Blood Moon Rising (A Beatrix Rose Thriller Book 2) (17 page)

She ducked her head around the corner. The Grizzly that had been firing on her had been popped open, the turret torn off and thrown to the side. She was just in time to see a secondary
explosion
as the big diesel tank detonated, a raging column of orange fire that scorched up and out of the wreckage of the hull. Debris flew hundreds of feet into the air and razored shrapnel peppered the wall with high-pitched chings.

No time for questions.

“Faik! After me—run!”

She sprinted into the yard and hoped that he was wise enough to follow her lead.

The Grizzly was spewing black smoke and steam into the
morning
air, the rain still slamming down. The guards, still barely recovering their composure, had either been thrown to the floor or had turned to face the sound of the explosion.

They had taken their attention away from Beatrix.

That was unfortunate for them.

She opened fire as she ran, holding the rifle with both hands and pumping bullets from the hip. She carved a path through them, the rounds either taking down their targets or forcing them into a second panicked retreat.

She heard the roar of a powerful engine from the other side of the wall and then the squeal of rubber biting on asphalt as a car skidded to a stop.

She hoped it was Faulkner.

Pope discarded the empty launcher and hurried back across the roof. There was a fire escape on the other side of the building, and he took the stairs two at a time, pausing on the landing to withdraw his
pistol
. He didn’t need it. The guards in the yard had either been shot or were too stunned to think about what had just happened, and none of them reacted. There was an alley at the back of the building with just enough space for the Toyota Camry that he had rented from the Hertz counter at the airport in Kuwait City. He gripped onto the last rung and dropped the final ten feet to the groun
d, tossi
ng the pistol onto the passenger seat as he slid into the car. He turned the ignition and drove quickly away from the prison.

Faulkner left rubber as he gunned the engine. The police turned in the direction of the SUV at the sound of the engine. One of them raised a rifle. There was no chance for him to fire it. He heard the crackle of automatic gunfire and saw the muzzle flash as
Beatrix
emerged from the building. The prisoner quailed behind her. She had a spare magazine in her left hand, pressed up against the
forestock
, and, as the first ran dry, she ejected it and slapped in the replacement almost without pause.

Three of the police went down, and the others scattered. Faulkner hit the brakes and slid the back around, thudding into one of the survivors full-on and sending him ten feet through the air.

He reached over and opened the doors.

Beatrix and the man ran full pelt to the car.

She almost threw Faik into the rear seat, yelling “Go!” as she stood on the sill.

He stamped on the gas and the SUV sped away.

Gunfire clattered in their direction, but none of the rounds found their mark. Beatrix returned fire, and then, as they moved out of immediate range, she slid inside and slammed the door closed.

“Who was that?”

“Who was what?”

“Don’t play dumb, Faulkner. Who fired the RPG?”

“Pope.”

The dial topped fifty and then sixty as Faulkner aimed away from the prison. He hammered the brakes as they approached a sharp turn, the sudden deceleration throwing them all towards the front of the car and then to the side as he yanked the wheel to the right.

“He’s here?”

“He thought it might be a good idea to have a little extra backup.”

“You didn’t think to tell me?”

“He told me not to.”

“Why not?”

They reached a junction with the main highway. Faulkner
bullied
his way out into the flow and then slotted out into the
outside
lane, flooring the pedal again.

“Why not?” she repeated.

“I don’t know,” Faulkner said. “You’ll have to ask him. He’s driving West and your boy back there to Kuwait.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

F
aulkner drove them out to the shantytown on the edge of the oilfields. Faik was quiet throughout, occasionally
dabbing
a tentative fingertip to the bruises on his face or squinting out into the sunlight as the sun dipped down over the horizon.

“Is my sister okay?” he asked, finally.

“She is.”

“How do you know her?”

“She helped me out. I’m returning the favour.”

“Did she tell you what happened?”

“To your mother? Yes, she did. I’m sorry.”

“The men who did it. Nothing will happen to them. They will do it again, too. They are not police. They are not military. It does not matter. The law does not apply to them.”

“Some laws do,” she said.

Beatrix ejected the magazine from the FN F2000 and examined it. She had fifteen rounds left.

“They will come for me now,” he said. “They know where I live. My sister will not be safe.”

She propped the gun in the footwell and turned all the way around. “You have family in Kuwait, don’t you?”

“Yes. An uncle. But it is irrelevant. How can we leave the
country
? We have no papers, no money, no anything. We would . . .”

“I’m going to arrange it all for you.”

“Why . . . ?”

She looked squarely at him. “You need to get your sister, pack whatever you need and then go. You’re right. They will come after you. They’re probably working out who has gone missing now. They might even be on their way. We need to go as soon as we get Mysha.”

“You will help us?”

“I’m going to get you both into Kuwait. You’ll be safe there.”

Faulkner parked the car next to the shack. Beatrix opened the door to get out. Faik did the same, still moving slowly and with an expression of wariness on his bruised face. She could guess why. He was wondering if this was another trick. Was he being teased with the prospect of his freedom, only to have it taken away at the last moment? Worse than that, was his little sister in danger now, too?

Mysha emerged and ran to her brother. She flung her arms around him, her face pressed into his chest. He returned the embrace, picking her up and squeezing her tight. When he looked over at Beatrix, there were tears streaming down his face.

She waited for a moment as they spoke.

Faulkner stood alongside her. “You cut that pretty fine,” he said.

“Good shooting. It wouldn’t have worked without you.”

“And Pope.”

“That didn’t hurt,” she admitted.

“What next?”

“We’ll get them out of the way, and then we go and get West. Start the car. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.”

Faulkner made his way back to the Freelander. Beatrix turned back to Mysha and Faik just as the girl threw her arms around her.

She untangled herself and held the girl back a little so that she could look at her.

“Thank you,” Mysha said.

“You’re welcome.”

“You do not work in television.”

“Not exactly.”

“You are very kind. I don’t know why you would help us like this. And I found this, too.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the roll of notes. “You must take it back. I cannot accept.”

“No,” Beatrix said, a little more sternly than she meant. “I have plenty of money. I want you to have it.”

“I cannot . . .”

She knelt before the girl and placed both hands on her shoulders. “Mysha, please. What has happened to you and your family is not right. It makes me happy that I can help, even if it’s only just a little bit. Please. You don’t need to be proud. There’s nothing wrong with accepting a little help now and again. And you’ll need all the money you can find.”

She looked across to Faik. He was watching them both, and as she caught his eye, he nodded at her.

Beatrix laid a gentle hand on the girl’s cheek. “Has Faik told you what we’re going to do?”

“He says we must leave.”

“That’s right. As soon as we can. Go and help him clean up. He’s had a rough time of it. And then get the things you can’t do without.”

She stood and wiped a hand across her eyes.

Beatrix was thinking of Isabella as she watched the girl run back to her brother, taking his hand in hers and leading him into the house. She could not remember the last time that she had cried. She had worried that the emotion had been smelted out of her by the cruelty of what had happened and then the long, lonely years of her exile.

But it hadn’t.

She felt an ache in her heart, and she brushed away a tear. She got into the car and waited for them.

Chapter Thirty

D
amon Faulkner opened the back of the Freelander. Bryan Duffy was in the compartment, hog-tied with packing tape and with a hessian sack over his head. He struggled as soon as the lid was pulled up, but it was pointless. They had secured him very carefully, and there was no way he would be able to free himself.

He tried to say something, but the rag they had taped into his mouth muffled the words.

“No point in making a fuss,” Faulkner said to him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

There were four Mylar party balloons in the back with him.
They said Happy Birthday in Arabic and were filled with
heliu
m. Fa
ulkner snagged them quickly before they could rise out of reach.

“Back in a minute,” he said, slamming the door.

He had parked fifty yards away from the Manage Risk building. There was a large stretch of scrub that filled in the void between the office block and a dried-out watercourse. A wooden pole
suspended
the power lines that ran to the building right across the middle of it. He forced his way through low bushes and clambered up a steep incline until he was on the scrubland, and then walked so that he was directly beneath the power line. He looked up to gauge his position, moving a little to accommodate the light, hot zephyr that was blowing in off the desert.

He spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Twelve, One,” he said.
“Comms check.”

Beatrix Rose’s voice came back: “One, Twelve. Signal’s an eight.”

“Also eight.”

“Copy that. Status?”

“Ready when you are.”

“Hold on,” she said. “I’m just going in.”

They had taken Duffy’s keycard. Faulkner needed to wait until she had used it to get inside.

“Do it.”

He released the first balloon. The wind caught it, jerking it away.

He released the second with the same result.

“One, Twelve. Status?”

“Hold on.”

He waited for the breeze to fade down and released the third balloon.

It jerked left, then right, and then its ascent was halted as it bounced into the electricity wires, wedging between them.

There was a fizz and a shower of sparks as the power surged and the transformers shorted out.

“Twelve, One,” he said as he walked back to the car. “Done.”

“Copy that. Good work. Power’s out.”

“I’m going back to the car.”

“Have you sorted the phone line?”

He had already fixed a wireless tap to the junction box. Any call or data that left the office would be mirrored on the laptop that was sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV. “Already done,” he said.

“Good. Keep sharp. These are serious players. Eyes out, Twelve.”

“Copy that. Good luck. Out.”

He reached the car and opened the back again. Once more, Duffy struggled. Faulkner reached down behind his body and retrieved the FN F2000. He rested the bullpup on the chassis and took out the extra ammunition.

“I don’t know exactly what you did to piss her off, but I’ll tell you one thing for nothing.” Duffy struggled again, harder this time. “I’m glad it’s you in there and not me.”

Faulkner slammed the door shut.

Beatrix was outside the entrance to the Manage Risk offices. She took the keycard she had taken from Duffy and inserted it into the reader. The lock buzzed and she pushed the door open.

“Do it.”

Faulkner cut the power to the block. The lights flickered, came back on, then died. The keycard reader lost power, and when the door shut, the lock clicked as a failsafe.

Duffy had given her a walkthrough of the office layout. There were administrative offices on the first and second floors, where the business of Manage Risk in Iraq was transacted. The ground floor was a large entertainment space, with a generous reception area and three separate conference rooms. The basement, accessed from the back of the building, was where the detention suite had been built.

He
’d
said there would be two guards.

She anticipated more.

Beatrix clicked on her flashlight, and holding it against her extended Sig, she made her way quickly through the downstairs area. There was evidence of wealth in the beam of the torch: leather sofas, a marble reception desk, the Manage Risk logo glimmering as the light passed over it. She moved in a low crouch, and as she was opening the interconnecting door that led to the conference suite beyond, she was beset by a blast of pain that was dizzying in its intensity. She stopped, propping herself up against the desk, and waited for her head to clear. It didn’t, at least not at once. A sudden surge of bile burnt up from her stomach, scorching the back of her throat as she retched onto the floor. She felt woozy, beads
of
sweat pricking out on her brow.

Come on.

Not now.

Come on.

Keep it together.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then reached into her pocket for the packet of Zomorph. She dry-
swallowed
two of the pills, took a breath and carried on.

The radio crackled with static, and then she heard Faulkner’s voice again.

“Twelve, One. Copy?”

“What is it?”

“Outgoing call. Automated. There was a dead switch on the alarm. It’s calling out.”

“Where to?”

“I’m tracing it now. Not the police, though. I’m guessing it’s an internal team.”

“Eyes on it. If you see anything, I need to know. Out.”

A carpeted corridor extended back from the reception, with the conference rooms on either side. The walls were glazed, and the light reflected back at her as she swung it left and right. There was
no one
th
ere.

Downstairs would be different.

She found the door to the stairs and opened it as carefully as she could. The hinges were in good shape, and it was silent. Small mercies.

The stairs ended with a door. There was an emergency light at the bottom, casting an eerie green glow into the space.

She crept down the steps, her joints aching with each step.

She reached the bottom and moved to the door. It was wooden, with no window.

She could hear movement inside.

She heard a voice.

Muffled: “. . . so you tell me.”

A reply: “Brownout. Wouldn’t be the first.”

“Like a third-world country.”

“Not
like
. It
is
a third-world country.”

“Thought we told them to make sure that didn’t happen anymore around here.”

Beatrix rested her fingertips against the door and gave it the tiniest push. It opened a fraction. It wasn’t locked.

“It’s Iraq, bro.”

She wedged the Sig in her left armpit and took one of the M84 flash-bangs from the canteen pouch. She transferred it to her left hand.

“What the fuck you expect?”

She stood, her joints flashing with pain, and addressed the door. She pushed it open quietly, pulled the pin and rolled the grenade into the room beyond.

She turned her face away, her hand coming up in a smooth and continuous motion from the throw. She gripped the pistol, hooking her index finger through the trigger guard and sliding it so that the trigger nestled against the top joint.

The magnesium and ammonium nitrate mix detonated with an ear-splitting crack and a sunburst flash that glowed with
coruscating
brightness, flooding through the crack in the door.

Beatrix kicked the door all the way open and went through, shouldering it aside as it bounced back against her.

She assessed.

A medium-sized room, twenty feet by twenty feet. Two rooms off it. Substantial doors in the way. Cells, perhaps.

Two men.

They had been close to the grenade. One was on his knees, his hands pressed to his eyes. Flash blind.

The second was up against the wall, one arm braced against it while his free hand was clapped up against his left ear.

Beatrix took her finger out of the trigger guard and gripped the gun barrel tightly, using the butt to bludgeon the man nearest to her. The second man turned, reaching for a pistol on a table just out of reach, but Beatrix closed on him faster than he could move. She balanced on her left leg, lashed her right foot into his gut, and then, as he jack-knifed, she kicked straight up, the blow catching the man square on the chin. He dropped like a stone, collapsing onto the first man in an untidy mess of arms and legs.

Beatrix took the gun from the table and ejected the magazine. The first guard had a holstered pistol, and she ejected the magazine from that one, too.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

She pocketed the magazines and turned to the two doors.

“Hello?” the voice came again.

The voice was muffled, coming from behind one of the doors.

“Hello?”

She went to the door. “What’s your name?” she said.

“Mackenzie West.”

“Alright, Mackenzie, I’m here to get you out. I’m going to need you to stand as far away from the door as possible. I’m going to blast it open. Understand?”

“I understand.”

She took the Cordtex detonation cord and a roll of sturdy
double
-sided tape from her pack and fixed the cord to the outline of the door, leaving a pigtail at the floor end. She primed the charge and backed out to the stairs to take cover.

“Ready?”

“I’m ready.”

“Breaching in three, two, one . . .”

She fired the charge. The explosion was not large, but it was contained and amplified in the enclosed basement. There was a loud crump, a sudden discharge of dust and smoke, and then the ringing sound of the metal door as it fell to the floor.

Beatrix rounded the corner with her gun halfway up.

She recognised Mackenzie West from the picture that Pope had shown her. He was dirty, and his face, like Faik al-Kaysi’s, bore the evidence of several beatings. There were bruises of different colours, some newer than the others.

He stumbled away from the wall, a fine coating of dust all over his body.

“Are you alright?”

He coughed and nodded.

“My name is Beatrix Rose. I’ve been sent to get you out. I know what’s happened to you, why they’ve locked you up.”

“We gotta get out. They’ll kill me before they let me go.”

“We are getting out. Are you fit to walk?”

“I think so.”

“Stay behind me.”

The radio hissed and fizzed. “Twelve, One. Copy?”

“One, Twelve. Go ahead.”

“We’ve got trouble. A car just pulled up . . . wait, shit, there’s another. Correction:
two
cars just pulled up, I’m counting four, five, six men, all armed.”

“Have they seen you?”

“Negative.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Twelve. Wait until they’re inside. There’s a reception area, self-contained. We can take them from both ends at once. On my mark, throw in a flash-bang and then pick them off. I’ll do the same. Copy?”

“Twelve, One. Copy that. On your mark. Getting into position now.”

Beatrix turned to West. “There’s going to be some shooting. Stay behind me.”

“I’m a soldier, ma’am. I understand.”

She toggled radio. “One, Twelve. Update, please.”

“I’m ready.”

“One, Twelve. Stand by. On my mark.”

Faulkner had crept up the wall of the building. The men had opened the door by overriding the failsafe and had filtered inside.

They had left it open behind them.

He could hear their voices, low and hard, as they moved farther into the ground floor.

Faulkner took out the cylindrical flash-bang and clasped it in the web between his right thumb and forefinger. He slid his left index finger into the ring pull.

“Three. Two. One.
Mark
.”

He pulled the pin, the spoon sprung up and he rolled the
grenade
into the darkened room beyond.

The flash-bang blared a starburst of light through the doorway.

A second flash-bang detonated a fraction of a second after
the first.

Faulkner rolled around and raised the FN F2000.