St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking

by Dana Haynes

  Copyright © 2019 by Dana Haynes

  E-book published in 2019 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by K. Jones

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-0768-1

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-0767-4

  Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  To Tim King and Andy Priebe: two friends who helped research stories and who listened to my endless pitches. Tim traveled with me to many of the locations in this book. Andy helped me with my flights of imagination. Deepest gratitude for the stories we’ve created together.

  To Katy: “We that are true lovers run into strange capers.”

  Prologue

  Sevastopol, Crimea

  Three Years Ago

  If you look up “bedlam” on any crime-fighting website, they will link you to Sevastopol and the Ukrainian drug runner, Pantomime.

  Anything that couldn’t go bad did. Anything that could go bad caught fire.

  American law enforcement, European intelligence agencies, Russian military—all coming together with the intent of stopping one criminal, the number one drug-running kingpin in the entire Black Sea region. Each with their own agenda, each with their own chain of command, each with their own political oversight.

  Bedlam.

  From the beginning, sparks flashed between one of the Americans, a feisty, wiry investigator from the US Marshal’s Service, and one of the Spanish intelligence officers, a tall, angular woman who tended to stand in the back of the room during briefings, arms crossed, looking dark and sullen. His name was Michael Patrick Finnigan, and he wanted a completely proper, by-the-book, American-style arrest, leading to an indictment, leading to a trial, leading to prison time.

  Her name (and it took Finnigan three days before anyone would tell him this) was Katalin Fiero Dahar. She seemed perpetually angry. She also seemed to have bad clock, constantly checking her watch and sighing irritably.

  They were calling the Ukrainian drug runner Pantomime. During one of the heated, shouted, pointless “Tower of Babel” meetings, Finnigan demanded a proper arrest of Pantomime. Fiero said it would be faster to shoot the fat bastard.

  “That’s not our job!” the American snapped back.

  She swiped long, straight hair away from her eyes. “Don’t be naive.”

  Finnigan fumed. “This has to be done right. We need to put him away.”

  “Yes, this has to be done right,” the Spaniard countered. “We need to put him down.”

  “We’re law enforcement!”

  She stormed out of the room. “You’re law enforcement.”

  A day passed. Embassies sent contradictory messages to the participating agencies. Wires got crossed. Pecking orders got pecked to death. Finnigan took the time to look into the intense, angry Spaniard. She was nominally a soldier, but without rank, insignia, or unit affiliation. She held herself apart from the other Spanish officials. He learned she was part Algerian. The others in her party treated her like sweaty dynamite, ready to explode at any time.

  Fiero also asked about the annoying American. He’d been a cop in New York City, she found, then joined the Marshal’s Service. His countrymen called him “the Boy Scout” and “Honest John,” behind his back and shook their heads.

  The less Finnigan learned about Fiero, the harder he dug. He poked and prodded.

  A prosecutor from Cordoba finally spoke to him off the record. “Fiero? Leave that one alone.”

  “Why?”

  The man looked around to make sure they were alone. His voice dropped. “That one is the Oscura Sicaria.”

  Finnigan looked it up.

  The Dark Assassin.

  It all came to a head on the night they’d planned for Pantomime’s arrest. The various agents, including Finnigan, were spread throughout a sprawling maritime warehouse and train yard outside Sevastopol. Communications were spotty; cooperation more so. Was this a military or law-enforcement operation? Would Pantomime be taken inside the warehouse or outside? Which agency was in charge? The Americans wanted to go all in; the Russians threatened to pull out.

  Shortly after midnight, Finnigan heard the distinct crack of gunfire. His earpiece squawked. “Pantomime down! Pantomime down!”

  Finnigan was outside, near the train tracks. He spun, eyes looking everywhere, hand lingering near his holstered Glock. Down? The drug runner wasn’t even supposed to arrive for another hour! Confusion and tumult assaulted him through his earpiece. “Who fired? … Target’s dead, Jesus … All units, fall back to the rally point … Find the shooter! … Belay that!”

  Finnigan turned and caught the faintest glimpse of someone leaping off the roof of the warehouse, ink black against a jet-black sky; no more than the suggestion of movement. The form—if it was a form, and not a figment of his imagination amidst the confusion—dropped straight down onto the roof of an unmoving Russian freight train. Finnigan was maybe two hundred yards back.

  He yelled into his mic, “Got the shooter! In pursuit!”

  The radios went nuts. “Who responded? Who is that? … Hold position! Do not engage … All units, help Finnigan! … All units, stop the American!”

  Finnigan ignored it all, sprinted in the direction of the shadow.

  He ripped the earpiece away, felt it bounce against his shoulder blade as he hauled ass into the train yard, running parallel to the train.

  He heard a ka-thunk, and then again and again, all up and down the line, the repeated sound echoing off the faded warehouse fronts. The engine safeties had disengaged, the mile-long freight train gearing up to leave the grimy, rat-infested station.

  Finnigan didn’t know any details yet. The target, Pantomime, was down? He’d been shot? That meant a crime. That was all Finnigan needed to know. Like a dumb dog chasing a ball, he didn’t need to know why he was chasing it, he just needed to catch it.

  He picked up his speed.

  Finnigan ran parallel to the train. He heard the faintest tap of rubber soles on metal, and felt sure that the hitter was running the length of the train, too. But up top, leaping from car to car.

  Fiero. The Spaniard/Algerian/whatever. She’d been the only person on the joint task force who appeared athletic enough to do that.

  “Stop!” he bellowed as she continued to flee in a sprint. “Hey! Police! Stop!”

  She ran along the top of the train in the direction of the engine cars, which were a half-mile ahead of Finnigan’s location.

  Now the train started to move. It began with a palsy lurch, a giant dragon stirring from a century’s sleep. It would travel a foot per minute; then a yard per minute. Then the train would be racing into the night, toward Dzhankoy and the narrow crossing of the Sea of Azov. Get that far, and the train and the suspect—Fiero?—would be gone forever.

  “Stop, goddamn it!”

  Finnigan kept sprinting, inhaling deep, the air of the old train yard a stew of lead and asbestos and every carcinogen known to man. He heard English and Spanish and Russian and French, tinny and incoherent, bubbling from the earpiece that swung behind him on its pigtail wire. The task force hadn’t even been able to agree on a common tongue, let alone a common definition of win.

  Finnigan wa
sn’t a big man. At five-eight, he was light and fast. He liked to say, “I’m faster than any bastard who’s tougher’n me, but I’m tougher than any bastard who’s faster’n me.”

  That’d been his father’s mantra when the old man was a New York City cop. The same for Finnigan’s uncles and grandfather. Nobody ever picked the Finnigan boys to win a basketball game—just the fight after the game.

  He ran faster than the iron behemoth and caught up to the connector between two of the cars. There he saw a flash of leg, way up high, leaping from one car to the other.

  Katalin Fiero Dahar. The Oscura Sicaria. He had no doubts about that now.

  The train was still much slower than Finnigan, but it was picking up speed. Fiero had selected her thousand-ton magic carpet well.

  Finnigan picked it up, boots pounding into the loose gravel, sprinting now, arms pumping, pulling ahead of this car. He reached the next space between cars; kept running.

  “I will goddamn shoot you!” he bellowed. “Stop running!”

  He thought he caught a glimpse of her jumping in his peripheral vision. She was now a second behind him. He sprinted on.

  The train chugged, gaining a little momentum.

  Finnigan got to the end of the next car, then ten paces beyond, and stopped, dropping to one knee, gravel digging into his skin, his right knee up, bracing his right elbow. He drew his Glock auto, clutched his right wrist with his left hand. He aimed.

  He had no hope of hitting the crazy Spaniard while she jumped between cars. She was just too damn fast.

  So, he fired before she jumped. He aimed for the vertical wall that made up the rear of the next car, aiming above the door. He was going for a bank shot. His bullets, he hoped, would hit the iron and ricochet back into her path. Maybe get her to stop or to stumble. Maybe.

  He fired twice, one shot after the other, sparks flying off the iron wall of the boxy car, both bullets caroming backward and upward into the night.

  He heard a muffled grunt. Then nothing.

  He knelt, listening. The train threw up a terrible racket despite—or perhaps because of—its glacially slow start.

  No chance I actually hit her! he thought. It had been an in-the-dark Hail Mary. The equivalent of casting a fishing line into a lake and bonking the fish on the top of the head with the lead weight.

  But Finnigan heard the distinctive crunch of boots landing on gravel on the far side of the slow-rolling train.

  She’d hopped down.

  He holstered his weapon and dodged between two of the cars. He climbed up on the ironwork, tossed his leg over the coupling device, and hopped down on the far side.

  The Spaniard tackled him.

  Finnigan saw her coming and twisted, hip-checking her away. He slammed back into the moving car and bounced off it, going to one knee.

  She was up and running, perpendicular to the tracks now, toward a cavernous abandoned warehouse thirty paces on.

  She limped, favoring one leg.

  Finnigan preened a little, thinking he’d hit her with the bank shot. That would be one to brag about at the bars until … well, forever. He rose to follow, already shaping the anecdotes in his head, when his vision warped. The planet’s gravity shifted. He stumbled and put a hand to his midriff.

  Felt a knife handle.

  His first thought: Why is there a knife handle in my shirt?

  Then: Oh.

  He yanked the knife out, let it clatter to the stones. He realized something had deflected the blow—his ballistic vest; his belt perhaps. Rather than a four-inch-deep incision, the blade had sliced him laterally—long, but not deep. The bolster of the knife had caught in the cloth of his shirt, which now bloomed with a dark stain of blood.

  He raced after her, one hand on the stomach wound.

  Fiero disappeared into the warehouse.

  The place was abandoned, falling apart, asymmetrical. The north end had collapsed under some winter’s snow, maybe, or fallen victim to termites. The south end stood, black and foreboding, a hole in the dark sky, a silhouette of structure.

  He ran inside.

  Twenty paces in, his left leg forgot how to lift properly and he tripped on an old flue brick, sprawling. It was too dark to see much. His hand felt sticky with blood. He sensed, more than saw, a solid substance a few feet to his left and crab walked toward it, left hand on the ground, supporting himself. He reached the old, creosote-soaked wooden beam and collapsed against it. He sat, drew his Glock, and tried to breathe normally.

  The pain pulsed in his gut.

  He heard the distinctive ratchet of a handgun slide in the dark, somewhere to his left.

  She spoke English. “You’re the American? Finnigan?”

  He remembered now that her voice was low and husky; a smoker’s voice, though she sure as hell didn’t run like a smoker.

  He said, “Fiero, right?”

  She began to swear; at least, he assumed from the venom sound that it was swearing. It was a Gatling gun goulash of Spanish and Arabic. She drifted to English at the end.

  “You shot me! Son of a whore!”

  “You stabbed me.”

  He waited, trying to triangulate her position.

  She said, “Yes, well … You shot me first.”

  Seconds ticked by.

  And Finnigan snorted a laugh.

  He had no earthly idea why. It was the simple petulance of her comment.

  A second later, and she laughed, too.

  “You’re psychotic,” he said.

  “Yes. Try to keep that in mind.”

  “Where did I shoot you?”

  She said, “Hip.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Just a graze.”

  Finnigan settled back against the pillar. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  “You haven’t met many Spanish women.”

  They both laughed. Which, for Finnigan, hurt like hell. Bats flitted overhead, sonar bouncing. The train outside chugged and hissed, and finally passed on by.

  He said, “We wanted the asshole alive. To face charges.”

  She said, “We wanted the asshole dead. He’d faced charges before. So, what? He was let off.”

  “So, you just executed him?”

  “Last time the Americans arrested him, they put him in Witness Protection. From there, he ran his rackets across the globe. And you knew it!”

  She wasn’t wrong. The Ukrainian had flipped, providing evidence for almost a dozen major arrests. And yes, he’d continued to profit from his own evils throughout.

  Finnigan felt the wound, right above his beltline. It hurt but it wasn’t fatal. It likely had begun clotting while he sat there. He wiped sweat off his forehead. They sat in silence.

  After a while, Finnigan lowered the hammer on his gun, sure that she could hear it. He holstered the weapon and then stood, grunting, one hand tacky with creosote, the other tacky with blood. Depending on where she was, he might have been backlit by the barn door. He started back the way he’d come—toward the entrance and the tracks and the night.

  Halfway there, he stopped. “You can’t just assassinate people.”

  “You can’t pretend to stop people like that with arrest warrants. My ends may not justify my means, but neither do yours.”

  “Your way isn’t justice.”

  “Yes, but yours isn’t either.”

  Finnigan reached the exit and looked back over his shoulder, into the pitch black. The darkness stared back at him. Far away, sirens blared and men in boots ran on gravel. Behind his back, his earpiece chirped nonsensically, like a grown-up in a Peanuts special.

  “Look, my way doesn’t always work,” Finnigan said, “but there are rules, lady. We follow the rules, or we’re just as bad as the bad guys.”

  The darkness said, “My way doesn’t always work, eith
er. I know this. But when your precious rules don’t work, then what? Do nothing? That way is just as bad as your bad guys.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  He stood, clutching his gut, waiting.

  The darkness said, “I don’t know. Do you?”

  Finnigan listened to the muted cacophony of his earpiece, listened to the fading sound of the freight train heading toward Russia. Thought about how little he cared that Pantomime was dead.

  He turned toward the darkness and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  C01

  Kyrenia, Cyprus

  Six months after Michael Patrick Finnigan and Katalin Fiero Dahar met—and wounded—each other in Ukraine, they were in business together.

  Both had had their fill of bureaucracy. Both wanted to see their work mean something.

  But Finnigan had set one inviolate restriction: “We’ll break rules. We’ll break laws. But we aren’t assassins.”

  Fiero agreed. Reluctantly.

  Finnigan was a cop, through and through. He was a slow, methodical, and imaginative investigator. Fiero was a spy. She could get into places and be whomever she needed to be to get to the truth.

  Fiero had a contact in the International Criminal Court, an anonymous go-between who threw a few thousand dollars their way, under the table, to connect “actionable evidence” to a wily Portuguese smuggler. The smugger had evaded capture for a decade. It took Finnigan and Fiero three days. The evidence was rock solid, the conviction a slam dunk.

  (Fiero hadn’t understood the colloquialism slam dunk. Finnigan explained it to her.)

  Their source at the court—an Englishman, it turned out—sent more cases their way. Harder cases. With more money on the line.

  What they were doing wasn’t legal, in the strictest sense. Okay, it wasn’t legal in any sense. Shan Greyson—they eventually learned his name—their back-channel liaison to the court, knew a banker who could help hide the profits.

  And Fiero knew mercenaries for the times when violence ensued.