The Other Crowd

by Alex Archer

  “It’s in my pocket. I’m just going to take it out slowly,” he cautioned. He lowered his tone and muttered, “Trust me.” Annja sensed that was more for her benefit than anyone else.

  At that moment, her opinion of Michael Slater altered. It moved from the dirt beneath her boots to right around her ankles. He was trying to keep it all together, with as little collateral damage as possible. And doing so surrounded by a band of bloodthirsty bandits would test any man’s courage.

  Reaching into his left breast pocket, Slater drew out something that produced a big grin on the leader’s face. His men chattered and nodded approval. The rough diamond caught the sun as Slater held it between two fingers.

  “Where the hell—” Neville said.

  “Not from our cache,” Slater muttered out the corner of his mouth. “Found it on Pierce’s body.”

  Annja tightened her jaw to keep from wincing. The man had ransacked a dead man’s body?

  “Nice size, yes? Estimated cut will yield up to ten carats. Worth a hundred Gs easily,” Slater said. “It’s grade A, flawless.”

  The leader held out his hand and Slater slowly placed the stone in his palm.

  When he’d had the time to assess the diamond’s value, and when he’d gained those particular skills, was news to Annja. On the other had, if MI-6 was really involved, he could have met with an expert and had the stone appraised.

  “It’s a pretty stone,” Slater said as the sunlight flashed in pink and blue on the surface of the smooth sides. “Much easier to sell than a truckload of weapons. Hell, you can go buy yourself six truckloads with that rock.”

  The bandit leader nodded once. He tossed the stone in the air and caught it smartly. “You would pay six times the price I am asking for a truckload of rusty old guns?”

  Slater glanced to Neville. “My boss has a client waiting for a shipment. You’re forcing us to make the sacrifice.”

  “Heh. That is what I do best.”

  The leader studied the diamond again. It would be easy for a lowlife like him to sell a rough diamond. Unless he owned a suit and had connections with the rich and famous, it was the cut stones he’d have trouble unloading, Annja knew.

  In the diamond trade, it mattered little where the rough had come from, only that it could produce a valuable cut stone. The moment it passed from a thief’s hands to someone licensed to deal in diamonds the stone became legitimate. Diamond dealers rarely traced the pedigree of a stone. She knew that was the reason blood diamonds funded a staggering portion of the warfare in the world.

  The leader cast a look at her, waggling his brow.

  Annja shook her head, refusing a worse fate than being left with Neville.

  “We have a deal,” the bandit said. “But I do not like to walk away without a bonus.”

  “Bonus?” Neville asked sharply.

  The leader aimed his weapon at the truck. One bullet deflated the rear tire. He nodded and hooked his gun over a shoulder. Turning, he walked off without another word.

  The surrounding bandits maintained position until their leader had descended behind the rise of low blue gorse, then they left in shifts, until finally the last disappeared as stealthily as they had appeared.

  “Seriously?” Annja asked Slater. “You stole a diamond off a dead man?”

  He cast her a droll look. “He wasn’t going to use it.”

  “Nice timing, Slater.” Neville slapped him on the shoulder. “But we didn’t need those arms.” Still, Neville nodded, apparently pleased the situation had been solved without his blood being shed.

  Slater gripped Annja’s wrist. “Now, what are we going to do with the woman?”

  “Like I said, she’s my driver.” Neville nodded at his thug, silently commanding him to take Annja by the arm. Slater handed her over, giving no indication her recent decision to trust him had been valid.

  “You’re going to let her drive to the warehouse?” Slater shook his head fiercely. “We don’t need another piece of collateral damage. Leave her here. She can walk to wherever it was she came from.”

  Neville stepped up to Slater. Though he was half a foot shorter the man commanded Slater’s attention. “You were supposed to get rid of her.”

  Annja caught Slater’s angry glare. He was trying to keep her out of this, but she had forced his hand.

  “I don’t snuff women,” Slater said. “And she’s a television personality. People know where she is and they will know if she goes missing. It’ll be bad for business. You ask me, whoever thought nabbing the cameraman was a good idea should have been thinking more clearly.”

  All of the men exchanged steely glances. Annja couldn’t determine who had been the actual kidnapper. Then she recalled Neville had mentioned the barge captain.

  “Then she comes along,” Neville said. “We need someone to drive the truck.”

  “I’ll drive—”

  Neville stepped in front of Slater as he headed toward the truck. “No, you help the lady up into the driver’s seat. I want you to bring up the rear in the Jeep.”

  Neville exerted his power and Slater was forced to concede or raise questions from his boss he’d rather not answer.

  Annja did not want to get into the truck. Whatever waited at the end of the drive might not include her, breathing. But what if Eric was there?

  “I need to know for certain Eric will be released if I do this,” she said.

  “He’s…out of it right now,” Neville said. “Unable to talk.”

  “High on LSD, just like Beth?”

  Neville shook his head. “Beth was a mistake.”

  “Why didn’t you kill her right away?”

  “I am not a cruel man, like you want to believe, Annja.”

  She mentally rolled her eyes. Why did the bad guys always think by not pulling the trigger they were doing good, or at the very least, a favor?

  “There are others missing, as well,” she prompted.

  “A few people got in the way. I took measures into hand. Now, I do love this chat. It’s so rare an intelligent woman intrigues me. But I want to get rolling before the sun sets.”

  “You think this truck will get far with a flat tire?”

  “Got it under control.” Neville gestured to his uninjured thugs, who shuffled toward the back of the truck and began to release the spare tire from the undercarriage. “Slater, why don’t you get Murphy and Miss Creed situated while we wait.”

  Slater slapped a hand on Annja’s shoulder. She kicked his shin, setting him off balance, and managed to swing under his bulk before he landed on the ground.

  A gun barrel stabbed her under the chin. Neville helped her to stand. “Play nice, Annja. You won’t do your friend any good if you’re dead.”

  She nodded and put up her hands in placation. A shove from the pistol pointed her toward the truck cab. Slater slapped a hand on her shoulder and shoved her forward, but didn’t release her.

  “Drive,” he muttered, so others could not hear. “Follow Neville to the warehouse. Whatever you do, don’t get out of the cab. These vehicles have been outfitted specially. The windshield should be bulletproof.”

  “Should be?”

  “You are a bloody pest,” he hissed. One final shove put her beside the truck cab, “Open it!”

  Annja stepped and opened the door. A body fell from the driver’s seat. She jumped to the side to avoid getting plowed to the ground by the dead weight.

  “Martin,” Slater directed. “Get this thing out of the way.”

  Martin, who had put the spare tire in position, walked over and gripped the driver’s body under both arms. Half the skull was gone. Annja guessed he’d taken a high-caliber shot at close range.

  “Hop in, Miss Creed,” Slater said.

  Steeling herself to put the dead man out of her thoughts worked only so long as it took to look over the spray of blood across the back of the beaded wooden seat cover. Small chunks of skull bone and flesh glinted with sunlight.

  Slater invaded her spa
ce so quickly Annja didn’t realize he’d cuffed her left wrist to the steering wheel with a plastic zip tie until it was too late.

  “I can’t sit in here with this…” She swallowed.

  He pressed his bulk along the length of her body and leaned in to wipe across the seat back with his sleeve.

  “You are far too comfortable with dead bodies and their parts,” she muttered.

  “Comes with the territory. Now play nice if you want to get out of this alive, got that?”

  “Is that offer still good to put me on a flight out of the country?”

  “Expired when you decided to become a royal pain in my arse.”

  “Get away from me,” she snapped. “That’s good enough.”

  He jumped down and Annja settled onto the seat. It was so large she didn’t need to sit all the way back against the wet beads.

  She wrestled with the zip tie. “I’m not going to jump out of a moving vehicle,” she said.

  “I certainly hope not.” Slater shrugged off his suit coat, the sleeve thick with human remains, and tossed it to the ground.

  She didn’t understand why Neville needed her to do this when his thug could easily drive the truck. And there’d be no body count that way. Though it was a great way to keep her under thumb, as he’d explained. And the bad guys were always less rational than they believed themselves to be. He probably thought this was a grand plan.

  “The directions are programmed in the GPS. But the SUV will drive ahead of you so you won’t get lost,” Neville explained as he approached the truck. “Don’t need you diverting off course. Now I’ll let Martin give you a little instruction on driving a truck and then we’ll send you off. Good day, Miss Creed. Happy to have you on board.”

  34

  Neville and his entourage drove a quarter mile ahead of Annja. The SUV didn’t push beyond thirty kilometers an hour. She knew passing them on this narrow road and taking off for freedom was out of the question.

  Annja wanted to follow Neville to the warehouse, or wherever it was he was leading her. If the slightest chance existed that she’d find Eric at their destination, she couldn’t pass it up.

  She’d gotten the hang of the ride, and could manage steering without twisting her wrist. But a sharp turn caused the thin plastic zip tie to bite into her flesh.

  Summoning the sword into her grip, she carefully clasped the blade and worked it under the plastic band. The zip tie severed and she dropped the blade into the otherwhere. Freedom obtained.

  Now, to follow the bad guys to their lair.

  Ten minutes into the drive, Annja’s cell phone rang. She tugged it from her pocket and checked the caller ID. “Garin?”

  Sucking in her upper lip, she vacillated on whether to answer. Whatever the man wanted was never a simple “Want to do lunch?”

  On the other hand, sometimes it was an invite to dine, in a country at least two thousand miles from her current location. She appreciated his intent to seduce her—because that is what it was, a drawn-out seduction. But just because she knew it would never happen didn’t mean she had to shatter the man’s hopes.

  The front of the truck swerved dangerously close to the gravel shoulder. Gripping the wheel, she realigned the truck on the road with a squeal of the tires.

  She checked the side mirror. Slater, behind her, hadn’t reacted. The Jeep remained four car lengths away.

  “No time for chatting.” She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. He could leave a message.

  Though she could handle the stick shift on the gravel roads, she had to keep a keen eye out for bumps and stray turtles. And sheep. And keep far enough behind Neville. The SUV stirred up the dust.

  Her phone jingled again.

  “No time for this, Garin. Not unless you can swoop in and—” The man was skilled at rescue operations. He’d had a hand in helping her out of a few tight spots. Not that Annja felt she needed to be rescued at this very moment. Slater was close in her wake. Bringing another person into the mix might only spook Neville, and ultimately, she may never learn where Eric was being kept.

  She let the call go to voice messaging.

  The green fields segued to city grays and tarmac as their cavalcade entered the outskirts of Kinsale. The delivery truck bumped across a railroad track, the warning horn from the engine announcing an oncoming train.

  Moments later, Annja’s phone rang and, thinking it was Garin again, she ignored it. It rang unceasingly and she finally slapped it open. “Yes?”

  “Annja, I’ve been cut off.”

  “Slater?” She checked the side mirror. No sign of his Jeep. “What’s up? How’d you get my number?”

  “Never mind. I wasn’t able to beat the train. I think it’ll put me about five, ten minutes behind you. There’s a harbor in Kinsale that Neville has been accessing for the river drop-offs. First, you’ll stop at a warehouse to load more weapons.”

  “If Eric is there—”

  “I know, you intend to save the day. Don’t be stupid, Annja. The man shot Wesley in cold blood. You think he’s going to let you live after you arrive at your destination?”

  “No. And I’m not being stupid. I just wasn’t given the ‘run now and seek freedom’ option.”

  “Annja, listen to me. Follow Neville to the warehouse, but don’t drive inside. Once he’s got you inside, your number is up. Stay outside, you hear me?”

  She nodded.

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Okay. Stay inside the truck. Dangerous inside the warehouse. Windows are bulletproof. What are you going to do? You can’t blow your cover.”

  “I don’t intend to. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Figure something out? You don’t have a plan?”

  “Trust me, Annja.”

  Since no one else was making the same offer, she accepted. “I’ll meet you in the city.”

  THE SUV PULLED into a warehouse at the edge of the small harbor town. Annja suspected it wasn’t large enough to be a major shipping port and probably catered to fishing boats, maybe the odd yacht or two. That was a lot more convenient for running guns than a larger port, which would employ a port authority to check all incoming and outgoing shipments.

  She noted the warehouse was set apart from what looked like the city proper. It was private, and there were no residential houses in the immediate vicinity.

  The warehouse sat at the bottom of a hill that blocked direct view of the sea. The harbor was ahead, flocks of white seagulls her clue. The clear blue sky looked too perfect for this moment.

  She slowed the truck to a stop before the corrugated steel warehouse door that slowly rose on pulleys. Neville’s vehicle drove inside and parked. The man got out and shook hands with a waiting man.

  A couple of men who were already in the warehouse rushed to the SUV to assist. Murphy, clutching his injured arm, was helped out. He flipped off Annja, and unstrapped his gun.

  Neville signaled with a wave of his hand for her to drive forward and park to the right next to the steel loading ramp. Normally a truck such as she drove would back inside to be loaded. She was facing forward.

  And she didn’t intend to drive any farther into the lion’s den. Shifting into park, Annja scanned the side mirrors for the cavalry. It had been five minutes; Slater had to be close behind.

  An angry bark accompanied a rap on the truck’s steel door. Annja waved the thug off and locked the door.

  She knew it was a risk to consider leaving the vehicle. “I didn’t exactly promise to sit tight,” she muttered.

  Slater was a trained professional. He had been working with Neville for months, and knew the man’s foibles and modus operandi. He obviously knew when to do exactly as he’d been commanded, or when to wing it to save the day, even when Neville would sooner jump ship and abandon his profits to bandits.

  A quick count tallied four men besides the wounded Murphy and Neville. All were armed. Neville didn’t appear to be one to get his hands dirty. He just pulled out a gun and shot
anyone who pissed him off. And he had no reason to keep her alive from this point on.

  Could Eric be somewhere inside the warehouse?

  She surveyed the loading ramp that angled up to a wooden dock. It was stacked with the same wooden boxes she’d seen being hauled to the river the other night. Weapons and ammunition set to be loaded into the truck she sat in—along with the guns already inside—and then driven to the harbor, was her guess.

  She did not want to participate in transporting illegal arms to be shipped off to some war zone.

  Could this shipment be legal? There were so many variations and fine print to the arms-dealing trade. Annja knew there were three types of deals. White, gray and black. White deals, dominated by governments and weapons manufacturers, were considered above the table, completely legit. The black deals, freelancer central, were strictly under-the-table and illegal.

  It was the appropriately named gray trades that were the most confusing and hardest to label good or bad. They involved clandestine deals made by freelancers on behalf of governments.

  The windshield cracked. Annja jumped. The glass did not shatter but the crackling continued out from the initial hit, spidering to all corners of the window.

  Neville stood in front of the delivery truck, his pistol aimed for a second shot. Bulletproof generally meant no cracks, at least not as much as this windshield was cracking. The vehicle was old. She had maybe two or three more shots before the bullets pierced the window.

  “I can’t just sit here,” she said.

  Unlocking the door and opening it, Annja gave it a kick. The thug standing outside took the steel door in the jaw and stumbled backward. Arms splaying, he didn’t drop his weapon, but it clattered as he hit the concrete.

  Annja summoned the sword to hand. In the compact truck cab it stretched out over the passenger seat. She knew what she was doing. And she had been given this power; she was not assuming a thing. The dream could not have been portentous. This was her fight to own.

  Annja leaped out into the fray.