always got an angle—” I cut short. I jerk my head towards the door. Did you hear that, too?
There is a distinctive sound that silenced weapons make. People think that it’s just a little ding noise, like it’s in the movies. But in real life, it’s much louder. Not silent at all.
Nario nods.
We both go to the chair where our weapons are stowed and pick them up. The conversation is forgotten as we press ourselves to either side, much like Ubert and I did back at the warehouse. But while Ubert and I had to communicate, Nario and I go about our business like we’re two halves of the same whole.
He reaches across and pushes the door open. The man looks almost surprised to see us, a redheaded Irishman with his face covered by a Jason mask, eyes going wide as Nario raises his gun.
“Say one word,” I rasp, gesturing with my pistol, “and you die. Get in here. Now.”
The man walks toward the door. I keep one eye trained on the gun in his hand until he’s within reaching distance, and then press my pistol to his neck and snatch the gun from his hand. I shove it in the back of my pants as Nario closes the door.
“My cell phone’s in the office,” I say, annoyed with myself.
Nario nods matter-of-factly. “Mine too.”
I grab the Irishman by the throat and shove him up against the wall. Nario tears off his Jason mask to reveal a young, scared-looking man.
“I’m guessing you didn’t know we were here,” I say.
He nods, lips covered in spittle. I resist the urge to headbutt him. My club, my fucking club, in the middle of the day. After the job at the warehouse, I thought our message was clear. But it seems the Elephant doesn’t even care about his own son. Or maybe he knows we were bluffing. Maybe he knows that Benjamin is just too valuable to execute.
“How many of you are there?” Nario snaps.
“Four.”
“Including you?”
“No—five, there’s five of us.”
“What sort of weapons do you have?” I press the gun harder into his neck. “Speak fast.”
“Two men have got rifles, semiautomatic, with, um, mufflers on or whatever you call them. The other two have pistols, like me.”
“And you’re here for Benjamin Sweeney.”
“Yes.”
I nod.
“Are my guards dead?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where Benjamin Sweeney is?”
The man shakes his head. His pale skin is going red from where I’m pressing with the pistol. “No, we’re guessing he’s here just because this is, like, where a lot of your men have been lately. But we don’t know for sure. We’re searching the place. We didn’t know you were here, though.”
“We’re in a bit of a bind here,” I tell him. “Usually we’d gag and cuff you and go about our business. But look around. Do you see any gags or handcuffs?”
He shakes his head, the color draining from his face. But then his eyes pop like an excited little boy’s. “I’ve got gags and zip-ties.”
“How fucking convenient,” Nario snarls. “In your back pocket?”
“Yes.”
I grin savagely. “This motherfucker sure is cooperative.”
We zip-tie his hands and feet and gag him with his own rag and duct tape, leaving him trussed up on the sweaty floor of the gym. I replace my pistol with his silenced one and we creep into the hallway.
It pains me to walk over to the corpse of Jacobo, the man who was on guard. It’s little consolation that he was a single man without children. Every man has somebody who will miss him. Every man has family in one form or another.
We creep through the empty club, passing two more dead Italians. I have to work hard to quiet the rage that burns through me at the sight of them. If I let it consume me, it will distract me from the matter at hand. We see that the basement door is open, and keep moving back-to-back, just in case we get flanked. Nario stays scanning the club as I head for the basement door.
“Secret tunnel?” Nario whispers.
“Yeah,” I reply quietly.
Instead of heading right down to the basement, we take a left into a storage cupboard and move the shelf out of the way, revealing a tunnel that leads in a roundabout way to another storage cupboard just outside the cell’s electronic doors. We stalk through the darkness. As we get closer, Irish voices come to us in echoes.