Running Black (Eshu International Book 1)

by Patrick Todoroff

  The ganger bellowed like an animal, but it was lost in the roar of the crowd as the bell rang and the fight started below. “Bitch!” he snarled, and raised his other arm to backhand her. I saw a blur and heard the snap of cloth as the female agent reached out and struck his windpipe with two rigid fingers.

  Once.

  Perfect.

  The old ganger jerked upright and started gagging. The room around us was howling over the pit, so the bar patrons missed the blow, but they started backing away as soon as they spotted the ganger choking, going blue. He sagged to his knees and fell face first onto the floor.

  Tam was backpedaling away from the big guy. The girl hadn’t even turned to look at her victim. I shook my arm and the Boker knife dropped into my palm. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the Turks coming towards us, his pistol out and raised. One of the ganger’s buddies made a mistake and grabbed for the girl. She pirouetted into him, taking his arm in hers and made a right angle at his elbow, the wrong way.

  The snap and scream made the Turkish bartender yank an old Russian Saiga 12 from under the counter. An automatic shotgun… This was a definite ‘situation’ now. Her partner spotted me reaching for Tam and whipped a flechette gun out of his jacket. A 3mm Isuzu Shredder.

  Great! We’d brought knives to a gunfight.

  I threw the blade anyway. The big man sidestepped easily and let it thunk into the bar.

  Yep—bad all around. I ducked among the tables.

  The female agent vaulted the counter and moved on the bartender. She hit him twice, and he dropped out of sight so fast it seemed the floor opened up and swallowed him. The Saiga appeared in her hands and the second bartender didn’t even have time to raise his weapon before double-ought painted him all over the wall. Behind me, the fight was kicking into gear down in the pit. Everyone in the benches was on their feet, screaming for blood, but panic was spreading from our more immediate violence; shockwaves fanning out from our little epicenter.

  The throng at the bar scattered as the first shots hammered over the skittering chimes of broken glass. The big guy was searching for me now, extending the Isuzu out in front of him. I popped up and spun a second blade, which sank in his forearm. A long burst from the Shredder cut a hooker next to me in half, and I glimpsed the female agent trying to track me through the criss-cross of darting figures. Half a second later, she gave up and opened fire in my general direction.

  I slipped on a warm blood slick and scrambled away as shotgun rounds chased me over the drop into the second level. I’d lost sight of Tam and Alejo. I could hear the Turks reacting, shouting panicked orders. Someone was screaming close by, and above me, a pistol crescendoed. The Saiga barked twice then stopped. Fear was hemorrhaging into the crowd now, kick-starting a stampede. A worried moan rose, and I rolled under a bench to avoid getting trampled. People were rushing the stairwell when the heavy clatter of an assault rifle fired up. I dropped another knife into my hand and peered over the ledge.

  The first level was littered with bodies and blood. There must have been a sale on Soviet relics because the female agent was still behind the bar, only now she was cranking off shots with a vintage Kalashnikov AK-47. There was a look of dead calm on her face. The zen of homicide. The Boss Turks on the far side had hustled themselves into the utilities room and slammed the door. Thinking this was a robbery or raid, their remaining no-necks surged forward, firing heavy pistols gangsta sideways.

  Amateur night at the fights.

  On my right, I heard the Isuzu buzzing and spotted Tam weaving cross current against the rush of spectators. The big guy was firing after him, off hand.

  Another one of the Turk’s guards came charging in from my left, shouting and firing toward the bar. He managed to kill three patrons. The girl never flinched and aimed his way. Right then, Alejo stood up and saved his life, dropping him with an uppercut of his cane. He stepped through the swing and snatched up the fallen gun one-handed.

  “Down!” Alejo yelled to me. “Go down!” and he pointed his cane toward the fight pit.

  He was right. The stairway up to the main floor was heaving with the crush of bodies trying to escape. Alejo knelt and began rifling through the guard’s jacket. I heard the big guy’s Shredder run dry. That gave Tam a spare second. I saw him twist and slide under the rail down onto the second level and roll hard toward the next drop. The man shouted something—in Japanese—as he snapped another coil into the Isuzu. The woman stepped out from behind the bar and both of them began closing in on Tam.

  Alejo started placing rounds around the woman. He didn’t hit her, but the shots drove her back behind the counter. He kept moving down the stairs, and she came up, spraying where he’d been. Her partner, surprised by Al’s gunfire, spun and ripped two quick bursts, sending streams of tiny steel darts whining after him. The range was long, but I spun out two more blades at him: one slicing past his face, the other sinking into his shoulder. I heard a grunt as he doubled back out of sight.

  Tag, creep. You’re it.

  I ran down the stairs.

  On the bottom level, bystanders gripped each other, huddling by the walls and crying. Tam was already slinking down by the cage, staying out of sight and looking for the gate. Alejo was doing his best to back down the steps with his bad leg while keeping a watch up top. Around me swam sobs and snapped whispers while the moans of the wounded and dying drifted over the frenzied jabber from the top level. More shots rang out.

  “We need to leave, Tam,” I said.

  “State the obvious. I’m working on it.”

  I had a Boker blade in each hand. Not that it mattered at this range, but it made me feel better—sort of. I stayed low and kept moving downward.

  Sprinkled in special pit side stands, a few flush patrons had been caught slumming. They crouched fat and sweaty, fearful behind large cushioned chairs, their clinging-arm candy blondes sniffling out whimpers.

  “Is it a raid? A raid?” one stuck his head up and wheezed at me. His Slavic Barbie escort was crying mascara black tears under a glittery tangle of peroxide and neon blue.

  “No. Stay down,” I said.

  “I can’t be here… I can’t—” he burbled, and his head exploded like a melon. Wet tissue and gray matter spattered on my face. The bimbo went a shrill two octaves higher, then collapsed in a heap, vomiting. I veered off to one side, and Alejo blasted upwards until the clip ran dry.

  “I’m out.” He threw the Star .45 automatic down in disgust. Up top, two mannequin faces slid away from each other over the chipped yellow railing. The woman going west, the man south.

  “Now would be good,” Alejo growled at Tam.

  “A minute ago would be better. They’re flanking, and we’re out of bang,” I yelled.

  I heard the jangle of chain link as Tam broke the lock. The three of us fled into the pit and made for the north wall. The emcee was gone, and the evening’s entertainment stood opposite each other, un-bloodied and animal tense. Alejo yelled a warning in Spanish and waved for them to follow.

  The two agents were gliding down opposite staircases two at a time. Closing in, they opened fire. Heavy rounds from the AK cut right through the steel fencing and it rent, sagging down onto the sand. The Shredder darts pinged and ricocheted off the links, sparking and veering crazy. Tam made it to the north tunnel, but Alejo and I were stuck center ring with the fighters.

  I was right next to the African, and saw his reactions kick in at the sound of the AK. He dropped his shovel, swiveled out of the line of fire and skirted along the wall for the nearest hole. Pug Face froze, then flailed like a mad puppet as the 7.62mm rounds hit him. He came apart and went down in chunks. I turned to see the big guy stopped halfway, looping his good arm in an underhand toss. A small olive drab egg arced towards me.

  Time dilates in combat. Sometimes fast-forward, sometimes underwater slow. This went slow. I dropped my hands, letting the blades slip onto the sand, then grabbed for the worn haft of the shovel. A chorus of AK rounds sang ov
er my head, and steel dart splinters stung my face and neck. I watched the grenade as it sailed almost lazily and caught a tear in the fencing, then bounced straight at me. The girl was still firing, far away. Tam was yelling. I swung, smacked the grenade back with the flat of the blade, and turned away. The African kid was crazy grinning at me, two thumbs up. Mad badminton skills. Someone grabbed me from behind and the world exploded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: TRAWLING THE WAKE

  Barcelona Metro Zone, Sant Adrià de Besòs District. 11:43 p.m. Day Three.

  It was nearly midnight by the time Major Eames arrived at the mosque. The sky was dull coal dark and low, and the rain had drizzled to a stop and charged the air with a dusty ozone smell. The streets glistened wet black, and she heard the police cordon beams sizzling in the damp. Colonel Estevana had called this one right: responding fast and strong, sealing off the streets around the crime scene and radioing for her and the task force. By the time she arrived, all the main avenues were blocked by military trucks and squads of Guardia Civil troops.

  She’d snatched a couple hours sleep, so her mind was clear when she clambered out of the command track. Still, she ran up the mosque’s stone stairs two at a time to get her heart moving faster, to bring focus in her thoughts. At the entrance, she felt the lurch of déjà vu. Three precise rows of lumpy, blood spotted sheets lay on the sidewalk; clumps of detained civilians were huddled around the CSI vans; an orderly queue of sterile white ambulances emerged from the fog, the spin of their lights rendered the tenements in the stark relief of metronomed lightning.

  A little voice nagged in her head. You’re too late.

  She’d been at a dozen scenes like this before, most of them in the Balkans. She saw the same raw daze spreading over the activity, haunting it, suffocating it, as if even inanimate objects had been shocked mute from the explosive brutality.

  Incidents like this, police were an afterthought: there to draw chalk lines and fill out paperwork. They’d called it “trawling the wake” back in Kosovo. “War is a beast,” a gunnery sergeant once told her, a rabid thing blind with rage. It gets loose, only sane thing to do was stay the hell out of its way.

  She drew a sharp breath, and the world synced back into place. Colonel Estevana approached from inside the mosque. “Something wrong, Major?”

  “No. Too familiar, that’s all.” She regarded the older soldier. He had a deep-lined face, worn even more by the recent fatigue, and iron-gray hair under his command helmet. She’d been too hard on him the other day. My God, was it two days ago, she thought. He’d taken her browbeating and done his job regardless. Good man. He was more cop than soldier, but these days the line was blurred anyhow. She made a mental note to mention him in her reports. “Doesn’t make it any easier though. What’s the count?”

  “To start,” the colonel said, “we’ve got eleven bodies upstairs. All civilians, five with criminal records. Four must have been guards, we found machine pistols on them. There was some old scanning gear at the top of the stairs too. Strictly low-tech, mostly for show. The fifth victim was a wire head with priors. Hack and fraud, all Turkish and Russian gang related. He was probably the maintenance boy for the old system.”

  “What else?”

  The colonel hesitated. “There’re more bodies downstairs. In the basement. It’s bad. Looks like they held cage fights down there. There was a crowd—” his voice caught and Major Eames glanced up.

  Must be a horror show if he’s choked up, she thought. “Take me there. I want to see for myself.”

  He nodded and walked back into the building. They followed police tape, blood smears, and the bustling ant trail of CSI geeks until they got downstairs. When she stepped out onto the main floor, she realized he was right. Bad didn’t even start to describe it.

  The air was rank, cloying with the stench of blood and bowels, and an acrid linger of gunpowder. Dozens of bodies were sprawled throughout the open room, tumbled on the stairs, draped over the railings like broken dolls. The cement floor was slick with dark fluid, wide swathes congealing into sticky black aspic sprinkled with spent brass casings. She clamped down hard before she retched. This wasn’t a shootout: it was butchery.

  Frowning, she nodded toward the room’s center, where it dropped down to the pit. “How many down here?”

  “Sixty-seven bodies so far,” Colonel Estevana answered. “A couple of them just parts. Most are here on the top level, some in the lower stands, a few trampled on the stairs and down by the pit. There was more armed security down here; six as best we can tell. Two behind the bar, four on the floor. All had known histories with the Turkish mob. And this was certainly a gun battle; not bombers.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive—No shrapnel, no explosion radials, no legs.”

  “Legs?”

  “Usually all that’s left of bombers—their legs.”

  “Right. Any live arrests?”

  “No,” he grimaced.

  “So your people ID’d the local mobsters. How high were they on the organized crime ladder?”

  “Bottom rungs. The guards have been identified as low-level muscle for the Arif Family, a Turk-Cypriot gang. There’s no one higher up the food chain. The utilities room has an escape hatch leading to the street, and the door was locked from the inside. If one of the Arif’s was in charge, my bet is they fled at the first shot and left their gamberros as rear guard. CSI already sniffed it. We’re checking for definite matches against the Interpol VICAP database.”

  “Mob front like this… I take it there’s no surveillance, right?”

  Colonel Estevana nodded.

  “What about witnesses? Someone must have seen something,” Major Eames demanded.

  Colonel Estevana consulted his data pad. “My men are interviewing people right now. Most everyone was gone by the time the first response arrived. Neighbors say everything was nice and quiet until people came streaming out like the place was on fire. No one would hear anything going on down here anyway.”

  “Your men find any survivors?”

  He thumbed through more screens. “We only got six wounded from inside the building. Four are on their way to the hospital, two were treated in ambulances on site. They both mentioned a Spanish couple; a big guy with an attractive woman. And an Asian.” A pause knitted his brow. “One of them also says he saw someone, an Anglo male, throwing knives.”

  “Throwing knives?” the major asked. “That’s six different kinds of stupid if you ask me.”

  “With the scanner upstairs, maybe it’s all he brought,” Colonel Estevana said. “It must have been one of his we found stuck in the bar. You think the Asian suspect is linked to the Triads? Local crank dealers have been scuffling over turf and supply.”

  “No.” Major Eames stepped carefully further out into the main room. “This isn’t some street spat; it’s a war zone.” She looked back at the colonel. “Any clues on the shooters at all? Did the guards take down any of the attackers?”

  He shrugged, pointed to the body of one of the guards. “No. Not unless one of the dead gamberros tried to off his boss. And that’s not likely.”

  “Then you have any ideas who this big guy and his girlfriend might be? Local guns for hire?”

  “No one this crazy,” the older officer replied.

  Major Eames’ eyes hardened. “You have anything good to tell me? How about the CSI teams, you getting matches on the Guardia Civil database?”

  “There were too many people in the main area for sniffers to sort out. We’re waiting on prints and DNA matches off the weapons we picked up. And there’s a problem with the weapons...” his voice trailed out.

  “What about them?” Major Eames asked.

  “Well, there’s lots of brass—10mm, old 12-gauge, 7.62. Typical gang guns. The bad thing is the CSI team found flechettes everywhere. And indication of an explosion.”

  “You said it wasn’t a bomber.”

  “It wasn’t,” the colonel replied. “There was Semtex
residue down by the pit, and plastic casing fragments. CSI says it was a micro-grenade.”

  Major Eames’ eyebrows went up. “That’s not mob stash. Both the Shredder and Semtex are on the banned list. They’re tagged with mandatory minimums just for looking at them funny.” Suspicion jangled at the back of her mind. “Those are strictly military issue, or Corporate.”

  “Corporate? You think someone hired professionals?”

  “C.E.O. orders a grudge hit on a low-rent fight pit? No to that one too. And this,” she gestured with her hand at the scene all around them, “isn’t too professional. Psychopathic yes, but definitely not professional.”

  Colonel Estevana stared out onto the main floor. “This, this can’t be deliberate, can it? This has to be some kind of deal gone wrong.”

  “Something went wrong for sure. Why? Over what? And what happened to the attackers? If they’re not under sheets, then they escaped. But how’d they get out? With the last of the crowd?” She looked over at the colonel, who nodded grimly toward the center of the room.

  Eames stepped warily toward the railing and peered down the circular, stepped levels towards the caged arena itself. The fencing was shredded, crazy canted in tangles and heaps, acting as a steel link shroud for another butchered corpse. The cage door was ajar, broken open. “What’s down there?”

  “More problems. My men had just started searching under the stands when you arrived. They found an old steel security door on the north side. Looks like it had been locked shut years ago, but it’d been pried open, and at least several people got out that way.”

  “And…?” Major Eames felt heat rising in her voice.

  “Major, the passage goes to the maintenance system for the Tube network. And into the sewers. I re-tasked the sniffer team, but it’s a maze of tunnels down there that go on for hundreds of kilometers. The trail went cold after two hundred meters.”

  “God. Damn. It! This keeps getting better.” Major Eames let out a heavy sigh. “There any other bad news you want to fill me in on?”