by Ronan Frost
He looked around for Iskra, but the Russian was nowhere to be seen.
“We’ve got to bug out,” Vic said. He didn’t waste time with any niceties. Instead, he cuffed the kneeling driver around the side of the head hard enough to fracture bone, and as the man dropped, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him toward their own vehicle, one block over.
“What do you want to do about these two?” Rye asked.
“Are they going to be a problem?”
The two men looked back blankly at him.
“I doubt it.”
“Your call then. Put a bullet in their foot so they don’t come after us.”
Rye didn’t have a gun, and the idea of shooting someone, even in the foot, was anathema to him. But he didn’t have time to bargain their freedom either, so he grabbed the first man by the shoulders and told him to run. He didn’t need to repeat himself. He lurched away from Rye, staggering three steps before his feet found a rhythm through the fear. The second thug bolted after him, arms and legs pumping frantically as he ran for his life.
“Thirty seconds,” Byrne said. “Coming in hot. Get out of there. Now!”
Rye followed Carter and Vic as they dragged the driver beyond the rusting Ford to the corner where their SUV was parked, engine running, Iskra behind the wheel.
They were closing the doors as the first shot ricocheted off grille and the second put a spiderweb through the windshield. “Down! Down!” the Russian barked, hitting reverse and flooring the accelerator to get them out of there fast.
It took Rye a second to realize that Vic hadn’t got into the car with them when he’d bundled the driver into the back seat. He looked around for the big man but couldn’t see him.
Another bullet tore into the soft fabric of the interior, inches from Rye’s shoulder.
He didn’t dare move as Iskra threw the SUV into evasive maneuvers, tires spinning up smoke as they laid down streaks of black rubber on the road. She whipped the tailgate around so violently Rye was pressed up against the window as more bullets tore into the black metal, and then they were powering away from the gunmen, losing them in the labyrinth of back streets between the ambush and the hotel.
Not that the Russian had any intention of pulling up outside their base.
She had another destination in mind, on the outskirts of the small town. The smell as they approached was sickening. Smoke billowed out of the stacks. Those chimneys were the source of the stench. Rendered fat.
She’d brought them to a slaughterhouse.
They slid to a halt, tires spitting gravel as the SUV slewed across the parking lot, and she was out of the car and had the driver by the scruff of the throat, dragging him toward the huge steel doors before the others had even exited the vehicle. The man kicked out, fighting her every step of the way. Rye felt a curious sense of relief at that, as he’d feared the worst after Vic had pistol-whipped him.
The Russian hammered twice on the huge doors and waited.
They opened an inch, then wider.
Vic was already inside.
Rye had no idea how he could have beaten them here. Iskra didn’t wait for the big man to open fully. She propelled the driver through the dark slash of the doorway. Vic stepped aside as the driver went down hard, sprawling across the concrete floor on his hands and knees.
Rye and Carter stood side by side, both looking at the doorway like it was the gateway to Hell without Cerberus to warn them off. “You sure you want to do this?” the thief asked. “I know what’s going to happen in there.”
“We’re in this together,” Rye said, with considerably more calmness than he felt as he stepped through into the darkness.
FORTY-SEVEN
On the other side of the door, the building’s true nature was inescapable. He was confronted by metal troughs along the walls and hoses conveniently placed to wash away the blood. There were meat hooks suspended from the ceiling and runnels in the tiled floor, which gently sloped toward the troughs so that the animal blood wouldn’t congeal on the tiles and make a mess of the sterile environment. It would work just the same for human blood.
Vic worked pragmatically, no real thought for what he was doing as he winched down two of the meat hooks until the barbed metal reached torso height, then with Iskra’s help went about securing their prisoner’s wrists to each one. Neither of them talked as they worked, which made it all the more unnerving.
Vic tested the right wrist, then the left, to be sure they would hold, before he returned to the winch and began turning it. Each revolution of the crank lifted the man’s arms up maybe ten or twelve inches more, so for the first three turns very little pain was exerted on his body as the meat hooks transformed him into a living, breathing embodiment of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The fourth turn brought a wince, the fifth a gasp of pain as muscles and joints were forced into positions they were never meant to experience.
He broke his silence.
Rye had no idea what he’d said: it may have been nothing more revelatory than a prayer to his god, or more damning than a pox on Vic’s line.
“Who hired you?” Vic said finally.
He walked around the hanging man slowly. He didn’t touch him, but every step was close enough that their prisoner would be able to feel his breath on his skin.
“I want a name. Give me that and it doesn’t have to hurt.”
The hanging man spat, though there was very little anger behind the gesture. It was nothing more than token resistance. He wasn’t about to offer his name, rank, and number. It wouldn’t take much to break him. When it came right down to it, he’d been paid to do what he did, this wasn’t some holy crusade for him, and that meant he was always going to talk. It was only ever a matter of time.
But they didn’t have the luxury of patience. So, Vic clenched his fist, and from behind, drove a brutal punch into the hanging man’s kidneys, spinning him around on the meat hooks as he cried out in pain.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” Vic told him, “but I won’t ask a third, so it’s important you decide just how much you want to hurt. Who hired you?”
The man bit down hard on his lower lip, gritting his teeth against the inevitable agony of Vic’s second punch. This one was so savage it lifted him two inches on the chains. He came down hard, the barbed hooks slicing into his wrists. Vic simply stared at the man, waiting, while the blood trickled down his forearms.
Rye couldn’t bear to watch: the symbolism of the slaughterhouse, the body on the meat hooks, the first blood dripping into the runnels in the tiled floor. He knew what happened next. “Tell him,” he said, begging the man to do the smart thing and save himself. “Please, just tell him what he wants to know.”
True to his word, Vic didn’t ask a third time.
His third punch left the man spitting blood.
The front of his sweat-stained shirt was a mess as Vic patiently worked him over, tenderizing his body. For a full thirty seconds, he delivered blow after crunching blow, each one doing unseen damage as they weakened their prisoner’s resolve. The man twisted and writhed against the crucifying chains, but without so much as a muted cry of pain.
Vic stepped back and let Iskra turn the hose on him.
The pressurized spray of ice-cold water hit their prisoner almost as hard as Vic, driving his head back as she focused the intensity of it on his gasping mouth. He couldn’t spit the spray out fast enough to draw a breath.
He was drowning on dry land.
Rye couldn’t watch. He turned his back and walked toward the door. The sound of the jet spray changed, no longer hitting meat but instead bouncing off the metal troughs behind the hanging man as Iskra gave him the chance to save himself.
He heard three words before he walked out. “The German woman.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Outside, he saw Carter Vickers leaning up against the side of the rental car. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He didn’t want to know what kind of tobacco he’d sourced since arriving in the border tow
n. Some things were better left unknown. He flicked the half-smoked stub away when he saw Rye coming.
“Pretty grim in there?” he asked, though it didn’t sound like much of a question.
“Just get me out of here,” he told the thief.
“That bad? Roger that.” He opened the driver’s-side door and leaned over to pop the lock on Rye’s. He clambered in. “Where to?” the thief asked. His first impulse was to say a bar, intending to get so drunk he didn’t remember those three mumbled words he’d just heard, and didn’t have to think about what Vic and Iskra were doing to the man in there. With enough alcohol inside him he might—just might—be able to convince himself that all was fair in this particular round of love and war, but it wasn’t. It was anything but fair. He’d allowed himself to be vulnerable, choosing to forget about Hannah for a few hours, and the world had fucked him.
Well, fuck the world.
That seemed like a fair response.
“A bar. Any bar. I’m not picky.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“Then drive, Genie.”
It took the thief five minutes to find a gaudy-looking sign that promised oblivion. He pulled up outside the door. “You want company?”
“What I want is to get shit-faced,” Rye said.
“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”
“It’s a terrible fucking idea,” he agreed. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. Wrong Disney cartoon. You’re not the Genie,” Rye said. “You’re Jiminy fucking Cricket.” He opened the door. “You can stay out here and keep watch if you are worried about me getting into trouble.”
“Probably a good idea,” Carter said. “All things considered.”
“Just try not to let me see you. I want to forget about this shit for a while.”
A while turned out to be less than an hour, and not long enough for him to get seriously drunk, despite going about it seriously. He had three empty glasses lined up on the bar by the time Vic joined him.
Vic held up a hand, said, “Two more,” to the barman and waited for him to decant the spirits before he asked Rye, “What the fuck do you think you are doing?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I didn’t sign up for torture and murder, Vic.”
“Neither did I. I escaped torture and murder in my homeland. I have no interest in bringing it into the new world with me.”
“Easy to say, but I saw what you did back there.”
“We did what had to be done, nothing more. And, I might add, we did not bring him into this. You did.”
“So now you’re blaming me? It’s my fault that you had to torture that guy?”
“Yes,” Vic said matter-of-factly. “That is not up for dispute. You got drunk, exercised poor judgment, and slept with a woman who, it would seem, is looking for the same thing that we are. You did this, Rye, not me. Not Carter or Iskra or Rask. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good thing in the long run. Until a few minutes ago, we had no idea how close this second party interested in the Cintāmani stones are to discovering the whereabouts of Shambhala. Now we do, so we can act appropriately.”
“So, it’s my fault, but it’s good I took one for the team? Great. Guess I don’t need to feel guilty about you killing him then.” He downed the liquor in one swallow and let out a gasp as he shook his head. The sting brought tears to his eyes. Or at least he wanted to believe it was the sting.
“Who said anything about killing him?” Vic downed his own drink, though there was no smacking of the lips or shaking of the head in his case. “I merely convinced him it would be in his best interest to forget all about the German woman and her money and return to his village. I convinced him that I am the devil, and if he should break his word and try to contact Cressida Mohr I would hunt him down, his parents, his wife and children, his favorite primary school teacher, his long-lost kin, and anyone else he’s ever given a shit about, and I would cut their throats while they slept at night. I think he believed me.”
“Shit. That’s brutal.”
“Better than killing him,” Vic said, and Rye couldn’t argue with that.
“So, what happens now?”
“We carry on as planned. We hole up here for the night, then go over the border tomorrow, try to get a head start on anyone else who takes it into their head to follow us. Check out that Ahnenerbe temple Byrne found. These people ruined one of the vehicles, so we need to source a replacement today, if we can. Other than that, drinking is as good a plan as any, as long as you don’t bitch about the hangover in the morning.”
“Thanks for the permission.”
“You need to get this—whatever this is—out of your system, Rye. I don’t think it is about what you saw in there. I think it is because you look at me now and you see the same man who killed your wife. I am not that man. So, if that means you need to get drunk tonight to banish that vision, then do it. I would rather you didn’t, but I am not going to tell tales. None of us are. But once we’re over that border tomorrow, our lives are going to depend upon your skills, so you don’t bring your ghosts with you. Understood? They stay here. Tomorrow is a different country. Tomorrow you need to be the best you you can be.”
“But tonight I get to be a self-pitying drunk? Okay, I can live with that.”
“Carter will wait outside. He will see you get back to the hotel safely.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you take all of the fun out of life, Vic?”
“My wife, god rest her soul.”
“I didn’t know you’d been married,” Rye said, and in that moment looked at the big man beside him very differently, aware of the kindred bond they shared.
“Why would you? I didn’t tell you. There is much you do not know about my life before Mr. Rask saved me, and that is as it should be.”
“How did she die?”
“What does it matter?”
“I’m just trying to understand you.”
“She died because I could not save her.”
“I know that feeling.”
“I know you do.”
“So that’s why you spend the rest of your life trying to save us?”
“That would be too easy, but if that is what you want to believe, then yes. That is why I spend my life trying to save Mr. Rask, you, Iskra, Carter, and the others. And why losing Olivia hurt so much. Because every time I save you I make up for not saving the woman I loved.” There was genuine bitterness behind his words, the kind of raw emotion Rye had not heard from him before. It was disconcerting, to say the least.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure what else to say.
“You have no need to apologize, Rye,” the big man said, pushing back his barstool.
He left twenty American dollars on the bar, which more than amply covered his tab, and left Rye to drink himself unconscious.
Rye pointed at the empty glass.
FORTY-NINE
Dawn brought only pain.
Rye rolled over in the tangle of sheets, reaching for his cell phone. The clock on the display told him he’d been in bed less than five hours. Those five hours had dragged like fifty, sweating the alcohol out of his system as the temperature in the room never dipped below twenty-five Celsius.
The shower didn’t work, which meant he was going to stink of alcohol all day. He washed himself down using the bathroom tap; the water was a muddy brown, but it was cold, and splashed across his face it brought him back to the semblance of life. He knew that everything he’d done yesterday after hearing the hanging man say “the German woman” had been self-destructive. Dangerously so. He couldn’t help it. Self-destruct was his default setting since he’d listened to Hannah die. He was resigned to the fact that it would be for a long time to come, no matter what Vic wanted from him.
It was too soon.
He cleaned his teeth with the brown water, and sprayed more body spray than was good for the environment, before he bagged up his stuff and headed down to the car.
The others we
re waiting.
None of them said anything as he dumped his bag in the trunk. He realized that the second car Vic had sourced wasn’t a car at all, and in no better condition than the shot-up SUV it was replacing. It was a flatbed truck with wooden slats for sides. The back was filled with their gear. They threw a tarp over the top and fastened it down.
The morning was bright, the air clear but humid, the threat of rain imminent.
They divided up between the cars, Rye in with Carter Vickers this time, Iskra and Vic in the SUV. The cab of the flatbed lacked the luxury of air-conditioning, though the wooden beads draped over the seats stopped his skin from sticking to the leather. The radio didn’t work, but given the fragile state of Rye’s head he wasn’t complaining—a little silence and the rhythms of the road would be just fine for now.
They buckled up and moved out.
Long before they reached the border gate, the voice of home chirped in his ear, Jeremiah promising them that five hundred US dollars should be enough to see them over the border without the proper visas. “The joys of capitalism,” the thief said, but Rye noticed he wasn’t himself this morning. When he questioned Carter about it, the thief just brushed his concerns off, saying, “Just tired, don’t sweat it.”
But that wasn’t it.
He was hypervigilant, eyes everywhere at once, scanning the buildings and rooftops for possible threats, checking each corner and parked car for potential bogies. This was a different side of him.
Carter pulled down the sun visor and took the vehicle registration papers down from where they were secured with a thick elasticized band. He handed them to Rye as he rolled the window down.
They drove around the main temple square, following the flow of traffic toward the gate.
There were six guards checking the papers of the locals coming and going, though they didn’t appear to actually look at any of the documentation they were shown.
Behind them, monks filed out of the temple.
Rye marked at least six tourists near the huge prayer drums. With them was a young boy who seemed less than impressed with the whole thing. It took Rye a moment to realize the thing he took from his backpack was a can of spray paint. He couldn’t quite believe the idiot was going to tag the temple, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. “Welcome to the modern world,” he said to himself. Carter made the mistake of thinking Rye was talking to him and answered as though they were disembarking from a flight.