3. Infil, Exfil
infil, exfil
LASH
T he compound—three apartment buildings in a U-shape with a heavy gate across the opening—backs up to an alley. Cameras watch the entrances at each end; it is early evening and the shadows are long. This is the riskiest part of the infiltration, when I stand the highest chance of being spotted. I creep through the deepest shadows along the wall, moving slowly and irregularly. A forgotten second-story window is the biggest security flaw in the system. It is possible that it isn't forgotten, but they merely feel that because it is high above the ground with no easy way to access it, there's no point in alarming it.
They didn't account for one simple thing: this building is quite old, and the bricks are not flush—they protrude quite a bit, and between the abuse of the elements and the wear and tear of the centuries, much of the mortar has worn away, creating an easy path up for someone with rock-climbing experience. I spend a few moments examining the wall, picking out a likely path; I kneel and remove my boots and socks, knotting my boot laces together through the belt loop of my jeans at my back, stuffing the socks into the boots.
And then up. Fingerhold by fingerhold, sometimes supporting my weight by fingertips and a toe—it's slow going, but I'm patient.
Once I reach the windowsill, I use the butt of my pistol to gently crack the glass—small, quiet taps that spread spiderweb cracks across the pane; tap-tap-tap at the top, the bottom, corners, the sides, until the glass is a fragile agglomeration of cracked pieces. Balanced by a precarious toehold, I cannot afford to rush and cause the noise of crashing glass; if I remember correctly, the floor on the other side is tile or marble. I cautiously tap a small piece loose near the bottom edge of the window, pry it free with my fingernails, and set it on the sill. My toe and fingerholds shaking, I grit my teeth, ignore the exhaustion. Free another piece, stack it with the first. Piece by piece, I create a hole large enough that I can snake my arm in and reach the lock, after which it's a simple matter of lifting the sash and climbing in.
Once inside, I close the window once more.
I am in a small, dark, cluttered supply closet—shelves hold boxes of paper towels and toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and the like. I put my socks and boots back on and peek out of the doorway—a long hallway extends in either direction, lined with low-pile industrial carpet, wall sconces at regular intervals shedding orange-yellow light from Edison bulbs.
I watch and wait for several minutes, but no patrol comes by, so I ease out, checking ceiling corners for cameras; through sheer dumb luck, I seem to have emerged in a blind spot. I creep down the hallway, listening for footsteps or voices, scanning for cameras. I spot one as I reach the end of the hall where it turns to the right; the camera watches the hallway, however, and not the stairwell. I shake my head, bemused. A quick scan of the stairwell assures me there is no camera here—once I'm out with Solomon and his companions, I'll have to have a word with Stjepan about his so-called security.
While my recollection of the layout of the compound is hazy, I remember that the security room is in the basement, along with the holding cells.
I descend the stairs, almost missing the laser tripwire along the bottom of the doorway; the door opens into the stairwell, so there is no way to cross the threshold without setting it off.
Tricky.
Once again, pure dumb luck is on my side—the door swings open just then. "This is Lukas," I hear a guard speaking Croatian. "Perimeter check."
I hide next to the door so it hides me as it swings open. The guard is adjusting his gear belt as he enters the stairwell—settling his radio on the belt clip, adjusting the microphone and wire, working the earpiece in place, checking his flashlight and pistol. He doesn't see me because he’s not even looking.
Remarkable stupidity and incompetence.
A slow-close hydraulic mechanism allows the guard to reach the next level before the door even begins closing. I step over the tripwire so it only shows a single open-and-close from the guard, pausing just on the other side of the threshold to assess my surroundings.
This hallway is garishly lit by fluorescents, the floor is polished concrete and the walls bare, featureless drywall. The first door on the right should be the security room. There is a camera watching this hallway, but that won’t matter beyond the next thirty seconds.
I hustle to the door to the security room, draw my gun, and enter. Two men sit in front of a display of monitors, but one is watching a football match on his phone with an earbud in his ear, and the other is eating yogurt—neither one has his attention on the screens, or they'd have seen me.
"Forget something, Lukas?" The yogurt-eater says, not looking around. "You always forget something. I swear, you'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed onto your skinny neck."
I press the barrel of my pistol to the back of his head. "Not quite," I say in Croatian. I press harder. "Hands up. Both of you. I don’t want to kill you, so just cooperate."
Their hands go up.
"Good." I reach down and retrieve their pistols, stuffing them in my pockets. "Now. Shut down the system."
"He'll still know you were here," the football watcher says.
"I know. I don't care. Tell him I'll call him later, as we've much to discuss." I tap him on the skull with the barrel hard enough to get his attention without hurting him. "Shut it down. Cameras, lasers, everything."
A moment later, the system is off.
"Good. Now. My friends are in the room down the hall, yes?"
"Yes. The next door."
"On the floor, both of you. On your bellies, hands on the back of your heads."
They comply, and I bind their wrists behind their backs with their own zip ties; I remove a boot and a sock from each man's foot, remove the laces from the boots, and gag each man with his sock and bootlace.
On the desk is a tablet device. I put it in front of one of the guards' faces to unlock it and search it for a layout map; once I find the map, I spend a few minutes studying it and memorizing the best route out—one level up to the ground floor and right out the front door, it appears.
I snatch a keycard on a lanyard from one of the guard’s necks and exit the security room, watching and listening for a moment. I hear a merry, tuneless whistling from the far end of the hallway. I close the door. Wait.
The door opens. "Camera six is offline, Anton,” a voice says.
"I know," I answer. "I'm working on it."
A pause. “You're not Anton."
I hear the door creak open further, hear his foot squeak on the tile. "Who are you? What are you doing in here?"
I shoot out of the chair and level my gun at him. "Hands up. I won't kill you if you do as I tell you."
His sigh is one of extreme annoyance. "This won't work."
I shrug. “That is my problem. Hands behind your head. On the floor on your belly."
I make swift work of binding and gagging him as I did his comrades and then leave the room yet again.
Here is where I encounter a problem: my keycard does not unlock the door to Sol's cell.
Back to the security room. Ungag one man. "Whose key unlocks that door?" I ask.
He grimaces, spitting to get the taste of his sock out of his mouth. "Stjepan and Igor."
"Where is Igor?"
"Gone for the day."
Fuck.
I re-gag the man and go back to the door, examining it, hoping for inspiration.
Ah!
Since this was, at one point, nothing more than an apartment building, the doors themselves, despite the fancy locks, are simple doors with standard hinges on the outside.
Back to the security room.
"Flathead screwdriver," I demand. “Where?"
One man looks pointedly at a drawer—I open it and find a haphazard assortment of tools—screwdrivers, a hammer, mismatched wrenches, a socket wrench, and an assortment of sockets. I select a flathead screwdriver and the hammer—it's a matter of moments to remove the door, bypassing the lock entirely.
Idiots.
Solomon lays on his back on the floor, one arm over his eyes. The woman—roughly my height, hard-bodied and beautiful—is next to him; they are holding hands, a surprising development.
The other man is an operator—I see it in the way he cracks an eye at me, assessing me with the calm confidence of a man who is sure of his abilities. He is tall, six-four, if I had to guess, and powerfully built with black hair and handsome features.
"Took you long enough," Sol says, grinning at me.
I shrug. "Between Stjepan's men and Mercado's, I have been busy."
None of them are zip-tied—another laughable oversight. Regular prisoners, perhaps, can be left unattended and unbound, but operators like these? Foolishness.
Stjepan, you have grown lax. Did you think I would not come for my brother?
Solomon and the others rise and precede me out of the cell; I put the door back on its hinges, hoping the mystery of their escape will buy us time.
"I assume you know the way out?" Sol asks me.
"Of course." I turn to the woman. "I am Lash."
She nods, shakes my hand. "I know. I'm Scarlett."
I look from her to Sol. "Later there will be time for stories, and I think you have an interesting one to tell."
He nods. "I do. We have to get out of here first, though—out of Zagreb, and fast.”
I frown at him. "Why are you here?"
He rolls his eyes. "For you, of course."
I laugh. "You came to rescue me, and now I rescue you. I believe you call this irony." My laughter dies. "Why, Solomon? What is going on?"
"Mercado has Inez."
My blood runs cold. "How?"
"That's a long story," Sol answers. "Short version is, Inez knows him. He's from her past. We have to get the whole crew together and go get her."
I sigh. "Mercado is bloodthirsty and merciless. I do not like her chances of survival if that monster has her."
Sol snorts. “Her chances are better than you think—he wants to play with her. Punish her."
I suppress a shudder. "Even worse. I know what his notion of play entails, Solomon."
Sol frowns at me. "We need to get out of this compound. How the fuck you got in here undetected, I don't know, but they're bound to notice sooner rather than later."
I nod. "Indeed." I extend my hand to the other man. "Lash."
He shakes my hand. "Lorenzo."
"Who are you?" I ask.
"I am Sophia's…." He frowns, shrugging. "I am Sophia's."
“Who is this Sophia?" I ask.
"Inez's real name,” Solomon answers. “Apparently.”
I absorb this. "Interesting. Clearly, there is much I must be caught up on. For now, however, we must go. You are correct, Solomon—I have kicked the bees’ nest, and it is only a matter of time before they swarm. Stjepan is not my enemy, so I will not kill anyone if I don't have to."
I wince, realizing too late my gaffe.
Solomon catches it. “You won’t kill anyone…if you don’t have to? What about your vow?"
I shake my head. "No time for that explanation, Sol. What I will say, however, is that my vow, unlike yours, does not include the injunction against killing."
Sol frowns. "You're a Broken Arrow."
"I am. Heart and soul."
"But then—"
"Later, Solomon. Later. Tatiana is waiting."
"Tatiana?"
I ignore the question and lead the way to the stairwell. Up to the ground floor, through a hallway past several locked doors, and to the foyer. Three guards huddle together, laughing at something on a phone.
They see us, but too late—I gave Lorenzo and Scarlett the handguns, since like me they have no restriction against killing. Solomon was unhappy to be weaponless but accepted it with only a few muttered curses.
"To the floor," I order in Croatian. "We won't kill you if you cooperate."
"Stjepan knows you are here," one of them says. “He is on his way."
I shrug. "Good. Now he knows the flaws in his security, which are many. Remain still while we leave and you will be unharmed."
Solomon chuckles. "Right out the front door, huh?"
I nod. “It was the closest exit."
We are outside in the night; a taxi passes us, followed by a diesel-spewing bus. The others follow as I head for the doorway where I left Tatiana.
Only…
She isn't here.
A pair of shell casings lay in a pool of blood; the blood points away in a messy trail, as if someone dragged a body.
I follow the trail down the sidewalk, Solomon and the others behind me. The blood trail enters a yawning alley mouth.
"Tatiana?" I call, voice pitched low.
Nothing.
The trail continues, bloody skid marks glistening in the ambient light. I follow it further in—this is a dead-end alley. A heavy male body lies slumped at the end of the alley.
"Tatiana?" I call again.
I hear a whimper.
I look around—a dumpster, overflowing with stinking trash, a pile of discarded boxes and haphazardly stacked pallets, drifts of crumpled newspaper. "Tatiana? It's me—It's Lash." I pitch my voice in a low murmur, in Croatian.
"Lash?" Her voice is tiny, fearful.
"It's me. It's okay. You can come out."
Boxes and newspapers rustle and topple, and Tatiana emerges, a blood-drenched specter.
"Lovely One," I whisper. "What happened?"
She takes a shuffling step, falters, and topples. I catch her and pull her into my arms—she's trembling and hyperventilating.
"He-he-he…" she points at the dead man on the ground. "He—I hesitated. I hesitated."
"Are you hurt?" I ask, scanning her for injuries.
"N-n-no. No. It's his." Her eyes are wet and wide, searching mine. "I hesitated. I hesitated."
I cup her face, smearing blood. "You're alive, Tatiana. He is not."
"I—I—I had to…" she mimes a stabbing motion. "He—he wouldn't die! I—I kept stabbing and stabbing. So much blood—so much blood." She squeezes her eyes shut. "I hesitated. You told me not to hesitate, but he—I didn't see his knife at first. He was going to—he tried to—" she shakes her head. "I fought him, Lash. He was so strong. So big. So heavy. But I fought him. He had a knife and I got it from him and I stabbed him. I stabbed him so many times."
I pull her into my arms, against my chest. "You did what you had to do, Lovely One. Killing a man with a knife is no easy feat."
"So much blood," she whispers.
Muffled gunfire dopplers off the alley walls, and I whirl, putting her behind me, pistol in hand.
Solomon jogs to the alley mouth and crouches against the corner, poking his head out. "Coming from the compound," he says.
I frown. "What? Who would attack Stjepan?"
"Mercado," Lorenzo answers. "We embarrassed him. We got away. He has Sophia, but we took out a lot of his men. His ego cannot allow that."
"I do not see the connection between him and Stjepan. Why Stjepan? Why does he want Tatiana?" I'm asking the questions out loud, more rhetorically than anything, but Lorenzo answers anyway.
"Who knows with Mercado? His distribution network is massive, and he has agents everywhere. If this Stjepan of yours is a major mover in this area, it's likely Mercado is trying to leverage him into service."
I nod, considering what I know. "He styles himself a warlord. Drugs are just how he pays for his real ambition."
Solomon has rejoined us. "So, the real question is do we help out Stjepan? Or do we let his people deal with them?"
I think for a moment. "There is no love lost between Stjepan Juric and me. But, as they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
"No!" Tatiana says. "We should leave."
"Those are your father's men in there being shot," I say.
"My father will not be there."
"They said he was on the way," I say.
"He will know. They will radio him and tell him they are under attack. There is a secret exit to the parking garage. One or two will stay to distract the attackers while the rest escape."
"You could have mentioned the secret way in," I say, annoyed. "I wouldn't have had to scale the wall like a spider."
"You cannot go in through that way—only out from the compound to the garage. Also, I forgot about it until just now. I've been a little distracted, you know."
I sigh, rubbing my face. “True. I'm sorry." I take her hand. "So, we go. Let your father's men handle their own situation. I feel bad, however—I disabled their security system, so they wouldn't have had a warning."
She just shakes her head. "If my father is in business with a man like this Mercado, then he deserves what he gets."
"Even if that's a bullet to the brain?" I ask.
She shrugs. "He is my father and I love him, but I know very well what kind of business he does. He does not hide it." She looks angry, now. "I have been kidnapped many times because of my father's business, because of his enemies. It is tiresome. Ana and Katya are dead, Georg is dead, and I am being hunted like an animal. I have been forced to kill a man with my hands. So yes, I am angry, and my love for the man who is my father is not stronger than my anger at what the actions and choices of my father the businessman have done to me."
"That is fair," I say. More overlapping gunfire, single shots and automatic bursts. “You must decide what you want to do next, where you will go, and who you will trust. I can deliver you to your father and you can trust him to keep you safe. Or you can come with me—with us."
She frowns, wincing and flinching at the gunfire. "I don't know."
“My goal was always to return you safely to your father. But if Mercado is making moves like this against your father's compound, you may not be safer with him than you would be with me. Which is not very safe—clearly. I have my own enemies and Mercado is only one of them."
Solomon speaks up, then. "Inez mentioned an enemy high up in a government somewhere. I assumed that was Stjepan. He claimed to have trained you, to have made you what you are."
I laugh. "Hardly. I worked for him many years ago, and it is true I learned much while in his employ, but it would not be accurate to say he made me who I am." I shake my head. "And no, he is not the enemy Inez was referring to."
"So…there's another powerful figure who wants you dead?" Solomon asks. "Not Mercado, not Stjepan, but someone else ?"
I shrug. "Yes."
"Who?"
I sigh. "A senior official in Interpol."
Solomon huffs. "Wonderful."
Tatiana leans against me. "Can we leave this alley, please?" She glances over her shoulder at the corpse. "I am not superstitious or religious, but I feel him."
"Yes, of course," I say. "I've been in Zagreb for too long as it is. Roberto Pugli, my enemy at Interpol, is an experienced intelligence analyst with decades of experience. He is a top-level administrator now, last I checked, but his contacts cover most of the globe. I am sure he knows I am here.”
“Interpol is administrative," Sol points out. "So what if he knows you're here? He’d have to mobilize local law enforcement."
I shake my head. "It is not so simple. Yes, he can and will send local law enforcement after me, but he knows many people and not all of them operate on the right side of the law. Those kinds of operatives are far more dangerous than the Zagreb police."
Solomon nods, blowing out a breath. "Ah, he's one of those."
"Corrupt, malicious, and cruel?" I say. "Yes. All that and more." Solomon opens his mouth, but I cut him off. "I am certain you have questions, but this is not the time for interrogations. We must flee Zagreb, and swiftly."
"Train?" Solomon suggests.
"Yes, it is best. We can rest and take turns keeping watch."
I look at Tatiana. "Are you able to walk? The train station is some distance from here, but we are not likely to find a taxi at this hour."
She shrugs. "Do I have a choice?"
"Not really." I peel out of my shirt and use it to wipe the blood from her face. Her white T-shirt is splattered with it, as are her jeans and leather jacket. There is nothing to do about that, however. Once I have cleaned the worst of the blood from her face, I shrug back into my shirt—it is now wet and tacky, but that doesn’t concern me.
And so we walk—block after block, mile after mile, three killers and an innocent young woman.