A Family Affair
Disclaimer: I don't own the Witchblade characters. I just playing. Enjoy!
Chapter 35.
Sara Pezzini stared out the window of the unmarked police car, trying her best to ignore the sound of Frank Orlinsky's voice, or, more accurately, the sexist joke the ignoramus was telling Jake McCartey, who was driving. She had to restrain herself from reaching over and slapping Orlinsky upside his nearly bald head from where she sat in the back seat. On her right wrist, the Witchblade pulsed with anticipation at the prospect of a fight, making Sara shift restlessly in her seat.
"I'll bet you're glad this is finally going down, hunh, Pez?" Jake said, his eyes briefly meeting hers in the rearview mirror.
"Yeah."
"From what I've heard, this Angel Medina guy and his brother probably won't give up easily," the blond rookie detective said.
"Fine by me."
"Yeah, they'll probably come out shooting, which will end up saving the taxpayers some money, seeing as there won't be a trial," Orlinsky said to Jake, ignoring Sara, as he had done since she'd gotten into the car.
"You wearing your vest?" Jake asked Sara.
"I never leave home without it."
"So, what are you gonna do tomorrow during our snow day?"
Sara sighed, wishing he'd pick up on the fact that she did not feel like making small talk. "Sleep all day."
"I rented a few movies and stocked up on munchies," Jake told her, oblivious to the fact that she hadn't reciprocated by asking him what his plans were. "Some companionship would be nice, though." His blue eyes met hers in the mirror hopefully.
"I wouldn't be very good company, Jake, what with being unconscious from exhaustion. And when I woke up, I'd be PMSing. Or did you forget what I wrote on my desk calendar?" Sara asked, smirking.
Jake flushed bright red. "Oh, yeah. Right."
Orlinsky sniggered. "Take it from me, kid, you definitely don't want any part of that. Never trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die."
"Why don't you ask Vicky if she'd like to join you, Jake?" Sara suggested, barely resisting the urge to stab Orlinsky with the Witchblade. 'I'd settle for watching him bleed for just a few minutes if it would make him shut the fuck up,' she seethed.
The younger man looked thoughtful. "Now, there's an idea. Maybe I will."
Suddenly, something made Sara twist around in her seat and glance out the rear window. Her eyes widened as she noticed the Entenmann's delivery truck several cars behind them.
'It can't be following us,' she thought. 'Could it?' But when she looked again a few minutes later, the truck was still there. And it had been joined by a Hostess delivery truck. 'Shit! Gabriel was right!' She tried to get a look at the driver of the closest truck, but it was too far behind them.
"What are you looking at?" Jake asked curiously.
"Um, I think Mike Morgan is in the car behind us," Sara murmured.
"Danny and him were at the academy together, right?"
"Yeah."
"He seems like a decent guy."
"Yeah, he is." Sara breathed a sigh of relief as a minute later the delivery trucks turned off onto a side street. 'I guess they weren't following us after all. Besides, Gabriel said there were three of them,' she thought.
"Here we are, at the perimeter," Jake announced, pulling over.
They were still about a mile away from the abandoned ice factory, at the very edge of the buffer zone that the joint task force had set up around it in deference to Angel Medina's infamous paranoia. It was 6:30 p.m.
The three homicide detectives got out of the car and made their way to the command center, a truck almost identical to the delivery trucks Sara had noticed earlier, except devoid of any markings aside from lettering on the doors. The commanding officer of the 11th Precinct's narcotics squad, Captain Sheldon Phillips, was standing inside the van, looking over the shoulders of two seated DEA agents. The interior of the truck was filled with surveillance equipment of all types. Sara saw that the men were looking at video feeds on two monitors.
"How'd you get a camera set up without tipping off Medina?" Sara asked curiously.
One of the seated surveillance specialists glanced at her and smiled. "We have our ways, Detective."
"We took the risk of putting them in place about an hour ago," Captain Phillips replied. "One is concealed inside the abandoned warehouse across the street, and we've got another covering the back of the factory," he said, indicating the other small monitor, which showed a rear view of the decrepit structure.
"We got movement. Might be the lookout."
They watched as a cab slowed down in front of the warehouse, and Alonzo Brown hopped out.
"That's my informant," Sara confirmed as the young man disappeared out of camera view. Moments later, another man, apparently the lookout Alonzo was relieving, got into the waiting cab, which drove off.
"Look, Captain," she said, "I promised the guy he wouldn't be prosecuted for his role in this. He knows he's gonna be taken into custody when the bust goes down, but I told him he'd be bailed out after a couple of hours. His name is Alonzo Brown."
"I'll put in a call to central booking and tell them not to put him in the system. He knows to use his phone call to call you, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, when he does, call narcotics, and we'll have somebody post bail for him. Angel won't know it was him who tipped us off," Phillips told her. "Okay, listen up," he said, moving to stand in the doorway at the rear of the truck and raising his voice so that the assembled detectives and DEA agents could hear him. "Here's how it's gonna go down."
Sara listened as the plan of action was outlined, becoming more and more restless as the minutes ticked by. The Witchblade had been spoiling for some action for three days now, and despite her exhaustion, she thought she might jump out of her skin if she didn't appease it soon. Jolts of adrenaline made her heart race and her muscles tense. At one point, she gasped as she felt the Blade begin to morph, and she barely managed to regain control of it. This rattled her, and not for the first time she wondered if she really should be here in the thick of things. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain why Angel and/or Joaquin Medina had died from stab rather than bullet wounds. But it was too late to back out now.
"Whoa! What the hell was that?" she heard one of the agents monitoring the video feeds say. Luckily, after he was through speaking, Captain Phillips had moved away from the truck.
"What was what?" the other man said.
The first agent turned and pressed the rewind button on a VCR, then, a few seconds later the play button. A video image came up on yet another monitor. "There! I could swear I saw something move."
Sara quietly stepped up into the truck and watched the small screen as the man rewound and played the recording again. For a split second, she saw a darker shadow glide swiftly across the very bottom of the frame. Glancing from the image to the live feed, the second agent shrugged. "Maybe it was the lookout guy's shadow. He's probably pacing in an effort to stay warm."
"Oh, yeah? Then why don't we see it now live? Besides, the angle's wrong. The lookout is on the loading dock, and the camera's in a second- floor window. It would show someone walking along the street in front of the warehouse, but not on the loading dock. And there would need to be a light in back of the lookout guy in order to cast his shadow, you dope."
Abruptly, the Witchblade swirled warmly on Sara's wrist. 'Nottingham,' she thought, with a smile.
The second agent shrugged again. "Coulda been a pigeon. Those flying rats are always hanging out in abandoned warehouses. Johnson mentioned that he startled quite a few of them when he placed the cameras earlier."
"Since when do pigeons fly around at night, genius?"
"When something scares them, Einstein."
"Yeah, but who or what scared them, Smart Guy?"
"I don't know. Maybe a stray cat."
Unnoticed, Sara left the truck as the two men continued to snipe at each other. She was glad to know that her Protector was nearby, watching her back. Contrary to what the Witchblade desired, Sara was hoping the drug bust would be accomplished swiftly and without bloodshed, so that she could collect the feverish assassin and take him to Irons' estate in Westchester. So help her God, she would force the billionaire to administer the antidote to Nottingham -- at the point of the Blade if need be.
At quarter after 7:00, one of the communications experts dialed Angel Medina's beeper number, making it seem as though the call came from Alonzo Brown's cell phone, issuing a warning to the inhabitants of the abandoned ice factory. The joint task force personnel climbed into their vehicles and then waited tensely for the word to mobilize. Ten minutes later, the order to surround the factory came.
Once again, Sara rode in the backseat of a car driven by Jake McCartey, with Orlinsky riding shotgun. As they pulled up in front of the factory with lights flashing and siren blaring, they saw several men hastily exiting the building. The detectives jumped out of the car, guns drawn, shouting "Police! Show us your hands!"
Sara immediately recognized Joaquin Medina, and she wasted no time in grabbing him.
"Spread 'em, Medina," she growled, shoving the man against the unmarked police car.
"Okay, okay, you got me, Mommy," the man said, leering at her.
Sara patted him down, removing a .22-caliber handgun from his waistband. "Yeah, you got that right, Joaquin. You have the right to remain silent," she told him, handcuffing him. Spotlights were turned on, flooding the street and the factory with bright light. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney -- "
"Yeah, yeah, I know my rights, bitch," Joaquin snarled, interrupting her.
Ignoring him, Sara continued reading him his rights. When she was done, she handed him off to a narcotics officer, who marched him off to a van, into which a number of other men were being loaded, among them Alonzo Brown. Briefly, she made eye contact with the young man, and gave him a tiny nod, which he returned before a DEA agent herded him into the van. Glancing around, she saw Jake McCartey handcuffing Angel Medina while Agent Atherton read him his rights while Orlinsky and Captain Phillips looked on. Angel was placed in the back of an unmarked car, accompanied by Agent Atherton, and driven away.
'Sorry about the lack of violence and bloodshed, Witchy,' Sara thought at the sullenly glowing bracelet on her right wrist as she bagged the gun she'd taken off Joaquin as evidence.
"Detective Pezzini?" Sara turned and saw a young, sandy-haired man approaching. Although he was now clad in a NYPD jacket and his dirt- smudged face was pale and drawn from exhaustion, she immediately recognized him from the Witchblade's vision as the undercover narc, Tommy Fuller.
"Detective Fuller, it's good to see that you made it out in one piece," she greeted him.
"Yeah, thanks to you," he said. "I'm pretty sure I owe you my life."
"Glad I could help out, Detective," Sara told him modestly. "Oh, before I forget, I have something that belongs to you." She reached into her jeans pocket and extricated his wedding band, handing it to him.
The young detective's eyes welled up as he took it from her and slipped it on his ring finger. "My wife thanks you, too," he murmured huskily.
"Sure thing. Take care of yourself, okay?" Sara said, giving him a hug.
"When you see Ian again, tell him Tommy says thanks," he whispered in her ear, returning her embrace.
"I will," she told him. She watched as he went over to his commanding officer, who patted him on the back. Nonchalantly, she glanced up toward the nearby rooftops, but saw no sign of Ian Nottingham.
Fifteen minutes later, the majority of the task force personnel had left to escort the prisoners back to the 11th Precinct, leaving behind mostly DEA agents, who were busy removing the drugs from the abandoned factory.
"I guess we're done here," Jake McCartey said, ambling over to Sara where she leaned against their car. "I heard there's at least 50 kilos of heroin in there."
"Thank God it won't make it to the streets," she murmured, heaving a weary sigh. She had taken off the rather thin NYPD jacket and put on her down coat in an effort to combat the cold. For the past few minutes, she'd been trying to figure out a way to ditch Jake and Orlinsky without raising suspicion, so that she could hook up with Nottingham.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire sliced through the cold night air.
"That sounded like automatic weapons fire," somebody said.
"Who's firing their weapon?" Captain Phillips demanded. "Report!" he snapped into his headset.
"It sounds like it's coming from the roof of one of those buildings across the street, sir," someone else said.
'Oh, my God! Nottingham!' Sara thought.
"I'm gonna go check it out!" she said, and took off running toward an alley that ran along the west side of the dilapidated warehouse across from the ice factory.
"Detective, wait!" Phillips shouted. "Dammit!" he cursed as she ignored him.
Drawing her service weapon, Sara darted into the alley, which led to a wide, cobblestone street. She took a left turn, and jogged down the dark street, skidding to a stop when she saw the three delivery trucks parked in back of the warehouse.
"Detective Pezzini, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Captain Phillips irate voice came from the earpiece of the headset that Sara had forgotten that she was wearing. "You're supposed to wait for backup!"
Sara ignored him, and crept toward the trucks. She spotted a man standing on the stairs that led to the gaping back door of the warehouse. He was dressed in fatigues, his face was covered with camouflage greasepaint, and he wore night-vision goggles. Luckily, he wasn't looking in her direction at the moment, but she knew that he'd spot her if she tried to sneak up on him owing to the lack of cover. Then she remembered passing two rusting metal doors set in the ground back in the alley. Turning, she ducked back into the alleyway and retraced her steps until she found the doors. They were bolted from the inside, she discovered. Holstering her gun, she willed the Witchblade into the short stiletto form, jabbing the thin blade into the narrow slit between the two doors, and then yanking it downward.
The screech of fatigued metal as it gave was covered by another round of gunfire, which echoed loudly in the confines of the alley. More bursts of automatic weapons fire hid the groaning of rusty hinges as she lifted one of the heavy doors. The pulsing red light of the Witchblade's blood- red stone revealed stairs leading downward.
'At least I know Nottingham is still alive,' Sara thought grimly, descending the concrete steps into pitch-black darkness. 'Those trucks could conceivably carry eight to ten armed men each, so that means he's up against as many as 30 opponents. Those are pretty rotten odds, even for him. Maybe the Witchblade will level the playing field.' She eyed the fiery stone. 'Looks like you're gonna get that fight you wanted after all.'
****
Ian Nottingham coolly fought for his life on the roof of the abandoned warehouse. After the heavily armed men entered the warehouse, he had headed for the structure that housed the stairs that led to the roof, but his sharp hearing had picked up the sound of booted feet on the stairs, and he realized that that escape route was no longer open to him and that he would soon have company. Bullets kicked up the gravel in front of him when he started to approach the ladder that he had used to climb up to the roof, forcing him to take cover behind the metal housing that had once protected the warehouse's ventilation system, but not before he glimpsed the shooter leap onto the roof after having climbed that same ladder. Unclipping four smoke bombs from his harness, Ian pulled the pins and tossed them in the direction of the stair structure. They detonated, releasing billowing clouds of dark red smoke. Seconds later, the door to the stairs burst open, and several men came through, the first one laying down a burst of cover fire from an automatic weapon, probably a Kalashnikov rifle from the sound of it. Rising, Ian drew his katana and engaged his enemy.
In less than five minutes, he had killed four men with his sword and incapacitated two others, sustaining only a shallow graze from a bullet to his right thigh in the process. He had quickly realized that these men were well trained and experienced fighters. They had simply never faced a combat-trained, expert swordsman who also happened to be genetically enhanced. Snatching the headset from one of the fallen men, he took a moment to put it on.
"He's too fast, he's too fast! Get more firepower up here, now!" he heard a man say in Russian. Unfortunately for him, his voice brought Ian right to his position, and the cold, cold hazel eyes of the assassin were the last thing the man saw before a gloved fist knocked him unconscious.
'Eight times three, plus three drivers: that's at least 27 men,' Ian thought, eyes searching the rooftop through the rapidly dispersing smoke. 'That means there's probably another man up here somewhere, and two more nine- or ten-man units inside.'
The tiniest whisper of displaced air alerted Nottingham just in time. He ducked, and the knife the Russian threw barely missed him. The man came at him with another 12-inch blade, and in a blur of movement, Ian grabbed him by the right wrist, snapping it so that the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers, before throwing him up against the wall of stair structure, twisting his left arm up behind him savagely, eliciting a gasp of agony from the hapless mercenary. Ripping the man's headset from his head, Nottingham searched him for additional weapons, finding and tossing away two more knives, a pistol, and a stun gun.
"Who sent you?" he asked the man in Russian, after turning off his own headset so that his interrogation would not be overheard.
"Why don't you ask your lying, cheating dog of a boss that," the man spat in the same language.
Mentally, Ian sighed. 'No surprise there.' He was pretty certain he knew exactly which vengeance-minded breakaway republic had sent this attack force. The Russians had more than a bone to pick with Kenneth Irons -- more like a whole stinking carcass. Their grievance involved an arms deal that hadn't gone well for them at all but had, of course, made Ian's master quite a bit wealthier. Never content to simply come out ahead on an insanely lucrative deal, Kenneth had undoubtedly arranged to have their noses rubbed in the fact that they had been duped. Apparently, the Russians had decided that retribution was at hand, starting with the attempted elimination of Irons' personal bodyguard.
"How many of you are there?" Ian asked the man, forcing his left arm even higher, causing the man to yelp with pain.
"Go to hell," the man breathed.
Ian turned him around and punched him in the face, splitting his lip. "I do not want to kill you, but I will if I have to. Now, tell me how many are there?" he said, pressing the razor-sharp blade of the knife he now held against the man's jugular, drawing blood.
"You will not kill me," the mercenary said, baring bloody teeth in a ghastly smile. His eyes flicked past Ian before calmly meeting his gaze again.
Turning his head, Nottingham's heart skipped a beat as he spotted two men on the roof of the adjacent building, one of which was armed with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. The other man was quickly loading the launcher with a stinger missile.
"Ready to die, are you?" Ian asked his captive. "Well, much as I hate to disappoint you, I am not going to die today, and if you are very lucky, neither will you." With that he smashed his fist into the man's face again, rendering him unconscious, and then tossed him several feet away from the roof structure. Then Ian started running, heading for the edge of the roof. He was about five feet from it when he heard the distinctive sound of a missile being fired.
Just as Nottingham leapt for the edge of the roof, the missile hit the structure where he'd been standing just seconds earlier, completely destroying it in an enormous fireball. The concussive force of the explosion threw Ian hard against the four-foot high wall of the roof, but then his momentum carried him over the edge, and he was falling to the ground, six stories below.
More to come. As always, thanks for the feedback. I always appreciate it and look forward to reading it. Post more please!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Witchblade characters. I just playing. Enjoy!
Chapter 35.
Sara Pezzini stared out the window of the unmarked police car, trying her best to ignore the sound of Frank Orlinsky's voice, or, more accurately, the sexist joke the ignoramus was telling Jake McCartey, who was driving. She had to restrain herself from reaching over and slapping Orlinsky upside his nearly bald head from where she sat in the back seat. On her right wrist, the Witchblade pulsed with anticipation at the prospect of a fight, making Sara shift restlessly in her seat.
"I'll bet you're glad this is finally going down, hunh, Pez?" Jake said, his eyes briefly meeting hers in the rearview mirror.
"Yeah."
"From what I've heard, this Angel Medina guy and his brother probably won't give up easily," the blond rookie detective said.
"Fine by me."
"Yeah, they'll probably come out shooting, which will end up saving the taxpayers some money, seeing as there won't be a trial," Orlinsky said to Jake, ignoring Sara, as he had done since she'd gotten into the car.
"You wearing your vest?" Jake asked Sara.
"I never leave home without it."
"So, what are you gonna do tomorrow during our snow day?"
Sara sighed, wishing he'd pick up on the fact that she did not feel like making small talk. "Sleep all day."
"I rented a few movies and stocked up on munchies," Jake told her, oblivious to the fact that she hadn't reciprocated by asking him what his plans were. "Some companionship would be nice, though." His blue eyes met hers in the mirror hopefully.
"I wouldn't be very good company, Jake, what with being unconscious from exhaustion. And when I woke up, I'd be PMSing. Or did you forget what I wrote on my desk calendar?" Sara asked, smirking.
Jake flushed bright red. "Oh, yeah. Right."
Orlinsky sniggered. "Take it from me, kid, you definitely don't want any part of that. Never trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die."
"Why don't you ask Vicky if she'd like to join you, Jake?" Sara suggested, barely resisting the urge to stab Orlinsky with the Witchblade. 'I'd settle for watching him bleed for just a few minutes if it would make him shut the fuck up,' she seethed.
The younger man looked thoughtful. "Now, there's an idea. Maybe I will."
Suddenly, something made Sara twist around in her seat and glance out the rear window. Her eyes widened as she noticed the Entenmann's delivery truck several cars behind them.
'It can't be following us,' she thought. 'Could it?' But when she looked again a few minutes later, the truck was still there. And it had been joined by a Hostess delivery truck. 'Shit! Gabriel was right!' She tried to get a look at the driver of the closest truck, but it was too far behind them.
"What are you looking at?" Jake asked curiously.
"Um, I think Mike Morgan is in the car behind us," Sara murmured.
"Danny and him were at the academy together, right?"
"Yeah."
"He seems like a decent guy."
"Yeah, he is." Sara breathed a sigh of relief as a minute later the delivery trucks turned off onto a side street. 'I guess they weren't following us after all. Besides, Gabriel said there were three of them,' she thought.
"Here we are, at the perimeter," Jake announced, pulling over.
They were still about a mile away from the abandoned ice factory, at the very edge of the buffer zone that the joint task force had set up around it in deference to Angel Medina's infamous paranoia. It was 6:30 p.m.
The three homicide detectives got out of the car and made their way to the command center, a truck almost identical to the delivery trucks Sara had noticed earlier, except devoid of any markings aside from lettering on the doors. The commanding officer of the 11th Precinct's narcotics squad, Captain Sheldon Phillips, was standing inside the van, looking over the shoulders of two seated DEA agents. The interior of the truck was filled with surveillance equipment of all types. Sara saw that the men were looking at video feeds on two monitors.
"How'd you get a camera set up without tipping off Medina?" Sara asked curiously.
One of the seated surveillance specialists glanced at her and smiled. "We have our ways, Detective."
"We took the risk of putting them in place about an hour ago," Captain Phillips replied. "One is concealed inside the abandoned warehouse across the street, and we've got another covering the back of the factory," he said, indicating the other small monitor, which showed a rear view of the decrepit structure.
"We got movement. Might be the lookout."
They watched as a cab slowed down in front of the warehouse, and Alonzo Brown hopped out.
"That's my informant," Sara confirmed as the young man disappeared out of camera view. Moments later, another man, apparently the lookout Alonzo was relieving, got into the waiting cab, which drove off.
"Look, Captain," she said, "I promised the guy he wouldn't be prosecuted for his role in this. He knows he's gonna be taken into custody when the bust goes down, but I told him he'd be bailed out after a couple of hours. His name is Alonzo Brown."
"I'll put in a call to central booking and tell them not to put him in the system. He knows to use his phone call to call you, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, when he does, call narcotics, and we'll have somebody post bail for him. Angel won't know it was him who tipped us off," Phillips told her. "Okay, listen up," he said, moving to stand in the doorway at the rear of the truck and raising his voice so that the assembled detectives and DEA agents could hear him. "Here's how it's gonna go down."
Sara listened as the plan of action was outlined, becoming more and more restless as the minutes ticked by. The Witchblade had been spoiling for some action for three days now, and despite her exhaustion, she thought she might jump out of her skin if she didn't appease it soon. Jolts of adrenaline made her heart race and her muscles tense. At one point, she gasped as she felt the Blade begin to morph, and she barely managed to regain control of it. This rattled her, and not for the first time she wondered if she really should be here in the thick of things. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain why Angel and/or Joaquin Medina had died from stab rather than bullet wounds. But it was too late to back out now.
"Whoa! What the hell was that?" she heard one of the agents monitoring the video feeds say. Luckily, after he was through speaking, Captain Phillips had moved away from the truck.
"What was what?" the other man said.
The first agent turned and pressed the rewind button on a VCR, then, a few seconds later the play button. A video image came up on yet another monitor. "There! I could swear I saw something move."
Sara quietly stepped up into the truck and watched the small screen as the man rewound and played the recording again. For a split second, she saw a darker shadow glide swiftly across the very bottom of the frame. Glancing from the image to the live feed, the second agent shrugged. "Maybe it was the lookout guy's shadow. He's probably pacing in an effort to stay warm."
"Oh, yeah? Then why don't we see it now live? Besides, the angle's wrong. The lookout is on the loading dock, and the camera's in a second- floor window. It would show someone walking along the street in front of the warehouse, but not on the loading dock. And there would need to be a light in back of the lookout guy in order to cast his shadow, you dope."
Abruptly, the Witchblade swirled warmly on Sara's wrist. 'Nottingham,' she thought, with a smile.
The second agent shrugged again. "Coulda been a pigeon. Those flying rats are always hanging out in abandoned warehouses. Johnson mentioned that he startled quite a few of them when he placed the cameras earlier."
"Since when do pigeons fly around at night, genius?"
"When something scares them, Einstein."
"Yeah, but who or what scared them, Smart Guy?"
"I don't know. Maybe a stray cat."
Unnoticed, Sara left the truck as the two men continued to snipe at each other. She was glad to know that her Protector was nearby, watching her back. Contrary to what the Witchblade desired, Sara was hoping the drug bust would be accomplished swiftly and without bloodshed, so that she could collect the feverish assassin and take him to Irons' estate in Westchester. So help her God, she would force the billionaire to administer the antidote to Nottingham -- at the point of the Blade if need be.
At quarter after 7:00, one of the communications experts dialed Angel Medina's beeper number, making it seem as though the call came from Alonzo Brown's cell phone, issuing a warning to the inhabitants of the abandoned ice factory. The joint task force personnel climbed into their vehicles and then waited tensely for the word to mobilize. Ten minutes later, the order to surround the factory came.
Once again, Sara rode in the backseat of a car driven by Jake McCartey, with Orlinsky riding shotgun. As they pulled up in front of the factory with lights flashing and siren blaring, they saw several men hastily exiting the building. The detectives jumped out of the car, guns drawn, shouting "Police! Show us your hands!"
Sara immediately recognized Joaquin Medina, and she wasted no time in grabbing him.
"Spread 'em, Medina," she growled, shoving the man against the unmarked police car.
"Okay, okay, you got me, Mommy," the man said, leering at her.
Sara patted him down, removing a .22-caliber handgun from his waistband. "Yeah, you got that right, Joaquin. You have the right to remain silent," she told him, handcuffing him. Spotlights were turned on, flooding the street and the factory with bright light. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney -- "
"Yeah, yeah, I know my rights, bitch," Joaquin snarled, interrupting her.
Ignoring him, Sara continued reading him his rights. When she was done, she handed him off to a narcotics officer, who marched him off to a van, into which a number of other men were being loaded, among them Alonzo Brown. Briefly, she made eye contact with the young man, and gave him a tiny nod, which he returned before a DEA agent herded him into the van. Glancing around, she saw Jake McCartey handcuffing Angel Medina while Agent Atherton read him his rights while Orlinsky and Captain Phillips looked on. Angel was placed in the back of an unmarked car, accompanied by Agent Atherton, and driven away.
'Sorry about the lack of violence and bloodshed, Witchy,' Sara thought at the sullenly glowing bracelet on her right wrist as she bagged the gun she'd taken off Joaquin as evidence.
"Detective Pezzini?" Sara turned and saw a young, sandy-haired man approaching. Although he was now clad in a NYPD jacket and his dirt- smudged face was pale and drawn from exhaustion, she immediately recognized him from the Witchblade's vision as the undercover narc, Tommy Fuller.
"Detective Fuller, it's good to see that you made it out in one piece," she greeted him.
"Yeah, thanks to you," he said. "I'm pretty sure I owe you my life."
"Glad I could help out, Detective," Sara told him modestly. "Oh, before I forget, I have something that belongs to you." She reached into her jeans pocket and extricated his wedding band, handing it to him.
The young detective's eyes welled up as he took it from her and slipped it on his ring finger. "My wife thanks you, too," he murmured huskily.
"Sure thing. Take care of yourself, okay?" Sara said, giving him a hug.
"When you see Ian again, tell him Tommy says thanks," he whispered in her ear, returning her embrace.
"I will," she told him. She watched as he went over to his commanding officer, who patted him on the back. Nonchalantly, she glanced up toward the nearby rooftops, but saw no sign of Ian Nottingham.
Fifteen minutes later, the majority of the task force personnel had left to escort the prisoners back to the 11th Precinct, leaving behind mostly DEA agents, who were busy removing the drugs from the abandoned factory.
"I guess we're done here," Jake McCartey said, ambling over to Sara where she leaned against their car. "I heard there's at least 50 kilos of heroin in there."
"Thank God it won't make it to the streets," she murmured, heaving a weary sigh. She had taken off the rather thin NYPD jacket and put on her down coat in an effort to combat the cold. For the past few minutes, she'd been trying to figure out a way to ditch Jake and Orlinsky without raising suspicion, so that she could hook up with Nottingham.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire sliced through the cold night air.
"That sounded like automatic weapons fire," somebody said.
"Who's firing their weapon?" Captain Phillips demanded. "Report!" he snapped into his headset.
"It sounds like it's coming from the roof of one of those buildings across the street, sir," someone else said.
'Oh, my God! Nottingham!' Sara thought.
"I'm gonna go check it out!" she said, and took off running toward an alley that ran along the west side of the dilapidated warehouse across from the ice factory.
"Detective, wait!" Phillips shouted. "Dammit!" he cursed as she ignored him.
Drawing her service weapon, Sara darted into the alley, which led to a wide, cobblestone street. She took a left turn, and jogged down the dark street, skidding to a stop when she saw the three delivery trucks parked in back of the warehouse.
"Detective Pezzini, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Captain Phillips irate voice came from the earpiece of the headset that Sara had forgotten that she was wearing. "You're supposed to wait for backup!"
Sara ignored him, and crept toward the trucks. She spotted a man standing on the stairs that led to the gaping back door of the warehouse. He was dressed in fatigues, his face was covered with camouflage greasepaint, and he wore night-vision goggles. Luckily, he wasn't looking in her direction at the moment, but she knew that he'd spot her if she tried to sneak up on him owing to the lack of cover. Then she remembered passing two rusting metal doors set in the ground back in the alley. Turning, she ducked back into the alleyway and retraced her steps until she found the doors. They were bolted from the inside, she discovered. Holstering her gun, she willed the Witchblade into the short stiletto form, jabbing the thin blade into the narrow slit between the two doors, and then yanking it downward.
The screech of fatigued metal as it gave was covered by another round of gunfire, which echoed loudly in the confines of the alley. More bursts of automatic weapons fire hid the groaning of rusty hinges as she lifted one of the heavy doors. The pulsing red light of the Witchblade's blood- red stone revealed stairs leading downward.
'At least I know Nottingham is still alive,' Sara thought grimly, descending the concrete steps into pitch-black darkness. 'Those trucks could conceivably carry eight to ten armed men each, so that means he's up against as many as 30 opponents. Those are pretty rotten odds, even for him. Maybe the Witchblade will level the playing field.' She eyed the fiery stone. 'Looks like you're gonna get that fight you wanted after all.'
****
Ian Nottingham coolly fought for his life on the roof of the abandoned warehouse. After the heavily armed men entered the warehouse, he had headed for the structure that housed the stairs that led to the roof, but his sharp hearing had picked up the sound of booted feet on the stairs, and he realized that that escape route was no longer open to him and that he would soon have company. Bullets kicked up the gravel in front of him when he started to approach the ladder that he had used to climb up to the roof, forcing him to take cover behind the metal housing that had once protected the warehouse's ventilation system, but not before he glimpsed the shooter leap onto the roof after having climbed that same ladder. Unclipping four smoke bombs from his harness, Ian pulled the pins and tossed them in the direction of the stair structure. They detonated, releasing billowing clouds of dark red smoke. Seconds later, the door to the stairs burst open, and several men came through, the first one laying down a burst of cover fire from an automatic weapon, probably a Kalashnikov rifle from the sound of it. Rising, Ian drew his katana and engaged his enemy.
In less than five minutes, he had killed four men with his sword and incapacitated two others, sustaining only a shallow graze from a bullet to his right thigh in the process. He had quickly realized that these men were well trained and experienced fighters. They had simply never faced a combat-trained, expert swordsman who also happened to be genetically enhanced. Snatching the headset from one of the fallen men, he took a moment to put it on.
"He's too fast, he's too fast! Get more firepower up here, now!" he heard a man say in Russian. Unfortunately for him, his voice brought Ian right to his position, and the cold, cold hazel eyes of the assassin were the last thing the man saw before a gloved fist knocked him unconscious.
'Eight times three, plus three drivers: that's at least 27 men,' Ian thought, eyes searching the rooftop through the rapidly dispersing smoke. 'That means there's probably another man up here somewhere, and two more nine- or ten-man units inside.'
The tiniest whisper of displaced air alerted Nottingham just in time. He ducked, and the knife the Russian threw barely missed him. The man came at him with another 12-inch blade, and in a blur of movement, Ian grabbed him by the right wrist, snapping it so that the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers, before throwing him up against the wall of stair structure, twisting his left arm up behind him savagely, eliciting a gasp of agony from the hapless mercenary. Ripping the man's headset from his head, Nottingham searched him for additional weapons, finding and tossing away two more knives, a pistol, and a stun gun.
"Who sent you?" he asked the man in Russian, after turning off his own headset so that his interrogation would not be overheard.
"Why don't you ask your lying, cheating dog of a boss that," the man spat in the same language.
Mentally, Ian sighed. 'No surprise there.' He was pretty certain he knew exactly which vengeance-minded breakaway republic had sent this attack force. The Russians had more than a bone to pick with Kenneth Irons -- more like a whole stinking carcass. Their grievance involved an arms deal that hadn't gone well for them at all but had, of course, made Ian's master quite a bit wealthier. Never content to simply come out ahead on an insanely lucrative deal, Kenneth had undoubtedly arranged to have their noses rubbed in the fact that they had been duped. Apparently, the Russians had decided that retribution was at hand, starting with the attempted elimination of Irons' personal bodyguard.
"How many of you are there?" Ian asked the man, forcing his left arm even higher, causing the man to yelp with pain.
"Go to hell," the man breathed.
Ian turned him around and punched him in the face, splitting his lip. "I do not want to kill you, but I will if I have to. Now, tell me how many are there?" he said, pressing the razor-sharp blade of the knife he now held against the man's jugular, drawing blood.
"You will not kill me," the mercenary said, baring bloody teeth in a ghastly smile. His eyes flicked past Ian before calmly meeting his gaze again.
Turning his head, Nottingham's heart skipped a beat as he spotted two men on the roof of the adjacent building, one of which was armed with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. The other man was quickly loading the launcher with a stinger missile.
"Ready to die, are you?" Ian asked his captive. "Well, much as I hate to disappoint you, I am not going to die today, and if you are very lucky, neither will you." With that he smashed his fist into the man's face again, rendering him unconscious, and then tossed him several feet away from the roof structure. Then Ian started running, heading for the edge of the roof. He was about five feet from it when he heard the distinctive sound of a missile being fired.
Just as Nottingham leapt for the edge of the roof, the missile hit the structure where he'd been standing just seconds earlier, completely destroying it in an enormous fireball. The concussive force of the explosion threw Ian hard against the four-foot high wall of the roof, but then his momentum carried him over the edge, and he was falling to the ground, six stories below.
More to come. As always, thanks for the feedback. I always appreciate it and look forward to reading it. Post more please!