“You won’t get away with this,” he said. I remembered his name. Freddy.
“Do you want to die? Seriously? Drop the gun.”
He didn’t, and I needed an example, so I shot him in the knee, too. All his bravado evaporated as he screamed and fell. He also dropped his gun.
“Okay, then,” I said. I kept my voice steady. “I want Yasmin Zaid and Edward. Where are they?”
None of them answered.
“If you don’t know, you’re useless to me.” I let the gun’s aim go to the next guy.
“Past the vat room,” Demi said in a hoarse whisper. “Down to your left. There’s an old wing of offices. She’s guarded.”
“How many others here?”
Her lips tightened.
“Do you think I won’t shoot you because you’re a woman? Get over yourself,” I said. “How many others here?”
I knew they weren’t pros when Demi said, “Five,” and Freddy gasped, “Twelve, and more coming,” at the same time. I believed Demi. God, I hoped she was right.
“That metal door,” I said. “Open it.”
One of the men obeyed. Freddy yelled, “Don’t help him, don’t.”
“Do you want to dance again?” I said. “Shut up.” He went quiet.
I could see inside-it was a cold room, like a giant refrigerator.
“Cell phones on the floor. Empty out your pockets.” They obeyed: five cell phones hit the floor.
I gestured them inside with the gun then slammed the door and locked it. Five more, and I didn’t know if that included Edward.
I continued down the hall. The main brewery floor was dark. Thin light gleamed from up high. I could see the squat bulks of six old copper vats; concrete flooring separated them. A catwalk encircled the square of the floor up high, a few rooms and offices above the catwalk. The walls were white tile.
I heard footsteps approaching above me on the catwalk. A man with an assault rifle buckled across his chest. You walk on a catwalk, you tend to look down through the metal mesh. He saw me.
He opened fire. I ducked low behind a rounded vat and the shots drumming the copper sounded like a jangling of cymbals.
I could see in the distance, on a half-lower level, a long wall with a metal rectangle. The bay doors. That was where most of them would have been, I thought, when the fight began, waiting to do the work of the loading. If I stayed pinned down here they’d rush me.
I climbed inside the vat. It was low and dark and the singing of the bullets made it sound like crawling into a gong. The catwalk formed an L shape over the opening. I waited.
The rifleman stopped shooting. He was looking for me, not wanting to waste bullets, and he had thought I would just hide behind the vat. I listened for the soft scrape of his feet above me and threw myself into the opening, firing into the space between the flooring and the railing. He jerked and then he fell to the catwalk. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but he was down and not shooting at me.
But all surprise was gone now.
I ran into the loading bay area, jumping over a railing, dropping to the concrete floor. I saw a man running toward me, raising a pistol. Two more men following him. Old pallets of bottles sat to my right and I dodged behind them. Gunfire exploded the tops and shattered sprays of glass, splinters, and stale beer fountained above my head.
Three to fight. I went still. I had a Glock in each hand, Piet’s wakizashi tucked in my back belt, and an explosive charge in my jacket pocket.
The gunfire stopped.
An awful echoing silence filled the room, the smell of cordite, of old beer.
I could hear a hissed argument in Dutch. “You go,” “No, you go,” cowards daring each other to find some courage. I thought of the people they’d helped kill at the train station. I tried to calm my mind, think of efficiency, like running along the edge of the building in parkour, find the line.
One called out in Dutch, “Throw down your guns, you can’t get out.”
I moved as quietly as I could to the corner of the large pallet I’d hidden behind. I raised the Glocks, aiming down each corner from the beer pallet.
No sign that anyone was coming.
Behind me, on the far side of the huge room, I heard a muffled scream from a woman.
70
Yasmin.
I didn’t have time to wait the three stooges out. The old pallets of beer were stacked in five long rectangles at one end of the dock space. Maybe forty feet between me and the external doors. I could hear at least two voices two pallets away. Like a run to make. Break it down into steps then commit each action as part of a more fluid movement.
My mind shifted to a gear it hadn’t been in since I tried to save Lucy in London. Overhead a bay of fluorescents loomed. I gunned the lights. The room plunged into semidarkness; the only light now came from the glow of the vat room.
Yasmin screamed again.
I studied the room with a traceur ’s eye. Pallets to leap on, railing to jump, walls to bounce off. I could try to use parkour to outflank them. I wasn’t sure how steady the pallets were and usually I ran with hands free, not holding guns.
I saw movement to my left and I risked standing and firing a shot, then fell back to the floor. A babbling scream rose from the other side of the pallet.
I hurried down the passageway formed by the pallets. Suddenly glass crunched under my heels.
Gunfire exploded around me from three sides. In front, behind me, to my right.
Surrounded.
I retreated left, in the direction of the man I’d shot. I could hear feet scrabbling around, two closing behind me to cut off my retreat back to the vat room.
But I wasn’t retreating. They were only looking for me between the pallets. If I wasn’t where they expected, I could gain a momentary advantage.
I did a standing jump and yank onto the fifteen-foot-high pallets and ran along the edge. I saw movement to my right, another guy rounding a corner where I’d been crouching twenty seconds before, and I fired. Missed him. He fired at the same time I did and I felt the bullet tear up through my jacket and score along the flesh of my back. Then heat hit my shoulder, a sting that rose into agony.
Below my feet, bottles broke, the pallet coming apart at the top. The stack gave way. Beer flooded my shoes. I knew if I tumbled into the mess I’d be cut by the jagged glass and an easy mark.
I jumped to the roof of a forklift, looking down to see a surprised face hiding behind its bulk. I fired wildly and the surprised guy went down, bullets punching into his shoulders. I jumped to the next pallet, hit the wood and didn’t look back. The pain in my shoulder seared. A warm throb of blood coursed down my back. I was hurt.
I couldn’t be hurt. I couldn’t. I jumped off the stack and landed on concrete.
And one of the two had doubled back on his run. I landed three feet in front of him.
He raised an assault rifle but he didn’t fire. “Drop your weapons!” he screamed.
I dropped both the Glocks.
“On the floor!”
I went to my knees. My hand twisted behind me for the wakizashi.
“Hands where I can see them!”
My hand closed on the wakizashi ’s handle. I turned the sword and it sliced through the thin leather belt I wore. Thank you, Piet, for being bored, for sharpening the sword while we waited in the rain outside the sweatshop
