Blood Trust

THIRTY-ONE

THEY WERE pounding up the safehouse stairs when Alli felt a breeze on her cheek, cold enough to make her shiver.

“They’re coming.”

It was Emma. Alli fought down a certain terror. Emma spoke to Jack only when he was near death or in dire straits. Was it the same with her?

“Prepare yourself, Alli.”

“Company,” Alli said to Thatë.

—Emma, stay with me.

Two men appeared on the second-floor landing. The moment they saw Alli and Thatë, they opened fire with AK-50s.

“I guess our cover’s blown,” Alli said as she scrambled out of the way.

Thatë opened fire with his assault rifle and the two men scattered. He advanced upward, Alli in his wake. She saw one of the men above them prone on the landing, aiming his weapon at Thatë, and she shot him. Her hands were firm, her mind unclouded. These were the lessons Jack had taught her, even before he’d brought her to the firing range for the first time. A firecracker could have gone off next to her and her concentration wouldn’t have wavered. Jack was a zen master when it came to concentration. For him, it was a necessity. In order to function more or less normally in the world took enormous amounts of concentration on his part. Anything flat with letters on it looked like a pinwheel or the inside of a lava lamp.

They were almost at the landing. Where was the other Albanian? As they reached the second floor, Thatë indicated that she go left while he went right. To the left, the banister ran along the second floor for about fifteen feet before arching upward on the flight to the third floor. Just before she reached the landing, Alli swung onto the banister. Here her smallness and light weight were a distinct advantage. Hooking her ankles through the uprights, she inched her way along. Behind her, she heard a spray of bullets and, turning, saw Thatë coming toward her. He was pointing upward; he had nailed the other Albanian.

They launched themselves up the staircase. Alli checked her watch. Less than four minutes until Vasily started his diversion.

They were only partway up, when a commanding voice called from behind them. “Stop where you are! Lay down your weapons and kneel with your hands behind your head!”

JACK COULD see Annika in the shadows, heard her speaking, presumably to Xhafa, when the barking of the attack dogs announced their entry into the house. He turned and, in a half-crouch, prepared to defend their position.

The first of the dogs appeared, its claws skittering on the wooden floor. Jack got off a shot just after it saw him. He hit a flank, but that hardly stopped the animal. It merely bared its teeth and came on. He shot it in the chest, but he was distracted by the sight in his peripheral vision of the second dog. The first dog was hardly slowed down by the two bullets and was barely two feet from Jack when he shot it in the head. It dropped in front of him, but now the second dog was upon him, its long claws extended, its jaws snapping as if it were rabid.

The sheer weight of it bowled him over. He jammed the barrel of the AK-50 between its jaws to keep it at bay, but its claws were tearing through his jacket as it if were made of tissue. He cracked his elbow into the side of the dog’s head, but that only made it angrier. The dog had hold of the AK-50 and wasn’t going to let go. He twisted it so hard, he heard the animal’s neck vertebrae click. In that moment, he let go of the weapon and used his crooked arms to jerk the dog’s neck even farther. The vertebrae cracked like a gunshot, the light went out of the animal’s eyes, and its weight slumped on top of him.

He took a deep breath and was about to retrieve the assault rifle from the dog’s clamped jaws when a voice said, “I’ll take that.”

He found himself staring up into the face of one of the guards.

ALLI TURNED to see the man with one green eye, the other blue; monstrous eyes, revealing a pitiless and relentless soul. She shivered and even Emma, beside her, seemed to quail.

“He’ll kill you, Alli. Give him the chance and he’ll kill you.”

Thatë made the mistake of trying to reason with him. “I work for Arian Xhafa. We’re here for Liridona. We have no quarrel with you.”

“The blood you’ve spilled is quarrel enough.” One eye seemed to speak while the other was deep in scheming. He was addressing Thatë but seemed to impale Alli with his implacable gaze. “No one leaves my safehouse.”

“Yours?” Thatë shook his head. “This safehouse belongs to Arian Xhafa.”

“Arian Xhafa belongs to me.”

The Syrian lifted a pearl-handled M1911 but before anyone could react, a ferociously hot fireball raced up the stairs with a massive lightning crack. The Syrian turned. Thatë shot him in the shoulder, but the Syrian, seemingly unperturbed, fired the .45. The full-metal-jacket bullet buried itself in Thatë’s chest, throwing him back against the stairs. From that semiprone position, he fired again and again, forcing the Syrian back into a room on the second floor.

“Thatë!” Alli cried, bending down to see to his wound.

But he thrust her roughly away. “Upstairs. Find Liridona and get out of here. I’ll keep this fucker out of your way.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Don’t be stupid.” He glanced up at her. “This is what I’ve trained for, this is my life. Now leave me to it.”

He began to fire again.

“Thatë—”

He shoved her hard. “Go!”

“Run, Alli.”

Tears running down her face, she turned and bolted up the stairs.

ANNIKA IGNORED the shots and the animal growling that came from the room behind her. This appeared to surprise Xhafa, until he said, “You’re not alone.”

Without a word, she hauled him out of the chair and, spinning him around, slammed him down on the floor.

“You’ll always be mine, you know,” he said. “Whatever you do, until the day you die.”

Annika straddled him. Taking a huge bowie knife out of her backpack, she proceeded to strip off his clothes, baring his back. The muscles rippled in anticipation.

Pressing the blade point to his skin, Annika proceeded to score seven concentric circles into his back, carving each circle deep into the muscles. Blood flowed, Xhafa screamed and kept on screaming.

CAROLINE WAS sitting in the passenger seat of the Syrian’s car, cradling her laptop, when she heard the volleys of gunshots. The car was parked a block away from the safehouse but the cracks sounded much closer. She turned to look out the side window just as Taroq pulled the door open.

She got out and Taroq embraced her. For all the emotion inside her, she might have been embraced by a boxcar.

“You had no trouble following us?”

He shook his head. “None at all.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

He pointed off to their left. “My car is this way.”

At his side, she walked quickly away from the Syrian’s car and never looked back.

THE FIRST screams caused the guard to look beyond where Jack lay, buried beneath the attack dog. In that moment, Jack located his Glock, brought it out, and shot the guard in the head. He was taking no chances. Grunting, he began to shrug off the dog’s corpse, when it juddered back into him, struck by two bullets fired from the second guard’s gun. He slumped to the floor as if shot.

Through slitted eyes, he saw the boots of the second guard coming hesitantly toward him. He was taking a calculated risk, he knew, but the dog was so big that it covered all of his torso and head. His hand with the Glock in it was beneath the attack dog’s neck and so able to move.

When he saw the boots close enough, he edged the muzzle of the pistol forward, tilting it up. It was then that the left boot slammed down on the Glock, trapping it.

At once, Jack let it go and, slithering out from under the animal, fired at the guard with the handgun in his left hand. He missed, and the guard slammed the barrel of his pistol into Jack’s cheek. Even as the pain jolted him, Jack stepped forward, inside the guard’s defense, delivering a flurry of vicious blows to his adversary’s head and neck.

Undeterred, the guard drove his fist into Jack’s wounded side, and Jack crumpled in agony. Grinning, the guard stood over him, pointing his pistol at Jack’s head. One instant his finger was about to pull the trigger, the next the blade of a bowie knife was buried hilt-deep in the left side of his chest.

He looked up, past Jack, but he was already arching backward and all his glazing eyes saw was the ceiling before his heart, sliced in two, ceased to beat.

Jack looked back over his shoulder and saw Annika standing in the doorway.

ALLI HAD just reached the third floor when she heard the pounding of boots. She had just enough time to duck into a room before six or seven armed men came charging down the hall, drawn by the gunfire and the smoke and flames from the ground floor. When they had passed, she darted out, running full-tilt down the hall. She flew by rooms with young girls in them, lying on mean pallets, or, more likely, deep in drug-induced slumber. She wanted to free them all but in their current state and under the circumstances that was impossible. She was here to find Liridona.

Liridona was in the back room, caged like an animal, on her hands and knees because there was no room to stand. Alli rattled the door, but it was padlocked.

“Edon sent me,” she said to the terrified girl. “Where’s the key?”

When Liridona failed to answer, Alli shouted, “Stand back!” Then she shot off the padlock, opened the door, and brought Liridona out.

“Do you speak English?”

When Liridona nodded, she said, “My name is Alli. Edon sent me.”

“Edon is alive?”

“Alive and well,” Alli assured her. “Now it’s time to get you out of here.”

“But how?”

A good question. Thatë said there was only one entrance. But Vasily was there and the guards would be clogging the entrance, putting out the fire. What to do?

“Where do the guards sleep?”

“We’re not allowed to go—”

“Quickly, now!” Alli commanded her out of her terror-induced stupor. “Show me the way!”

Liridona stumbled down the hall, Alli at her back, guarding her like a lion with its cub.

JACK, COVERED in blood, heaved the attack dog’s corpse off him and rose shakily to his feet.

“Are you all right?” Annika said.

“I should be asking you that.” He brushed by her into the room. “Good God.”

Arian Xhafa was on the floor, his naked back a mass of bleeding wounds. His fingers were curling and uncurling spastically and he was trying to get up on his hands and knees.

Jack walked toward him. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“What he did to me.” Annika was right beside him.

He watched Xhafa crawling his way toward the chair.

“Only worse.”

“Only worse,” she affirmed.

Jack glanced at her. “Is it over now?”

Her carnelian eyes were hard and, also, he thought, a bit sad.

“You know better than that.”

Behind her, Xhafa, hands on the chair’s arms, pulled himself up.

“I only counted five guards,” he said. “And where is the Syrian?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Xhafa’s right hand slide beneath the chair’s cushion. In an instant, he had whipped around, a 9mm in his hand. Pushing Annika, Jack squeezed off two shots. One passed through Xhafa’s neck, the second took off the back of his head.

Annika did not turn around. Instead, she stared into Jack’s eyes. “All that work,” she said, “for nothing.”

Was she serious or being facetious? That was the thing about Annika. You could never be sure.

LIRIDONA LED Alli into a warren of well-furnished, almost opulent rooms. She crossed the floor and opened one of the windows. This was the side where the ivy grew thick against the wall.

Liridona, at her shoulder, looked wide-eyed. “What are you doing?”

“Getting out of here.”

“I can’t.” Liridona shook her head wildly. “I’m afraid of heights.”

“We have no choice. This is the only way out.”

Liridona shrank back. “No.”

“Look.” Alli pointed to the streetlight that rose up at the rear corner of the house. “All we have to do is get over there and it will give us an easy way down.”

“I can’t. Please.”

“I won’t let you die here.” Alli grabbed her. “Put your arms around me.” She felt the girl’s rail-thin body as she climbed onto her back. “Now when I swing out, wrap your legs around me, too.”

Holding on to the window sash, Alli put one leg over the sill, and grabbed for the nearest vine before realizing that their combined weight was too much for her.

Then she felt Emma close beside her.

“Use your fingers and your toes.”

Alli nodded. Quickly, she untied her boots, kicked them off, and dropped them out the window. Then she swung her leg out again, this time using her toes as well as her fingers to hold on to the ivy where the vines were thickest.

Behind her, Liridona sounded like she was praying. Across they went, moving laterally, hand over hand toward the streetlight. After three handholds, Alli could feel the weight trying to drag them off the vine. Then she heard a brief ripping, as one part of the vine pulled away from the wall, and her heart beat like a triphammer.

Liridona, her eyes squeezed shut, interrupted her prayers to whisper, “What was that?”

Alli was too busy to answer her, and Liridona did not ask again. A fist of ice had formed in the pit of her stomach and she fought down a wave of panic. She thought of Jack and took deep breaths to calm herself, but the streetlight still looked as if it was a football field away. For a long, gut-wrenching moment, they swung above the narrow concrete walkway between buildings. If they fell, there was nothing soft to break their landing. Gritting her teeth, she returned to crabbing her way across the network of vines. One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time.

They were still several arms’ lengths from the streetlamp when the vine gave way. Liridona shrieked as they began to fall.

Kicking out against the wall, Alli swung them back and forth like a pendulum. At the apex of the arc nearest the streetlight, she let go with fingers and toes. For a moment they flew through the air. Then the streetlight smacked her in the stomach and they slid down until she could get her arms and legs around it. She hung there for a moment with Liridona shivering on her back. Then she inched them down. When they reached the cement, Liridona continued to cling to Alli, sobbing with relief and shock. Alli rocked her for a moment, then pushed her gently against the side of the house.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

Liridona’s eyes went wide. “Where are you going?”

“I can’t leave Thatë and Vasily behind.”

She went quickly along the side of the safehouse until she reached the front corner. Peeking around, she saw Xhafa’s men drag Thatë’s body out the front door and pile it on Vasily’s corpse.