Killian’s head hung low from the punch. “God damn it, Rudenko,” he said, spitting blood as he spoke. “I told you all I know. I swear, if there was anything more, I would tell you. The last thing I care about is protecting my father’s legacy.” His head slumped farther down to his chest. Still, he managed to say, “And hurting the women in order to get more information out of me would be completely useless and excessively cruel.”
Rudenko nodded as if he were seriously considering what Killian had just said. “You know, I want to believe you, Mr. Lebon. I really do,” he said sincerely. “But I’m sorry, this matter is just too important to my country to not take all necessary measures to ensure your truthfulness. Surely you of all people would understand. It’s simply professional prudence, that’s all.” He looked at Sabra and nodded to the door. “Please send Mr. McKnight along on his errand then.”
As Sabra reached the door, Rudenko called out, “Just a minute, Mr. Sabra. Perhaps for the sake of thoroughness, we shouldn’t begin with the one who matters most to Mr. Lebon. Perhaps instead we should work our way up to her.” He put a hand to his chin as he considered the proposition. “Yes, I believe that’s what we should do,” he concluded. “Instead of Ms. Gunther, let us begin with those two beautiful twin sisters for now.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
McKnight held his swollen right hand close to his chest as he walked by the door to RJ’s cabin and stopped at the next door after it to where the twins had been held. Using his left hand, he punched in the security code and entered the empty room. He didn’t go there thinking that the twins would still be there. He knew Henderson had already took them to DeBlanc – he had a good laugh watching as Ruby rushed by him, leaving Henderson behind with her barely conscious sister hollering for her to wait. No, he went there because he knew it was empty. Before he headed up to DeBlanc’s to fetch the twins, he wanted to first look after his injured hand.
He went into the head and turned the sink faucet on to high and all the way to cold. He gently placed the damaged hand under the running water and held it there for a few minutes. He then took a small towel from under the vanity, folded it in half length-wise, and wrapped it tightly around the hand.
Walking up the passageway toward the elevator, his wrapped hand braced against his chest, McKnight wished there really were a doctor onboard. He could tell by the amount of swelling and the severity of the pain that something was broken. He would at least need to get an icepack on it as soon as he delivered the twins to the Russians.
Thinking hard about the many different ways he would like to murder that fucking Lebon asshole, he failed to notice RJ as she slipped out of her cabin and began following him as he made his slow angry way up to DeBlanc’s master stateroom.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
While we wait, I’d like you to elaborate on something for me, Mr. Lebon,” Rudenko said as he continued pacing slowly back in forth before Killian. “Earlier you referred several times to your late father’s extremist bullshit. What did you mean by that?”
Killian’s head hung to his chest. He didn’t respond.
Rudenko stopped pacing. “Mr. Lebon, did you hear me? he asked impatiently. “I said I wanted to know more about your father’s so-called extremist bullshit.”
When Killian still didn’t respond, Sabra grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. Killian had passed out.
“It appears all the damage his head has taken is beginning to take its toll,” Rudenko said in Russian. “Can you wake him up?”
Sabra walked over to his backpack. He dug through it briefly until he found what he was looking for. A package of smelling salts. He removed one of the ampules from the box, walked back to Killian, and broke it under his nose.
The ammonia did its work and Killian snapped awake, coughing and sputtering.
“My, you do come prepared, don’t you Mr. Sabra,” Rudenko said approvingly.
Sabra nodded.
Rudenko walked up to Killian and attempted to kneel. As he did his right knee cracked painfully and locked up on him. He barely managed to keep from falling over. “Ah, it seems all the ice hockey from my youth is catching up to me,” he said to Sabra in embarrassment as he struggled to stand straight again. He looked around the room for something to sit on, even though he knew already it was empty of any furniture. “Doesn’t it seem odd to you, Mr. Sabra, that only Mr. Lebon here gets to sit in comfort.” He smiled at Sabra hoping to elicit a smile from the stoic agent in return. He didn’t. “I truly need to sit down for a while before things get too serious in here. Could you be so kind as to run to one of the adjacent cabins and fetch a chair for me to sit in?” He bent his legs at the knees to try to work out the stiffness.
Sabra started to leave but then stopped. “But I don’t know the codes to any of the doors?”
Rudenko smiled patiently at the agent and then looked back at his hostage. Killian’s head had once again slumped back down to his chest. “Well, perhaps you can go find out what’s taking Mr. McKnight so long, and when you find him you can ask him to fetch me a chair.”
Sabra still hesitated. “But do you think it is a good idea for you to be alone with the hostage?”
“No, I don’t,” Rudenko said, losing his smile. “That’s why I implore you to make haste.”
Sabra went over to the backpack again and again dug through it briefly. This time he brought a small pistol out from it. He chambered a round in the weapon and then walked over to Rudenko and held it out to him. “Ten rounds. Should be enough to do the job,” he said in English.
“Yes, this should help allay any fears while you’re gone,” Rudenko said with an appreciative smile as he accepted the gun. He nodded toward Killian. “But I believe our man has passed out on us once again, so I doubt we have much to worry about from him while you’re gone.” He studied the gun from different angles with a knowing eye. “Nine-millimeter Glock 26 subcompact. Very nice. Trigger safety, correct?” It was more a statement than a question.
Sabra nodded. “Aim, squeeze, shoot. He dies.”
After Sabra departed, Rudenko placed the gun in the front right pocket of his suit jacket and took the opportunity to use the bathroom. When he returned, he kept his hand in his pocket with a loose hold on the gun.
“Come now, Mr. Lebon, you haven’t really gone back to sleep on me, have you?” he asked by way of resuming the interrogation. “I was hoping that while we wait for the girls to join us we could continue our dialogue.”
Killian moaned softly.
“Oh good. You are still awake,” Rudenko said. “Now, perhaps then you could explain to me what you meant when you previously referred to your late father’s extremist bullshit. Were you speaking in hyperbole, or are you aware of specific extremist activities that he was engaged in?”
Killian lifted his head slowly and looked at Rudenko with groggy eyes. He spoke in a voice barely above a whisper, and then his head slumped back down to his chest.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lebon, but I couldn’t hear what you said. You’re going to have to speak louder for me please.”
Killian didn’t respond.
Rudenko took the gun out from the jacket pocket and walked over to Killian. He nudged Killian cautiously on the shoulder with the end of the barrel. “Mr. Lebon are you awake?”
Killian barely raised his head as he mumbled something unintelligible about his father.
“Oh, sometimes I don’t know why I continue to bother with you, Mr. Lebon,” Rudenko said as he reluctantly knelt to try to better hear what Killian was saying. Both knees cracked this time in protest as he planted the left one on the floor and kept the right one up in a bend. He used the right knee as a brace for his forearm so he could keep the gun pointed at Killian. “Mr. Lebon, I must insist that you speak up. Remember, the more you cooperate with me now, the easier it will be for your lovely friends.”
Killian lifted his head up slowly as if he were getting ready to speak. Rudenko turned his head so his left ear was in alignment wi
th Killian’s mouth and leaned in closer. But as he leaned, his right knee locked up on him again and he lost his balance. His hands instinctively dropped to the deck to prevent him from falling over.
With the gun no longer pointed at him, Killian struck out at Rudenko, leaning forward as far as his bindings would allow, and bit hard onto the Russian’s vulnerable left ear. Before Rudenko could react, Killian threw his body back against the chairback as hard as he could, pulling Rudenko along with him by the ear, and tipping the chair over. However, the combined weight of the two men snapped off the back wooden legs before the chair could tip all the way over and sent them crashing straight to the deck.
Killian lay on the deck gagging while Rudenko lay on top of him writhing and screaming from pain. The jolt they received from hitting the deck had snapped Killian’s mouth shut, causing him to bite off most of Rudenko’s ear as it did. The large bloody chunk of flesh and cartilage was now stuck in the back of his throat choking him. He thrashed his body around until Rudenko rolled off him and he could get a good enough cough out to dislodge the ear and spit it out. Once he was breathing freely again, he discovered that, though his wrists were still taped to the chair’s broken-off back legs, his hands and arms could now move unhindered. He tore himself free from the broken chair parts and stood and began searching for Rudenko’s gun.
Rudenko, his face completely covered in blood, forgot his agony when he saw that Killian was freed from his bonds and now standing. He saw the gun lying nearby him on the deck and made a lunge for it. But in one long stride Killian came down hard with the heel of Henderson’s shoe on Rudenko’s outstretched fingers still inches away from the gun.
With Sabra’s Glock in hand, Killian kept the heel of the shoe on Rudenko’s fingers and ground it back and forth over them until there was a snap. Rudenko screamed while squirming in agony in a small pool of his own blood. Killian pointed the gun at the Russian’s head, but he had a hard time focusing his sights on it. The pain in his head was severe. He felt dizzy and lightheaded and his vision had become dark and blurry. But he spoke with strength. “If I recall correctly, Rudenko, I believe I said something not too long ago about ensuring your corrupt, miserable life came to a violent end. Remember that?”
Rudenko was close to hyperventilating from the severity of the pain he was experiencing and the direness of the situation he was in. He spoke to Killian through rapid, panicked breaths. “We both know you can’t… shoot me, Mr. Lebon. The gunshot… will alert my heavily armed men… and you and your whores… will be dead in a matter of minutes.”
Despite his own pain and dire complications, Killian had to chuckle at the unrelenting audacity of the man. “Who said anything about shooting you?” he said as his grin turned to a hateful scowl. He lifted the foot wearing the burgundy wingtip that had just broken Rudenko’s fingers and stomped its heel down onto the bloody spot where Rudenko’s ear used to be. And then he stomped down on it again. And again. As he continued targeting the disfigured spot with the heel of the shoe over and over, he became dizzy and his vision blurred and began fading to black. Near blind, he continued in a mad frenzy, with each stomp of the foot screaming out astaghfirullah, begging a God in which he didn’t believe for His forgiveness. And he continued doing so until the side of the corrupt Russian’s head had caved in on itself and the heel of Henderson’s shoe was striking down straight to the pulp-covered deck.
Astaghfirullah! Astaghfirullah! Astaghfirullah…
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
McKnight knocked on DeBlanc’s stateroom door. There was no answer. He knocked again, harder, and listened closely. He heard the faint rustling of sheets and nothing more. He knocked once again, this time even harder.
DeBlanc hollered out in a slow, slurred speech, “If you don’t stop knocking on my fucking door, whoever you are, I will have you thrown overboard.”
McKnight leaned in close to the door and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but Mr. Rudenko requests that I bring the girls down for questioning.”
DeBlanc responded with a slow volley of angry expletives that quickly ran out of steam. After a moment of silence, the door buzzed open. McKnight entered and was hit immediately with the stale smells of marijuana and sex. Empty champagne bottles, drugs and drug paraphernalia, dirty dishes, and discarded clothing items littered the room everywhere – the floor, the coffee table, the mantle over the fireplace. Everywhere McKnight looked he found evidence of excessive debauchery.
In the back of the stateroom DeBlanc lay naked on the bed except for a mostly balled-up sheet covering his left leg from the thigh down. The bedspread lay forgotten in a desolate heap on the floor off to his side of the bed. The clothes he had been wearing were left strewn across the entirety of the room like breadcrumbs, starting with the jacket hanging off the corner of the couch, the tie on the floor several feet away from it looking like a dead snake, the shirt laying lifeless over a stool that was laying on its side by the bar, the pants crawling up the two steps to the bedroom suite, one shoe balancing precariously on top of the rolltop desk, the other peeking out from under the bed, the underwear not to be found, the socks remaining on the feet.
DeBlanc tried to sit up, but he quickly found that it took too much effort, so he allowed himself to fall back into the pillows. He was soon snoring. A naked Ruby was sitting up next to him trying hard but mostly unsuccessfully to slip on her bikini bottoms. When she saw McKnight, she stopped attempting to dress herself and tossed the troublesome bottoms carelessly to the floor, smiling a loose, decadent smile at him as she did.
“Hey baby, you coming to join the fun?” Ruby said in her professional party voice. Like DeBlanc, she also slurred her words when she spoke. “Where’s that sexy partner of yours with the smile, damn it?”
McKnight had also been wondering where Henderson was, but he ignored the question and walked over to Toni lying passed out on the couch. “I’m sorry to spoil the evening for you, Ms. Black,” he said as he stared down at her sister, “but both you and Ms. Steele are needed down below, so I need you to get yourself dressed as quickly as possible…” He paused to reach down and shake Toni’s shoulder. When she didn’t respond, he continued. “…and then, by the looks of it, I’ll need you to help your sister get dressed and sobered up as well.” He had to pull himself away from the couch so he wouldn’t continue to stare down at the beautiful naked body lying spread out before him.
At the mention of her sister, Ruby snorted disdainfully. “The bitch can walk around this damn boat naked for all I care.” She scooted herself to the end of the bed and stood up. She then stretched luxuriantly, allowing McKnight a good look at her own naked body, before walking to the bathroom with an uncertainty in her step and closing the door behind her.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
After McKnight had entered DeBlanc’s room and the door had closed behind him, RJ stuck her head out from around the corner of the bulkhead at the end of the passageway just far enough for her eyes to see that the area outside DeBlanc’s stateroom was clear. She made a quick, low-crouched run up the passageway, her bare feet making no sound on the plushily carpeted deck, and put an ear against the stateroom door to try to listen through it. Unable to make anything meaningful out that was going on inside, she scurried back down the passageway, returning to her hiding place behind the corner.
As she sat and waited for McKnight’s return, it was hard for her to not focus on the fact that she was preparing to ambush a massive man skilled in the art and science of human destruction while wearing only a thong bikini and armed only with two raggedy-edged sticks. She needed to be focusing on instead what it was she had to do to the man, for she would only get one chance at him, of that she was certain. However, still being high and jittery from whatever it was his dead partner had sprayed into her nose, she was having a hard time calming her speeding mind down to where she could focus on anything at all.
For her entire adult life, RJ thrived in solitude and isolation, with Diego having had been her o
nly true friend and the closest thing she had to family. After her mother’s suicide, and at Diego’s urging, she did spend some time at his retreat and had come to find some comfort from the close-knit, caring community there and solace from the counseling she had received; but eventually she realized she could find more peace and healing from managing her dead father’s garage and working through the troubling intricacies of a faulty fuel pump than she ever could from laying her soul bare to others just as damaged as she. With her time at the retreat long past, and now, with Diego’s untimely death, her only human interaction came almost exclusively from her customers at the garage, Joanna who delivered her mail, and the clerks and customers at the few local stores where she shopped. She had no social life, neither real or virtual, and she wasn’t a believer, much to Diego’s dismay, so she attended no church. Just a short week ago, with her secluded life as mundane and predictable as ever, had someone told her that her life would take the drastic turn toward such drama and danger as it had, she would have thought the person insane.
The closest she had ever come to anything like the situation she was in now – her in deadly pursuit of a trained killer – was when out hunting game. A love for auto mechanics and a love for hunting were the only pleasant things her father had handed down to her, and just about the only things in which she could consider herself an expert. Apart from being all alone in her garage greasy from head to foot from troubleshooting a complicated automotive repair, the blessed solitude of her life was brought to its most magnificent glory when out in the pre-dawn forest stalking her favorite prey, giant black bears.
The situation she was in now was most similar to hunting bear, she supposed, especially in the fact that the bears and the prey she now stalked were both oversized killers, one trained to be and the other born to be. Black bears, however, rarely attacked humans, preferring to employ their deadly weapons of sharp, vicious teeth and long, sinister claws for the innocent gathering of food instead of for mortal combat, while the prey she was now stalking did thrive on combat, and the weapons he employed, a Bushmaster Carbon 15, an automatic rifle capable of firing off a clip of thirty rounds in a matter of seconds, and who knows how many handguns and knives, were created for the sole purpose of hunting humans. She couldn’t help but laugh a pathetic, fateful laugh when comparing her prey’s deadly weapons to her raggedy sticks.
The Good Kill Page 37