The Harry Starke Series: Books 7-9 (The Harry Starke Series Boxed Set Book 3)

by Blair Howard

  “Stay close,” I whispered, “and keep your ears open. I don’t like this. I’m almost sure they know we’re here. If not, they sure as hell must be expecting us.”

  I squeezed through the half open door and, keeping my back to the wall, moved left. I went just far enough to let the others in behind me, then stopped and looked around. What I saw took my breath away.

  We were at the northern edge of an enormous room. From the outside looking in, it had been big. From the inside, it was vast: at least two hundred feet long and maybe half that wide. The east and west walls were pierced by huge windows. Those to the west were aglow, giant church windows lit up by the street lamps and the fire station beyond, beams of amber light filling the room with a dim, unearthly light, turning it into a nightmare world of light and shadow that stretched away into nothingness. Huge steel supports stood like Emperor Qin’s terra-cotta army; they too cast giant shadows. And as far as the eye could see, row after row, stack upon stack of building materials and equipment stretched away into the distance. I looked up and down the rows between the supports, trying to decide on a plan.

  I inched my way along the wall and peered around the end of it. The southern wall of the loading dock stretched all the way to east wall—the windows on that side of the building were dark.

  “Kate, Jacque, go left. Take the east side, and stay in the shadows. Bob, you take the west side. I’ll go down the center. Keep your ears on and live. We’ll meet at the far end. If you hear anything, anything at all, take cover and spread the word. Okay?”

  They nodded.

  “Let’s move.”

  We separated, but for a moment I stayed where I was and watched as they headed out. When I was sure they were all safe and in position, I moved out between the stacks of building materials.

  The stillness was overpowering. Every once in a while, I heard a vehicle pass on the street outside, but that was all. The car headlights swung shadows across the room. I moved forward with the Tavor across my chest, listening for even the slightest sound that might indicate we were walking into an ambush.

  When I reached the double wooden doors at the south end of the room, Bob was already there, leaning against the wall like some itinerant worker, waiting.

  “Took your time,” he said. “Where are Kate and Jacque?”

  They arrived before I could answer. The double doors stood open a little, wide enough for us to make it through in single file, which we did. On the other side we found ourselves at the bottom of what once had been a service elevator. It was obviously a sad remnant of what it had been. The elevator cage itself lay in pieces at the bottom of the shaft, a heap of tangled, rotting wood and rusting wire. The wire mesh doors lay broken in front of it, the gears and cables that had once hauled it up and down the four floors were lying in a tangled heap atop the pile. To the right a wide flight of wooden stairs led upward around the shaft.

  I looked at the stairs, then at Bob. He shrugged. I stepped past the elevator to the double doors beyond. These opened up into another great room, a twin to the first one, and I had no doubt that there were two more just like it beyond that one.

  “What now?” Jacque asked.

  Good question. I wish I had a good answer.

  I looked down the length of the second room; it too was packed with building materials.

  Someone must be using the place as a warehouse.

  I stepped back to the foot of the stairs and peered up into the darkness.

  “We have a problem,” I whispered. “I have one of those weird feelings.” And I did. For the last several minutes my skin had been crawling.

  I looked at Kate. It in the dim light I could see the worried look on her face.

  “We’re being watched, aren’t we,” she said.

  “I don’t know. I just feel…. I dunno, maybe.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Jacque asked.

  I had no answer. This was a first for me too. I had no SWAT team at my disposal, and what little urban warfare training I’d had had been with the PD, and it was nothing compared to this. Hell, I was worried—worried we were walking into a trap, worried the people I cared about were putting themselves in deadly danger… and I was worried for myself. But those were problems I didn’t dare dwell on. I had to figure out what to do, and quick.

  Mentally I shook out the cobwebs, and made a decision.

  “Bob, you and I will take the high road, see what’s on the upper floors. Kate, Jacque, you stay down here and watch our backs. Keep an eye on the rooms fore and aft. If you see anything, holler, okay?”

  They both nodded. I twitched my head at Bob and started up the stairs. Two turns around the elevator shaft and we were on the second floor, where we found two more rooms, north and south, each identical to the ones below except that these were swept clean, and the light from the street streamed in unrestricted. A million dust motes floated in the golden beams of light.

  No steel supports up here, or steel joists. Everything here was made of wood, and massive.

  They built them to last in those days. And these wooden floors would make some nice furniture…. Hell, Harry, stick to damned task at hand.

  It was then that we heard the commotion downstairs, a whole lot of yelling and shouting, but no shooting.

  What the hell?

  I ran to the stairs, tripped over a loose board, and almost fell headlong into the open shaft. I caught hold of a wooden support and managed to save myself. Bob ran past as I dragged myself out of the hole. I rolled over onto my back, pushed myself up and onto my feet, and ran down the stairs after him. I found him at the bottom of the stairwell on one knee beside Kate, who was flat on her back, struggling to sit up, blood streaming from a cut on her forehead. A man lay facedown, either dead or unconscious, in the doorway. Of Jacque there was no sign; she was gone.

  Bob dragged Kate into sitting position. I turned on my Maglite; she looked like hell. There was a deep cut on the right side of her forehead, and a long graze on her cheek.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked. “And where the hell is Jacque?”

  “She’s gone. They got her. They took us by surprise. They grabbed—”

  “Oh shit, no,” I dropped my ass on one of the stair treads and put my head in my hands. “No, no, no! No! How the hell…?”

  She looked angrily at me, grabbed Bob’s arm, and hauled herself onto her feet.

  “We were taken by surprise. And don’t you look at me like that, Harry Starke. They were behind us, came at us out of nowhere at a run, out of that damned mausoleum we’d just come through. They blinded us with flashlights. We—no I wasn’t looking in that direction. There were four of them. They were after both of us, I’m sure. Two of them grabbed Jacque and rushed her away through there.” She waved her hand in the direction of the second room. “The other two came after me.” She glared at me and then at Bob.

  “I kicked one of them in the balls and downed him. He dropped his flashlight and ran his head into the doorframe; his flashlight is over there.” She pointed. It was lying by the elevator shaft.

  “His name is Loopy, by the way. When he saw him go down, the other guy yelled his name, then came at me. He got me in the head with a damned huge Maglite, and I went over backwards. I thought he was coming for me, but he must have heard you guys coming down the stairs…. What was that God-awful crash I heard?”

  I shook my head. “That was me. I decided to take the elevator.”

  I know, I know. It was no time for joking. But it times of extreme stress, that kind of crap seemed to flood into my head.

  “They’ve got Jacque, then?” I asked. “Oh shit…. Did you recognize any of them?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s not panic. We need to think this through. Bob, see if that one’s still alive. If he is, strap him up.”

  “Yeah, he’s still breathing.” He jerked the man’s hands behind his back and fastened his wrists together with a nylon cable tie.

&nbs
p; “We should have stuck together,” I told Kate. “Christ, I knew something was going to go wrong. I could feel it. Now we really are in the crap. They’ve got Jacque, and any advantage we might have had is gone. So what the hell do we do now?”

  I sat down again on the bottom step of the stairs to think.

  Christ, the son of a bitch has us. Worse, he has Jacque. Damn! Damn! Damn!

  “Hey, Harry. Harry Starke. You there?” The words echoed through the building. All three of us froze. “I know it’s you out there. This is your old buddy, Lester Tree, but you knew that, didn’t you, Harry?”

  “As soon as Duvon broke that boy’s neck I knew you’d be comin’, just a matter of time. I told ‘em so. I sure as hell did. An’ you, you must be crazy, man. You thought you’d be able to take me by surprise. Hell, I had you pegged the minute you parked that piece of shit Jeep early this morning. I was surprised it took you so long. I had Duvon up on the water tower. He spotted you right away. You need to come on out now, Harry. I have a friend of yours here, a pretty little Caribbean girl. You don’t come out right now, Henry here will cut her throat.”

  I looked at Kate and then at Bob, and then I got to my feet and went to the door. I looked down the vast stretch of the room, but I could see nothing.

  “Shady,” I shouted. “Turn her loose unharmed and you’ll get to walk out of here.”

  His laughter reverberated off the high ceilings. “Harry, you’re so full of crap. Hey, I told you, give it up or kiss your little coffee-colored lady’s ass goodbye… well, before Duvon does. Pretty little thing, she is. Hell, she’s not so little, either. Jeez, I bet she’s hot. She hot, Harry?”

  “You son of a bitch, Tree. You lay so much as a finger on her and—”

  “And you’ll do what? What you gonna do, Starke? You have any idea how many people I have with me? Eighteen. I have eighteen. How the hell many you got? Six? I have you outnumbered three to one….”

  Hah, I could almost hear him counting it out on his fingers.

  “Yeah, that’s right, three to one!” he shouted. “I got the numbers an’ I got your little Jamaican bitch. So your ass, Harry Starke, is all mine.”

  I looked at Kate, then at Bob. “Eighteen,” I whispered, less this one,” I nodded at the prone gunman. “And he thinks we’re more than we are.”

  “That makes no difference at all,” Kate said. “Not if he has Jacque.”

  “Harry? You still there? Talk to me boy.”

  “Yeah, Shady. I’m still here.”

  “You wanna know how we knew you were comin’? One of my guys spotted the flash when you took a picture through the winder. I even gave you a chance at me. I went outside and took a leak. I spotted you, Harry. Damn you though. You didn’t take the bait. You always was a savvy son of a bitch. We would have had you then if you had. Never mind, though. You’re here now, right?”

  He paused, laughing, and then continued. “Okay, Starke. This is how we’re going to play it. You’re going to put down your weapons and you’re going to walk toward us with your hands high in the air—”

  The crack from Bob’s suppressed Tavor reverberated through the room. It was followed by at least a dozen more as he fired as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  “Jesus Christ, Starke. What the hell are doin’ shootin’ at me? Didn’t I just tell you I got your bitch? I’ll kill her ass you don’t do as I say—”

  Again Bob interrupted him, emptying the magazine at the dark shadows at the far end of the room.

  “Bob!” Kate yelled. “Stop. He’ll kill her.”

  “No he won’t,” Bob said, ramming a new mag into the rifle. “She’s too valuable to him.”

  “Bob’s right,” I said. “Tree needs her to get to me. He won’t kill her. Not until he has no other option. If we get to her first…. Come on! Kate, you go left; Bob, go right. I’ll take the middle. Quick now, on my mark.”

  “Starke you f—”

  I unloosed a hail of fire from my own Tavor. I emptied the mag, all thirty rounds, tossed the gun to one side, dragged one of the VPs out of its holster, turned on the Surefire LED and the laser, and yelled, “Now!”

  I charged down the middle of the room at a run, heading for the darkest area, where I figured he was, and was greeted by a hail of suppressed fire from the shadows at the southeastern corner of the room.

  Most of the slugs howled over my head, slamming into the stacks of building material. I heard Bob and Kate follow me into the room and head their separate ways, but I knew they were no use to me now. I was on my own. I heard the heavy crack of Bob’s 1911, and I dropped down behind a pile of pallets.

  I saw muzzle flashes in the dark, and for microseconds the room was in daylight, and the gunshots echoed.

  So, some of them don’t have suppressors.

  I snapped off two shots in their direction, heard a yell, jumped to my feet, ran three paces more, dropped again. Fired three more into the shadows and was rewarded with another yell.

  In the meantime, I could hear the suppressed fire from Kate’s Glock. She was moving quickly along the east wall, firing as she went. Then Bob opened up. He snapped three quick shots from the west wall. If they hit anything or not, I had no idea. What I did know was that we had taken back the advantage, at least for a little while. Now all we had to do was keep it.

  That’s the singular advantage of a suppressed weapon. The enemy has no idea where the shots are coming from, and that’s extremely disorientating.

  I jumped to my feet and ran toward the far end of the room. I hit the wall, dropped the empty mag out of VP and slammed in a replacement, racked one into the chamber, turned the Surefire off, then dragged the second VP from its holster. And then I was up and running again, heading for the big doors.

  Without stopping, I charged on through the double doors, took a sharp left and ran along the wall, then turned left again into another darkened stairwell. I’d guessed right. There were five of them, plus two more wounded, and they weren’t expecting me. They were all facing north, toward Kate, who was hurling a steady stream of suppressed fire toward them. I could hear the muted fire of her Glock as she moved steadily forward.

  I fired twice, into the wall above their heads, and yelled, “Drop ’em! Throw ’em down! Now! Facedown—lie facedown! Get your hands where I can see ’em. Do it now, or I’ll blow your goddamn heads off!”

  I had taken them completely by surprise. They turned toward me, wild-eyed, and slowly raised their hands, their weapons clattering onto the concrete floor, dropped to their knees, and then lay face down, their hands outstretched in front of them. I holstered one of the VPs, turned on the Surefire on the other, and lit up the murky stairwell.

  Kate burst through the opening, Glock poised, and began systematically kicking their weapons out of reach. That done, she holstered her Glock and, while I watched them, proceeded to strap their hands behind their backs with electrical ties.

  So we had one tied up back at the elevator, and five more tied up here along with two wounded; one had been creased along the left side of his head. I turned the Surefire on him. The bullet had gouged a five-inch furrow through his scalp just above his right ear. It must have clipped the skull, because I could see the bone, and he was in a heap in the corner, unconscious and bleeding steadily. The other I wasn’t sure about. I couldn’t tell if he was gut-shot or not. For sure he had a hole in his left side just above his hip, and he was on his back, nursing it, blood running through his fingers, and moaning loudly. But would he live through it? God only knew.

  Kate had also put two down fifty feet away to the north by the east window. That made ten, more than half of Shady’s army and, surprisingly, no one was dead yet. But where the hell is Bob?

  “You crazy bastard,” Tree yelled, from somewhere way at the south end of the third room. “I’m gonna kill the bitch. You hear? I’m gonna kill her ass sure as hell if you don’t throw your shit down an’ come out with your hands up.”

  Crack, crack, crack! Crack, crack
, crack! Six shots from Bob’s suppressed .45 hammered into the shadows, where we now knew Tree must be hiding. They were immediately followed by a scream. Bob was down at the south end of the third room. He fired again, and three more slugs hammered into the shadows: another yelp echoed out into the room. Shady was bleeding soldiers fast. He’d just lost at least two more. You don’t get hit with a .45 and stay on your feet.

  “Damn, damn, damn, damn you, you bastards!” Tree screamed it at the top of his lungs. I could almost see him jumping up and down with rage. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, it would have been funny. It wasn’t. That crazy son of a bitch was within an ace of killing Jacque.

  “Starke, you—”

  Crack, crack, crack! This time it was me who cut him off as I ran south, head down, between the stacks of loaded pallets, Kate close behind me. I reached the far end of the third section of the building and stopped.

  “Shit!” Tree yelled. Then all was quiet.

  By now all three of us were at the southern end of the room, Kate and I to the left of the big doors, Bob to the right, with, our backs to the wall.

  “Okay, Starke. This is your last chance.” Tree’s voice was calm now. He’d obviously gotten a hold of himself.

  “One more shot, just one more, you son of a bitch, and she dies. No foolin’. Henry will cut her neck and then hang her upside down to drain. So, you gonna quit, or what? Here, you want some help decidin’?”

  Jacque screamed, long and loud.

  I shook my head. I believed him. This was it. I looked at Kate and nodded.

  “You win, Shady. Bob, no more. Stand down.”

  “What?” Tree yelled. “Bob? You? What about the others?”

  I looked at Kate, tilted my head, questioning. She gritted her teeth and nodded.

  “What others?” I shouted. “We’re it, Shady. Just the two of us.”

  “You piece of shit, Starke. You took out thirteen of my men, just the two of you?”

  “Yup, just the two of us.” I turned to Kate and said, quietly, “I wonder if he’s counting the one at the elevator shaft?”