoking a cigarette. An automatic rifle was leaning up against the wall nearby. This was apparently the guy on active duty.

  In the kitchenette, a tall man with a bald head was standing at the stove, sautéing something—I was too far away to get a whiff, but I could hear the crackle of the food in the frying pan over the sound of the men arguing about the card game.

  Suddenly, my eye caught movement up above, a quick flash of white as Selena moved in to position, crouched next to a fork lift. I moved forward slowly, closer to the light, until I was sure she could see me through the doorway. She nodded at me, then subtly made a pointing signal, indicating her right, my left. I leaned closer to the doorway, slowly edging forward until I could see around the door jamb, then pulled my head quickly back. Leaning against the wall, about eight feet from the doorway, was another lackadaisical guard, his gun in his hands but slack. He was watching the guys at the other end of the warehouse, wishing he were in the game, and never turned his head toward me or looked up to where Selena was hidden.

  I caught her eye again from my place in the shadows. I drew my weapon from my holster and showed it to her, then pointed in the direction of the guard. She nodded. I moved my gun to my left hand and with my right I held up four fingers, then pointed toward the card table (I only had three fingers on my left hand). Then I held up one finger and pointed toward the front door, and then I held up one finger again and pointed toward the kitchen. Selena nodded each time, then made that weird rolling motion with her index finger in front of her. I had no idea what she meant, and gave an exaggerated shrug. We really should get those tiny earphones that fit right inside your ear. How ‘bout it, Technology Acqui
red? I’d ask Marty when we got back.

  Selena got up from her crouch into a standing position, still in the shadow of the fork lift. She held up her left hand and closed one finger at a time, counting down four three two one.

  With two quick bounds she leaped into the air, bracing her hands on the railing and then going up and over, somersaulting twice before landing in a crouch on the card table, which promptly collapsed under the sudden and extreme force.

  As you can imagine, bedlam ensued. Two of the men had their thighs and knees crushed by the collapsing table and hollered in pain, the other two jumped back as Selena leapt between them, hit the ground in a crouch and then sprang forward into a flying side kick that caught the door guard in the chest just as he was reaching for his rifle.

  Down at my end of the warehouse, the guard sprang off the wall and began to run toward the ruckus. He made it ten feet before I fired my X2 Taser gun into his back, running up behind him as he turned back toward me, stumbling. He raised his weapon and fired at me but his aim was already impaired, and before I even reached him he had fallen to his knees, one hand reaching over his shoulder to try and pull out the prongs.

  Without stopping, I sprinted past, sending him sprawling with a kick as I went by. I released the cartridge from the end of the taser, and broke into a full sprint up the length of the open space, my bare feet hardly making a sound.

  I was closing the distance fast, but I was still thirty feet away when the man in the kitchen saw me. He shouted and pointed, but no one was listening to him. Of the two men who had been wounded by the crashing table, one was still curled on the ground, but the other had staggered to his feet and made his way to a CB radio that was on one of the shelving units. The two other card players had their backs to me as they fought with Selena. The man she had kicked in the chest seemed to be down for the count. I don’t know if they thought two against one was going to be easy, or if they didn’t think a girl could fight, but neither of them drew their pistol before approaching her. They’d pay for that.

  As I closed the gap to fifteen feet, the man on the floor rolled over so he could see me, and without trying to get up he drew his pistol from his shoulder holster. I shot him with the taser and careened suddenly to the right, toward the cook, dropping the now-empty taser as I went. It only held two cartridges. Something buzzed past my ear and then I heard the loud rapport of a pistol, but there was no point in looking back. Either the tasing would bring him down, or he’d shoot me in the back. We’d find out in a second.

  Meanwhile, in front of me didn’t look that great either. The cook, it seemed, was not just the cook but also one of the guards. Either that or he was a cook who just felt more comfortable with an AR15 by his side. He picked it up and aimed it at me. I was ten feet away, dead center in front of him. I ducked and tried to roll out of the way. Who was I kidding? I was a dead woman. For real this time.

  Nothing happened. I came up out of the roll and onto my feet to see him fiddling frantically with the mechanical safety. Maybe he was just a cook after all. I grabbed a broom that was leaning against the wall, just as the cook brought the gun back up to fire. I stepped in, my hands spaced widely along the shaft of the broom, and blocked the barrel of the rifle out and to the side. The gun fired once, into the wall, and I dropped the broom and grabbed the barrel with both hands, kneeing the cook in the groin at the same time.

  I could hear Selena fighting in the hallway, and then I heard a blast of static as the other man shouted into the CB in English: We are under attack!

  Without letting go of the rifle I turned my body away from the cook and kicked down hard on his foot, forgetting I didn’t have any shoes on. Son of a bitch, that hurt. There was another burst of static, then a voice over the CB responded: You were told to never use this channel.

  I took my right hand off the rifle just long enough to elbow him in the face, and when I felt his grip loosen I yanked the rifle out of his hands, aimed it at the CB radio, and fired three quick shots. The man using the CB dove to the ground, and at least one of the shots must have hit because the hissing static fell abruptly silent.

  Secure the scene, Riley, I thought to myself, and swept the gun around the room. I could see the CB operator; I couldn’t see around the corner and down the hall to where Selena was, but the two men I had hit with the taser were both down. I heard a sound behind me and turned to check on the cook, a moment too late. He brought the frying pan down hard, with both hands, onto the AR right near my hands, knocking it from my grasp and onto the floor. Good thing he went for the gun, if he’d hit my head like that it would have caved in like a pumpkin.

  His forward momentum carried him past me. He swung wildly back around with the pan, hoping to catch me off guard, but I ducked under it, squatting all the way to the floor and coming back up with the broom again. He came at me again with the pan, but I blocked it with the broom handle. And again, and again. Christ, I thought, Selena knew what she was doing with the quarterstaff training.

  I blocked his fourth swing, but his strength and the weight of the pan broke the broomstick in half, the end with the bristles flying out of my weak hand and landing on the open gas burner, the straw catching fire. The cook was a big man, with a bald head and a crooked nose. There were food stains on his t-shirt where he had wiped his hands while he was cooking. He had a grin on his face when he saw the broken broom, but it changed to a look of renewed concern when I thrusted at him with the pointed end. He tried to block with the pan, but it was too heavy, and I punctured his left shoulder with the tip of the broken handle. He grunted in pain, but otherwise kept coming at me.

  Suddenly there was an explosion of brick just to our right, fragments hitting us both, stinging. Another gunshot and the wooden cabinet door above the stove splintered. The cook and I both turned to look across the room to where the CB operator was now standing with a pistol, firing at me, I suppose, but his aim wasn’t that great.

  Obviously, the cook felt the same way because he turned and shouted, “Alto!”

  In the half-second this afforded me, I used my gloved hand to grab the other half of the broom from the hot stovetop and swing the burning end into the side of his head. He screamed and brought both hands to his face, dropping the frying pan. I let go of the burning broom and used a two handed grip to thrust the other half of the handle into his stomach. As he grunted and grabbed at the broom, another gunshot rang out, and he surged forward as it hit him in the back. He toppled down on top of me and we went over in a heap. His body protecting mine as three more shots were fired.

  There was sudden silence. Hesitantly, I peeked up and over the cook’s body. In the exact place where the CB operator had been standing, Selena Salerno now stood, holding the man’s pistol. He was unconscious on the ground. She was sweating and breathing heavily, but was as alert as a jaguar.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, motioning to the cook. I looked at his face, and his staring eyes told me all I need to know. I gulped and nodded, leaping to my feet and backing away from him, staring.

  “Riley!” Selena hissed at me, breaking the moment.

  “Right, right,” I mumbled, and reached over and turned off the stove burner. The enflamed broom bristles had died out, and the AR-15 was lying on the floor in a puddle of the cook’s blood. I turned away and took a deep breath.

  “Do not throw up, Riley,” Selena said in a severe voice. “It leaves too much DNA.”

  “Nice.”

  I moved away from the body and over to Selena, who was collecting a pistol and a set of keys from the body of the second man I had tasered. I looked back at Selena, who was still breathing heavily and leaning a bit to the left, one hand on her ribs.

  “Are you okay?”

  “De nada.” She started across the open warehouse toward the wall with the locked doors.

  “One of them called for back-up, Selena, we’ve got to hurry.”

  “Then help me,” she said, and broke into a limping run.

  Four

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nbsp; We sprinted across the room to the closest locked door, Selena fumbled with the keys until she found the one that worked. Inside was a plain room with one light hanging from the ceiling. Mattresses were strewn around the floor, but there was no other furniture. Inside were eight women, who all took a step back away from us until Selena spoke rapidly to them in Spanish, way too fast for me to follow, but the women responded by moving toward the door.

  The smell in the room was terrible. A doorway in the far corner led to a small bathroom, toilet and sink. No shower, no windows. The women were all Latina, some looked like teenagers, others looked as old as me. They were all dressed in shapeless gray cotton house dresses that weren’t much more than a sack with arm and head holes.

  Apparently, none of them were Selena’s sister, Valentina, because Selena rushed from the room to open the next door. The women filed past me out of the room, one of them limping badly. When I reached out to help her she skittered away from me.

  “Riley!” Selena yelled, and I hurried back out into the main room. The next door had been flung wide, and Selena was guiding a woman out of the pitch black room and into the light. The woman was completely naked, and had her hands cuffed behind her back. Her body was covered in dirt and bruises, and her long black hair was in wild disarray.

  “Christ!” I rushed into the dark room. The smell was almost unbearable. Of sweaty bodies and open sewers and something else underneath it all. In the dim light, I found two more women, similarly naked and restrained, and guided them out of the room, where they squinted in the light. None of them was Valentina.

  Selena had unlocked the third and final cell, which mercifully was empty. On the key ring she found a handcuff key and began to unlock the three women.