A Time to Die

by Tom Wood

  Victor withdrew his pick and torsion wrench. His fingers detected that the pick had deformed a little in his pocket when he had crawled across the ground, so he spent a moment re-straightening it. The end result was less than satisfactory: a pick that was not quite straight and weakened from being bent back and forth.

  The padlock was in deep shadow, making his job more difficult still. He couldn’t risk using his torch, even shielding the light with his body, so he worked the pick and wrench in pitch-black darkness, keeping as quiet as he could. He didn’t want to alarm the women inside into making noise that would bring attention.

  He inserted the torsion wrench and began raking the tumblers with the pick, but miscalculated the pressure required.

  The pick snapped.

  It only made a small amount of noise, but he waited a moment to see if there was any reaction from inside the container or elsewhere. Nothing.

  By working the wrench like a pick he managed to drag out the sliver of metal that had snapped off. That solved one problem.

  He backed away, but not into the shadows. From one of the mounds of scrap metal he selected an aluminium can that was dented but not crushed. He held his breath and lifted it from its perch. There was a clink of metal. He paused, motionless. No reaction.

  He crept back to the shipping container door, crouched in the shadows and spent a few minutes twisting and tearing the can apart until he could fashion a sliver of metal to the appropriate shape. He wrapped the sliver of aluminium around the arm of the lock and pushed it down in the slight gap between the arm and the lock. He worked it further down into the hole until he felt resistance. He pushed harder down and the mechanism clicked. The lock was open.

  After glancing around to make sure he was still unobserved, he gripped the looped arms and pulled them free. Metal scraped against metal in a quiet scream as he withdrew the padlock from the container door.

  There was no noise from inside. The women were asleep or hadn’t heard him. But there was no way they wouldn’t react when he opened the door. Maybe they would scream in fear of their captors or perhaps attack him. Even if they didn’t, the hinges would make a hellish rusted wail when he pulled open the door.

  He thought about the river and the barges and the occasional horn that sounded. One would cover any noise he made, but it was impossible for him to know when a ship or barge would pass, and he would have no warning. It wasn’t an option.

  He paused for a moment, thinking.

  Victor rapped his knuckles on the container door with as light a touch as he could manage. He waited.

  He did so again, but with a little more force and a little more noise. He waited. Still nothing.

  A third rap, harder still, produced nothing but silence. He was preparing for a fourth attempt when there was a noise. Someone had rapped from inside the container.

  He had heard no hasty discussion or murmur of conversation. Only one of the women had heard.

  ‘I’m here to help you,’ Victor whispered, speaking Russian as Zoca had. ‘But you must keep quiet. Don’t speak. Rap twice if you can understand me.’

  Two quiet – if louder than he would have liked – clangs followed.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Don’t say anything. I’m going to release you. When I open the door you need to be ready. Explain to the other woman what I tell you. Once the door is open you need to go immediately left and run as fast as you can. There will be a twisting path between piles of scrap metal. You will reach a fence. You’re going to have to climb it. There will be razor wire at the top. It will cut you. It will hurt. But you’ll be free. Rap twice if you understand.’

  Two more clangs answered, quieter than before because the woman inside the container now knew what to expect.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Once you’re on the other side of the fence, keep running. If you see a car, flag it down. If you see a shop, run inside. Get help as fast as you can, but don’t come back and don’t stick together. Split up and they won’t catch you. When I open the container it’s going to be loud and they’re going to hear, which is why you need to run as fast as you can and climb and not worry if you cut yourself getting over the wire. The cuts will heal and you’ll be free. Whatever you do, don’t look at me, and don’t look back – just keep running, whatever happens. Go and tell the other woman what I’ve told you. Make sure you tell her absolutely everything. Once you’ve done that, come back and rap twice more to let me know you’re both ready.’

  He waited. After ten seconds there was nothing. After twenty there was still nothing.

  A few seconds later he heard the two raps of confirmation.

  He took the door in both hands and heaved it open.

  TWENTY-ONE

  He tried to ease it open as softly as he could, but despite his best efforts it made the predicted loud screech as the rusty hinges scraped and grinded. In the stillness of the scrap yard the sound pierced the night, echoing and unmistakable, impossible to ignore or rationalise as some innocent sound. Even inside the office cabin, amidst loud conversation and laughter, it would be heard; it would be recognised.

  Victor had planned for this. He had told the women to run.

  The first appeared, running and stumbling, bolting out of the container with everything she had. The ground was wet and slippery and her feet were bare. She kept from falling, but lost some speed before she recovered. She did as he had commanded. She didn’t look back.

  The second woman was right behind her, dashing out of the container as fast, but then stopping, abrupt and without warning.

  She glanced back over her shoulder, then turned to face him. There was nothing he could do to stop her seeing his face. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she was the one he had communicated with through the door. Up close she was even younger than he had thought. A teenager, maybe not even eighteen. She was thin and malnourished, but fuelled by the will to survive and the promise of freedom. Her face was dirty and her hair a tangled mess, the blonde hidden beneath a paste of oil and grime, but her eyes, though red-rimmed and moist with tears at that moment, were the bluest he had ever seen.

  They reminded him, despite himself, of a beach and breaking surf and similar eyes he had once gazed into, wet skin pushing against wet skin and promises broken and a debt he could never repay.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, stealing him back to the present he should never have allowed himself to leave, however briefly.

  ‘Go,’ he urged. ‘Hurry.’

  She said, ‘What’s your name? I want to know who saved me.’

  The other woman had disappeared out of sight, running hard.

  ‘There’s no time,’ he said. ‘Run.’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  Despite her fear, she was elated by his perceived kindness. She thought he was a hero. She thought he was saving her out of the goodness of his heart. As the girl turned away from him, her eyes seemed to leave a trail of incandescent blueness in their wake that shifted colour, darkening into red.

  Blood, arcing from her neck in a sudden swathe.

  Gunfire destroyed the silence.

  He was blinded, the blood splashing in his eyes, and between the visceral assault of noise in his ears and the curtain of red pulled across his vision he lost his bearings.

  Victor didn’t need to see the weapon to identify it as an AK47. The concussive crack of each high-velocity bullet gave it away. His instincts were strong, honed from countless battles, and dragged him low, to the shadows behind the container, to safety, as sizzling hot rounds pierced the air around him. The shooter was aiming for the girl with blue eyes, but a stray round hitting him would be just as lethal as an aimed shot.

  One of Zoca’s men had exploded out of the office cabin, reacting to the commotion with fully automatic gunfire. Maybe he knew he was shooting at the escaping women – the fleeing shipment. Maybe he didn’t.

  Victor hit the ground before the girl. She fell a moment later, but while he dropped in a control
led descent, breaking the fall with arms and legs as shock absorbers, she was a loose collection of limbs, uncontrolled and without grace, flopping down into the mud.

  He swiped the blood from his vision in time to see her last gasps and splutters, fighting to continue existing; desperation and terror and agony as the blood fountained from the gaping tear in her throat.

  Her last words were mouthed: Help me.

  He didn’t. He couldn’t. Had he been able, he would not have. He would not have risked exposure even if there had been anything he could do for her. He wasn’t a hero, whatever she had thought.

  Those blue eyes never stopped staring at him.

  Bullets were slicing through the night air, aim shifted to chase the other escaping woman, still alive and running faster than she would have thought herself able.

  The shooting stopped, sudden and abrupt, and he heard screams – not of pain or fear, but anger.

  Zoca, berating his man for opening fire, for being rash and impetuous and stupid. He backhanded the shooter in the face and stabbed the air with his fingers, pointing to where the second woman had run to, and ordering two of his men to pursue her.

  ‘Bring her back or don’t come back,’ he called after them.

  The other two, and Zoca, headed towards where Victor lay hidden – but hidden only because of the angle. If they moved laterally it would only be shadows that hid him. They stopped at the corpse.

  The two men stood still but Zoca circled the body.

  Victor was less than two metres away. He remained still in the cover of the shadows, a dark uneven shape against a dark uneven backdrop. They didn’t see him.

  ‘Shit,’ Zoca spat.

  ‘Is she dead?’ the shooter asked, cautious and quizzical, and afraid.

  The girl was still staring at Victor, but she was dead. Escaping air from inside her bubbled and frothed the blood at her neck and made a low whistle.

  ‘Is she dead?’ the shooter asked again.

  Zoca snapped out a pistol and drove it into the man’s abdomen in a sudden, savage strike. Rados’ lieutenant was fast and he was strong.

  The man dropped to his knees, heaving for breath, his face tight with pain.

  ‘Are you dead?’ Zoca asked, mimicking the man’s tone.

  The man, gasping, could not respond even if there had been a real question to answer.

  ‘No?’ Zoca asked. ‘You’re not dead, are you? You’re still alive. Why are you still alive?’

  He used the handgun to club the man in the side of the head, striking his temple with the muzzle, the blow as fast and vicious as the one to the abdomen.

  The man tumbled over, dazed and panting, his eyes glazed and cloudy at the same time.

  ‘Are you dead?’ Zoca asked again.

  He leaned over the man and clubbed with the pistol and stamped with his heel, interspacing the blows with the same mocking rhetorical question:

  ‘Are you dead?’

  ‘Are you dead?’

  ‘Are you dead?’

  He stopped only when there was not enough of the head left to strike with any degree of accuracy. Then he passed his pistol to the other man, who had stood watching in silence. The gun was drenched in blood and glistening bone and brain matter. The man took it without word or grimace.

  Zoca was gasping from the exertion and rage. His face was flecked with blood, made all the more vivid in contrast to his bone-white skin and hair. He wiped his boot on the dead man’s jeans.

  Chest rising and falling, Zoca gestured to the man he had beaten to death. ‘I just wanted an answer. Why wouldn’t he answer me?’

  The other man could only shrug. It was a shrug of indulgence rather than ignorance. He knew that Zoca was crazy.

  The other two men returned a moment later, red-faced and puffing. Rados’ crew were not fit. They smoked and drank and didn’t exercise. One of the two returning men had the other woman flung over a shoulder. She was dead or unconscious, and her arms and legs were red with fresh blood.

  ‘What happened to her?’ Zoca hissed.

  ‘She climbed the fence,’ one explained, still huffing to get his breath back. ‘She got tangled in the wire and cut herself. That’s where most of the blood is from. I dragged her back down, but had to hit her once to keep her quiet.’

  Zoca examined the cuts and took a fistful of hair to raise her head and examine her face.

  ‘You broke her nose.’

  The man was quick to defend himself. ‘I had to hit her. She wouldn’t stop screaming.’

  ‘You flattened it. She’s ruined now.’

  ‘I had to,’ the man said, but quieter. He took a nervous step back.

  Zoca, having neither a gun in his possession to beat the man nor the stamina to do so, had to settle for baring his teeth in a maniacal expression of rage. It was short-lived: there were more pressing matters to attend to. He looked from the unconscious woman to the two corpses and then to the shipping container itself. He walked towards it.

  ‘How did they get out?’

  None of the three men answered.

  He paced in front of the container, looking at the ground. He made a clicking sound with his tongue as he searched. When he had located the padlock, he bent over to retrieve it from a puddle.

  ‘It’s intact,’ he said, turning to face his men.

  One said, ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘How did they unlock it?’ another asked.

  ‘Unlock it? You think they managed to unlock it from inside the container?’ Zoca’s eyes were wide. ‘You think they reached through the steel and used a magic key?’

  The man didn’t respond.

  ‘Remind me,’ Zoca began, ‘which of you locked this particular container?’

  No one answered. The three men glanced at each other.

  Zoca asked, ‘I suppose it was locked by magic too. Or rather, I think we can safely say that it was not locked at all.’

  One of his men said, ‘I think he locked it,’ pointing to the corpse with the smashed-in skull.

  ‘How very convenient,’ Zoca said.

  He approached the dead woman, coming close to where Victor lay hidden. He seemed to look directly at him, but his focus was elsewhere.

  Zoca stretched his arms out wide at shoulder level, spreading his fingers into the night and darkness. The fingers of his right hand glimmered with blood, still wet but drying fast. He tilted his head backwards and exhaled, loud and deliberate in a controlled scream. His men watched, but their demeanour revealed this was something they had seen him do before.

  When he had finished, he tilted his head upright once more and pushed his fingers through his hair, leaving a smear of blood through the white strands. The blood acted like styling product, leaving the affected hair sticking up in clumps while the rest lay flat.

  His men shifted, uncomfortable.

  ‘This is a serious setback,’ Zoca said, his eyes still aimed at Victor, but the words directed at his men. ‘He will not be pleased. All of us will suffer for this.’

  The three remaining men shifted, even more uncomfortable. They might be tough criminals, former paramilitaries, but they were scared of Zoca and even more so of Rados.

  Zoca approached the other two containers. ‘Did you hear that?’ he shouted. ‘One of you is dead. That’s what happens if you try to escape. You will die. You will be shot and killed. Worse, if we catch you alive. Take this as a warning and do not test me.’

  He gestured to the man with the unconscious girl slung over his shoulder. ‘Put her back in the container for the time being while I think about how to fix this.’ To the other two he said, ‘Get this mess cleaned up, and do so fast.’ He headed to the office cabin, but then stopped, and said without looking back, ‘And make sure the door is locked this time.’

  Victor remained stationary. Each second that passed increased the risk of discovery, but Zoca’s three men weren’t looking for him. They didn’t know he existed, let alone that he was lying almost within touching distance. H
e stayed motionless while they talked and complained amongst themselves in hushed voices; about Zoca and his craziness and how the women managed to escape and whose fault it was and which of them would take the blame and what Rados would do to them.

  They had two bodies to move and a lot of blood to clean up, as well as an unconscious woman. She was put back inside the container, and while the focus of the three men was on her, Victor backed away, crawling on his stomach, so by the time the container door was closed he was hidden from view.

  It didn’t take them long to wrap the bodies in black plastic and duct tape. They had done this kind of thing before. Next they picked the larger bits of skull out of the mud, then poured a sack of sand over the blood. They worked using the ambient light from the portacabin, but one used a torch at intervals to check their progress.

  When they were satisfied with the clean-up, they took the bodies out of Victor’s sight and headed back inside the office cabin. He took that as his cue to move out.

  He had come here with the intention of destroying a shipment of drugs to disrupt Rados’ organisation. It hadn’t worked out that way, but Rados had lost a man and a quarter of a shipment tonight. Unplanned and messy, but the end result might even be better for Victor’s purposes.

  The price had been a girl with blue eyes.

  Help me.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The sign outside said it was a famous kafana. The plastic chairs inside said otherwise. It was warm and full of hungry Serbians quite content with the dirty walls and cheap furnishings. The food looked appetising though and was piled high on plates delivered by a svelte waitress with boundless energy. The air smelled of smoked meats and strong coffee.

  Victor had slept through most of the day, and spent the rest of it trying his best not to think about a dead girl with blue eyes.

  Hector was seated at a table, alone, midway through a plate of sour cabbage rolls stuffed with chopped meats and rice. He didn’t notice Victor’s approach until he pulled out the chair opposite. Hector was maybe forty years old, but looked a decade older. There was no fat to plump out his skin and a lifetime of smoking and poor diet had taken a hard toll. The bags under his eyes were as dark as his irises. His hair was thin and sparse in places from a lack of protein and nutrients.