He’d have to fool Grigore as well. He never wanted to know his captor’s name, and now he couldn’t forget. She was right after all. Not knowing names would have been easier.
The timer expired.
He freed the instruments from the pressure and heat of the autoclave. He couldn’t feel the heat through the thick rubber skin of his blue suit, but within the suit he felt his own body heat. The pressure within his head increased. His heart raced. For a moment, he wanted to return the instruments to the cabinet and do nothing, to forget everything and return to his cell. Let them do what they would with him. His father shouted at him from a deep and dreaming part of his head. The voice shouted at a coward. No more.
He picked up the scalpel and turned from the camera. With a careful slice, the blade cut into his sleeve. Air seeped from the tiny slit into the lab’s low-pressure atmosphere.
Behind him, Dr. Korkolis moved the boxes into an insulated crate. He stumbled toward her with his sleeve outstretched. In the other, he tucked the blade along the inside of his arm, clenching it with his fingers.
“My suit is breeched,” he said in a panic.
Her eyes widened.
“Get out!” she shouted, though her voice was impotent and frail within the suit. “Sterilize immediately.”
She pointed to the hall. It was her instinct to do this, but she had no real concern for him. She did not pause to think or question. What did she care if he lived or died? This was her training, nothing more. Still, in her eyes he glimpsed a vulnerable reaction to the surrounding danger. She was for a moment, like him—a weak child.
He ran to the air lock and waited for the pressurized seal to release the steel door. Air flowed past him like a sucking breath, and once inside the nozzles doused him with chlorine bleach that sterilized any trace of disease. His risk of contamination was low, even with the puncture in his sleeve. The lab served its singular purpose well. She saw to that for her own sake. She could not enter behind him while the nozzles rinsed away chemicals that disappeared into a steel drain.
He still held the scalpel along his arm, ready to conceal it from the camera in the room beyond. There he stripped from the blue suit and laid it like a deflated skin on the epoxy floor. He hurried through the process, making a fist to calm himself as he shed his scrubs and stood naked in the changing room. At each step, he focused on the scalpel. He concealed it on the table within the wad of scrubs. Then he clutched it in his left hand where the blade fell along the bare skin of his forearm.
In the shower, he scrubbed himself with one hand while the other hand grasped the scalpel. He dropped it. He leapt to avoid the blade from puncturing his foot. The scalpel clattered on the shower floor, and he muttered to himself as he examined it. The blade was intact. He clutched the steel grip tighter in his hand
Grigore awaited him in the locker room beyond. Kamran’s stomach turned. Did she alert him? He crossed the room naked and dripping wet. He dared not look at Grigore, but from the sides of his vision he saw the guard take an uneasy step back as he entered. Kamran dropped the blade into his bundle of stinking clothes and dressed. Grigore watched from across the room.
“Where is Dr. Korkolis?” Grigore asked.
Kamran nodded his head toward the containment. “I had to leave the lab. There was a tear in my suit.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“Only for me. But I have sterilized everything. This can happen sometimes.”
He shrugged and sat on the bench to put on his socks and slippers.
Grigore’s shoulders drooped, a sign Kamran took for relief. The guard rubbed his mouth and looked to the shower door. Kamran used the moment to put on his shirt and again tuck the scalpel along his arm. Without any force at all the blade cut through the sleeve, but he ignored it and made an effort to button his shirt.
“She will be out to yell at me soon,” he said.
Grigore chuckled and shot him a malicious sneer. Unfazed, Kamran stood with his arms at his side and waited for Grigore to move first.
“You clumsy fuck,” Grigore said. “You buttoned your shirt wrong.” He prodded with his chin at Kamran.
Kamran looked down at his worn shirt, its buttons askew. He tugged at a one of the buttons with one hand and shrugged. Don’t look at him. If he can notice that, he can notice the scalpel. He shuffled across the tiles toward the door.
“What do I care? Back to your room,” Grigore said. He stood at the door waiting for Kamran to exit, unaware of the scalpel.
Kamran pushed the door latch and entered the bright hallway. Grigore trailed behind and passed his badge over the sensor to open the prison cell door. Kamran thought he could reach out and take the card, cut it loose with a flick of the razor-sharp scalpel in his hand. For that matter, he could cut the man’s throat. The scalpel’s edge would slice through his flesh before he knew what had happened. But it wouldn’t kill him outright. Kamran’s arm froze at his side. Grigore would fight back, and Kamran could not fight. He couldn’t even run. Fear stole his breath. The vice in his chest returned. He entered his prison once again as Grigore backed away to avoid any risk of contact. The door slammed shut with a metallic thud.
Kamran sat on his cot and stared at the wall. He still clasped the scalpel at his side, but the fear paralyzed him as he lost track of time. He heard a faint tapping, a tick at the base of his brain that he realized came from without rather than within.
He had no sense of how long it had been—how long the random beats of tapping had sounded in his ears. Minutes or hours, it did not matter. He was the pawn of everyone here. Maybe the American was just using him. All he had to do now was remain in place. They would free him, or they would kill him. There was nothing he could do to change that. There never was.
The tapping ceased. From the vent where he spoke to Ethan the night before he heard a sound like a voice. Dazed, he made no sense of the words. The sound was faint and desperate, a kind of pleading mantra. He stared at the wall until the pleas also ended.
A crash shook him from his trance. The force of something heavy and loud on the other side of the wall sent tremors into his quiet space. He stood. More banging sounded, like a hammer on a rock. From his doorway, he watched Grigore run to the room next door, shouting at the American. From within his cell, the American screamed back.
Kamran turned his head to hear more. On the counter next to him he spied his watch curled in a coil of gold and glass. He took the watch in his hand and gripped tight. His skin shivered. All sense of fear left him. It was time.
Overhead, he found the metal bar of the magnetic lock. He jammed the scalpel once, twice into the tiny crevice and shoved through to the door frame. He pulled the scalpel’s handle away from the door, pleading to himself for it not to break. His weak arms strained, and the surgical steel seemed to bend. Please let me be strong enough.
He heard a tiny crack and stumbled back into the room with the scalpel still in his hands. He thought it broke, but the door opened slightly into the hallway. The nearby shouting and banging became louder. He examined the blade. Its tip had chipped away, but a gleam of razor edge glinted in the hallway light. He stepped out into the empty hall.
More shouting came from the room where Grigore’s voice screamed at the American. From the American came an anguished cry that Kamran recognized. He’d made that sound himself in the cellar where they beat him. It was a cry of anguish, much like the ones he kept inside himself while they made him part of their killing. Grigore stood over Ethan, reaching for his gun.
Unnoticed, Kamran stepped into the room. He wrapped his free arm around Grigore’s wide girth. With the other he pulled the scalpel hard across the man’s neck and felt the warm blood cover them both.
Chapter 21: Deep Wounds
Brașov, Romania
8:49 a.m., Saturday, June 22
Ethan cried out as the guard threw him to the hard floor of his cell. He couldn’t overpower the heavyset man who stood over him shouting in words he couldn’t comprehe
nd. His ears thrummed from the pain. He fought to keep one battered eye open. He had thrown himself at the door, then at the guard in desperation to get out. Now he wasn’t sure he could stand. He had failed.
The shouting stopped. A pale dread overtook the guard’s expression. The guard clawed silently at a pair of scrawny arms that quickly vanished. In their place, smears of bright red spread down the guard’s shirt. The man’s eyes went wide in shock. His life blood fell from a gash across his throat. The guard turned to the hallway where Kamran Khorasani backed away from him. He fumbled at his hip for his weapon. Wounded as he was, the guard could still kill either of them.
Ethan forced himself to his feet. Blood rushed from his head and sent the room atilt. He threw himself again at the guard, clutching at the pistol before the man could free it and fire. They fell to the floor together wrestling over the weapon.
Ethan struggled to speak. “Help me.”
He tugged at the man’s stout fingers, prying them one at a time from the pistol’s grip. He tried to breathe through the pain. He had little strength left to fight. His lungs burned. The guard’s breath gasped and gurgled, and slowly his fingers weakened as Ethan pried them away.
Ethan freed the gun and crawled away from the dying guard with the weapon trained at his dying body. His forearms stung from exertion, and the pistol hung heavy in his hands from the effort.
Sweat dripped into his eye, and he blinked away the blur. Kamran faced him, sitting against the far hallway wall with his bloodied arms raised in surrender. In one hand he clutched a gold watch. The other held a slim scalpel.
“Do not shoot please,” Kamran said.
His voice trembled, high pitched and weak. Ethan saw terror in his soulless eyes. Scorpio had stripped everything from him. His station, his dignity, his hopes and fears, any sense he had of his former self had crashed in the Black Sea weeks ago. All of it was laid bare now with only his instinct to survive remaining. This was their aim. They inserted themselves like a parasite in his mind, driving him to become a killer.
Ethan lowered the weapon.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” Kamran lowered his arms and pointed at Ethan’s face. “But your eye …”
“It’s all right. We’ve got to get out now. Down the hallway to that door.”
He stood again. A steady sting of pain swelled in his left eye, but his balance returned and with it his senses. They had no more than a minute before other guards would arrive. He stepped out into the hallway over the guard’s body. Down the long hall, he saw a sliver of daylight under the steel door. He pointed with the pistol toward the exit, but Kamran crawled back into the room where he reached at the dying guard’s belly with the scalpel.
“He’s gone. There’s no time for that. Let’s go,” Ethan said.
Kamran snipped at the guard’s belt and held up the guard’s ID badge. “We may need this.”
Ethan nodded. He moved to the other end of the hall where it turned deeper into the building. He knew more guards would come from the doorways and twisting halls beyond. He checked the pistol and peeked around the corner. He heard nothing—no shouts, no running feet. No one came. Not yet.
“Go now,” he said.
Kamran ran ahead of him down the long hallway. Just a straight sprint to daylight, and then they could find a vehicle or escape on foot. Their footsteps reverberated down the empty hall. If the guards didn’t hear, they could see. Ethan spotted the camera exactly as he remembered, hanging from the ceiling like a watchful eye.
Kamran reached the door and wagged the handle. He looked frantically for the security panel and waved the badge across it. With a tiny click the lock released, and Kamran shoved the door into bright morning sunlight.
Ethan turned to check behind him as they exited onto the loading dock outside. He squinted into the gloomy hallway, but nothing moved. Still no footfalls of pursuers bounded down the hall. They could escape.
He spun around and watched as Kamran fell mutely to his knees with the scalpel jammed into his shoulder.
Andrei came for him next. He had waited for them at the entrance. Kamran hadn’t even seen the attack. Now it was Ethan’s instinct that drove him to kill or be killed. His vision narrowed so tightly that he saw only Andrei’s empty hands moving in a blur toward him.
He lunged left and pulled the trigger with the pad of his finger. Just as Wade had scolded him to do again and again in training. Once, twice the gun kicked in his hand. Andrei swatted his arm away, and the shots fired wide into the open lot.
Andrei wrapped his hands around the gun and shoved Ethan back. A shiver of pain shot up his arm, and the gun twisted away from him. His fingers tensed, but the more he grasped it, the more his fingers bent to the point of breaking. He let go.
Andrei clasped the gun with one hand awkwardly, unable to fire. With the other he struck Ethan’s neck in a swift jab like a snake’s bite. The blow dazed more than hurt, and he stumbled back. Andrei positioned the gun in his left hand and sneered at Kamran who knelt nearby clutching at the scalpel.
“Fucking coward,” Andrei said.
He shot Kamran in the back and kicked him to the ground.
Ethan saw his own end. Andrei moved quicker than him, each movement the practice of a trained killer. Now he’d die at Andrei’s hand, just like those Romanian fools who didn’t know what they had bargained for. He remembered the tattooed one with the knife and Andrei’s bleeding left arm. The memory was his last advantage.
He reached out before Andrei turned the gun on him. He didn’t want the weapon, but Andrei would expect that. It bought him the fractional second he needed to grab Andrei’s forearm. He dug his thumb into the deep wounds along his left arm. Andrei jerked in pain and a grunt escaped his sneering mouth. The pistol clattered on the concrete as they struggled.
Ethan drove the tip of his thumb deeper. Andrei howled, then struck Ethan again and again with his fist. Ethan held ever tighter, trying to shake off the rapid blows to his chest. With each, his lungs tightened, and he struggled to breathe. But Andrei squirmed in agony.
The punches stopped, and Andrei shoved himself toward Ethan, twisting his arm to break Ethan’s grasp. Ethan held tight and opened the cut along Andrei’s arm. Warm blood soaked through his gray jacket sleeve.
Andrei shifted his weight again and kicked. The pain Ethan tolerated, but his old weakened knee buckled beneath him. Andrei freed himself, and with a shove knocked Ethan to the ground.
Andrei rubbed along his forearm and winced. “I should have killed you before. When I killed your CIA friends.”
“But you didn’t. Because you do whatever you’re told.”
Behind Andrei, Kamran’s body moved. Blood covered his shoulder, and below that a darker stain grew on the back of his shirt. He rolled to his side, and Ethan saw his face. Light faded from his eyes. His mouth moved like a dying fish gasping for breath. Ethan would face the same fate if he didn’t do something. For now, he could only stall and hope for some chance to fight back.
“Isn’t that it, Andrei? You’re just Korkolis’ bitch.”
Andrei kicked him hard in the side. Ethan coughed from the force of it. He fended off another kick, but the effort drained the strength from his limbs. Andrei loomed over him while he gasped for air.
“You think I give a fuck what you say?” Andrei said.
“I think you don’t believe their bullshit. They’ll throw you away for the cause. Just like you used Kagirov. Like you used Seda.”
Andrei mocked him with a snort, and a twisted smile replaced his cruel sneer.
“I’ll take my time with you. You die alone. No one will ever find the pieces of you,” Andrei said.
Kamran slid over the coarse concrete, inching himself along within reach of the pistol that lay a few feet from his grasp. Ethan cowered from more kicks from Andrei’s heavy boots. He absorbed the heaviest blows with his arms, trying to protect his ribs.
Andrei stopped to smirk at him again and gather his breath.
He wiped away a froth of spittle from his mouth, unaware that behind him Kamran had reached the gun. Andrei kicked again, slower this time, more forceful.
Ethan endured the pain and took his turn to mock. He forced out a laugh at Andrei who paused enough for Ethan to lower his arms from his head and speak.
“You of all people know what they say, Andrei.”
“No, you tell me, you little wretch of a whore. Tell me while you bleed out your asshole.” Andrei raised his boot to stomp again.
“Tebe pizdets,” Ethan said. You’re fucked.
Kamran fired. He shot up at Andrei, pulling the trigger in slow succession. Each shot rose from the recoil that he struggled to contain in both of his feeble and blood-soaked hands. The first shot tore through Andrei’s back and out his stomach. The rest rose up through his lungs as Andrei twisted away from the gunfire. The last shots missed altogether and lodged into the nearby wall. But Kamran had his revenge.
Andrei took a step toward Kamran, then staggered off the edge of the loading dock where he fell onto the gravel below.
Quiet washed over the open lot like a calmed sea. In the fleeting moment, Ethan wanted to close his eyes and wake in his bed next to Sarah. That was a fleeting dream, but cold reality kept him awake. He pushed himself up. More guards would come for them.
Kamran mumbled something Ethan couldn’t understand. His hands still held up the emptied pistol, his fingers tugging at a dead trigger. A miserable whine escaped his throat, but Ethan ignored his delirium. They had to move. He reached for Kamran to drag him to the edge of the dock. Kamran’s eyes fixed on him in horror.
“No,” he said, “do not touch me.” The pistol fell away, and Kamran raised a blood-soaked hand. His voice stuttered and shook from his wounds. “I could still infect.”
“Can you make it?”
Kamran nodded. He dragged himself to the edge and swung his legs over the side to stand.
The Hidden Vector: A Spy Thriller Page 26