“Suffice to say, we have some very generous friends.”
“And here I thought we were your friends-but apparently you’d rather bite the hand that feeds you than free your homeland from oppression.”
“You think we owe you loyalty?” Al-Nasr’s face showed disdain. “We owe you nothing. Allah will reward us for what we’ve done.”
“Yeah? Be sure to say hello to Him for me.” Yancey raised the MAC-10 and loosed a flurry of bullets into al-Nasr and Waheeb. He didn’t ease off the trigger until the gun clicked empty and the two men were scarcely more than meat and gristle.
Bellum men came running but lowered their weapons when they realized there was no threat. Yancey’s ears rang. The room stank of voided bowels and spent ammo.
Osborne, red-faced with fury, grabbed Yancey by the lapels. He had three inches and forty pounds of muscle on Yancey, easy. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.
Yancey dropped the MAC-10 and placed his hand on the wooden grip of his revolver. “Get your goddamn hands off me. Our orders were clear.”
“But if we’d had the chance to question these assholes, we might’ve discovered who helped them carry out the attack!”
“Sure, unless the Feds caught wind of the fact that we had suspects in custody and took them from us before they cracked. What do you think would happen if the world found out that Bellum brought these fucking towelheads into the country under false pretenses and gave them access to explosives? I’m guessing that scenario ends in prison sentences, and I’m not eager to play bitch for the same lowlifes I spent twenty years putting away.”
“When we brought them here, we had no way of knowing that they planned to double-cross us.”
“Listen to yourself. Do you really think that matters? The longer these two remained breathing, the greater the chance that Bellum’s role in the attack, however inadvertent, would be exposed. If you’d just put them down when you came in, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“My men and I aren’t trained to shoot people who don’t pose a threat.”
“Well, then, I guess you should be thanking me for saving you the trouble.”
“You think I ought to thank you? I-”
Yancey held up a finger to silence him. His phone was humming in his pocket. He took it out and answered it. “Hello, Mr. Wentworth. Yes, it’s done. Thank you, sir, but our tac team deserves most of the credit-they did good work.” He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said to Osborne, “Anything you’d like to add, or are we good?”
Osborne fumed but said nothing.
Yancey terminated the call. Then he knelt, fished a handkerchief from his pocket, and used it to wipe his prints off the MAC-10.
“Comb this place from top to bottom,” he said. “Take the Semtex and anything else that could lead back to Bellum. Then send teams through the surrounding buildings to look for witnesses and cameras.”
“That could take all night.”
“Then it takes all night. We’re on the one-yard line, son. Let’s not fumble now because we forgot to dot our i’s or cross our t’s.”
“Yes, sir,” Osborne replied through gritted teeth.
“Good man.” Yancey clapped him on the shoulder condescendingly and headed for door, lighting a fresh cigarette as he stepped once more into the fog.
Cameron sat in the rancid muck that had leaked out of a rusty dumpster and tried to use the hole’s jagged edge to saw through her zip-tie handcuffs. She couldn’t see what she was doing because her hands were behind her back, but her wrists burned with every downstroke, and blood dripped freely from her fingers.
I’ll be pissed if I survive this only to die of tetanus, she thought.
Earlier, as soon as Yancey’s footfalls had been swallowed by the fog and Cameron knew she was alone in the backseat of the Caddy, she had curled into a fetal position and tried to bring her hands around front by sliding them past her butt and pulling her legs through. But she was bound too tightly, the V made by her arms too narrow.
The exertion winded her. Yancey had stuffed a pair of balled-up dress socks in her mouth, and she could barely breathe through her nose because it was crusted with dried blood. If I want to get out of here, she thought, I’m going to have to get rid of these goddamn socks.
She’d opened her jaw as far as she could and pushed at the socks with her tongue. It seemed to take forever, but eventually, she succeeded in getting them out. She licked her lips and spat lint onto the backseat.
Yancey had engaged the rear child locks. With her hands and feet bound, she had no hope of climbing into the front seat and unlocking the door. That left one option…and it was going to be noisy.
Cameron scooted into position. Drew her knees up to her chest. Kicked the Caddy’s back right window as hard as she could.
The car shook. Her legs ached. But the window didn’t break.
She tried again. Still nothing.
Automatic gunfire echoed through the night. Cameron shuddered with terror and willed herself not to cry. Then she doubled her efforts.
On the seventh kick, the window shattered. She threw herself out of the aperture and landed face-first on the pavement, her hands useless behind her. For a moment, agony blotted out the world. It took every ounce of will she possessed not to scream.
With some assistance from the car, she’d managed to stand. She tried to hop away but soon toppled and was forced to inch along on her stomach. The fog enveloped her. Eventually, she wriggled around a corner, out of sight of anyone near the car.
She’d found herself in an alley between buildings. It was shrouded in long shadows, its only illumination the distant streetlights through the fog. Her first thought when she’d crawled behind the dumpster was to hide, but then she saw the hole and thought the edge might be sharp enough to sever her bonds.
Now, Cameron wondered about the gunfire. Hoped that Yancey had been killed. But she kept sawing because, deep down, she knew he hadn’t.
She heard sounds coming from around the corner, a muffled curse and a fist pounding the Caddy’s roof in frustration, and she realized he’d returned. She froze and tried to breathe as quietly as she could.
Seconds passed that way, or maybe hours, or maybe years. Then she caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, and a voice nearby said: “There you are, you little bitch. Didn’t I tell you that I’d be right back?”
Cameron cowered. Tried to kick him with her bound feet as he approached. He slapped them aside, hoisted her up by her hair, and punched her twice in the gut.
The air whooshed out of her like a bellows. She doubled over in agony. Yancey used her momentum to throw her over his shoulder. Then he carried her back to the car.
As he stuffed her in the trunk, she begged, “Please don’t kill me.”
“Don’t worry, kid. I’m not gonna kill you-not until you help me get Segreti back, that is.”
37.
WE NEED TO TALK.”
The voice was male and had a smoker’s rasp. The number was Cameron’s.
“Where did you find this phone?” Hendricks asked.
“That’s what we need to talk about. See, I’ve got your girl.”
Hendricks’s stomach dropped. “What girl?”
“C’mon, jackass. You know what girl. Cute little thing. Fresh-faced, resourceful. Well, a little less fresh-faced than she was before I got my hands on her, to own the truth. Anyway, she’s got your number in her contacts and no one else’s.”
“That chick doesn’t mean a thing to me,” Hendricks bluffed. “She’s a groupie. A dilettante. A spoiled little rich kid looking for a thrill. I’ve been trying to shake her all week.”
“Is that right.”
“Yeah.”