Vertigo

by Wesley Cross

  Now, however, as the local guards seemed to have been dispatched, and barriers overrun, the situation had been reversed, and the stronghold became a trap. All Connelly’s team could do for now was to preserve ammo and try to keep the enemy from entering the house.

  “Sooner or later this is gonna attract local cops,” Pat said between the shots.

  “Yeah, but it might not be soon enough.”

  Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the shooting stopped. Connelly risked a quick peek through the window, but now as the assailants took cover behind the roadblock, it was impossible to tell how many of them there were.

  The silence lasted only for a few seconds and then came the high-pitched feedback of a bullhorn.

  “You’re surrounded,” the voice said in heavily-accented English. “Surrender, and you will not be harmed. Resist, and you will be destroyed. You have three minutes. Put down your weapons and come out with your hands up in the air.”

  “What the fuck’s that?” Doug said.

  “I’ve no idea,” Connelly responded, “but I’m not gonna wait for three minutes. We gotta split up. Pat, Doug, take the side exit. We’ll get some smoke grenades out and lay suppressive fire so you can get through the yard. You can hop the fence there.”

  “What about you?” Patrick said. “We ain’t leaving you behind. Why don’t we throw some frags out there and then go out the front door?”

  “Civilians,” Doug grunted. “Those houses across the street are made of straw. Too high of a risk we’re gonna kill some families with kids.”

  “The walls should hold,” Patrick protested. “It’ll blow the windows, but that’s just tough luck.”

  “No time to argue, guys,” Connelly said, peeking through the window. “Martin and I will booby-trap the place and get out as those assholes start moving in. At least then the blast will be contained. We’ll meet you tomorrow at eight at the bazaar. Leave all your heavy gear behind. I’m sure our CIA friend can hook us up with whatever else we’ll need. We gotta move. Now.”

  “We can climb out through the big window in the back,” Martin said. “It’s a little high, but at least it’s wide enough. Even I can fit through there.”

  There wasn’t enough time to get creative, so Connelly decided to play it straight. He fixed a pair of grenades on either side of the front door and Martin tied a wire to their safety pin rings. Then, they stepped back to the room at the far side of the house.

  “Are we ready?” Connelly asked, looking at his teammates.

  “You have thirty seconds left,” the voice amplified by the bullhorn bellowed. “There will be no more warnings.”

  “Let’s go, boys.”

  Connelly and Martin lobbed two smoke grenades through the side door, and as the smoke started to envelop the patchy lawn, their submachine guns roared to life, laying suppressive fire. They watched as Doug and Patrick dived under the gray curtain and disappeared into the night.

  The sounds of automatic fire intensified and then, without a warning, the house shuddered as if it were a great living beast that drew its last breath. The shockwave of the fragmentation grenades knocked Connelly to the ground and showered him with pieces of broken glass and small debris.

  He shook his head, trying to get his bearings. A thick sheet of dust hung in the air, leaving a tangy taste in his mouth and getting into his eyes. Two massive hands reached out to him through the cloud of dust and lifted him off the floor as Martin’s pale pockmarked face came into his view—the giant’s lips moved, but the world remained silent.

  “What?” Connelly asked, and the sound of his own voice cut the blast-induced deafness as the cacophony of the firefight returned.

  “Let’s go,” Martin bellowed into his ear. “We gotta move.”

  A bearded man rushed through the door, his AK-47 ready to spit out hot lead. Connelly lifted his submachine gun to meet the attacker, but before his weapon could finish its deadly arc, Martin jumped. The giant soldier moved so fast, it looked as if he teleported from where he stood, magically appearing next to the assailant.

  His left hand slapped the rifle out of the insurgent’s hands and his right struck out, burying a fist the size of a watermelon into the man’s midsection. As the insurgent collapsed, Connelly watched in shock as the man’s torso folded in half at an unnatural angle.

  Another man appeared in the doorway and Connelly squeezed the trigger twice—his bullets connecting with the man’s cheek and jaw.

  “Do remind me, never to piss you off,” Connelly said to Martin, as the second dead body fell on top of Martin’s prey. “C’mon, buddy, let’s get out of this dump.”

  He dashed to the window in the back of the house and peeked out, trying not to be seen—if there was any activity, he couldn’t see it. Connelly looked around and then dug out a dusty frying pan from the debris on the floor.

  He picked it up by the handle and, keeping his face away, he stuck the pan out of the window and kept it there for a few seconds while moving it up and down. No shots came and satisfied, he threw the skillet to the floor.

  “We’re good,” Martin said, moving away from the door. “You go first, Mike.”

  Connelly placed his hands on the high windowsill and jumped up, pushing with his palms down and propelling his body forward. He was halfway through the window when he heard the clanking noise.

  He knew what it was before he had a chance to turn his head back and look at the source of the noise and when he did, his eyes only confirmed what his ears had already told him.

  Two Soviet-made F1 grenades were spinning on the floor a few feet away from them—too far to get them in time to throw back, but close enough to vaporize anything more tender than concrete inside the entire room.

  “Sorry, Mike,” Martin said, moving between Connelly and the grenades and, before Connelly could try to protest, in one fluid motion, Martin’s giant hands shoved him up and out of the window.

  The moment stretched as in a slow-motion film, as Connelly’s mind protested at the speed his body could not match. As he fell, his body instinctively turned toward the ground, preparing to roll on impact to soften the shock.

  Before he made contact, the night above him was split by the brilliant light of the blast. For a moment, it looked as if a portal had opened and the heavens themselves were revealed to the realm of the mortals in all their glory. Then it was dark again.

  31

  October 2007

  New York

  As she watched Hiroko being led away by the two goons with a gun to her back, Chen felt her heart pounding in her chest. She’d grown fond of the enigmatic woman over the past three months. Her razor-sharp wit, her biting sense of humor, and, more than anything else, her nothing-can-scare-me attitude helped her navigate the craziness of the world where her sister had been murdered in cold blood, and her boyfriend turned out to be the son of a skin-flaying mobster.

  Chen looked around, scanning the area for a cop or anyone else she could call for help, and that was when she saw them. Another two thugs, identically dressed, were running toward her from the southern entrance of the park.

  “Oh shit,” she swore and, fighting her suddenly jelly-like legs, Chen started to run.

  She dashed out of the park and across the street, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a pickup truck, ducked under the scaffolding running alongside the building, and crashed into a muscular young man in a hoodie stepping out of the coffee shop, almost knocking him off his feet.

  “Help,” she pleaded, grabbing the man’s arm. “Those two guys are trying to hurt me.”

  “What’s your problem, fellas?” The man stepped forward, putting himself between Helen and the two approaching thugs. “Stop right there.”

  The two men slowed down just long enough for one of them to extend his arm. A blue arch of electricity jumped from the black box in the thug’s hand and the young man cried out in pain as he fell backward, his hoodie sliding over his face.

  Chen turned to run, but one of the attacker
s swept her leg, tripping her and sending her crashing head first into the metal pipes supporting the scaffolding. The impact knocked the air out of her lungs and before she could recover, another man bent over and touched the black box to her neck, sending fifty thousand volts of electricity into her body.

  Hot, pulsating pain traveled the length of Chen’s entire body, paralyzing her head to toe. Through the fog, she heard the squealing of a car’s brakes and then she was carried a few feet to the side of the road and thrown onto the dirty floor of a large van.

  As the vehicle accelerated away, the man brought the Taser to her face.

  “If you misbehave, I will zap you again, and again, until you start listening. Do you understand?” he asked in heavy-accented English.

  “Sure,” Chen said. “I understand.”

  Then, pushing herself off the floor, she kicked the man in the face with all her might. There was a cracking sound, and the man staggered backward as blood gushed out of his broken nose.

  “You bitch,” he wailed, and charged at Chen, as his partner tried to grab Chen’s hands. She scratched at his face, digging her nails as deep as she could as the man howled in pain and surprise.

  Chen scrambled for the door handle and pulled it down, swinging the door open and pulling herself out, ready for a jump.

  The gray surface of the road looked hard and unforgiving as it sped by and she hesitated for a moment. Then one of the men crashed into her side, knocking her on the floor and before she could catch her breath, another man stabbed her with a Taser in the back.

  The fight went out of her as the liquid fire of the electric shock spread out through her body. Through the red mist of pain, she felt as they flipped her on her stomach and tied her hands and feet with some rope. Then, they turned her on her back again and stood there, looking down at their captive.

  “I’ll come to watch you scream,” the man with a broken nose said.

  “Me too,” the other one added, gingerly touching the deep gashes on his cheek with the back of his hand, and spat. “Even play with you a little.”

  “How’s your face, asshole?” Chen managed through the pain. “Untie me, and I’ll play with you right now.”

  As she lay on the floor of the van, watching her captors and awaiting her fate, an awful realization dawned on her—whoever these people were, they were not planning on bringing her back. This was going to be a one-way trip. There was no other explanation for this.

  After a while, the rumbling of the gravel road replaced the low hum of wheels over asphalt, and finally, the van came to a stop.

  The two men opened the door, jumped out, and then pulled her outside. She was standing inside of a small warehouse, and to her left, there was a row of familiar garage doors on one side and offices on the other side of the area. The low rumble of machinery wasn’t there now, but she had no doubt they were in the same warehouse where she’d met the lone hacker—the man who had met a gruesome end because she needed a piece of information that only he could provide.

  One of the men bent down and cut the rope around her ankles, and the moment her bounds came undone, Chen tried to knee him in the face, but this time he was prepared.

  He dodged the knee and stabbed her stomach with the Taser. Chen collapsed as the ball of fire exploded in her midsection. Strong hands grabbed her feet and somebody unceremoniously dragged her listless body across the floor, inside one of the offices and then to the metal door at the end of the empty room. The door squeaked, and Chen bumped her head as the man pulled her body over the threshold.

  As dark panic enveloped her, she started thrashing about, trying to free herself, but another pair of hands grabbed her wrists and then the two men lifted her in the air and slammed her down on the wooden table.

  Before she could do anything, they slapped restraints on her wrists and ankles, and she heard the wheel turning as they stretched her in four directions. The man kept on going until she could not move a single muscle and her body was so taut with tension, she had difficulty breathing.

  Then one of the men produced a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut away her clothes, moving around the table with surgical precision. Chen found herself paralyzed with fear; even her vocal cords refused to work. All she could do was watch as the two collected the pieces of her clothes off the floor and headed for the door. The lights turned off, plunging the place in complete darkness.

  As she lay there in the dark, cold sweat forming on her naked skin despite the cold, Chen’s consciousness started to slip away, the fragile net of normalcy being pulled apart by the madness of her predicament. She was going to die a nasty death in this awful place, the logical part of her brain told her. A primal, guttural wail escaped her lips, the sound of a wounded prey with no means of running away, cornered by a terrible predator.

  Then, without warning, the door squeaked again, and the bright light flooded the room, making her squirm, trying and failing to cover herself from prying eyes.

  A short, broad-shouldered man with a big mane of jet-black hair was standing in the middle of the room. His suit was perfectly tailored to accentuate his athletic frame. His black eyes scanned her head to toe without a trace of shame, his face relaxed and content.

  “Oh my, Miss Chen, what a pleasure. You’re such a spirited fighter,” the man said, a humorless smile on his lips, his polished British accent sounding out of place in the chamber of horrors. “But I have so many questions.”

  32

  October 2007

  Kabul, Afghanistan

  By the time Mike Connelly reached the river bank, the stars had already all but disappeared, and the sky in the east started to change from the inky black to hopeless gray. Connelly had shaken the pursuers off his tail a long time ago, but he kept zigzagging the city for a while longer until he was confident that no one was going to catch up. On one of the quiet streets, he climbed the roof of a brick house and left his submachine gun jammed inside of a chimney, leaving only the MK23 pistol tucked into its appendix carry holster. Then he made his way to the Artal Bridge by the Kabul River.

  The word river hardly applied to something little more than a dirty brook, Connelly thought. Though it swelled during the hot summer months when the high temperatures melted the snows up in the Hindu Kush mountain range, the dams and the changing climate kept the riverbed, choked on both sides by piles of garbage, almost dry during the bigger part of the year. Now, as the temperatures dropped into the mid-sixties, and at night even going as low as the mid-forties, the putrid smell wasn’t as strong as during the summer, but even now, Connelly could smell the river long before he could see it.

  The road by the bridge, usually packed with walking people going in and out of the shops, delivery boys running errands, and slowly driving cars trying to navigate the crowds and ignoring every traffic law, was almost deserted at the moment. The few men and even fewer women hurrying about their business at this early hour were giving Connelly curious looks, whose tall, muscular frame, clean-shaven face, and light complexion were sticking out like a sore thumb.

  It was only a short walk from here, over the bridge and past the local hospital, that would take him to the bazaar where the meeting was going to take place. But he had two more hours to kill, and he wondered for a moment if he was better off spending them somewhere where he was less likely to attract any attention. He walked a few blocks in a circle, trying not to stay in one place for too long. He was passing the bridge for the third time when he saw two familiar silhouettes leaning over the stone barrier by the river. Like him, they were wearing civilian clothes and yet just like him, they looked decidedly out of place.

  “Gents,” Connelly said as he approached them, “it’s good to see that you’ve made it.”

  “Where’s Martin?” Doug asked.

  “He didn’t make it. Saved my ass,” Connelly replied, meeting his teammate’s eyes. “I was halfway through the window when two frags rolled in, and he tossed me out of the room as if I were a child. I didn’t even have th
e chance to react. It’s fucked up.”

  “That kid was strong,” Patrick said and sighed. “Geez, what a shit show.”

  “Strong is the understatement of the century. Fast too,” Connelly said. “When one of the assholes got through, he punched him, before I could place a shot—broke the guy in half. For real—I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “It’s almost like we’re cursed,” Doug said, turning back to the river. “First Sean, now Martin.”

  “Let’s make sure it’s not for nothing,” Connelly said, looking at his watch. “Our CIA contact should meet us at the bazaar in about thirty minutes. It’s about a fifteen, twenty-minute walk from here, so I’d suggest we start going.”

  “Sure, boss,” said Patrick. “We’re way too visible here anyway.”

  “But let’s be on the lookout when we get to the rendezvous point,” Connelly said. “Nobody was supposed to know we were at the safe house and the moment we get there, we get a fucking army as the welcome party. I don’t want to take any chances.”

  The sun was creeping up higher and as they walked, the crowds grew thicker as people started heading out to work, the shop owners started to put their fares out, and shoppers descended on the market to haggle over spices, produce, jewelry, and clothes.

  The CIA contact who was supposed to meet them at the bazaar was working at a small stall, selling spices. A picturesque collection of colorful bags was crowding a small foldable table, and a jovial-looking bearded man was hustling about, setting up price tags on his fares and arranging his product. While Patrick and Doug took positions to keep watch on either side of the row where the merchant’s stall was located, Connelly approached the trader alone.