Andre found her phone, threw it to the floor, and stomped on it, breaking the case. When he started working his way to her feet, she said, “There’s a nine millimeter pistol attached to my ankle.” Grigori frowned. Leine shrugged. “Professional courtesy.”
Andre nodded and lifted her pant leg. He slid the gun free and handed it to Zamir. One of the other gunmen approached from behind and yanked her arms back before she could react, lassoing her hands behind her with a zip tie.
“This wasn’t part of the deal, Zamir,” Leine said, gritting her teeth.
Grigori strained against the two gunmen holding him. The shorter one rammed a pistol against his head.
Zamir frowned. “You’re right. I will have to call Nicholas and raise the amount he owes me, now that I have two of his people.”
Andre stepped behind Grigori and, with the help of the other two, cinched his wrists. The gunman behind Leine did the same to her ankles.
That’ll make things a bit more challenging, she thought.
Zamir studied Leine’s pistol before he slid it into his waistband. “Russian made? I would have expected Swiss or Austrian.”
“Why is that?”
Zamir smiled. “Because of your reputation.”
“What are you talking about?” The sinking feeling in her chest told her that this was something other than a simple shakedown. Had Vladimir already betrayed her? Short-sighted, even for Vlad. He would have waited until Nicholas received the shipment before he set the Albanians loose on her. What the hell was going on?
“I could kill you now, but you are worth so much more alive.” Zamir leveled his gaze at her. “You would be surprised who is looking for you. Did you know that your picture is readily available on the Internet?”
When she didn’t respond, he smiled. “It is true. Your photograph has been posted in a certain chat room that I frequent. Although, I will say it is not a good likeness.” He shook his head. “So many ways to make money in the digital world. But you must know where to look, yes? I could not believe my luck when you appeared.”
Zamir was talking about the deep web. The invisible Internet most people weren’t aware of where criminals used message boards and set up chat rooms to do business under the radar. Drug deals, child pornography, arms dealing, human trafficking, murder for hire, you name it, the deep web was a one-stop shopping Mecca for black-market goods. Leine had trolled for leads when working cases for SHEN and exploited it extensively as an assassin. The irony that it had been used to track her wasn’t lost on Leine.
“I hate to tell you this, Zamir, but you’ve got the wrong gal.”
“If either of us dies,” Grigori added, “you will know the unimaginable fury of my family.”
Zamir snorted. “I am shaking with fear.” The other gunmen joined in the laughter.
The sound of a vehicle approaching outside echoed through the building. A white box truck with a refrigeration unit mounted above the cab pulled into the warehouse and backed up to the cooler door. Zamir and his men leaped into action. Two of the gunmen stayed behind, their weapons trained on Leine and Gregori.
Zamir opened the back of the truck while Andre and another gunman extended the ramp. The two men and the driver disappeared through the strip door into the cooler and reappeared pushing a shrink-wrapped pallet on wheels, stacked ten high with bundles of currency. Two more pallets followed before they replaced the ramp and closed the back of the truck.
Zamir said something to the driver and handed him a stack of money. Smiling, the driver turned to leave. Zamir raised his gun and fired. The sharp report echoed through the warehouse. The man fell forward, onto the cold concrete. Zamir motioned to Andre.
“Put him in the cooler.”
Andre and the other guard each took an arm and dragged the driver through the PVC strips, streaking a path of blood across the floor.
“We go now.” Zamir slid on a pair of expensive sunglasses and motioned to the two guards. “Bring them.”
And then it hit Leine.
Without the clean shave and the expensive suit she hadn’t recognized him. Zamir resembled the man standing next to the Bulgarian target in the picture accompanying the French news article. Z. Ristani. Zamir Ristani.
Dick Bennett’s former business partner.
Chapter 31
It was after ten o’clock Thursday morning when Santiago Jensen’s phone rang.
“Detective Jensen, this is Lou over at SHEN. I need to speak with you about Leine.”
“Is she all right?” Santa leaned forward in his chair.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. I’ve been trying to reach her since early this morning. She’s not answering her phone.”
“She was on her way back to Tijuana last I saw her.”
“I’m aware of that. I’ve been monitoring her location through a locator we installed on her phone. For some reason she ended up in Ensenada. That wouldn’t have been a red flag in and of itself. She could have gone there to check out a lead.”
“But?”
“But the program quit logging her location a few hours ago.”
“So either her phone died or it’s been disabled.”
“It’s a distinct possibility.”
Santa clenched his jaw as unease morphed into worry. Leine never let her phone die. Charging the battery was the one thing she made sure she did every night before she went to bed, and she took a solar charger with her everywhere.
“Where’s the last location you have her?”
“A rundown warehouse on the outskirts of town.”
“I’ll call my guy in TJ, have him check on it for us.”
“That would be very helpful. Thank you, Detective.”
“Call me Santa.”
***
Bob Herrera agreed to drive to the warehouse in Ensenada right away to see if Leine was there. Santa paced a groove into the carpeting next to his desk while he waited to hear back from the DEA agent.
Heather stopped in to check on him and asked if he wanted some takeout, but he declined. There was no way he could eat, not when Leine might be in trouble. Heather gave him a sympathetic look and left for lunch. Santa didn’t notice her leave.
Goddamn that woman, he thought. He’d never worried about another human being as much as he worried about Leine Basso. Yeah, she could take care of herself, and yes, once upon a time she’d killed people for a living, but that didn’t lessen his fear for her safety. Santa didn’t view things in stark black and white. He’d learned that in his line of work there were several shades of gray.
Like his feelings for a former assassin.
Two hours later, his phone rang. The screen read Robert Herrera. He answered on the first ring.
“No trace of her, Santa,” Bob said. “The neighborhood’s pretty sketchy, mostly a bunch of abandoned warehouses. There’s a Hummer parked down the street with the windows bashed in. I checked the glove box and found a rental agreement issued to a Nicholas Romanov.”
“Leine had a phone call from someone named Nicholas before she left. Said it involved a favor for a friend. I suggested she turn him down, do the favor after TJ if he still needed her.”
“Looks like she didn’t take your advice.”
“Guess not. Anything else?”
“One of the warehouses had fresh tire tracks coming out of it. Maybe a panel van or something bigger.”
“Did you get inside?”
“Yeah.” Herrera paused.
“And?”
“There was blood on the floor in the back by a walk-in cooler. Somebody dumped a body inside.”
Santa closed his eyes. Shit. “I’m coming down.”
“Figured you were. Text me your ETA. I’ll meet you in Tijuana.”
“Thanks, Bob.”
Santa hung up the phone and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension lodged there. He emailed the sergeant to get clearance for comp time that afternoon and the next day, which happened to be Friday. He’d have
a little more than three days to search for Leine.
What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time, Basso?
Chapter 32
One of Zamir’s men drove the refrigerated truck and Andre rode shotgun. They followed Zamir, Leine, Grigori, and the two other gunmen in the Yukon. Zamir had ordered his men to place Leine in the second row next to him and secure her wrists to the grab handle. The taller gunman took the seat behind them, and they strapped Grigori into the front passenger side. Both vehicles were now on a secondary road, headed north.
“Nicholas will wonder what happened to us if we don’t check in,” Leine said to Zamir. That much was true. Either she or Grigori was supposed to call in a progress report every few hours. A shipment delay was unacceptable.
“You will contact him soon enough,” he replied.
Kidneys could be held outside of the body if they were properly packaged and delivered within twenty-four hours. The time dropped to under twelve hours for a pancreas or a liver, with less than six for a heart. Leine wondered how long it had been since the kidneys had been removed from the donor, whoever it was. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly in an attempt to rein in the adrenaline. She assumed they were keeping Grigori alive because they had to line up a buyer. And because they weren’t in a place conducive to removing his organs.
There was no way the shipment in the blue cooler had been taken from a willing donor. Not with what she suspected were two matching kidneys in the bag. She glanced in the rear side mirror at the refrigerated truck, her anger growing.
Zamir leaned toward her, breaking through her thoughts. He gestured at her bandaged arm.
“That must have been some dog, eh?” He smiled as though they were having a friendly conversation. “For a woman, you are very tall. How did this dog jump so high to bite your arm?”
“We were playing. He got a little excited and before I knew it, he’d bitten off a chunk.”
“What kind of dog was it?”
“A big damned German Shepherd.”
Zamir studied her face for a moment before he nodded and leaned back in his seat. It looked like her story worked. For now.
She wondered how much the contract payout was for. It had to be lucrative enough that Zamir believed it was worth more than killing her for revenge. Leine doubted any of Zamir’s gunmen knew who she was or she’d be dead by now, price on her head or not. Emotions generally ran high when it came to the death of fellow members of an organization like the KLA.
Leine glanced out the window at the saddle-brown landscape. They’d left Ensenada behind over three hours ago and were now driving along a pockmarked dirt road in the middle of nowhere. The occasional tree or shrub broke through the monotony of the desert landscape, but for the most part the terrain boasted a mixture of dust, dirt, and bright colored food wrappers.
Not a great place to fight off armed gunmen, Leine thought. Then again, what place was? She wished Grigori had been more forthcoming about the location of the border crossing. At least then she’d have some idea what to expect. Going into a situation blind and in restraints was never good.
After the question about the dog bite, Zamir didn’t attempt any more small talk, giving Leine a chance to mull over what she’d learned, hoping to latch onto new information that would lead her to Elise.
If Elise was still alive.
Although a long shot, it was possible the two kidneys belonged to the missing girl. They weren’t Josh’s—too much time had lapsed since his death.
“Turn here,” Grigori said.
The SUV slowed and turned onto a smaller dirt track, heading farther into the desert along a deeply rutted road. The box truck followed, precariously teetering back and forth. Leine found it interesting they were using a refrigerated truck to transport money. The kidneys would survive in the hard-sided cooler. The only thing that made sense was that Zamir intended to use the vehicle to transport organs. She assumed the money was for startup costs, among other things.
What a waste of life, she thought. Memories of the many targets she’d eliminated as an assassin crowded her mind. She’d considered what she did a service, albeit a violent one. Yes, she had killed people, but every one of them except for Carlos had been responsible for heinous acts of their own, and her guilt wasn’t as crushing as it might have been.
Carlos was another story.
Leine would bet her life that if Zamir succeeded in transporting the truck across the border without detection, every healthy organ he could find would be snapped up by desperate transplant recipients in the US. Wait times were notoriously long across the globe, and many died before a match became available.
Half an hour later, they came to a makeshift gate with barbed wire on either side and stopped. Zamir got out to open it, and returned to the SUV. The vehicles continued through.
A short time later, they rounded a bend and slowed to a stop in front of a sprawling Quonset hut. Two sliding doors hung from a long track running a third of the width of the structure. Grigori exited the vehicle, followed by the gunman who’d been sitting behind Leine. Inside the SUV, Zamir covered Leine with his .45 while the other two walked up to the doors. Zamir’s gunman banged on the rusty metal with the barrel of his AK.
The door slid open and a dark-haired man Leine hadn’t seen before walked out to greet them. He motioned angrily at Zamir’s gunman and said something to Grigori, obviously unhappy. Zamir’s thug raised his gun and shot him, point-blank. The dark-haired man dropped to the ground. Throughout the exchange, Grigori’s expression remained impassive. The gunman shoved the dead man to the side, and prodded the Russian forward with the barrel of his gun.
Several shots rang out from inside the Quonset hut. A moment later, Zamir’s gunman reappeared at the open door and whistled. The refrigerated truck drove around the SUV and continued inside. Zamir motioned for his driver to follow them into the structure. They parked near the refrigerated truck, and the driver and Zamir got out, leaving Leine attached to the grab bar of the SUV.
Inside was a cavernous space with a dirt floor. A dozen cots had been stacked three high against one wall, with half-empty shelves lining another. Several gas cans stood on a shelf along the back wall, sharing space with an assortment of tools.
An older-model dump truck was parked on top of a rectangular piece of sheet metal in the center of the structure. Two bodies lay next to a makeshift table with a shortwave radio and what was left of a bag of tortilla chips, a coguama of Tecate, and two Pacificos.
Zamir barked commands at his men, keeping an eye on both captives while his driver climbed into the dump truck. The engine turned over once, twice, followed by a loud backfire and belching smoke as the diesel motor chugged to life. The gunman shifted into gear and drove the hulking machine forward until it cleared the metal plate underneath. Then he killed the engine and hopped out. Andre covered Grigori while the driver and the other gunman dragged the metal plate sideways, revealing a concrete ramp leading underground.
Leine craned her neck for a better view. The ramp led to a reinforced tunnel large enough to drive a truck through. With everyone momentarily distracted by the ramp, she grasped the end of one of her hair pins by the tips of her fingers and worked it loose.
The passageway was most certainly compliments of one of the more powerful cartels. In the last few years, the drug cartels had discovered high-end industrial drills, enhancing their ability to dig large tunnels. Access would have been easy with the amount of cash these criminal organizations had at their disposal. Leine had never heard of one this large, though. Most were pipelines several inches across drilled under strata a few hundred feet from the border. The DEA had recently discovered a tunnel five feet wide near Calexico, but nothing this large.
With Zamir and the other gunmen’s attention still on the tunnel, Leine shoved the bobby pin into the female end of the zip tie they’d used to attach her to the grab bar, working to bypass the tie’s small teeth. It took a few tries before she was able to loos
en the plastic enough to pull her bound hands free.
Careful to keep her arms above her head to give the impression that she was still tied to the grab bar, Leine transferred her efforts to the tie around her wrists. Zamir turned to look straight at her, and she stilled her hands. Apparently satisfied his prisoner was still secure, he returned his attention to the tunnel.
Punctuated by utility lanterns, the passageway was reinforced with wood framing and rebar. A small generator on a wooden platform sat near the entrance. The SUV driver trotted down the ramp to the machine and fiddled with the controls. After several futile attempts at starting the machine, he stepped back and gestured to the other gunman to try.
Leine loosened the second tie enough to slip one hand free, while keeping the other on the grab bar to give the illusion of still being attached. Watching Zamir out of the corner of her eye, she worked the bobby pin into the tie around her ankles with her free hand. Seconds later, she shook off the plastic tie. She slid the pin back into her hair, held onto the bar above her head with both hands, and waited.
Neither gunman could get the generator to work. Clearly frustrated, the driver motioned for Grigori, but Grigori balked.
Andre shoved the barrel of the AK-47 into his back and pushed him forward onto the ramp.
“Go,” he growled. Grigori relented and walked down the ramp to join the other men. Andre remained several yards behind him.
Grigori turned his back and presented his bound wrists. With a nod from Zamir, the smaller gunman used his pocketknife to cut him free.
While the rest of them looked on, Grigori made a great show of trying to start the generator but failed each time. Leine lowered her arm to the handle and eased the door open, watching him closely. She dropped into a low crouch and edged around the back of the Yukon. Leine estimated the distance between Zamir and the SUV at five feet.
Grigori bent over the pull cord and muttered something. The two gunmen leaned in to see what he was talking about. Grigori spun and there was a flash of metal as he slammed a knife into the closest guard’s gut, burying the blade. The man grunted and doubled over as Grigori head-butted the other guard and grabbed the AK. Using the guard as a shield, Grigori swiveled, strafing the air with bullets. Andre dove for cover.
The Body Market: A Leine Basso Thriller Page 18