Greg Rucka - Walking dead

"Mar haba," he said.

"Al-salaam alaykum," I answered. Peace be upon you.

"Wa alaykum e-salaam," he answered. And upon you peace.

The insincerity was palpable to all of us.

He rose from his seat, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out with his toe, his attention, for the moment, on its destruction. He was wearing Nikes. They looked new. When he was certain he'd ground the butt to shreds, he looked up again, this time at Xia.

"You can go," he told her.

Xia took hold of Kekela's forearm, started trying to move her back in the direction we had come. "Come on."

"No," Kekela said. "No, I'm staying with him."

"Keke, please," Xia said, trying to move her again. "We should go."

I'd been keeping my eyes on the man, the same way he'd been watching me. There was no question, now, that Xia had set me up, and from her behavior, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, that she'd done so against her will. There had always been the chance this was how things would play out; the moment I'd handed over the picture of Tiasa, it pretty much guaranteed that the wrong people would take notice. But the wrong people for Xia were the right people for me, and I'd played the gamble willingly, and I'd settle it now, no matter the cost.

At least, no matter the cost to me.

"It's okay," I told Kekela. "You should go."

"No! What's going on?" She jerked herself free from Xia's grip, turning on her. "What did you do? What have you done, Xia?"

Xia didn't answer.

"I told him he could trust you! I told him because I trust you!"

"If she won't leave," the man said to me, "she's welcome to come inside with you. I have friends who would be happy to keep her company."

"I'm sure you do," I answered. "That's why she's going to leave."

"No, no I won't, I won't go. I'm staying with you, Danil!"

I broke from the staring contest, faced Kekela. She looked miserable, guilty and afraid. I put my hands on her shoulders, spoke in Georgian.

"Either they have Tiasa, or they know where I can find her, and that's why I'm here. You got me this far. You did everything I asked you to. But now you have to go."

"Oh God, oh my God." Her voice had gone tight. "This is my fault. It's all my fault."

"It's not."

"They're going to kill you. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?"

"First they'll have some questions for me."

"Oh God, oh God. No, no, I can't leave you."

"If you go in there, Kekela, they'll use you against me. It's like you said by the pool. I need to concentrate on saving one woman at a time."

It took her a second to parse, to remember, and then she half laughed, half sobbed.

"You are fucked up," she told me.

"Without question," I agreed. "Go. Please."

This time, when Xia took her arm, she didn't resist. I watched them round the corner, going out of sight. Kekela didn't look back.

When I turned again to face him, the man's smile was exactly as it had been before. He indicated the door he'd been seated beside. "Shall we go inside?"

"After you."

"No." The smile died, turned to ice in the middle of the desert. "After you."

Fifteen Before I went through the door, I thought that I'd play it their way, at least for a while. They had questions, I was sure. At the very least, they wanted to know my interest in this fourteen-year-old girl they'd seen in the picture Xia had shown them. They wanted to know who I was, why I cared. If I was some crusading law enforcement officer, or someone in the business, someone trafficking, though the last seemed highly unlikely.

So I thought that I would let that run, let them intimidate and threaten and even hurt me, if that's what it took. Just to get them talking, just to see if Tiasa really was here, and if not, to find out if they knew her, knew where she was. It was risky as hell, but it seemed the best idea.

Then I stepped inside, into a spare and ugly makeshift waiting room with a couple of rundown chairs, some pillows in the corner surrounding a large sheesha pipe. Digital photos, printed on plain paper, were tacked to the wall opposite me, the menu of the day, the girls available. A single door, closed, led out of the room opposite me.

I took it all in as I entered, the man in the dishdasha closing the door after us even as another man stepped out from where he'd been against the entry wall. Maybe another Emirati, I couldn't be sure, this one dressed in loose linen pants and an overlarge white linen shirt. He had a shotgun in his hands, a stubby little pump-action Serbu model with an after-market gold finish. As soon as the door closed, the man in the dishdasha said something in Arabic, and the man with the shotgun stepped toward me, the barrel of the gun not quite in-line, and I could tell he was going to use it as a prod.

At which point I thought, Fuck it.

I swept my forearm up to clear the barrel of the shotgun, pivoting into him, catching hold of the weapon in my right hand. At the same time, with my left, I punched my fingers into his throat, just beneath his Adam's apple, then again, into his left eye. He lost the shotgun to me, choking as he staggered back.

I spun back to the entrance, saw that the best reaction the man in the dishdasha had managed as yet was to be stunned, which suited me fine, and frankly was kind of the point. He was still looking stunned as I kicked him in the knee with my left. Adrenaline turned the kick more vicious than I'd intended, and something in the joint buckled and broke, and he toppled, screaming in Arabic. Then he was on the floor, and I kicked him in the face, hard, and he cut to silence.

I flipped the shotgun around in my grip, turning again to the man I'd taken it from. He had fallen back against the wall, struggling to keep his feet, blood running from his eye, his face swollen with the need for air. His right hand was going behind his back, and I knew he was drawing on me, forcing an escalation that didn't leave me any option. I shot him point-blank, and whoever had loaded the Serbu had chosen birdshot for it, and it was as devastatingly messy as it was effective.

There was a half beat of silence as I went to the body, searching it. By the time I'd pulled the pistol from the dead man's hand, the first scream had come, childish and high-pitched. Footsteps pounded on the ceiling above me, at least two sets. The pistol was a semi-auto, a Beretta, and I tucked it into my jeans, then glanced back at the man in the dishdasha. He was semiconscious, bleeding and groaning.

The room I was in had only the two doors, the one leading out, the other leading deeper within. I needed to go deeper, because if Tiasa was here, that's where she'd be. But deeper meant more men with guns. Going outside would give up the initiative and lose me time, and I'd get neither back. Staying where I was wouldn't work, either; unless whoever was coming in response was either dense or mental, he'd pause outside to assess, rather than charging into the room headlong, because he couldn't know who had shot whom. Once he realized his friends weren't answering, he'd then as likely spray the room with bullets as not.

I jacked the next shell up on the shotgun, moving to the inner door, and opening it without hesitating. It wasn't that I was sure of myself; it was that I didn't have time to be cautious. The hallway was short, maybe fifteen feet, turned ninety degrees left at its end, rooms on either side. I closed the door behind me silently, listening to movement above, the sounds of whimpering, the hush of men's voices. The rapid movement had turned to caution.

I took the door on the left, as fast and as quiet as I could. It was a bathroom, broken tile and one shit-stained seat, the bowl half-filled with excrement and urine. The light was on, and I left it that way, shutting the door silently after me. I swung the front grip down on the Serbu and forced myself to breathe, trying to replenish and stockpile oxygen, listening hard for movement in the hall.