Chances were that Doug Blakeley had gotten everything he knew about body searches from cop shows or watching other people do the work. Kelly took a minor chance, spreading his legs and angling his body – but not so much that he could not spin upright by thrusting himself off with his hands. The P-38 lay at his right foot, throwing its own flat shadow across the gravel to the base of the wall.
How many were there behind the lights? If Doug were alone, this was going to end real quick no matter where Gisela decided to stand in the business.
Which was an open question in Kelly’s mind right now, because the woman had sidled a few steps from his and was shielding her eyes with an uplifted forearm. She looked disconcerted, but not nearly as shocked by this as she had been by the fact that her friends had gone off and left her. The situation made reasonable sense to Kelly, waiting for a frisk or a gunshot, if Doug Blakeley was one of the dancer’s friends.
The asthmatic wheeze of a turbocharged engine at low rpm’s masked but did not hide the sound of footsteps. Kelly’s eyes were adjusting to the glare. Without shifting the position of his limbs or body, he turned his head and squinted over his shoulder.
There were two of them approaching, one from either side, their shadows distorted by the corrugations of the metal wall. The man to Kelly’s left said, “Peter here told me I should shoot you right off, Tom-lad. Blink wrong and we do just that.” It was Doug.
Kelly snapped his head around to center it between the lines of his shoulder blades. Peter has good sense, motherfucker, he thought, but not so good that he doesn’t take orders from you.
Gisela moved unexpectedly closer to the American. “I hadn’t thought you would arrive like this,” she said pleasantly, in English. Peter, the bull-necked professional to the right, knelt and picked up the Walther without removing his gaze or the muzzle of his weapon from Kelly’s chest. He and Doug both carried compact submachineguns – Beretta Model 12’s whose wire stocks were folded along the receivers. Beretta 12’s were easily distinguished from similar weapons by the fact that they had handgrips both before and behind the magazine well. Given his choice of wraparound bolt submachineguns, Kelly would have picked an Uzi or an Ingram, where the magazine in the handgrip facilitated reloading in a tight spot.
But given his choice, Kelly would have held the gun instead of being at the muzzle-end of two goons who were at least willing to blow him away.
Peter handed the P-38 to Doug, the shadow of the transfer warping itself across the beige metal wall. Both men carried their submachineguns in what was to Kelly the outside hand: he could probably grab either of his captors, but not both, and he could not grab either of the guns.
The engine of the car suddenly speeded up. It was an automatic response triggered either by the headlights’ load on the alternator or the block’s need for greater cooling than the fan could provide at a low idle. Peter snarled something in Bulgarian toward the vehicle, however, indicating both that he was jumpy – as Kelly would have been, forced to hold a gun on Peter – and that there was at least a third member of Doug’s present team.
Elaine might possibly speak Bulgarian, but it wouldn’t be the gunman’s choice of a language in which to address her, even at the present tense moment.
“He didn’t have a gun,” said Doug, “and then he’s got this to use on us. How do you suppose that happened?”
Kelly was so focused on himself and his own problems that he did not realize he was the subject of the sentence, not the question, until Gisela said, “He took – ” and Doug slapped her alongside the jaw with the butt of the pistol.
Had the weapon fired, it would have punched a nine-millimeter hole down through Doug’s belly, pelvis, and buttocks, a good start on what the fellow needed. . . . But Walthers, save for those churned out with bad steel and no care in the last days of the Nazis, were about as safe as handguns could be. The wooden grips cracked loudly on Gisela’s jawbone, and the wall rang as the blow threw her head against it.