The Hitman and the Escort

by Natasha Stevens

  But I don’t hope that.

  I hope that he comes and gets me.

  I hope he doesn’t run away, like I ran away.

  I wait, and I pull a blanket over me.

  And then I see a face on the video monitor:

  Vladimir’s brother.

  He’s even bigger than he used to be, bodybuilder big, but he has the same shaven head and bright cruel eyes.

  He’s dressed a little nicer, I find myself thinking stupidly. Sportswear, still, but … more expensive. A black sweater and I can see a Rolex gleaming on his wrist. And a bulletproof vest on over it.

  And he looks at the screen and smiles a smile full of teeth that have obviously been replaced and capped, and then the screen goes blank.

  Vladimir

  I park the car at the end of one of the trails that leads to the cabin.

  I use my phone to check all the security cameras but most – although not all – have been disabled.

  On the ones that still work, I see more men than I could possibly deal with.

  The snow will help though.

  I strip off my leather jacket, not wanting to be a black silhouette. I get down to my jeans and two layers of grey wool shirt and my bullet-proof vest. I have wool long underwear, too.

  I have my own Sig Sauer, and I found a suppressed HK-5 submachine gun in the trunk of the Major’s car, and several extra magazines of 9mm ammo, next to the corpse of Alan, who appears to have died of a broken neck.

  And of course, I have my knives.

  I find a package on Alan’s body, too.

  The passports.

  Chastity

  After an eternity of waiting, the door to the panic room is opened by some kind of small controlled explosion.

  A flash and concussive blast throws me to the floor.

  I can’t breathe or move or hear. For a moment, I think I’ve been killed.

  But no such luck.

  Because somebody is dragging me by my hair.

  The pain is enough to cut through the dull ache, the searing dizzy pain of concussion behind my eyes that is keeping me immobile and I start breathing again with a scream.

  Vladimir

  I slip into the woods, moving silently and invisibly from tree to tree as the snow falls harder.

  I relax and breathe as my body temperature begins to drop. I slow my breathing so I don’t produce so much visible fog of breath.

  I don’t mind it. The cold is like a friend to me.

  It always has been.

  It fills me.

  It will help me do what needs to be done.

  Chastity

  Vladimir’s brother, Igor, dragged me out of the Panic Room, and through the smoke and ringing in my head I tried to focus.

  The metal door was bent and twisted off its hinges, and I saw there were two other men with him, one dressed in bulky battle gear and helmet, boots and rifles, and the other looking more like your typical Russian mafia thug, with a leather jacket, a shaved head, and a gold chain.

  I’m painfully aware of the fact that I’m wearing nothing but panties and a t-shirt as my ass and legs drag over the cold concrete floor of the hallway.

  He drags me to the right, and I shriek.

  He’s taking me into the torture room.

  Vladimir

  I come across two of them, as I near the house.

  They’re holding positions, but not close enough together that I could kill them with a grenade. They’re not bad, keeping their weapons and heads down and not moving. Not moving much.

  They’re good, but they’re not Ghosts.

  I only regret that it takes up a lot of time doing it right.

  The snow is coming down harder now.

  I crawl up behind one of them and then slam onto his back, forcing his helmet into the snow and stabbing him in the kidneys, under his vest, and then pull his helmet back and slice his exposed neck, then slice the other side just for good measure, and I can feel my knife grate against his spine.

  The snow is turning red as I roll backward and off him.

  The other guy gets up into a crouch and is turning, trying to see what’s happening, raising his rifle, but I transition to the suppressed HK-5, pulling it up smoothly after I sheathe the knife, and I shoot him in his legs, below the bullet-proof vest, and he goes down.

  The suppressed subsonic bullets are quieter than usual gunshots, and the blanketing snow is muffling everything, but it still sounds like tree limbs cracking.

  I move forward, aiming at the faceplate on his helmet, and squeeze the trigger five more times, hitting him in the face and neck and he’s finally still.

  More red snow.

  I see two more men coming through the trees and the snow.

  I disappear into the trees, into the snow, into the night.

  Chastity

  “I couldn’t believe my luck!” says Igor, as he pulls me into the center of the room. “Such an amazing coincidence. When they sent me pictures of that billionaire having dinner with you, it was like winning the lottery.”

  “After being shot and spending nearly ten years in prison, I guess something good had to happen eventually,” I say, weakly, looking up at him. He’s enormous, his massive back and shoulders seeming to fill the room.

  He laughs. “Prison? Oh, that wasn’t so bad. My higher education of crime. And I did very well for myself, of course. Did a lot of good networking, as the Americans say.”

  He laughs again. His eyes are positively dancing with glee. Or maybe drugs.

  Green eyes, so much like Vlad’s eyes, but so flat and flinty, like cheap imitation jade.

  He reaches down and pulls the t-shirt off me, and I’m naked except for my panties.

  He looks around at the table and all its straps, the trapeze, the leather mask on the wall, the whips and crops and says, “My god, look at all this shit. I heard my brother was insane, but this …”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I’ve never used anything like this, but I can see that might be convenient,” he says thoughtfully. “I mean, girls are usually smart enough not to scratch or bite when I rape them, but this stuff could be useful.”

  He lifts me by the hair and I shriek again, and he puts me on the table, and the guy in the leather jacket holds my arms and the guy in soldier stuff holds my legs as they fasten the straps into place.

  Igor is smiling down at me, his huge rough scarred hands on my tits. “You see, whore? You can run, but you’ll always end up right back where you started.”

  I turn my head to the side as the tears begin to come.

  Vladimir

  Of course, I have a secret tunnel in and out of the bunker.

  I mean, of course I do.

  It took a long while to dig, but it was good exercise as well as an interesting exercise in engineering. It’s not big enough to walk upright or even crouch; most of it I need to crawl through on my belly.

  I find the hidden door and I crawl for ten minutes or so and then it puts me in the bunker.

  I watch through the hidden peephole; nobody’s in the workout room.

  Nobody except the dead billionaire and his wife in the freezer, of course.

  I enter, walking past the three freshly-washed boxes and scrubbed concrete floor.

  I look through the peephole into the hallway and see a guy in full tactical gear waiting outside the door to the torture room. Idiotically he has his head turned to the side, and seems to be listening to what’s happening in the room.

  Idiot has enough chance to gasp when I pop through the door and drive my knife into his anterior jugular, and then across the bottom of his stomach under the tactical vest he wears, and then slice an artery in his arm, and then drive the knife into the brachial cluster of his shoulder, and then into then up into his neck under the mandible of his jaw.

  It takes about three seconds, and by the time he collapses onto the ground, unconscious from blood loss, I’ve already tossed him aside and pulled out my Sig-Sauer .45 and enter
ed the torture room.

  Chastity

  He rips my panties off slowly. Splitting them right down the middle.

  I am naked, spread eagled on the table, my wrists and ankles secured.

  His huge rough fingers pry apart the lips of my pussy and enter me.

  His fingers are inside of me.

  Again.

  “You don’t have to tell me you like that shit, bitch,” Igor says. “I know you do. You told me so ten years ago.”

  “I was drugged and I hated myself and I felt like I deserved to be raped by a scum like you,” I spit. “That’s all.”

  He looks down at me, his eyes flat.

  “I can’t believe my own brother shot me … over a cunt,” he says.

  He pulls a long knife off his belt, and presses the tip against one of my nipples.

  “I think I won’t kill you,” he says. “I’ll cut you up, take your beauty away from you, and keep you around to fuck. Maybe I’ll cut your arms and legs off so you can’t scratch and bite and cut that evil tongue of yours out, too.”

  “You’re nothing,” I spit.

  And then explosions fill the room.

  Vladimir

  I step into the room, and shoot the guy in the leather jacket twice in the head.

  He’s falling as my brother turns towards me.

  Igor.

  Huge, now, muscles like a bodybuilder.

  Igor smiles with big white capped American-style teeth.

  I put the front site on him and fire into his center mass as he charges across the room at me.

  I register that he’s wearing a vest and raise the gun to shoot into his head, and blood sprays as a bullet passes through his cheek and ear, and he crashes into me.

  His knife stabs down into the top of my right shoulder, into the collarbone, severing one of the straps of my vest, seeking the sub clavicle artery.

  He must have learned a little about stabbing people in prison.

  Agony jolts through me and blood shoots up into both our faces.

  We both slam back against the far wall and I dig the fingers of my left hand into his face, his eyes, and manage to hold onto the gun and twist it sideways and down and drive it into his crotch.

  And I pull the trigger again and again until the slide locks back and the trigger won’t pull anymore.

  Chastity

  I can’t hear anything but I know I’m screaming.

  I’m struggling to raise my head to see.

  Bright flashes in the dim room as Vladimir pushes the gun into Igor’s groin and fires.

  Both of them collapse, and I see with horror that Vladimir has a knife stuck into the top of his shoulder, near his neck.

  Blood, oh god, he’s bleeding.

  The smell of smoke.

  The smell of blood and gunpowder.

  Vladimir

  Shooting somebody in the crotch is not just psychologically debilitating, it’s anatomically very destructive.

  Huge blood vessels and arteries there, and also the big bones of the hip and the base of the spine.

  I gasp and get back to my feet.

  Igor is lying in a heap in a widening pool of blood, struggling to stand, but he won’t be able to.

  I double-check to make sure the other guy, the guy in the leather jacket is not moving, and then I stand.

  Pain lances through my neck and arm, and there’s a lot of blood flowing down the inside of my shirt and vest.

  Igor is reaching for a gun.

  My Sig Sauer is empty. I can reload with one hand – it’s a basic, necessary move that all operators practice – but I don’t bother.

  I just pick up the gun that Igor is reaching for, the one that fell from the hands of the guy in the leather jacket.

  A Glock .40 caliber.

  Not my favorite caliber, but it will do.

  I hold it in my left hand, the one that’s not covered with blood. I can’t feel the right one much.

  Igor looks me in the eyes. His cheek is ripped open, furrowed and bleeding from the bullet I put there. I see more teeth.

  “Put the gun down,” he rasps through a mouth full of blood. “Fight me like a man.”

  His spine is probably shattered, or at least his hips, so he wouldn’t be able to fight like a man anyway.

  But I say, “We’re not men. We’re killers.”

  I raise the gun.

  “And ghosts,” I say.

  And I shoot him in the face until the gun is empty.

  Chastity

  Vladimir gets the straps off me.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “But you’re cut, you’re bleeding …”

  “Yes,” he says, and staggers out into the hallway, into the panic room, and gets a big red first aid kit and pulls out a thing that looks like a big maxi-pad tampon and pushes it down gently on the side of the knife, and then another on the other side of it.

  I follow him naked, also limping.

  I’m still dizzy and feel nauseous from the explosion in the danger room and my ears are still ringing.

  “Shouldn’t we … take that out?” I say, and burst into tears.

  “If I take it out I’d probably bleed to death,” he says.

  He’s so pale. And I see a large bloodstain on his jeans as well.

  “Get dressed,” he says. “There are sweatpants and a sweatshirt that will fit you in the panic room,” he says. “The boots will be big but they’ll have to do.”

  He picks up the large rifle next to the man in the soldier clothes who is dead in the hallway and watches the ramp up the stairs while I get dressed.

  Then we go into the other room, the room where I’d been in the box, and he closes the door and types in a code on the keypad.

  He points at an open panel in the wall. “That’s a tunnel,” he says. “Go out and follow the trail down the hill and there’s a car there. I hope it’s still there. Keys are in it. And your new passport, in a package in the glove compartment.”

  In the rack on the wall, behind the Plexiglas, there are guns and body armor and other things. He opens the case with another keypad and pulls out an ordinary-looking small backpack, the kind of thing a student would carry.

  “There’s $5000 in cash in small bills in an envelope in the front pocket and $75,000 more in hundreds hidden inside those books in there. There’s some other stuff there, like an untraceable cell phone.” He hands it to me and takes out a very large and wicked looking rifle and the boxes with bullets in them, the clips or whatever they’re called.

  “I’m not leaving you,” I say, tears streaming down my face. “I can’t leave you again.”

  “You have to,” he says, and his eyes are dead serious. The kind eyes again. “I’m begging you. Please leave. You can get away if I stay here and keep them busy.”

  “How can I do it without you?” I say. “How can I do anything without you?”

  “I’ll … be with you.”

  “I don’t want to go,” I cry.

  “We don’t have time to argue,” he says.

  There’s banging at the door.

  Vladimir

  “Go out. Survive. Wait for me. I’ll join you when I can. I’ll handle these guys,” I lie.

  There’s no chance I’ll survive this.

  But she gave me a week of life.

  Real life, not the life of a ghost.

  For a week, finally, I felt like a real person again.

  And I don’t want to spoil that knowing that she died here, like this.

  “Go,” I say, and kiss her. I see my blood on her lips. “I have the number of the phone. Keep it with you. I’ll call when I can.”

  And she looks me in the eyes, tears streaming down her beautiful face, and she nods.

  Chastity

  And I run.

  Again.

  Hating to leave him.

  But this time, I’m not running away.

  I’m running to something.

  Even if it’s only a dream,
I’m running to something.

  A dream of a life where the two of us can live together, in peace, outside of the living hells we created for ourselves.

  I go out the tunnel and crawl outside, and stagger through the snow.

  I’m crying hysterically, snot running down my face, but I find the car and get in and drive away, through the quiet dark snow-filled night.

  And I think of Vladimir, and I take a deep breath, and I look at the road ahead, and I start to feel calm.

  Vladimir

  The blood is pooling around me. The field dressings have sopped up as much as they can.

  How much blood do I have left?

  They’ll be through the door soon.

  I crawl behind one of the metal transport boxes – they’ll definitely stop most bullets – and prop the rifle on top of it.

  I check the magazine in the weapon and line a couple more magazines up next to me.

  It’s cold in here.

  But I think of her, and I take a deep breath, and I close my eyes, and I feel at peace.

  EPILOGUE – SIX MONTHS LATER

  Chastity

  Costa Rica.

  I go to bed early and wake up early now.

  I drove to the next city and got on a bus and rode all night, and then got a sleeper compartment in the train and rode it all the way down to the Mexican border.

  I crossed with a few dozen drunken tourists; nobody even asked to see my new passport.

  I kept taking buses, staying at small hotels, traveling down through Mexico and into Nicaragua and ended up in a beach city in Costa Rica and I figured it’s as good a place as any. I live at a small beachside hotel, with a nice garden full of flowers and hammocks.

  Vladimir would like it here, I’m sure.

  I pay cash weekly, a very reasonable price, but last week the owner told me I could stay for free if I gave him English lessons – he has the student books, he asks most of the questions – and if I help out at the front desk when he needs it.