Challenge accepted.
I felt a vibration in my pocket and a second later heard an electronic ring; I dug the phone out of my pocket and accepted the call. “Hello?”
“Puck Lawson?” The voice on the other end was quiet and almost soft, but icy.
“That’s me.”
“I am Ivar Krieg. We have a friend in common.”
“Anselm, yeah. Thanks for calling, man.”
“Ja, es nichts. You are in Kiev, ja?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know where, precisely?”
I glanced at Colbie. “Can you figure out our cross streets?”
She nodded. “Yeah. One sec.”
I went back to Ivar. “Hold on a minute and I can tell you.”
“Okay.”
Colbie trotted from the bench to the nearest intersection, and my eyes never left her—primarily to keep an eye on her and to make sure nothing untoward happened in the hundred-some feet from the bench to the corner, but also because her ass was phenomenal and because a woman running in heels was an incredible sight performing an incredible feat, if you asked me. She trotted back and I relayed the cross streets to Ivar.
“Ah. I know exactly where you are. How many of you are there, and are you safe there for the immediate future?” His English was impeccable, even smoother than Anselm’s.
“We’re at the park not far from the intersection. We’re safe for now, but Cain’s boys have a way of showing up unannounced. If they do show up, we’re gonna have to make tracks and fast,” I said. “There’re twenty of us.”
“Scheisse,” Ivar hissed. “That is a lot of people.”
“Don’t I know it, brother.” I heard a diesel engine roar and tracked the sound, but it was a city bus groaning and swaying to the next stop. “How much did Anselm tell you?”
“Enough. That you have stolen from Cain his human trafficking merchandise, and that you require assistance in Kiev.”
“One of the girls has a tracer in her, we’re relatively certain, so you can safely assume that wherever we go, they won’t be far behind.”
“I know someone who can neutralize that easily, although she operates out of Prague.” Ivar hesitated, thinking. “Twenty people, one chipped . . . are you armed?”
“Minimal. Two nines, a forty-five, and a forty, mag and a spare for each.”
“Not so much, considering. You will need more.” His cadence quickened, taking on the authority of someone who gave orders and was used to them being followed. “Remain where you are if at all possible—it is a good spot. If you receive company, dispose of them if possible. To attempt to elude them with so many extra bodies around is impossible. Can you split up if necessary?”
“Affirmative. Thirteen of the nineteen are unknowns. They were on the plane and I wasn’t gonna just leave ’em there. There are five girls who I cannot and will not separate from.”
“The thirteen, they are locals?”
“Negative. Assorted nationalities. Most are not native English speakers, and none of them are locals from what I can tell.”
“And you know nothing of their places of origin?”
“Most of them I can’t communicate with, so no. If you can have ’em dumped at a consulate or something, they can become someone else’s problem.”
“Nein, I have a better idea. I know someone who specializes in placing victims of trafficking in safe houses where they can be reunited with family if possible, or given a new life, if not.”
“Yeah, Anselm mentioned that human trafficking is a bit of a . . . ah, sore spot for you.”
“I have made it my personal mission to hunt down and end human traffickers. It is a vendetta for me. And this man, this Cain . . . he is a personal enemy of mine in particular. It was he, I believe, who was responsible for my sister’s kidnapping, enslavement, and death. I have sworn a blood oath that I will put a bullet in his skull.”
“Well, Ivar, you know what they say—the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I wouldn’t mind putting a hole or seven in that piece ’o shit my own self.”
Ivar’s laugh was an icy rattle. “I believe we understand each other very well, Herr Lawson.”
“Indeed we do, Mr. Krieg, indeed we do.”
“I am in the air as we speak. Your man Harris was able to secure a flight for me from Berlin.”
“ETA?” I asked.
“Less than two hours until landing, and perhaps twenty minutes after that to your location. I have ground transport arranged already in Kiev.”
“Sounds good. See you in a couple hours then, Ivar.”
“Jawohl. I look forward to our meeting.”
He clicked off, and I replaced the phone in my pocket. “Well, he seems like he’ll work out just fine,” I said to Colbie.
“Nice guy?”
I chuckled. “I hope not.”
Colbie frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“I don’t need a nice guy, I need a competent guy. I need the kind of guy who can get hold of untraceable firearms. I need a guy who can dispose of corpses. I need a guy who knows what to do with a bunch of scared, innocent women who all speak different languages, kidnapped from who the fuck knows where.” I withdrew one of the pistols I’d taken from the guys in the panel van and set it on my leg between us. “Any guy who meets those criteria probably ain’t a nice guy, know what I’m sayin’?”
Colbie eyed the pistol. “I see what you’re saying.” Her gaze went to me. “So . . . are you a nice guy?”
I snorted. “Not by a long shot. Wasn’t even a nice kid, and only got meaner as I grew up.” I smirked at her. “Nice is really fuckin’ overrated, you ask me.” Sliding the pistol toward her, I met her eyes. “Ever use one of these?”
She nodded. “Once.”
“Cap someone?” I asked, my voice neutral.
She shrugged. “I dunno. It was . . . chaotic. Probably not, to be honest. I wasn’t really . . .” She trailed off, unsure how to finish her statement.
I knew what she meant, though. “In gun battles, the majority of shots fired miss. An untrained kid, scared, in a gangland shootout? I doubt you came within a dozen feet.” I overrode the objection I saw bubbling up. “You didn’t want to hurt anyone, you were just going along with what was in front of you. Doing what you had to do.”
She nodded. “I’d hoped to never be in that position again.”
“Don’t blame you, sweetheart.” I dropped my palm on her knee and squeezed. “You don’t want it, I sure as hell won’t think less of you. But if you want to keep this with you for protection, it’s yours.”
“You think I should?”
I shrugged. “I’m not gonna lie to you, shit could very well get worse before it gets better. This has been way too damn easy so far. I’m just offering it to you. Choice is yours.”
She stared at the heavy black .40. After a moment’s thought, she gingerly nudged it back toward me with an index finger. “I think I’ll let you do the shooting, if that’s okay. If it comes down to it, I’ll do what I have to, but if I don’t have to shoot anyone . . . I’d rather not.”
I slid the pistol back into my pocket. “Fair enough. I’ll do my damnedest to make sure you don’t have to use it, how about that?”
She smiled at me. “I would appreciate that.”
At that moment, my ever-wandering gaze latched onto a pair of men across the street, seventy-five yards away. The way they were eyeing me, the brisk, crispness of the way they walked, and the way both of their right hands remained shoved into the pockets of identical black windbreakers . . .
“Layla,” I snapped, raising my voice just enough to be heard. “Incoming.”
“I see ’em.”
“I’ll handle it, but be ready,” I said. I nudged Colbie with my knee. “Go over and sit by the others. Follow Layla’s lead.”
She didn’t hesitate but also didn’t obviously hurry. She stood up, strolled over to where Layla and the others were, and found a seat on the arm of the bench, immediately e
ngaging in conversation.
The two men were close. Their eyes flicked from me to Temple and back, and then scanned the rest of the park. One of them said something to the other, gesturing with a free hand, and the two men separated.
The last thing I wanted was a public shootout, especially with so many innocent people around—aside from the nineteen women in my care, there were other pedestrians on the sidewalks, cars passing back and forth, bicyclists. All I had aside from the pistols was the three-inch folding blade I’d taken from Anton on the plane, which was better than nothing but not much against two armed assailants.
I was sitting on the bench closest to the street, so I remained where I was for the moment. I cast a quick glance behind me at the park, doing a headcount and a scan of the layout: the park was a rectangular lot between two rows of buildings, with a walkway bisecting the rectangle from the sidewalk to the center of the park, where there was a brick-paved courtyard, three rows of benches arranged in a semicircle around the center, facing in. A giant oak tree served as the centerpiece of the park, with a few smaller saplings around the perimeter of the park. The sides and rear of the park were formed by brick walls, the back and sides of buildings, with only the street side facing open. Most of the women were sitting on the benches closest to the oak tree.
As the two men approached the park, crossing the street, I stood up and slid my hands into my pockets. I had the folding knife in my hand, thumb ready to flick the blade open. The men had separated far enough apart that their tactic was obvious: one was going for me, the other for Temple. I decided to trust Layla to handle the one headed her way, and focused my attention on my immediate opponent.
He was a similar height to me but slimmer by about thirty pounds, and probably a decade younger, although the coldness in his expression made me think he was no novice to these kinds of situations. I stood my ground and let him approach. He got within six feet and then stopped, withdrawing his hand from the windbreaker pocket. He had a nine, finger on the trigger.
“Hands,” he barked, in a thick accent. “No funniness or you die.”
I kept my expression neutral as I raised my hands slowly. Of course, I had the little folding knife in my right fist, and it was just long enough that it didn’t quite fit in my fist. His eyes went to my hand, and he jerked his chin at the hint of black peeking out from the bottom of my fist.
“What is?”
I lowered my hands and opened my right palm to show the knife. “Here.”
He held his gun low, at his hip, aimed at me, and shuffled toward me, arm outstretched. Dumbass. Had he told me to drop it, kick it to him, or toss it, I’d have been fucked, but he looked young enough and naïve enough to maybe fall for this little trick. And yes, he did. He inched toward me, reaching for the closed knife in my hand, trusting the threat of the gun to be enough of a deterrent.
Dumbass.
I waited until he made his move, stretched his hand out to snatch at the knife. There was a split second when his attention was on my hand, on the knife, rather than on me, and that was when I struck. I lashed out with my left fist, batting his gun hand away and darting forward into him. My left hand fastened onto his wrist, and I crushed down with all the force I had, hard enough that I felt bones grinding, and he cried out. The instant I made my move, I flicked open the knife blade that thankfully had a nice, smooth action and decent spring to the blade, so one little push of my thumb sent the blade snapping into place. My hand was already low, at belly level, which made a throat shot tricky. I crashed into him, keeping a crushing grip on his gun hand wrist, and jamming the knife between us, angling down, down. I felt the rough scratch of denim and the bulge of his zipper; I angled a little lower and then drove the blade into the meat of his inner thigh, high up. He grunted in pain and I twisted the knife, dragged it back toward me through muscle, and then I withdrew the blade, my knuckles dripping hot and wet with blood. I slammed the blade into his throat just beneath his Adam’s apple, and his groan and scream of pain turned to a nasty wet whistle. I backed away, dropped him, stripping him of his pistol as he fell, blood spurting in thick, bright red gushes from his severed femoral artery.
I heard a shout and turned my attention to Layla and Temple. The other thug had Temple held in front of him against his chest, arm across her chest, but he didn’t have his gun to her temple. He had orders to bring her in alive, obviously, since she wasn’t worth anything dead. Which made his posture as a hostage taker an empty bluff.
I made sure he got a good look at his buddy, bleeding out. “Let her go, dickhead.”
“Nemaye . . . vpadit’ nizh,” he said, jerking his chin at me.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, bud, but for your sake, I hope it was ‘I’m a pussy, I give up.’”
Colbie snickered. “Actually, he told you to drop the knife.”
“No shit. Some things translate themselves.” I met her gaze. “Tell him to let her go, or I’ll kill him slower than I did his friend.”
Colbie rattled something off in Russian, and the dumbshit was foolish enough to pivot away from me to face Colbie, leaving most of his torso open. I chucked the knife at him, and as soon as the knife left my hand, I drew the .45 from behind my back. Life ain’t like the movies, though, and folding knives aren’t weighted for throwing, so unless you’re an expert, that shit ain’t sticking blade first into anything, and even experts would say that was nearly impossible. And in my case, I wasn’t an expert knife thrower. So the knife hit the asshole right in the center of his chest with the handle. Didn’t do jackshit to hurt him, but it did provide exactly what I needed: a distraction. He jerked his attention back to me, and the moment Temple felt his focus shift, she tore herself out of his grip and hit the ground. Smart girl. Now the playing field was even. By the time the stupid fucker realized what was happening, I was already inside his reach and had my pistol barrel shoved up under his chin. He blinked stupidly for a second, and then raised his hands.
“Shit,” I groaned as I took his weapon. “This complicates things.”
“What does?” Colbie asked.
I grabbed the guy by the hair and shoved him into the ground at the base of the oak tree. “This cockmuncher,” I said, gesturing at him with the barrel of the pistol. “He surrendered, so I can’t just shoot him, now.”
“Oh,” Colbie said. “I suppose that wouldn’t be very nice, would it?”
“No. It’d be downright unfriendly, I’d say.”
People watched, staring at the dude bleeding out, wondering what was going on. I had to make this whole scene less conspicuous right the hell now or we’d have to find somewhere else to sit, and I was kinda starting to like this park.
“Hey hooker, grab his ankles,” I said to Layla.
“Don’t call me a hooker, dickhead,” she retorted.
Layla tucked her pistol into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back with practiced ease and grabbed the now-dead dude by the ankles. I grabbed him by the armpits, and we carried him to the back corner of the park and dumped him. Not much I could do about the giant pool of blood on the sidewalk where he’d bled out, but at least there wasn’t a body lying out in plain view. He wasn’t exactly hidden where he was; mind you, just . . . less obvious.
A quartet of men in business suits drifted past the park just then, and my heart slammed in my chest as one of them glanced our way, but he didn’t seem to see anything amiss, and they all kept walking. This park was some distance from the busiest roads and didn’t have much traffic, pedestrian or vehicular—thank god, too, because that hadn’t exactly been the most unobtrusive of situations.
Layla sat back down on the bench with Kyrie and Lola, who were comforting Temple. Layla had her pistol out and was positioned to keep an eye and a gun barrel on our hostage, who seemed content to sit and not be dead, for the moment, at least.
I picked up my knife off the ground, folded the blade back in, and pocketed it, then resumed my seat on the bench. After a moment, Colbie returned t
o sit beside me.
“You make that look so easy,” she said.
“Which part?”
She gestured at the spreading pool of ruby-red blood. “That. Killing people. I’m not even sure what you did, or why he bled out so fast.”
I grabbed her hand, placed her fingers on the inside of my thigh, high up, so her knuckles were inches from my crotch. “There’s an artery here, the femoral artery.” Colbie’s breath caught, and her fingers splayed out on my thigh, digging in, as if fighting the urge to move higher yet; I released her, but her hand remained on my thigh. “The femoral is one of the biggest arteries in the human body, transporting over three hundred fifty millimeters of blood per minute. If that motherfucker gets severed, you will bleed out in less than five minutes.”
She tightened her grip on my thigh, and I felt myself going hard behind my zipper even though she was inches away from my cock, and we were discussing a man’s death. “So . . . if you’d severed his femoral artery and he was going to die of blood loss anyway, why did you stab him in the throat?”
I rested my palm on her knee, and then gently, slowly, hesitantly slid it up her thigh in minute increments, under the hem of her skirt; she let me, and my heart started doing a ridiculous pussy virgin teenager thumpity-thumpity-thump just from a fairly innocent palm to her leg.
“So he wouldn’t scream and draw attention to us.”
“Oh.”
“Do I scare you?”
She nodded. “Yes, you do. It shouldn’t be so easy to end a life.”
I sighed. “I agree. But that’s where my life has taken me. I don’t do it lightly, and I don’t do it easily. I’m not a serial killer or a sociopath, Colbie. But if someone threatens me or those I’ve sworn to protect, I will not hesitate, and I will not feel guilt. These jackholes are all stone-cold killers, and I’m doing the world a favor by getting rid of them.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
“In terms of what? In general, or people I’ve killed?”
She shrugged. “Both, I guess.”
I thought for a moment. “Hmm. In general . . . maybe not making more of the time I had with Raquel. I wish I’d been more open about how I felt, shown her what she meant to me. I was young and stupid and an emotional caveman, thought being manly and macho meant never being . . . like . . . sweet or tender or whatever. I really cared for her, but I was just a . . . a churlish dick all the time. Surly and closed off, kept my emotions shut down.”
Puck: Alpha One Security Book 4 Page 9