by Lee Roland
“Who’s leasing the space?”
“Corporation. Malison Dividend.” He bent to study the screen. “Second year, five-year lease.”
“So what we see here could have come in a little at a time?”
Dacardi straightened. “Yeah.”
“And you think it’s guns? Plastic?”
He nodded, his eyes on the screens. “Seen boxes like that before. Same construction. See how the corners are put together? The way the straps are crossed. Maybe coincidence, but it feels wrong.”
“Could I get in? Have a look around?”
He lifted a plastic card out of his pocket. “My warehouse. My lease.”
The sun had almost set when we arrived at the warehouse. Dacardi kept in phone contact with his men, who in turn followed the wharf security vehicle making its rounds. One of his men drove us to the warehouse in the Mercedes and let us out at the front door. The metal building, one of the larger ones on the block, towered over us like a dirty green temple to the gods of industry. Enormous bay doors on the front allowed big trucks in and out. Equally large doors and a massive lifting apparatus would be on the dock behind for goods loaded and unloaded from barges. A sign mounted on the wall by a small door proclaimed OFFICE. NO SOLICITORS.
Dacardi swiped a plastic card in the lockbox attached to the door. The lock clicked and he jerked it open. We quickly stepped inside.
“Sorry, fuckers,” Dacardi said. “Had the codes changed like they didn’t think I’d programmed in a master. My property. I come here when I damn well want.” He stepped up to a panel with a digital readout and keypad mounted on a wall, punched in some numbers, and all the lights on the pad blinked green.
“I hate fucking computers,” Dacardi said. He sneered at me like I was personally responsible for the electronic age. “I hate that bastard who takes care of mine. Have to pay him more a year than I pay my second man.”
“What are you going to do if it is weapons?”
“Don’t know. Get some men and trucks down here, move ’em . . . Don’t know. Gonna take the fall no matter what.”
I agreed. Dacardi owned the warehouse, and no matter what happened, no one would believe he didn’t own the guns.
The office had an empty water cooler and a clean desk, a room not used in some time. It fit with Dacardi’s assertion of inactivity.
We entered the hushed confines of the main warehouse. Though we were the only living beings in this steel cave, menace hung in the air like the ghost of violence. Dacardi carried a powerful flashlight. Nothing but numbers marked the crates, stacked five high, two by two in rows. They reached the metal ceiling far above us. None were open like the one at yesterday’s site. “I don’t know, Dacardi. Look for pallets set apart, away from the crates.”
“You mean like those?” He flashed his light between two rows. Sure enough, five pallets sat near the back wall like tombstones clothed in shrink-wrap. More C-4.
We approached cautiously.
“What do you think?” Dacardi spoke like he knew the answer to his own question.
“I think we should probably leave here now.”
“Yeah. Too many for me to get them out without somebody seeing. I’ll call my lawyer, then be a Good Samaritan and call the cops.”
“Best you can do, I guess. Don’t tell them I was here, or you’ll need more than lawyers.”
“You been a bad girl, huh?”
“No. Guilt by association. Like a crime boss owning a warehouse full of guns that aren’t his. I’ve blown up one cache and found another. My credibility level is in the basement.”
“Your cop?”
“I think he likes me. And believes me. But he’s only one man.”
Dacardi grunted. “Crime boss. You know how hard I worked to get rid of that—”
The sound came, soft, the opening of a door, a slight change in air pressure, then the sliding of a shoe on concrete. Someone had come in the front. Someone with a key and all the codes. I glanced at Dacardi. He switched off the flashlight. As he did, the main warehouse lights flashed on. Ten men moved toward us across a hundred and fifty feet of open space. They’d spread out. One wore a security guard uniform, but the others looked like dockworkers. I doubted they’d be dumb and drugged like the Bastinados.
I was sure they’d be armed. Would they shoot? The guns and ammo really weren’t much of a danger, but the four pallets had the potential to blow us all to hell. Overwhelming us with numbers would be their best bet.
“Is there a back door?” I asked.
“ ’Bout fifteen feet behind us.”
“Will your card—?”
“Back door should open.”
“You carrying?” I asked.
Dacardi nodded. “Little .38 in my pocket.”
I drew my gun. “Let’s go. I’ll hold them back while you open the door.”
We quickly backed away to the door. The men coming toward us slowed when they saw my gun. They jerked to a stop when I pointed it at the four pallets, confirming my suspicions of their contents. C-4 wouldn’t likely explode from a single bullet, but they obviously didn’t know that. Or it was something more volatile than C-4.
Dacardi cursed from behind me where he worked at the door.
“Got it,” he said as the door opened.
We rushed out the door and onto the docks. Our only escape was the river. I could swim, but the Sullen ran deep and cold here. And it was at least thirty feet down to the water.
Dacardi slammed the door. The lock clicked shut, but would probably open from the inside unless . . .I scanned the area. The docks themselves were clean and clear except for the winches and other loading equipment, but six-foot strips of heavy angle iron lay piled near the building. I grabbed a couple and wedged them against the door.
“How are we going to—?”
“Swim. You swim, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m not much on diving.” Not thirty feet anyway.
“Don’t know much, do you?”
“Not about docks.”
He grinned. Great Mother, the crime boss was having fun.
We ran to the end of the dock, where a ladder dropped to a smaller floating platform.
I jumped at the whir of the big bay doors on the back of the building opening.
Dacardi had already started down the ladder.
I turned back. Our pursuers, crouched low, hurried toward us. I couldn’t shoot and climb a ladder, so I holstered the gun and started down. I made six feet when one of the men pounded across the dock. I glanced up. The barrel of a pistol pointed straight down at me.
Out of the blue, two shots cracked into the night. The gunman standing over me collapsed as the top of his head popped off. A splash of warm blood hit me and ran over the dock’s edge. His weapon, released by nerveless fingers, hit the river below with a small splash.
I hurried on down the ladder. Blood and brains? No problem. I needed a bath anyway.
The last rays of sunset painted the sky, and the automatic security lights flashed on.
I jammed my gun into my holster as tight as it would go. As one, Dacardi and I made a running dive into the black water of the Sullen River. Water closed over my head as I entered a cold, silent midnight envelope.
Too quiet. They should have been shooting at us by now.
I stroked as far and fast as I could underwater, trying to reach the current in the main channel and ride downstream. Finally, I had to surface. When I did, my eyes burned with the dirty, petroleum-filled water. I had to fight to stay up. My boots dragged me down. If I had shoes, I could kick them off, but I’d laced the boots tight, all the way above my ankles.
“Dacardi,” I yelled, gulping a mouthful.
He surfaced beside me, spit out some water. “Swim!” he shouted. He surged ahead of me.
We struggled on. Still no shots followed us. I glanced back.
The dock suddenly flashed with fire. Not an accident, I’d bet. Someone would rather burn the warehouse than have the weapons ta
ken by the police.
I swam harder without making much headway. I called on all the strength the Mother gave me, pumped my arms, and willed my heavy-weighted feet to kick faster. My legs felt like tree branches loaded with ice in a sudden storm.
Dacardi fell back to swim beside me, though only the Mother knows why. He’d been wearing shoes and had probably long since shed them. Sirens sounded in the distance—the far distance, I hoped. No one needed to be close, not as close as we were.
Flames lit the night now. They had spread to sheet the warehouse’s back wall. I jerked at an explosion. A small one. Probably a fuel tank or something. We’d finally caught the current, and the Sullen dragged us downstream—but not fast enough.
The warehouse exploded with a catastrophic blast louder than anything ever heard in Duivel. Someone had detonated the C-4. Dacardi’s hand seized the back of my neck. He made a powerful dive for the river’s bottom. We plunged down into the cold, dark depths filled with death.
chapter 25
When I was a kid in school, they told us not to tap on the aquarium tank because it hurt the little fishes’ ears. They suspended me for beating the shit out of a boy who kept pecking at the glass with a ruler. Now I played the fish.
Sound, incredible sound, more felt than heard, vibrated my bones. The river convulsed in a great shock wave. Caught in the throes of its giant spasm, I tumbled and rolled like a surfer losing a battle with a mighty wave. For a brief moment it tossed me high out of the water. I caught a glimpse of an inferno burning like the mouth of hell before gravity plunged me back into the roiling river.
I gulped one breath before water closed over my head again. The river churned around me like a giant washing machine. Light blazed as the river, the oily surface, caught fire. A flash, only seconds, but it warmed the water around me. Darkness enveloped me again.
My lungs burned. Just a few moments and . . . maybe it would be quick. Like going to sleep, I’d read once. Like the person who wrote those words knew.
My body jerked. Something seized my arm and dragged me through the darkness. I should help . . . should kick my feet . . . My head popped out of the water. I gasped and sucked in some water, but it had air mixed in it. I coughed, choked . . . My head went under again, and was immediately jerked back, this time by my hair.
“Come on, bitch,” Dacardi shouted in my ear. He had my arm, and he slung it over a white foam cylinder, the kind they use to keep boats from hitting the dock. Thank the Mother. I locked onto it. My boots tugged at my legs, but I clung tighter.
Dacardi moved us toward the shore. Pieces of burning debris and other unidentifiable objects floated around us. We’d been pushed out of the main channel. If not, we’d be on our way to the Mississippi. Blood seeped from a cut in his forehead, and with each breath, he gave a small gasp of pain. I kicked with my iron-weighted feet. My legs protested by sending tremors of fire through the muscles.
The inferno upriver lighted the sky like a second sunset. Occasional smaller explosions cracked now and then. That was probably the ammunition. The blast and the surge of water, combined with the river current, had taken us a quarter mile downstream.
My feet touched bottom. Soft, mushy stuff clung to my boots like a giant bowl of toxic pudding. The bank, only a small place between warehouses, made a short, slick incline. They built no docks here because the channel cut to the river’s other side and it wasn’t deep enough to bring the barges this far.
I clawed through onto a lovely patch of scraggly yellow grass and wonderful semidry earth. I rolled onto my back and stared up into clouds of smoke. If the fog came before dawn, the docks and the Barrows would reek of a great burning.
Oxygen deprivation has a terrible effect on the human body, even one sustained by the Mother’s strength and will. Arms and legs that burned moments earlier now felt numb and hard as ice cubes.
Much as I wanted to lie and rest, I knew we had to get out of there. If someone saw us, we’d probably both spend the night in jail, or at the minimum an interrogation room. I probably wouldn’t have to fake anything to get them to take me to the emergency room, though.
I had to try twice, but I finally sat up. I felt for my gun, miraculously still wedged in the holster, and my knife, in the arm sheath. Feeling slowly returned, bringing the sensation of . . . Oh, damn. Something moved inside my muck-coated pants. I popped the button, tore open the zipper, and shoved them down. Several unidentifiable crawling things dropped out.
Dacardi laughed, a slow, frayed sound.
I laughed, too. We were alive, not something I’d have bet on fifteen minutes earlier. I pulled my pants back up, used my knife to cut the laces on my boots, and shucked them off. Dacardi had crawled to one of the buildings and used it as a climbing wall to get to his feet. I did the same, whimpering the whole way. Then I had to bend over and pick up my boots. Tempting as it was to leave them or even throw them in the river as retaliation for almost killing me, I wanted to leave nothing behind.
Clinging to the wall, we carefully limped our way toward the street.
My strength returned faster than Dacardi’s, and I could walk using the building for balance, not as a lifeline. I couldn’t tell how far we’d come, but the fire’s light had given way to the flash and shadow of emergency lights down the street. We stayed in the shadows, not wanting to be spotted by wharf security, if they weren’t all at the fire.
“Wait,” Dacardi said. He fished around in his pocket and drew out a cell phone.
“Will that work?” I rubbed my hand across my pocket, where my own was surely beyond resuscitation.
“Damn sure better. Supposed to be waterproof.”
The phone did work, and Dacardi’s guys came for us, though they had to walk a quarter mile because of roadblocks. That meant we had to trudge back that quarter mile, with only wet socks between the pavement and us. No way was I putting my feet back in my boots until I’d dried and fumigated them. Finally, we climbed into the backseat of the Mercedes, completely ignoring the filth we were carrying into a car worth more than I’d made in the last five years. We rolled away from the disaster at the docks.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“Home,” Dacardi said. “You call the suits?”
The driver nodded. “Soon as I heard the big boom. Briefcases packed and on their way.”
“And you?” Dacardi turned to me.
“Abby’s,” I said. “Could I use your phone?”
He handed it to me and I called Abby. When she answered, my first words were “I’m okay.”
She didn’t speak for a moment; then she said, “I know that. I’m a psychic, remember? Someone else needs to be reassured.”
Flynn spoke. “Tell me you’re not at the docks.” His voice came across the line, taut and cold.
“I’m not at the docks.” The truth, since we’d left them behind and were heading north.
“Shit!”
Guess he didn’t believe me. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I hung up, then immediately called the Archangel. Michael wasn’t in, so I left a message that I’d survived yet another catastrophe.
“So,” Dacardi said. “Every time something blows up, I should look for you?”
“I guess. You check all your other warehouses?”
He glanced at the driver and the driver nodded his head.
Dacardi’s face was a picture of weariness and worry. “This is bigger than Richard and Flynn’s kid sister.”
“Yeah. A lot bigger. Tomorrow night, you going to be ready?”
He nodded. “Said I would, didn’t I? But there’s something I—I ain’t no explosives expert, but I think there was something else in that warehouse.”
“Yeah. Think so.” I’d seen plastics in the warehouse where Flynn and I had crawled out of the sewer, and I’d bet that’s what caused the spectacular blast on Exeter Street that so injured me. “I got connections in munitions manufacturing. I’ll see what I can find. Maybe something to bargain with the Feds. They’re
gonna be all over this.”
“Good luck.”
Dacardi did make the driver stop by a store and sent him in to buy me another cell phone. Not a megabucks waterproof model, but it worked. It was my carrier, too, and they gave me the same phone number.
Dacardi had received a telephone report on the situation at the docks while we waited. He sighed. “Buildings on either side of mine went up. Men killed. Lot of trouble.”
I agreed.
The Mercedes stopped at the curb in front of Abby’s house. “Thanks for dragging me out of fire and water, Dacardi. If you hadn’t found me that last time I went under, I wouldn’t be here.”
Dacardi studied me. “What else could I do, bitch? You was shining like a full moon.”
Shining? Like last night when I died and the Mother jerked me back to life? What was happening to me? I needed to talk to Abby, but how much help could Abby be on this?
“Well, anyway, that was good shooting on the dock,” I said. “Looking up into that gun barrel wasn’t as much fun as nearly drowning.”
Dacardi slowly shook his head. “I saw. It wasn’t me.”
“Oh, shit.”
“You got it, bitch.”
Someone had saved my life. Wish I knew who to thank. Or maybe I didn’t.
I closed the door and headed up the driveway to Abby’s back door, wet, exhausted, covered with river mud.
Flynn sat on the back doorsteps with Horus at his side. Abby must have adjusted the cat’s attitude and placed him on probation. Nefertiti hung from the porch railing, her head swaying in a hypnotic rhythm. The only light came through the back door and the kitchen windows.
Flynn seemed colder, harder, and older. Like Dacardi, he’d come to realized things were bigger than two kidnapped children. He stretched his legs out and leaned back against the porch railing. T-shirt, shoulder holster, jeans, and, as usual, he needed a shave. My weary body stirred at his lean, rugged look.