Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02] (3 page)

“Our records indicate that Big Eddie owes us twenty-five million in passage taxes.” The other man at the table was Keng’s assistant. Even pirates need accountants nowadays. “Ten thousand per shipment, plus interest and penalties for sixteen months of noncompliance.”

“You really think you can extort money from someone like Eddie?”

“Ahh . . . dinner has arrived,” Keng said merrily. “Ms. Katarina, I’m the king of this world. I can do whatever I want. Take that back to your employer, and tell him that twenty-five million is my final offer.”

I placed the first dish of five-star goodness in front of Datuk Keng and made eye contact with Katarina.

“Smells wonderful,” she said. Translation: Negotiations failed. Time for violence.

Two guards behind me, two more outside, but they were bored. This was just another meeting. They were pirates, tough guys, brutes. This standing around stuff dulled the senses, and I was just the submissive little waiter, whom they had dealt with all night long.
Complacency kills.

“I must implore you one final time, don’t force this issue with Big Eddie, or he will kill you.”

Datuk Keng scowled, all pretenses of cordiality gone. Now I could see the man who plundered ships and murdered sailors. His face creased with rage. “You dare threaten me? I’ll make this quick—”

I moved with lightning speed, reaching into the nearest guard’s coat. The problem with shoulder holsters? The guy standing in front of you can draw your gun faster than you can. I popped the snap, yanked the Browning, and tossed it to Katarina.

She caught the Browning by the grip and leveled it at Keng.

“I’ll make it quicker.”
BLAM.

Datuk Keng’s head snapped back in a spray of red. The guard tried to hit me, but I blocked it with my elbow, grabbed him by the tie, and fell, choking off his air and taking us both to the ground. That’s why I won’t wear a tie.

Katarina brought her hands together smoothly and pointed the gun at the second guard. He froze, hand on gun. She smiled. There was no question how that was going to play out. He raised his trembling hands slowly, aware that the only reason he wasn’t dead was because we didn’t want to make any more noise.

I rolled, sprang to my feet, grabbed a serving platter, and smashed the second guard in the head. He went right down. Then I kicked them both repeatedly in the face—tuxedo shoes are not the best for beating people senseless—until I was sure neither would be causing any trouble. One quick glance at the exit wound on the back of Keng’s skull told me
mission accomplished
, now to get out of here in one piece.

I removed the other Browning from the second guard’s belt and two spare magazines from his offside, stuffed those in my pocket, grabbed his radio, and headed toward the door. We had no idea if the room was insulated enough to dampen the sound of a gunshot.

Katarina placed the 9mm muzzle against the accountant’s head. He began to whimper and plead for his life in Indonesian. “Listen to me very carefully.” Her voice was utterly cold and distant. “Big Eddie wants his money. You will repay him triple the value of his stolen cargo. You will also pay him ten percent of all future takes. You will clear every attack with us from now on. Or we’ll burn your little pirate kingdom to the ground. We can find you anywhere. We can reach you anywhere. You work for Big Eddie now. These negotiations are closed. Do you understand?”

He started to respond, she smashed him in the head with the butt of the gun. “In English!” This was the part of negotiation that Katarina excelled at.

“Yes, yes! Whatever you say, please don’t kill me!”

Kat called over to me. “Status?”

I had taken up position behind a wooden column and had the gun trained on the door. There was no traffic on the radio. I was really glad that the party was so blaringly loud. “They probably thought it was fireworks.”

“Good.” Katarina turned her attention back toward Keng’s assistant. “We’ll be in touch.” She hit him in the head with the pistol again, hard enough the sound of the blow made me cringe. The assistant flopped onto the floor unconscious.

“Let’s go,” I said as I changed the radio to a predetermined channel and hit
transmit
. “We’re on the way down. Prepare for pickup.”

“On the way,”
Carl, my partner in crime, responded over the airwaves. I knew that the car was already in motion and he would be waiting at the service entrance in exactly two minutes. Carl was reliable. I stuffed the Browning into my waistband and made sure my tuxedo covered it. The radio went into a pocket.

“Damn it!” Katarina hissed as she lifted the cloth of the cart. “The soup spilled. I can’t ride in there. You know what this dress cost me?”

“Just go,” I grunted. She had just murdered a pirate, but she was worried about her outfit. My girlfriend was psychotic. “You got a better way to walk out of here past twenty security guards?”

“You are handsome when you’re stern, Lorenzo,” she replied as she ducked under the cloth, slipped out of her high heels, and folded herself into an almost impossible position. “And you look like a Bollywood James Bond in that outfit. Very handsome.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled as I flipped the cloth down to conceal her, then pushed the cart to the door. It was heavier now. Katarina was taller than I was and extremely athletic, so she added a lot of weight to the cart. Not that I would ever guess her weight out loud, since she made her living killing people for an organized crime syndicate.

And I was what? Her
helper
?

It was a pretty shitty job when you thought about it that way.

We walked right out. I kept my head down, eyes averted. The guards at the door grunted at me as I passed. From observing them, I knew that they had approximately two to three minutes before another radio check, plenty of time to get out of here.

The crowd was thicker now, more people accumulating around the railing. The fireworks show was reaching its climax and the city was beautiful in the smoky light. Weaving the cart between socialites, I kept my head down and kept moving, not paying any attention to the sparkles or explosions. I risked one last glance back toward the private area as I reached the kitchen. One of the guards was pulling out his radio, checking in prematurely.

As soon as I was into the kitchen I was moving fast, the doors swinging wildly behind me. I nearly ran over one of the chefs, and collided with another waiter. The kitchen smelled of exotic meats and curry, lots of curry. Flames were leaping from a grill under a row of neatly carved chickens. We had to get out of here, now.

“Pard? What’s going on? Is Mr. Keng not happy with his food?” the chef asked nervously.

“He’s really not happy,” I responded as I threw back the cover. “We’ve got to move.”

“Which way?” Katarina asked, sliding out of the cart. I took off running. She carried her five-inch heels in her hand so she could keep up with me as she followed.

“Pard? What’s going on?” the chef shouted after us, totally unaware that the man he thought he was speaking to was on a boat to India with a ten-thousand-dollar bribe in his pocket. I shoved past more kitchen staff, leaving them confused with what an Anglo woman in a party dress was doing running through their work space. I went right to the freight elevator and mashed the button furiously.

“What about the security check on the first level?” Katarina asked as the elevator started down.

I pulled out the stolen radio. “Carl, put the kid on.”

“This is Reaper.”

“Reaper . . .” Katarina hissed, rolling her eyes. “Such a terrible nickname.”

“I need you to jam Keng’s channel. Then I need to know what’s going on at the first floor checkpoint. And tell Carl and Train we’ve been spotted. This might get hot.”

“Okay,”
Reaper responded, sounding slightly distorted as the radio waves passed through layers of concrete and steel.
“Their channel is now filled with crap.”

“You know, if he’s over sixteen I would be stunned.” She bent over and put her shoes back on.

“He told me he’s twenty-one, and he’s a technical wizard. And since our last tech guy got blown up in Singapore . . .”

Reaper came back.
“I don’t think they were able to contact security, but they may try the courtesy phones. I’ll kill those.”

“Do it.”

“On it,”
he responded enthusiastically.
“Reaper out.”

“What kind of name is that supposed to be?” Katarina snorted.

“I told him he couldn’t go by his real name. Too dangerous.” The floor numbers changed rapidly, but I didn’t know if we would be fast enough.

“Yes, real names are dangerous in this business . . .” She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me slowly back against the elevator wall. “Hector.”

“Business, Katarina. Stick to business,” I grunted as I pushed her away. She was the first person I had told my real name to in years. It was stupid, and weak, but infatuation does that to a man. She did that fake pout that I had found cute at first, though now it was just annoying.

“Whatever you say, Lorenzo, darling.” She was beautiful, lethal, and I had been lonely. I had let her suck me into working for Big Eddie, and what a mistake that had been. Bad guy. Villain. Robber. Thief. Look up the definition and there was my picture. It was what I was good at. I was probably one of the best in the world. It was all that I knew, and all that I could do. And honestly, I loved it. I was a predator, through and through. But since everything had fallen apart back in back in Africa, I had tried to only prey on other bad guys. They had more to take, and I could always console myself that when I had to off one of them, I left the world a better place. According to my twisted moral code, they were fair game. Normal people were off limits, but working for Big Eddie, those lines often blurred. I had seen how real evil operated, and I was employee of the month.

I hate what I’ve become
.

Concentrate on escaping. Be bitter later.
I yanked the waiter’s sash, opened my coat, undid my tie, and tried to look casual, sloppy. Just a guy wrapping up a night on the town and taking home a professional girl. I grabbed Katarina around the waist—her abdominal muscles were hard as rock—and held her close. “Look like we’re guests leaving the party.” She held out the other 9mm.

“Take this.”

“Why?”

“Where am I supposed to conceal a full-size pistol in this thing?” she growled, gesturing at her dress.

True enough. She couldn’t hide most of herself in it. I took the gun and shoved it into the front of my pants and made sure the cummerbund hid it. I didn’t like carrying a cocked and locked handgun over my manhood, but didn’t have time to think of a better spot.

First floor
. The elevator clanked to a stop and the doors hissed open. Katarina giggled loudly and snuggled up; she was a superb actress. I did the half-drunk wobble out onto the linoleum. This was the service entrance, and guests shouldn’t be coming down this way, but it was a heck of a party upstairs, and what happens in Kuala Lumpur, stays in Kuala Lumpur.

A few workers noticed us, but the place was swamped tonight. What was another drunk and his harlot? An older woman behind some sort of registration desk was wearing a traditional headscarf, and she shook her head sadly at the sight. She was old enough to have watched her traditional backwater country super-modernize, and all of the ancillary moral decay that came with it.

“Excuse me, sir. You should not be in this area,” she said politely.

I waved my hand in her general direction. “We’re leaving,” I said dismissively, playing the lost rich guy. Katarina giggled again. The woman frowned, apparently deciding that she needed to notify somebody of lost guests, and lifted her phone. She jiggled the receiver a few times when she didn’t get a dial tone.
Way to go, Reaper
. We continued down the hall.

The area terminated in some doors and a loading dock. Several workers were moving in cartons of food and booze from a truck. Carl would pick us up on the other side.

Katarina’s nails sank into my arm. I froze. Several men were entering, squeezing around the delivery truck. They had the look of toughs, not dressed for a quality event. The guy in the lead was still wearing his sunglasses at close to midnight, was plainly hurried, and was talking into a cell phone.
Can’t jam everything, damn it
.

He saw me as I saw him, across twenty feet of concrete and harsh fluorescent light, and he knew that these were the people who had just shot his boss in the face. His hand moved in a blur as he shouted to the other pirates.

Katarina had her arm around me, and her hand was only inches from the Hi-Power in the back of my waistband. I felt it leave as she dove to the side. I drew the second gun as I went the other way.

It was
on
.

The gun in my hand was a worn old military model. I punched the gun straight out, shifting focus from the pirate to the rudimentary front sight. I fired twice as I moved against the wall. Now I was crouching, moving forward into the loading area. I had to get out of that fatal funnel. Had to attack.

Katarina had the same idea. There were multiple gunshots from her side. The lead pirate stumbled, dropped his cell phone, started to turn toward her, black gun coming up in his hand. I nailed him again, and then he was down. The workers were screaming, scattering, hitting the floor, or running.

The other pirates were in a bad position, squeezing past the truck with no place to maneuver. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I took the left. Katarina took the right. The wall behind me exploded into concrete fragments. The noise was deafening in the echoing space. A worker trapped in the crossfire spun, vegetables flying out of the cardboard box in his hands. A fine particulate mist seemed to hang in the space that he had filled. I fired down the narrow passage, dropping another pirate.

“Magazine! Magazine!” Katarina shouted. I reached into my pocket and tossed one to her. She was at slide lock, gun empty, and barely looked up to catch the mag. She slammed it home, dropped the slide, and kept shooting.