by Mike Leon
“Oh! The grow house!” Yuri says. No! Not the grow house! Wintergreen doesn’t give a goddamn about the grow house. Nobody does.
“He’s not going to the grow house,” Dmitry says. “He wants blood. He wants to stack up bodies. He’ll come here.”
“Even if you are right, it would be suicide for any man to come here,” Volchenko says. “I have twenty-seven trained mercenaries on this house. State-of-the-art camera system. Blast shutters and doors! I am not afraid. Go. Yuri will take you to the Koschei.”
There isn’t much conversation after that. Yuri stands up like a good soldier should.
On the way through the mansion Moldovich won’t shut up about the legendary Koschei, greatest hitter who has ever walked among men. They say that Koschei cannot be killed. They say that Koschei drinks the souls of his victims and becomes stronger with every kill. They say that where he walks, the soil dies so nothing will ever grow there again, that statues he passes cry tears of blood, that the unborn strangle themselves in the womb at the sound of his voice. The way Yuri talks about the Koschei is the same way a teen girl talks about her favorite member of her favorite boy band—from that perfect naive distance where she can see something angelically pretty, but can’t hear him asking to have his knob polished. As long as that sweet distance is maintained, he’ll be prince charming forever.
Yuri pulls open the door to the chapel and that distance is travelled.
“Koschei…” Dmitry mutters in awe as he looks across a mighty chamber teeming with gold plated icons of the saints and golden urns that emit burning incense fumes. Ahead of him, the wondrously toned physical specimen that is the Koschei kneels before the altar that is adorned with a gold and silver bound edition of the Holy Testament. He is completely naked. His body, like the finest weapons, is a work of art, covered in colors and patterns with no beginning or end. The pastiche includes daggers and minarets and spiders and flies, skulls, five pointed stars, teardrops, demons, pitchforks, crowns, and so many other symbols that Dmitry could search them for weeks and not spot every nuance.
“You see his tattoos,” whispers Yuri at Dmitry’s back. “The domed towers on the castle are for sentences to the gulag, and each window is for a year of imprisonment. Nineteen. The flies are men he killed outside and the spiders are men he killed inside. One hundred seventy in all. The teardrops are for the widows he left in his wake.”
“That’s quite a bit you can tell from just his tattoos,” Dmitry says.
“That only scratches the surface. Do you see the broken rings on his lower back? Those are his failed marriages. Another on his left buttock is for a wife who was unfaithful. Her name was Sasha. On his neck is the Greek word Chobani, which is his favorite brand of non-fat yogurt. The roller coaster that runs down his shoulder and bicep is for a day he spent at Six Flags years ago. It has three cars because he was able to ride most of the rides, but one car is missing a wheel because he did not meet Bugs Bunny. There is so much more if you keep looking.”
“Koschei,” Dmitry calls out. The glorious naked figure’s head whips around in an instant to meet his call. The body slowly rises with arms outstretched in prayer.
“Forever and ever Amen.” Koschei sings. His smooth face seeks the heavens, much like his towering, bulging, conspicuously and inappropriately erect penis. “You must be Fedosov.”
“Yes,” Dmitry says, focusing vociferously on the Koschei’s face.
“Koschei…” Yuri mumbles quietly in starstruck awe.
“I hear you have a problem.”
“Yes.”
“Fear not, Fedosov.” The Koschei steps toward him, his arms still outstretched, his giant dick bouncing like a hoplite spear. He closes the distance, but continues far beyond the point of comfort, if there ever was one, and into Dmitry’s personal space. He throws his arms around Dmitry’s shoulders. Dmitry holds back a whimper as the Koschei squeezes him in an endearing hug, then kisses him on the mouth. “There will be a firefight. Oh yes. A glorious firefight. Do you feel it?”
“Uh… I think I can feel it.”
“Yes. Oh yes. Your enemies will die tonight.”
INT. THE BLACK OMEN - NIGHT
The Black Omen is the kind of place Red would absolutely expect his old enemy to frequent. Second only to the kill team’s capacity for violence was his womanizing. His tastes fell perfectly in line with the harlotry on display here, from what Red can remember. On the main stage, two beautiful women wearing only pink g-strings are putting on a very crude interpretive dance presentation of I Kissed a Girl.
The bar is mostly unoccupied even though the club is busy. Most of the patrons are more interested in nude dancers than overpriced liquor. Red has a seat on one of the bar stools and has a look around. The place is industrial looking, with rivets in the black sheet metal that adorns the walls. There are black light fixtures over the stalls where the private dances go on, and in a few other places too. Red makes sure to observe their placements, and he takes special care to avoid the violet hues.
“What are you drinking?” asks the twiggy little lady behind the bar. She’s built like a toothpick with just the most subtle female curvatures, pretty according to many tastes, but not what Red would call a conventional sexpot. She smiles at him from under an oversized cowboy hat and bouncy brown locks of long hair.
“I’ll have a Cuba Libre,” he says.
“Oh.” She appears perplexed. “I don’t know how to make that.”
“It’s rum and Coca-Cola with lime,” he says.
“That’s just like a Rum and Coke,” she excitedly says.
Red frowns with annoyance, but quickly shifts to a feigned smile. “Cuba Libre is a celebration of freedom. Rum and Coke is, like so many things taken from the workers, a cheapened alternative—soulless, meaningless, repackaged by imperialists for simple capital gain.”
“Oh, okay…” The bartender frowns.
“I want to know about a dancer named Lily.” He watches as the bartender pours rum into a collins glass.
“Uhh, there aren’t any dancers named Lily.” The bartender fills the glass with Coke from the bar gun. “I mean Chastity’s real name is Lily, but that’s like a secret, so don’t tell anybody.”
“She has black hair and tattoos?” She adds a lime to the top of the glass and sets the drink down in front of him.
“Yup. That’s her.”
“Have you seen her with a man recently?”
“Sure. Lots of men. She’s a stripper.”
“But a particular man. Tall. Dark. Rough.”
“Oh, like her boyfriend? He’s scary. He was here last night looking for Yvonne. Are you Yvonne’s boyfriend? Because nothing happened.”
“Which one is Yvonne?” Red asks.
“Oh, she’s right over there with Weird Kevin.”
“Weird Kevin?”
“Yeah. One of the regulars. He’s really not weird, but that makes him weird… I don’t know. It’s just what Molly says. I don’t understand it.”
“Perfect.” Red finishes his drink and leaves the Black Omen. He sits quietly in his car, reading from The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
A glowing nude specimen of beauty sits down at the bar, her string bikini crumpled in her hands from a recent strip down. Her body is perfection given form, but it’s that smile that draws the eyes. It’s all Red can see when he looks at her, giant pearly white teeth that always show like those of a smiling doll or puppet.
“I’ve been grinding on Creepy Larry in the VIP room for three hours,” she says. “I think he’s tapping his 401k for me now.”
“A 401k is just another way for the bourgeoisie to maintain control over the means of production,” the bartender says.
The dancer in front of her goes quiet in surprise. “Are you okay, Jessica?”
“I’m fine. I’ve just been reading a lot of Lenin and Engels lately.”
“I skimmed them in college. Not a fan. Can I get a bottle of water?”
“Sure.�
� Jessica hands a bottle of water across the bar as Yvonne happens by on her way to the now unoccupied VIP room. The buxom brunette dancer stops to ask for a hard cider and a dirty martini in an unmistakable Russian accent. Jessica reaches for a cocktail glass. “So Yvonne, what did Lily’s boyfriend want last night?”
Yvonne narrows her eyes slightly in a distrustful micro expression, then shakes her head into a dismissive smile. “Nothing. It was nothing,” she says.
“It didn’t look like nothing,” Jessica says, pouring vodka into the glass with just a splash of vermouth.
“He just wanted my number. I wouldn’t give it to him.”
“Oh. Okay.” Jessica finishes the drink with a tiny plastic sword through four olives and Yvonne picks it up and takes it away. The Russian slut is lying. Getting an answer out of her may be an arduous task. She will need to be beaten, or tortured or...
“Volchenko,” someone says. The words come from a crusty old man sucking on an electronic cigarette at the end of the bar. “Guy was asking her about somebody named Volchenko. I think he’s in the mob. Fuckin’ rooskies. We should have gone right over and dropped the bomb on them right after we dropped it on Japan.”
INT. GROW HOUSE - NIGHT
“Have I told you about my FN Scar, Dmitry?” the Koschei says. It has been the same thing from that man for hours. Have I told you about my super charged sports car? Have I told you about my beach house in Vienna? Have I told you about my designer sunglasses? Have I told you about my awesome tattoos? Once, Dmitry might have cared, only enough to raise his personal bar for one-upmanship. Now, he can only feign interest. There is an applicable expression about seeing how the sausage is made. “I show you picture. Here. See?” Koschei presents a photograph on the iPad he brought with him into the grow house. The gun in the photo is a boxy looking gold plated rifle. “All gold plated, except for stock is solid gold. I use for bear hunting, sometimes to fight commando squads when they attack me, which happens all the time. This I get from good friend Vladimir Putin.”
Yuri Moldovich hangs on every word like he’s listening to Jesus.
The three of them lean against the aluminum wall of one of the grow house’s three rooms, each a warehouse by itself packed wall-to-wall with marijuana plants, except for narrow walkways that the caretakers use to get to the plants during the day.
Elsewhere in the indoor jungle, Tony the Tiger finishes a joke for Piotr Bogdonovich, Val Sokolov, Vlad, and some others they gathered here. “So the tapeworm goes ‘WHERE’S MY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE?!’ and the doctor hits it with the hammer.” Vlad laughs thunderously over the mild chuckles of the others. It has been this way for hours. The killer isn’t coming here. Of course, Dmitry knew that from the start, but no one would believe him. They don’t even believe it’s really just one man after them all.
“Now this one,” Koschei says, showing him another photo on his phone. “This is my Desert Eagle Five-Oh. Also gold plated. This I use for when I have to stop car. Bam! Right through engine block. Desert Eagle Five-Oh. The best. There is nothing better. You want to be best like me, you need best equipment. No expense spared. I get best guns. Fastest car. Fastest women…” Koschei smiles and nudges his elbow to Dmitry’s. “Eh? Yes?” Dmitry is just glad the assassin put some clothes on. Though, his tuxedo and his alligator skin trench coat are probably a bit much for the occasion.
This is stupid. He should be back at the Volchenko mansion, or at a safe house with Volchenko, taping everything that disgusting son-of-a-bitch says. Instead, he’s here. All of them are here, wasting time staring at a bunch of plants.
“Here,” Koschei says. “I show you pictures from holiday in Ibiza. You know Ibiza, yes?”
EXT. VOLCHENKO ESTATE - NIGHT
Oh-two-hundred. Assault on the Volchenko residence. Sid goes in over a twelve foot brick perimeter wall that surrounds the entire property. The other side is open grass most of the way to the main building, which is a three floored mansion containing at least fifty rooms. A clay tiled patio area surrounds a large stone fountain at the rear of the structure and a decorative stone path leads from that to an elaborate gazebo. The front of the property is clear except for some flower beds around hulking trees arranged in formation, and a long blacktop driveway which loops in front of the house.
Sid moves up through the grass and approaches the mansion from the northwest side, which is neither the front or rear of the building and contains no doors. They’ll be watching the doors, and are less likely to see him coming this way. As far as getting inside—he’ll be making his own entrance.
He reaches the side of the mansion quickly, avoiding the bright light cast upon the lawn from an upstairs bedroom. The fact that they are not treating all windows as active windows indicates they are not well prepared. If Sid were defending the building he would have made certain all windows were dark. As it happens, Sid even observed several people in the illuminated bedroom. These things are unforgivable mistakes. Amateurs.
He had considered blasting his way through the side of the house to establish rapid dominance, but he no longer has any military grade explosives and would have to mix up a large quantity of Ammonium Nitrate/Nitro Methane to blow down the limestone. There was no time for that. Instead, he goes through a window.
He plows through the glass like a two hundred pound missile and drops down in the middle of a little room with several bookshelves and a collection of delicate looking pottery. He is wearing jet black clothes and gloves. His chest is covered by a burned and tattered kevlar vest he recovered from the ruins of his old apartment. He has knee and elbow pads he purchased from a sporting goods retailer. His head and face are covered by a latex werewolf mask which he cut up to make an allowance for a pair of ballistic goggles. It’s cheap, scary, conceals his identity, and doesn’t impede his peripheral vision. On to the violence.
It starts when he kicks open the door to the cramped hallway leading to the ballroom atrium. Two goons sit on a bench in the ballroom watching a portable video player while they should be watching the front door. Sid perforates them both with the cool new toy he picked up from the gun store, a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun. With its pistol grip, collapsible stock, semi-automatic action, or selectable pump action for increased reliability with low pressure special loads like bean bags, rubber shot, and tear gas, the Sporting Purpose Automatic Shotgun 12 is the perfect choice for all kinds of wholesome leisure activities. Whether skeet shooting at the local sportsmen’s club, taking little Jimmy on his first turkey hunt at the old farm, or just enjoying a laid back sunny day at the range with your best gal, the SPAS-12 is the perfect shotgun for the occasion. From Franchi—the family friendly firearms manufacturer.
He also brought the FNX-9 he picked up at the nightclub, and a KA-BAR knife. Anything else he needs he intends to pick up from the bodies. There will be plenty of bodies. He can already hear the security personnel running from other rooms, upstairs and down, toward the source of the gunshots.
One more suited goon emerges from a doorway to Sid’s left. The kill team spears him with the muzzle of the SPAS and crushes the man’s nose before he squeezes the trigger and puts a coffee mug sized hole all the way through that screaming skull. The shotgun plunges right through that meat socket and keeps the body suspended while Sid checks in the sport coat for anything useful. He gets a Glock 17 from the coat.
Three arrive from the other end of the atrium. They already have their guns out. Sid puts them down with the Glock as he saunters through the middle of the room, speed-shooting through the entire magazine to pump his enemies’ bodies with lead. He whips his head back and howls at the ceiling, echoing up through all the overlooking floors. “You can’t hide from the hellhound, Igor!”
Sid steps under the cover of the overlook as several bullets rain down on his position. Three floors above, a hand holds a Sig SG 553 carbine over the lip of the balustrade, blindly spraying the bottom floor with automatic fire. Sid lifts the SPAS-12 and pumps two shots between the balusters. The Sig
comes falling from the sky and thumps down on a leather sofa nearby. The sight of it makes him angry. That gun has a 30-round detachable box magazine! He could barely get a repeating rifle for all the money that was in that duffel bag, but these idiots have select fire weapons.
“Where did you assholes get real guns?!” Sid shouts as he picks up the carbine.
“Fuck off, dick cheese!” someone yells from upstairs. Sid zeroes in on the source of the voice, one floor above, three meters from the edge of the balustrade, Sid’s ten o’clock. He lifts the carbine and fires a few shots through the ceiling in that direction, and then hears a loud thud against the floor.
Sid yells “If anybody wants to throw me their gun, I promise not to kill you!”
Almost instantly, another 553 drops from the third floor parapet and clatters against the marble floor.
“Seriously, Todd?” shouts someone above, as Sid draws the fallen carbine toward his position using his foot. He yanks the magazine from it and stuffs it in his waistband.
“You should just jump down here, Volchenko,” Sid shouts. “Break your neck and end it quick. It’ll be better than what I’m gonna do to you!”
“He can’t hear you!” hollers Todd, the cowardly gunfighter. “He’s in his panic room!”
“Shut up, Todd!” interjects the other voice again. 5.56 rounds rain down on Sid from above. He blasts up at the shooter with the rest of the shells in the SPAS-12 and a body tumbles over the third floor parapet, plummeting into a glass coffee table which explodes into hundreds of tiny white beads.
“Don’t shut up, Todd,” Sid says. He takes the great red carpeted staircase that leads up to the next floor. Another bodyguard waits around a doorjamb along the hallway atop the steps. He thinks he’s clever, but Sid can hear him breathing. Sid pops four rounds of 5.56 through the wall and a body falls into the hallway. He steps over the body and keeps moving.