Kindle Edition
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Crooked Cat Publishing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 174
Copyright: Dec 15, 2015
Price: $2.64 (eBook)
Crime thriller sequel to Catacomb featuring the 'avenging Cat'.
Some months after their adventure in Morocco, Catherine Vibrissae receives devastating news from Rick – news that will change her life.
Still determined to go to Shanghai to face down her arch enemy Malefice and end her vendetta once and for all, she thwarts an ambush by Cerberus’ head of security, Mr Soong.
To complicate matters, oligarch and people smuggler Belofsky is in Shanghai with his own agenda.
While Cat plays cat-and-mouse with Soong, she uncovers a conspiracy that could lead to war between China and Japan.
Excerpt
Two weeks ago
Tenerife
As prisoner transfers went, this one was going smoothly, as usual. First Sergeant Inma Lopez steered her BMW R850 motorcycle ahead of the Mercedes Sprinter. Their small Guardia Civil procession left Los Cristianos and steered inland onto the Arona road. This route, via Vilaflor, and through the Teide national park, may be circuitous, but it avoided the busy main coast road. Once they hit the TF-24, it was a short drive to El Rosario, the overcrowded prison, Tenerife II. Handcuffed in the van, their prisoner, Dolores Blanco seemed no trouble. Maybe she was still recovering from the gunshot wound she’d sustained on Gomera; still, she was now deemed fit enough to leave San Sebastian hospital and go to jail to await trial. “A simple transfer duty,” Lieutenant Vargas had observed when allocating her for this task. Corporal Pepe Machado brought up the rear on his motorbike, complaining as ever about ‘eating dust’. Birds chirped. All was well with the world. The curve in the road was sharp, yet easy to negotiate, but the obstruction was unexpected.
Inma braked and held up a warning gloved hand. The van drew to a halt behind her, its engine idling. There’d been a small landslide. Not that uncommon.
She switched off the engine, dismounted and kicked the stand out. Her hand hovered above her holster as she scanned the surrounding landscape: on the right of the road, a cluster of boulders, on the left, the fragmented slope that had caused the land-slip. No vehicles in sight, nobody about. Breathing easy now, she sauntered towards the van.
Diego, the driver, opened his window. “Qué pasa?”
“We need a shovel to clear this!” she called to him.
He thumbed toward the back. “It’s in there. I’ll open up.”
The rear doors were unlocked and Pablo, the prisoner escort, peered out. “Trouble?” he asked.
“No, just– ”
A series of shots erupted from the roadside boulders. Time seemed to move slowly for Inma as she sensed the impact in her back. Disoriented, steeped in pain, she buckled on weak legs and her knees hit the hard road surface. Her vision blurred. Hazily, she watched Pablo topple from the rear of the van and hit the ground.
She was having difficulty breathing, couldn’t seem to move her arm, her gun useless in its holster. She saw Pepe tumble under his motorcycle, red smearing his high-viz torso; then he lay still.
Glass shattered in the driver’s cabin and she knew that Diego and his co-driver were slain as well. She gulped in air but started coughing on a metallic-tasting viscous liquid.
In stark contrast to the sudden burst of deathly violence, now everything was still.
The silence persisted for a short while and then birds began chirping again. Inma was thankful that these would perhaps be the last beautiful innocent sounds she heard in her all too short life. Wet stickiness clung to her and a deep chilliness traced her spine.
Then she noticed a Ford Econoline van drive up and brake behind the fallen Pepe who still lay beneath his motorcycle. Two men got out, wearing black balaclava masks, one carrying a set of wire cutters and the other an automatic pistol. Despite being aware that her life drained from her every second, her professional mind absorbed details: they didn’t wear gloves, so perhaps they didn’t have criminal records? Their pace rapid, they strode to Pepe, and studied him briefly. One of them kicked him, perhaps to ensure he was dead. Her heart lurched in anguish and anger and she realised it was beating slowly, far too slowly.
A man emerged from the boulders, carrying an automatic rifle; he didn’t wear a mask, but she didn’t recognise him from any mugshots that flitted through her foggy mind. He walked towards the Sprinter’s cabin and checked Diego and the co-driver and then, content that they too were dead, he turned to her. She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. He stopped and stared at her and she waited for the coup de grace. His lips curled in the travesty of a smile. He shook his head and crossed himself, and then jogged to the Ford van. Callously, he let her live, doubtless aware that her dying moments would be filled with an overpowering rage and images of her failure.
The two masked men reached the rear of the Sprinter and cautiously clambered inside. Were they here to free the prisoner or to murder her? She would never know.
Finally, all went blissfully black and the pain went away. Everything went away.
***
Wearing prison fatigues and handcuffed to a bracket on the interior wall of the vehicle, Dolores Blanco sat on a hard bench and trembled at the sound of the gunshots. She had made plenty of enemies in her lifetime. Were they here to finish her off? Her mouth was parched as two men climbed in, both wearing balaclava masks. She held her breath and her stomach churned.
The shorter one carried an automatic pistol and warily scanned the interior. “All clear,” he said in a nasal twang, even those two words hinting that his Spanish was a foreign tongue to him.
The tall man stepped forward, hefted a huge pair of cutters and snapped the chain of her cuffs.
Massaging her wrist still encircled with the single handcuff, she said, “Thanks, whoever you are!”
“We’ll explain when we’re clear of here,” the short one said, helping her to the road. He rummaged in the pockets of her dead escort officer and freed a set of keys, unlocked her cuff.
She noticed the other dead Guardia Civil officers, blood discolouring their tunics and the road, and a frisson of pleasure suffused her. All this death, solely for her.
The tall man threw the cutters into the brush and all three hurried to the Ford van, which had turned around in the meantime.
They clambered into the rear. As they motored away, the two men removed their balaclava masks.
The tall one was unfamiliar to her: lean, with Latin looks and a two-day stubble, eyes dark and brooding. The short one was clean-shaven, with a cleft chin, wide-set greyish brown eyes, high Slavic cheekbones and long tawny-brown unkempt hair to earlobes; she knew him. “Anton Belofsky!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Not pleased to see me, Lola?” His narrow thin lips curved.
“Of course I am. It’s just that the last I heard, you’d run off on your boat with Jacinta Ortiz to escape the law.’
“I came back because I have a few scores to settle.”
“But why spring me free?” She raised an eyebrow, lips curling in amusement. “Not that I’m ungrateful, of course.”
“I thought you’d like to get even with the Kirbys.”
“Kirbys?”
“Laura Reid and Andrew Kirby. They’re married now.”
She let out a shriek. “The Reid woman! She shot me!”
“We know, we’ve been keeping an eye on your hospital care. When we heard you were fit enough to be moved to prison to await trial, it seemed time to act.”
“I’m very glad you did.”
“I’ve taken a risk to free you.” He smiled like an alligator, mouth broad and menacing. “Perhaps you might like to return the favour?”
“Why free me to do that? Haven’t you got men who would do whatever it is for you?”
“Oh, yes, I have.” He pointed at the two silent men beside them. “But I want you as my woman. You have spirit. This would be my gift to you, if you are interested?”
“What about Jacinta? Wasn’t she your woman?”
“We parted on amicable terms.”
“I could be amicable with you, Anton. Especially after what you’ve done for me today.”
He snickered. “Yes, I hoped you would say that.”
“But first, I would like to pay back the Reid woman.”
“That would please me greatly, my dear.” He opened a long satchel and handed her an automatic rifle.
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