Page 18 of Lash

Once inside, I close the window once more.

I am in a small, dark, cluttered supply closet—shelves hold boxes of paper towels and toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and the like. I put my socks and boots back on and peek out of the doorway—a long hallway extends in either direction, lined with low-pile industrial carpet, wall sconces at regular intervals shedding orange-yellow light from Edison bulbs.

I watch and wait for several minutes, but no patrol comes by, so I ease out, checking ceiling corners for cameras; through sheer dumb luck, I seem to have emerged in a blind spot. I creep down the hallway, listening for footsteps or voices, scanning for cameras. I spot one as I reach the end of the hall where it turns to the right; the camera watches the hallway, however, and not the stairwell. I shake my head, bemused. A quick scan of the stairwell assures me there is no camera here—once I'm out withSolomon and his companions, I'll have to have a word with Stjepan about his so-called security.

While my recollection of the layout of the compound is hazy, I remember that the security room is in the basement, along with the holding cells.

I descend the stairs, almost missing the laser tripwire along the bottom of the doorway; the door opens into the stairwell, so there is no way to cross the threshold without setting it off.

Tricky.

Once again, pure dumb luck is on my side—the door swings open just then. "This is Lukas," I hear a guard speaking Croatian. "Perimeter check."

I hide next to the door so it hides me as it swings open. The guard is adjusting his gear belt as he enters the stairwell—settling his radio on the belt clip, adjusting the microphone and wire, working the earpiece in place, checking his flashlight and pistol. He doesn't see me because he’s not even looking.

Remarkable stupidity and incompetence.

A slow-close hydraulic mechanism allows the guard to reach the next level before the door even begins closing. I step over the tripwire so it only shows a single open-and-close from the guard, pausing just on the other side of the threshold to assess my surroundings.

This hallway is garishly lit by fluorescents, the floor is polished concrete and the walls bare, featureless drywall. The first door on the right should be the security room. There is a camera watching this hallway, but that won’t matter beyond the next thirty seconds.

I hustle to the door to the security room, draw my gun, and enter. Two men sit in front of a display of monitors, but one is watching a football match on his phone with an earbud in his ear, and the other is eating yogurt—neither one has his attention on the screens, or they'd have seen me.

"Forget something, Lukas?" The yogurt-eater says, not looking around. "You always forget something. I swear, you'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed onto your skinny neck."

I press the barrel of my pistol to the back of his head. "Not quite," I say in Croatian. I press harder. "Hands up. Both of you. I don’t want to kill you, so just cooperate."

Their hands go up.

"Good." I reach down and retrieve their pistols, stuffing them in my pockets. "Now. Shut down the system."

"He'll still know you were here," the football watcher says.

"I know. I don't care. Tell him I'll call him later, as we've much to discuss." I tap him on the skull with the barrel hard enough to get his attention without hurting him. "Shut it down. Cameras, lasers, everything."

A moment later, the system is off.

"Good. Now. My friends are in the room down the hall, yes?"

"Yes. The next door."

"On the floor, both of you. On your bellies, hands on the back of your heads."

They comply, and I bind their wrists behind their backs with their own zip ties; I remove a boot and a sock from each man's foot, remove the laces from the boots, and gag each man with his sock and bootlace.

On the desk is a tablet device. I put it in front of one of the guards' faces to unlock it and search it for a layout map; once I find the map, I spend a few minutes studying it and memorizing the best route out—one level up to the ground floor and right out the front door, it appears.

I snatch a keycard on a lanyard from one of the guard’s necks and exit the security room, watching and listening for a moment. I hear a merry, tuneless whistling from the far end of the hallway. I close the door. Wait.

The door opens. "Camera six is offline, Anton,” a voice says.

"I know," I answer. "I'm working on it."

A pause. “You're not Anton."

I hear the door creak open further, hear his foot squeak on the tile. "Who are you? What are you doing in here?"

I shoot out of the chair and level my gun at him. "Hands up. I won't kill you if you do as I tell you."