Cold Fire

by Dustin Stevens

  “You guys weren’t the problem.”

  Just like that, another chunk of information fell into place. At the same time, a massive piece of the dam holding my own emotion back split away, a roiling ball of vitriol threatening to spill out at any moment.

  “The Russians started taking over,” I muttered. “The DEA didn’t catch you—you turned yourself in for protection.”

  Manny cast his gaze up at me a moment before leaning back in his chair. He looped an arm over the back of it and ran his opposite hand down the length of his face, his focus never far from the phone still sitting on the table.

  “I agreed to do the time, give up a dozen of our major providers, even assist things moving forward, so long as you guys took care of Mateo and Carlos. So much for that shit.”

  I could feel Diaz’s stare on me as she glanced my way, shaking her head. My own attention was aimed on the opposite wall, no longer looking at Manny, letting his words sink in.

  “Why did Mateo come to Yellowstone?”

  Manny shifted his eyes up to me, drawing my own gaze over to him. We sat in silence, each sizing the other up for a long moment, before he sighed.

  “We knew you were on our ass. We also knew that you would never let it go, you were always going to be on our ass. Mateo always said if they somehow found him, he would go find you. Even if they got him in the end, he knew it would set you out after them.”

  It was exactly the answer I’d been expecting. It fit with everything else he was telling us, from the introduction of the Russians to the hostile takeover.

  There was no way the Russians could just let Mateo and Carlos walk, not knowing everything they did. They would never stop looking for them, not until they were found and silenced.

  My involvement, right from the start, was no coincidence. I had been placed intentionally on the sideline by warring factions, taken out of the game only to be pulled right back in when they needed me. I was simultaneously a thorn in their side and a saving grace, something they hated but needed.

  There were still so many questions, so many holes that needed to be filled in, but there would be time for that later. There was something bigger at play here, some reason Mateo and Carlos had both been killed within a couple of weeks of each other.

  “Who are the Russians?” I asked.

  The eyebrows on Manny’s face tracked up a fraction of an inch as he sat there, once again moving his gaze away from me, back to staring at nothing.

  “Some cat named Blok. Viktor. A real pretty boy, second- or third-generation guy, born with a silver spoon and a lot of attitude. He runs things on this side of the ocean, a real asshole, nothing but a front for the real muscle back home.”

  “Where?” Diaz asked, her body rigid beside me.

  Manny spread his hands wide and said, “Last I heard he had moved the operation down into Baja somewhere, but I’ve been here. I can’t do your entire job for you.”

  Despite the barb, he wasn’t entirely wrong. We had been operating with so much less than the whole story, a fault starting with Hutch and extending all the way to Carlos, that we had been doing little more than fumbling around in the dark. Now we had a clear heading, a way to put everything together, have it all make sense.

  I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest, letting the new information meld with what I already knew. There had to be a reason Mateo came to find me when he did, a reason Lita showed up right after and tried to gun me down as well. It had to be more than just dredging up an old rivalry or trying to tie off a loose end.

  That simple fact lodged itself in the front of my mind for a full moment, sitting there, marinating, before a single statement Manny had made a moment before fit into place.

  “The product the Russians wanted to bring over, it’s finally ready.”

  Sensing it was a statement more than a question, Manny looked up at me, his head rocking up and down in agreement. “Only thing I can figure. Some new stuff they call Krokodil.”

  Diaz snapped her attention over to me, alarm in her eyes. “You’re shitting me.”

  “What?” I asked, making no attempt to mask my confusion.

  “You’ve never heard of that stuff?” she asked. “The papers call it a zombie drug because it has hallucinogenic effects. Makes people do all kinds of crazy things like walk off bridges or try to eat human flesh.”

  I had vaguely heard of it when it first came onto the market, but never had I researched it too closely or taken a case involving it. When bath salts originally surfaced in America, I had heard that this was being developed as an even more potent version overseas.

  “And Mateo knew all this, didn’t he?” I asked. “He knew what they were making, what it was capable of. Knew they would be coming after you guys, wanting you taken out before they started moving it.”

  “So he went to find you,” Manny finished.

  So he came to find me. Somehow they too knew where I’d been, what I’d been doing all this time. They’d watched as I created a life for myself, left all this behind, only to pull me back in when the time came to do their dirty work.

  Deep within me, another bit of my resolve broke away. No matter how angry I was, how much the craving for blood was growing within me, this was not my fight. I had made promises, walked away years ago, for a reason.

  Mateo Perez showing up one day was not about to trump that.

  My right hand slid out and pulled the phone back to me. I took the picture down off the front screen and put it in my pocket, rising to leave. This entire ordeal had awakened a darkness in me I had worked long and hard to tuck away. No matter how hard it would be, I was going home to bury it back where it belonged.

  Nodding once at Diaz, I slid my chair toward the stack in the corner and walked to the door, making it almost there before Manny called out.

  “Hey, Hawk,” he said, his inflection even, void of any taunting or sneer. “The cat that did that to Carlos is a guy named Pavel, big son of a bitch that works for Blok.”

  I stopped by the door, processing the information. It was the same first name Hutch had given us after returning from Yellowstone, the man that had gone up in search of Lita. Like most everything else he had told us, the information fit.

  The Bloks were cleaning house, getting ready to set their vicious new toy on the West Coast.

  “You know how I know that?” Manny asked.

  Something about the words he used, the way he asked the question, resonated deep inside me. I knew what he was trying to say, where he was going with it, even before he said it.

  He stood, retreating toward the door and knocking on it. The sound of his knuckles connecting with hollow metal echoed through the room, a moment later answered by the same wiry guard.

  “I can tell by the look on your face that you think you’re out,” he said, staring right at me. “But let me tell you why you’re not. Let me tell you why Mateo was right, why you’re not going to drive out of here and not come back, why you’re going to go to Baja and get these motherfuckers, and then go to Russia afterward if you have to.

  “You see what he did to my cousin there? That was what convinced us to partner with the Russians in the first place. Not only did they offer us a way to keep moving product once the DEA started sniffing around, they got you off our asses for good five years ago.

  “They sent that sick son of a bitch out into the desert, and he did the same thing to your wife and daughter before he torched your house to the ground.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The voice on the other end of the line was worried, frightened even. The fear permeated every word it said, driving home the message that it carried.

  Whatever Pavel had said to Wyeth Mender, it worked. The man was on board, come what may, forevermore.

  Viktor Blok sat with his feet resting on the corner of his desk, his bare limbs crossed at the ank
les. His right elbow was propped up on the arm of the chair, keeping the phone in his hand pressed against his ear.

  His left hand was looped loosely around the rim of a crystal tumbler, the glass filled almost to the brim with Sibirskaya vodka. The remainder of the bottle sat nearby in a silver bucket filled with ice; only the top few inches of the label were visible from where he sat.

  “Yes, glad to hear it,” Viktor said, his tone distant and bored. He waited as the man again launched into another apology for causing any delay, another cased promise about it never happening again, and he lifted the glass and took a heavy swallow.

  The icy cold liquid slid smoothly along his throat, no trace of the customary burn associated with the low-end forms most people in North America drank. Clear as water, it went down easily, and Viktor paused only a moment before taking another slug.

  “Yes, excellent, we’ll be in touch soon,” Viktor said once over half of the tumbler was drained, cutting the conversation short. There was obviously much more Mender wanted to add, effusive praise he wanted to heap on the operation, but Viktor wasn’t in the mood for it.

  Without waiting for a farewell, he dropped the phone back onto its cradle and took up his drink once more. He pulled it over onto his lap and held it between his hands, staring down at it, his mind racing.

  Tonight was supposed to have been a crowning moment, the time when he called his uncle and declared everything was ready, the operation could begin. The act would remove any lingering distrust the old man had, allowing him to once again take charge in North America.

  He, Viktor Blok, would control an empire running up the entire coast of California. Within months his new product would be in the hands of Hollywood stars and professional athletes, the entire country clamoring for Krokodil. Demand would explode, his network would spread. By the age of thirty-five, he would be a king.

  Instead, his night had once again been thwarted by the meddling of his uncle and his goon. He had been pushed to the side, shown to be impotent to a major distributor, the last remaining holdout. At a time when he should be celebrating a grand triumph, he had instead been reduced to nothing more than a secretary, answering the phone and mumbling through the acceptance of more praise of the family name, a name he had done nothing to build.

  In one movement he raised the glass to his mouth and tossed back the remainder of the vodka, swallowing it down without regard for cost or taste. The goal of the evening was not to celebrate. There would be no savoring of anything.

  Dropping the glass back on his desk, Viktor lowered his feet to the floor and shifted his body toward the bucket, lifting the bottle from it. Frigid water and half-melted ice burned his fingertips as he lifted it out, pulling the top and filling the tumbler once again.

  Halfway back into the bucket, a knock sounded at the door, three deep thuds followed by it opening wide, and a massive figure filled the frame.

  Viktor stood with the bottle raised above the bucket, an eyebrow arched, and watched as Pavel stepped inside. The behemoth wore his customary dour expression, his face made even more harrowing by the dark circles underlining each of his eyes. He walked straight in and splashed himself down into the seat across from Viktor, not saying a word.

  “Please, come in, take a seat,” Viktor said, dropping the bottle back into place, letting the sarcasm drip from his words. “Get you a drink? I hear you’ve had a busy night.”

  Pavel stared across at him with the same emotionless eyes, pools that looked almost black, shrouded in mounds of dark hair. He sat in silence for a long moment, motionless.

  “Well,” Viktor said, raising the glass toward his unexpected guest, “I’m going to have one. Hope you don’t mind. Here’s to you!”

  Once more he raised the glass to his lips, draining over half its contents. Already he could feel the high-grain liquor starting to work on his senses, dulling his vision around the edges, making his tongue feel heavy in his mouth. He swayed just a bit as he fell back into his seat, pausing to collect himself before propping his feet back up into place.

  “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your little visit?” Viktor asked. “Stop in to gloat about your newest accomplishment? To catch me up on what you have been doing without my knowledge?”

  Still Pavel sat in silence, staring back at Viktor.

  Viktor matched the gaze for a long moment, feeling the hatred he had for the man, for everything he stood for, rise within him. Looking across the desk he saw his uncle, he saw Anatoly, he saw cold winter mornings and firewood riots and endless bowls of borsch, all of the things he loathed about his former life and would never again return to.

  “You know what I don’t understand?” Viktor said, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair and pressing the pads of his fingertips together in front of his face. “You’re not even family. Sure you’re big and scary and take orders like a damn dog, but at the end of the day, you’re nothing. You’ll never be a Blok. You’ll never be anything more than the son of a whore, some street urchin my uncle found all those years ago and felt sorry for.”

  Perhaps it was the alcohol allowing Viktor to finally say what he had always felt about Pavel. Maybe it was the realization that after tonight, the family would never allow him to ascend to the level he should. Most likely, it was a combination of the two, the sudden fear of losing a life he had become rather fond of playing no small part in it as well.

  Viktor twisted his head to the side and glared across at Pavel. He waited, looking for any sign of rage, any display that his words had found their mark. As much as he should have been afraid, he found himself unable to muster any terror, no matter what the giant might be capable of.

  Rather, he felt anger rise within him. A tiny bit that started deep in his stomach, further down even than the warmth of the vodka swimming through his system. It grew in size and animosity, rippling through him, pushing past the alcohol and forcing its way to the front of his mind.

  What he said was true. He was a Blok. He was the handpicked successor to the family dynasty in America. This was his time, the long overdue coronation of his place in the pecking order.

  This man was nothing, useful as a soldier but nothing more.

  “Say something, dammit!”

  In one sharp movement, Viktor snatched up the tumbler from the desk beside him and hurled it at the opposite wall. The delicate crystal shattered on contact, shards exploding in every direction, their pieces tinkling softly as they fell to the floor. A stream of vodka traced itself across the floor between Viktor and the wall, light shining off the misshapen pools.

  An oversized amoeba of liquid showed itself on the wall, splattered out from the bits of shiny glass embedded in the woodwork.

  Pavel turned his head and stared at the mess on the wall before shifting his focus back to Viktor. He pressed his thick hands down into his thighs and stood, letting a low groan escape through his nose as he reached full height and stood looking down at Viktor, contempt obvious on his features.

  “They’re coming.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Naval Base San Diego was the largest military installation on the entire western seaboard. Over twenty-six thousand people, more than three-quarters of them active-duty personnel, called the place home. In total it encompassed more than thirteen hundred acres, land and aquatic combined.

  After leaving the Metropolitan Correction Center, we didn’t bother returning to the desert. What we needed to do was apparent. Whoever had found Carlos within hours of him leaving clearly had a pulse on everything going on at DEA headquarters. If we were to have any hope of getting into Baja and finding the Russians that had taken over the Juarez cartel, a move was going to have to be made fast.

  Waiting even a day at this point would give them too much lead time. They would be able to liquidate whatever they were doing and disappear into the Mexican countryside. If not with their entire stash of product, at the
very least with every person who mattered.

  Our only choice, a fact we both acknowledged without saying it out loud, was to go tonight. Whatever we might lose in planning would be more than accounted for by the element of surprise. With the backing of the United States Navy, we both felt reasonably secure in the chances of success moving forward.

  The first call Diaz made while exiting the interrogation room was to the commanding officer at NBSD. More than once the base had provided open support for the DEA on stings up and down the coast. I could tell just from hearing one side of the conversation that there was surprise at the unusual proposition, even some trepidation about the truncated timetable it would be performed under, but no outright opposition.

  This would be a good thing, for the country and for their respective careers, and they both knew it.

  The second call was to her head analyst, a guy she referred to several time as Potts, someone I was certain I had never met before. I matched her step for step as we exited the building and climbed into the car, only half-listening as she relayed to him that she needed a location and she needed it fast. Between everything the Juarezes had handed over during the last few years and the new information we had, there should have been more than enough for them to find the new base of operations.

  If this guy was anywhere near as good as Pally had once been, he’d have something for her by the time the first boat pushed offshore headed south.

  While the flurry of activity of Diaz beside me slid in and out of my consciousness, my active thoughts focused on what Manny had said just a few minutes before. For five long years I had known that what happened to my family was a direct result of my work, but never once had I heard it stated that bluntly.

  Born of equal parts denial and self-preservation, I pushed aside the notion that what I did for a living had ultimately taken my life away from me.

  The sorrow of their passing was long since gone. There was not a single day that I didn’t think of them or long for their company, but the sharp stabbing pain of a pickax to the stomach had subsided some time ago.