“Fuck early.”
“Fuck late, it’s all the same to me,” Corso said wearily. “Here’s your fucking drink.”
Nina tapped some salt on the back of her left hand, touched her pink tongue to it, slammed the shot, bit into the lime.
Yeah.
Breakfast of champions.
That thing being done, breakfast being the most important meal of the day, she turned her mind to the file Fabruzzi had foisted off on her. A request from the Bureau and DOS to look into reports that one Vladimir Darko, like Donnie Darko the movie, but darker. Darko was derived from the Slavic “dar” which meant gift. This guy had been no gift to the women he’d raped while working as a guard in one of the rape camps set up by the Serbs during that unpleasantness that took place in Bosnia and those other places she couldn’t recall the names of that sprung up in the rubble that had been Yugoslavia.
She didn’t give a fuck about politics, never voted. Her favorite political slogan was on one of her T-shirts: VOTE FROM THE ROOFTOPS. With a logo of a sniper on it.
She liked that.
She rolled the thoughts around in her head, took out the picture she’d crammed into her pocket, looked at the long face, like a fox’s (what was that word…vulpine, what that it?) the thick hair combed straight back. He looked like a vampire rock and roller.
Those eyes, though…Nina recognized that look.
She saw it plenty in her job. Woman hater. Mean. Working it out. Probably abused by his mother, too much love or not enough. Or just born that way. It happened like that. Evil just was.
And this one was evil.
She smiled.
Maybe he was a gift.
To her.
She hadn’t killed anyone in months.
Interlude
You know how women can always tell something about another woman by the choice of her clothing, her accessories, her jewelry?
Street fighters do the same.
Body language, physical condition, visible scarring -- those all send a message.
But in the hierarchy of professional shooters, there’s certain things that stand out like skill identifier badges on the chest of a professional soldier -- paratrooper, pathfinder, Ranger, Special Forces, combat diver, Navy SEAL -- they all got badges, right? Tells you what they know?
Same thing with a street gunfighter.
There’s some that favor the fancy customized guns. That’s cool, till you shoot somebody with one. Then that fancy gun goes into Evidence, maybe to get lifted by some underpaid cop sitting in there, or to disappear behind a rack for thirty years, and anyway, you don’t get it back till Forensics has had its way with your custom piece, and the opposing counsel if there is one (and in most shootings, if there’s a criminal proceeding or a grand jury, there most def will be a civil case) and where’s your $2500 Custom Combat Commander as done by Wilson then?
Shooters like Glocks. Customize it a little, mostly whittle on the grip till it fits you right, maybe fuck around and drop a different trigger spring in, you’re good to go. Forensics takes it, go get another one, shoots just like the first.
Gun leather, now you can get downright medieval with that shit -- Sparks and Kramer from the good old days, nowadays they like all this cheap nylon shit, but real shooters like the leather.
And knives…ooooohhh. Shiny. Sharp. Nothing quite as intimate as a knife. All about penetration, right? Stick it in, wiggle it around. A guy thing, but some hot women like knives. Angelina Jolie collects knives. She’s hot, don’t you think? I think so, hell most anything with a dick in the Western world does. Nothing better for the up close and serious interpersonal interaction. Especially for women, because it’s always about up close and personal for them. That Hideaway was built for just that reason…
Chapter Eight
“They will come for you,” Irina Komarov said. She opened her mouth in a perfect O, obscene contrast between scarlet lips and pink inside her mouth, puffed out a symmetrical smoke ring. It crept slowly towards Vladimir Darko, who stood in a semblance of attention before the desk where Irina sat, her long legs crossed, feet up, where she could admire her shoes.
Sergey stood to her side. He stayed on his feet when they had visitors.
“We can buy you the women you want. Don’t freelance, Vladimir. It will bring us trouble, and you are not worth that trouble.”
“Then why am I here?” Vladimir said.
Sergey smiled and looked down at his wife. She curled her lips in distaste, drew again on her Sobranie.
“You’re a skill set, Vlady. A skill set with a very bad habit. Don’t let the bad habit outweigh the value of your skill set.”
“They are probably looking for him now,” Sergey said. “His paper was not as good as we thought. The port of entry in Detroit picked it up, and our man had to be involved.”
“That was not my fault,” Vladimir said.
“True,” Sergey said. “It was ours. But we require you to do certain things for us in order for us to do certain things for you. This is one of them. Do you understand?”
“Da,” Vladimir said.
“Speak English, Vlady,” Irina said. “You need the practice.”
She smirked as she drew on the Sobranie, blew smoke at him. She liked watching him struggle to maintain his composure.
He hated her.
She enjoyed that.
She uncrossed her legs, crossed them again, making sure that Vladimir’s eyes shot towards the flash of panty between her thighs.
“Would you like me to buy you a woman, Vlady?” Irina said. “Find one. I’ll buy her for you. My treat. Price is no object. What do you say? Is there someone you have your eye on?”
There is a stillness between a stillness in a dangerous man. A drawing inward that sucks light and feeling and all the warmth out of a room. As though a door had opened into the vacuum of deepest darkest space, and the chill of utter blackness washed over those who were there in the presence of that darkness.
There was such a stillness now, radiating from Vladimir Darko.
Sergey shifted his weight forward on the balls of his feet, his hands loose at his side.
Irina just smiled. “Well?”
“Yes,” Vladimir said. He smiled, and Irina thought, just for a moment, had she the ability to be frightened of a man, that she might be frightened by the chill in that smile. For her or some other woman? Or both. Or all women.
“Yes,” Vladimir said. “There is a woman I want.”
Interlude
Do you believe in evil?
Not evil with a small e, like Hannah Arendt said. Evil with a capital E, the Big E.
Evil.
Is it a force, a presence, an entity that lurks outside our world, makes inroads into those it senses weakness in, or those who welcome it, or those who lust for the power they think is in that acceptance?
Or is it the manifestations of dark beings, Fallen? Dark things from another dimension or fallen angels, thrown down in flaming perdition and ruin in Milton’s dream?
There is Evil in the world.
And evil.
I’ve seen both. Seen it in the smooth faces of the perfectly possessed, seen it in the sidelong glances of mud dark eyes, carefully concealed.
Seen it in my face before.
Cast it out.
But I know what it is when I see it.
And when I see it, I want to kill it.
As I have so many times before.
Chapter Nine
“This is your idea of subtle?” Deon said.
“Can’t do anything about the color, bro,” I said. He didn’t approve of the purple metallic flake paint on the stolen tow truck, but repainting it would be too much of a problem and involve too many people.
I looked at the weapon he laid out on the bench seat between us.
“That’s your idea of ‘light’?”
He had a Galil .308, the folding stock version the Israelis and the South Africans favored for their paratroop units propp
ed up next to his knee, another one, stock folded back, for me, a US claymore bag filled with spare magazines, a sawed off shotgun with a sidesaddle laced with what looked like lock busters and a SAW ammo carrier stuffed with buckshot and more lock busters.
“How many pistols do you have?” Deon said.
“The usual.”
“Want a third?”
“There’s more hardware in here than most 3rd world police forces, Deon. I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself. Don’t come crying to me we get into it.”
“Right.”
I geared the truck up, and rolled down the highway. It was a short drive to the warehouse, but before we rolled down the street, I pulled down my balaclava to cover my face. So did Deon. We both wore goatskin mechanic’s gloves, great for fingerprints, DNA and keeping our hands protected while we did what we needed to do.
I drove past the warehouse with its secured roll up door and the heavily barred windows beside it, backed the tow rig right up. Jumped out while Deon covered, hooked the tow cable through and around the barred window, jumped back in, gassed the truck and pulled the whole damn window structure right out of the old wooden walls. Thick, hell yeah. But no match for that tow truck when revved up.
The window structure clattered behind me. I jumped out and undid the cable, hit the rewind, grabbed the Galil and held a position beside the window. Deon ran forward and vaulted lightly through the gap. I stood by, an earphone from my police scanner hooked on my belt in place, listening.
The internal alarms rang and rang, but hell, they wouldn’t be ringing at the police station, now would they?
Inside, Deon hit his head lamp, jogged down the aisles, right to where the SAWS were, looped two over his shoulder, ran back and handed them out to me.
I threw them inside the truck.
Deon ran back in, then came back with a lugbox of ammo boxes. Hell, I could hardly lift that box, but the skinny bastard carried it as though it weighed nothing, and threw it up into the truck bed.
“Shall we?” he said. Not even out of breath.
“We shall,” I said.
We jumped into the truck, gassed it. I looked in the rear view mirror. Coming up fast and growing in my mirror was a Chevy Suburban.
“Deon,” I said. “We got company. It’s Komarov’s armed response.”
Deon grinned, twisted in his seat to look back. He opened the door -- the speedometer said 75 mph -- and stepped out onto the wide running board, braced his Galil against the passenger side panel and fired his weapon three times.
Most of the blast was behind me, but I felt the concussion even within the cab of the truck, through the metal roof and walls.
Behind us, the Suburban swerved sharply.
And kept on coming.
“Oh, he’s game, is he?” Deon shouted. “All right then, oke. Don’t expect any less from the likes of you.”
He disappeared from sight and the door slammed shut. I craned my neck and saw him steadying himself in the truck bed, right up against the crane of the lift.
“Oh, this is just fucking wonderful, “ I said.
Keep it between the lines and let that lunatic tend to the shooting.
A steady cadence of fire from behind me, the boom boom boom of a .308 in the hands of someone who knew how to run one.
The Suburban swerved, slowed, pulled to the curb.
Still under control.
The door opened up and Deon swung himself back into the cab, quite unconcerned by the pavement whizzing by at 80 miles per hour.
“Did you do him?” I said.
“No,” Deon said. “Calm one, that. But I let him know we were here and unhappy.”
We both laughed then.
***
Vladimir Darko walked quickly away from the Suburban leaking steam at the curb. Rounds had pierced the windshield, the engine compartment; one had narrowly missed his head and punched through the headrest. He pulled out his cell phone, ignored a trickle of blood on his cheek from glass fragments.
“Sergey?” he said. “We have a problem at the warehouse.”
Interlude
Here’s another secret that bad guys know.
Bleeding hearts like to go on and on about how crime is the result of poverty, lack of opportunities, social injustice.
Bullshit.
You know why we like to break the law?
For easy money? Sometimes.
But the real reason?
Because it’s fun.
There are few rushes anything like breaking the law in a big way and getting away with it. Just like Teddy Roosevelt said: “There are few things as exhilarating as being shot at and being missed.”
I remember, when I was a kid, running like hell from the cops through an orchard near my home. Running and running, because if that cop caught me, I was in for a beating at least and jail at worst.
And I remember laughing like hell at the same time.
I’d never felt so alive.
Adrenaline is the most addictive drug there is, forget about coke and heroin and ecstasy and tobacco and crack and cold beer and warm whiskey.
There is nothing like the rush of danger.
That’s what kept me in the Army for so long. Where else could you go and get paid, make some decent bank, to jump out of airplanes, shoot guns, blow shit up, travel around the world -- and kill people?
That’s the biggest rush of all.
Remember, it’s all about breaking the law in a big way…with a big rush.
And stealing from dangerous operators on the wrong side of the fence was breaking a big law in a big way.
Chapter Ten
Nina was a woman who hunted men who hunted women.
She enjoyed the twisted symmetry of that.
There was something about unraveling the dark twists in the brain of a sex offender that appealed to her. And she had a gift for sniffing out stone crazy, as most sex offenders had serious screws loose.
It led her down some dark paths, both at work and at play.
And in her attempts at serious relationships, whatever the fuck those were supposed to be.
She sat in the UC car and looked at the entrance to Moby Dick’s.
Touched her nose.
Thought about serious relationships.
“Fuck that,” she said.
She’d spent the whole day trolling. Darko was a dark boy, that’s for sure. According to State and Interpol, he’d escaped trial. Been spotted in Slovenia working as muscle for one of the Russian outfits. With his military background and a reputation for ruthlessness and a body count to bolster his street cred, he was in some demand. But the boy had a habit he couldn’t shake, and that was a taste for brutal rape.
Nina curled her lip as she ran through the facts in her mind, and tapped her trigger finger against her thigh, tap tap tap, rat a tat tat, the Glock drum roll to stitch a bad boy up the middle and in the head.
Darko liked to prey on sex workers -- no duh on that, easy access, availability, and often not missed. But he had a taste for the very best, the crème de la crème, so he targeted high buck courtesan types, expensive gentlemen’s clubs, the best strip bars. In Eastern Europe, the new mecca for sex vacations, he had his choice. But apparently even there his tastes were too extreme, and he was damaging -- sometimes killing -- the goods.
Mind you, he paid for his pleasure, but professionals in the business of selling sex think about longer term -- you have a prime piece, you want to milk her (or him) for all you can get over their effective lifetime at the high end, before you drop your product down the line to the progressively less costly venues.
And Darko had ruined some expensive product.
He’d come to the attention of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, and he’d run when the serious hunters worked their way down the list to his name -- a smart thing to do when you had the US Delta Force and the British Special Air Service and the Norwegian Special Forces and a medley of high end shooters and looters sniffing at your heels. His
paper had gotten him into the country, thanks to a bent immigrations and customs inspector, who had the misfortune of being under surveillance when he let Darko through. That was the last straw, though, and said former inspector was singing and singing in federal custody, and one of the tunes he sang pointed Darko in the direction of Lake City.
And to Nina Capushek, huntress.
She laughed. Oh, hell yeah. She was a huntress, all right.
The sky was gathering dark. She’d worked all day on tequila, lime, a burrito and a handful of snacks taken from the lunch time buffets of the strip clubs and massage parlors and sex shops in Lake City. A few nibbles, but nothing big, food or tip wise.
And she needed a drink.
Moby’s would be the ticket.
She entered the way she entered any place -- she walked right in and kept walking, got deep inside before she looked around. Nothing like lingering at an entrance to let everybody know you didn’t know your way around. Just go deep. She walked to the bar, paused, looked around. Late afternoon trade, the usual drunks and day time losers who hung out now, right before the after work rush, if this fucking dive got it.
The punch bowl center front on the bar got her attention.
It was full of AA coins.
She dipped her hand in, stirred them around, plucked one out. Six Months. There was another one that said Two Years.
“You want drink?” the tiny Vietnamese woman tending bar asked.
“You collect these?” Nina said.
“Yes. Boss like. You have? You have AA coin, put it in. All night you drink for free.”
Nina laughed. “That’s fucked up.”
“Good business, I think,” the bartender said. “Long time the boss do that here.”
“Jesus. I need a drink to get my mind around that.”
“What I get you?”
“Tequila. Cuervo Gold, lime, salt. You got food?”
“No. You can order Vietnamese, they bring here.” The bartender reached under the bar and handed Nina a dog eared take out menu. “Very good food. My family.”
“What’s your name?”
“Thieu.”
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