Rogue Strike (A Troy Stark Thriller—Book #6), page 19
Troy pulled the bulletproof vest on. It had pockets in the front for the grenades. He pulled his right pants leg up and carefully taped the knife there. All the while, Alex was talking into his headset.
"Keep your helmet on, if you can. These things are walkie-talkies at least quarter of a mile out, possibly up to half a mile. I'm going to be circling a quarter of a mile."
“Got it,” Troy said.
"The GPS on that girl's chip is accurate within 15 meters. So there's a little bit of slack there, but not much. She's in the building where I'm dropping you. There are two stories and a basement. You've already been in the basement, so I'm guessing they're not hiding her there. The ground floor is a real floor - outside people actually come in there. With a little luck, she's on the top floor. Go in, hit hard, grab her, come right back up the stairs. If God is kind, that's what we're looking at."
Troy nodded. "Roger that."
“If not, all bets are off.”
Troy had the MAC-10, and was tightening the strap to his body. One magazine was mounted in the gun. The other two were in his left hand.
“What does that mean?” he said.
"I can't circle all day, Stark. There are police, military. Air traffic control has been calling us this whole time. We're just ignoring them. If you get in there, and you can't find her, or she's impossible to reach, come back up and let's go."
Troy was silent. He found pockets for the magazines.
“Make it out alive, that’s what I’m saying.”
“I’ll think about it,” Troy said.
He wasn't coming out of there without Dubois. She was not going to be impossible to reach. Troy could kill every man in that building to get to her. He would cut them up into tiny pieces if necessary.
He glanced through the windshield. They were already above the city. The confluence of dark rivers was just below and to his right.
"Ready?" Alex said. "Dropping in."
The helicopter fell downward like a fast elevator. Troy's stomach lurched upward into his throat. For a second, he thought Alex must have lost control. Then they were ten or fifteen feet above the roof, and hovering.
"Too high," Troy said. "Too high."
The chopper dropped again, kissed off the snowy rooftop, and bounced several feet.
"Out!" Alex shouted. "Go! Go! Get out!"
Troy pushed the door open and burst out. He dropped onto the roof, lost his balance, slipped and fell. He hit hard, the jolt going through his body. The snow was frozen, not soft.
The chopper was already gone, rising into the air. Alex banked hard, using gravity to shut Troy's door again.
Then Troy was on his feet.
The door to the stairwell was about twenty meters away. The doorway protruded from the roof. It was a steel door, silver or gray in color, with a horizontal handle and a lock plate embedded below the handle.
Troy could shoot out the lock. Or he could blow it.
Shooting it would be quieter, especially with the suppressed MAC-10, but he might need the ammo later.
Who is really coming from this direction?
Troy walked up to the door, grabbed the handle, turned it, and pulled. The heavy door opened easily. They didn't even bother to lock it. They were gangsters, after all. Most people tried to stay away from them.
Inside, a concrete stairwell led down to the next level.
Troy took the stairs two at a time, moving quietly, like a wraith. His senses were going crazy - sight, hearing, even smell - his body and mind were on fire.
"Stark?" Alex said through the headset in his helmet. "Testing. Stark?"
Troy hoped he was the only one who could hear him, but he didn’t know for sure.
"Shut up!" he hissed. "Don't speak again."
The stairs dead-ended at another metal door. He touched the knob and pulled it open the smallest amount. There were voices somewhere nearby.
Troy poked his head out and looked both ways.
The hallway was narrow and dim. It smelled of must. It hadn't seen a paint job in years. There was no one in the hall. The voices were coming from the right, around a corner.
Troy pulled the MAC down and stepped into the hall.
He was in.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Time Unknown
Place Unknown
"Wake up!" a man said. "Wake up, dummy!"
The man was slapping her. First on one side of the face, then on the other. Her head wrenched from side to side with each impact.
"Take her hood off," another man said. "I want her to see where she is."
Strong hands yanked her into a seated position against a wall. Fingers pulled her head forward and worked at some kind of straps or ties at the back of her neck. Then they pulled the hood, ripped it up and over her head.
Dubois blinked at the low light in the room. It wasn't much, but she had become accustomed to near-total darkness.
Her situation was somehow worse than she had imagined. Her arms were bound behind her. She was on a hard wooden floor, inside a cage. The bars were made of some rusted metal, and the cage was welded together in a corner of the room. There was one window to the outside world, which was blacked out with either paint or some kind of tape. It was clear that they hadn't organized all this on her account. This room had been like this for a long time. It had been used for torture before. The thought was not reassuring.
There was a dim yellow lightbulb hanging from an electric wire in the ceiling.
A heavyset, unshaven, unkempt man stood near the open door of the cage.
A thin man sat on the only piece of furniture in the room, a metal folding chair. The man was bald with a neat black goatee. He looked like an artist's rendering of the Devil.
“Adrienne, are you ready to talk to me now?” the Devil said.
Dubois shook her head. "I've told you everything."
The Devil smiled. "Why do I doubt that?"
“I don’t know.”
"I've been given my final orders," the Devil said. "You either tell me who you really are, or I'm supposed to get rid of you. Though I think we'll enjoy each other's company first, if you understand my meaning."
"No. I don't understand."
"Love," the Devil said. "We're going to be in love."
Dubois glanced up at the overweight man standing at the opening. He must have been the one hitting her just now. His hands were big and meaty. His eyes were bloodshot. He grinned down at her.
"Would you like to crawl on your stomach and face like a worm?" the Devil said. "I'll let you squirm out of there, and you can come to me and beg for your life. Would you like that?"
"I'm a tourist," Dubois said. "My name is Adrienne…"
"We have no use for tourists," the Devil said. "We might as well kill them."
Dubois stared into the space in front of her.
"If you were police, or a spy, we might find a use for you," the Devil said. "It would be very important for me to know that. My superiors might allow me to take pity on you. But you'd have to say it now. I'm running out of reasons to keep you alive."
It was a lie, Dubois realized. She could never tell this man who she was. If these people were involved in the cholera attack, it would alert them that law enforcement was close on their heels. And it would give them a very good reason to kill her.
“Please,” she said.
The Devil cupped his ear. "What? I didn't hear you."
“Please!” Dubois nearly shouted it.
The Devil had pulled a small pistol from somewhere. He checked it to see how many bullets there were.
"Please. That's what I like to hear. So this is what's going to happen. My friend here is going to untie your arms. You're going to be a good little girl and not try anything funny. He and I are both carrying guns, and we could both kill you with our bare hands anyway."
He paused, staring across and down at her for a moment. His eyes seemed to glitter in the semi-darkness.
"Once your arms are untied, you're going to crawl out of that cage on all fours, and you're going to crawl right here to me, and you're going to beg for your life. You're going to beg like a dog begs for a treat."
“And if I don’t?” Dubois said.
The Devil shrugged. "Then my friend there will shoot you in the head."
Dubois felt the tears coming again. She worked to hold them in. She didn't want to give this man anything, least of all the satisfaction of making her cry.
She was going to die now. She understood that. She wasn't going to crawl, and she wasn't going to beg. She wasn't going to identify herself. So they were just going to kill her.
She looked up at the heavyset man. He seemed old. His face had jowls, and his eyes were tired. But she saw no compassion in those eyes.
“You wouldn’t shoot a woman, would you?”
The man shrugged. "I was in the war."
“He was shooting women and children before you were born,” the Devil said.
Dubois said nothing. These men were too cruel. How did they become this cruel?
"Will you crawl? Will you beg?"
She shook her head. "No."
She would die with dignity instead.
The Devil glanced at his minion. The man pulled a gun from somewhere and stepped into the cage. He pressed the muzzle of the gun against her skull.
"Please," she heard herself say, tears streaming down her face. "I'm just a tourist. You have no reason to kill me."
His voice mocked her. "I'll kill you because you won't be my dog. It's reason enough."
Dubois’s breaths came shallowly, in harsh rasps.
“Will you be my dog?”
“No!”
The Devil glanced at the other man.
“Go ahead.”
I’ll be your dog!
She almost said it, but didn’t.
An image of her mom flashed before her eyes. They had gone together to get micro-chipped. It was like a girls' day out. They had gone to a café for a glass of wine afterward to celebrate. Dubois had been glad. Her mom would be safe.
“Goodbye lady tourist,” the fat man said.
“No!” Dubois screamed. “Wait!”
He pulled the trigger. Dubois’s entire body convulsed.
Click.
She fell over sideways onto the floor. She was weeping now, her body shaking from the sobs. Her throat felt blocked. She could not swallow.
“The next trigger pull finishes you,” the Devil said.
It took a moment for Dubois to gather her ability to speak.
“I hope you die,” she said.
The two men both laughed.
"What a sweet girl," the fat man said. "I like her spirit."
"Yes," the Devil said. "It's a shame that we have to part ways now."
Dubois saw his glowing eyes staring at her. He smiled, as if delighted at what he saw, another person reduced to a sniveling wretch on the ground.
“Go ahead and kill her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
10:35 am Central European Time
Bogovic’s Building
Zeleni Venac
Belgrade, Serbia
Troy moved up the hall, toward the voices.
He scanned the walls and ceilings for cameras. He didn't see any. Up ahead, the hall turned a corner to the left. The floor was made of old wood. A symphony of creaks and groans seemed to accompany his every step.
Troy pressed forward, driven by the singular image of Dubois's face. He was going to tear apart the world to bring her back.
He leaned, back against the wall, and took a breath. The voices were RIGHT THERE. He could inhale the smoke from their cigarettes. He cradled the MAC.
Go.
He spun around the corner. The men looked his way. They were standing in front of a closed door. They seemed frozen, shocked to see him there. They both had handguns in holsters. They reached for theirs guns, one man's cigarette dropping from his mouth.
Troy sprayed them with the MAC. He lit them up. The gun bucked just a little in his hands. The sound was low, contained by the suppressor.
Clack, Clack, Clack, Clack, Clack.
One man oozed to the ground, riddled with holes in his chest.
The other was still on his feet. He lurched toward a box mounted on the wall. He pulled a lever down. Somewhere else in the building, an alarm started. It was faint here, but probably loud wherever it was going off.
That was not good. It said more were coming.
Clack.
Troy shot the guy in the head. The man's head jerked back, and he dropped to the floor, dead before he landed.
There was a line of wooden doors here, to Troy’s left.
Pick one. Pick one.
He picked the one the two men seemed to be standing in front of. He stepped over their corpses, faced the door square, lifted a leg, and kicked it as hard as he could. The door swung open. It probably wasn't even locked.
A heavyset man looked up. He was holding a gun to the head of a woman on the floor.
He turned the gun on Troy.
BANG!
The noise was loud in the room and the hall. The shot was chest high, and knocked Troy backwards. He hit the wall behind him, stumbled on one of the dead men, and pitched forward.
BANG!
The man shot him again. The force of it jerked Troy upright.
I’m wearing a vest.
And on the heels of that:
Thank God.
He gasped for air, the wind knocked out of him. If he lived, he'd be feeling these gunshots for days.
He raised the MAC, he and the heavy man facing off. The fat man had learned his lesson. He aimed at Troy's head.
Clack!
The man’s head popped back, and he dropped to the floor.
Troy stepped into the dark room.
"Man!" the woman screamed. "Man to your right! He has a gun!"
It was Dubois.
Troy turned, and a man was there in a metal folding chair. He had a gun in his hand but was slow to raise it. The man was bald, with a goatee. He was very thin.
CLACK!
Troy shot him. The sound suppressor was already wearing out.
The man slumped in his chair, dropped his gun, and then slid off onto the floor. He seemed oddly withered. His arms and legs were like bones with skin on them. There seemed to be no flesh on them. In the low light from a yellow bulb, Troy spotted aluminum crutches leaning against the wall behind where the man had been sitting.
The guy had some kind of wasting disease. That wasn't Troy's problem. Troy had found the guy here, holding Dubois prisoner, so he killed him. Sympathy for the guy was someone else's job.
Dubois was on the floor inside a cage, among the shadows. The cage was open. The fat man had fallen next to her. A halo of blood was spreading out around his head.
"Stark," Dubois said, her voice a rasp. "Nice helmet."
He tapped himself on the helmet, but said nothing.
“Took you long enough.”
Troy breathed shallowly, still barely able to speak.
His chest felt tight and painful. He gritted his teeth.
"Traffic was tough," he said. He crouched next to her, scanning for any sign of injury beyond what was visible. Her face was swollen. One of her eyes was mostly closed. The sight of her battered form filled him with rage, and just behind that, relief. She was alive, and for the moment, that was good enough.
Troy turned her to the side and discovered that her arms were pinned behind her back and bound together with duct tape. He pulled his pant leg up to his café, grabbed the knife taped there, and ripped it away. He began to cut the tape binding Dubois down the middle, careful not to nick the skin on her arms.
Dubois, battered, possibly broken, managed a smile.
“Ever consider a quiet retirement?”
Troy nodded. "For you, yeah. I think about it a lot."
She smiled, shook her head, but didn’t speak.
Gently, he cut the last of the bindings. Her arms were free. The duct tape was still thick on her arms. He would worry about removing that later.
“Can you move?” he said.
Her voice was hoarse. Yes. I think so."
"Then let's go. We don't have much time."
“Lead the way,” she said.
He helped her to her feet. He reached into the holster on his belt, and pulled out the Glock.
“Can you carry this?”
She nodded. She took the gun in her small hand.
Troy noted the bruises up and down her arm. He noted the torn clothing. Again, he noted her beaten face. A surge of feelings and sensations flooded his system. Horror. Terror. Heartbreak. There was a searing feeling, a sense of being burned alive, from the inside.
He wanted to scream in agony.
He forced it all down, down, deep inside himself. There was no time for it now.
He took a deep breath.
The urge in his body was for revenge. He had already killed four men.
Was it enough? He didn't know.
"Back to back, you lead," he said. "Face forward, I'm facing backward. We got bad guys coming. The stairwell to the roof is around the next corner, a door on your left. That's our way out. We need to move quickly."
They went out into the hall, Dubois in front, Troy watching their backs. Somewhere, the alarm was still blaring. Running footsteps were coming.
“Keep moving,” he said.
Dubois, who normally moved like a cat, staggered forward with an uneven gait.
Troy spoke into his helmet mic. "Alex, you hear me?"
"Stark. Loud and clear. You still alive?"
“Yeah.”
“Dubois?”
"Both of us. We are coming to the roof. Request immediate pickup."
"I'm circling back. Be there in a minute or less."
They turned the corner. A second later, they reached the doorway. Dubois eased it open, gun pointed in front of her.
Heavy footsteps were coming now, from both sides.
"Oh God. Run Dubois! Run!"
They sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, Troy giving up the back-to-back. He was right behind Dubois, pushing her forward. They were both gasping for air. Their breathing sounded like shrieks. Below them, the door to the stairwell opened.
