David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (2 page)
The driver shrugged.
“It pulled up outside,”
he said. “The door to the building opened. A man came out. The men got out of
the taxi and went inside with him. Nothing dramatic.”
“Did it sound its horn?”
I said.
“No.”
So someone had seen it
arrive. They’d been watching.
“Was the man who came
out armed?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What with?”
“The usual. An AK.”
That sounded like
overkill, for the suburbs. But then, we were talking about drug dealers.
“How many people are
inside?” I said.
“Don’t know.”
I increased the pressure
on the Beretta.
“I don’t know,” the
driver said.
“Is Kevin Truly inside?”
I said.
“I don’t know who that
is. You think the people who pay us tell us their names?”
“Were you told to expect
any other people or vehicles?”
“Yes. Another taxi. The
two men are supposed to leave in one.”
“At what time?”
“We weren’t told a
time.”
“What else were you told
to do?”
“Wait here. Make sure...
never mind.”
I gave him another prod.
“Make sure no one was
snooping around,” he said. “Stop anyone who tried. Call a number if there was a
problem.”
“What number?”
He reeled off a series
of digits.
“Is that their regular
number?” I said. “The one you normally use to contact them?”
“No,” he said. “It’s
just for this job.
For problems, only.
It changes
every time.”
“Well, there’s certainly
a problem now,” I said. “And the bad news is, the window for calling numbers
has closed for the day. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s still
something left for you to do.”
Neither of the men
responded.
“In fact, three things.
And they’re all simple. First, I want you to drive up to the building and stop
in exactly the same place the taxi did, earlier. Second, wait for thirty
seconds. And third, if no one has come out by then, sound your horn. Two long
blasts. No more. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely, crystal
clear? Because you’ll need to do a better job than you did of stopping me from
snooping around.”
“We’re clear.”
“Do those three things,
and nothing else. Nothing to warn whoever’s in that building that something is
going on. Because if you deviate in any way at all - do you know what will
happen?”
The driver pressed his
head sharply back against the Beretta for a second.
“You’ve got it,” I said,
sliding down low behind the front seats. “Now let’s go.”
I slipped out of the car the moment it came to rest and moved
backwards into the shadows until my shoulders touched the wall of the
dilapidated building. The two guys remained in their seats, sitting still,
staring straight ahead, and doing nothing to invite a bullet. I counted the
seconds in my head. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Nothing stirred. We reached thirty.
The driver raised his hands from his lap and started to reach for the
centre
of the steering wheel, but before he made contact I
heard a harsh metallic squeal to my left and the door to the warehouse was
flung back on its hinges. The side of the car was bathed in light. Boots
crunched on gravel. A man appeared. He was a shade over six feet tall, broad,
with a completely shaved head. The reflection of his face in the car window put
him in his early forties. His clothes looked expensive - black Armani jeans and
a ribbed, zip up sweater made from ultra fine cashmere. He was holding a radio
in his left hand.
And a folding-stock Kalashnikov in his
right.
The man paused for a
moment,
then
approached the car. I fell in step behind
him, and just before he reached the driver’s door I reached my right arm over
his shoulder, wrapped it across the front of his body and grabbed a handful of
soft wool just below his left armpit. My left arm snaked up from the other
side. My hand looped all the way around to the back of his skull. It kept going
till I brushed his ear. Then my fingers clamped down and I pulled back hard in
the opposite direction till I heard the telltale crunch of a pair of his
cerebral vertebrae being torn apart.
Fresh bodies are always awkward to move on your own. They’re slack
and floppy - before rigor sets in, anyway - and their weight seems to multiply
tenfold. That one was particularly uncooperative. I couldn’t get a decent grip
on it, anywhere. Its arms and legs kept escaping. The head was almost
uncontrollable. In the end I felt like it took me an hour to bundle it in
through the rear doors of the car.
“Is that the same guy
who met the taxi, earlier?” I said, finally moving round to the front and
pulling out two more
flexicuffs
.
“I think so,” the driver
said, after taking a deep breath. “But wait. You can’t leave...”
“Hands out,” I said,
feeding the tongue of the first cuff through the one binding his wrists,
then
looping it around the steering wheel.
“You too,” I said to the
passenger.
He didn’t argue, so I
secured him in the same way.
“Now listen,” I said,
taking the keys then reaching across and wrenching the rearview mirror off its
mounting. “I’m going inside. You’re staying here. And you’re going to stay
silent. You’re going to make absolutely no noise at all.
Because
if I hear one single sound, I’ll be back out.
And you’ll both be joining
that guy on the back seat.”
Chapter Two
The sentry’s Kalashnikov had fallen next to the car during the scuffle
so I retrieved it, used the mirror to make sure no one unfriendly was lurking
on the other side of the door, and then stepped through into a corridor. It was
wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, and extended all the way to an
emergency exit at the far side of the building. A line of doors was set into
the left hand wall. There were five. They were unevenly spaced, and all were
standing open. The first led to an empty room. I guessed it had been an office,
based on the shapes of the worn patches on the
lino
.
A pile of squashed cigarette butts lay on the floor next to the window, and I
saw that the board covering the glass had been pried away at both lower
corners. That was probably where the sentry had been keeping his watch, but
there was no one else in the room, now.
The remaining four rooms
- a kitchen, two bathrooms, and one other, perhaps a staffroom - were deserted
as well. That only left a pair of double doors on the opposite side of the
corridor. They were closed. A keypad dangled on its wires from the frame, so I
was confident they weren’t locked. I stood and listened for a moment. There was
nothing to be heard, so I moved silently to the far end, then turned, took out
the phone I’d taken from the driver, and dialed the emergency number he’d given
me outside.
The call was answered on
the first ring.
“Yes?” a man said, in
German. “What?”
“Quickly,” I said,
whispering to make my voice less
recognisable
. “Six
guys. Front of the building. All armed. Looks like they mean business.”
“On our way,” the man
said, then the line went dead.
I switched the rifle to semi automatic - Kalashnikovs are famously
reliable, but notoriously hard to control on full auto - and lay down on my
front. Five seconds passed. Then the double doors burst open. Two men charged
though and started racing away from me, towards the exit. They were tempting
targets, but I waited. They covered half the distance to the outside world.
Three quarters. Then two more men emerged, running hard, and I finally squeezed
the trigger. Four times.
The nearer pair had no
chance to react. The other two slowed down a little. The final one even managed
to half turn around before the three shells hit him. That was more of a chance
than they gave their ‘customers,’ I thought, as I blew the stinging cordite out
of my nostrils.
The main warehouse was a broad rectangular space, maybe 5,000 square
feet all in. The walls and roof were bare metal, with an exposed skeleton of
beams and girders. There was no merchandise left. No boxes, or containers, or
even debris. Whoever had cleared the place out had been thorough. But they’d
also been in a hurry. They hadn’t unbolted the redundant shelf legs from the
floor. They’d just chopped them off about three inches above the surface,
leaving scores of jagged L-shaped uprights sprouting from the concrete like the
shoots of uniform metal plants.
The only item not
physically attached to the ground was the table that held the two piles of
drugs. It was standing at the exact
centre
of the
giant room, almost glowing in a pool of moonlight that spilled through a jagged
hole in the roof. Three people were in front of it.
The two
Marines.
And Kevin Truly.
“Good evening,
gentlemen,” I said, approaching the group.
“Sir,” the biker Marine
said, stepping back from Truly but not lowering the gun.
“Any more of his friends
around here?” I said.
“There was one outside
in the corridor, sir. And the four who just went running out of here, a second
ago.”
“They’re all accounted
for. Seen anyone else?”
“Not inside, sir. But I
think
our cab was followed by two guys
from the hotel
bar. They might be around somewhere.”
“They’re outside. Not in
a position to trouble anyone, though.”
The Marines glanced at
each other.
“So, then, what we do
with him?” the Marine said, gesturing to Truly.
“He’s coming with me,” I
said. “A couple of my people are waiting to chat with him.”
“Couldn’t we just... you
know?”
“You know, what?”
“Slot the bastard. Get
it over with. Here and now.”
I took a long, hard look
at the Marine, and then turned to his colleague.
“After what he’s done to
us?” the biker Marine said. “He deserves it.”
“And it’s his gun,” the
other one said. “It’s not traceable to either of us.”
For people trained to
find swift, decisive solutions to problems like this, you could see how the
idea would appeal to them.
Specially
when their heads
were on the block, and he was the star witness against them. So for a second,
part of me – a tiny part – wished I could just look the other way.
“Not a chance,” I said.
“With due respect, sir,
you’ve ‘accounted for’ what, seven of the bastards already, tonight?” the biker
said. “What’s one more?”
“Asked, and answered,” I
said.
Neither Marine spoke for
a moment.
“What if he tried to
make a run for it?” the other Marine said. “We’d have no choice, then.”
“OK,” I said. “Tell me
this. Who else at the Embassy is involved in this?”
The Marines glanced at
each other again, but this time neither one spoke.
“What was going to
happen next?” I said. “More drug shipments?”