Ashen Rayne (Shadowlands Book 1) (22 page)

Smoak didn’t wait to see him get run over. She was already in the truck. She looked at the driver and held up the blood-covered blade.

“Stop the truck.”

The driver looked her and sucked on the Russian cigarette that was clenched between his teeth.

“You can’t kill me,” he said in a cloud of smoke. “I’m driving. One twitch and we’re going into the wall. I have the upper hand.”

Smoak took her glasses off and set them on the dash. She then stabbed the driver through the thigh and grabbed him by the head. In a flood of anger, she slammed his face repeatedly into the steering wheel making the horn blow with every word she yelled.

“No. You. Don’t.”

He sagged in his seat and Smoak reached over him to open the door. He realized what she was doing and sat up, one hand reaching for her throat. She lowered her chin and bit his hand, tearing a gobbet of flesh from the soft meat between his thumb and forefinger. He howled in pain, but kept struggling, and his nails tore a ragged line in her face.

Smoak turned her face away and hit him in the throat with her elbow. The driver gagged and she pulled herself up on an overhead grab-handle. With it as leverage, she kicked as hard as she could. By the fourth impact, his face was pulp, but still, he hung on. He smiled showing broken teeth and turned the wheel. Smoak felt the truck swerve violently, and she grabbed the wheel herself. There was a jarring impact, then another, and the truck slid to a stop wedged between a small foreign car and the guardrail.

“How many do you think died,
Pizda
?” he said when the truck had settled.

Smoak pulled her knife out of his thigh and rammed it through his jaw. “At least one.”

It took some time for Smoak to extricate herself from the smashed cab of the Peterbilt. By the time she did, the second truck was long gone, lost in the flow of traffic somewhere ahead.

She dropped onto the pavement and ran alongside the trailer, ignoring the calls from nearby cars asking if she was okay. It didn’t look as bad as she’d thought. There was little damage to the cargo container at all. From the looks of things, the cab and guardrail had absorbed most of the impact, leaving the container safe and sound. With any luck, the victims had suffered nothing more than a few bumps and bruises.

She reached the back of the truck and heaved at the bar that held the door shut. It came open with a whine of metal grating on metal and a puff of rust. She let it swing wide to reveal the yawning blackness of the container. At first, she couldn’t see anything, but then faces started to appear in the gloom. Dirty, frightened, uninjured faces.

Smoak did her best to smile. “My name is Smoak. You’re going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, the police and ambulances were on their way and everyone had been let off the truck to stand in the fresh air for the first time in days. No one had suffered anything worse than a sprain in the accident. The drugs in their system had kept them from tensing at the first impact, and they had just ridden it out like a jumble of old dolls. They were shaken and bruised, but far better off than they could have been.

Rock had gathered everyone in a safe place in the shadow of the truck and was taking names, but Smoak could already see that Rayne wasn’t among them. She had the same hair as Blaze and would have been visible at fifty feet.

“What now?”

Ashley dabbed at the wound on Smoak’s face with an antiseptic pad.

Smoak winced and pulled away. “That hurts, Ash. Can you track the other truck?”

“Hold still,” Ashley said. “I don’t know if I can track it, it isn’t exactly a legal cargo.”

Smoak frowned, but let Ashley finish her work. “Don’t they need a password or something to get onto the dock and drop off the container?”

Ashley smiled. “That’s funny. No, SK, they don’t need a password. They probably only need a pocket full of those coins you carry around, but I’ll try.”

“Fine. Do what you can. I’m going to borrow a vehicle and go after them, have Rock call me when you have something,” Smoak said.

She slid off the hood of the Evade and climbed over the wrecked truck to where a handful of volunteers had parked. Most of them had left the keys in their vehicles while they helped Rock with the accident scene. With a twinge of guilt, she climbed into a late model Ford pickup and roared off. She didn’t have time to waste asking nicely. The container was getting further away by the minute and Rayne along with it.

Less than a mile later, she had to make a decision. Ahead the highway intersected with the A1-A Expressway. The A1 direction would lead toward the docks and international shipping. The highway would leave upstate and eventually lead to Georgia and the rest of the country. Either option was just as viable and ruthless. However, on a truck, the captives would be more likely to be seen or heard on a journey. Whereas, on a ship with minimal crew, a handful of trained men could keep them under wraps with little difficulty.

With no word from Ashley, Smoak turned on the A1 and headed for the docks, hoping her talent for being where she was needed wouldn’t fail her. She was accelerating down the ramp toward the 395 bypass when Rock called. She flipped the phone open and stuck it partway into her shirt.

“What have you got, Rocky? Tell me these guys are going to a ship at Port Miami.”

“They are,” Rock replied. “Miss Ashley broke into the highway cameras and found that they are heading into the port right now. She also found a manifest for a cargo ship bound for Mexico that is being held for two containers. It’s the only ship in port that still has cargo room.”

“Where?” Smoak asked, pushing the Ford’s V8 as hard as she could.

There was a pause and she could hear Rock asking Ashley. He came back on a moment later.

“The cargo ships are at the south end of the docks. The one you are looking for is named Stralsund K. As far as Miss Ashley can tell from the photographs, it looks just like all the other cargo ships in port. Blue-black and rust colored.”

“Do the words ‘needle in a haystack’ mean anything to you? Keep digging,” Smoak said.

She closed the phone and guided the Ford at breakneck speed down the port’s main road until she could see the guard station at the end. She felt in her jacket for her military identification and remembered she was wearing Blaze’s jacket, not her own.

Great time to be wearing your girlfriend’s clothes,
she thought.

She stopped at the gate and rolled down the pickup’s window. A younger man in a grey uniform stepped out, clipboard in hand.

“Can I help you, Miss?” he asked.

“Did a tractor-trailer with a red container on the back just come through here?” Smoak asked.

“Yes, about fifteen minutes ago,” the guard replied. “A lightweight transport, why?”

“Great, which way?”

“It was heading toward the south end of the port, it’s the last delivery for the night,” the guard stated.

“It’s going to a ship called Stralsund K. Which way did it go? I’m in a rush.”

“South and west. Stralsund is the last container ship on cargo row, but—”

“Thanks. You might want to duck and call the cops,” Smoak said.

She said a silent apology to the truck’s owner and tromped the accelerator. The big truck crashed through the wooden barrier and accelerated under her hand, drifting easily around the corner toward the Foreign Trade Zone.

She rounded another corner toward Cargo Row and slammed on the brakes, causing the truck to fishtail. Just ahead, a yellow freight moved, trundling along at a reasonable twenty miles per hour and entirely blocking the road. Smoak swerved to the left and raced the truck along a narrow lane made by cargo containers waiting to be cleared and loaded. At the far end, she jumped the curb and swerved to the right, narrowly avoiding a heavy load forklift. The echo of its tiny horn followed her down the next lane, and she couldn’t help but smile. The thing had outweighed the truck two to one and still it had a horn like an Italian scooter.

When she cleared the last cargo container, she entered a large storage lot awaiting the next load. Containers would be offloaded and placed there until they cleared customs. On the far side, she could see the Stralsund K, fully loaded with all manner of shipping containers. At two-hundred and fifty meters, she was small for a cargo ship and painted a dark blue that was fading to rust around the bow and waterline. On the dock, a large crane was lifting the red container under the watchful eye of half a dozen Russian gun thugs. Another crane sat idle, and Smoak could see someone cradling a high caliber rifle, leaning over the edge, the barrel trained on the container.

Smoak chewed on her lip and thought. She had her knives, a dozen caltrops and enough tranquilizers to drop an angry Rhino. Not much help against a dozen trained, heavily armed men. She also had enough C4 to open a few steel doors or make a small explosion.

“I’m sorry dude, I owe you a truck,” she said.

It took her a few minutes to feed a wad of detonation into the gas tank. She stuck the explosive to the side of the tank and put in a three-minute timer. The C4 would vaporize the gas and the det-cord would ignite it, creating an attention-grabbing fireball.

When she was through, she said a silent prayer to Gaia, got into the truck and accelerated toward the men. When she was up to speed, she set the cruise control and bailed out behind a storage shed. She rolled when she hit the ground and was up and running through the shadows toward the loading crane. She was halfway up the ladder when she heard the first gunshots. She looked toward the ship and saw Igor’s gun thugs opening up with their MP7s. The high-velocity rounds were turning the pickup into Swiss cheese. Better the truck than her.

She kept climbing, counting the seconds. Another fifteen passed before the truck exploded into a fireball and a shower of sparks that would have been visible to the cruise ships on the opposite side of the dock. The detonation had turned the truck into shrapnel and killed most of Igor’s men. The handful that were left wouldn’t be doing any shooting for a very long time.

Smoak reached the top of the ladder and pulled open the door to the crane. Inside, the driver was staring at the explosion, his mouth hanging open. He looked at Smoak, and she held up one blood-encrusted blade.

“Get out.”

The driver nodded and climbed out of his seat without a word. Smoak watched him vanish down the ladder and slid into his seat. She’d learned to operate a similar crane in the Philippines. It had been a few years since Parang, but the controls felt familiar under her hands. She raised the container and began turning the crane, hoping to get it away before anyone realized what was happening.

The container moved slowly. Cranes are known for their lifting ability, not speed. Second after painful second ticked by while she watched the container dangle perilously over the distant concrete. At any moment, more of Igor’s men would arrive, and she felt certain they would start shooting. The only question was if they would risk damaging what was left of a multimillion-dollar cargo or not. She was hoping not.

She was still counting the seconds when the window beside her exploded, peppering her with shards of glass. She ducked as low as she could and looked out at the other crane. The over-watch sniper had spotted her, and she could see the dock lights reflected in his scope.

“Couldn’t you have waited five more minutes?” she groused.

She was nothing but a big shiny target inside the crane. Worse, even if she managed to get the container to the ground, the sniper could pick them off one by one. She had to do something, but every plan seemed suicidal at best.

She ducked another bullet and pulled off her bracelet made from the military-grade cord she’d grown to love while in the service. Though bloody useless for regular use, the thin nylon had saved her butt in emergencies dozens of times, including sealing a wound that would have otherwise killed her.

She unwound the bracelet and used her knife to cut a piece from the fifty-foot rope. She wrapped the cord around the swivel control and tied it off, ensuring the crane would continue to swivel slowly when she let go. She then climbed out of the crane and started up the access ladder that ran the length of the swing arm. More shots pinged off the steel, but she kept climbing. The crane and its motion were the best cover she was going to get.

She reached the top, none the worse for wear, and looked down at the container twenty-five feet below.

Gaia, I hate heights
, she thought.

The container would swing within jumping distance of the sniper in just a few more seconds. She didn’t have time to think about falling or anything else. She pulled off Blaze’s jacket and wrapped it around the main support cable.

“Sorry, honey,” she said. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

She let go of the crane and slid down the cable, the thick jacket protecting her hands. She landed at the bottom and rolled, almost falling off the far side. She caught herself on the upper rail and pulled herself up to lie on the cool metal. She wanted nothing more but to lie there and catch her breath, but a still target was a dead target. She rolled to the side and another bullet buried itself in the steel where her head had been.