by Seth Harwood
But there’s no time to find out what these guys did to him.
When he tackles the suit, he comes down on him hard, but then the bed comes down on top of both of them and Niki feels something wet run down the back of his neck. He tries to shrug the bed off, but it’s too heavy. Underneath him, the suit is writhing madly, struggling just to get free and out from under. Then Niki feels a horrible pinch in his shoulder, and there’s only one thing it could be: that fucker bit him!
Niki crawls out from under the bed. He touches the wet spot on his neck and looks at his hand—what’s there is white and red mixed together. It looks like a mixture of puss and blood. He wipes it on the bedsheets. Normally this would really creep him out, but right now he’s got one thing on his mind: kicking this suit’s ass.
Freeman pushes his chair away from the bed with his foot, looks at Niki and says, “Futhing kilh him,” through a bloody mouth and two busted lips.
Niki shrugs. He hasn’t seen the big man since they all watched the Colombians tear down The Coast, but from what Jack’s said, he can’t be trusted. Still, for now, he’s preaching to the choir. Niki looks at Jack, thinks about slapping him across the face to see if it’ll get any reaction—Jack’s eyes are open but he looks like he could be sleeping, which is strange—but the black suit stands up on the other side of the bed, and Niki’s over it in a second, gun in hand. He takes the guy down and this time comes down on top of him with no bed, no neck getting puss dripped on it, and with the suit face-down so there’ll be no biting. He hits him once, hard in the back of the neck with the butt of his gun and feels some of the fight rush out of the fuck. Then he puts the gun down and rolls the suit over on his back, straddling him and holding his arms down with his legs.
“You want to bite something?” Niki says. The suit shakes his head. There’s no look in his eyes yet, as if something of him is still missing from the hit in the back of the neck. “Bite on this.” Niki drops a punch with all he’s got into the middle of the guy’s mouth, trying to break his teeth. He hits him again, feels the lips break against the teeth and looks down at what was a mouth and is now just a bloody mess.
“You feel that?” he asks, and hits him again. “I’m going to give you something to fucking bite on.” He reaches for the Makarov.
Jane Gannon comes across the warehouse floor between the series of beds and odd furniture. She sees a few girls tied down to the beds and this turns her stomach so much she wants to kill Akakievich herself. As it is, it looks like Shaw has his hands full there; the two stand toe-to-toe, bald Russian and bald black cop, and circle each other like two dogs getting ready to fight in a pit.
She goes to one of the girls and tries to untie her from the table, but the girl’s actually pinned down with handcuffs, fucking police issue, she’s willing to bet. “Are you OK?” she asks the girl.
Her thin, pale face turns to Jane, and she smiles, but it’s not a look of recognition. Wherever this girl is, she’s not seeing Jane and the rest of the room. Wherever she is, she’s probably seeing pink hearts, yellow moons, and blue diamonds. Jane wonders if slapping her will help, but then why wake her from what could be a pleasant dream? Knowing what Akakievich is capable of, she’ll probably have a long turn in detox after this experience and will never get over the emotional scars of what she’s had done to her.
“You are a serious fuck, Alexi,” Gannon yells across the room. Vlade’s at the top of the stairs now, and he looks around them. Their eyes meet, and they both shrug; what could’ve been a big fire fight and a scene where any or all of them could have been killed is at least partly under control. They’re not outnumbered or outgunned. A hell of a lot of fighting’s already gone down, and amid the wreckage, only about two of Akakievich’s guys are still standing. Then one of them starts to stand up behind Shaw, and Vlade cuts him down with a quick burst from his Uzi.
“Fucking A,” Gannon says. She fires off two shots at the ceiling and when she sees a guy across the room pick his head up and look her way, she shoots him in the chest.
Then she sees Jack. His back’s to her, but his fucking head is unmistakable. Who else has a head that big? He’s in a chair and not moving. Immediately she fears the worst, that Akakievich has done something off the deep end, that by not coming in when Shaw wanted her to, she’s let Jack die. She shakes her head. That she shot him is not something she’ll forgive herself for anytime soon, something she’ll probably carry with her for a while, but if she let him get killed on her watch, if they could’ve saved him and didn’t, she’ll never live to forgive herself for that.
She rushes over to Jack, passes the big Samoan with the broken face—he watches her with a look she doesn’t like—and steps around Niki and what he’s now doing to the face of a Russian in a suit on the floor. But then she stops and has to take a second look. Niki’s got the butt of a gun’s grip in the suit’s mouth, and it looks like he’s using the edge of the clip to pry out the guy’s front teeth. The suit’s choking on the gun, trying to move his head away, but Niki’s sitting on both of his legs and won’t let the guy go. The clip of a gun always has that front lip on it, but she’d guess it hasn’t been used for this purpose very often. She’d say never, but in this world, she can’t be sure.
“Niki?” she says.
He tilts his head toward Jack’s chair. “Handle Jack.”
A sound comes from the suit’s mouth that’s half a gurgle and half the kind of crack you’d expect to hear if someone’s tooth got broken out of his mouth.
“Yeah, motherfucker,” Freeman Jones says to Niki. “Fuck his ass up!”
Much as she wants to stop what she sees happening, Gannon has to know what’s happened to Jack. She approaches him slowly, sees the back of his head, and comes around his chair half afraid of what she’ll find. She sees a few dark marks on his forearm: burns from either a cigar or maybe something else around that size or shape. She touches Jack’s shoulder and feels something of a response from him. He moves under her hand, and she knows he’s alive.
“Jack,” she says. She comes around to his front now, full around, and sees his arm still in the sling, some blood seeping through the bandages from beneath them. His face looks as if he’s totally gone, and she knows right away that he’s nodded out, that whatever Akakievich has been giving to these girls, he’s given to Jack as well.
“Fucking Jack,” she says, and slaps him across the face, hoping it’ll do some good. “Jack!”
38. Vlade Takes Over
Shaw circles Akakievich, waiting for the moment to make his move. “How’d you get the black eye there, comrade?”
Akakievich nods. He touches his lip and looks at his hand. “This is a courtesy of your friend Jack Palms, Detective Shaw. But do not worry. He will have whole new problems in his life now. A brand-new addiction.”
“Truth is,” Shaw says, “I never really liked that fuck. Too pretty for his own good.”
“Yes.”
This is when Shaw makes his move to sweep Akakievich’s feet out from under him; he slides at the Russian’s ankles and catches them between his legs, then rotates and brings him down. Then they’re both on the floor. Akakievich scrambles to get away from Shaw, comes up into a crouch, and pulls out a six-inch knife. He waves his other hand from Shaw toward himself, beckoning, and sneers, “Come on.”
Shaw does a 180 and turns so he’s facing Akakievich with his head and hands, not his feet. He leans back onto his feet, comes up onto his toes, ready to pounce forward. Slowly, the two men both rise to standing at the same time, eyes locked on each other’s, hands dangling in front of them.
“What is your move, Detective? Why are you so slow to react?”
The truth is, Shaw’s trying to figure out where his gun went, how it got lost in the scuffle when he was blinded. Behind Akakievich, where the bigger Russian was, Sasha, he knows the AK went in that direction, but he’s not sure what happened to his Beretta. This is the worst sin imaginable, and Shaw knows it: coming into a situation like th
is and losing your weapon—sure, he wanted to attack with his hands downstairs to keep things on the quiet side, but that doesn’t change things. Maybe he’s getting out of practice, maybe Walnut Creek estate patrol has finally softened him up to the point where he can’t do things like this anymore. “Shit.” He swears, and it’s not clear how Akakievich reacts, what he thinks this means.
But in Shaw’s mind, the first thing he’s thinking is the last thing he should be thinking in a time like this—that he’s thinking at all means he’s too fucked out of the moment to be effective.
“Fuck!” Shaw yells a few curses and hits himself with a right uppercut to his chin. It dazes him for a second and pushes him to the side, but he shakes it off and he’s seeing red again. Fuck the gun, fuck the AK that’s probably over behind Akakievich somewhere, and fuck this motherfucker with a bullshit knife.
“You want this?” Shaw asks. By now it’s clear by the look on Akakievich’s face that he has no idea what to expect next. Shaw takes his shirt off and wraps it around his hand for protection from the knife. “Come on, motherfucker.” Shaw rushes at Akakievich, and the Russian steps to the side, moves past Shaw and uses his own momentum to push him into the table and down onto Sasha, who’s still out of it from Shaw’s last punch. But now with the cop on top of him, Sasha starts moving. Shaw pushes him to the side and gets up, starts toward Akakievich again. The two square up, Akakievich slashing a few times with his knife, and Shaw dodging.
“I had a gun, I’d just fucking shoot your ass, motherfucker.”
“How about I shoot you up with heroin and cut your fingers off one by one?”
Shaw rushes at Akakievich again, his shirt between both hands now. He hits Akakievich with a left to the ribs, then a right elbow to the jaw, then he spins, wraps the shirt around Akakievich’s right wrist and puts his back into the Russian’s body. He hits Akakievich with an elbow to the ribs and starts pushing him back toward the front wall of the warehouse. Akakievich wraps his left arm around Shaw’s neck and tightens his grip, going for a makeshift half nelson.
“Fuck you!” Shaw elbows Alexi in the right-side ribs again and then again, lifting the Russian’s feet off the ground each time he does. He swings the right arm around looking for something to beat it against until the knife falls out and, finding nothing, uses his own knee to smash Akakievich’s wrist into. Fortunately, this only takes about two whacks before the knife rattles out of his hand, and now Shaw pulls away from the Russian, turns to face him, then twists his arm behind his back, spinning Alexi around in the process. He starts to run him face-first toward the glass windows of the front of the warehouse, but a burst of shots to his right stops him where he is. Just next to where he holds Akakievich, he sees Sasha fall to the ground, cut down with a burst from an automatic. He turns and sees that not only has Jane Gannon finally made it on the scene, along with Niki, but Vlade stands at the top of the stairs, a smoking Uzi in his hand and a look on his face like he’s finally come home.
From outside, Shaw hears the sound of police sirens for the first time. Perhaps Alexi wasn’t lying. But for now there’s nothing he can do about the cops; they’ll all just have to sort this shit out when they arrive.
Vlade nods at Shaw, like Shaw has something he wants. Vlade walks closer, kicking tables and bodies out of his way. Akakievich looks to be the only Russian left standing. And then he’s not; in a flash before Shaw can react, Akakievich drops onto the ground, his legs on either side of Shaw’s feet, and he does the same scissor spin move that Shaw’d tried earlier, only this time it works all too well, brings Shaw down hard onto the ground. Something angular and metal hits the side of his head, and when he touches that side of his face, he feels warm blood on his fingers. He sees Akakievich, both hands over his head, swinging down at his midsection, and he has an instant to clench up his abs, but it’s not enough. Akakievich hits him full force in the gut and knocks the wind out of Shaw. He coughs something onto the ground, then, before Akakievich can do anything else, Vlade leaps on Akakievich and pins him down. He screams something in another language that Shaw can’t understand.
39. Rescue
“Jack.” Gannon slaps him across the face twice before she gets a response. Even then, Jack barely looks in her direction, no shred of recognition passing over his face. “The fuck did you do, Jack?” she asks, knowing she won’t get any response.
“White horsth,” Freeman tells her. “Your fucking Rusthian shot Jack up with histh old buddy. Dude’s probably futhed up right now.” He looks away from her and back down at Niki just as a bone crunching sound clicks in the Russian’s mouth. Niki brings the gun up with blood trickling down the handle. The guy’s mouth looks worse than Freeman’s: lips broken and chin in blood. There’s a wide gap on the top of his mouth where Niki’s pulled his teeth out: two or three at least. Even with the things she’s seen in ten years of life as an FBI agent, this makes her look away.
She yells Niki’s name. “What is wrong with you? Leave this bastard alone now.”
Niki turns to face her and shakes his head. Something passes behind his eyes, and it’s as if he’s just come back from a faraway place, a feeling Gannon doesn’t want to know.
“Let him alone,” she says. Niki nods and lets the Russian go. The Russian rolls over onto his chest, holding his mouth with both hands and whimpering softly, and Niki grabs his shirt, uses it to wipe off the butt of his gun.
“Futhing pusthy,” Freeman says.
Niki tucks the gun into the back of his pants and stands up. His hands are shaking. He’s breathing fast. “Smoke a cigarette or something,” Gannon says. “Jesus.”
Niki shakes his head. “How is Jack?”
“He’s whacked out. How much did that fucker give him?”
“Plenthy. Seriousth.”
“Shit.” She starts to undo Jack’s straps: one around his head that’s barely still holding him; one around his upper chest, this one tight around his sling, the gauze already stained with fresh blood from today, after it’s supposed to have stopped bleeding; another strap around his waist like a seat belt; and straps across his thighs and shins. They’re all leather belts, with metal buckles, the kind of thing you’d see on old electric chairs. Shit, it wouldn’t surprise her if Akakievich had gone out and gotten one just to have the fucking thing around. She notices the bad-looking burns on Jack’s right forearm again and decides that they need some medical attention.
Police sirens echo from outside off the other abandoned warehouses. She shakes her head. “Where’s Akakievich?”
Niki looks around them, points to the other side of the room where she can see Vlade wrestling on the floor with the Russian sex trafficking fuck. Niki starts toward them.
“Why don’t you start unstrapping some of the girls?” she calls after him. Niki doesn’t stop or show any sign that she’s spoken; he walks straight toward Akakievich and Vlade. Gannon turns to look away from what Niki’s about to do.
“Fuck.” She slaps Jack again, and for a moment, it looks as if Jack might focus, but his eyes go and he’s gone again.
“You need a hand with this slacker?” Suddenly Shaw stands beside her, fresh blood trailing down the side of his face from a cut above his ear. But he’s smiling. “He OK?”
Gannon nods. “Come on. We need to get you two out of here before the cops show.” Shaw bends down and pulls Jack’s body out of the chair, drapes Jack over his shoulder and stands up holding him like a fireman holds an old woman. Jack’s one free arm hangs down Shaw’s back and his head bounces freely.
“Your car still same place?” Shaw asks.
Gannon nods, and Shaw carries Jack toward the stairs. She looks around the scene: Freeman does his best to shrug; he’s parked his chair next to the whimpering Russian who writhes on the floor holding his bloody mouth. Across the room lie a few dead bodies and others who’ve been shot, beaten or knocked cold; she sees several beds with young girls strapped down, including one who actually looks right at her, her head held up in the
air, tears down her cheeks like she’s just woken up from a bad dream to realize where she is. On the other side of the room are Vlade and Akakievich, wrestling on the floor with Niki standing beside them, watching. Whatever’s going on over there, she’s not sure she wants to know.
She starts after Shaw. God willing, Al will have moved the desk off of the stairs, and the police won’t arrive before she can get Jack and Shaw away from this scene. If they’re lucky, Vlade and Niki will have some kind of diplomatic immunity to fall back on.
40. Man to Man
Vlade slaps Akakievich once across the face and holds him down, but without the full strength of his left arm, Akakievich flips him off and they roll on the ground. Whatever happened when he caught the desk on the stairs seems to have torn something open in Vlade’s shoulder—something he didn’t even know had closed. He feels a sharp, warm pain coming from that side of his body, but he’s not about to let it slow him down.
Akakievich pushes him off, and the two men crouch, facing each other about three feet apart. “So what has this all been about?” Vlade says.
“You know.” Akakievich frowns, his beard pushing out toward Vlade as he does. “I own San Francisco. I do what I want.”
Vlade shakes his head. “Not our girls. Not girls from our country.”
Akakievich jumps forward and catches Vlade off guard, knocks him onto his back. Before Vlade can get up, Akakievich is on top of him, straddling his chest and holding his arms down with his hands. “Oh, your shoulder is still weak from when I shot you. How did that feel?”
Vlade tries to move his arms. He realizes Akakievich is right: his left arm is much harder to move; he can’t even budge it. “No,” Akakievich says. “You are not moving. And I do what I want with San Francisco. The mayor, the police chief: they are with my girls.” He shrugs. “They are mine to use as I like.”