The Target

by Saul Herzog

  The men must have been flinging themselves against the walls of the compartment because the entire helicopter shook from the movement.

  Seconds turned to minutes and the heaving and screaming grew louder and louder. It felt like an eternity before the men grew silent. Ten minutes had passed. The pilots checked their watches then powered down the engines.

  When they opened the door, there was nothing inside but corpses. They let the air clear, then pulled the bodies out to make sure they wre dead. Lance saw that the skin on the men’s faces and hands was pink as ham.

  80

  Lance watched the pilots for a minute, then opened fire on them with the silenced pistols, killing all four.

  He proceeded toward what he’d determined to be the command tent, already knowing where to expect guards. With all the men who’d committed the massacre dead already, there weren’t many left to guard the place.

  Two soldiers sat in a guard post by the barracks surrounded by sandbags. They were relaxed, smoking cigarettes, not paying attention. Another two stood outside the command tent in the next clearing.

  Lance took a grenade from the launcher and lobbed it into the guard post. As it exploded, he darted to the next clearing and opened fire with the assault rifle on the two men stationed outside the command tent.

  He kept moving, rotating around the clearings through the brush and undergrowth in an anti-clockwise direction.

  Four more guards came running out of the barracks tent and Lance figured that must have been about it for men in the camp. The guards had no idea where Lance was, they had no idea if they were under attack from the air or from land, by one man or a hundred, and Lance picked off the first of them with two shots to the torso. The man fell to the ground and the other three opened fire in his direction.

  Lance dropped to the ground and fired a grenade.

  Then he retreated about fifty yards into the brush, past the place where he’d found the tripwire earlier. He took cover behind the trunk of a fallen tree and waited for the soldiers to approach.

  The instant the lead man tripped the wire, he froze.

  The others looked at him, terror on their faces.

  “Don’t move,” one man said.

  Lance rose up from his position and shot the man who’d tripped the wire. All three of them were caught in the blast.

  Lance made his way back to the camp in time to see an overweight man, half-dressed, with pasty skin and a gut, running for the president’s Mi-8 chopper.

  “Stop,” Lance called out.

  The man knew his time had come. He stopped running and raised his hands. His back was to Lance but he seemed to know who was standing behind him.

  His pants were open, and with his hands in the air, they fell down around his ankles, revealing a pair of white, cotton briefs.

  Unconsciously, he made to pull them up, and Lance said, “Don’t move.”

  The man raised his hands back up.

  “Turn around,” Lance said.

  The man turned. The front of his tunic was open, as were the buttons of his shirt, and apart from the white cotton underpants, every inch of his clothing had been spattered in blood.

  “You’re Oleg Zhukovsky,” Lance said.

  “And you’re Lance Spector,” Zhukovsky said.

  Lance stepped closer to him. “You led those men,” he said. “You did that. You killed all those people.”

  Zhukovsky looked Lance in the eye and sneered.

  Lance could already see that he would get nothing from him.

  He was a broken man.

  Destroyed.

  There was nothing Lance could threaten him with that compared to what he’d done already to himself.

  “They were Russian,” Lance said.

  “That’s why it had to be them we killed,” the man said.

  “To provide a pretext,” Lance said.

  The man said nothing.

  Lance stepped closer to him, holding his gun out in front, ready to fire if he so much as moved.

  “Who are you?” Lance said.

  “You know who I am.”

  “I know your name,” Lance said. “That’s not the same.”

  The man didn’t answer and Lance said, “I suppose it doesn’t matter. You’ll be dead soon enough.”

  The man remained very still.

  “If you’re remembered at all,” Lance said, “it will be as a murderer.”

  “Men who do things like me,” Zhukovsky said, “are never remembered. No one wants to write about such things in the history books.”

  Lance shook his head. “Come now, Zhukovsky,” he said. “I can call you that, can’t I?”

  “I don’t care what you call me.”

  “You think you’re a special case, don’t you, Zhukovsky? You think what you did today sets you apart from other men. The truth is, there have been soldiers like you all through history. In every time. In every country. In every war. You’re not special.”

  “I did what needed to be done,” Zhukovky said.

  “You’re a dog, Zhukovsky. A dog that got a taste for it.”

  “A taste for what?”

  “A taste for blood, Zhukovsky.”

  Zhukovsky shrugged.

  Lance knew he was wasting his time. What was there to say to a man like this?

  As if to confirm the thought, Zhukovsky said, “If you’re going to kill me, kill me.”

  “Don’t you have anything left to say? Any last words.”

  “Do you want me to say something?”

  Lance shook his head. He didn’t know what he wanted.

  “Those people were Russians,” Zhukovsky said. “They belonged to the Motherland. And the Motherland needed them to be sacrificed.”

  “They didn’t belong to Russia,” Lance said. “They belonged to God, and to God alone. So when you killed them, Zhukovsky, when you took their lives, you took something that belonged to God.”

  “There is no God,” Zhukovsky spat.

  “You don’t know that,” Lance said. “No one knows.”

  “It’s all lies,” Zhukovsky said.

  “And the bullet I’m about to fire into your head,” Lance said, “is that a lie?”

  Zhukovsky let out a quick laugh.

  “Is this all amusing to you?” Lance said.

  Zhukovsky cleared phlegm from his throat and spat it out. He said, “I killed those people for my country. I killed them because I was ordered to do it. And now you’re going to kill me for your country. Because you were ordered to do it.”

  “No one ordered me to do this,” Lance said.

  “I know who you are, Lance Spector,” Zhukovsky said. “And I know that when they order you to kill, you kill. Same as me.”

  “That’s different,” Lance said.

  Zhukovsky laughed. “That’s the real tragedy,” he said. “You don’t even know what you are. What you’re becoming.”

  “I’m not like you.”

  “And you think I was always like this?” Zhukovsky said. “You think I was born a sadist. When I was your age, Lance Spector, I did what you do. I killed when they told me to kill. I told myself I was on the side of the good guys. I was just like you.”

  “We’re not the same,” Lance said.

  “We’re certainly not so very different as you imagine, Lance Spector.”

  Zhukovsky let out another long laugh, then broke into a fit of coughing and spitting.

  “Look at you right now,” he said, “itching to end my life. Just dying to pull that trigger. Aren’t you?”

  “Shut up,” Lance said.

  “How are we different?” Zhukovsky said. “Because I killed a thousand people today, and you did not? That’s just math, Spector. I killed a number. You kill a number. Is it the number that matters, or the killing?”

  “You shut up right now or I’ll blow your brains out.”

  “Go on,” Zhukovsky taunted.

  Lance didn’t know what to say. Maybe they were the same. Maybe he was on a
path that would end up as Zhukovsky had done. Maybe, if he wasn’t a monster yet, he was on his way to becoming one.

  He could feel it.

  He knew what rage was.

  He wanted to avenge Sam, and Clarissa, and the unborn child that died at his own hand.

  “We’re on the same path, you and I,” Zhukovsky said. “And if you’re right that there’s a God, he’ll curse us both to the same inferno. You mark my words.”

  “You know,” Lance said, “you’re wrong to say I’m here on orders.”

  “Of course you’re here on orders. What other reason could there be?”

  “No one ordered me to be here, Zhukovsky.”

  “You’re here then because…”.

  “Because of what happened in Montana. I’m here for my own reasons. I’m not here for my country. I’m here for revenge.”

  “Revenge?”

  “I gave my word that I would look out for someone. A girl. And now she’s dead.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zhukovsky said.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  Zhukovsky shook his head. “Why would I be involved in something like that. My work was here.”

  “Then who ordered it?”

  Zhukovsky laughed. “Shoot me, or don’t shoot me, Lance Spector, but we’re done talking.”

  “Who ordered her killed?” Lance said again.

  “Why would I tell you?”

  “Because you’re about to die, Zhukovsky. You’re going to die because of that order. And why should you die while he lives?”

  Lance raised up the gun and pointed it at Zhukovksy’s bare chest.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  Zhukovsky laughed again. One last time. Then Lance fired.

  The bullet struck his chest with a thud, and Zhukovsky, like the beast he was, didn’t flinch at all.

  He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t move.

  He stood still for about thirty seconds, then finally, all at once, dropped to his knees.

  Lance watched, then walked over to him.

  “You know who had her killed, Zhukovsky.”

  Zhukovsky looked up at him, blood filling his mouth. “That’s really the only reason you’re here? A thousand innocent people were just massacred, and all you want to know is who killed your whore of a girlfriend.”

  Lance sighed. It was true.

  All that blood.

  All that talk of God.

  And the only reason he was there was to get revenge.

  “You’re right,” Lance said. “So give him to me.”

  “In all of this,” Zhukovsky said, “the only person who really cares about those people, the only one who knows what happened to them, the only person who was there when they died, was me.”

  “Who ordered the hit on Sam?” Lance said.

  Zhukovsky fell forward from his knees. He stopped himself, holding himself up, his hands wrist-deep in the snow, and saliva fell from his mouth to the ground, turning the snow pink.

  Lance bent down.

  “Tell me,” he whispered into Zhukovsky’s ear. “Tell me so I can kill him.”

  Zhukovsky looked at him. Their faces were very close to each other. Then he said, “That man you want is Jacob Kirov.”

  “Jacob Kirov,” Lance repeated.

  Zhukovsky nodded. Blood was dripping from the hole in his chest in a steady stream.

  “Take the chopper to Saint Petersburg. He’ll meet you at Levashovo airport. Tell him I sent you.”

  Lance nodded. He was about to finish Zhukovsky off, when, at that very instant, the man’s head exploded.

  A bullet had entered at the right temple and exited on the other side of his skull, causing the entire thing to blow open like a watermelon.

  Lance dropped flat against the ground as a hail of gunfire came at him from the trees.

  81

  Lance scrambled behind Zhukovsky’s headless corpse for cover and made it just in time. A hail of bullets slapped into the body, sending splatters of blood into the air.

  “I’ve got you pinned down,” someone called from the trees.

  He spoke English with a heavy German accent.

  Lance had the forty milimeter grenade launcher strapped to his back. As more bullets came his way, he fired off three shots in the direction of the voice.

  The moment they began to explode, he got up and ran.

  He’d just made it to the treeline when bullets started pelting into the wood in every direction. The trunks of the trees splintered and Lance dove to the ground.

  He held up his rifle with one hand and gave himself some scattered covering fire, then poked his head up above the brush and tried to get a read on where he was being fired from.

  He wanted to know if the man was still in the forest or if he’d moved.

  He got the distinct feeling the man wanted to talk, like he had something to get off his chest, and he called out, “What’s a German doing here?”

  The man didn’t reply.

  “It’s all over,” Lance called out, trying to coax the man into revealing his position. “You just committed the worst atrocity Europe has seen in a generation. The entire world will hunt you down.”

  Still no answer.

  “If you believe in God,” Lance called out, “it’s time to make what peace you can with Him.”

  That one hit the mark.

  “What do you know about God?” the man called out.

  His accent was definitely German, and from the direction, Lance could tell he was still in the trees across the clearing.

  He picked up the grenade launcher and angled it like a mortar. He could use an old trick he’d learned from some artillery men. From where he was, it would be very difficult to get an accurate shot on the shooter. However, if he timed the grenade to explode in the trees, the force of the explosion would send enough shrapnel of wood into the forest below that it would multiply the blast radius of the grenade by a factor of three.

  He poked his head up to get one last read on the distance. A stream of bullets came at him from the opposing side of the clearing.

  Then he fired the grenade up, through the clearing, high into the air. It arced perfectly and exploded the instant it fell into the trees on the other side.

  He fired off two more shots and when the explosions had passed, he heard blood curdling screams from the man’s position.

  Lance left the grenade launcher where it was and made his way around the clearing through the brush. When he reached the man, he saw why he was screaming so loudly. Shards of wood had pierced through him in a number of places, in his arms and legs, his back and torso, but somehow, one piece, about the size of a butter knife, had lodged itself deep into his left eye.

  The man was in agony, delirious with pain, and Lance just walked over to him, grabbed the shard of wood, and yanked it out of his eye. The eyeball came with it, plucked from its socket like a plum from a pie, and Lance flung it into the brush behind him before the man had time to realize what had happened.

  He was howling in agony, screaming like a banshee, and Lance ripped a piece of cloth form his jacket and tied it around the man’s head. Then he pulled the man out into the clearing.

  “Take off your coat,” he said to the man, and then left him their, wailing like a little child.

  Lance entered the commander’s tent and found the first aid kit. The fentanyl citrate was in a small glass bottle and he pierced it with a syringe and pulled the liquid up into the tube.

  He went back to the man, who was still screaming, and jabbed the opioid into his leg.

  Instantly, the man’s muscles relaxed and he stopped screaming.

  “What’s your name?” Lance said, suspecting he already knew the answer.

  The man was so high from the drug he could barely speak. Lance had to slap him in the face a few times, then give him a little time for the fog in his mind to clear enough to answer.

  “What’s your name?” Lance said again,
holding up the syringe, which still contained some of the clear liquid in its tube.

  “Prochnow,” the man said. “Christoph Prochnow.”

  “The German.”

  The man nodded, and Lance, looking at him more closely, knew he was the man he’d seen in the bunker beneath the Air Ministry Building in Berlin.

  “You took Tatyana Aleksandrova and Laurel Everlane,” Lance said. “That was you.”

  The man said nothing. Lance doubted he even understood the question.

  “You’re the one who killed the cop. The Latvian. Agata Zarina.”

  Prochnow smiled like an imbecile and Lance had to put some pressure on a wound in his leg to get his attention.

  “You killed the Latvian,” Lance said again.

  Prochnow nodded.

  “She got the message to us,” Lance said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Prochnow said nothing. He was out of it. Useless.

  “You killed the Clockmaker too,” Lance said.

  Prochnow reached out into the air in front of his face as if trying to touch something that wasn’t there.

  Lance shook his head. “Tell me,” he said, “why do you Germans keep coming to this frozen forest to die?”

  Prochnow gave him no answer and Lance raised his pistol to the man’s temple. He looked away. He pulled the trigger and grimmaced as the blood splattered back on him.

  Then he went inside the commander’s tent and searched until he found a Russian uniform that fit him. He cleaned the blood from his hands and face, changed into the uniform, and reloaded his weapons.

  Then he went to the presidential Mi-8 chopper, fired up the engine, and took off, heading north.

  82

  Laurel and Tatyana were in the lobby of the US embassy in Riga. Outside, across the courtyard, a team of men in brown overalls worked on the roof trying to repair the satellite communications system.

  “This is insane,” Tatyana said.

  It had been over twenty-four hours and the embassy was still completely cut off from Washington.