Джеймс Паттерсон - Lost

AS SOON AS she heard the first shots, Hanna realized exactly what Albert planned to do. He wanted to use this as cover to shoot Billy the Russian. He wasn’t going to wait for a police officer to do it.

Hanna flinched as Albert shot one of the Russians in the back. The man just dropped. Nothing like in the movies. He just fell forward, silent and still in the midst of chaos.

Albert wasted no time. He grabbed Hanna by the wrist and tugged her along as they fled the shooting.

Albert managed to say, “I think that shit Billy is headed for the gangplank. We better not see him on the ship.”

Hanna risked a quick glimpse over her shoulder. They’d already gotten far enough away that all she could see was a few flashes from pistols. It was amazing how much the sound of gunfire was reduced when you got a few dozen yards and a couple of shipping containers away from it.

Hanna recognized a couple of the younger women running past them, headed for the front of the ship. They were girls she had housed in Amsterdam.

She’d thought these girls would’ve trusted her. It must be the gunfire. Hanna didn’t like the idea that they would betray her and run when they knew they still had to work off the cost of their transportation. The people she transported usually wanted to trust someone. And they’d known the travel would be hard.

She planted her feet to stop Albert from dragging her along.

He looked at her, astonished. “Are you crazy? We’ve got to get out of here.”

“We need the red backpack. Either Magda has the pack or it’s back in the container.”

“Back there, where all the gunfire is? Where the police are waiting for us? No, thanks. We need to keep running.”

Hanna glanced over the side of the ship and saw the girl she was looking for. And she had the backpack over her shoulder. She yelled at Albert, “Right there. Magda’s right there.”

“And running faster than we could ever hope to,” Albert pointed out. “Don’t worry. The tracker is in the backpack. We’ll let things settle down here and then we’ll be able to find her easily. At least we can salvage the diamonds.”

Hanna followed her brother off the ship. The chaos from the ship had spread to the docks. People were running in every direction. No one knew if this was a terrorist attack or a drug-gang shootout.

Hanna followed Albert’s lead as he immediately slowed to a fast walk. They headed directly off the port grounds. She was going to take a serious financial hit on this fiasco.

Chapter 76

IT TOOK ONLY a moment for me to regain my senses and realize I had to act immediately. I wanted to chase the shooters, but there were too many people who needed help right in front of me.

I swept the area for gunmen. Once I determined it was clear, I holstered my pistol. Two men from the group that had confronted us were dead.

One of the men had been shot in the back, but I didn’t know if it was an accident or if someone from his group had gotten tired of him. For safety reasons, I took the pistols from the bodies and secured them.

A moment later, I was at Marie’s side. She was on the deck and bleeding badly from cuts on her face. I could barely recognize her under all the blood. It pooled and dripped off her nose like a cheap faucet.

She said, “I swear, it’s not that bad. Some of the blood isn’t mine. Check on the girls in the container.”

A moment later I was in front of the storage container. The smell turned my stomach. A haze seemed to have settled over the few people still in the container. Piles of garbage filled the back corners. Junk-food wrappers, empty water bottles, and used toilet paper overflowed from one small garbage can to form a small mountain. Cockroaches scattered when I stepped inside.

A bucket used as a toilet was visible through a flimsy plastic curtain. I had a hard time imagining what the nine-day trip from Europe had been like for these poor souls.

Steph was checking the pulse of a man on the ground. He was ashen and his eyes looked up lifelessly at the rusty walls of the container. One leather loafer was missing from his left foot.

Steph looked up at me and shook her head.

I said, “Hit by a stray bullet?”

Steph said, “No. We have four dead in here. It looks like they all died from illness or heat exhaustion.” She indicated another man on the ground and two girls against the rear wall. There were three young women, alive, huddling together near the door to the container. Steph went to comfort them.

I went over to the rear wall. The two girls looked like they had been dead a couple of days. They had been placed next to each other and covered with a plastic tarp.

Both the girls looked like young teenagers; they had long hair and pretty faces. Faces with eyes that would never see home or family again. It was heartbreaking.

I thought about how these poor people had lived for the last nine days and I got mad. Fury washed over me like a wave. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this pissed off. And I knew just who I could focus my anger on.

I stepped out of the container with my hand on my pistol and said, “Where is that goddamn Inspector Vacile?”

Lorena Perez just pointed.

Across the cluttered deck, our best source of information lay flat, half of his face missing. Blood had gushed from the gunshot wound on his left cheek. Based on where he’d landed, I guessed he’d been shot by the men who surprised us. I wondered if it was done on purpose to keep him from talking to us.

I stepped over to Lorena. She wasn’t injured but she didn’t look too good. Her hands were shaking and she was leaning back against a storage container.

I put my arm around her shoulder. “You saved our asses. You okay?”

She looked up and nodded but didn’t say a word. I’d seen it before. The aftermath of police shooting could be devastating. She’d done her duty and proved she had talent.

Anthony Chilleo was holding pressure on the wound on Rick Morris’s arm.

I said, “Chill, how bad is it?”

“I’ll survive,” the Customs supervisor said.

“We’ve got help on the way. Nothing we can do for the others,” Chill said.

I searched the two dead men’s pockets, found some ID, and said, “They’re Russian.”

Chill mumbled, “Shocker.”

Chapter 77

HANNA SLAPPED THE wall in frustration. “Why can’t we get a decent reading on the tracker?”

Albert didn’t take his eyes off his phone as he tried again to refresh the location of the tracker sewn into the red backpack.

They’d spent two hours near the port looking for Magda with the red backpack.

During a quick break, sitting on the seawall in Bayside with the trendy shops behind them all closing down for the evening, Hanna turned to her brother and said, “Why did you shoot a Russian in the back?”

Albert looked at her as if she were speaking Martian. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I shoot him? They were trying to rip us off. It was our best chance to rid ourselves of the Russians here in Miami.”

“Did you see what happened to Billy?”

“No. It was too crazy. We’re lucky we got out of there alive.” Albert focused on his phone as he tried to bring up the tracker again.

Hanna said, “It’s getting late. Let’s head back to the hotel.”

As soon as the cab pulled into the Miami Gardens Inn, Hanna saw that the lights to their first-floor room were off. There was no way Josie and Tasi had gone to bed this early. There should have been a glow from the TV set, at the very least.

They rushed to the door, Albert with his pistol out.

Hanna fumbled with the key in the low light, then shoved the heavy door open and immediately flicked on a light so that Albert could scan the room.