53. Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter fifty-three
He was waiting to hear one of his men call out, to shout that they had captured or killed Goodman, but that never happened.
A thick silence settled over the dump and the only sound was Zeqiri’s own pulse thrumming in his ears.
That could only mean one thing; Goodman had dispatched another of Zeqiri’s soldiers.
Zeqiri scrubbed a hand over his mouth. Fear was an invisible pressure gripping his belly. He licked his lips and tried to think.
Osmani was almost certainly dead. Goodman had been inside the crane. Whether Goodman had already been there when Osmani arrived, or Goodman followed him in, was hard to say and in the end didn’t really matter. Two men went in and one came out.
Sergeant Besnik had been flattened by an automobile. That left Zeqiri, Mehmet, and Stafa. And from the sound of things, one of those two had just been eliminated.
Zeqiri didn’t like the way the numbers were going. The math was quickly turning against him. Who could say how many more traps Goodman had set up. How long had he been in the scrapyard before he called Zeqiri? Impossible to say.
Licking his lips, Zeqiri glanced around at the piles of scrap metal. Suddenly every mound, every piece of broken furniture, every cast-off appliance seemed like a deadly threat. A half melted stove, the source of someone’s house fire, leaned precariously out from a nearby hillock.
It was too close for Zeqiri’s comfort. He imagined the appliance crashing down on his head and crossed over to the other side of the aisle. That side was no better. Several old refrigerators and heavy registers perched among the stack. Were they rigged to fall?
You’re letting Goodman get inside your head, Zeqiri told himself.
A single shot rang out.
The sound echoed across the junkyard and rolled like thunder across the distant hillside.
Zeqiri sank into a crouch, pulled his weapon up tight to his shoulder and peered, wide-eyed into the darkness. The only movement came from cockroaches scuttling amid the wreckage.
Again, no shouts. Nobody yelling that he’d taken out Goodman. Which only left one other possibility.
Goodman had dispatched another of Zeqiri’s trained soldiers. With a single shot no less.
Who was this guy?
Zeqiri shook his head. No time for answers. They were down to two. The Captain didn’t like those odds at all. Not one bit.
He was too close to the money to lose it all now.
No sense in risking his future. He’d seen, or rather heard, enough.
He eased up from his position and backpedaled until he reached a relatively broad path cutting between the piles of garbage.
He wanted a clear sight line. He could not chance kicking a tripwire in the dark.
Then he was hurrying toward the nearest opening in the fence that ringed the dump.
Discretion, after all, was the better part of valor.