James Patterson - Blindside

He started to pant. He was losing color.

All I said was “How bad?”

He turned and lifted his hand so I could see the wound. Even through his mangled shirt, I knew it was nothing to fool around with.

“I have an idea.”

Fiore said, “Is it better than your idea to come here alone?” “Only marginally.”

“Better than nothing. Let’s hear it.”

“I’m gonna lay down some heavy fire. And you scoot out the door.”

Fiore said, “I’m not going to leave you here.”

“You’re not going to do either of us a favor by bleeding out on the floor. Go get some help. And some immediate medical attention.”

I could see him thinking about it.

Then I said forcefully, “You need attention right now. On the count of three, you get out that door. And don’t forget to get me some help.”

I counted quickly. “One, two, three.” Then I slid to the right of the post and emptied my magazine. I spread the fire around, trying to keep anyone with a goddamn gun in the room from raising his head.

One bullet struck the metal handrail along the catwalk. It caused an impressive spark. The air was thick with dust and gunpowder. The slide on my pistol locked back. I was empty. I threw myself behind the support column.

Now I needed time.

CHAPTER 72

AS I CROUCHEDbehind the post, I said a quick prayer for the FBI man to make it. The ploy had worked. Bill Fiore had slipped out the door while everyone’s heads were down. I couldn’t buy him any more time with the gun. But I didn’t need to surrender immediately, either.

Sweat stung my eyes. Suddenly I realized I was dehydrated. And exhausted. Gunfights can do that to you.

I called out, “Hang on, hang on. Can we talk about this?”

I was surprised to hear Henry’s voice. He was apparently up in one of the offices around the catwalk. He shouted back, “Drop your gun and surrender. Then we can talk.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me?”

“Christoph and Ollie will definitely kill you if you don’t. Now both of you drop your guns.”

I smiled at the idea that they thought the wounded FBI agent was still with me. I milked it for as much time as possible.

Finally I said, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘both of us.’ I’m the only one here.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“I don’t have a partner. That was just a guy who’d been bothering me before.”

I heard the slovenly Ollie call out from the other side of the room, “He’s telling the truth. He’s the only one behind the post.”

I slid my empty gun across the floor. Then I stepped out from behind the post with my hands up. Gunnar was, of course, still there on the floor. A giant puddle of blood had spread out around him. His eyes stared straight ahead. I guess he’d had more to worry about than closing his eyes when he bled out.

The other man I had shot in the leg was whimpering, still clutching his upper thigh. Real tears matched his tattooed teardrop. Strands of his dark hair hung across his face. His pants were soaked with blood, but he hadn’t lost a bucketful like poor Gunnar.

The two killers from New York, the ones I now considered the professionals, rushed toward me with their guns up. Christoph showed some sense when he immediately put my hands behind my back and fastened them with something. It felt like rope, but then I realized it was a pair of disposable handcuffs. I’d seen them at police trade shows. They looked like shoelaces with a sturdy plastic bracket that locked the two thin cords in place. I tugged on my arm and was impressed at how well they worked.

Ollie searched me carefully and kept my wallet, leaving behind the few euro coins I had in my trousers pocket.

“I got twenty-eight euros in there.”

He smiled. “If you need them, I’ll give them back to you.”

“What if you’re not around?”

Ollie chuckled. “Trust me, I’ll be close by until you really won’t need cash anymore.”

That was a little disconcerting.

Now my main hope was that Fiore could get help here immediately.

Henry came down the stairs from the catwalk with Natalie right behind him. He walked quickly across the floor, shouting for men to starting sterilizing the place. He paused briefly to look down at the injured man with the teardrop tattoo. Then he spoke in Estonian to the remaining shooter, the other man who had crept up next to me when I first stepped into the room.

The man shrugged, then shot his injured comrade in the face. Aside from a surprised gurgle just before the shot, there wasn’t time for the injured man to react. Now he lay flat on the floor, blood leaking from the hole between his eyes. The blue teardrop was still visible.

Henry casually looked my way and said, “No witnesses, no links to me. You see? I really am smarter than any cop.”

Christoph and Ollie pushed me forward as we all rushed out of the building. They shoved me into the back of a surprisingly clean Volkswagen Passat. It had a remnant odor of pot but was otherwise immaculate.

Ollie turned around in the passenger seat and pointed a Smith & Wesson revolver at me. “Lie down on the floor and don’t sit up again. If you do, I’ll have to shoot you.”

“If I don’t, does that mean you’ll just shoot me later?”

“Is that something you want to test right now?”

He was eloquent in his own way.

CHAPTER 73

THE RIDE INthe back of the Dutch killers’ Volkswagen had been short, probably less than ten minutes. I’d had a hard time calculating the speed with my face on the floor of the car. I believed Ollie when he said he’d shoot me. After years as a cop, you get a good sense for someone who’s full of shit. Ollie was not, even if his looks said otherwise. Stuck on the floor, with an utter lack of knowledge of Tallinn, Estonia, I was up shit creek. I had no idea where I was or why they had taken me instead of killing me on the spot. Perhaps I’d been spared just because Natalie would’ve been a witness to Henry ordering it. I might never know.

I had gotten a quick glimpse of the street and the fairly nice stand-alone office building I was rushed into after they stopped the car and hauled me out. Then they’d shoved me down a flight of stairs to some kind of basement with an empty loading dock area at the back. The building had to be perched on a hill, then, the dock at the far end lower than the main entrance. I’d been lucky to stay upright on the hard, concrete steps with steel strips embedded along the edges. At the bottom of the stairs, they’d crammed me into a small room with stained cinder-block walls sweating tiny beads of water. It wasn’t that humid, but basements did weird things all over the world. Dead bug carcasses littered the bare concrete floor with a drain in the center of the room.

It was dark and smelled of urine. Not the image I had of a cybercriminal’s hideout at all. Not even a decent super-villain lair. This sucked.

I had tried to pick up some intel on the ride over, but the men had spoken to each other only in Dutch. I worried about Bill Fiore and his wounds. I hoped he was getting treatment right now. That would mean he’d also alerted the local police to my kidnapping. I wasn’t a hopeless case yet.

Now I found myself in a room where the only light was a line along the bottom of the door, from a bulb at the base of the stairs next to it. I sat on a hard, wooden chair, like I was waiting to see the principal at a Catholic school. My hands were still secured by the cord handcuffs. And just like in a holding cell of a police station, there was a bolt in the wall with a ring on the end big enough to tie a rope through. That rope was attached to my handcuffs and kept me in place. I wasn’t impressed with Estonia’s restraint technology. I felt like I was in the Alabama of the Baltics. But I was secure. I had already tried to break free and only had sore wrists to show for it. Maybe I should watch my New Yorker’s natural tendency to make fun of Alabama.