Dark Territory

by Leo J. Maloney

Morgan glanced down at the instruments panel and pointed. “Yeah, but there’s no English on here anywhere. How do you know what’s what?”

  “Aw, helos are like girls. They’ve all got pretty much the same parts—cyclic, collective, main rotor, tail rotor. You just dip the nose, keep the pitch steady and biting air, don’t overwork the rotor pedals, and kick her sides if she balks.”

  “That’s a horse analogy, not a woman analogy.”

  “Whatever, bro.”

  Morgan twisted around and looked at Linc, who’d gone all pale and sweaty.

  “You getting anything on comms with Alex? Or anything coming off of the Trans-Siberian?”

  “That train’s as dark as a plumber’s handkerchief,” Linc said. “I got nothing except the occasional burst from somebody’s satphone, and that’s encrypted so I can’t read in.”

  “Damn,” Morgan said and he turned back around forward.

  “There it is!” Conley jabbed a finger out past the cockpit glass, then right away grabbed his cyclic again.

  Morgan leaned forward and stared. Sure enough, in the distance at about three klicks, he could see the small red rectangle of the backside of the train. A line of its cars slinked forward from that around a long curve, huddling close to a squat mountain. Black smoke curled back from the dark locomotive up front, which he thought had to be from a backup gasoline generator of some kind because all these trains were electric nowadays. Still, it made for a good target marker.

  “Outstanding!” Morgan grunted into his mike. “Get on her ass.”

  Conley leaned forward and hunched, as if indeed he were riding a horse at the head of an old western posse, and the helicopter seemed to lean forward and down as well as its twin turbines screamed and the main rotor sliced up the freezing Russian dawn air. The back of the train’s locomotive grew larger and larger.

  “Now what?” Conley said as he focused on keeping the strange machine straight and level. They were very close to the ground, and what zipped underneath them was nothing but unforgiving timber and steel track. One small slip and they’d explode like an ostrich egg on a cheese grater.

  Morgan reached for the door handle, but he didn’t haul back on it yet.

  “If you can get me on top of the locomotive,” he said, “I’ll bet that’s where all the action is.”

  “Morgan, that’s nuts!” Linc sputtered from the back. “If Conley flies us over the whole length of the train, the bad dudes are gonna spot us!”

  Conley looked over at Morgan for a second and flicked his eyebrows up. “You know, Junior back there’s got a point. If we sneak up on the rear end and drop you on the caboose, there’s a chance they won’t spot us and you’ll get down clean.”

  “Okay,” Morgan said. “And then what?”

  “Well, you’ll have to take a nice long walk in the fresh air, roof to roof.”

  Morgan turned around to stare accusingly at Linc. “Thanks, smartass.”

  Shepard said, “Well, it makes the most sense.”

  Without another word, Conley crept up on the back of the train, slowly, methodically, jinking the helicopter as needed and trying to keep it so low that no one aboard would realize he was there. The train’s noise would cover the rotor sounds, but if he swung too far to either side someone up forward might spot them. And then he was right there, just ten feet back from the rumbling caboose. Morgan looked at him and slammed the door open. A rush of wind hurled into the cockpit, threatening to throw the bird off its flight path, but Conley held on.

  “God, Morgan, be careful!” Linc yelled in his mike. But Morgan had already torn off his headset and had his feet down on the helo’s skids and his body half out the door. He looked back at Conley as the wind whipped his face into a weird flapping grimace and he pointed down.

  Conley dropped lower, the skids about five feet above the caboose’s sloping roof. He held his breath and he held the helo steady as Morgan suddenly released his grip on the fuselage and disappeared. Conley pulled pitch and climbed straight up twenty feet, then he looked down at the train and grinned. Morgan was there in a crouch, shooting him the finger. He swung the bird hard to the left and darted off to get out of range.

  “Did he make it?” Linc was begging in Conley’s ear. “Did he?”

  “It’s Dan Morgan, Linc,” said Conley. “Of course he made it.”

  Linc found the barf bag and threw up.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The cargo car looked and smelled like a morgue.

  Kreesat had made Alex tell him what had happened to his men, which wasn’t difficult to do, since Alex was happy to share it, though she kept her tone as matter of fact as possible. The Serbian major then summoned Amina, and instructed her to gather up a few healthy male passengers, at gunpoint, and make them bring the four corpses up forward.

  But Alex had to correct his math, noting with a suppressed smile that two of his men were no longer aboard the train—one having gone through the floorboards and another having stumbled out an open door.

  This made Kreesat want to slit Alex’s throat, slowly, and he told her so. However, he was going to wait until the train was out of dark territory, so he could commit the act live and in living color, via Skype, after first making certain that Dan Morgan would be watching.

  In the meantime, he had Amina gather up some terrified male labor and bring Karl and Bojan’s corpses into the cargo car and stack them up in the corridor. They stank.

  Alex and Svetlana were also in the cargo car’s corridor now, on their knees, with their fingers laced behind their heads, and Vlado Hislak standing right there, holding Karl’s .45 on them, which he really didn’t need. Whatever discomfort was still pounding through Vlado’s throat, testicles and forehead had been flooded away by his fury at seeing the two women who’d dishonored his manhood and killed four of his comrades. Between himself, Amina, and Major Kreesat, who were now the only ones left of their team, it was arguable as to who wanted these women dead more.

  Through the open door of the Cargo Berth Four, Alex could see Dmitri Kozlov hunched in the chair that addressed the metal table. Upon first seeing Svetlana, he had sobbed with relief and tried to embrace her, but Kreesat had shoved him roughly back into the seat. A monitor sitting atop the single side band radio showed satellite tracking lines and a single blinking beacon, which Alex assumed to be the Laika II being set up for a nuclear launch. To the right in the dark corner next to the humming gasoline generator, Sasha sat slumped against the wall in the shadows, looking very small and gray, his sad eyes averting Alex’s gaze.

  She glanced at his round toed boots, and beside them the coil of rough rope she’d rigged from the ceiling hook to Vlado’s neck, and beside that the large padlock she’d used to dent his forehead. But all of that was useless now; she couldn’t get to it, because she was kneeling in the crossfire of Vlado’s pistol, and Kreesat’s.

  “You have turned a simple business arrangement into an unnecessary international incident, Ms. Morgan,” Kreesat said as he glowered down at Alex. He was leaning against the open door jamb of the cargo berth, his right thumb stroking the teeth of his pistol hammer. The corner of his right eye twitched. “This is a typically ugly American trait.”

  Alex looked up at him and smiled. “We are difficult, aren’t we?”

  “Very. And I am going to assume that, before we entered dark territory, you somehow revealed the location of our uplink station to your superiors. Is that correct?” Alex just let her head slip to the side and raised an eyebrow. Kreesat slipped a long commando blade from a belt sheath and tossed it to Vlado, who caught it with surprising grace. He glared down at her again. “You should have stayed out of the family business.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “I am assuming you are wearing a Zeta ear comm. Your father had one of those the last time we met. I smacked it out of his head with a blackjack.”

&n
bsp; “And he took a nice slice of your ear.” Alex smirked.

  Kreesat’s eyes narrowed further. “You can take yours out yourself, or I can have Vlado pry it out with that knife. Your choice.”

  Alex unlaced only her left hand from the back of her head, and popped out her ear comm. Kreesat extended his hand and she dropped the small, flesh-colored, device in his palm. He dropped it on the floor, raised one boot high and stomped down on it, smashing it to bits. His act reminded Alex of a Jewish wedding she’d attended where the groom had done the same thing with a wine glass.

  “Mazel tov,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind.”

  “So, now you have left me no choice, Ms. Morgan. This train is obviously a tactical target, for both Washington and Moscow, and in turn, those capitals are tactical targets for me. Thanks to your meddling, they have not yet complied and moved my money, which means that I have nothing to lose. If you had not interfered, it could have been all so simple.”

  “My bad,” Alex said.

  “Yes.” Kreesat nodded. “Bad, and shortly, dead.” He turned and looked at Kozlov. “You may launch now, Doctor. And be quick about it.”

  Kozlov raised his weary head and stared at Kreesat with burning eyes. Something had changed in his demeanor, perhaps since seeing his daughter alive, or witnessing the cruel horrors of this man who had promised to help him, but was now his satanic tormentor. Alex noted a look of defiance—this old scientist was once again a father, with his child present as a witness. He was not going to do anything shameful.

  “I will not,” Kozlov said to Kreesat.

  Here we go, Alex thought.

  Kreesat cocked his head. “You will not what, Doctor?”

  “I will not launch the missiles.” The old scientist puffed out his chest. “I will not be your tool of mass murder.”

  “I see.” Kreesat looked at Vlado and cast his eyes over to Svetlana. The giant Serb took one long stride in front of Alex, gripped Svetlana by the hair at the top of her head and lifted her off of her knees as she screamed and reached up to grab his massive wrists. He grinned and ground the barrel of his .45 in her temple as Kozlov’s face went bone white…

  * * * *

  In the locomotive, Amina kicked Dan Morgan in the groin, and he wasn’t wearing a cup.

  Morgan had just arrived, after snaking his way from car to car along the swaying, tilting rooftops, and having lost his balance once and nearly been ground to a bloody paste on the tracks. But he’d made it, climbed down to the coupling just behind the engine, cut through the accordion flex rubber with his knife, and surged forward into the locomotive. He expected to find some sort of opposition holding the engineer hostage, but he hadn’t anticipated this blonde banshee, who seemed to be Spartan’s doppelganger, with a twist.

  She turned to him, looked him over, realized that he had no firearm and tucked her own Makarov into a belt holster. Then she grinned and bore into him with a pair of arctic green eyes, came up with something long and gleaming, and charged.

  They both had fighting knives—real ones. Morgan, having just experienced this with Spartan while sparring, still had a good sense memory of testicle shock, so the foot flashing up towards his crotch was met by his left forearm as he bent hard forward. The impact of her shin against his ulna hurt like hell, but it hurt her leg as well, so her kick missed the mark and punched his inner thigh high and inside.

  The thought flashed through his mind that he didn’t want to kill her; he wanted to take her alive. Therefore, gripping his commando blade point-down in his right fist, he punched her in the left jaw, which she shook off as if a toddler had slapped her.

  Amina held no such sentiments about taking prisoners. She grinned and flipped her Gerber blade straight out in an epee grip, then lunged to stab Morgan in the throat, which he just barely parried with a bladed left hand. Then he kicked her full on in the groin with his shin, which lifted her off her feet, but elicited no more than a grunt.

  She snarled at him in a heavy accent, “No balls.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was reminding him that his target was female and therefore the blow would be much less effective, or if she was commenting on his character.

  She slashed her blade across the left side of his face, and although he cranked his upper body backwards, she caught flesh and his blood flowed down over his collar. He spun his knife, snapped forward again and speared her straight on, right under her ribcage on her left side. The tip of his blade met something hard like bone, and she choked on a scream, twirled her blade into an overhand grip and tried to stab down into his carotid artery.

  He blocked that with his left hand and somehow managed to get a grip on her wrist, pulling her in close, but she head-butted him so hard in his nose he saw fireworks. Still, he held onto her knife hand and cranked her wrist so hard that something inside it snapped and she was forced to drop her blade. And then she really kicked him in the groin, full on, and as he dropped to his knees she spat out a train of Serbian epithets.

  And then she was gone, and Morgan was left there holding his aching package with both hands. The train’s engineer stared at him with huge eyes from his pilot’s position, amazed that the American, heroic though he undeniably was, had let the Serbian woman kick him in the balls … twice.

  * * * *

  Kreesat didn’t need to tell Kozlov what was going to happen to his daughter if he refused to launch the missiles—it was obvious. Vlado the giant was grinning and twisting her blonde hair in his massive left fist, and her body was suspended halfway off the floor where she’d been on her knees next to Alex. The barrel of his .45 pistol was embedded in her right temple, grinding her flesh, and Kozlov could take no more.

  A burst of fatherly rage and adrenaline propelled him from his chair as he yelled something in Russian. His small, age-spotted hands crashed down on top of Vlado’s gun hand— enough to wrench it away from Svetlana’s head.

  Vlado jerked back, surprised and impressed, as the old man snarled like a mongoose and pulled the gun towards his own belly with all his might. And Vlado, not being very bright, or considering the fact that Kreesat still needed the old man’s capabilities, shot him point blank. The explosion, and the bullet’s heavy momentum, slammed Kozlov backwards into his chair, where his legs splayed and twitched as he clutched the gaping wound.

  Alex was already on her feet, as was Sasha. Just two minutes before, she’d caught his gaze, drawing his eyes down to the rope and padlock tucked into the dark corner near his rump. He, in turn, had understood, and had carefully pulled the rope toward the lock, deftly knotted an overhand loop, threaded the lock’s thick metal “U” through the loop, and quietly snapped it shut. Now, as he jumped up from the floor, he hurled the rope and lock to Alex.

  Vlado caught the metal glint at the corner of his right eye, and for one instant, it was a David and Goliath tableau. Alex spun the rope and three-pound lock in a vertical circle that churned to a blur like an airplane propeller. Vlado, towering massively above her, turned his lumbering frame and swung his still smoking pistol to bear.

  Alex whipped the lock so fast it actually made a hiss in the air—then impacted with Vlado’s left temple, where it punctured the flesh, shattered the skull, and kept on going deeply into his brain. His heavy pistol spun through the air and smashed into Sasha’s chest as his eyes rolled back in his head while his arms and legs turned to rubber. He collapsed forward onto the cargo car floor like a grizzly bear felled by lightning.

  But Alex had no options left. She couldn’t get to Kreesat—the range was too far and he was standing at the other side of Vlado’s twitching corpse. He spun on her, his expression molten and raging. As he swung his CZ99 towards her, she dropped the rope and prepared to duck to one side or the other, but she was framed by both corridor walls. There was really nowhere to go.

  Sasha’s first shot shocked everyon
e. The .45 pistol was massive in his hands, but he was a Russian working class hero, and he knew how to deal with a tyrant. The bullet spun Kreesat fully around and he reeled past the cargo berth’s door jamb and staggered back towards one corridor window. Sasha fired at him again, but missed him and hit the window instead, which shattered into a hundred shards and burst outside the train into the rushing wind.

  Kreesat made to defend himself with his CZ, but Sasha fired three more times in rapid succession, and the heavy impacts to Kreesat’s chest sent him careening backwards and out the shattered window. The last thing anyone saw of him were his boot soles, just for a flashing second.

  Alex looked at the open maw of the window, its frame hemmed with ragged glass shards, and then at Sasha, who was lowering the pistol and breathing very hard. He looked back at her, his expression neither triumphant nor remorseful, and said, “Boris was my friend.”

  Svetlana, weeping softly, was kneeling next to her father and cradling his head. He was still alive, but fading quickly, his forehead beaded with cold sweat and his feeble voice full of liquid.

  “You must stop the launch, Lana,” he whispered.

  “Yes, Father.” She kissed his gray temple and held him. “What is the code?”

  He managed to smile weakly. “It is your name, of course.”

  She nodded and turned to the keyboard below the single sideband radio. She typed in her name and after some seconds, the quickly flying beacon on the monitor image headed off in a different direction, and then stopped flashing altogether. She returned to Kozlov and held him again.

  “Is there anything else, Father?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “The microwave uplink. Kill it.”

  Svetlana looked up at Alex, who walked over to the gasoline generator, kicked the power toggle button to “off” with her heel and then ripped the electrical feed from the comm tower. The lights flickered and went out. The berth became eerily silent.

  “And there is one more thing,” Kozlov whispered to his daughter.