EL BON PASTOR, BARCELONA
Carson and Dareh shelter behind several rows of empty dumpsters at the storage lot’s north end. Beyond them lies a jumble of garbage trucks, road barriers, cars covered with dust, steel-framework trailers missing wheels, random junk, and a few scrubby trees trying to eke out a living in what’s probably a toxic waste dump. A few sodium-vapor lights cast an orange film over the mess while also creating deep, black shadows. Carson’s sure the place looks better at night.
She overlays the map on what she sees to get oriented. The lot’s shaped like a trapezoid that’s sandwiched between two streets that meet at a forty-five-degree angle. The only vehicle entrance is in the middle of the two-hundred-meter frontage on Carrer de Serra, a divided four-lane road that runs northwest-southeast. The one-lane Carrer dels Cresques runs east-west behind them, forming a hundred-meter leg. A ragged line of ratty three- and four-story apartment blocks lines the other side of that street.
Either Sabadell isn’t planning to do much shooting, or the locals won’t care if they do.
Dareh whispers, “When will they come, do you think?” He’s swaddled in black jeans and a black hoodie with a blood-red stylized bird and “Oranssi Pazuzu” splashed across the chest, whatever that is.
“Anytime. It’s after nine.” Carson tugs down the bottom edge of her body armor. It’s never comfortable to sit in it for long. “Ever killed anybody?”
Dareh stares at the dumpster in front of him, breathing slow. Finally, he says, “In the Pâsdârân, I am with my platoon by Zaranj. It is in Afghanistan, by the border. Takfiri are there. The West call them ‘IS.’ You know IS?”
“That like ISIS?”
“Yes. They go across border, attack Milak, in Iran. We find them by road. We shoot them all.” He glances down at his hands, pressed between his thighs. “We kill wounded IS. I shoot two. Then we burn their vehicles and go back to Iran.”
Shooting the wounded. That’s hardcore. Normally she doesn’t approve of that—though she did it just three months ago—but Dareh was dealing with ISIS, and those evil bastards deserve it. “Okay. This’ll be different. Up close and personal. You okay with that?”
“Yes.” He draws a wicked-looking combat knife from the scabbard strapped to his left thigh. “Celeste is my friend. This people hurt her. I will hurt them.”
“Be quiet about it. Conserve your ammo. You got twenty-six rounds left.” He’s carrying the suppressed Walther she took from the hit team on Ibiza. She’s got the Glock. “How’d you get through the army being…the way you are?”
“Gay? I pretend. My sister sends to me a picture of her friend. I say she is my girlfriend. The men ask if we have relations. I say no, that is forbidden. Not until we marry. I agree when they say bad things about people like me.”
“Must’ve been hard.” Metal rattles to their right. “Shh.”
Twenty-five meters to their right, a metal gate next to a derelict gatehouse closes the only hole in the fence behind them. It’s crusted with junk, but there’s no barbed wire to deal with. It’s how Carson and Dareh got inside the lot. As she watches, four men jog past a gutted porta-san and fan out across the yard, taking firing positions behind vehicles or, in one case, a roll-off garbage bin. All have long weapons and tactical gear.
Carson checks her watch: 9:36. She’d expected them earlier. Maybe they still underestimate us. Too bad for them. She pushes down on Dareh’s shoulder until they’re both under cover. “You saw where they went?”
“Yes.”
“Take the two over there.” She points to his left. “Watch them, keep track of them. I’ll take these two.” She points to her right. “When Iris and Sebastian are a klick away, we move out. When we do, we move fast and hit hard. Celeste’s counting on us.”
Grebnev lounges in a hotel armchair while Ilya drives the drone around the subjects’ mansion. The drone’s night-vision camera is doing what it can with the low level of ambient light—the moon has almost set—but the picture on the video screen is seriously muddy.
Not that there’s much to see. The lights are on in the mansion’s ground floor, a first-floor bedroom, and the landscaping, but there’s not much moving in there. There’s been no obvious activity since the two cars left, the first forty-five minutes before the second. The two men he has in the field are probably getting extremely bored.
“Sir?” Ilya leans forward in his chair. “What does that look like to you?”
Grebnev sits up and peers at the collection of dark-gray shapes on the screen. “Where is this?”
“The north end of the property by the back wall.”
There’s something there, but Grebnev can’t tell what. “Can you switch to IR?”
“I can try. It hasn’t been working well.”
The picture wobbles, then blooms bright green. It finally stabilizes (sort of), showing a dull, dark-green field with slightly brighter clumps of vegetation scattered around. The video rotates as the drone turns. After a few seconds, six bright heat sources appear in a line along the wall. They’re shaped like men lying flat on their stomachs. The drone stops, hovering.
“Well, that’s interesting.” Grebnev rings Kallström.
“Hallo. Yes?” Heavily accented English with road noise in the background.
Grebnev switches to English. “Kallström, this is Grebnev. Do you have a team at the mansion?”
“If I do, what?”
“If you do, I know who owns the six men on the property. If you don’t, then we have police there. Answer the question.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t mention that before. What is their mission?”
“When Sonia is here, my people kill other gang people. Then problem solved. You approve?” The way he says it, it’s clear he doesn’t care if Grebnev approves.
“Just so I know what’s happening. Grebnev out.” He taps his chin with the phone for a few seconds as he considers the situation. So far, none of Kallström’s plans have worked especially well. He changes to Russian. “Ilya, keep an eye on these jokers. Let me know when they move.” He rings Karik. “Get your men ready. You may get your hostile fire pay tonight.”
Ferran glances away from the road toward Kallström as the man stows his phone in his back pocket. “Who was that?”
“Grebnev. He is like old woman.”
He has good reason. “Your team at the mansion knows to hold until you tell them to go, yes?”
“Yes, yes.”
The street is mostly deserted at this hour. Walking down here at night isn’t the smartest move, and the run-down warehouses don’t host any official business that would bring car traffic this late. They pass the elevator for the Verneda Metro stop. Four short blocks left to the meet. Ferran says, “Let me do the talking tonight.”
“Yes, yes.”
There are a lot of moving pieces in play tonight, and most belong to Kallström. That doesn’t make Ferran as comfortable as it used to. Kallström’s becoming sloppier, less attentive to detail, more likely to improvise rather than plan. Ferran will need to have a talk with him about this soon. Tonight, all the man has to do is tell his people to open fire once Sonia’s in the open.
Two minutes later, he turns the Gelandewagen right into the storage lot. It looks deserted. He knows it’s not.
It’s 21:48. Twelve minutes until Sonia arrives. And with any luck, no more than fifteen minutes before she’s dead.
Carson’s about five meters away from her first target, a guy crouching behind a garbage truck with a burned-out cab. Like her and Dareh, the guy’s wearing a black balaclava. Unlike them, he has a suppressed M4 carbine. She needs to make sure he’s out of action from moment one.
Sebastian’s voice murmurs in her Bluetooth earpiece. “I passed the metro station.”
Four blocks away. The black Mercedes SUV’s still parked east of the driveway, facing the entrance, still dark. Carson’s in the perfect position to take out the guy with the M4. She hates back-shooting people—if they’ve got their backs to her, they’re not threats, right? So what changed?
Celeste changed things. That strange, innocent young woman Carson’s known for less than three weeks and is now ready to run into combat for. But why? The music? That’s part of it—if she can do what she does now, what will she be able to do ten years from now? Twenty? But that’s the easy, wrong answer.
It’s the unconditional trust Celeste gives Carson. Trust, and faith. Trust that Carson will protect her, keep her safe. Faith that Carson will always be there. The same trust and faith Carson’s younger brothers gave her. She was so tough on them, rode them so hard, and she can’t believe how good they all turned out. That trust was what made her grow up so fast—not her father’s absences, not her mother’s drunken insults and abuse. She had to be worthy of her brothers’ trust, no matter what it cost her. Like she has to be worthy of Celeste’s trust now.
I failed her once. Can’t do it again.
Sebastian’s voice: “I’m at the signal before the petrol station.”
One block away. Time to go. “Okay. When you come in, keep your lights on. Be careful, both of you.” She has Sebastian and Dareh tied into a conference call on her phone. “Dareh? Go.”
“Okay.”
I’m coming for you, Celeste. Hang on.
She aims at the guy with the rifle, exhales, then fires.