Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (read a book .TXT) 📗

as eminently appropriate. I put my elbow through the glass pane, reached in and turned the handle. Next thing, we were in a small office. It was dark, but by the filtered light of the streetlamps I could make out a shabby desk, a couple of chairs and an old telephone. On the left there was a black, impenetrable oblong: a doorway into the bowels of the building.

Harry spoke into his radio. “Alpha Two, we need backup. Gate is open, as is door, both courtesy of the U.S. Demolition Squad.”

“Roger!”

I whispered, “Did anybody bring a flashlight or a gun?”

“I imagine our friends in there brought both.”

Dehan said, “Why don’t we just turn on the light?”

She flipped the switch and flooded the room with light. We could now see through the open doorway, a short distance down a concrete corridor. There I could make out a large set of double doors. They had the look of warehouse doors. I moved toward them. As I stepped into the passage I saw there were stairs on the left leading up to the next floor. I shook my head at Harry. “You need to call in a firearms unit, Harry. If either of them has a gun, we are sitting ducks.”

I heard the crunch of feet behind us. Three uniforms were making their way in, led by a giant sergeant. They at least were wearing body armor.

“I’ll call it in, he said. But it could take at least an hour to get a firearms team here, if they send one. We actually have no real reason other than your bloody colon to believe they’re armed.” He turned to the uniforms. “Sergeant Lewis, go upstairs and see if there’s anyone there. Employ extreme caution, one or both of them may be armed.”

“Yes, gov.”

They started making their way up the stairs. I pushed open the doors to the warehouse. It was a large, cavernous, dark space. The air was chill.

I called out, “Sadiq! The place is surrounded! We have a firearms team on its way! You are not going anywhere. Give it up and hand over the material.”

There was only silence. I stepped in and peered to my right. The vast nave filtered away into shadows, with stacks of boxes piled against the walls. Dehan tapped my arm and pointed over to the left, where there was a small clapboard and glass office in the corner. I nodded, nudged Harry and pointed, indicating he should go left and I would go right. Dehan scowled at me and shrugged with a ‘what about me?’ look. I gestured at her dress with both hands. She showed me a finger, it wasn’t the one her ring was on.

Harry shouted again. “Give it up, Sadiq! You’re surrounded! Come out with your hands in the air!”

While he was shouting, I sprinted across the open space to a stack of boxes and took cover behind them. I could make out Arabic writing as well as English. It said they were full of dates. I was maybe fifteen feet from the office door.

I looked over at Harry and gave him the thumbs up, then I started shouting, “Don’t make this worse than it is, Sadiq! Cooperate and maybe you can strike a deal! Turn Queen’s evidence!”

I saw Harry dart toward the side of the office and slide below the window. I slipped around the back of the boxes and saw another stack, about six feet from the office door. These were wooden crates, about six feet by four, and had pictures of melons on them. I moved up, caught Harry’s eye and prepared to storm the door.

That was when the glass in the window shattered and Sadiq stood and opened up on me with an assault rifle. I swore violently and rolled behind the crates. A voice was screaming. It was Sadiq, shouting in Arabic, interspersed with English, about how we would never take him alive. Then he shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” and opened up with the assault rifle again.

I glanced over at Dehan to make sure she was OK. She was pointing frantically at the crates of melons I was pressed up against. I shrugged and spread my hands. She gritted her teeth, glared and pointed again. Meanwhile I could hear Sadiq shouting something that sounded very dangerous to me.

“Where is your firearms unit? Where is your backup? I am going to kill you all! Allahu Akbar!”

And he opened up again, spraying the area with a hot hail of lead. As I curled up behind the crates, wondering how long it would take the slugs to tear through the melons and find me, I also began to wonder where the hell he’d got an assault rifle from, between Chiddester’s house and here. And then, as the noise of lead hitting steel began to dawn on me, I realized what Dehan had been pointing at.

Next thing, I was on my feet, dragging the topmost box to the floor. From the corner of my eye, I saw Dehan break cover and run. A hail of bullets trailed her, kicking up cement dust from the concrete. The box hit the floor and shattered. I heard Sadiq bellowing, coming closer. I looked down and saw the damned box was full of melons.

Sadiq came skidding around the corner, training what looked like an AK-47 on me. I didn’t think. He fired as I dropped and I felt the hot whiz and pop of the slugs skimming past me and into the wood. I grabbed the nearest melon like a football and hurled it straight into his face. It made a sickening thud and he went over on his back. I leapt at him, pinned down his gun hand with my left knee, and drove my fist into his face, not once and not twice, but three times.

But he was clawing at me with his left,