Chimera

by Rob Thurman

  It was pretty much a doomed effort from the very beginning, and I knew it. But the weeks we had together gave me a glimpse into a life that might have been . . . if I hadn’t lost my brother . . . if I hadn’t fallen in with thieves out of sheer apathy . . . if I’d been a man instead of an obsession-driven tin soldier. Wind me up and watch me go, blindly marching down a path without end.

  Nat had found out soon enough what my life was all about. Obsession she could’ve lived with, I think. But dishonesty and only a passing acquaintance with the law-abiding world, that wasn’t a life she would embrace—or tolerate. She had loved me, but she’d loved something else more . . . her soul.

  At least she left me the clock.

  Giving up sleep as a lost cause, I padded in bare feet over to the living room window to watch moon-spangled waves. I had a lot of planning to do, and watching the tide’s hypnotic show helped my brain disassociate to do its job. Saul was my first thought. I needed his help, his expertise, and he wasn’t being too cooperative. At the restaurant he’d slid back in his chair, held up his hands, and shook his head adamantly. “Sorry, buddy,” he had said in a tone remarkably lacking in apology. “I found him, just like you wanted. My job is officially over.”

  Maybe it wasn’t such a leap for me, but it was something of an assumption for Saul . . . being so certain that this boy was Lukas. The sight of that compound had unquestionably put him on edge. Whatever was going on within those walls, he obviously wanted no part of it. But if my less-than-distinguished career had taught me anything, it was that everyone had their price. The look he’d stolen over his shoulder at me as he’d left the restaurant had shown a darkly annoyed glimmer. Yeah, he knew it wasn’t over between us.

  Folding my arms, I leaned toward the window and rested my forehead against the cool glass. Five stories down I could see empty tide-washed sand. There were no dead horses, their legs curved slackly in a running position; no little boys with pale and limp starfish hands. “Lukasha,” I murmured, the nickname still natural on my lips after all these years. “You out there?”

  The moon continued to pass through the sky and I imagined for the very first time that I might actually hear a reply.

  Chapter 4

  Konstantin had many favorite restaurants, but not a single one of them was Russian. Too much borscht and cabbage as a child had humbled better men. I’d seen the sight of a beet cause Gurov’s left eye to twitch uncontrollably. Embracing the favored local cuisine wholeheartedly, he ate more Cuban food than Castro himself. Payasada was his most frequent choice, and I was more than familiar with the setup there. The front door, the fire exits, the back door through the kitchen; I’d checked them all out on more than one occasion.

  “You look like dermo,” Konstantin observed coolly after sipping Cuban coffee from a tiny cup cradled in his palm. As strong as the drink was, I was surprised it didn’t dissolve the china between itself and freedom.

  I was working. The glass of iced tea before me was for appearance only. I kept my hands below the level of the bright red and yellow tablecloth and my eyes scanning the lunch crowd. “Noisy neighbors,” I replied blandly, shrugging my shoulders lightly under my jacket. Lukas was my business and mine alone. Anatoly had made that clear.

  A razor-thin white eyebrow arched skeptically, but he returned to his coffee without comment. The source of my sleeplessness didn’t interest Gurov. His only concern was that I performed my duty and kept him alive. Anything else was simply an empty distraction between him and his paper. Normally lunch duty was no real hardship. Despite what the movies said, it was a rare occasion indeed that a hit went down in a perfectly well lit and respectable restaurant.

  The line of my back was as tense as the rest of me. Shifting minutely, I rolled my shoulders in a futile effort to relax. There were a hundred things I wanted—needed—to do. Lukas could be out there, and here I sat, watching my boss suck down gallons of coffee. Time was moving so slowly that I could actually feel my arteries harden from the cold pizza I’d had for breakfast. I wanted to go stake out the “compound,” as Saul had labeled it. I couldn’t make a move until that was done.

  But more than that, I wanted to see him. I wanted at least a glimpse of the boy who could be my brother. Hell, who was I trying to kid? He was my brother. He was Lukas. . . .

  He had to be.

  For a few hours, however, I was stuck. And while I had plans to make before I could hit that place even for simple observation, the sooner I could do something concrete, the less likely I was to put my fist through the nearest wall—or the nearest waiter. This had not been my week for those in the challenging field of food service. I raised a hand to catch the attention of our server as the level of dark coffee in Konstantin’s cup dropped. The waiter was lounging against one wall with arms folded and one foot lazily tapping along to the overhead samba beat. If there was a hurry to be found, he didn’t seem to be in it. He was probably a model/musician loathing his day job.

  Gurov didn’t enjoy waiting for his coffee . . . or anything for that matter. And I didn’t enjoy what he might have me do if his needs didn’t get immediate attention. As I added a laser-sharp glare to my gesturing hand, the waiter pushed away from the wall and headed our way. His bored look was now mingled with a slight hint of unease. It seemed he wasn’t quite as thickheaded as I’d thought.

  “Never mind, Stefan. I must cut this lunch short.” Konstantin was folding the newspaper with quick, precise movements. “Perhaps you’ll have an opportunity for a little education with our preyatel upon our next visit. I have an appointment to attend to.”

  Taking care of the bill, I rather hoped the next time we came back, the rock star wannabe would have gotten a new job. For his sake. Gurov didn’t hold grudges; he’d invented them. Kicking the shit out of some waiter, I didn’t need a fortune-teller to read that in my future.

  I led the way out of the restaurant, pausing in the doorway to check the sidewalk and street. Clear. Konstantin tapped a finger against his watch impatiently. A glittering gold and diamond piece, it cost more than my condo. My priorities in life would be viewed as askew by some, I knew. I was more than a little fucked up and there was no denying it. But when it came to material things, I’d learned the hard way. Money couldn’t buy the things that mattered. If I spent that much on a watch, it shouldn’t just keep time; it had better let me travel through it too.

  Moving down the sidewalk, I fished in my jacket pocket for the remote to Gurov’s car and started it while we were still half a block away. Our guys weren’t much on bombs, but the Colombians lived and breathed explosives. Fortunately for the fire hydrant we were parked next to so blatantly, the car started without incident. Opening the door for the older man, I scooped the ticket off the windshield and stuffed it in my pocket. As I headed around the front of the shiny black hood, I spotted them. There were two big guys wearing similar Windbreakers. I was sure Saul would’ve said it was a fashion disaster, but even in the winter Miami’s warm weather made you work to cover up your gun.

  Rocking back casually on my heels, I did another quick visual check. Yeah, just the two, and amateurs to boot. Not Mafiya ; I could tell that at a glance. They were most likely punks out to jack a car. About eighteen or nineteen, one white, one black, they had identical empty eyes. I saw a blade flick to life in one tattooed hand held close to a leg. Someone hadn’t listened to their guidance counselor any more than I had.

  I didn’t bother with planning or subtlety. That sort of thing would be wasted with these guys. Within seconds they were in front of me, faces as predatory as the vulpine face of any wolf. I hit the one without the knife first. His empty hands were even more threatening. A knife I could deal with; a gun out of nowhere would be a little trickier. Flashing a cheerful grin, I leaned against the closed driver’s door. “Nice jackets. Can I help you guys? You lost? Out to spread the word of God maybe?” I couldn’t look innocent. Life had made damn sure that was something my face would never be able to wear. But I gave it my best s
hot only to see it reflected back at me in a sudden uneasiness in the face of the man with the switchblade. Wolves recognized their own. On the other hand, the one I kicked in the stomach didn’t look uneasy. In fact, he didn’t look anything but nauseated.

  One hand on the car supporting me, I twisted sideways and planted a foot in the abdomen of the one whose empty hand had suddenly darted toward his jacket. Before he hit the asphalt, I gave him another on the point of his chin, taking him out of the game then and there. No flies on him when it came to self-interest, his buddy had already lunged at me. With sharp silver metal and teeth bared in a twisted face, he slashed at me while hissing curses like a foul-mouthed pit viper.

  Kids.

  I blocked his arm with my left one, my hand fisted. My other hand was wrapped snugly around the grip of a Steyr 9mm. Yeah, flies weren’t exactly roosting on me either. I planted the end of the four-inch barrel firmly in the center of his pimply forehead. Could be he’d planned on stripping the car and trading the parts for zit cream. He froze, the shiny black eyes no longer empty. Fear, pure and simple, shone clearly, along with a desire to be anywhere but here. Tough love worked wonders.

  “Go home, Junior,” I said flatly. “You’re not ready to play with the big boys yet.” Only five or six years separated me from this piece of shit barely out of diapers—half a decade, but it may as well have been a lifetime.

  The knife clattered on the asphalt, shortly followed by his ass. Scrambling backward for several feet, he then flipped over to a crawl before lunging to his feet and running down the street. Half in front of the car, his friend still lay unconscious and obviously forgotten. There’s no honor among thieves and apparently no loyalty either. Sighing, I holstered the semiautomatic and bent down to slide my hands under the slack shoulders to drag him to the sidewalk. He was lucky. Some guys I knew would’ve driven over him and raided his wallet for the car wash money.

  It had all taken less than thirty seconds, but as I slid behind the steering wheel, Konstantin still pinned me with an expression of sharp annoyance. “ Tat? ” he demanded, fingers drumming on his suit-clad knee.

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. Tat referred to common thieves, unworthy of the respect given to their more murderously organized brethren . . . us. “And pretty shitty ones at that.” Pulling away from the curb, I raised a hand in a casual wave to the small knot of tourists gaping from the curb. This had been more fun in the sun than they’d bargained for, I was thinking.

  “Pity.” Gurov leaned back against the butter-soft leather of the seats. Closing his eyes, he linked fingers across a stomach amazingly lean for a sixty-year-old man.

  Raising my eyebrows, I repeated the word, curious.

  Face serene, he said, “Pity. If your heart was with your family, your work could be truly phenomenal.”

  Being phenomenal in a career of brutality; I wasn’t sure the two belonged in the same sentence . . . or in the same man. As for family, I knew who it was, and who it wasn’t.

  Gurov and the others didn’t even come close.

  Chapter 5

  “ I hate you, you son of a bitch.”

  Unimpressed, I kept the night-vision goggles up to my eyes and replied absently, “No one held a gun to your head, Skoczinsky.”

  “Bullshit.” Beside me, he shifted on his stomach and with a snarl swatted at a buzzing mosquito. “It may as well have been and you know it.”

  He was right, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. The amount of money I’d offered Saul had made it almost impossible for his mercenary soul to refuse, but almost is just that—almost. What carried it beyond that was the question I’d asked, a simple one: What if it were your brother? It was a fairly desperate attempt on my part, and I hadn’t expected it to do much good. Some people don’t give a damn about the brothers they do have and some don’t have any at all. But sometimes those desperate attempts work best of all.

  It wasn’t a gun to his head, that question, but to Saul, combined with the money, it had been every bit as convincing. I’d seen it in the tightening of his jaw and the ice behind his glare . . . a brittle ice running with cracks in all directions, ready to break. If you were a bodyguard, reading people was a crucial skill. I didn’t know exactly what had changed Saul’s mind, but he had changed it and that was all that mattered. I wasn’t going to waste time feeling guilty about it, I thought obstinately, doing my best to promptly squelch the supposedly nonexistent emotion. After all, with the chunk of change I was giving him, he could stock up on plenty of long spoons for the next time he supped with the devil.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll cry for you later.” I needed Saul for this. If that meant manipulating him, I would do it. I would do it and deal with the consequences to my questionable conscience later. I would also give anything I had to get him on board. That anything came to pretty much every penny I had to my name and then some, but I didn’t have any doubt it would be money well spent. “Make yourself useful. Take the east side, and check back in fifteen.”

  With another grumbled curse, he slithered off into the night with an alacrity that would’ve done any soldier proud. It might be a job he regretted taking, but he would do it to the best of his ability nonetheless. His morality might reside on a level far more shadowy than that of your average upright citizen, but Saul did have principles he followed rigorously and questions he wouldn’t answer. The principles might always come back to that bottom line, the almighty dollar or euro, but they did exist. And because they did, he had led me personally to the “school” he’d followed the children to two days before.

  He’d been on the nose with his description of the place. If this was a school, then Stalin was the headmaster. The compound, and it was that without a doubt, was smothered in concealing gloom. There was none of the garish orange glow that blanketed the sky over Miami to lighten the night. The lack of moon or urban lights led to a blackness as thick as the depths of a tar pit—thick, sticky, and virtually impenetrable. Despite that, the NVGs provided by Saul let me see the details of the place. In fact, I could see them clearly enough that I swore silently.

  Walls topped with razor wire and a twisted iron monstrosity of a gate that belonged at Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, it was one goddamn impressive setup, I was forced to admit. Nearly three hours from the city limits and on the edge of the Everglades, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more inhospitable spot if you had years to search. With sand, scrub, and low-lying water filled with creatures more ill-tempered than my boss, it didn’t make for a real estate agent’s dream. More important, it didn’t bode well for a fast escape.

  Exhaling, I dropped the goggles onto the ground and rubbed my eyes with a thumb and forefinger. The sand gritted under my elbows and aside from the croaking of frogs, it was the only sound to be heard. This wasn’t a job for two men; hell, even the ATF would’ve been screwed. Not that that was saying much.

  It didn’t matter. I didn’t have the ATF. I had Saul, myself, and a set of balls that would’ve impressed even King Kong. It would have to be enough. Saul hadn’t bothered to ask why we didn’t just call the cops and have them investigate. He was smarter than that. Lukas was still listed as a missing child, true. And if we’d gone to the police with our information, skimpy as it was, they would’ve looked into it. But by the time they made it past that massive gate, I seriously doubted there would be anything left to find. I had no idea what we were dealing with, not one goddamn clue, but it was safe to say the police might be every bit out of their depth as we were. It was a risk I wasn’t about to take. If this teenager was Lukas, I wasn’t giving any advance warning that might lead to a second disappearance. I had one chance to pull this off . . . one chance to save him. I wasn’t going to blow it.

  Not this time.

  Grimly, I took another look at the place. Normally the resources needed for a place the likes of the one before me would’ve made me think government, but Saul had already discounted that. They had to be private, but that didn’t tell me a damn thing about who they were an
d what they were doing. Regardless, sitting spinning my wheels trying to figure it out wasn’t going to get me any closer to getting inside the walls. What we needed was a good measure of boldness and a shitload of luck. And there was no time like the present to get started. Doing a little slithering of my own, I headed down the slope for an up close and personal look at the walls of Jericho.

  The walls didn’t fall that night. They didn’t quake; hell, they didn’t even shiver, but at least we’d taken stock of what we were up against. That was something, right? I knew because as we had walked back to the car, Saul kept telling me so—repeatedly. I think he was concerned that I might have a psychotic break and try to scale the wall with my bare hands. Maybe it was an exaggeration, but truthfully he wasn’t far off the mark. All those years. I clenched the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched bone white. All those years, and the best I could manage was slinking around in the dark. Lukas was there; he was right there. But he might as well have been on the moon . . . distant and unreachable . . . solitary and untouched . . . untouched. One could dream anyway. Jesus.

  I rested my forehead on the wheel, exhaled once, twice, then straightened. “So, daylight surveillance tomorrow?” I asked mildly. The calm was hard won, as I tucked every bit of despair, frustration, and rage into a mental box and closed the lid tight. That box had been with me a long time now. Born on a windswept beach, whelped on the blood and pain of child and horse, this box had teeth. Considering what I fed it, it needed them.