The Other Crowd

by Alex Archer

  35

  Thug number one lay sprawled on the loading-dock floor. He was out cold after Annja had clocked him in the jaw with the truck door. He still held the pistol in hand, which she had time to kick across the floor. It landed under the left front tire of the truck.

  She now only had three thugs to deal with. Murphy was standing, but she wasn’t too worried about his ability to fight with his wounds. And Neville remained an amused bystander.

  Slashing the sword before her soughed the air crisply. The battle sword was nothing fancy, but it did hold a fine edge and could cut through flesh with ease. She had no compunctions about doing just that if any approaching attacker threatened her life.

  From the back of the warehouse where the loading platform stood four feet high, two men in sandy-colored overalls charged at her. They didn’t pull out guns. As they got closer to Annja, they synchronized their moves. Arms stretched out, they clasped the forearm of the other to form a bar between them.

  Sword blade upright, Annja pumped her arms and ran toward the men. Three feet from the oncoming battering ram, she leaped, did a summersault in the air and came down on bended knee behind the two surprised thugs. As possessor of the sword she’d learned a few impressive moves.

  Lunging up to stand and swinging the sword in warning toward the thugs, she turned, bringing her sword arm down and behind her as she faced Neville.

  He crossed his arms high on his chest, his gun tucked in his waistband. A shrug silently conveyed the message “I’m watching. Show me your best.”

  At the moment, Annja detected no danger from him and so focused on the three remaining deterrents to her continued breathing. Behind Neville the loading platform stretched along the wall; one end was connected to a steel roller ramp used to slide boxes into a waiting truck, the other end stopped at the wall. On the second floor, at the top of a stairway that hugged the brick wall, an office door caught her eye.

  Annja made a run for it and jumped onto the platform. If Eric was here, he was behind that second-floor door. She spun to sight her opponents as a pistol cracked. The sound was off. The weapon hadn’t fired correctly. And it hadn’t come from Neville.

  The third thug who hadn’t yet approached her yelped and dropped a pistol near his feet. Gripping his bloody hand he swore in Gaelic. The gun must have misfired, which was virtually impossible with a well-made weapon. If those were the kinds of arms Neville was selling, Annja wondered how he could keep up the business and not bring countless unsatisfied customers after him with blood in their eyes.

  She didn’t have time to struggle with the right and wrong of the quality of product offered in illicit arms sales. The two thugs who had failed to corral her earlier moved to opposite ends of the platform. The dock thundered under her feet as they clambered up in pursuit.

  She met the first, but the clatter of the steel platform distracted her and she lost her timing. He charged into her body with a grunt, fearless of the sword. The impact loosened her grip on the sword. Even with it she couldn’t fight effectively when the man was so close. He punched her in the gut. Her shoulders hit the corrugated steel wall. The wall clattered like close thunder.

  Releasing the sword into the otherwhere, Annja used the fact she was pinned by the shoulders to lift her knees and jam her heels into the thug’s shins. The hard rubber soles of her boots scraped down his shins, but his heavy overalls protected his skin from damage.

  A forehead to his chin reverberated in Annja’s skull. Her opponent released her long enough to receive an open-palmed smack aside his jaw. Following quickly with another palmheel jab to his ribs, she kept the punches coming, keeping her elbows in and close, and head down.

  She pressed her opponent backward against the wall—and was grabbed from behind. Two iron-strong arms banded about her shoulders and upper chest. Sucking in a breath, Annja kicked from her standing position, pushing backward, but she couldn’t topple her aggressor.

  Calling the sword to hand, she slashed it across the other thug’s chest. A diagonal red line stained his overalls. He gripped his chest, not believing that he’d been cut.

  Suddenly Annja’s equilibrium altered. The thug holding her lifted her off the ground. Her body tilted too far off balance. Wrapped in her opponent’s grasp, together they teased gravity—then fell.

  The thug shouted. They both landed hard on the floor. Jaws clacking, Annja struggled against the sudden blackness that grasped at her consciousness. Wheezing in a breath of oxygen, she countered the near-blackout.

  Thankful for the padded landing, she pushed off from the thug’s barrel chest. He was out cold. Standing, she turned, sword in hand, just in time to catch the other man as he leaped from the platform and into her embrace.

  With no time to swing, she sent the sword clattering across the floor while she wrangled with the man who was bleeding profusely from his chest. Bending her knees would center her gravity and make the catch easier, but the man was too big for it to matter. Her muscles gave way and Annja dropped, twisting, so the man would be beneath her when they landed on the floor.

  Not allowing him time to think through his next move, Annja gripped his head on both sides, grabbing hair, and slammed the back of his skull into the floor. The first hit made him blink and groan. With the second he stopped moving at all.

  She sensed someone rush toward her as she knelt over the fallen man. It was Murphy, and he was injured, but determined. She wouldn’t have time to stand and meet his attack with the sword, so Annja rolled off the man’s body and looked up to find Murphy’s feet swept out from under him.

  Slater locked his arm across the man’s neck. Just when it looked like he’d snap his neck, he instead applied pressure to both sides of his neck, focusing on the carotid, reducing the man to unconsciousness.

  The subtle snick of a gun safety sliding off alerted Annja. It wasn’t a Walther P99.

  “God, I love a woman who can fight,” Neville said. His aim was squarely for her forehead. “It really turns me on.”

  Annja scrambled to her feet. Unsure of whose side Slater would stand on, she backed toward the truck, keeping herself in the middle between Slater and Neville.

  “Whoa, Frank!” Slater stepped before Annja in a protective stance. That answered her question. “What’s going on?”

  “I can ask you the same.” Neville waved his gun at Slater. “What’s with the hero stuff? Fighting on the wrong side?”

  “I’m trying to keep down the casualty count.”

  “You weren’t hired for that.”

  “No, but I was hired for discretion. And if you had kept the barge captain out of the land operation, we wouldn’t even have this problem right now because no one would have been kidnapped to get them out of the way.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Slater. Taking the woman’s side?”

  “You know whose side I’m on.” Slater avoided eye contact with Annja. He shrugged his shoulders and touched the gun at his side, but didn’t take it out of the holster. “Can’t be murdering innocent women now, can we?”

  “I can, and I will, if that is what is required from one with a spine. Christ, no wonder this operation is going tits up. But I will admit, you’re right. Miss Creed is far too interesting to dispose of in such an unoriginal manner. Bullets are so passé.”

  Neville paced the floor in front of the loading platform, surveying his fallen men. “I’ll say it again, she’s quite the talent. Amusing to watch her take out my men so easily. I won’t even ask about the sword. I have a feeling that falls somewhere along the lines between mysterious caches of diamonds and the other crowd.”

  Annja breathed in, lifting her chest. Hands at her hips, she maintained a ready stance. Slater was not breaking his cover, which could put her at the disadvantage. But he had protected her so far; she wasn’t willing to give up on him yet.

  “Where is Eric?” she asked.

  “You—” Neville pointed the gun at her while he spoke “—don’t get to talk. You,” he said, switchi
ng his focus to Slater, “had better do some fast talking.”

  “Just preventing collateral damage,” Slater said.

  “You always have my back, Slater. You’ve been a valuable asset to my team. But we can’t let her stroll out of here now. She’s seen everything.”

  “Miss Creed can keep her mouth shut.”

  “Are you going to see to that?”

  “If I have to.” Slater looked at her, but she didn’t react.

  “You’ve done a lousy job of it so far.” Neville cocked the trigger. “I think you and the woman have a thing going on.”

  “That is ridiculous,” Slater said.

  “You don’t say that very convincingly.” Neville eyed Annja up and down, his reaction more disgust than interest. “The only reason you would protect her is if you’re involved with her. Honestly, I don’t care who you screw on your own time, Slater. But in this situation, your extracurricular shagging has caused me one hell of a headache.”

  “We are not—” Annja began.

  “Shut up,” Neville barked at Annja. “I know how to handle this. We’re going for a ride, the three of us. I’m tired of you shadowing me, Slater. I should have done this days ago.”

  Neville nudged one groaning thug with his foot. The man managed to pull himself up to stand. He was the least damaged of the men, and quickly retrieved a rifle and magazine from a nearby box. He directed Annja and Slater to the SUV Neville had arrived in.

  “Annja,” Slater whispered as they approached the car, “you were supposed to wait inside the cab until the cavalry arrived.”

  “Did you take a look at my final resting place?”

  He glanced over at the damaged windshield. “Bloody hell. Sorry. You okay?”

  “Sure. Did you blow your cover?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  36

  Neville did the honors. He handcuffed Annja to a rusty length of chain with links so thick they looked designed to securely hold tugboats. It would definitely keep her in place. Slater, too.

  The chain ran through an iron loop, attached to a five-hundred-pound iron anchor. On the other side of the loop, Slater grimaced as Neville’s man secured his wrists. He hadn’t struggled since Neville had taken them in hand. Nor had he given any clue to Annja that the cavalry might be on their way. But she could hope. Wouldn’t MI-6 protect its own?

  What was going on in Slater’s brain? And why did she need to know so desperately? It wasn’t going to help her escape this situation. Focus was required.

  “You’ve been nothing but trouble since day one,” Slater said to Annja, loud enough for all to hear. It would serve him to keep up the act. MI-6 did not need one of their own revealed, even if he was two steps and a forced leap away from death. “Should have put a bullet in your brain when I first had the thought.”

  Neville patted the iron anchor that two thugs had dragged down the wooden dock from its perch on a concrete platform. “The pretty ones always are the most difficult to kill. More fun to shag, though, eh?”

  Slater did not react to Neville’s prodding.

  “You had potential, Slater. Your work was appreciated. Until you tried to screw me over. Any last words?” He patted Slater’s chest and drew out the folded sunglasses from his chest pocket.

  “Not the Ray-Ban’s, mate,” Slater protested. “Those are my best pair.”

  “You think it’s going to be bright where you’re going, Slater?”

  “I can hope.”

  With a chuckle, Neville returned the sunglasses to Slater’s pocket and slapped his cheek. “Any brightness will be from the flames, mate. Drop them!” he said.

  Slater lunged near Annja’s cheek, making it look as if he’d lost his balance. “Don’t panic,” he whispered.

  A thug shoved him aside and put all his weight into pushing on the heavy iron anchor.

  Not panic? Piece of cake. A gang of gunrunners were going to push them off the dock and into the harbor. The drop may not be deep this close to shore—in fact, Annja hoped it was a nice long sloping incline—but it wasn’t the depth that would kill her, it would be the lack of air and her inability to breathe like a fish.

  Annja was an above average to excellent diver. She could hold her breath a long time. No world record breaker, though. Slater, military trained, should be able to outlast her.

  But it wouldn’t matter with the handcuffs binding them together.

  Another thug joined in and the anchor wobbled. It wasn’t going to slide easily across the warped wood dock, and while they rocked on it to get momentum, Annja teased the idea of kicking one of them into the water. It wouldn’t help her plight. If the drowning plan didn’t go over, she suspected a couple bullets to the backs of their heads would serve, much as Neville thought it passé.

  She gave Neville the evil eye. “Don’t hurt Eric. He’s an innocent.”

  “Like you are innocent of snooping and putting yourself in my way? You know too much about our operation, as does your friend.”

  “He’s just a kid. If you’ve kept him drugged, he’ll never remember a thing.” Appealing to the man’s lacking compassion was a losing battle. But his sense of freedom was another thing. “Eric’s father financed our trip here. You’ll have him on your ass if you don’t send his son home in pristine condition. If you don’t go to jail for arms dealing, then kidnapping and murder tend to alter a man’s choice of Armani to prison orange.”

  “I’ll take that into consideration. See you around, Miss Creed. Mr. Slater.”

  Her wrists were jerked roughly. The anchor wobbled onto its curved base and the eye of the iron weight tilted toward the sky.

  Annja sucked in her breath. Her heartbeats thudded heavily. She’d been in worse situations. She’d once survived a tsunami in India. She’d been buried under tons of sand while hiding in an Egyptian tomb. She’d battled monsters, run away from natural disasters, fought bloodthirsty machine-gun-wielding pirates, and somehow she always managed to walk away.

  She could do this.

  The heavy weight rolled over the end of the dock, splintering the wood. Annja stumbled on a piece of serrated wood as she was literally dragged forward. Airborne, she tugged on the chain, but realized it would only pull Slater closer to the anchor.

  “Hold your breath,” he said.

  The anchor broke the impact as it crashed into the water’s surface. But it also served to suck down the water and created a sort of cup of air. Not good.

  Annja swung her legs forward. Slater did the same. Her hiking boots hit an arm of the anchor, and her entire skeleton felt as if it was jerked inside its skin, as if she were being skinned alive. A sharp wave of cold water hit her lower back and shoved her forward. She collided with Slater’s chest, but he shoved her away. It had been an instinctive reaction; his body had been jerked from hers without volition.

  It was difficult to inhale air as she was being sucked down in a gush of bubbles and rapidly moving water. The dark water and millions of air bubbles trilling about like champagne distorted her vision. She lost all concept of where Slater was until his foot kicked her shin. The stinging connection almost made her release her air.

  Her right fingers clasped, wanting to hold the sword, but with her wrists cuffed, it would only be an impediment.

  Then she realized what he was doing—Slater was tangling his leg in hers.

  So he could keep her close? The chain would do that. Or to wrangle her into some kind of death grip to make it all go faster? Whatever he had planned, she let it happen. If he harbored one final iota of malice against her, now was a bad time to try for revenge.

  And then he grabbed her shoulders—with both hands. He was free. Pulled downward, arms first and body following Annja, Slater clung to her. He shoved the chain into her hands.

  She grabbed a twist of links. Though wet, the built-up rust on the iron cut into her palms. They had stopped descending. The anchor must have landed on the bottom, but it could still slide down the incline. Looking up, the surface glitt
ered silver; they were no more than twenty feet under.

  Slater fussed at her wrists, wrenching the cuffs painfully across her bones. He must be picking the handcuff locks. It was the only thing that made sense. Annja held the chain that would keep them weighted and prevent them from floating to the surface.

  Air rapidly soughed from her lungs. A burn sizzled at the top of her lungs, clambering up her throat. Her temples pounded, as did her heart. The water wanted to cave in her skull and suck down her insides.

  In the next instant, her right hand was free. Slater wrapped his legs about her waist to keep them together. With a tug at the chain, she took his signal and dropped the heavy metal links. They floated upward. Her left hand was still cuffed and she dragged the length of heavy chain with her.

  Grabbing her hand, Slater tugged her sideways. They kicked through the murky water. He aimed for under the dock. It wouldn’t be wise to surface out in the open if Neville and his gang were still around.

  As her head broke the surface, Slater shoved a palm over her mouth. Vision blurred by water droplets, she focused on his shaking head. He put a finger to his lips. Don’t make noise. He pointed upward.

  Careful not to sputter and gulp in air, Annja treaded water. The heavy chain pulled her down until Slater grabbed the links, reducing the weight. Overhead, she eyed the shadows moving over the slatted dock boards. They’d stuck around to make sure their quarry didn’t surface. She could only be relieved they hadn’t fired a couple of rounds into the water to ensure their dirty deed had been successful.

  Water spilling from her mouth in dribbles, Annja inhaled too quickly and sputtered. Slater pressed his hand hard over her mouth. She understood he was trying to protect them both, but this wasn’t helping. Wrenching his hand away from her mouth, she gasped as quietly as she could manage.

  He made the okay sign, and questioned her with his eyes. She nodded affirmatively.

  Slater put a sure hand to her back and tugged the chain. It helped her to stay above water. Together they moved toward the shore slowly, riding the residual waves from the anchor drop.