Of course he had left one cable in place: the one connecting his computer to the casket.
Before he opened the door, he glanced down at the baseboard and saw the tiny strip of transparent tape he’d placed between the door and the jamb. It was still in place. That meant no one had entered here.
Or probably not, anyway. Nothing was ever certain.
Long ago Dragomir had learned the importance of leaving nothing to chance. This was one of the many lessons he’d learned at the University of Hell, also known as Prison Number One, in Kopeisk.
The money transfer had been received in his account. The cutout had been eliminated.
Some time ago he had made provisions for a quick escape in the event the operation did not go to plan. In a steel box he’d buried in the Acadia National Park in Maine was a Ukrainian passport and wads of cash, in U.S. dollars and euros. The passport didn’t expire for another two years.
With a new identity, crossing the Canadian border would be quick and easy, and there were plenty of international flights out of Montreal.
The only chore that remained was hardly a chore at all.
It was his reward for all the long tedious days of vigilance and patience and restraint.
He knew how it would go: He had rehearsed it countless times, savoring the prospect. He’d tell the young girl what was about to happen, because there was nothing as delicious as a victim’s foreknowledge. Hour after hour he’d seen her fear, but when she learned, in precise and clinical detail, what was imminent, her terror would reach a whole new physical state.
Then he’d go about the business methodically: He’d disconnect the air hose from the compressor and attach it to the garden hose with the brass coupler. Once he pulled up the lever on the farmer’s hydrant, the water would start to flow. It would take a few seconds before the water began to trickle into the casket.
He had drowned small animals—mice, chipmunks and rabbits, a stray cat—in a trash barrel. But the squeals and the frantic scrambling of a dumb animal were ultimately not satisfying. They lacked apprehension.
She would hear the trickle, and then she would know.
Would she scream, or plead, or both?
As the water level grew higher and the air pocket grew smaller, she would flail and pound and most of all beg.
He had done some calculations. The interior volume of the casket was 230 gallons. Given the water pressure in the house and the diameter of the hose and the distance from the spigot to the burial site and then the nine feet down through the soil into the casket itself, it would take just short of half an hour to fill to capacity.
Then the water would reach her chin and she would have to struggle to keep her head above water, gasping her last precious breaths, her neck trembling from the exertion, her lips pursed like a fish.
He would watch in hypnotized fascination.
She would attempt to scream as her lungs filled with water; she’d flail and plead, and when she was entirely submerged, she would hold her breath until she couldn’t take it anymore and she was forced to expel the air from her lungs. And like a child in utero she would be forced to breathe liquid.
She would drown before his eyes.
It was a terrible way to die. The way his father died. For years he could only imagine it.
But now he would know.
Dragomir knew he was not like other people. He understood his own psychology, the way he drew sustenance from the fear of others.
As he entered the house, he paused.
Something was different here. A shift in the air? A vibration? He had the finely tuned senses of a wild animal.
Now that the cutout was dead, he wondered how long it would take for the Client to realize what had happened. They had some idea where he was based, but he was sure he hadn’t been followed after the last rendezvous.
Still, he wondered. Something was off.
He moved quietly through the parlor to the front door, where he’d placed another tell, a barely visible slice of Scotch tape at the bottom of the door next to the jamb, both inside and out.
A minuscule ribbon of tape lay on the floor. No one who wasn’t looking for it would see it.
But now he knew for certain: someone was here.
101.
I could hear footfalls, the creaking of the wooden floor, the sounds becoming louder, closer. Grasping the pistol in my right hand, the banister in my left, I squatted and looked through the keyhole and saw only the ice-blue light from the computer monitor.
Alexa on the screen. Such advanced technology in the service of such primitive depravity.
He had entered the room.
I saw a leg, clad in jeans, but just for an instant. Walking toward the computer, or at least in that direction. Then he came to a stop.
The man was standing a few feet away. I could see his back: large torso, broad shoulders, a dark sweatshirt.
Did he suspect anything? But his body language didn’t indicate suspicion.
He was standing at the window, I saw now, casually looking outside, a black knit watch cap on his head.
And the hideous pattern on the back of his neck.
The bottom half of an owl’s face.
102.
Dragomir Zhukov entered the back room, peering around at the filthy windowsills and the peeling yellow paint on the walls and the uneven floorboards.
A voice crackled from the small computer speaker. The girl was speaking.
“Nick!” she screamed. “Please don’t go away!”
The pistol was in his right hand even before he’d made the conscious decision to draw it.
* * *
ZHUKOV TURNED swiftly, holding a weapon, an enormous steel semiautomatic with a barrel like a cannon.
I recognized it at once. An Israeli-made .50 caliber Desert Eagle. Made by the same folks who gave the world the Uzi. It was the sort of thing you were far more likely to see in a movie or a video game than in reality. It was too large and unwieldy, so unnecessarily powerful. When Clint Eastwood declared, in Dirty Harry, that his .44 Magnum was “the most powerful handgun in the world,” he was right. In 1971. But since then, that title had been claimed by the Desert Eagle.
I saw his wide angry stare, his strong nose, a sharp jaw, a cauliflower ear.
“Nick, where’d you go? I thought you were here! When are the others coming? Nick, please, get me out of here, oh God, please, Nick, don’t leave me—”
Zhukov turned slowly.
He knew.
103.
Zhukov knew I was here somewhere.
Alexa’s voice, steadily more frantic: “Please, Nick, answer me! Don’t leave me stuck here. Don’t you goddamn go away!”
Zhukov moved with the taut, coiled grace of a cat. His eyes scanned the room, up and then down, ticking slowly and methodically in a grid.
I breathed noiselessly in and out on the other side of the heavy wooden door. Watching through the keyhole.
I’d come to rescue Alexa. But now it was a simple matter of survival.
The hollow-point ammo I was using might have had unequaled stopping power, but the rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thick old wooden door between us. The instant they hit wood they’d start to fragment. If they actually passed through the door, they’d be traveling at such a reduced velocity that they’d no longer kill.
I was all but defenseless.
Nor was my body armor meant to stop the .50 caliber Magnum rounds fired by the Desert Eagle. I didn’t know whether the rounds would penetrate the ballistic vest; they might. But even if they didn’t, the blunt-force trauma alone would probably kill me.
So I watched him through the keyhole and held my breath and waited for him to move on to another part of the house.
Zhukov scanned the room again. He seemed to be satisfied I wasn’t hiding here. I saw his eyes shift toward the kitchen. He took a few steps in that direction.
Slowly I let out my breath. As soon as I was sure he’d moved into the kitchen, I’d turn the
knob silently, and step out as noiselessly as I could.
If I got the jump on him I might be able to drop him with one well-aimed shot.
Reaching out slowly, I placed my left hand on the doorknob. Ready to turn it once he was safely out of the room.
I continued watching.
Drew breath. Waited patiently. A few seconds more.
Then he swiveled around, back toward me. His gaze dropped to the floor, as if he’d just discovered something. I saw what he was looking at.
The railback chair I’d just moved out of the way of the basement door.
It was out of place. Not exactly where he’d left it.
His gaze rose slowly. He smiled, baring teeth that were brown and belonged in a beaver’s mouth.
He raised the Desert Eagle and pointed it right at the basement door, directly at me, as if he had X-ray vision and could see through the wood, and he squeezed the trigger—
blam blam blam
—and I lurched out of the way and everything was happening in slow motion, the thunderous explosions and the muzzle flash, fireballs that lit up the entire room, the splintering of the door, and as I let go of the doorknob and the banister and leaped backward I felt a bullet slam into my chest, the pain staggering, and everything went black.
104.
When I came to, a few seconds later, my body was wracked with excruciating pain. Like something had exploded inside my chest while my rib cage was being crushed in some enormous vise. The pain in my left leg was even worse, sharp and throbbing, the nerve endings shrieking and juddering. Everything moved in a sort of stroboscopic motion, like a rapid series of still images.
Where was I?
On my back, I knew, sprawled on a hard cold floor in the near darkness, surrounded by the dank odor of mold and old concrete and the stench of urine. As my eyes adjusted, I saw snowdrifts of what looked like shredded newspaper all around me, and a lot of rat droppings.
Something scurried by, made a scree sound, and I lurched.
A large shaggy Brown Norway rat, its long scaly tail writhing, stopped a few feet away. It gazed with beady brown eyes, maybe curious, or maybe resentful that I’d disturbed its den. It twitched its whiskers and scuttled away into the darkness.
Pale moonlight filtered in from above, through a gaping hole in the underside of a wooden staircase.
In an instant I realized what had just happened.
A bullet had struck me, slamming into the left side of my ballistic vest, but it hadn’t penetrated my body. I was alive only because two inches of solid oak had slowed the round’s velocity. But I’d been knocked off balance, shoved backward down the stairs. Then I’d crashed feet first through the termite-damaged, rotten planks and broken through, landing on the concrete floor below.
I tried to breathe, but each time I inhaled it felt like daggers piercing my lungs. I sensed warm blood seeping down my left leg. I reached down to feel the bullet wound.
But there wasn’t any.
Instead, the jagged end of a broken plank a foot long was sunk several inches into my left calf, through tough denim.
I grabbed the board and wrenched it out of my flesh. A couple of long rusty nails protruded from the wood. As painful as it had been lodged in my calf, it was far worse coming out.
I tried to recall the number of shots he’d fired at me. The .50 caliber Desert Eagle’s magazine held only seven rounds. Had he fired four or five? Maybe even six.
Maybe he didn’t have any rounds left. Maybe he had one.
I was short of breath and dazed and numb. A creak somewhere overhead, then heavy footsteps on the top steps. Zhukov was coming down the stairs.
Maybe he thought he’d killed me but wanted to make sure. Maybe he thought he could just finish me off. I had to move before he fired straight down as I lay here gasping.
I felt for my weapon but it wasn’t in the holster. I’d been holding it when the bullets struck me. Maybe I’d dropped it when I took a tumble. Now I felt for it on the cold floor, my hands sweeping over the concrete and the debris and the rat droppings. But it was nowhere within reach.
A light came on: a bare bulb mounted to one of the rafters about ten feet away. The ceiling was low. The basement was small: maybe thirty feet by twenty.
Wooden shelves were screwed on to the cinder-block walls, lined with old canning jars. Rickety children’s bookcases, painted with clowns and dancers, were heaped with newspapers and magazines that had been chewed through, cobwebbed, littered with rat droppings. In one corner, in a square hole cut into the concrete floor, a rusty sump pump was planted in gravel, collecting dust and cobwebs. Here and there were folding tables stacked with old toasters and kitchen implements and assorted junk.
He took another step. I lay absolutely still, held my breath. Lay flat, looking up.
If I made a sound, he’d locate me, and he’d get a direct, unimpeded shot straight down. The vest wouldn’t protect me.
He knew I was here. He’d heard me stumble down the steps. Surely he’d seen the broken boards, the gaping hole, the missing treads. But did he know I was directly below him?
As soon as he looked down, he’d know. Once he did, it was all over.
I looked over at the bare lightbulb again, and then I noticed the splintered two-by-four on the ground, the blood-spattered plank whose jagged end had sunk into my leg.
I grabbed it, and in one hard swift throw I hurled it, smashing the bare lightbulb, and everything went dark again.
In the dark I stood a chance.
But a few seconds later, a flashlight beam shone down the stairs. The cone of light swept slowly back and forth over the floor and the walls, into the dark corners. I could hear him coming down the stairs, slowly and deliberately.
Then the beam went off. The only light was the faint trapezoid cast by the open door above. Maybe he’d stuffed the flashlight in a pocket. He needed two hands to hold the Desert Eagle.
Now it was all a matter of seconds. I had to get to my feet to be ready to pounce, but do it silently. The slightest scrape would announce my location like a beacon.
The timing was crucial. I could move only when he did, when the sound of his tread and the creaking and groaning of the old wood masked whatever slight noise I made getting up.
Lying flat, I listened.
A dry whisking. The rat had come out of its hiding place, alarmed by yet another disturbance, maybe fearful that a second human being was about to come crashing down into its nest. It pattered across the floor toward me. Paused to make a decision, surveying the terrain with shrewd eyes.
Directly overhead another step creaked. Startled, the rat came at me, skittered across over my neck, the sharp nails of its paws scratching my skin, its dry hard tail whisking my face, tickling my ear canal. I shuddered.
Yet somehow I stayed absolutely still.
Abruptly clapping both hands over the thing, I grabbed its squirmy shaggy body … and hurled it across the room.
Suddenly there was a shot, followed by the clatter of metal objects crashing to the floor.
My ears rang.
Zhukov had heard the rat’s scuffling and assumed it was me.
But now he knew he hadn’t hit me. No one can get shot with a .50 caliber round without giving a scream or groan or cry.
So was that his last shot? Was that number six or seven? I couldn’t be sure.
Maybe he had one round left.
Or maybe he was on a new cartridge.
He took another step down, and I knew what I had to do.
105.
I had to grab his gun.
Through one of the missing risers in the decrepit staircase I could see the heels of his boots.
Then I heard the unmistakable metallic clackclack of the pistol’s magazine being ejected. The weapon was directly above me, close enough to seize, wrench out of his hands. If I moved fast enough, took him by surprise.
Now.
I shoved down against the floor with both hands, using the strength in m
y arms to rise into a high push-up. Favoring my right foot, I levered myself up until I was standing.
Then, reaching out both hands, I grabbed his right boot and yanked it toward me. He lost his footing, stumbled down the steps, yelled out in surprise and anger. The staircase groaned and creaked and scattered chunks of wood. Something heavy and metal clattered near my feet.
The Desert Eagle?
Go for the weapon, or launch myself at him, try to immobilize him before he could get back up?
I went for the gun on the floor.
But it wasn’t the gun. It was his flashlight: a long black Maglite. Heavy aircraft-grade aluminum with a knurled barrel, heavy as a police baton.
I leaned over and grabbed it, and when I spun around, he was standing maybe six feet away, pistol in a two-handed grip. Aiming two feet to my left.
In the dark, he couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see much either, but for the moment I could see more than he could.
I arced the Maglite at his head. He didn’t see it coming. It struck him on the bridge of his nose, and he roared in pain. Blood trickled from his eyes and gushed from his nostrils.
He staggered, and I lunged, knocking him to the floor, driving a knee into his stomach, my right fist aiming for his larynx, but he’d twisted his body so that I ended up delivering a powerhouse uppercut to the side of his jaw.
He dropped the weapon.
I landed on top of him, pinioned him to the floor with my right knee and my left hand. His blood was sticky on my fist. But he had unexpected reserves of strength, like an afterburner. As if the pain only provoked and enraged him and fueled him. As if he enjoyed the violence.
He levered his torso up off the floor and slammed a fist at my left ear. I turned my head but he still managed to cuff me hard just behind the ear. I swung for his face, but then something large and steel came at me and I whipped my head to one side though not quite in time, and I realized he’d retrieved his weapon.
Holding the Desert Eagle by its long barrel, he swung the butt against my temple, like a five-pound steel blackjack.
Buried Secrets (Nick Heller) Page 29