If she was at our destination, she was leaving with me.
The skyscrapers and fields of construction cranes fell away abruptly, and for another ten minutes we sped through the desert. The terrain was harsh, browns and yellows, packed earth and then sand, clichéd as a movie set. Traffic that had been light and constant thinned out even more. Our driver slowed enough to keep from rolling the car when we turned inland along a freshly paved road that seemed to lead to the middle of nowhere. After another two minutes, an apartment block came into view, as if it had been dropped from above onto the landscape.
The cab pulled into the makeshift dirt lot, amidst a battery of other vehicles, most in considerably worse condition than our own, pickups and vans, even a couple heavy-class construction vehicles. Two caught my eye, a new BMW sedan and a Toyota SUV. Both lacked the thick layer of desert dust that seemed to coat everything else. I paid the driver, and Kekela and I got out. Heat collapsed on us like a curtain, drier than it had been in the city, yet more severe. The car pulled away, wheels crunching gravel, then sped off the way we'd come. For a moment after it left, there was the illusion of silence, and then noise began filtering to us from the building.
Now that we were out of the cab, I could see the structure was actually multiple buildings, all of the same design, as if modeled on some old Soviet-style housing plan. They'd been built so close together it looked like there was barely room enough to walk abreast between them. This was further complicated by the fact that a chain-link fence ran around the perimeter, topped with concertina wire. Piles of trash, some of it in bags, most of it not, sat heaped along the fence.
There was noise coming from within the buildings, the voices of too many men in too small a space, barely heard behind the din of two dozen air conditioners. I could smell overflowing sewage.
“Now what?” I asked Kekela.
“I don't know. She said she would meet us.” She looked confused.
“There's a brothel here?”
“At least one, yes.”
“Why here? Why not in the city?”
“Your girl, Tiasa, she's young.” Kekela glanced around, perhaps searching for Xia, perhaps afraid we'd be overheard. There was no one in sight. “A lot of men like them young, but the young ones, they can't work the bars. So they put them in houses, they hide them in places like this.”
I pointed to the BMW and the SUV. “Either of those Xia's?”
“I don't think so. I don't know what she drives, though. Customers, probably.” She shifted, uncomfortable with the subject. “Like I said, a lot of men like them young.”
I looked the buildings over again. The heat was intense enough that my sweat evaporated the moment it reached my skin, made my flesh tighten. When I looked back in the direction of the city, I could just make out the tops of the high towers, the upper floors floating in the heat haze.
There was a clank from the fence, and Xia was opening the gate, motioning us to her. Kekela moved first. I followed. The gate had a padlock, and Xia replaced it once we were through, but she didn't lock it.
“This way,” Xia said. “Quickly.”
She started immediately along the narrow alley between the blocks. Laundry lines made from scavenged work-site cable were strung between support posts, draped with clothing and bedding, obstructing vision everywhere I turned. Xia hurried, Kekela close after her. Every door we passed was closed, every window set high and made small, impossible to see or escape through.
“Over here, this way,” Xia said.
We turned, came around the corner of one of the buildings into a courtyard, this one devoid of laundry or refuse. In the meager shade provided by the balcony above him, a man sat opposite us, beside a closed door. He looked in his twenties, wearing the traditional shirt-dress
dishdasha
that Emirati men favored, but this one was teal instead of the old-fashioned white. His head was bare, no
gutra
, his hair cut fashionably, just a little long. A cigarette burned in one hand.
“Here he is,” Xia said, indicating me.
The man let a mouthful of smoke leak free as he looked me over. Then he showed me an anemic smile.
“Mar haba,”
he said.
“Al-salaam alaykum,”
I answered.
Peace be upon you
.
“Wa alaykum e-salaam,”
he answered.
And upon you peace
.
The insincerity was palpable to all of us.
He rose from his seat, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out with his toe, his attention, for the moment, on its destruction. He was wearing Nikes. They looked new. When he was certain he'd ground the butt to shreds, he looked up again, this time at Xia.
“You can go,” he told her.
Xia took hold of Kekela's forearm, started trying to move her back in the direction we had come. “Come on.”
“No,” Kekela said. “No, I'm staying with him.”
“Keke, please,” Xia said, trying to move her again. “We should go.”
I'd been keeping my eyes on the man, the same way he'd been watching me. There was no question, now, that Xia had set me up, and from her behavior, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she'd done so against her will. There had always been the chance this was how things would play out; the moment I'd handed over the picture of Tiasa, it pretty much guaranteed that the wrong people would take notice. But the wrong people for Xia were the right people for me, and I'd played the gamble willingly, and I'd settle it now, no matter the cost.
At least, no matter the cost to me.
“It's okay,” I told Kekela. “You should go.”
“No! What's going on?” She jerked herself free from Xia's grip, turning on her. “What did you do? What have you done, Xia?”
Xia didn't answer.
“I told him he could trust you! I told him because I trust you!”
“If she won't leave,” the man said to me, “she's welcome to come inside with you. I have friends who would be happy to keep her company.”
“I'm sure you do,” I answered. “That's why she's going to leave.”
“No, no I won't, I won't go. I'm staying with you, Danil!”
I broke from the staring contest, faced Kekela. She looked miserable, guilty and afraid. I put my hands on her shoulders, spoke in Georgian.
“Either they have Tiasa, or they know where I can find her, and that's why I'm here. You got me this far. You did everything I asked you to. But now you have to go.”
“Oh God, oh my God.” Her voice had gone tight. “This is my fault. It's all my fault.”
“It's not.”
“They're going to kill you. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?”
“First they'll have some questions for me.”
“Oh God, oh God. No, no, I can't leave you.”
“If you go in there, Kekela, they'll use you against me. It's like you said by the pool. I need to concentrate on saving one woman at a time.”
It took her a second to parse, to remember, and then she half laughed, half sobbed.
“You
are
fucked up,” she told me.
“Without question,” I agreed. “Go. Please.”
This time, when Xia took her arm, she didn't resist. I watched them round the corner, going out of sight. Kekela didn't look back.
When I turned again to face him, the man's smile was exactly as it had been before. He indicated the door he'd been seated beside. “Shall we go inside?”
“After you.”
“No.” The smile died, turned to ice in the middle of the desert. “After you.”
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Before I went through the door, I thought that I'd play it
their way, at least for a while. They had questions, I was sure. At the very least, they wanted to know my interest in this fourteen-year-old girl they'd seen in the picture Xia had shown them. They wanted to know who I was, why I cared. If I was some crusading law enforcement officer, or someone in the business, someone trafficking, though the last seemed highly unlikely.
So I thought that I would let that run, let them intimidate and threaten and even hurt me, if that's what it took. Just to get them talking, just to see if Tiasa really was here, and if not, to find out if they knew her, knew where she was. It was risky as hell, but it seemed the best idea.
Then I stepped inside, into a spare and ugly makeshift waiting room with a couple of rundown chairs, some pillows in the corner surrounding a large
sheesha
pipe. Digital photos, printed on plain paper, were tacked to the wall opposite me, the menu of the day, the girls available. A single door, closed, led out of the room opposite me.
I took it all in as I entered, the man in the
dishdasha
closing the door after us even as another man stepped out from where he'd been against the entry wall. Maybe another Emirati, I couldn't be sure, this one dressed in loose linen pants and an overlarge white linen shirt. He had a shotgun in his hands, a stubby little pump-action Serbu model with an after-market gold finish. As soon as the door closed, the man in the
dishdasha
said something in Arabic, and the man with the shotgun stepped toward me, the barrel of the gun not quite in-line, and I could tell he was going to use it as a prod.
At which point I thought,
Fuck it
.
I swept my forearm up to clear the barrel of the shotgun, pivoting into him, catching hold of the weapon in my right hand. At the same time, with my left, I punched my fingers into his throat, just beneath his Adam's apple, then again, into his left eye. He lost the shotgun to me, choking as he staggered back.
I spun back to the entrance, saw that the best reaction the man in the
dishdasha
had managed as yet was to be stunned, which suited me fine, and frankly was kind of the point. He was still looking stunned as I kicked him in the knee with my left. Adrenaline turned the kick more vicious than I'd intended, and something in the joint buckled and broke, and he toppled, screaming in Arabic. Then he was on the floor, and I kicked him in the face, hard, and he cut to silence.
I flipped the shotgun around in my grip, turning again to the man I'd taken it from. He had fallen back against the wall,
struggling to keep his feet, blood running from his eye, his face swollen with the need for air. His right hand was going behind his back, and I knew he was drawing on me, forcing an escalation that didn't leave me any option. I shot him point-blank, and whoever had loaded the Serbu had chosen birdshot for it, and it was as devastatingly messy as it was effective.
There was a half beat of silence as I went to the body, searching it. By the time I'd pulled the pistol from the dead man's hand, the first scream had come, childish and high-pitched. Footsteps pounded on the ceiling above me, at least two sets. The pistol was a semi-auto, a Beretta, and I tucked it into my jeans, then glanced back at the man in the
dishdasha
. He was semiconscious, bleeding and groaning.
The room I was in had only the two doors, the one leading out, the other leading deeper within. I needed to go deeper, because if Tiasa was here, that's where she'd be. But deeper meant more men with guns. Going outside would give up the initiative and lose me time, and I'd get neither back. Staying where I was wouldn't work, either; unless whoever was coming in response was either dense or mental, he'd pause outside to assess, rather than charging into the room headlong, because he couldn't know who had shot whom. Once he realized his friends weren't answering, he'd then as likely spray the room with bullets as not.
I jacked the next shell up on the shotgun, moving to the inner door, and opening it without hesitating. It wasn't that I was sure of myself; it was that I didn't have time to be cautious. The hallway was short, maybe fifteen feet, turned ninety degrees left at its end, rooms on either side. I closed the door behind me silently, listening to movement above, the sounds of whimpering, the hush of men's voices. The rapid movement had turned to caution.
I took the door on the left, as fast and as quiet as I could. It
was a bathroom, broken tile and one shit-stained seat, the bowl half-filled with excrement and urine. The light was on, and I left it that way, shutting the door silently after me. I swung the front grip down on the Serbu and forced myself to breathe, trying to replenish and stockpile oxygen, listening hard for movement in the hall.
It didn't take long, cautious footfalls passing my door by within a handful of seconds, then a voice calling out, “Murab? Zafar?”
I took my hand off the front grip long enough to open the bathroom door, kicked it clear, and stepped out, facing the way I'd come. There were two of them, Western dress, each with an AK, each showing me their backs. They heard me coming. I fired, jacked, fired again, and the birdshot and the close range guaranteed I didn't need to do it a third time. Both of them fell, one hit in the back before he'd managed to turn, the other in the side, as he'd been coming to bear.
There was more screaming, and I realized some of it was coming from the room opposite me.
I dropped the shotgun, took one of the AKs. It, too, had a gold finish, and showed pride of ownership, complete with a hand-tooled leather carry strap. I slung the weapon, took out the Beretta, checked the chamber-loaded indicator, and verified there was a round waiting, then dropped the magazine into my hand. It was full. I replaced the mag.
The screams had stopped.
I could hear the whine of an air conditioner above me, but no more movement. With the Beretta ready, I moved to the first door in the hall that I'd passed, tried the knob slowly. It gave without resistance, and I went low, pushed it gently open. No one shot at me in response. I peered in, discovered it was a small kitchen, as filthy and potentially unsanitary as the bathroom had been.