Authors: Steve N. Lee
Tags: #Action Suspense Thriller
And thank God it did.
Without it, making bad decisions, freezing in the face of danger, or losing her coordination through adrenaline surge would have gotten her killed more times than she could count.
Standing on the landing, halfway up the stairs, she turned back to Elena looming over Michal with the knife. Tess had bound his hands again to be safe, but she still worried that the frail lady might not really be up to handling the job. Especially if everything went south upstairs. But it was their only choice.
She nodded again to Elena, who nodded back.
Tess turned the corner.
Ahead, steps climbed up. In the ceiling, some white tiles were skewed or had fallen down to reveal black holes with the odd cable hanging down.
Despite her breathing exercise, her heart pounded faster now that she was closer to the lurking danger. The top step lay just feet away, but she couldn’t yet see over it. Anything could be lying in wait. Anything. Rabid guard dogs. Six guys with Uzis. A gang of machete-toting psychos…
She stopped.
Clarity. She needed clarity. Imagination was a wonderful tool, but if she let it run wild in times of stress, it was the easiest way to see everything she most dreaded come to life – she had to picture herself winning the coming battle and not visualize herself bloody and injured. Seeing failure in her mind was the quickest way to seeing failure manifest in reality.
She drew another slow breath. Pictured sitting on her smooth rock in her favorite spot in China’s Wudang Mountains, from where she could see the early morning mist clinging to the valley bottom. Calmness. Serenity. Peace.
Then…
She flipped the switch in her mind: time to kill.
Climbing up the stairs, she peeked through the dusty bars of the balcony rail, cobwebs draped between some of them.
A fat guy with a stubbly beard stared straight at her, slouched on a green sofa next to a table smothered with crushed beer cans and squashed pizza boxes. So much for the element of surprise working in her favor.
She marched up the remaining stairs, scanning the room she was emerging into.
To her left, a shaven-headed guy sat at a reception desk playing music videos on a laptop.
Michal had said there would be two men. She was certain he’d lied. Where were all the others?
A corridor led away from this central area, doors leading off it. She imagined the doors led to the hotel’s rooms, though it must have been years since it had any paying guests.
Rounding the balcony rail at the top of the stairs, she had a better angle and spotted a door behind Reception which probably led to private offices. Maybe that was where the remaining men were.
The fat guy craned his neck to look around her. He was likely wondering where Michal was.
When no one followed her up the stairs, Fatty pushed to sit up properly on the sofa from which mucky lumps of stuffing burst in various spots.
Frowning, he said something to her in Polish.
She smiled as warmly as she could and moved closer to him. Of the two men she could see, he was the main threat – the other had to move from behind the reception counter to reach her, which would take him a couple of seconds longer.
Fatty stood up. A faded black T-shirt advertised some rock band she’d never heard of. But it wasn’t the picture of lightning hitting a guitar which drew her eye – the butt of a semiautomatic handgun poked out of the waistband of his jeans. From the angle of the gun, it was obvious Fatty was right-handed.
Armed and the closest, he was definitely her first target.
He spoke in Polish again.
She shrugged and ambled toward him.
He stuck his right arm out to block her with his open hand.
Tess grabbed his hand.
Twisting and bending his arm to lock the wrist, she forced it out straight.
She smashed her steel-plated forearm through his elbow with a sickening crunch.
He screeched and whipped his arm away.
Tess grabbed his gun and tossed it over the balcony rail to the lower set of steps which led down to the exit, where it would be safe, well out of reach.
Before the shaven-headed guy at Reception could draw a gun and take a shot at her, she heaved Fatty around by his disabled arm to shield her.
But Shaven Head didn’t pull a gun. He grabbed a baseball bat and stormed out from the reception area, shouting in Polish.
Meanwhile, Fatty swung at her with his one good arm. In a bar brawl, such a blow could easily knock someone’s teeth out, but a wild punch by an untrained fighter lacked real power, accuracy and speed – the three things a strike needed to achieve the optimum result.
In Thailand, Panom had forced her to punch a mattress fastened around a tree trunk for hours at a time, day after day, week after week. Her knuckles had bled, her wrists had swollen, her muscles had torn… But, man, had she learned how to connect.
She slipped Fatty’s punch and hammered in a right body hook of her own, then a left hook to his head, and a cross to the jaw. All with maximum power. All encased in her armored gloves.
Blood running from gashes in his head, Fatty staggered back dazed and then collapsed.
Tess would’ve liked to have moved in and finished him, but Shaven Head was too close. He leapt at her, swinging his bat at her head.
With no chance to maneuver, all she could do was fling both arms up to block the strike. It slammed into her forearm guards. Her steel guards spread the impact load along the length of each arm, sapping the bat’s bone-breaking force.
But it was still a hell of a blow – it battered Tess sideways.
She stumbled over the corner of the table and fell onto the green sofa.
Shaven Head lunged to strike again.
Sprawled over the sofa, Tess slung a pizza box into his face to give her chance to twist around. He cowered, turning away. She slammed a kick into his gut.
He staggered back, face contorted in pain, while Tess rolled off the sofa and to her feet.
She shot a glance to the door behind Reception – still firmly shut. Had no one sounded the alarm?
Shaven Head stormed at her, heaving his bat back with both hands.
Tess let him – this time she had the chance to maneuver.
As he let fly with his hunk of wood to cave in her skull, she sprang closer. So close, she was inside the swing so the bat could do nothing but harmlessly swing by behind her.
She grabbed Shaven Head’s arms, pinning them.
Twisted around and bent forward.
Threw him over her shoulder.
He crashed down onto the table of beer cans and pizza boxes. The table collapsed and he hit the floor.
She stomped on his knee. He shrieked.
Tess kicked his bat away and spun around.
Wavering, Fatty clambered to his feet, still groggy from her metal punches. But he came at her again. Blood caked his face.
Tess feigned a hook to his head. When he threw his hands up to protect himself, she whipped a kick into his knee.
Fatty hobbled to one side. Trying to catch his balance, he grabbed the balcony rail to steady himself.
Tess rarely used kicks above the waist. They had proven too risky in the past – on uneven or slippery surfaces, the higher she kicked, the more likely she was to lose her balance and fall. However, on level ground with good friction, she’d sometimes risk them if the payoff was big enough.
Arcing her leg high into the air, she blasted her foot into Fatty’s head. The kick pushed him backwards with such force, he toppled over the balcony rail and plummeted to the ground floor.
Meanwhile, Shaven Head was struggling up.
Tess risked a sneak peek over the balcony – Elena would stand no chance against Fatty.
The big man lay on the last few steps, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, eyes open.
She spun back to Shaven Head.
On his feet, he’d lost his main weapon so he grabbed an alternative – two broken table legs.
He winced when he put weight on the leg on which she’d stomped. But it didn’t stop him coming at her. Obviously more wary this time, he didn’t try to rush her like before.
He flung one piece of table leg at her.
She threw her hands up and twisted away so it missed her.
Sneakily, he took advantage of the distraction and lunged, using the splintered piece of wood as a slashing blade.
Too slow.
Tess blocked his swing. While one of her forearm guards hit his arm with such force it must have caused tissue damage, her other hand caught the piece of jagged wood, his grip on it loosened by the force of her strike.
She ripped the wood away and whipped it around in an arc. Smashed it into his temple.
For a moment, he stood frozen, the piece of wood sticking out of his head.
A drop of blood trickled down the side of his face and his eyes rolled backward in their sockets.
Then he dropped to the floor as if he was a nail that had been hit by a giant hammer.
Tess looked at the door to the private room behind Reception. Why had no one rushed out? In fact, why had no one rushed out from anywhere?
She glanced at the corridor. Why hadn’t the johns and women run out screaming the moment they heard the fighting?
She crept over to the door behind Reception. Eased the handle down. Peered in.
Empty.
At one side, a dirty microwave and a battered fridge suggested it was where they prepared meals when pizza and beer became too tiresome. At the other side was a bed with all the covers heaped in a pile in the middle.
She ducked out.
Froze.
Listened.
No talking. No movement. Nothing. So strange.
She leaned over the stairwell. “Elena?”
“Yes?”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes. Shall I come up?”
“No,” Tess said. “Stay where you are while I check it’s safe. I’ll call you when it’s clear. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Tess prowled across the room towards the corridor which led to the hotel’s rooms. It was eerily quiet. Way too quiet. Something was wrong.
There were far fewer people here than she’d imagined there would be. Where were they all? And more to the point, where was Cat?
Tess stalked toward the corridor from which ten doors led off, five on either side. All ten doors were wide open. Immediately upon entering the corridor, her mind flew back to the bus station in Bangkok and her first ever experience of the squat toilet – the stench of sweat, urine and feces hung so thick in the air she could almost shovel it out.
Fists clenched and raised before her, Tess strained to hear the tiniest of sounds, wary of a three-hundred-pound gun-toting thug leaping out at any second.
But no one leapt out.
At the first door, she hugged the wall and shot a glance inside.
Nothing.
She peered in. Then entered. The smell clawing at her.
Inside, a bed covered in a stained off-white sheet sat to one side, a grimy sink hung off the wall near the bed’s foot, and a bucket sat below a window that was bricked up. Tess didn’t need to look in the bucket to guess from where the stench was coming.
As the clues slotted into place, horrific images formed in Tess’s mind of what might have been going on here. She turned and crept across the corridor and entered the room opposite, praying she was wrong.
She wasn’t.
“Oh, Christ, no.” The same basic setup confirmed her suspicions. This was worse than she’d thought. A million times worse. This was no brothel and Cat’s abduction was no kidnapping.
Tess shook her head. “Not this. Please not this.”
An aching void raked at her gut from the inside, as if Shaven Head were carving out her innards with the splintered piece of wood.
Oh, God, how would she tell Elena?
This… This was human trafficking. At least in a kidnapping situation, there was a chance you could pay a ransom to get your loved one back. Even in enforced prostitution, there was a chance you could break in and rescue them. But this…
There was no ransom to pay. No rescue to be launched. Your loved one might as well be dead. And probably wished they were.
To be certain, Tess worked her way up the corridor and looked in all the rooms. In the room at the end on the left, she caught a glimpse of something from the corner of her eye. She strode in, reached down, and picked something up off the floor. In a little transparent plastic envelope was a four-leaf clover.
“Oh, God.” Cat had been here. But Tess had been too late to save her. In the day and a half since Cat had disappeared, these monsters could have taken her anywhere. Right this second, she could be being raped almost anywhere in the world – China, the Middle East, Brazil. Even the USA.
Tess slumped, rubbing her brow. How the devil was she going to break it to Elena?