by Holly Hart
"Depends," Conor laughed weakly. "If I'm supposed to hit anything or not…"
I picked the black rifle off the floor, flicked off the safety and handed it to him. "You know how to use it?"
He nodded. "I've had… some experience."
"Good." I flipped the knife between my two palms, testing its easy balance. The iron tang of spilt blood was already tickling my nostrils. Victor was going to pay today. "If it's going to shit, use it. I do my best work with my hands anyway. You know the plan?"
Conor shrugged, his face wrought with tension. "Kill as many as we can, for as long as we can, and buy the girls some time?"
I bared my teeth, in a grimace that was somewhere between a smile and a snarl. "You got it. Good hunting."
32
Maya
"Massey, slow down," I said, turning to look out of the window of the small European two door car. Its paintwork was chipped and scratched, not to mention faded from a dozen winters sat on the curb without protection from the driving snow of an Alexandrian winter, or the beating sun of an Alexandrian summer. We'd dispensed with the stretch limo for this. I didn't like using it at the best of times, but Conor swore that the bulletproof windows would come in handy someday. I didn't doubt it, especially not in a city where half the criminal gangs were out for my head. But I didn't have to like it.
"Sorry boss," Massey replied sheepishly, after tapping the brake so hard my head almost bounced off the dashboard. "Are we here?"
I nodded. "I think so."
The grubby, pollution-stained brick tenement blocks were built in the 1940s to house workers flooding to Alexandria from across the country. They fed the factories that then fed the war effort, and their homes soared into the sky. They pricked the haze that hung low over the city, like the choking black smoke stacks of a hundred coal fires. I shivered. They should have been knocked down decades ago, but corruption and special interests – much of it my father's doing – had kept them firmly in place.
"Imagine living here," Massey muttered as he brought the car to a halt, more gently this time. "I think I'd rather top meself."
I looked at him reproachfully, but it seemed to bounce off him like water off a ducks back. I doubted he'd even noticed my attempt at scolding him. Massey lived in his own world, a world of leprechauns, rainbows and pots of gold, as far as I could tell. A world without responsibility. I was jealous of him. "Plenty do. The suicide rate here's three times higher than the rest of the city, and Alexandria's already got a rate higher than the rest of the country."
Massey looked around with dismay. "More power to them," he said. "Better dead than this."
I rolled my eyes. There was no point chiding him, he wouldn't change. And frankly, I didn't want him to. "Come on," I hurried. "We haven't got much time. Are you ready –"
"To do what needs to be done?" Massey finished, cradling what looked very much like a second world war bayonet in his hands, light from the fading skyline glinting off his eyes in a menacing caricature of. "Born ready."
That I really didn't doubt. For all his jokes, his easy smiles and infectious laughter, Massey was still a very scary man. A scrapper – and a killer. Conor hadn't told me the whole story, and out of respect I hadn't asked, but a few dark, throw away comments here and there had helped me paint a picture. He'd been raised to fight by the Irish Republican Army, a group of terrorists, or freedom fighters, depending on who you asked.
I didn't. By the sounds of it, his childhood had been short and brutal.
I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the thought, and to make sure that I gave my own boy, and the one kicking in my belly, a better life than that. That was what I was fighting for – the reason I wanted to scour Alexandria of its sins. Not to take control, or to be called the Boss, for creature comforts or earthly pleasures. But to make sure that my babies didn't have to grow up like Massey. "Come on then," I said, disguising the upset in my voice with false enthusiasm. "Let's go."
I fought the urge to rest my hands on my knees and double over from the exertion. Just my luck, the kormilitsa – wetnurse – my network of spies had pointed to lived on the top floor of the towering apartment block. And the elevator was out.
"You okay?" Massey asked with concern. "You sure Conor would be okay with you doing this, you know, in your condition?"
I shot him an acid look. "Conor's my husband, not my keeper. And I'm your boss," I said, placing my emphasis on the very last word. "So unless you want your next task to be cleaning toilets with a toothbrush, I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself."
Massey grumbled, but to his credit, he kept the muttered protestations to himself – mostly. I turned a blind eye. He rapped twice on apartment 53's door – two commanding hits that left whoever lived inside in no doubt that they were to open the door – or else. The decaying open-brick corridor echoed with the noise, and then fell deathly silent. Even the sound of children's laughter from inside the apartment, which I realized that my heaving struggle for oxygen had drowned out, seemed to fade away, before roaring back with twice the vigor.
I grinned to myself, hiding behind Massey's back in case the door opened. Kids are kids.. I thought. You can't keep them down.
"No, no, no," came a thrice repeated, long-suffering refrain from just inside the door. "Pyotr, go with Elsa –"
A click, and the door opened an inch, revealing a slice of a harried, middle-aged woman's face in between the doorway and the paint-chipped door itself. "What is it?" She barked brusquely. A child squeaked, then was yanked from view.
And then she saw Massey. I watched from behind him as her throat muscles contracted and she gulped, her head rocking backward with dismay. "No, no," she whined. "I pay Mister Victor already. I am just old lady, no husband, I cannot pay more. I already do favor for Mister Victor, like he say. No, no…"
My heart broke.
"Wait out here, Massey," I ordered. He turned and stared at me with surprise, but I shook my head surreptitiously, my eyes flaring with command. The last thing I wanted to do was have him kick down a door that led to an apartment filled with playing kids. That was exactly the kind of thing I was trying to change in this city. If I allowed myself to break my own rules, it would be a slippery slope… I stepped forward, and sneakily elbowed him aside.
"Mrs. Linsky?" I asked, softening my voice and plastering a broad smile on my face. "Perhaps I could come in," I continued, catching a sweet smell pouring from her apartment. "We could share a couple of sbiten?"
Her eyes flared at the sound of my voice. Massey shot me a surprised, amused look as he heard me lay on a Russian accent so thick I doubted that even my great grandparents had spoken so, when they farmed in the Siberian tundra.
I studied the woman carefully now the Irishman was out of my way. She wasn't as old as she had first appeared, not much past forty, if I was any judge. But she had the worried, lined face of a woman at least ten years older. Hope, like a candle in the breeze, had been snuffed out. She was reduced to surviving, and existing, not living.
She stared at me with worried eyes, but in the traditional Russian way, deferred to my authority. I didn't like it, but there it was. Like most Russians of her generation, I guessed she had memories of living under complete domination in the Soviet Union, or had parents who did. She let me in for the same reason she did Victor a favor – fear. I resolved not to take advantage of her. A click echoed through the corridor as the woman loosened the chain holding the door closed, and she ushered me in.
I stepped through, and hissed to Massey to, "stay here."
"You have a lovely apartment, Mrs. Linsky," I said, looking around at a small, pokey place that was anything but. The walls had taken on the jaundiced yellow that indicated a smoker had lived here, once. For a long time. More poignantly, the kids I'd heard from the other side of the door were nowhere to be seen. Hiding, no doubt, the elder children caring for younger, keeping them quiet. Mrs. Linsky caught my gaze.
"I told my husband not to smoke," she said, "
every day. But did he listen? Of course not." She handed me a steaming mug of hot sbiten and pointed at a faded paisley couch. "Please, sit."
I did as I was told. The couch groaned and gave off the unmistakable sound of a spring breaking as I sat. I started speaking, more to distract myself from the cloying poverty of my surroundings than anything else. "Thank you," I said, glancing at the hot drink in my hands. "I'm sorry for coming here without any warning, Mrs. Linsky –"
"Alina."
"Alina," I repeated. "But we've much to discuss."
33
Roman and Conor
The knife sprouted from his neck like a weed from the ground. I swiveled past him, and his eyes filled with astonishment, shock, and fear. Blood dwelled around the blade's hilt and trickled onto hands already sticky with the dark red liquid. I pulled it out, a fountain spurted, and he dropped. His body hit the ground with a thump, but I'd already stopped listening.
Eight men had piled out of those three black SUVs, piled out and then filed in amongst the war memorial's huge, rusted iron pillars to secure the area for their boss. Three already lay dead at my hands, scattered around in various stages of lifelessness, snapped necks or slit throats chronicling their descent into death.
Now four.
The earpiece around the body's neck crackled, relaying a high-pitched warning its owner would never get to hear. I stared at it with disgust, considered putting it on, hearing the pained, terrified cries of my enemies as their confidence evaporated, as their minds filled with fear and doubt. I decided against it, kicked it off his neck and crushed it underneath my boot. An electronic screech briefly pierced my ears, and then nothing.
This was a hunt. They were animals, and animals don't talk.
I kept walking, straight through the rusted pillars. They were built offset, like a thicket of trees that grew not by design, in careful rows, but wherever their seeds fell, so that whatever lay behind was visible only rarely. Brief snatches of the floodplain, the back of Victor's head in the distance, then rusted metal stakes, warnings against the folly of human violence – and now testament to yet more of it.
The breeze gusted, and carried on it a sound, a squeal – a baby's cry. My blood ran cold, and I stopped dead in my tracks, legs swallowed up by quicksand, the air in front of me replaced by invisible concrete. No! This can't be. He's not supposed to be here.
I closed my eyes, blinked, licked my lips with a tongue that was as dry as sandpaper. Ellie's soft, sweet, innocent face flashed upon my mind, and it was all I could see. If our child was here, then it meant that this distraction – half of it, anyway, was for nothing. Maya would stumble across an empty nest, and as for Ellie…
It didn't bear thinking about.
My calm, deadly confidence evaporated. Anger surged through me, and then cold determination. If Victor had my baby, then he was as good as dead. The rules of the game had shifted, and my promise to Conor and Maya meant nothing. Perhaps I couldn't save Ellie, but my son was another matter entirely. I was going to get him back, and take his captor out.
Victor's voice drifted on a change of wind, and what he said filled my heart with dread. "Find… Get it done."
Find her? Get what done?
I didn't know, and it terrified me. But I guessed he meant Ellie. There wasn't a shadow nor a speck of doubt in my mind that she was in danger. The bloody knife fell from my hand and landed point down in the dark earth, soil that the river had deposited over centuries, rich, life-giving mud. Droplets of blood trickled down the blade and soaked into the earth. Next year, a flower might feed on the death, or grass grow, but it meant nothing to me. My hand moved on autopilot, unclipped the holster at my waist and pulled out a gun. One-handed I flicked off the safety catch, then racked the slide with my left. I was the gun now, and it was me. We were one, and Victor was in our sights.
I broke into a run, straight for the sound of Victor's voice. I dodged pillars as I sprinted, huge, stark edifices the color of blood, and they seemed like monuments to the lives of those that I'd killed. I didn't see them. Adrenaline soaked my muscles, flowing in not as a trickle but in a flood, and my vision narrowed until there was nothing ahead of me, nothing except my target, and blackness all around.
I ran forward, past the last line of rusted stakes, and broke into the open.
Victor's last bodyguard span.
A shot echoed.
His body dropped to the ground.
I screamed, a raw, painful roar that ripped my throat to shreds. It was an outpouring of rage, of grief, and the statement of intent. "Victor!"
He stood stock still, his arms by his side, but held oddly up at the elbow, as if he was hugging himself. Or cradling something… I leveled my gun and pointed at his skull, but it was an impotent gesture. I knew that if I shot, and he fell, he might crush my son, my fragile son, and I caressed the trigger and spat on the ground with impotent disgust.
A baby's cry echoed out upon the breeze, and the blood thundered in my ears, and it felt wrong, sounded wrong.
"Ah, the avenging father appears at last," he called, in a mocking, lilting tone of voice. "Where have you been, Roman? I've been waiting. I have to say, I'm impressed. It seems I miscalculated – I thought ten men would be more than enough. Mistakes, eh. I've made a few."
He turned round, and in his arms I saw what I feared most – a bundle of cloth, held tight to his body with one hand, but worse, so much worse, a stainless steel, 9 mm Desert Eagle pistol held, limp-wristed with the other.
My voice broke. "What kind of man –," I said, throat cracking. "Threatens a child?"
"This?" Victor shrugged, an evil smile dancing across his lips. "This isn't a child, it's a pawn." His smile vanished, face changing in an instant from sinister, to downright terrifying – the kind of face that stalks every child's worst nightmare, and their parent’s waking dreams. Not stretched, not pulled into an affected grimace – just soulless, dead.
Conor appeared to Victor's side, rifle held ready at his shoulder. He stared down the sights, aimed, and then looked at me, a question in his eyes.
I shook my head.
"That's right," Victor sneered. "Listen to your master, puppy. If I die, who's to say this finger doesn't pull against the trigger as I fall? We wouldn't want your sweet baby to suffer for your mistakes, would we? So here's what's going to happen." He said, a victorious grimace that I imagined was intended to pass for a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "I'm going to get into that SUV, there, and you're not going to follow, or – well you know what happens."
"Who were you talking to?" I said in a choked voice, my heart in my mouth. "Just then, on your cell phone. Answer me! Who the fuck were you talking to?"
"I'm sorry, Roman," came the reply, in a mocking tone of voice that didn't even register as a tidal wave of guilt crashed against my body. "If you're talking about your pretty little girlfriend, I'm afraid it's too late…"
34
Ellie
The fire alarm's wail went on, and on, and on. It pierced my eyes, assaulted my eardrums and began to rattle around inside my skull like a banshee, a never-ending squeal that threatened to raise the dead.
But I was grateful for it.
Because the longer it went on, the longer I'd be alone. And judging by the sprawling enormity of the evidence locker, I'd need every second I could get. The steel racks went on forever, row after row of plastic-bagged, brown paper-tagged pieces of evidence piled high to the skies and forever in danger of toppling. Bloodstained shirts sat cheek by jowl with guns, knives – and even more arcane weapons abounded. I think I saw a samurai sword, though it was out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't go check it out.
Still, weapons were the least of the story. Most of the racks weren't nearly so interesting: piled high with brown cardboard boxes, like the inside of the self storage unit, or the kind you get when you're told to clean out your desk.
Well, shit…
It turned out that getting in to the locker wasn't nearly goin
g to be the hardest bit. Finding my bag in here was going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack. The size of the place boggled my mind, stretched its ability to comprehend what it was seeing to the very limit.
I tried to picture it.
Case after case, murders, rapes, beatings, assaults; day after day, month after month, year after year. My stomach clenched, and I began to contemplate just sitting back and letting the weight of the world wash over me. How could I do this? It was too big for just one person on her own. Hell, an army might scour this place for a month and not find what they were looking for. So what chance did I have?
I closed my eyes. Not a second passed by before Roman's face flashed onto the back of my eyelids, risking his life for me even now; then the vague outline of my child, wrapped in blue swaddling clothes and crying out for his mother.
I bit my lip, and kept biting until the coppery tang of blood filled my mouth, and then longer still. I bit down until the pain wiped out the fear, banished the demons stalking my mind, and crystallized everything I stood to lose.
Who cares if an army can't find it? An army's driven by its stomach, not by love.
And I had that in spades.
My eyes snapped back open, and I found myself suffused by a grin, fatalistic determination. I was going to give it my best shot, or die trying, because if I didn't succeed that I didn't want to live.
I tore through the shelves like a woman possessed, almost jogging at times, my arms and eyes and fingers all dancing in unison, searching boxes, eyeing labels, fingering bag after plastic evidence bag, box after box of legal notes until they all melded to one. And at all times, like Sauron's eye watching over me, two things reminded me where I was, and the enormity of what I was doing – the screeching wail of the fire alarm, and the security cameras that speckled the ceiling, dark and bulbous, like baleful black-painted turtle shells.