by Matt Rogers
The very thought of the setup brought up nausea in the pit of Slater’s gut.
But he wasn’t naive enough to assume that was the only outrageous breach of justice happening out here in the cold, dead plains.
Vladivostok might have been a populated city, but anything outside its limits gave way to a freezing wasteland, barely inhabited by human civilisation.
And that left room for all kinds of horrors to take place.
Slater forced the thought from his mind. He’d returned to the Far East to round up the remnants of the mine operation and crush them forever, but that noble pursuit paled in comparison to what he’d stumbled on here.
So he pushed himself faster as the darkness closed in, rounding the corner and glimpsing the blonde-haired man hurrying down the next street. The houses in the quaint neighbourhood fell away, replaced by large swathes of unused land, which eventually gave way to industrial warehouses and fenced-off facilities. Slater shivered and gasped in the chill and hurried past towering factories, some belching smoke from their rooftops. The street lights barely illuminated the road, piercing through the fog that settled over the city in the evening time.
He moved quicker. The blonde-haired man had almost disappeared from view, and that was Slater’s only connection to the conspiracy surrounding Medved.
He sensed they were approaching the shipbuilding plant.
There was a stench in the air.
The stench of fear. The stench of metal and ocean and darkness.
Night continued to fall, and Slater implemented every trick in his arsenal to stay invisible behind the blonde man, stalking him through the southern stretch of Vladivostok. He kept to the shadows, making use of the concealment, staying ever vigilant of threats on either side. He wasn’t taking any chances after his encounter with the mercenary from Medved. If the man had been armed in public, he would have shot Slater down in the street.
And Slater wouldn’t have known the kill shot was coming until it was far too late.
They rounded a corner, entering a new stretch of the industrial sector closer to the open ocean, and the Medved Shipbuilding Plant revealed itself in all its impossible size.
38
Pasha hadn’t been exaggerating.
The plant was effectively a miniature city within Vladivostok. A high-walled perimeter fence built of concrete and topped with barbed wire flanked the entire perimeter of the grounds, but the colossal ships being constructed on the other side of the wall towered over everything in sight. They were the size of ten skyscrapers mashed together — some merchant vessels, some icebreakers, some container ships. They hung ominously in the dusk, backlit ever so slightly by the dark blue sky.
Despite the late hour, Slater sensed the electricity in the air. He couldn’t hear voices, but the unmistakeable hum of operating machinery trickled over the wall. He identified the familiar beeping of forklifts — the construction sites were alive, and the workers in the shipbuilding plant were hard at work. But at the same time Slater sensed desolation — no matter how many men toiled away over the wall, there were vast swathes of dead land, home to dozens and dozens of warehouses and storage facilities and head offices and loading zones. The sheer amount of resources necessary to construct these behemoths was an operation unto itself.
The blonde-haired man tucked the overcoat tighter around his mid-section, hunched over a little more, and approached an unimpressive metal door in the side of the perimeter fence. It rested in a small concrete indent a few feet off the sidewalk, effectively hiding in plain sight. The man strode up to a simple numerical keypad in the side of the alcove and thumbed five consecutive commands — Slater loitered halfway down the street, watching closely, fixating on the number of times he stabbed down with his finger.
Five.
V12XY.
Adds up, he thought.
The door unlocked with a soft click that seemed to echo down the empty street, passing over gravel and potholes and sleet, and the blonde man hurled the door open and disappeared inside Medved.
Slater touched the knife in his belt in a rare moment of vulnerability. He’d spent years learning the ins and outs of urban warfare in an attempt to eliminate hesitation entirely. If he had to move on a target, he didn’t want to stop and pause for a moment.
It was dead time.
Wasted time.
But now, something was different.
His sixth sense had aggravated again, kicking into high gear as he stared at the tops of the half-finished ships and the cranes towering over the rest of the site. Something lurked in that darkness, something he knew would rattle him to his core. There was no way to avoid it.
All roads lead to this.
He took a deep breath. Took his hand off the knife. Adjusted his jacket. Hardened his mind using a brief meditation tactic to inhale resolve and exhale doubt.
He envisioned his brain as a bundle of endless neurons, and in his mind’s eye he destroyed anything that might make him waver in the face of a deadly threat.
Then he stepped out of the shadows and strode for the metal door, crossing the road and skirting around a handful of jagged potholes. The weather worsened along with the feeling in his gut, and a light rain began to cascade from the heavens. He hunched over, imitating the blonde man’s actions, both to shield his face from any surveillance cameras and to avoid getting rainwater in his eyes.
He made it to the door, savouring the shadows, and punched in the code Bogdan had given him, letter by letter.
Now he had the chance to see whether the construction worker genuinely wanted to help.
V.
1.
2.
X.
Y.
A sharp electronic beep, a trio of green lights above the small keypad, and the door clicked open.
Slater took the handle and pushed inward, slipping through into the outer recesses of the shipbuilding plant. He quickly realised Bogdan’s code wasn’t exclusive to this particular door, for there must be hundreds of points of entry scattered across the grounds. This door led to a swathe of gravel and mud spreading as far as the eye could see, culminating underneath the bowels of a gigantic, half-finished container ship in the distance. This close to the Sea of Japan, the wind came howling off the ocean at an unprecedented rate and blew a shocking gale across the open stretch of land.
Slater shivered and took in the sight of an arsenal of machinery spread at random across the gravel, forming a rudimentary maze through the shipbuilding plant. But this section was only one tiny fraction of the larger picture. Slater could spend weeks searching the place and still fail to account for everything here.
He had entered a new world. A community of its own.
Then he turned and saw the guard booth resting in the shadow of the perimeter wall. He locked eyes with a gruff Russian guy in his early thirties, sitting slumped on the wooden steps leading to the booth, the embers of a cigarette glowing between his lips, his shoulders hunched to brace against the cold.
Slater froze, then nodded once, upturning the corners of his mouth despite his violent instincts to neutralise the threat.
Maybe he could pass himself off as a worker.
Maybe.
Then the guy stood up, tossed the cigarette away, and strode forward. He fired off a string of accusations in Russian, giving Slater the evil eye.
Maybe not.
39
Slater spotted the blonde guy in his peripheral vision. The man was nearly invisible, swallowed up by the vastness of the shipbuilding plant. He was a few dozen feet ahead, weaving between dormant machinery and oversized forklifts, about to disappear behind a mountain of wooden planks arranged in haphazard fashion. Slater forgot about him for the time being. The guy seemed set on his current path, refusing to check over his shoulder at any point, moving fast for the colossal unfinished container ship in the distance, propped up on giant supports the size of buildings.
He wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry. The greatest threat had diss
ipated — Slater hadn’t lost him in the streets. There were more variables out there, more laneways to vanish into, more collateral damage to take advantage of. Medved was a separate world, and Slater no longer worried about losing track of the blonde man.
Instead he turned his attention to the guard posturing up alongside him, ready to haul him out of the plant unless he was credentialed.
Didn’t you see me use the gate code to get in? Slater thought, flustered.
He didn’t want to cause any more damage than necessary. He’d hoped like hell the guard would simply assume Slater belonged in the plant.
Apparently not.
The man squared up to him, unquestionably aggressive, and hurled another insult at him in Russian. Slater spotted the appendix holster slotted into the guy’s belt and noted the handle of the Makarov pistol protruding out. There was no mistaking the threat. But he also sensed opportunity — a chance to arm himself, finally.
He almost licked his lips at the sight of the weapon.
But he kept his composure, and as the Russian guard reached out and seized him by the collar, flummoxed by the lack of response, Slater let out a whimper. He dropped any shred of an aggressive posture, and took the defensive. Hands shaking, he reached out and urged the man to wait before hitting or kicking him. He gestured to his jacket, and raised an eyebrow.
I have credentials. Let me show you.
The guard paused, still sporting a white knuckled grip on Slater’s collar, and nodded once.
Slater reached into the inside of his jacket and seized hold of the empty air, gripping nothing in particular. But now he was in an advantageous position, his arm bent at the elbow, raised to shoulder height.
He didn’t need to unleash a big looping haymaker from a mile away and give the guard a chance to retaliate.
Expression smug, as if he were about to prove he belonged at the plant, Slater straightened up. But inside of withdrawing ID from his jacket pocket he scythed the elbow horizontally through the air, smashing delicate bone in the guard’s jaw. The almighty crack poised in the air for a moment, then the wind carried it away.
The guard went down in a silent heap, not unconscious, just shocked.
Slater had broken his jaw with the elbow, and that carried with it all kinds of long-term repercussions. But they were avoidable if the guy took his recovery seriously. And Slater didn’t have time to ascertain how innocent the guard was. For all he knew, the man had no knowledge of the dark side of Medved. So he guided the guy into a seated position on the guard booth’s staircase, watching the blood drain from his face and the shock set in.
Slater reached down and gently extracted the Makarov from the holster. He gripped the gun one-handed, leapfrogged the short flight of stairs, and entered the guard booth. The space was tiny, claustrophobic, humid in an uncomfortable way, warmed by nothing but the guard’s own body heat. The sole window was fogged and the silence permeated everything.
Slater found what he was looking for — a set of handcuffs resting in the far corner of the desk, tucked underneath a mountain of paperwork. They’d likely never been used. He left the booth, locked one manacle around the frozen guard’s left wrist, and clamped the other around the banister at the bottom of the short flight of stairs.
The guard wouldn’t be calling for help in a hurry.
Satisfied that he’d made his entrance undisturbed, Slater gripped the Makarov tighter and disappeared into the night, leaving a pale, sweating shell of a man in his wake.
40
Thirty minutes earlier…
Still high off the endorphins released during cold-blooded murder, Magomed stormed up to the Medved Shipbuilding Plant and entered a code into the metal door. He’d known the code all along but never had to use it. This was his first foray into the physical realm — all his previous orders had been conducted at a distance, using scapegoats and middlemen to take official employ of the army of mercenaries he had stationed around the plant.
The excitement of putting everything into action thrilled him. And it gave him immense satisfaction to know that stabbing the two secret policemen to death had barely fazed him. His mind was more battle-hardened than he thought.
He was ready.
As he opened the door, he ran a hand through his hair.
Coarse, jet black hair.
He hurried into the site, shooting daggers at the solitary guard stationed at this defunct corner of Medved. The guy looked miserable, slumped over the wooden stairs, puffing restlessly at a cigarette. As soon as he saw Magomed he gave an exaggerated double take, identifying the face but sporting disbelief that the man had actually arrived.
Because key individuals on Magomed’s payroll had been briefed on his identity earlier that day.
Not all.
But some.
They were expecting him.
But the guard hadn’t anticipated he would enter from this entrance.
‘Magomed,’ the guard said. ‘This is all happening fast. Are we ready?’
‘Almost.’
‘Where is Ruslan? The rest of the men are waiting on him. They’re getting restless. They’re not sure if this is going ahead.’
‘Ruslan is out there somewhere,’ Magomed said, gesturing past the wall. ‘In the city. I sent him out to make sure no-one thought there was foul play afoot. He contacted me earlier. We’re in the clear. No-one suspects a thing.’
‘The men know him. They don’t know you. I think they will listen to their orders better if it comes from him.’
Of course, Magomed thought, stifling his frustrations.
Who did he think he was, revealing himself for the first time and expecting them all to bow to his commands? But that was exactly what he was paying them to do. He had to accept that everyone worshipped Ruslan — that’s why Magomed had used the man to co-ordinate the mercenaries over the past few months.
Ruslan was their de facto leader, a fearsome ex-military thug himself.
And he looked the part, too. Six foot four. Packed with muscle. Blonde haired. Blue eyed. The perfect specimen to order a ragtag army of soldiers of fortune aboard an icebreaker.
So what use was it if the man was still out there in Vladivostok?
Magomed needed him back at Medved.
And he’d made that explicitly clear.
For a moment, doubt ran through him. Perhaps the secret police had planned a simultaneous attack. Maybe they’d sent their forces to sabotage all the leaders of the plot in unison. Maybe Ruslan had succumbed.
But that didn’t align with the Ruslan he knew.
Still, Magomed stewed silently. ‘Ruslan comes through this entrance, yes?’
The guard nodded. ‘Da. I’m expecting him at any moment.’
‘Right. Carry on.’
‘Are we still supposed to meet at midnight?’
‘Yes. That’s still on. Proceed according to plan. Nothing’s changed.’
‘You’re worried about Ruslan.’
‘He’ll be fine.’
‘He’s…’
The guard trailed off, clamping his mouth shut as he realised he shouldn’t be speaking.
Magomed cocked his head. ‘What is it?’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Now you have to tell me. You know this.’
The guard nodded, pale, sheepish. ‘Shit. I really wasn’t supposed to let this out.’
‘Has he got himself involved with something?’
‘You see … there’s a hell of a lot of waiting around, Magomed. These are violent men protecting the icebreaker. I’m a lowly perimeter guard and I can see that much. So Ruslan and a few of the others decided to put their skills to use. It might have come back to bite them. That’s why I’m worried about him. I don’t know what kind of enemies he formed.’
‘What’s he been doing?’
The guard began to speak, apprehension drenching his features as he pivoted from one line of thought to the next, revealing details of something dark and sinister,
something meant for the shadows, something never supposed to see the light of day.
‘Christ,’ was all Magomed could think to say. ‘You think he’s made enemies?’
‘I can’t see how he hasn’t.’
‘When was he supposed to be back?’
‘He told me he was on the way. An hour ago.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘There could be valid reasons for it, though. I ran into trouble. Out there. On the streets.’
The guard went pale. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘There’s certain authorities who actively don’t want this to happen. I trust you’ll do your job well for the remainder of the evening. Don’t let anyone into this place who doesn’t belong.’
‘Of course. When have I ever?’
‘Now is the most important time to be vigilant.’
‘Of course,’ the guard repeated.
Magomed nodded and continued into Medved’s grounds, putting distance between himself and the guard booth. He let the dusk completely swallow him before pausing for a beat in the shadow of an enormous forklift. He threw a glance back at the booth — already, the guard had returned to sucking his cigarette down like his life depended on it. He wasn’t watching the door. Instead he stared vacantly at the space between his feet. The man would prove utterly useless if anyone decided to force their way in through the door. He had a Makarov pistol, but he would be hesitant to use it if he met any resistance. His life was a sedentary one, spent endlessly searching for threats that never materialised.
When a problem did in fact surface, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
And the secret police had set Magomed on edge.
So he decided to stay. He wanted to see if Ruslan returned, and whether he was followed.
He slid the bloody KAMPO Bayonet from its holster and stalked into the darkness, blending in to the point where he became completely invisible.
And then he watched, and waited.