“No. Stay in the vehicle. I’m sending someone to collect.” He turned to the paramilitary who’d accompanied him. “Go!”

As the paramilitary left, Yuri snatched up a sheet from one of the fallen gurnez and jammed it against the woman’s bullet wound, tying it on hard with a length of tube from the wrecked medical tower. Then he went over to where a pair of drones was hovering over the wounded gang member. Two laser target dots illuminated his forehead. The man had taken three hits, two in the arm, one in the chest. He was already ashen, gulping down breath. Blood was pooling on the floor. “Help,” he beseeched.

“Sure thing,” Yuri knelt down and pushed his visor up. “One of my people is bringing a medic kit. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. I’ve seen worse.”

“Man, it hurts!”

“I need to know, where are the other people that were brought here?”

“Please. I’m sorry. I just drive the vans, you know?”

“Sure.” Yuri held up the card with Horatio’s picture. “Did you see this kid? Is he still here?”

The man had trouble focusing. “Jeez, it hurts bad. Deep, you know, deep inside. Is that the bullet?”

“Keep it together. The paramedics are almost here. Before they give you a shot for the pain, tell me: the kid?”

Yuri heard more gunfire hammering in the big warehouse directly underneath. Then a series of grenades went off. The whole room shuddered for several seconds.

“Did you see him?” Yuri persisted.

“Yes. He was here. Overnight.”

“Where is he now?”

“They took him downstairs.”

“Downstairs where?”

“Ready—”

“Ready for what?”

The man’s limbs started to shake.

“Ready for what?” Yuri shouted.

“Go.” He held an arm up, fingers grasping for Yuri, as if that contact would somehow help. “Ready to go.”

Yuri stood up, ignoring the clawing hand. “Our prime target may still be in the building. Ground floor. Proceed with extreme caution.” He snapped the visor down again and studied the tactical display before striding out of the room and hurrying down the stairs. One of his drones flew point, the other took up position behind.

There was a doorway behind the lobby’s reception desk. The door itself had been torn off, revealing a black gulf. The point drone flew through first. Yuri followed it into a long, windowless locker room with smashed light panels on the ceiling. His visor enhancements kicked in, converting the darkness into a clinical blue-and-white monochrome image. The drone navigated its way past buckled lockers that leaned against each other like a domino knock-down row that hadn’t quite worked. It slipped through another open doorway into the first of the ground-floor warehouses. Yuri came out into a huge space, broken up by floor-to-ceiling cargo racks that were mostly vacant. Grenade blasts had pummeled hundreds of empty plastic crates out of their stacks, scattering them across the floor. Ancient heavy-lift trollez were parked around the five loading bay doors, the warehouse’s vast interior making them look like abandoned toys. Two of the tactical team’s drones had been brought down, their blackened armor fuselage casings badly crumpled. Yuri didn’t like to think what weapon had done that. There were gunshots coming from the far end of the warehouse, obscured from Yuri’s view as he crouched down and ran for cover behind a solid-looking workbench.