Disruptor (6 page)

She’d left smart behind several blocks
back.

The girls were on the fourth floor, locked in
a room and crying. What lies were they told? Offered modeling
contracts, jobs in nightclubs? Did they speak English at all? Were
they even legal age?

Rage ticked like a time bomb in her chest,
counting down to that moment when she just couldn’t hold it in any
longer.

Calling Kevin had been little more than a
stopgap. She’d told herself,
find out all you can, know what you
might be going in to. Tip the cops. Walk away. You can’t do this
alone
. All the while knowing she wasn’t going to be able to
stop herself from doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous.
Maybe that was why she’d called him – just to talk to someone one
last time. Enough bullets, or too many hits from that stun gun, and
she was dead. Death by gunshot didn’t scare her. She knew quite
intimately how badly electric shock would hurt as it destroyed the
unnatural parts of her body. It felt like being set fire on the
inside.

The curtain fluttered in the room where the
girls were being held. Dani lay flat on her stomach, hoodie pulled
close, head just high enough over the parapet to see. Somebody
opened the window. It was the girl with the attitude, who’d gotten
the bad end of the stun gun. Goddamn, she was trying to escape.
Dani liked this girl. Rooted for her. Wanted to help her.

She could do nothing without making too much
noise.

The crying from the other girls continued,
but Dani thought she detected a false note in the sounds. As if it
was as much cover as anything else. The girl who’d been stun-gunned
began to lift the window, slowly, carefully, mindful of noise.
Thankfully there was no screen. The men had made the mistake of
putting them in a room with access to a fire escape and no guards
on that side of the building. They probably thought the girls were
so cowed by fear of the men and their guns that they would never
dare try to flee.

Dani watched as one of the girls crept out of
the window and onto the fire escape. Barefoot, she made her way
down and dropped the last three feet to the ground. Dani checked
the positions of the outside guards, gratified to find them in
place and unaware of what was happening. The first girl out crept
away into the night.

Dani was sitting on the parapet now, ready to
jump if her help was needed. The girl at the window spotted her.
Dani nodded and gave her the thumbs up. The girl bit her lip, the
nearby yellow streetlight putting hard glints in her eyes. After a
moment she nodded in response, then turned and waved the next
prisoner to freedom.

It took longer for the second girl to make it
down. Her body was tense with so much fear, Dani wondered if the
poor kid was scared of heights too. Step by step, she made her way
down and finally landed on the ground. Dani breathed a sigh of
relief and checked for the guards.

One was walking the perimeter. Dani held one
hand up, palm facing the window, other hand pointing to the ground.
The guard moved slowly, holding his phone up to his face and
thumbing through text messages. He never bothered to look up. Once
Dani was sure he was back at his station, she gave the thumbs up
again.

Girl number three hurried down the fire
escape, clumsy and a little too loud. Dani searched the rooftop for
anything she could use as a weapon. A few chunks of concrete,
either too small to be of use or too big to carry if she had to
jump. Various bits of trash. A cool rectangular piece of metal – a
lighter. It might not have any fluid left but she shoved it in her
pocket anyway. Finally she hit pay dirt with a decent length of
rebar.

She hurried back to the edge of the roof.
Girl number three was running up the street. The last one, the one
Dani thought of as the leader, was half out of the window when the
door behind her burst open. Two men rushed at her and dragged her
back inside, all three screaming and cursing in Russian.

They would likely kill her for costing them
the three other girls. And it wouldn’t be a slow death. Dani
gripped the rebar, moved back several feet, took a running go and
launched herself across the span between buildings.

She hit the fire escape with a thud and
scrambled up it then swung her legs through the window, right into
the chest of a Russian gangbanger. He fell backward, his loosely
held gun flying out of his hand. The other man had the girl pinned
to the bed, fist raised and aimed at her head. Dani got her balance
and struck the second man’s arm with the rebar at the wrist. He
screamed, clutching his arm to his chest. The girl got out from
under him and rushed to the window.

Russian number one lunged for his gun. Dani
kicked it away then twisted around to take another whack at the
second guy. She wanted at least one of them down and not able to
get back up for a good long while. Three quick blows across the
back of his shoulders, then one good hard hit to his knee, and the
second Russian crumbled.

Gun Russian had made it to his feet by this
time, still wobbly from being knocked on his ass so hard. Dani
hoisted the rebar like a baseball bat and swung at his head. She
didn’t miss. He dropped to the floor with a heavy thunk.

Dani let herself taste a moment of grim
satisfaction then turned to the girl. “Go.” She pointed at the
window. “Now!”

The girl stared, big eyes full of emotions
that needed no translation. Dani nodded. The girl nodded in
response then disappeared out the window.

Loud footfalls from the stairs, rushed, angry
words in Russian. The rest were coming. Dani retrieved the loose
gun from the floor and took another off the guy she’d knee-capped.
She tucked one gun into the small of her back, kept the other in
her left hand, the rebar tucked under her right arm.

Things were about to get ugly. She took a
deep, calming breath.

The door opened. Dani rushed at it, not
firing until she had clear targets. Two bullets in the first man
through the door, another two in the next. She shoved past their
prone bodies and slammed the door shut behind her. Anybody trying
to check on the girls would have to get past her. If she recalled
her firearms lessons correctly, this type of .45 had a twelve-round
clip and one in the chamber. Hopefully both guns had all their
rounds. She was going to need every bullet. That meant no more
targeting center mass. Head shots from here on out.

She wiped sweat from her face with her
forearm. Two more bad guys rounded the corner. The first got a
bullet, the second ducked back just in time. He was quickly joined
by two more, all three of them firing their weapons around the
corner of the stairwell. Dani crouched down and flattened herself
against the wall as much as possible. Chunks of drywall rained
down, the smell of gunpowder thick in the air. They stopped firing
and one guy popped his head around. She sent him down with one
shot.

Somebody bellowed in anger. Dani wished she’d
been able to get a better count of how many were in the brownstone.
Were all the girls long gone? Were the guards watching the fire
escape now? Shit. Doing this alone was stupid. She needed to get
out, now. There were too many of them, too many guns. Her best bet
was to get out via the fire escape and keep to the rooftops.

The door behind her opened. Kneecap Russian
barreled out. Dani raised the gun a hair too slow. He slammed into
her and they went careening into the far wall, spilling onto the
stairs and the Russians waiting there. One picked her up and threw
her to the next landing.

Her back against the wall, she reached up and
found the banister and used it to pull herself to her feet. The guy
who’d thrown her was talking to her in Russian that she guessed was
supposed to sound menacing but she was just too fucking tired to
care. She’d lost the gun somewhere. The rebar was on the floor.
More guys were on their way up the stairs.

“I just want a cheeseburger,” she said to the
guy talking at her. “A shower. Clean clothes. Maybe watch a movie.
What do you say?”

He sneered and growled more Russian at
her.

“So that’s a no, huh?”

The next set of two gangsters stepped up onto
the landing, guns drawn. Dani wasted no time. She pushed off from
the wall and kicked the gun from the hand of the nearest gangster.
It bounced off the head of another and clattered down the stairs.
She slammed her foot into the knee of another gunman, grabbed his
arm and twisted as he went down from both the pain and the force of
her grip. He was a big guy like all of them, but one on one he was
no match for her strength. As she got her hand on his and the gun,
she felt some of the small bones in his hand break from the
pressure. She forced his arm up and fired the gun, dropping one
Russian and sending Mr. Talkative running up the stairs.

More footsteps came pounding up from below.
Dani jerked her captive around and shot at the newcomers. The
gangster used his free hand to punch her in the back. She planted
her elbow in his face, feeling his nose break at the impact, then
forced his arm inward and shot him with his own gun.

A bullet came close enough for her to feel it
disturb the air. Swearing, she whirled around and shouted at Mr.
Talkative. “You’re a lousy shot!” She spotted the rebar on the
floor under the bodies and retrieved it then backed up against the
wall.

Mr. Talkative spoke, not that she had any
idea what he said. Nor did she care. She had to lure him out of
hiding. “So what do you say you put that gun down and come beat on
me like a real man?”

Two more men crept up the stairs, so quiet
they were probably hoping to catch her unawares. They didn’t know
that with her hearing, that was unlikely to happen. Dani edged
closer to that end of the landing, rebar at the ready.

The top step creaked. Dani rushed at the
attackers. She swung the rebar in one long graceful arc, up and
over to take out one guy with a blow to the head then down and back
up to hit the other one in the crotch. Both tumbled down the
stairs, either unconscious or simply unable to get back up.

A door opened down the hall and someone sent
a hail of bullets her way. She dove down the stairs, running over
the uneven terrain of bodies in the floor. The shooter followed,
with yet another two coming up in front of her. She dropped to the
floor right as all three fired at her. The shooter from upstairs
went down, along with one from downstairs. She swiped the rebar at
the gun hand of the one left, knocking the pistol away and doing
damage to his hand.

“Always in pairs,” she said as she rose. “You
guys are like women who go to the bathroom together.”

“You’ll die for this, bitch,” he snarled.

“Finally, one of you speaks English.” Dani
twirled the rebar like a baton. “And here I was, upset that I’d
never learned to say
fuck you
in Russian. Come on.” She
crooked a finger at him. “Come at me, bro.”

He bellowed in rage and rushed at her. She
dropped to avoid a fist, then swept her leg out to trip him. He
fell, tumbling down a few stair steps. She got behind him, grabbed
a hank of his hair, and bashed his head into the wall
repeatedly.

Dani braced herself against the banister.
Back up, or all the way down? How many had she killed? Seriously
injured? Not enough. They were traffickers – they all deserved to
die. Three days. Three days between being taken off the streets and
sold to the lab. Three days in hell, and she and Angel and Nicole
and Cassidy had barely made it out alive. Three days. It may not
have been the same crew, or even the same city, but they were the
same kind of evil, and all she wanted to do was make them pay.

With interest.

That bastard with the stun gun hadn’t made an
appearance yet. Maybe he was downstairs, waiting for the fight to
come to him. By some minor miracle, she still had the gun in the
small of her back. Quickly, she checked for more in the immediate
vicinity, scooping up four. She tucked them away in pockets then
twirled the rebar. Shouts came from the ground floor, slightly
panicked. Good. Panic was appropriate for them right now.

A tiny noise sounded behind her. She turned
her head to see Mr. Talkative taking aim. Before he could pull the
trigger, she threw the rebar, planting it in his chest dead center.
He’d been a lousy conversationalist anyway.

With a gun in each hand, Dani descended the
stairs.

No sign of her at the shelter. Worse, he
almost threw up when he got out of his car. A thick sheen of sweat
ran from his hairline into his eyes. After a quick look around,
during which he could barely see, Kevin returned to his car and
checked his phone. No calls, from her or anyone else. He wiped the
sweat from his forehead and tried to blink away the moisture from
his eyes. The world stayed smeary and streaky so he gave up. He
reached into the glove box for the spare glasses and contact case
he kept there then quickly switched out.

He felt like a sitting duck, the car parked
not far from where he was attacked. Driving around was better than
staying so he started the car and left.

Plenty was written about gang crime in the
Point Sable Herald
, the city’s last major daily paper, but
none of it contained really useful information. A lot of general
pronouncements, mostly, with an obvious lack of names, dates,
places, and other details. It was considered a South Side problem,
and therefore not of much interest to the majority of the paper’s
dwindling readership.

But Kevin did know a few things. Lincoln
Heights was Russian mob territory. They were involved in just about
everything such an organization would be expected to have ties to:
drugs, guns, prostitution, protection rackets, gambling. If it was
illegal and profitable, they had some level of involvement.