Dmitri checked his watch. ‘Let’s wrap this up,’ he announced.
The other men nodded and went about finishing their assigned tasks. Dmitri and Pavel stripped off the police uniforms and stuffed them into one of the barrels.
‘Here,’ Dmitri said as he tossed his brother new clothes from the gym bag.
Pavel pulled the snug-fitting work shirt over his broad shoulders and looked down at the embroidered company logo over the left breast.
‘I feel like I’ve been demoted,’ Pavel said with a laugh.
Once the trailer was wiped clean of blood and gore, the soiled mats and the sausage were stuffed into the barrels, and Josef snapped the thick plastic lids closed. The men then carefully turned the barrels right side up. The movers’ bodies slumped to the bottom, but the lids easily held the weight.
Yuri and Vanya jumped down from the trailer and took the barrels, one by one, from Pavel and Josef.
After Pavel and Josef exited the trailer, Dmitri handed them the three flashing caution lights and the gym bag that contained the two suppressed Glocks. He then leapt down and closed the trailer’s side door.
Between the trailer and the Blazer, Dmitri’s men arranged the barrels around a wide, deep pothole near the pavement’s edge. Snapped in place, the orange caution lights began blinking.
‘Let’s go,’ Dmitri announced, smiling to himself that the barrels might actually do some good.
4
Nolan Kilkenny and Ted Sandstrom stood leaning against the wall beside a large window as the movers wheeled another cart of boxes from the nearly empty lab. They heard Kelsey and Paramo engaging in a rapid exchange of words out in the corridor, their voices growing louder as the pair neared the lab’s door.
‘Problem, Kelsey?’ Nolan asked.
‘Just a friendly debate,’ she replied.
Paramo smiled. ‘Kelsey and I were mulling over some of Guth’s work on false vacuum theory.’
‘False vacuum theory?’ Nolan repeated. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask.’
‘It’s one of the more recent theories kicking around about how a universe forms,’ Kelsey offered.
Nolan held his hands up as if to push any further explanation away before it could reach him. ‘Stop right there! My head still hurts from last night’s little after-dinner discussion about M-branes and eleven-dimensional multiverses.’
‘Wimp,’ Sandstrom said with a laugh. ‘Hey, Raphaele, did the movers get those boxes out of our office?’
‘Everything went down with the last load,’ Paramo replied.
Kelsey eyed the blue plastic cooler near Nolan’s feet. ‘Anything left to drink?’
‘There’s one can of Diet Coke with your name on it.’
Kelsey fished the last can from the slush of melted ice and sat down on a lab bench. ‘How long before we’re done here?’
‘Not long. All that’s left are those two boxes. It’s a short drive to the research park,’ Nolan said, running through a mental checklist. ‘I figure a couple of hours to unload at the new lab.’ Nolan picked up the cooler and dumped the icy dregs into the lab sink, shaking the last few drops out before closing the lid. ‘I’m going to take this down to my truck so we can reload it at the gas station. I’ll be back in a minute.’
The hallway echoed with his footsteps, the building nearly empty on this early-summer Friday afternoon. Kilkenny took the stairs and exited Nieuwland Science Hall around the corner from the loading dock. A semi filled the single bay, its trailer flush with the elevated concrete dock. The four-wheeled carts were nearly empty; the five-man crew had made quick work of this job.
Kilkenny’s truck was parked at the far end of the loading area facing the dock. He fished the key fob out of his khaki shorts and pressed the button that unlocked the lift gate.
As he placed the empty cooler into the back of the SUV, he observed one of the movers pull two canvas bags from the white Blazer parked near the semi. The man then carried the bags back to where the rest of the moving crew waited. Another of the movers crouched down, unzipped one of the bags, and extracted a pistol holster.
‘What the hell?’ Kilkenny cursed quietly as he watched the distribution of weapons and other equipment among the men.
Using hand signals, the leader of the crew ordered the others into position. One remained on the loading dock while the others went back into Nieuwland Hall.
With his SUV screening him from view, Kilkenny searched the cargo area for a weapon. In the row of bins where he kept his tools, he found a combat knife — a memento from his navy days. He strapped the sheathed blade to his right thigh and carefully closed the lift gate.
As the mover paced along the elevated platform, Kilkenny surveyed the area between the loading dock and the rear of the semi trailer, timing the man’s movements. The short span of the platform meant that the trailer blocked the man’s view of the parking area for only a few seconds in each circuit.
Realizing that he would have to move quickly, Kilkenny crouched behind his truck, tensed and ready. When the man turned at the far end of the platform and began walking back toward the semi, Kilkenny sprinted across the entire lot using the trailer as a shield. His heart pounded as he slipped under the truck, adrenaline coursing through his body and his senses charged. Loose gravel and chips of broken glass dug at his forearms and shins as he stealthily snaked his way beneath the trailer to the platform.
When Kilkenny reached the space between the double axle at the rear of the trailer, he pulled himself back on his feet and again began timing the man’s movements. As the man turned away, Kilkenny shifted closer to the platform, hiding in the space between the right-side tires and the steel-frame bumper.
Soon the man turned facing the driver’s side of the semi, walking back toward the open trailer doors.
Kilkenny slipped out from beneath the vehicle and stood next to the rear tires. Carefully, he unfastened the door catch. As the sound of the man’s footsteps grew closer, Kilkenny timed it perfectly and thrust the heavy metal door forward. The sudden rush of the door caught the man broadside, striking hard against his shoulder.
‘Blat!’ Vanya cursed as he rolled from the force of the blow.
Kilkenny followed the rotation of the door forward and leapt up on the platform behind it, releasing his grip on the handle and unsheathing his knife to press on with the attack.
Despite the burning pain, Vanya reached for the Glock 9-mm pistol strapped to the left side of his chest. He snapped a glance over his battered shoulder in time to see Kilkenny emerge from behind the steel door.
‘Krasny adín!’ Vanya shouted as he twisted the holstered weapon up and fired from beneath his armpit.
The first round drilled through the muscle of Kilkenny’s left thigh, a point-blank shot that struck at almost the same instant it left the Glock. After boring a bloody tunnel, the bullet erupted from Kilkenny’s leg and ricocheted off the concrete dock. A second shot flew just inches wide because of the recoil of the first.
Momentum still carrying him forward, Kilkenny grabbed the holster strap and held tight as he drove his combat knife into the man’s back. The knife shuddered as its serrated back edge sawed through the cartilage that connected a rib and vertebrae.
Vanya’s grasp on his pistol weakened as his heart spasmed, the blade puncturing the muscular walls of the organ. Kilkenny pushed the knife sideways as he extracted it, widening the gash in the man’s blood-soaked back. Vanya’s legs gave out, and Kilkenny let him fall to the dock.
Kilkenny then rolled the body over onto its back; a blank, open-mouthed stare gaped back at him. Using his knife, he cut two strips of cloth from the man’s shirt and hastily wrapped a pressure bandage around his thigh.