Page 2 of Puck

I knew orders were being given—I could only tell from the tone of voice since the orders were in whatever language those dickknobs spoke. Silence for a moment, and then I heard the clatter and thunk of the cargo door opening.

A male head popped in, followed by the rest of the body—average height, average build, brown hair, kinda ugly, and carrying an AK on his back by a strap. He passed right by me without seeing me, somehow, and made straight for the pile of luggage strapped down in the middle of the hold. He was about two hundred feet away and was busy trying to sort the luggage; it was black as hell in there and I could barely see him.

As the second dude walked past me, I tiptoed up behind him, wrapped my arm around his throat and gripped my wrist in a chokehold. Fucker didn’t know self-defense, apparently, because all he did was gurgle and thrash, surprised and, well, choked to death. When I was sure he wasn’t going to pull out some Judo shit, I loosened my hold so he could answer a question.

“English?” I growled in his ear over the noise outside and the sound of the engine slowing down.

“Da! Da!”

“Where are the girls being taken?”

He wiggled, and I squeezed until he quit.

“Market,” he rasped.

“Which market? Where?”

“Don’t—don’t know!”

I squeezed again, hard enough to impress upon him the understanding that I could end him with a flex and a twist. “Talk, bitch, or you’re dead.”

“I don’t know!” He gurgled this a little too loudly, and I clamped down until he thrashed and struggled. “Promise, promise—I only load baggage and guard door.”

“The assholes in charge—they know everyone by name and face?”

“Nyet. But they only speak Russian or . . .Ukrainets. From Ukraine,da?”

“How many?”

“How many where?”

I heard a diesel engine cough into life, and assumed that meant time was short.

“Doesn’t really matter how many, does it?” I asked, but the question was meant rhetorically.

And besides, I didn’t give him a chance to answer. I squeezed until he thrashed, and kept squeezing until his kicking slowed, and then I set him down, stripped him of his AK, and checked him for useful shit. He had a cheap plastic lighter, some shitty Russian cigarettes, a spare mag for the AK, a beaten, old, and scuffed-to-hell Makarov 9mm with a mag for that. A decent handful of cash in American dollars, euros and rubles, a passport, and a small black folding knife.

Enough to get me started.

I hauled the body to the very back of the cargo hold and hoped to hell nobody looked in there, or knew who had been sent in to get the bags.

I heard a voice shouting something, in what sounded like Russian, getting closer, so I stuffed the cigarettes, cash, lighter, magazines, and knife in my BDU pockets, slung the AK around my back, and shoved the pistol behind my waistband at the small of my back. And then started slinging suitcases toward the cargo door.

My plan was stupid, but it was all I could think of: pretend to be one of them for as long as I could and then start shooting, or whichever course of action seemed best at that particular moment. Right now, though, I threw suitcases. A pair of hands grabbed them as they reached the door; he didn’t glance in, thankfully. If he had, he’d have seen the dead guy, which probably would have ended the game before it started.

I started to wish I could speak more than just English. Thresh and some of the other A1S guys spoke more than one language, but that just wasn’t my skill set. I could ping a nail with a 9mm round from damn near a hundred yards, I could read blood splatter as easily as “Run, Spot, Run,” I could hold my own in a firefight, fistfight, or knifefight, and I could analyze ballistics and trajectories like a road map. I just couldn’t speak anything except plain old English, and even that I often mangled. Fine. Whatever. Wasn’t usually a problem. Right now, though? I had a feeling it was going to be a major fuckin’ problem.

I tossed the last suitcase at the opening and followed it over, hopping out of the baggage hold after it. A monster tub of lard with platinum blond hair, wearing a maroon tracksuit with three white stripes down the sleeves and pant legs, was waiting by the back end of an aging Mercedes party bus, the kind of thing that was bigger than a van but shorter than a tour bus, usually used for bachelorette parties and winery tours. He tossed in two suitcases, and then glanced at me as I hopped down.

“Gde Anton?” he said, peering at the cargo hold doorway.

I shrugged, grabbed a suitcase and tossed it in the back. My heart was hammering, but I kept up the pretense, helping the big fat bruiser load the luggage into the van. He was easily six six, and probably weighed three hundred or three fifty, but it was all flab; he was gasping and sweating just from tossing a few suitcases.

My plan was just to bluff my way through, shrug and grunt and act dumb, and hope an opportunity presented itself. When the luggage was loaded, Tubby McTracksuit climbed up and behind the wheel. I climbed up into the van after him, and the guy shot me a quizzical look but didn’t object, so I took the nearest seat, shifting the AK around front as I sat down. I scanned the van, and my heart sank. I saw not only Lola and Temple, but Layla and Kyrie too, plus another eighteen or twenty other girls. What the fuck? How did the A1S girls end up here?

All the women were between sixteen-ish and forty-ish, ranging from the plain side of pretty to drop-dead gorgeous, and they were of all builds and ethnicities. And they all looked terrified. Most of them had tear tracks dried on their cheeks, and a few looked dazed and numb. Fuckers had all four of our women? They hadKyrie? Motherfuckers weren’t smart, then. Taking Kyrie meant they’d pissed off Valentine Roth, and that wasnota good move. They had Layla, which meant Harris was pissed off, and they had Lola and Temple, which meant Thresh and Duke were pissed off. Four of the deadliest men on the planet, with nearly endless resources at their disposal—and you snatched their women? Pretty fuckin’ stupid.

It would have been comical, except that even for those guys, time was of the essence. I only hoped they knew where we were, and they got here in time.