Abduction

by Michael Kerr

  “No, just Mr. Cady and his wife.”

  Logan intended to apply more pressure to Chris’s neck, not to kill him, but to compress his carotid arteries and render him unconscious as the blood supply to his brain was restricted.

  Chris took a chance. Brought his right elbow back into Logan’s stomach, believing that the arm around his neck would loosen enough for him to jerk free and shout for help as he threw himself forward to get his hands on the AK-47 that he’d dropped.

  Logan tensed his abs as the guard’s arm moved. He hardly felt the blow, and instinctively tightened his grip, choking Chris before he could call out, as he brought his knife hand round and up, for the blade to enter under Chris’s ribcage and penetrate his heart.

  Chris became rigid from head to foot. The sharp pain in his chest was agonizing, and worsened as the blade was twisted and pulled free.

  Logan dragged the dying man back into thicker foliage and then recovered the Russian assault rifle and pushed it in among the dead leaves under the bushes. He had no use for it. Silence and stealth were his allies. The knife would hopefully be all he needed, for the time being.

  There was a wet sigh from behind him. Chris Wright had expelled his last ragged breath as his ruptured heart pumped a last pulse of blood through its ruined chambers.

  Logan felt no sympathy for the man, or gave a damn that he had just murdered a fellow human being. It was all about which side of a hard line you stood. Everyone that took up arms for Cady was the enemy, and Logan believed that sometimes it was best to say ‘fuck to the law and deal with your own war’. The law enforcement agencies had obviously known that Cady was a gangster, but had not been willing or able to close him down. Going it alone was the only way to get the job done.

  He kept to the boundary, up close to the trees and bushes that ringed the football field-sized lawn.

  The second guard dropped his rifle and clutched at his throat as he fell to the ground. Logan had emerged from the greenery behind him, said, “Hey,” and as he had turned, chopped him across the throat with the edge of his hand. The guy’s larynx had fractured, and he was asphyxiating, unable to draw breath.

  He picked them off one by one. Left two more unconscious with serious concussions from being struck with the butt of his Glock, and another with a cut throat. The next had heard him, turned and was raising his rifle. Logan shot him in the forehead and hoped that the suppressed blast would not alert anyone. If Chris had been telling him the truth, then there was only one more external security guard to deal with.

  Josh Newcombe was sitting on a low brick wall at the far end of the staff car lot at the rear of the garage complex. He had just poured a cup of coffee from a two liter thermos flask when he heard a pop that could have been a vehicle backfiring in the distance, a fish jumping in the nearby river, or something just as mundane. It could also have been a bullet fired through a silencer, but he grinned and dismissed that as fanciful. But what if…? He set the plastic cup down on the top of the wall, stood up and raised his Uzi submachine gun. Looked around but saw no movement. He was letting his imagination spook him. The place was intruder proof. The cameras would pick up anything warm-blooded. He walked out into the center of the lot and did a couple of turns. Nothing. He stood in place for a minute, listening, and then went back to the wall, sat back down and picked up his coffee cup.

  Logan was at the other side of a large SUV, only three yards from the seated guard, and having long legs, three yards equated to less than three strides away.

  As Josh raised the cup to his lips and began to take a sip of the steaming hot coffee, a figure came from behind a vehicle, straight at him, too fast for him to react against.

  Logan took one long stride, then another, and as he took the third he swung his right leg up and drove his foot into the seated man’s chest like a battering ram, knocking him back over the wall.

  The cup flew from Josh’s hand as he shot back, ass over tit, to land on his stomach.

  Logan vaulted over the wall, to sit astride the guard’s back and pin him down. He pulled back on long, lank hair that was fixed in a ponytail, and pressed the edge of the knife’s blade against the throat, just above the Adams apple, hard enough to draw blood.

  “Tell me your name,” Logan whispered in the prone man’s right ear.

  Josh swallowed hard, and the razor-sharp cold steel bit another fraction into his skin. “Josh Newcombe,” he said. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Not if you do exactly as you’re told,” Logan said. “Lie to me or make any sudden move and I’ll cut your head off.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ACE stopped looking at the monitors. He found that he was imagining movement that wasn’t there. The two other guys in the room took it in turns to stare at the screens. You could only give them full concentration for an hour, maximum.

  Ace went across to a corner of the room where a small metal table was set up as a refreshment bar. The twelve-cup Mr. Coffee machine was drip feeding, and automatically paused in its operation as he lifted the pot out and filled a ceramic mug.

  Maybe Logan had decided to hightail it back to wherever he’d come from. He’d got the kid back and caused a lot of grief to Cady. What else could he gain by staying in town and continuing to come at them? It wasn’t logical. But it always paid to be extra careful. You courted nothing but trouble by thinking that you knew what another person would do.

  Sipping the strong coffee, Ace recalled a mark who had almost taken him out back in oh-two in Cleveland, Ohio. He had been all set to double tap the guy in the Cathedral Plaza parking garage on E 9th Street.

  They were on the second floor. He watched as Peter Carlton ‒ a crime reporter for The Plain Dealer, the major daily newspaper of Cleveland ‒ came out of the elevator and angled across to his Nissan sedan in an ill-lit slot. Carlton had upset the boss of the Cleveland crime family, seemingly stupid enough to believe that he would not be hit for digging the dirt. But the Mafia doesn’t like bad press, and individuals that went too far risked having fatal accidents or being whacked and made an example of to deter others.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat of his Hertz rental with the window down, just two spaces away from the Nissan, Ace smiled at the sound of the locks being disengaged as Carlton thumbed his remote as he approached.

  His mark stopped to open the door, and then went off script, to quickly turn, drop to his right knee and shoot at Ace.

  Ace ran the tip of his finger along the horizontal scar on his cheek, where one of the slugs from Carlton’s pistol had come close to ending his life.

  He had returned fire, to put four bullets in the guy: one in his chest, one in his shoulder, and two in his face. Peter Carlton’s aspiration to win a Pulitzer Prize died with him on the ridged concrete that he was now laid and bleeding on.

  Ace took another mouthful of coffee. That had been a good lesson. Always be ready for unanticipated behavior, and never overestimate your own capabilities. He was extremely competent and confidant, but was aware that other people had their strengths. Logan had proved that he was a formidable adversary.

  “Do you get regular test calls on the radio?” Logan said to Josh.

  “No. We’ve been instructed to maintain silence and only use them if we get a sighting of you.”

  “What if you thought you’d seen something, but weren’t sure?” Logan said as he used his left hand to frisk the man and found a handgun in a shoulder holster, which he removed and tossed into bushes twenty feet behind him.

  “Phone it in.”

  Logan reached out and picked up Josh’s Uzi by its strap. He detached the extended magazine and ejected the bullet from the chamber of the Israeli manufactured weapon.

  “So make the call,” Logan said, drawing the Glock and sheathing the knife again as he climbed off Josh and moved back, out of reach. “Take a few deep breaths, then phone Moran and tell him that you think you saw movement at the end of the car lot.”

  Josh fumbled his cell from a
pocket with trembling fingers and hesitated for ten seconds while he regained a little composure, then brought up a contact list and made the call.

  “Yeah, Josh?” Ace said. He always used first names with staff, because doing so made them feel important. “Why the call?”

  “I could be wrong, but I thought I saw movement out here in the parking lot. Just a blur from the corner of my eye. It may have been a reflection off the river.”

  “Meet me at the door,” Ace said. “I’m on my way down.”

  “Now what?” Josh said to Logan.

  “Do what the man says. Meet him at the door. I’ll be standing alongside it pointing this gun at you. Give me away and you won’t be worrying about what happens after that.”

  Ace drained his cup, unbuttoned his jacket, but did not draw his gun from the shoulder holster he wore. Newcombe was still a newbie to the firm and obviously nervous. But he was alert and had showed commonsense in phoning. There was absolutely no way that Logan could have got in, or infiltrated so far without being seen or showing up on the cameras. But he would bolster the young man’s confidence by having a look round and then telling him to keep up the good work. And a break away from the control room wouldn’t hurt.

  As he opened the door he saw a tell in Josh’s eyes. It was subtle, but rang warning bells. He took in the whole picture. The fucking magazine was missing from the Uzi. This was a trap.

  Without any hesitation he shouldered the open door back against the wall as he reached for his gun.

  Logan was standing against the brick wall, thirty-six inches to the side of the door, which he had judged to be a regular thirty inches wide. Even as it slammed against the wall he was moving out, holding the Glock two-handed and now pointing it at the man who was curling his hand around the butt of a gun that was still in its holster.

  “You’ll never clear leather with that,” Logan said. And to Josh he said, “Is this Moran?”

  Josh nodded. He was terrified. Moran didn’t move, just stared at him with an accusatory stare that held the promise of pain and suffering.

  “Ease the gun out, finger and thumb, and get rid of it,” Logan said to Moran. “Then interlock your fingers, put your hands on top of your head and kneel down.”

  “How’d you get in, Logan?” Ace said as he complied with the instructions slowly and carefully.

  “Take a guess?”

  Ace noted the mud on Logan’s face and the gloves he was wearing, and that his clothing was wet. “From the river?”

  Logan nodded. “Your guy on the pier was an amateur. They all were.”

  Ace said nothing. He believed beyond doubt that all the guards had been incapacitated or killed.

  “You can drop the Uzi now,” Logan said to Josh. “And then go through your boss’s pockets. I want his cell and his wallet. If he’s carrying another weapon, then toss it away from you.”

  Josh approached Ace and frisked him. Found his phone and wallet and backed away.

  Logan slipped his rucksack off and opened the top and withdrew a thick roll of duct tape and tossed it to Josh, who caught it with his left hand.

  “Put the wallet and phone down on the ground and then tape him up,” Logan said. “Wrists and elbows first, behind him, and then his ankles.”

  As Josh moved toward Ace again, he partially obscured him from Logan’s view, and that was the instant Ace took advantage of and made a move, springing up to his feet and pushing Josh in the chest, propelling him into Logan, who was caught off guard and stumbled back on his heels and fell with Josh on top of him in an awkward embrace.

  Raising the Glock through the gap between Josh’s left arm and body, Logan pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Ace in the forearm, taking out some muscle as it went through, but not striking bone, and a flesh wound wasn’t going to stop him.

  Lashing out with his foot, Ace got lucky and the pointed toe of his western boot struck Logan’s wrist, causing him to drop the gun as the blunt force against the tendons deadened his fingers.

  There was no time to pick up the Glock. Logan was already pushing Josh up and off him, so Ace drew his foot back and unleashed another kick, aimed at Logan’s head, but Logan jerked his head to the side and Josh took the full impact of the boot in his left temple and keeled over on to the ground, unconscious.

  Logan stood up, arms out and crossed in front of him to take the force of the next kick that came in a classic defense move.

  They stood facing each other. The gun was just a few feet from them, next to Josh, but neither of them made a move for it. They just stared at each other and waited.

  “So let’s do this,” Ace said, ignoring the stream of blood that was running out of the cuff of his sleeve to drip off his hand.

  Logan said nothing. Why waste words on someone you intended to kill in the next few seconds. He didn’t blink, just stood balanced, ready for whatever Moran might do.

  Ace turned and attempted a side kick, aiming for Logan’s left knee but coming up short as Logan stepped back. The slight widening of Moran’s eyes had been the reflex signal that he was going to attack.

  Ace was still off balance on one leg when the fist exploded in his face. He felt his front teeth snap and the jagged stumps mash into the inside of his lip, but ignored it and made ready to launch a further assault. He was too late. Logan hunkered down, picked up the Glock and shot him twice, and Ace could not ignore either of the two small but deadly slugs of hot lead that sizzled through his throat and the bridge of his nose. There was just a microsecond of partial realization that he was dying, as he fell to the ground and the now ruined back of his head slammed on to the gravel-covered surface.

  Logan felt neither joyful nor sad at what he had done up to this point in time. Moran and the others had been a part of the lowest subculture within society; the kind that were like black, rotten, stinking teeth that infected healthy gums and needed to be pulled out and disposed of.

  The duct tape had rolled six feet away from where Josh lay. Logan retrieved it and bound and gagged him. It would have been quicker to just cut his throat or put a bullet in his skull, but he thought that the young man was just a pawn, and that he had not realized how deep he was in, or what kind of man he worked for.

  Picking up the rucksack and placing the strap over his shoulder, Logan entered the stairwell and walked up the flight without any pause or stealth. Whoever was up there would believe that it was Moran returning.

  The door to the control room was still open. Sloppy; it should have been locked. It was a lack of professionalism and a false sense of belief that they had nothing to worry about. They were relying on technology, not taking into account that someone who knew that they employed it could outsmart them. Stepping into the room he looked about him and took in the whole setup. There were two guys, both under thirty. One was looking at monitors, totally concentrated on the screens. The other was over in a corner, pouring a cup of coffee. Neither of them even looked at Logan. He thought that they were just geeks, not privy to the criminal affairs of the man that they were employed by. To them this was just top-notch security for a rich guy.

  “You need to put your coffee cup down and go sit next to your buddy,” Logan said. “If either of you start pushing buttons or trying to be smart, I’ll kill you.”

  Harold Dunn and Elmore Kingsley just stared at the extremely tall man. His face was coated in drying, cracking mud, and he was pointing a gun at them.

  Harold put his cup down, walked over to the chair next to Elmore’s and sat down.

  Logan still had the roll of tape in his left hand. He threw it to the nearest man and said, “Secure your buddy’s wrists behind him, then his ankles together, nice and tight.”

  Harold did as he was bid, then sat down again.

  “What’re your names?” Logan said to them.

  “Harold Dunn.”

  “Elmore Kingsley.”

  “Well, Harold and Elmore, here’s the deal. You answer some questions, and then I leave you both taped up and still
breathing. How does that sound?”

  “Like a good deal under the circumstances,” Harold said.

  “Best on the table,” Logan replied. “Is the main gate manned tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Can you unlock it from here?”

  Harold’s eyes flicked to the console.

  “I’ll take that as a yes, so do it,” Logan said. “If you press an alarm button I’ll gut shoot both of you.”

  Harold pressed the button that released the lock on the gate. He had no intention of doing anything that would put his life in danger.

  “What make and color of car do you drive?” Logan asked him.

  “A white Ford Fusion,” Harold said.

  “Where’s it parked?”

  “Left of the door, about three up.”

  “Put the keys on the desk.”

  Harold took them out of his pants pocket and set them down.

  “So far, so good. How would Moran get into the house?” Logan said.

  “I would advise Mr. Cady by intercom that he was on his way over, and Mr. Moran would let himself in with his key card.” He pointed to the intercom. It had a keypad next to the speaker. “The main house is reached by pressing number one.”

  Logan reached into his pocket and took out Moran’s wallet, to throw it to Harold and say, “Show me the card.”

  Harold opened the wallet, found the card in one of a half dozen compartments and held it up. It was plain white with a mag strip on the back.

  “Put it and the wallet on the desk, and then place your arms behind the back of your chair and interlock your fingers.”

  It was a stretch. If the chair had been only an inch wider, Harold would not have been able to link his hands.

  Logan stuck the gun in his pocket and went over to the sweating controller, to quickly wrap tape around his wrists, then his chest, and then his ankles to the single leg of the swivel chair. He then took a thick sheaf of bills from Moran’s wallet and picked up the key card.

  “I’m going to press the intercom,” Logan said. “And I want you to sound very convincing when you tell Cady that Moran is on his way across. If you blow it, then you’ll end up as dead as Moran and some of the guards are. Are you ready?”