69
I HURRIED INTO THE VAN, crawled to the back. The gear was there, where he’d tossed it. I pulled out the two Glocks, one mounted with a silencer, the explosive charge, the cell phone.
I heard footsteps skittering on the pavement. At least two people. I wished it were more.
“Piet?” a man’s voice called. Then in Dutch, “Hurry up. Edward’s pissed, we’re going to be behind schedule.”
They stepped into my range, in the intermittent light of the moon. One of them saw Piet lying on the black of the pavement. He rushed forward; the second man was smarter, stopping, then falling into a protective crouch, gun at the ready.
Through the barely open back door of the van, I shot the first one in the knee. I have always heard that the pain is excruciating. The silencer made a quiet hiss. He fell with a raging howl, clutching at his leg. I shot the other one, standing over Piet, in both knees. He dropped, his knees hit the pavement. I slammed a fist into his throat and he went silent. I kicked the first guy hard and he went quiet, too.
Two down.
I ducked out of the van and ran for the door. It had been propped open. Oddly—and I didn’t like anything that suggested oddity right now—the large bay doors to the brewery remained closed. With the truck here, I expected them to be opening in greeting. I didn’t want to be caught in the open.
I hung at the lip of the parking lot door. No sound, no voices—only a distant murmur.
I risked a glance. The old brewery’s entryway was empty, dimly lit by fluorescent lighting. Concrete floor, brick walls, high, grimy windows. I smelled the soft waft of sausage and pizza. I rushed the door. Beyond that was a brick hallway of old offices, most of the doors shut, one door open, faint light gleaming from inside.
I could hear voices, speaking in Dutch: “You’re cheating.” A man’s voice, young, rough.
“You cannot cheat on a computer game.” A woman’s voice.
“You know a trick.”
“Knowing a trick isn’t cheating, whiner,” the woman said. Laughter from more people.
I stepped into the doorway. Five of them, four men and a woman, sat with their backs to me, hands holding video game controllers, a fictional bloodbath erupting on the screen. They were killing Nazis in the computer-generated rubble of Berlin. The room wasn’t so much an office as a big storage room, and I saw a large heavy metal door.
“Hey, a*sholes,” I said. “Game over.” Not a brilliant line but I wasn’t thinking witty.
They all did this little jerky dance of surprise: jerk, freeze, stay frozen. The woman, Demi—I recognized her from the house Piet had taken me to—was closest to me and I pulled her close. She stiffened with terror. They dropped the game controls and behind them on the screen I could see their players immediately fragged by an SS squadron.
I put the gun against Demi’s head. “Drop the weapons… slowly.” Three of the guys had guns in the back of their pants; I’d seen them when they stood up. Two of them obeyed. The third, a muscular youth with a hateful glint in his eye, took his out and hesitated.
“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.