Dark Territory

by Leo J. Maloney

  “Novello, Sabrina,” Kreesat said as he looked at his list, which also noted nationality and age. “She’s Italian and twenty-eight. Let’s see her.”

  Sasha found the matching EU passport and held it up with the front flap open for Kreesat to see. The Serbian made a face. “Ugh. Not nearly as attractive as her name.”

  He continued on, searching for females of appropriate age ranges who could possibly be of great physical strength or at least considerable martial arts skills. At last, he got to the M’s.

  “Let me see this one, Montefiore, Elizabeth.” Then he held up a hand to belay that order. “No, wait. This one, instead. Morgan, Alexandra. American girl.”

  Sasha, palms sweating and his old heart hammering—he knew too well that he didn’t have Alex’s passport in the pile and had no idea where she was hiding—flipped through his stack of American passports once, then again, until he finally looked at Kreesat’s expectant expression.

  “For some reason, Mr. Kreesat, I do not seem to be able to find this one.”

  “That pile is all the American ones? You are absolutely sure?”

  “Yes, although this young woman … Perhaps I missed her somehow, or perhaps she was in the toilet.”

  Kreesat got up from his perch and started to pace as he tapped two fingers to his lips. “Do you recall what she looked like, this Morgan girl?”

  “I, well, I cannot really say that I …”

  “Of course you recall, Sasha. You’ve been doing this your entire life. What did she look like? And don’t disguise her or lie.”

  Sasha, though he had some affection for Alex, wasn’t going to lie for her and then most certainly die. He had seen what this Serbian hellhound had done to the policeman, Boris.

  “Well, perhaps tallish for a young American female, and oh, rather short dark hair perhaps …”

  Kreesat spun on Vlado Hislak. “Is that her, Vlado? Does that sound like her?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  Kreesat clapped his hands together, looked up at the ceiling and laughed.

  “It could not be!” he chimed. “Could I be so incredibly lucky? Could this girl be that bastard Dan Morgan’s daughter, here aboard this train with me?” He spun on Dmitri Kozlov as he slammed his flat palms on the metal table, making a pile of passports jump and skid off onto the floor. “Doctor! You are going to shortly prepare a speech, which you will be giving via the train’s intercom from the locomotive.”

  “What kind of speech?” Kozlov protested weakly. “What is it that you could possibly want me to say to all of these poor victims of yours?”

  “They are not victims yet, Doctor. For the moment, they are simply guests. However, I must inform you that amongst them is a passenger of particular interest to you.”

  Kreesat lowered himself so that his ice-blue eyes could meet Kozlov’s, and already the old man was again touching his chest in anticipation of another dark twist to his ongoing nightmare.

  “As I told you, your daughter is under my control,” Kreesat said. “Well, let’s say that she was under my control, and she shall be again, but you are going to assist me with that.”

  “I … I do not understand.”

  “Svetlana is aboard this train. Yes, this is where I have been holding her all the while.”

  “I must see her!” Kozlov screeched, but Kreesat squeezed his forearm so hard that the old scientist winced and went limp.

  “You will see her, Doctor. All you will have to do, is to announce yourself over the train’s intercom and implore her to give herself up, because she is cooperating with a Western spy aboard—the daughter of an imperialist criminal named Daniel Morgan.”

  “And she will not be harmed?”

  “Of course not.” Kreesat actually managed to look offended. “You have my word.”

  The scientist sighed. “Then I will do whatever I must to have Svetlana with me again in safety.”

  “I know you will.” Kreesat patted the old man’s hand and got up, barely able to contain himself from rubbing his hands together. He reached over the comm tower, plucked the satellite phone from its charger and said to Vlado, “Watch them both carefully.” Then he went out into the cargo car corridor, powered up the phone and called a number in the United States from the contact list in his cell. A young woman answered.

  “Zeta Division. Please use your identifier and state your contact,” said Karen O’Neal.

  “Yes, young lady. My identifier is Major Maxim Kreesat, and my contact is Ms. Diana Bloch, if, in fact, she is still employed.”

  “Hold, please,” Karen said, and after a few seconds Diana came on the line, her voice dark and snarling as if she were speaking with a man who enjoyed burning kittens. “Kreesat, this is Bloch here. State your case.”

  “You know my case, Ms. Bloch, as the White House and the Pentagon have informed you fully by now. But what you do not know, is that I have discovered that Mr. Daniel Morgan’s daughter, Alexandra, is also aboard this train. You may confirm or deny as you wish.”

  “That’s absolute nonsense.”

  “Well done. Exactly the professional response I expected. And now you may go ahead and inform Agent Cobra, that I have not forgotten that he owes me a debt of flesh. Tell him as well, that I am very much looking forward to meeting his daughter.”

  He ended the transmission with a flourish of stabbing one finger at the power module, then marched off for the end of the cargo car. He burst through the coupling door with a renewed spring in his step. Losing his primary hostage, Svetlana Kozlov, had worried him somewhat and pricked his warrior ego. However, the timing hadn’t interfered with his plans, as Kozlov had no knowledge of Svetlana’s true whereabouts or momentary liberation, and had therefore cooperated and the plot had progressed as planned.

  Now, Svetlana was no longer a necessary pawn in the game. As a matter of fact, no one aboard really mattered anymore, for the sums were about to be paid in full. It was simply a technical banking matter, as well as the overcoming of some bruised national egos. Neither the Americans nor Russians would risk a nuclear strike for the sake of a billion dollars. They were spending such amounts on single aircraft carriers. Having one less boat would make no difference.

  Kreesat appeared behind Karl and the two cousins, Spiro and Mako, who were standing at the head of the dining car and cradling Russian Krinkov short-barreled AK-74s. Past the trio, Kreesat could see that the car was packed with patrons, many of whom were still in pajamas, and none of whom appeared to have any appetites. Their silent eyes were glassy and troubled, a few of the women and children whimpering softly. Karl turned his head when he felt the major’s presence behind him.

  “Sir, should we confiscate their cell phones?” he asked.

  “It isn’t necessary, Karl. They won’t be able to use them for the next nine hours, except for playing solitaire. We’re in dark territory now.”

  “Yes, sir. And how are the negotiations going?” Karl asked.

  “Exactly as I expected. Both the Americans and Russians are pretending to negotiate, while they argue about how to effectively stall the delivery of our funds and take us out. I’ve given them one hour for the transfers. If nothing happens, I will have Kozlov target the satellite on Washington first. But before I actually launch, I might be asking you to execute a few passengers, while the Americans listen over the satcom.”

  “Understood, sir. May I ask a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s our procedure if the Americans and Russians decide to pay?”

  “You mean when they decide to pay.”

  “Yes, when.”

  “Well, we’ll confirm the monetary transfers, then launch the nuclear missiles anyway.”

  “We will?” Karl looked a bit confused. Even he hadn’t anticipated such double-dealing from Kreesat, whom he’d seen stab more than a few men in the back. />
  “Of course, Karl,” Kreesat said. “If we simply escape and take the money, they’ll be hunting us day and night for the rest of our lives. However, if we take possession of the funds, and hit both their capitals anyway, they’ll be so busy with the nuclear disasters that they won’t even have the strength to pursue us for years. By that time we’ll all have altered our faces and disappeared.”

  Karl grinned at his commander. “I would never have thought of it that way, sir.”

  “I know.” Kreesat patted Karl’s shoulder and called over Spiro and Mako with a cock of his chin. The blond cousins huddled closer. “Gentlemen, I want you to hunt down a female passenger who is aiding and abetting Kozlov’s daughter—the one we were holding in the box. Her name is Alex Morgan, American nationality, in her early twenties, tallish for a female, with short brown hair and large brown eyes, rather attractive. I believe she’s the one who embarrassed Vlado, so take good care.”

  “What should we do when we find her?” Karl asked.

  “If she’ll surrender, bring her to me,” Kreesat said. “If not, bring me her corpse.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mako was the first to die.

  Having been raised in an eastern European machismo culture, he made the mistake of assuming that the Kozlov woman would remain as he had seen her before—timid, trembling and supplicant. He hadn’t an inkling that Svetlana the liberated—unlike Svetlana the hostage—was a capable, resourceful and, now, furious young woman bent on revenge and freeing her beloved father. Plus, she was in the company of an American girl whom she’d just seen dispatch a giant.

  And Mako didn’t have a clue about Alex’s capabilities either. He was picturing her as a typical spoiled American millennial—putty in his murderous hands, despite her having knocked Vlado Hislak out cold, which was surely by stroke of luck.

  With his Krinkov submachinegun slung across his back, and twirling a vicious looking double-edged fighting knife in his fingers, Mako strolled from the First Class dining car through another car of sleeping berths. The passengers had been ordered to keep their doors ajar, and he smirked at them as they stared at him like impotent, trembling sheep.

  Since he’d been instructed by the major to find the two women and bring the American one back, dead or alive, he inspected each sleeping berth, then moved on to the next—on occasion pausing to liberate some cringing woman’s wedding ring at the point of his knife. This was a practice his uncle had taught him after the slaughters in Sarajevo—to the victors went the spoils.

  By the time he got to the end of the second sleeping car, he was already bored. There were many more cars, and these women could be hiding anywhere. But one open berth caught his attention. Reclining on the divan in the sitting room was a sexy looking bimbo in a short, teal sequined dress and stiletto heels, with chestnut red curls and heaving cleavage. She smiled at him as he appeared in the open door, and cocked her chin upwards in invitation.

  The seductress was Svetlana, the wig borrowed from a Polish Jewish Orthodox woman on board, and the dress and heels from a Slovenian stripper en route to a gig in Chelyabinsk. When she uncrossed her legs, Mako took the bait, grinned broadly, stopped twirling his knife and stepped inside for what he expected would be a brief interlude of fornication.

  But as his leather boots hit the berth’s small Persian carpet, he discovered that there was nothing under it. Alex had purloined some carpentry tools from the caboose’s hardware box and removed a full square of the old car’s floor boards, then lightly affixed the rug over the square hole with carpet tacks.

  The carpet disappeared, and so did nearly all of Mako’s body as he yelled and shot his arms out to both sides, his fingernails digging into the surrounding floorboards as he desperately tried to keep himself from falling all the way through. He screamed again when one ankle struck something below on the tracks and snapped in half, but he managed to hang on.

  Alex emerged from the berth’s sleeper and straddled the square hole—where little more than Mako’s head was sticking up—and tromped on his hands as Svetlana got up off the divan and closed the door.

  “I removed the toilet seat from the commode,” Alex said. “I figured if we slid it under his chin, like a big porcelain collar, we could keep him here for awhile.”

  “Why bother?” Svetlana asked.

  “Maybe he’ll tell us something.” Alex was looking down between her open legs at Mako’s face, which was beet-red and beaded with sweat. He wasn’t speaking.

  “No, he won’t.” Svetlana frowned. “These types never do. I’ve known a number of Spetznaz and these are the same. And if we pull him back in, it will be like saving a scorpion.”

  “Not my favorite creature,” Alex said. “He’s got a rifle strap over his shoulder. Did he have a weapon on him?”

  “Yes, I think it’s down there behind his back. But please, Alex, do not try to get it.”

  “Oh, I won’t. We don’t need it for now, and there’ll be more.” She pulled her gaze from Mako’s twisted face and looked at Svetlana. “Are we done here?”

  “I think so.”

  Alex stepped back off of Mako’s hands. His scream as he fell was snatched away by the wind roaring up through the hole and the thunder of the steel wheels below, which crushed his flailing body into bone meal and entrails, barely leaving blood on the tracks. Svetlana pulled the wig off and shook out her own blond hair.

  “Well, that’s one,” she said. “Shall we go for another?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “But first, help me put these floor boards back. I’d hate for someone to get hurt.”

  * * * *

  Spiro’s death followed shortly after his cousin’s.

  He and Mako had grown up together in Belgrade, where their parents lived in the same block of flats—a common cultural practice that made for brotherly bonds. They’d failed in the same schools, swum together where the Sava River met the Danube, dealt drugs together in Deponija, and when the Shadows were seconded to Russian troops in Chechnya, they’d raped young girls and castrated prisoners together. They were very close.

  Having flushed out plenty of innocents and insurgents alike, Spiro and Mako had a routine. One would walk point, not really expecting to find every panicky prey, but leaving an odor of fear in his wake. And the other would follow along at a proper interval, so when the prey felt safe that one hunter had passed and fled in the opposite direction, the other cousin would appear. It worked so well. There were plenty of unmarked graves to prove it.

  So, approximately twenty minutes after Mako had left on his patrol of the train, hunting for Alex and Svetlana, Spiro set off as well. A bit less casual than his cousin, he slung his Krinkov combat-style across his lower chest and marched through the cars like an old East German Stasi agent, jamming the barrel into every berth and bunk—scaring the hell out of the passengers.

  That amused him endlessly. At one point he was about to call Mako on his cell and ask if he wanted to meet for a vodka in one of the dining cars, but then remembered they were in dark territory. Their drinking would have to wait ‘til they both met up again at the back of the train.

  He strolled through two sleeping cars, where no one was catching a single wink, and then passed through the Second Class dining car, stopping in the galley to snatch a roll, smear a pat of butter on it and carry on, munching away.

  Then he entered the coupling between that dining car and the next set of berths, where, unbeknownst to him, his beloved cousin had already paid for their family sins with his life. The coupling was strangely dark. He stopped in the bumping, windy flex tunnel and looked up to see the light fixture was broken. Then he looked down again and …

  A condom bloated with Red Savina Habanero chili powder, blended with eighty-proof Russian vodka, fresh lemon juice, and olive oil to make it all stick, exploded in his face.

  Alex, having had about two hours’ lead time before the S
erbians had started hunting her and Svetlana, had prepared the devil’s brew in one of the dining car galleys. While working up the homemade pepper-spray concoction, she’d sent Svetlana off on a mission to find a tennis racket, a condom, a roll of surgical tape, and a champagne glass.

  From one dark corner of the coupling tunnel, Alex swung the tennis racket so fast and hard, she could have won the first round at Wimbledon. The condom, taped to the front of the racket, was also filled with shards of the smashed champagne glass along with the do-it-yourself mace, so when the chili-bomb burst in Spiro’s face his skin was shredded as well, enhancing the horrific effect.

  His reaction alarmed even Alex. He slammed his open hands to his face and howled like a pig being burned alive as the 350,000 Scoville heat unit chili seared his eyeballs and nasal passages, while the vodka splashed across the bloody glass rents in his forehead and cheeks.

  He hurled himself backwards and bounced off the passageway door, and Alex hurled herself backward as well to get out of his way. Then, like some wild ball on a billiard table, he went careening around the coupling, frothing and screaming, his submachinegun swinging from the strap around his neck and banging off the walls.

  Somehow Svetlana—who was clutching a ring of access door keys given to her by Alex—managed to crawl into the coupling in the midst of this melee, reach up, and unlock the boarding door. She gripped the handle and slammed it open as a rush of freezing nighttime air burst inside along with the howl of the train from outside.

  Spiro, who was blind and in horrible agony, lurched toward the cool rushing wind, staggered straight out the door and was snapped away into the night at a hundred miles per hour.

  Alex and Svetlana, both crouched on their knees and breathing like marathoners, stared after Spiro’s dramatic departure, then at each other.