Chapter Sixteen #2
I went in behind the first paramedic. The room looked worse without a camera flattening it into a screen.
Mattresses covered the concrete in uneven rows, most thin enough that the floor showed through the fabric where bodies had worn them down.
A few blankets had been shared between several women.
Empty food wrappers and crushed bottles filled a cardboard box near the door.
The bucket behind the hanging sheet had overflowed onto the floor at some point and been covered with cleaning powder that did almost nothing for the smell.
One woman had a bandage around her forearm that had gone gray at the edges.
Another sat with both wrists tucked beneath her thighs, hiding bruises that climbed past the sleeves of an oversized sweatshirt.
A third would not raise her head until the female officer beside me crouched far enough away to speak without touching her.
Several women wore clothing that did not fit, including men’s sweatpants cinched with string, oversized sweatshirts, cheap shirts printed with logos from cities hundreds of kilometers away and slippers with socks or bare feet.
There were no bags, coats, phones or jewelry anywhere I could see, nothing one woman could point to and call hers.
Cerberus had taken names and passports along with the rest of their belongings and reduced each person to whatever was easiest to move.
Keller stood near the door and began speaking German, then English, telling them medical help was coming and nobody would be taken anywhere without being told where they were going.
A woman near the back answered in Romanian.
I moved toward her slowly.
“Roman??” I asked.
Her eyes snapped to mine. I switched languages and told her we were police with medical help behind us, and that nobody in the room belonged to Cerberus. She stared at my face long enough that I could see her deciding whether the words were another trick.
Then she pointed toward the wall behind me.
“More,” she said in Romanian. “There are more.”
“How many?”
She shook her head and pointed again.
“Next room. They took the sick ones there.”
I looked toward Keller. He understood from my expression before I translated.
His radio came up. “Wolf, room one says another holding room north, sick or injured women.”
Wolf answered immediately. “We’re on it. Stay where Bear cleared you.”
Keller looked at me. “Stay with medical.”
For the next several minutes I barely heard the comms. A paramedic wrapped a thermal blanket around a woman whose hands would not stop shaking.
One of the German officers cut the plastic ties from an older woman’s wrists while she cried without making any sound.
Another woman refused to leave the room until her friend could stand, so Bear came back long enough to lift the friend onto a stretcher without drawing attention to how little she weighed.
I checked the two photographs Keller had given me against every face I could see. Neither woman was in room one. Raven’s voice sharpened through my headset before I could move to the next face.
“Wolf, movement rear office. Three males heading north. One carrying a hard case.”
Wolf answered, “Kade?”
“Cannot confirm. Camera is side angle. Hair length matches.”
My attention moved toward the corridor before I could stop it. Keller saw.
“You stay here,” he said.
“I know.”
He turned toward the doorway when a German officer called his name. Somewhere deeper in the building, a burst of gunfire cracked through the concrete. Every woman in the room reacted. Several dropped immediately. One screamed.
The Romanian woman grabbed my sleeve hard enough to pull me sideways. I crouched with her.
“Stay down,” I said. “Stay here.”
Wolf’s voice cut through my headset.
“Contact north corridor. Two armed. Viper, left.”
Another burst followed, then a single rifle shot farther away.
Hawk.
I could not see Raven from the corridor, but I could hear how fast he was working from the way his calls stacked over the radio traffic.
“Rear lot vehicle moving. Black BMW reversing from bay three. Jackal, south lane.”
Jackal answered, “Have it.”
Wolf said, “Do not chase past the rail line.”
“Copy.”
A paramedic motioned for me to help move a woman closer to the door.
I put one arm around her shoulders and guided her across the mattresses while trying not to listen for Kade’s name in every voice on the radio.
We reached the corridor just as Bear opened the second cold-room door.
He went quiet at the threshold. Only eight women were inside, and several of them could not stand.
Two lay on mattresses without sitting up when the door opened.
One had a swollen eye nearly closed and dried blood at the corner of her mouth.
Another had both ankles wrapped in dirty gauze.
A woman near the back was shivering beneath two thin blankets despite sweat dampening her hair.
The smell of infection was sharp enough that one of the paramedics swore under his breath.
Bear let his rifle fall behind him on its sling and lowered his voice before he moved any closer.
“Medical now,” he said into comms. “I need everybody you’ve got.”
The woman with the wrapped ankles tried to move backward when he approached. Bear stopped several feet away and lowered himself to one knee.
“I’m not touching you,” he said. “Doctor’s coming.”
She stared at him.
Bear looked over his shoulder. “Mercer. What languages?”
I moved to the threshold. The woman answered his question without knowing he had asked it, whispering something in Serbian to the woman beside her.
The first Serbian word stopped me halfway into the doorway.
I crouched outside the room and answered her.
Her head lifted. I told her Bear was not going to hurt her and that we were getting everyone out, then asked whether she could tell me her name. Her lips moved twice before sound came.
“Tara.”
Tara. I had read the name so many times on the Haus Eberhardt transfer sheet that seeing a real woman answer to it made the page feel obscene. I looked at Bear.
“She’s from Eberhardt.”
His jaw tightened. Tara pointed weakly toward the room behind her and said something fast enough that I had to ask her to repeat it.
“They separated the ones who fought,” I translated. “This room.”
Bear studied the injuries again. The punishment records from Haus Eberhardt were suddenly visible in bruises, dirty gauze, black eyes and infected wounds three feet in front of me.
Raven broke into the channel.
“Wolf, visual on Kade. North loading floor. Black jacket, hard case, armed male with him.”
Wolf answered, “Hold medical corridor. Mercer stays south.”
I pressed the headset closer. “Understood.”
Bear held my gaze for another beat before returning to Tara. I stayed where I was while the gunfire moved toward the rear of the building.
Viper’s voice came fast and controlled. “Two moving east.”
Wolf said, “Take one. Leave the second if he breaks outside.”
“Copy.”
Raven switched feeds through my headset, narrating only what the team needed. “Rear camera lost. East lot still live. One male exiting side door.”
Hawk said, “Have him.”
A shot cracked outside.
Then Jackal. “BMW stopped. Driver running south.”
“German unit takes driver,” Wolf said. “Jackal hold east.”
“Copy.”
I stayed beside Tara while medical worked around us. She gripped my fingers when the paramedic cut away the bandage from her ankle. I let her squeeze until my knuckles hurt. When she asked whether the people from Eberhardt were alive, I told her eleven women had been recovered there.
She started crying.
“Six came here,” she said.
“From Eberhardt?”
She nodded.
“Are they all alive?”
Tara looked toward the corridor.
“I don’t know.”
Keller’s jaw tightened before he turned away to call another ambulance forward. A German officer appeared at the end of the corridor and waved to him.
“We found a third room,” the officer said. “Rear section. Door open. More people.”
Keller looked at me. “Stay with her.”
“Go Keller,” I responded.
He moved with the officer toward the rear.
I stayed where I was for almost three minutes before Hawk’s voice cut across the channel so sharply that I barely recognized him.
“Viper, get the fuck down.”
Viper dropped without answering. The shot from the north embankment reached my headset a fraction before the actual crack rolled through the building, followed by glass breaking somewhere in the rear loading area.
Viper swore.
Raven said, “Shooter upper catwalk. Hawk got him.”
Wolf came over the channel. “You hit, Viper?”
“No.”
Hawk keyed his mic. “Viper.”
There was nothing flat or measured in his voice now.
“I said I’m good,” Viper replied.
A rough breath came through Hawk’s mic before he spoke again. “He had you.”
“I know.”
Wolf cut in. “Move.”
“Moving.”
Viper was back on his feet before the last word finished. Hawk shifted to cover the broken catwalk window, but his next call came faster than his usual measured pace, the adrenaline still audible beneath the words.
“East door. Movement.”
Raven said, “Kade crossing. Hard case still with him.”
Tara’s hand was still wrapped around mine, and I held on while my attention pulled toward the corridor.
“You’re okay,” I told her in Serbian.
The reassurance sounded ridiculous with gunfire traveling through the walls, but Tara nodded anyway. The paramedic lifted her onto a stretcher, and once she was moving, I stepped into the corridor to clear space.
Keller came out of the rear section at the same time with one of the missing women beside him, his left hand lightly guiding her elbow while a female officer followed close behind.
The woman was barefoot and wrapped in a gray emergency blanket.
Blood marked one side of her face, though I could not tell whether it belonged to her.
Keller looked toward me.
“Mercer, this is Ana. Serbian.”