Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

Four yellow doors, each servicing eight apartments, four to either side of a common stairway, judging by the curtainless windows rising in a column over each door. The only other windows without curtains are small ones at head height on the ground floor. Storage. No visible fire escape. It makes the top two end apartments ideal safe houses. Your enemy can only reach you by coming up the common stairs. With eyes on the door and stairs, there are no surprises.

But where’s the out?

He walks completely around a neighboring structure, identical to the others. Each apartment has a balcony.

And there’s the out: in the event of a raid, Fahiz can quickly escape by lowering himself from one balcony to the next until he reaches ground level. There’s even a downspout outside the balcony for an express route, should the back prove to be guarded.

Dulwich would have a camera on the yellow door and two more inside: one looking down from the first landing; a second, from the highest landing, making the castle impenetrable to a surprise attack. Dulwich would not bother to put eyes on the egress; an escape route exists only in case of an assault—a frontal attack.

He would put a man on the ground.

—

KNOX MAKES A SECOND PASSaround the apartment building, this time from a wider radius, alert for a guard he might have missed. Seeing none, he convinces himself a guard in such a quiet cul-de-sac would only attract attention and arouse suspicion, no matter how carefully placed. It is the solitude, the remoteness, of the setting that makes it so perfect to its purpose.

He double-checks the handgun, hoping to find more than the four rounds left in its magazine. Reminds himself it isn’t just Fahiz he’s after. Despite circumstantial evidence connecting Kreiger to Fahiz, and Knox’s hope that Kreiger’s external hard drives may further implicate Fahiz, he needs hard evidence to trade to Brower. A captive girl is unlikely—the girls were meant for the shipment Knox interrupted. There could be rug or fiber evidence linking the man to the knot shop, accounting, phones or a computer. Any and all of it is equally as important as the man himself. He can’t trade half a package.

Satellite dishes hang off the half balconies in the back, including the first-floor corner balcony that is Knox’s destination. A blue glow behind the gauze curtains warns him that a television is on in the bedroom, just on the other side of a double-glazed glass door, also curtained from the street.

The drainpipe is a cheap aluminum; he rethinks the idea of anyone using this as a fire pole; it won’t support him. But it provides enough of a grip to allow him to extend himself as he jumps, and catch hold of the balcony’s concrete platform. He pulls himself higher, takes hold of the banister rungs and gets a knee secure beneath him. He can hear a sound track and dialogue traveling less than a meter, can ill afford a neighbor crying out an alarm or calling the police. He holds to the very edge of the tiny concrete balcony, climbing up onto its south wall in order to reach the balcony directly overhead.

An irritated voice from inside freezes him. The music and dialogue have stopped as well. It takes him several seconds to process that his legs are now blocking the dish, have interrupted the satellite transmission. He pulls and swings his legs high just as the door opens. Knox is parallel to the balcony below, stretched along the outside of the next balcony’s rail. An African man passes just feet below him. He bends to inspect the dish just as the music and dialogue start up again and a woman calls out in Dutch that everything’s fine.

The door shuts and locks.

Knox climbs from the second to the third balcony; from the third to the fourth. He’s suddenly more mechanical, more in control. He places his ear to the door as he slips the pick gun into the lock and pulls its trigger. Tumblers are caught. With a slight wiggle, the pick gun turns. He rids himself of all expectations. This is his gift: the ability to exist entirely in real time. It allows him to be prepared for anything, for nothing, for everything. He takes what he’s given and has the evolved nervous system to react with split-second timing.

The room is dark on the other side of the glass. He closes his eyelids and waits for his pupils to adjust. Slips the gun from his lower back.

The door opens slowly and he peers in to see a loveless room with a floor mattress, alarm clock and cheap lamp. He is exceptionally careful closing the door behind him, aware that even a small gust of wind could reveal him.

A knife blade of light cuts beneath the bedroom door, beyond which the murmur of male voices carries. Knox stretches out on the tile floor, closes his right eye and peers beneath the gap with his left. The smell of cigar smoke taints the air.

Three pairs of shoes, a few feet away, around a table set with four chairs. The heels aimed toward him are polished, the seams tightly stitched. To the right, black Reeboks size 12 or 14. Barely seen: the toes of a pair of black military boots, exceptionally wide. Like the Reeboks, they look big.

His index finger slips through the trigger guard, finding the trigger. He practices swiveling the barrel from right to left—the Reeboks to the military boots. He must keep his face away from the recoil, knows he’ll be momentarily deafened by the reports.

His vision refocuses: two sleeping teenagers on mats beyond the military boots. Enfolded in a tangle of blanket. Knox catches two of the spoken words: French. North African French at that. The men are playing a game of cards.

“I need a piss,” a voice says in French. The polished shoes turn toward Knox.

Is it Fahiz? Does he have the wrong apartment?

Knox rolls out of the way of the door coming open, stands and tucks behind. The man who appears in the soft light invading from the adjacent room is African, not Turkish. He spots Knox out of the corner of his eye and his voice catches. Knox eases the door back toward the jamb with his heel as he seizes the man by the throat and lifts him off his feet, one-handed. The door clicks shut.

Knox walks the flailing man into the bathroom. Closes this door as well. Runs the water. Indicates for the man to remain quiet—the gun aimed into the man’s forehead. He smells shit in the air; the man has crapped himself.

“Turks?” Knox says, speaking French. “This building. Men. Possibly small girls.”

The man nods. He would have agreed if Knox had mentioned green-tailed aliens, but Knox takes it as progress.

“Where? Which apartment?” He cautions, “You call out, and it’s your last, my friend.”

The terrified man points over his shoulder.

Knox eases his grip on the man’s throat. “Across! Across the hall.”

“How many?”

This adds to the man’s horror: he doesn’t have the answer.

“One man? Three?”

The man shakes his head violently. “More than one, certainly.”

“They live here long?”

Another denial. “Come and go. Not so often.”

“Turks?”

The man nods. “Not nice, these men. Never speak.”

Knox studies the bathroom: concrete walls. It’s a bunker.

He says, “We will go into the other room. You will tell your friends it’s okay. The children and your friends . . .”

“Brothers. They are my brothers.”

“You, all of you, must come in here. Stay in here. It’s safe in here, these walls.” Knox reminds the man of the gun in his hand, and the man nods. “Silently. No sound. These are bad men.”

Another quick nod from the man.

Knox keeps the man in front of him. Together they pass into the room, and his hostage speaks rapidly, telling the two younger men, “It is all right!” The men are on their feet, the tension thick. The kids come awake.