CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
2073 Words
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Reid’s hand was already inside his jacket as the door swung inward. He yanked out the Glock and fired two shots toward the door.
He had no intention of shooting anyone that didn’t deserve it. Reid tracked his aim slightly to the left just before pulling the trigger and both bullets buried in the wall. Yet it had the desired effect; the cops and cargo workers crowded outside the small office took cover, vanishing from the frame.
The distraction gave him the precious few seconds he needed. He forced the doubt of the earlier moment out of his mind as he crouched and pounced, pushing off his toes and shoving his hands straight in front of him in a swan dive. His body careened through the narrow window, but he felt his toes snag the sill as he landed painfully onto the pavement outside, tucking into a sloppy roll. His shoulder throbbed; he’d have a substantial bruise there later.
He snatched up his bag as he scrambled to his feet and broke into a sprint, running parallel between the freight terminal and the low mountains behind it. He immediately regretted firing the shots; though it gave him the necessary time to escape, he had just authorized the police to use deadly force against him. And he had only seen three officers, when he knew there were at least four…
As soon as the thought crossed his mind someone came into view just ahead of him, another cop rounding the corner of the building with his service pistol drawn and pointed downward. Reid did not pause or even slow down; he lowered his shoulder and slammed into the cop at full speed like a defensive tackle.
“Oomph!” The officer took a hundred seventy-six pounds of Agent Zero to the midsection. For a moment the man’s entire body was off the ground, weightless, and then he crashed to the asphalt hard on his back.
Reid vaulted over him without slowing and sprinted onward. He stuck to the shadows, clinging close to the base of the mountains. Sirens screamed behind him as the police took to their cars. He needed to buy some time, at least enough to find a place to hide. He scrambled up the gentle slope of the mountain for about ten yards, tore off his jacket, and threw it into the dirt. Then he doubled back and continued parallel to the runway. With any luck the police would find the jacket and assume he made a run for the hills.
Reid ran until the tarmac ended in flat, dark fields, occasionally stealing a glance over his shoulder to see headlights and flashers in the distance. But they weren’t far; they would come this way soon enough. After nearly a half mile of running he paused, catching his breath, and crouched low in the shadows of the grassy field. He unzipped his bag and pulled out a change of clothes. He replaced his white T-shirt with an olive-green one, secured his shoulder holster, and then pulled on a brown blazer to replace the jacket he’d tossed. Deeper in the bag he found a blue baseball cap—thanks Watson, he thought—and pulled it on.
Still in the grass and shadows, he circled wide around the airport, approaching it from the east. Even under the cover of darkness he wasn’t terribly keen on staying on foot, not while the police were searching. He couldn’t be sure they had gotten a decent look at him, but he didn’t want to take the chance. Besides, it was a twelve-mile hike to walk to Dubrovnik proper.
When he reached the road he walked just beyond the shoulder toward the front of the airport. He just had to get to the bus terminal, and from there he could take a shuttle into the city. He was hoping the police would assume that the perpetrator with the gun wouldn’t be stupid enough to just get on a bus.
He was less than twenty yards from the bus terminal when two police officers exited the airport right next to the waiting shuttle. Reid cursed and quickly leaned against a metal signpost, trying to look casual.
He checked his periphery. One of the uniformed officers boarded the bus. The other mulled about near its doors, chatting with tourists. Likely asking them if they’d seen anyone fitting Reid’s description.
If he stayed and waited for his chance to board a shuttle, they might find him. The airport wasn’t large and despite Dubrovnik’s popularity as a tourist spot, there weren’t nearly as many visitors in the colder months. But what choice do I have? I can’t rent a car. I can’t walk it without risking being seen…
“Hey!” A gray sedan pulled to a halt directly in front of him. The passenger window was down, and the driver leaned over to address Reid. “Hello, my friend! Yes, you. Are you American?”
Reid realized he was leaning against a sign for a taxi stand. The gray car had two words stenciled on the door in faded letters, in both English and (presumably) Croatian: Taxi Service.
“You need ride?” The driver’s English wasn’t great, but at least he spoke it.
“Yes. I do.” Reid tossed his bag in and slid after it into the backseat. “Drive into Dubrovnik. City center.”
“You got it.” The taxi pulled away from the curb. Reid turned his head away as they cruised past the bus and the police officers. In less than a minute they were out of the airport and on their way to the city. “You alone, my friend? Where is your family?”
“I’m meeting them,” Reid said succinctly. The driver was about his age, maybe a year or two younger, with a heavy five o’clock shadow and tired eyes. But he smiled pleasantly—he had an American tourist in the backseat, which Reid understood to probably mean he expected a nice tip. “I only have US dollars. Is that a problem?”
“No, no problem. Happens a lot with tourists. Forget to change money. Lacking of… of, uh…” He snapped his fingers as if it would conjure the word.
“Foresight?” Reid offered.
“Sense,” said the driver.
Reid scoffed lightly. He noticed a thick sheaf of travel brochures in the pocket of the seat back, advertising things to do and places to stay in the city.
One of them in particular caught his eye.
“Where are you staying, friend?”
“I’m staying here.” Reid passed the bright brochure up to the driver. It looked like a beautiful place; the cover advertised crystal-clear pools and modern villas overlooking the Adriatic coast.
“Oh,” said the driver, impressed. “Villa Maya, huh? I had a feeling you were wealthy man.” He winked in the rearview mirror.
Reid took the hint. In his pocket he still had the wad of emergency cash he had taken from his closet before leaving Virginia. He peeled off a hundred-dollar bill and passed it to the driver. “This is for you,” he said. “And keep the change. But we have to make a stop first.”
“Stop where?”
“I’m looking for a place that I believe operates somewhere in the city. It’s a company by the name of Tkanina.”
The driver chuckled. “You know that means ‘fabric,’ yes? You are looking for a place called ‘Fabric’?”
“Yes.”
The driver laughed lightly again, but he typed it into the GPS on the cell phone mounted on his dashboard. The taxi swerved slightly on the road, reminding Reid to buckle his seatbelt.
“Huh,” the driver said softly after a moment. “How about it. There is a Tkanina in Dubrovnik. Other side of the city from your place, but not far from here. You still want to go?”
“I do,” Reid told him.
“You are the boss.”
It only took another four minutes to reach the destination, located in a small commercial area outside of Dubrovnik proper. The address they had been led to was pretty much exactly as Reid had expected; beige brick, nondescript, with no signs or indication of what might be inside.
“Turn off your headlights. Park over there, in the next lot over,” Reid instructed. The taxi rolled past the dark, silent building and stopped in the lot of an adjacent facility. The sign suggested the place manufactured bicycle parts, but it was deserted at this time of night. “Pop your trunk, please.”
Reid got out of the car and stowed his black bag. Then he came around and knelt beside the driver’s side window. “I’m leaving my bag with you,” he said. “I want you to wait for me. I don’t know how long this will take; it might be only a few minutes. It might be an hour. But if you wait, there’s another hundred in it for you.”
The driver’s eyes lit up. “Sure thing, my friend. I wait here.”
“Thank you.” Reid straightened, but then another thought occurred to him. “And, uh, you might hear noises.”
“Noises?” The driver raised an eyebrow.
“Loud noises. But please. Stay and wait for me.”
The taxi driver grinned as he reclined his seat back and wove his fingers behind his head, as if sitting in a lounge chair. “My friend, I am chill. See? I stay. I wait.”
“Thanks.” Reid left the car and trotted across the dark parking lot towards the cube-like Tkanina building. The only light outside was mounted on the front, a few yards over the steel double-door entrance, casting a pale glow over the front several parking spaces. Reid edged around the halo of it and inspected the building’s façade; there didn’t appear to be any cameras, and the windows were too high up in the walls for him to get a look inside.
He tried the front doors. They were locked, naturally, but after a quick inspection he determined he could dismantle the lock from the outside. He snapped open the spade-shaped lockback knife, still stained with some of Marko’s blood, and set to work.
It took him under a minute to take the left door handle off and pull the locking bolt out, but it felt like much longer. His mind was racing. He wasn’t expecting to find his girls here; the traffickers and Rais alike would be stupendously foolish to trust that sort of information with a soft touch like Marko at the freight terminal. Even so, he hoped to find something—or more aptly, someone—inside.
He slipped into the building as quietly as he could and immediately drew his Glock 22. It took several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the shop floor… and when they did, his face fell in abject disappointment.
The shadows fell long over rows and rows of workstations. Many of them were equipped with industrial-grade sewing machines. Along the far wall were wide devices with rollers wrapped in wide swaths of fabric in various colors.
This is actually a textile mill. He had expected a mostly empty building, or perhaps even a thinly veiled front, but this appeared to be a bona fide business. It could have been owned by the traffickers as a way to launder their money, he reasoned, or perhaps a pass-through entity like the men at the ports had been, paid off to falsify incoming cargo in order to get the girls into the country.
Regardless, he had come this far, and he was definitely going to have a look around. He crossed the shop floor carefully and quietly, his path illuminated only by the wan moonlight from the windows recessed high in the walls overhead. At the far end of the floor he found entrances to a couple of office, unlocked and empty.
Beyond them were two sets of stairs. One was made of steel and led up to another partial level of the plant. The second was concrete and led down into the darkness of a basement.
Reid stood at the base of the steel stairs for a full minute, listening intently. He heard nothing but the blood rushing in his own ears; no footfalls, no voices, nothing.
He took the stairs down, wishing he had brought a flashlight.
At the bottom he squeezed his eyes shut for several seconds to allow them to adjust to the darkness quicker. When he opened them again he could make out the faint silhouettes of more machines, lots of them—he was standing at the edge of a subterranean level of the plant, a floor just as vast and wide as the one above. But it was incredibly dark, too dark to navigate. He held the Glock in one hand as the other fumbled along the wall in the hopes of a light switch.
Something caught his eye and he glanced upward. In the corner of the ceiling was a small, single red dot of light.
Reid squinted at it. The light was attached to a rectangular black box. A camera, he realized, directed at a downward angle.
Toward the entrance.
Directly at him.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he heard shuffling footsteps in the darkness.
And then the shooting began.
- Writer
