by Sean Black
“So,” said Lock. “Your advice would be for us not to be late and to stop sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that bluntly,” Robertson said. “But that would be the gist of it.”
Chapter Twelve
Lock handed Yuksia his SIG P299, a round already in the chamber. He stepped back as she took up a Weaver stance and began to fire the first of the fifteen rounds in the magazine. She handled the recoil no problem, adjusting her aim slightly with each shot, and finishing with two tight clusters. The first cluster centered in the chest of the silhouette target. The second cluster of shots punched through the inverted triangle marked out in the center of the target’s head.
She ejected the empty magazine and laid the gun down on the bench. Next to it, her cell phone flashed with an incoming text message from Robertson. She picked up her cell, opened the message and palmed it to Lock so that he could read it.
The money transfer had been cleared and verified by the kidnappers. András had just taken the call. The kidnappers were ready to release the package. They were going to call with a location in a half hour. With no clue as to where it might be, Lock, Ty and Yuksia were to sit tight, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.
Lock had met with the original driver that had been lined up after breakfast. He was middle-aged, a former city cop who smelled of stale beer and onions. He had the death pallor and yellow-edged eyes of a man whose first waking thought was of where his first drink was coming from. Lock wouldn’t have let him drive a bumper car at a fairground, never mind handle transport on a live operation.
With a last minute alternative hard to come and the clock ticking, Lock suggested that he drive the car while Yuksia navigated. Ty had shot him a look, which Lock had ignored. He did want to spend what little time they had left with her, but she was also a good fit for the job. Her English was impeccable, she had been calmer than most people under live fire, and he trusted her. She could also, from what he’d just seen, handle a gun if called upon to do so.
Ty strolled down from his lane at the opposite end of the range. His SIG P229 was holstered. He stood next to Lock as he inserted a fresh clip into his weapon, racked the slide, and holstered it.
“We good to go?” Ty asked Yuksia.
“Soon,” said Yuksia. “Shall we walk out to the car?”
Together, the three of them thanked the owner of the gun range, and strolled out past the reception area, down the long winding corridor, and out into the fresh early afternoon sunshine. It was cold but clear with blue skies overhead. Yuksia gave Lock to the keys her car and he climbed into the driver’s seat, pushing the seat back to adjust for his larger frame. Ty’s long legs meant he claimed shotgun. Yuksia climbed in back. Just as she settled herself in her seat, her cell phone chirped with a fresh text message.
Lock studied her puzzled reaction as she scanned the message. “Problem?” he asked her.
“They want us to go to the zoo.”
Next to Lock, Ty struggled to half-turn in his seat. “Say what?”
Yuksia held up the cell phone so he could read the message. “They want us to drive to Budapest Zoo, go inside, and await further instructions.”
Lock started the engine, put the car into gear, and drove towards the exit. Next to him, Ty still looked puzzled. “What are they thinking leaving him at a zoo?”
“They haven’t. This is just part of the dance,” said Lock.
“What dance?” Yuksia asked him.
“You’ll see,” said Lock.
Chapter Thirteen
The door opened and the guard walked in. Michael tensed a little as the he walked behind him. A second later he felt a black fabric hood being pulled down over his head. A mouth slit allowed him to breathe, but he couldn’t see anything.
There was a click as the hand and foot restraints he’d been wearing since the incident with the razor blade were unlocked. Michael reached back and felt the outline of the razor blade in his back pocket. He had taken it out of the razor again after he had finished shaving, while the guard had been distracted by a phone call. But before he could use it, more guards had appeared and shackled him.
He moved his hand away as an arm wedged itself under his armpit and he was helped to his feet. He was slowly guided forward towards the door and out into the corridor.
He could hear another man talking to the guard. They were speaking Hungarian. Michael had picked up a few words, but not enough to follow the conversation. The second man took his other arm, and said in English, “Be careful. There are stairs.”
With one of them on either side they walked him down a flight of stairs. He stumbled a few times and they had to tighten their grip to prevent him from falling.
He felt a breeze. He could smell petrol. After weeks alone in the room every new smell and sensation prickled his senses. He felt like a man who had been in a coma. His world, which had been so narrow and confined, was simultaneously familiar and fresh. It left his nerves raw.
The wind picked up. He shivered a little with the cold. They were definitely outside. He was sure of it.
The sound of a car engine springing to life close by startled him enough to make him jump. Next to him the two men laughed at his reaction. The second man, the one whose voice he was sure he hadn’t heard before but who had spoken to him in English said, “Relax, Michael. You are going home.”
Michael swallowed hard. There was something about the word ‘home’ that set him on edge. “Not until I know Katya’s safe. I want to see her. Take me to her.”
The men laughed. The second man said something to the other in Hungarian. He heard Katya’s name in the mix somewhere. Michael didn’t understand that they’d said but it elicited another huge belly laugh from his regular guard.
Michael felt a mixture of longing and rage flare up inside him. He would make them pay. Not now perhaps, but they would.
He felt a hand push down on the top of his head as he was bundled into what he could only imagine was the back seat of a car. The two men pressed in on either side of him, making escape impossible. He heard the car’s doors slam shut. Someone switched on the radio. The car began to move.
Michael sunk back into the seat. He took as deep a breath as the hood would allow, and closed his eyes.
Chapter Fourteen
The chatter of monkeys filled the air. A group of school kids snaked past the enclosure where Lock was standing hand in hand with Yuksia. Across from them, Ty did a bad job of pretending to study a map of the zoo. Behind Ty, a heavyset local in a black leather jacket that hadn’t been tailored to accommodate steroid heavy biceps the size of volleyballs was doing an equally bad surveillance job.
“So why are you so sure that they haven’t left him here?” Yuksia asked Lock.
Lock was aware of the man in the leather jacket’s eyes on them. He leaned in and kissed Yuksia on the lips.
“Ryan!” she protested. “We’re working.”
He nuzzled her neck, his lips obscured by her long hair. “Keep looking at me. There’s a guy over there watching us. He’s here to make sure that it’s just us and that we don’t have the cops in tow. That’s why they wanted us somewhere public and out in the open. It means they can get a good look. But this isn’t a collection point.”
He gave her another kiss. In a few moments Yuksia would get another call from András with the actual collection point. It was a shame. Lock could have happily spent the day kissing Yuksia at various tourist spots around Budapest.
Right on cue her cell phone rang. The heavy was already waddling off, no doubt going to see his buddies in the Great Ape House. Ty watched him go.
Yuksia finished the call. She took Lock’s hand again. “You like being right, don’t you?”
Lock smiled. “You don’t have to hold my hand anymore. Our shadow’s gone.”
Yuksia looked up at him, her chin jutting out defiantly. “I don’t have to do anything. But maybe I want to.”
They turned an
d headed for the exit. Getting on the plane to London was going to be a hell of a lot tougher than Lock had ever imagined.
Chapter Fifteen
The car came to a stop. The engine noise died. No one moved. Crammed between the two men, the pressure on Michael’s left side eased suddenly as one of them opened the rear passenger door and got out. Moments later the other guard opened his door and exited the vehicle.
A hand grabbed Michael’s arm, he winced as fingers pinched his bicep. He was half-guided, half-hauled from the back seat. One man either side, they marched him forwards. They were walking so quickly he struggled to keep up. Not being able to see had slowed him down.
There was the sound of a door being opened. What little light he had through the fabric of the hood faded. They were inside. The echo of their footsteps told him that much.
They kept walking, the pace a little more leisurely. Michael guessed that the speed was connected to their risk of exposure. They were more likely to be spotted outside. Even the most fleeting glance of two large men frog-marching a hooded man in a suit from a car into a building would be enough to prompt a phone call to the police.
They came to a stop again. There was the creak of another door being opened. He was pushed forward. A hand on his shoulders forced him down into a seat. His hands were pulled behind the back of the chair. His wrists were pressed together. He felt rope being tied around them.
“Stay here,” he was told. “Someone will come get you soon. It’s over, so relax, and forget about your whore.”
The last word triggered something in him. He lashed out with a kick but the man’s footsteps were already receding into the distance. The door opened and then closed again.
He was alone again. He took a breath. His rage burning afresh as he tried to reach back and dig a finger into his back pocket, searching the tiny blade.
Chapter Sixteen
The sky a burnished gold, they were losing light as Lock spun the wheel, taking a sharp right turn into an old industrial area of abandoned open lots and derelict warehouses. Lock slowed down, dropped one hand from the wheel, reached into his jacket and came up with his gun. Ty had already drawn his. Both men scanned the terrain ahead.
Yuksia was on the phone to András. He was on an open line to one of the kidnappers who was giving András, what he had promised, a final set of directions to Michael Lane.
Lock could tell from Yuksia’s body language that she felt uncomfortable. He didn’t blame her. Not after having been fired on the previous evening. Robertson may have seen it as a warning to stay within the usual parameters, but that was an easy call when you were tucked up in a cozy conference room at a luxury hotel. Organized crime gangs in central and Eastern Europe may not have been as quick to temper or unpredictable as say an Islamist terrorist group, but they weren’t exactly a bunch of choir boys either. If they wanted to dissuade future investigations into how they targeted Western businessmen then killing Lock, Ty and Yuksia would make for an effective way of doing that.
Conversation in the car had died away. They had reached a long row of gray communist-era concrete buildings. “The third one down,” Yuksia said. “They’re saying he’s in there.”
Lock’s eyes flicked to Ty, then to the building that Yuksia was pointing at, and then to his rearview mirror. The area was a maze with row after row of warehouses on both sides separated by narrow alleyways. A car could pull out behind them and they’d have no way of seeing it until it was right up their tail. Worse, Lock hadn’t seen another vehicle or person in the past two minutes. If they were ambushed, they would have to fight their way out. Lock was starting to regret not taking up the offer from the manager of the gun range of some more heavy duty hardware than a couple of handguns and a half dozen fifteen round clips.
He turned round in a wide sweep and stopped next to the warehouse. He left the engine running, and got out. Ty met him on his side of the car. Lock opened the rear door and put Yuksia in the driver’s seat with strict instructions to get the hell out of there if she heard so much as a single shot.
“And leave you here?” she protested.
For the very first time he regretted, if only for an instant, their brief sexual encounter. Emotion had entered what was best kept as a strictly business relationship. In his business emotion tended to get people hurt. “Yes,” he said, firmly. “You can’t get us help if you’ve been shot.”
Ty had moved away from the car. Lock watched as Ty walked away slowly, his back to the concrete walls. Ty disappeared around a corner only to appear again a few moments later. He waved Lock over to him. Lock took Yuksia’s hand and gave it a squeeze before turning away.
“There’s a door down here,” Ty said to him.
Lock stopped at the corner. Yuksia was staring at him. Reluctantly, she got into the driver’s seat and closed the door.
He followed Ty to the door. They took a side each. Ty pushed the handle down. The door opened. Lock pushed through, his SIG punched out ahead of him.
Inside, the space was mostly taken up by what looked like an old printing press. Lock took a few steps inside. Ty joined him. The wind caught the door, slamming it shut behind them.
Lock waved Ty to one side of the vast metal printing press as he skirted round the other side. They were headed for what the kidnappers had told András was an operating room at the back where they would find Michael Lane.
About twenty feet ahead, Lock could see a red door. There was a faded black and white plastic sign tacked to it with wording in Hungarian. The door was slightly ajar. Lock stepped to the hinge side of the door. He pushed the door open with the toe of his boot as Ty arrived on the other side.
This time Ty pushed through the door first, gun drawn, body low as Lock provided cover. The room was completely dark. Lock doubted the building still had power, but reached out to a set of three switches and flicked them on. Miraculously, they worked. Overhead a single bare bulb flickered into life.
The two men exchanged a look at what they saw. Ty muttered a low “What the hell?” His exclamation was met with a shrug. “The hell if I know,” said Lock.
Lock dug his cell phone out of his pocket, and scrolled down to Robertson’s number. He hit the red call button and waited for it to connect, not entirely sure how he was going to break the news. This was one scenario they hadn’t prepared for.
Ty tapped Lock’s shoulder and pointed to the door. Both men spun round, guns punched out as they heard someone walking towards the room. Lock’s finger fell to the trigger, ready to fire.
Yuksia appeared in the doorway. Lock lowered his weapon, ready to remonstrate with her. She stared beyond both of them to the empty chair and the floor where several lengths of thin blue rope and a black hood lay on the floor.
“Hello! Hello? Ryan?”
Robertson was shouting down the phone at Lock. Lock raised the cell to his ear. “I’m here.”
From outside came the revving of a car engine. Lock hit the door first, followed closely by Ty. They raced across the printing plant floor. Ty’s long legs outpaced Lock and Yuksia. Yuksia was cursing at herself in Hungarian. She transitioned to English as they got outside. “The keys! I left them in the ignition!”
Lock rounded the corner to see the car swerve to avoid hitting Ty and accelerate away at speed. At the wheel was Michael Lane.
Chapter Seventeen
Standing next to bags packed for a flight they were set to miss, Lock stood with Yuksia at the window of Robertson’s hotel suite overlooking the Chain Bridge.
Her hand settled on his shoulder. “There was nothing you could do. It was my mistake.”
Behind them, Robertson was hunched at his desk, midway through a tense call to the insurance broker back in the Lloyds building in London. The broker was understandably furious at having just paid out a sizable ransom without actually having a living, breathing hostage in return.
Equally tense calls had been made to Michael Lane’s wife and elderly parents, as well as his anxious employers. A f
ew feet away from Robertson, Ty was taking the opportunity to raid the negotiator’s mini bar for bars of freshly replenished Toblerone.
Like a lot of former military personnel, Ty had seen enough of the rage and despair the world had to offer not to be blown off course by what he regarded as a temporary setback to their plans. Ty’s analysis of what may have motivated Michael Lane to flee a safe return home had been pithily summed up earlier when he’d told Lock, “Dude’s not had a beer or seen a woman in months. I’d have split too.” Yuksia had rolled her eyes at Ty’s pithy summation of Lane’s probable motive while Lock did his best not to laugh.
Robertson put the phone down. “Ryan, you and Tyrone don’t have to stick around. It’s hardly your, or Yuksia’s fault that our hostage decided to take off like a bat out of hell. It’s not something we legislate for. You’ll be paid as agreed. I settled that with the broker.”
Lock turned from his position by the window. “As far as I’m concerned the job’s not finished until we have Michael Lane and we know he’s safe.”
“You don’t have to…” Robertson started.
“I know we don’t,” said Lock. “But we will. Otherwise next week or next month there’ll be another Michael Lane.”
Robertson got up from his desk and joined Lock at the window. For a few moments the two men stood in silence, staring out at the Danube and the glittering bridge.
Lock turned back towards András who was sat on one of the suite’s plush couches, his head in his hands. “Can you hit up whatever contacts you have and put the word out that we’re offering five thousand euro for any information leading to us finding Michael Lane?”