Midnight Shadows (6 page)

So she simply nodded her head. “Be careful,” was all she said through a tight throat.

But he was gone, slipping out the door so quietly she didn’t hear him.

More gunfire, separate shots this time.

She sat up against the headboard in the darkness, hugging her knees. Realizing how very lucky she was she’d met Douglas after he’d retired from active duty as a SEAL. Sending him out on mission after mission…that would have broken her heart. Literally. She could feel her heart beating heavily in her chest, as if it wanted to break its way free.

After a quarter of an hour the tension was so great she couldn’t sit still. She threw back the covers and went out onto the terrace. Nothing was happening out to sea. There were no lights, no boats. She kept to the shadows as she crept to the edges of the terrace, trying to see what was happening on the grounds. The terrace had been designed for privacy, bougainvillea-filled trellises at the sides. But she could carefully brush the prickly branches to one side to try to see what was happening on the grounds.

Nothing. Nothing was happening on the grounds. Darkness and silence.

Except…a shadow! Moving silently from behind a tall thick pine tree to a thick oleander bush.

And Allegra realized that all those shadows she’d been seeing weren’t artifacts. Weren’t signs of her blindness coming back. They had been real.

She watched the shadow crouch, then make its way forward.

The shadow started running…

Douglas and Yannis wouldn’t know about that shadow. Somehow she had to get word to them.

And then a huge explosion broke the silence and a light as bright as the sun lit up the night.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

He was fucking unarmed!

Douglas followed the sound of gunfire. He’d done that a million times before but he’d never done it unarmed. No, when he went into battle, he was ready for combat. Armed to the teeth and with body armor and night vision. Now he was blind and defenseless.

The noise had come in the general direction of the restaurant. He used as much cover as he could but there were long stretches of grass and low bushes. He hunkered down next to a trellis and pulled out his cell.
Where R U?
He texted Yannis. No use asking what was going on. Someone was shooting, that was all he had to know. The only questions now were—where and how many bad guys?

Behind water cistern
, Yannis replied and Douglas took off at a run. Being careful but choosing speed over concealment. He reached the water cistern and hunkered down beside Yannis. “Sitrep. Tangos?”

He could see the anger on Yannis’s face by the faint light coming from the building. “No, I think we have some good old-fashioned kidnappers here. They’re in the dining hall. They’ve got Esterhaze duct-taped to a chair, four armed men, plus one fuck who’s the negotiator. They took down his bodyguards.”

Douglas remembered those lithe big men moving down the helicopter steps before Esterhaze exited. Three men, cut down for doing their job.

He cut his eyes to Yannis and spoke in a low almost toneless voice. Whispers carried. “How much stuff did you keep?”

“You know that’s illegal.”

When leaving the military, Special Forces operators were supposed to hand in all their materiel. Few did.

“Get real,” Kowalski snorted. He’d kept an arsenal, back in a gun locker at home.

Yannis blew out a breath. “Two flashbangs, a Claymore, four MP-5s, 4 Sig Sauers and two M870s.”

“The M870s won’t help, this is close-in work. Can you get the flashbangs, the Sigs and the MP-5s?”

Yannis nodded, pressed something in Kowalski’s hand and melted into the night.

Kowalski eased his way quietly to a window of the dining hall, pulled out the retractable snake scope and switched on the monitor, matte treated so the light wouldn’t reflect. He slowly threaded the snake video past the frame and studied what the monitor showed him.

The old man had been pistol-whipped. A long bloody gash in his head dripped blood. He was awake, though, his fine features angry and defiant. He was old, but Kowalski knew he’d made a daring escape from Hungary on his own at the age of twelve, arriving penniless and homeless in the West, and had amassed one of the largest fortunes in the world. You don’t do that by being meek and mild.

He was old but not frail.

Right in front of him, lying at his feet, the three bodyguards lay bonelessly, each shot through the head.

Four gunmen standing facing out surrounded Esterhaze. A fourth was talking angrily into a cellphone. He was speaking German. Kowalski understood enough German to know that he was negotiating a ransom of a hundred million dollars.

Esterhaze had a hundred million dollars, no question. The question was, once the money had been deposited in the German fuckhead’s account, would they kill Esterhaze and slip away?

Over his dead body, and certainly over Yanni’s dead body.

Yannis arrived with a black backpack and two MP-5s slung over his shoulder. He handed Kowalski a combat vest and put on his own. They armed up noiselessly, in the dark, something they’d done a thousand times before. When they were ready, they checked each other and jumped up and down to make sure nothing clinked.

Okay. Ready to rock and roll.

They’d done this so many times before, they could communicate with hand signals. The flashbang, then infiltrate. Kowalski high, Yannis low.

Go.

They stood on opposite sides of the door. Yannis lobbed the flashbang, aiming at the center of the room. They both covered their ears and opened their mouths. And anyway, they’d had extensive training in recovery after a flashbang explosive.

One million candela, 170 decibels, guaranteed to induce temporary blindness and deafness, major disorientation and loss of coordination.

A second later they were in the room and with ten well placed bullets—they’d practiced this endlessly with live ammo in the shooting house—the four were down. Ah, the double tap. Worked every time.

The guy who’d been talking in German into the cell was lying face up, a look of astonishment on his face. The cell was still in his hand, squawking.

Kowalski pried it out of the kidnapper’s hand and brought it to his ear. Someone was shouting in German. “All clear,” Kowalski said and let the cell drop. Someone else would track the numbers down and find out who was at the other end. This end, with Esterhaze, was secured.

Yannis was cutting the tape holding the old man in his chair. Esterhaze slumped forward and Kowalski put out a hand, easing him gently back. He would still be stunned from the flashbang, tinnitus in his ears. He probably wasn’t taking much in, but body language was strong. Both of them put a hand on his shoulders, communicating without words that they were watching over him.

“You’re safe now, Mr. Esterhaze,” Yannis said. “We’ll call your people and watch over you until they arrive. You’re safe,” he repeated.

“Not quite,” a female voice said from the doorway. “Not yet.”

Kowalski and Yannis turned.

Kowalski stared. Bling Lady. Only she wasn’t wearing bling right now, no. She was covered in a black Nomex flight suit, black watchcap over her dark hair. Night paint on her face so her pale skin wouldn’t stand out in the dark. She held an AK-74 with ease and clear familiarity.

Not Bling Lady. An operator.

“Throw your MP-5s and Sigs down, using your left hands. I’ve got Esterhaze in my sights. I could kill him at this distance even if I didn’t know how to use this weapon. But trust me when I say I do know how to use it.” She frowned. “
Weapons down!”

Esterhaze was slowly coming back into himself. He looked at the dead kidnappers, at Bling Lady. “It’s over,” he said.

She laughed. “Oh no, Mr. Esterhaze. It’s far from over. The original agreement still stands. One hundred million dollars in the bank account we gave you. All it takes is one bullet to kill you. You’re old but you’re rich. You’ve still got years ahead of you, and what’s one hundred million dollars to you?” Still looking straight at Esterhaze, muzzle of her weapon pointed to where she was looking. “And you two? Don’t even think of trying anything. I have excellent peripheral vision and at this range I can’t miss. I can take both of you out in half a second. You lose, I win.”

“You can’t get away,” Yannis said evenly.

She smiled. She was truly an exceptionally beautiful woman. Kowalski hated her.

“Yes, yes I can. You don’t need to know—isn’t that the phrase soldiers use? Need to know? So you don’t need to know but we have plans in place.” She tapped a large rectangle, bigger than a watch, on her wrist. “So when the money has been transferred, I’ll be gone.” She smiled. “And so will you two.”

Kowalski watched her carefully. She stood like an athlete, wide stance, hands steady. If she was an operator, she wasn’t going to get tired or bored. She was fifteen feet away, too far to rush her. She wouldn’t leave them any kind of opening.

Someone was coming for her, other operators. The resort was nearly empty, with only staff on the premises. No one who could remotely help them.

Maybe when she got word the money had been transferred, she’d get excited and lose for an instant that laserlike focus she had. It was a slim chance, but better than the nothing they had now.

A tapping sound came from the corridor outside. Loud, irregular. The woman shifted her attention for a microsend to the corridor behind her and frowned.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Get out.”

The tapping sound became louder. Behind her a Greek peasant woman appeared, dressed in black, with a black shawl around her head, dark round sunglasses though dawn was just breaking. She was blind, tapping her way down the corridor with a white cane.

“Ti symvainei?” The voice was guttural. Yannis had taught him a few Greek phrases and he recognized this one.
What’s going on?

“Get out of here,” Bling Lady snarled, motioning with the muzzle of her weapon.

The peasant woman bowed her head, murmuring, “Sygnò.”
Sorry.

Kowalski peered at her closely. What the fuck?

The peasant woman suddenly whirled and whacked Bling Lady across the side of the face, hard, with the cane. Then whacked her across the hands, just as hard. Then against across the side of her head again, drawing blood.

Bling Lady screamed, curling her bloody hands over her bloody face and Kowalski and Yannis dove for their weapons and took the shot. Two bullets slammed into Bling Lady’s shoulder, both of them opting to keep her alive for intel on who was coming and who had organized the kidnapping because they had every intention of making those guys very very sorry they’d tried this.

The peasant woman ripped off the black shawl covering her head revealing soft red curls surrounding a very pissed-off face.

She hauled off and kicked Bling Lady in the ribs, hard.

“And
that’s
for ogling my husband, bitch!”

Epilogue

Kowalski found that one of the hardest things he ever did, in a life full of hard things, was fending off the immense gratitude of a very old and very rich man.

Esterhaze’s people arrived from Athens in another expensive helicopter within the hour, to whisk him off to a private clinic. Bling Lady talked and the Greek authorities, working with Interpol, mopped up the German kidnapping ring.

That was fine.

What was hard to deal with was Esterhaze’s gratitude. For Yannis it was easy. Esterhaze’s company, Sun Investments, the largest hedge fund in the world, pledged to hold every single meeting, conference, seminar and workshop at the Hagios Nikolaus, to the end of time. Yannis and his cousins would walk in tall corn for the rest of their lives.

Kowalski? He had to turn down five job offers, each offer increased by $500K up to the last offer which was for an insane amount of money. Kowalski wasn’t interested.

Finally, Esterhaze offered Douglas’s and Midnight’s company, Alpha Security International, the contract for security for Sun Investments till the sun went nova. That was better and it made Midnight very happy because it was going to make them all rich.

Kowalski didn’t give a shit. He was already rich.

He had Allegra.

THE
END

Copyright Information

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For more information, please direct your correspondence to:

The Story Vault

c/o Marketing Department

364 Patteson Drive, #228

Morgantown, WV 26505-3202

MIDNIGHT SHADOWS: A Midnight Angel Short Story

All rights reserved.