We exploded out of the industrial park, revving onto the service road, dodging around several slower-moving cars.
“Got to get enough distance then find new wheels,” he said. “We can carjack someone. There’s a school nearby, a mother won’t fight us.”
“But she’ll see our faces.”
“You still have a bullet?”
“Let’s do this the easy way. I can hot-wire anything.”
“Takes too long.” He slammed a frustrated hand against the wheel. “I hate losing those whores.”
I was free from agonizing about the captive women; Howell would make sure they were safe. Now I just had to keep Piet from killing someone else so we could catch a ride.
“Those weren’t cops,” I said. “They’d already have blocked out the industrial park. They didn’t. So who the hell was Nic working for?”
Piet didn’t answer for a minute so I did.
“Rivals.”
“Rivals?” Piet said. “You mean other traffickers.”
“Or maybe whoever the Turk was working for,” I said. I wondered if Piet would now mention Bahjat Zaid’s name.
“Well, we are going to take care of that problem.”
I loved that we, although he was horrifying company. Fine for him to think we were a team; easier for me to slide the knife past the ribs when the most happy time came. I fought down the thought. Enjoying killing people? That was a downward slide in which I had no interest.
He pulled into another sprawling industrial park that wore a concrete gray anonymity. He wore a mulish frown on his face; he seemed almost eager to find a victim, to vent his rage.
He spotted a young man carrying a box, walking toward a Mercedes parked at a remove from the others. “Him. We’ll take his.”
“I don’t want you to kill someone over a car, Piet. Every small crime we have to do is a crack in the chances of pulling off the bigger job.”
“Don’t talk to me like I haven’t worked before,” he said, annoyance in his tone.
“I’m not. But you kill only when absolutely necessary.” That was true. “This isn’t necessary yet.”
His face reddened. He did not like being lectured.
“I’ll take care of the car. Without killing the guy. You stay here. Keep your face out of sight. I don’t want him to see you.”
“He’ll see you. If he does, you kill him.”
“He won’t see me.” I slipped out of the van as Piet kept driving, slamming the door, running. The guy, bespectacled, thin, started to turn toward me and I hit him, a single precise blow at the base of the neck. He crumpled and I caught him. I pulled him out of sight, gently set him down in front of a cluster of other parked cars, where a narrow strip of anemic grass lay facing the concrete wall of the office park. His breathing was regular.
He had Mercedes keys in his pocket and I fished them free. Piet was already out of the van and running toward me. I ran to the Mercedes, unlocked it and slid behind the wheel.
“That was extremely smooth,” he said. But his tone of voice wasn’t admiring. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“Canadian Special Forces.”
He said nothing more. I peeled out of the industrial park. “Where to?” I asked.
“I’m not sure I trust you, Sam,” he said. And he tightened the grip on the assault rifle he held.
53
MILA RAN. She’d fired four rounds into the machinists’ shop, with calculation. She wanted to confuse, to unsettle. She’d winged the blond in the arm and had forced Howell and his men to concentrate on her for a full minute, which hopefully had given Sam time to flee.
Then she’d retreated, running across the parking lane and around a corner. A CLOSED sign—Gesloten— hung in an office and she’d worked the lock with a kit in her pocket, ducking inside before she could be spotted. She slammed the door closed and hurried to the curtained office window to watch.
Five minutes later Howell and his two men emerged. No sign of the Chinese hacker. The big blond clutched his arm, his jacket sodden with blood. The other man stumbled, hit in the leg. Both men looked more pissed than hurt. Howell’s face wore blind rage.
The van pulled away. So. Howell was not treating a crime scene like a crime scene. Maybe he would call the Dutch police; but then there would have to be explanations as to how Company personnel had arrived at the warehouse and engaged in a gun battle. And although the industrial park looked neglected and empty, someone nearby might have heard the shots