Blood Trust (52 page)

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.

*   *   *

T
HE 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.

*   *   *

A
LLI 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.

*   *   *

J
ACK
,
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.

*   *   *

L
IRIDONA 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.

P
ART
F
OUR

BLOOD TRUST

The Present

And so time turns a corner, or flows down a well, only to return to the place where it began.

T
HIRTY
-
TWO

A
LLI WAS
in the middle of the student riot in the city plaza. The fog, a metallic brown from gunpowder, garbage, and the grit of the streets, thrust itself like a living thing against her. She was buffeted by the currents of running people. Screams found her, as insistent as the tolling of bells from the cathedral, which seemed to watch indifferently with its elongated El Greco face.

In the melee, Alli lost sight of Liridona altogether, and her heart beat even faster in her chest as she plowed her way through the mob, nearer now to the mass of truncheons lifting and falling, to the sprays of blood and bone, to the tilted bodies, to the cries of pain and terror.

Then she spotted one of Arian Xhafa’s men, his tall frame sinister as a bat, rising for a moment above the heads of the students. Her way lay directly in the path of the militia. She calculated that there was no time to circle around, so she plunged ahead until she was close to the line of truncheons, advancing en masse like a phalanx of Roman soldiers. On hands and knees, she made herself inconspicuous, crawling through the churning legs of the militia until she eeled her way to the other side.

Scrambling to her feet, she looked around and spotted the men pushing Liridona around a corner. On the fringe of the mob at last, she ran toward the corner. Running with her heart in her mouth, running toward the sudden roar of gunshots that spurted at her from around the corner.

“No!” she cried. “No!”

Hurtling around the corner, she was jerked off her feet. She stared into the monstrous eyes of the Syrian. The blue eye, the green eye. They regarded her as if each had a separate intelligence, both cold as permafrost.

From somewhere out of her sight, she heard Liridona weeping, and, like glass shattering against stone, she began to struggle free. But the Syrian shoved the barrel of his pearl-gripped .45 into her mouth.

“Once again, quiet.” His voice a constricting iron band. “Before the end.”

The air shivered as Edon, appearing out of nowhere, swung a tire iron into the Syrian’s back. His body arched forward and he let go of the .45 as he fell. Darting down, Alli picked it up.

“How—?” She aimed the pistol at the Syrian, but she heard Liridona’s scream.

“There’s no time!” Edon shouted, turning and running down a dank back alley.

Alli sprinted after her. “Stay back!” she called. “Stay back, Edon!”

Catching up with the girl, Alli ran past her. She could see Liridona between the two men. On the run, she shot one of them in the shoulder. The other turned his handgun on her and she shot him dead. The first man grabbed his wounded shoulder, then, shaking himself like a dog coming in from the rain, ran straight at her. Liridona leaped, barreled into the back of his knees, and he stumbled down onto the filthy concrete. Liridona scooped up his handgun and, as he twisted his torso up and took a swing at her, shot him point-blank in the face.

T
HIRTY
-
THREE

“S
HE
’
S REMARKABLE
, you know.”

Annika, sitting next to Jack on the ferry from Vlorë to Brindisi, on the eastern coast of Italy, looked over to where Alli was talking animatedly with Edon and Liridona. The first thing they needed to do when they reached Italy was to go clothes shopping.

Jack was dog-tired, and he ached all over. He wondered whether he had a fever. He’d lost his antibiotics somewhere during their strange and bloody odyssey. It would be good to get home.

“Is that what you meant to say?” His voice was soft.

Annika glanced at him for a moment. “I feel … I don’t know, I feel close to her.”