It was probably Streinikov himself who’d talked to him after the first call was transferred. And Streinikov had agreed to pay. Now some flunky, some Junior Ranger with an ego problem, thought he could rip him off. Probably thought he could keep the ten g’s for himself and tell his boss it had been paid. But it wasn’t gonna play out that way.
The flunky might just decide to put him out of the way, of course. But Alonzo had already anticipated that move. He wasn’t waiting in the Shell station. He was across the highway in a turnout next to another gas station, this one open for business. He had it all figured out.
He needed more coke, though. Just one more hit, to keep his head clear.
* * *
Lukin steered the Escalade into the Shell station. It was empty. Ilya’s gaze panned the fuel islands and came to rest on a piece of paper flapping from one of the pumps.
“Retrieve that,” he told Lukin.
Lukin got out of the car and tore off the paper, which had been secured to the pump with chewing gum. He showed it to Ilya.
In large block letters, carefully printed in pencil, were the words:
LEEVE THE CASH AND GO
Illiterate American fool.
“What do we do now?” Barsky asked.
Ilya shrugged. “We leave the cash. And go.”
* * *
Alonzo looked on with satisfaction as one of the Russians, a tall blond guy, left the Caddy and placed a manila envelope on the fuel island, weighing it down with a rock. He returned to the car, disappearing behind the driver, and a moment later the SUV pulled away.
He watched it go. It could be a trap. They might just drive around the corner and circle back. But he was patient. He could wait. He spent twenty minutes fidgeting, taking an occasional hit to stay sharp, and studying the road. No one returned.
Time to risk it. Ten grand. Not bad for a night’s work. Parker was still alive, and the little Mexishit Chihuahua hadn’t gotten the beatdown he’d earned, but there would be time to settle those scores later.
He drove down Route 4, doubled back, and reached the Shell station. Warily he parked between the fuel islands and recovered the envelope. For a paranoid moment he wondered if maybe they’d put a bomb inside, some kind of lightweight plastic explosive or some goddamn thing. But when he undid the flap, he saw only a stack of hundred-dollar bills tied with a rubber band. He took a whiff. New money. It smelled better than freshly cut grass.
He turned back to his car, and the Russian was there, the blond who’d planted the envelope.
But that was impossible. He’d gotten back into the car, and the car had driven away.
The Russian seemed to read his thoughts. “I’ve been here the whole time, my friend. I dropped out of sight, and the car left without me.”
Alonzo opened his mouth to speak. Eloquent arguments crowded his brain. He could talk his way out of this. He could do anything. He was invincible.
The Russian shot him.
He was barely aware of being hit. All he knew was that one moment he was upright, and the next moment he was on his knees with his hands clutching his belly. He lifted his head and saw the Russian pick up the envelope. The man was smiling.
“Now you are paid,” he said, and he pressed the gun to Alonzo’s temple and squeezed off one more round.
36
Bonnie sat cross-legged on a stool in the upstairs bedroom of the home of Howard and Margot Swanson, scoping out Streinikov’s compound next door.
As Streinikov had helpfully informed her, his neighbors to the south were currently vacationing in St. John. Since it seemed a shame to let such a nice house go to waste, Bonnie had taken the liberty of defeating the worthless alarm system and forcing the lock on the front door. There was only one vehicle in the two-car garage, leaving space for the Saturn she’d boosted.
She’d had plenty to do in the Swansons’ house, besides checking their piled up mail out of idle curiosity to learn their names. First she’d attended to the gunshot wound in her calf. The bullet had passed clean through, and the damage was minimal, but there was a lot of bleeding and a fair amount of pain. She found first aid supplies in the bathroom and bandaged the bone, then threw down some Tylenol to kill the ache. To keep herself alert, she swallowed some NoDoz from her purse.
The bites inflicted by the glass shards were less serious but took longer to address. She cleaned them out one at a time, swabbed them with bacitracin, and applied Band-Aids.
Finished, she looked herself over in a full-length mirror. She was a mess. She’d seen corpses that looked healthier. They’d probably felt livelier, too.
The medical stuff was taken care of. She got down to business. Having lost all her gear, she had to be creative about weapons. If things went as planned, she would acquire some new firearms soon enough. In the meantime she contented herself with items scavenged mainly from the Swansons’ kitchen, as well as some gasoline siphoned from their Audi, rubber gloves from under the bathroom sink, and a nylon stocking from Mrs. Swanson’s underwear drawer. She stuffed all this gear into a backpack she’d found in the Saturn’s backseat, which had formerly held a stash of porno magazines from Thailand. These she thoughtfully left for the Swansons’ perusal.
The pack, when fully loaded, was kind of bulky, and it rattled a little because of the wine bottles, but she wasn’t counting on stealth tonight.
After these preparations were made, she positioned herself at the bedroom window and tipped the binoculars from Streinikov’s cruiser to her eyes. She took her time studying the layout of his estate.
The place was all lit up now. Floodlights illuminated the perimeter fence. Sentries patrolled the property. She counted five men in long overcoats, each armed with a serious-looking firearm. Probably machine guns, both full-size and sub-gun. Plus, there were three more assholes who pulled in through the front gate and parked their Cadillac SUV in Streinikov’s garage. One of them was Sundance, so that had to be the crew who’d nearly aced her in the motel.
No dogs, though. She was glad about that. She didn’t want to kill any dogs.
Lights burned in the windows of the main house, a sprawling ranch whose interior she remembered from the tiled display on the TV monitor. She saw no activity inside, no silhouettes in the windows, no flicker of a computer screen or a TV set.
The greenhouse was a different story. It was a safe bet Streinikov was still in there. Other people came and went as if delivering updates or receiving orders. Other than Sundance, they were new to her. One of them must be a doctor. He carried a little black bag and looked scared.
All told, she counted eight people, plus the doc and the unseen Streinikov. There could be additional personnel in the greenhouse, but she didn’t think so. Eight was probably the head count. She thought of that old TV show, Eight Is Enough. It sure as hell was enough for her.
She hadn’t expected Streinikov to fortify his compound to quite this extent. The place had become a fortress under lockdown. Given that she’d lost her weapons stash, was wounded, and was up against greater odds then she’d anticipated, a saner person might well have had second thoughts right about now. But she was an all-in type of gal. She was committed.
She watched the strolling sentries long enough to conclude that they followed no regular pattern. They ambled along the fence, pausing to investigate any stray noise or just to take a leak. They were mainly interested in the two gates—the front gate, which opened onto a cul-de-sac, and the hillside gate, which led to the stairway she’d climbed from the pier.
She didn’t think they were expecting her. Actually she didn’t think they were expecting anyone. It was more like a show of force. With the alpha dog laid up and licking his wounds, the rest of the pack weren’t taking any chances.
Most of these Russian mob outfits were surprisingly small, limited to a trusted few, unlike the street armies mustered by the Italians and the Asians. There was a strong possibility that the eight guys she’d spotted were Streinikov’s entire crew, or at least his core
membership, the ones who mattered. If things worked out, she could shut down his entire operation tonight. If things didn’t work out, she was the one who would be shut down.
Funny how things came around. It had been a February night when she went into the farmhouse in Ohio in search of a man named Lucas Hatch, who’d killed her parents. The odds had been against her then, too. But she’d gotten it done. Maybe she would do it again.
The clock on the bedroom wall was showing 5:30. She had to go in before dawn.
She shrugged on the backpack. Her purse would be stashed in the Saturn—she didn’t need it weighing her down. Her hat? She almost left it off; if it got lost in the action, it might be used later to identify her. Oh, fuck it. She would wear the hat. What was the old saying—they died with their boots on? Well, she would die with her hat on. You know, if she died at all. It wasn’t a sure thing. She felt the need to remind herself of that.
“Okay,” she said to the Swansons’ empty house, “let’s put this pu-pu on a platter.”
As inspirational speeches went, it wasn’t exactly up there with “Win one for the Gipper,” but it did the trick.
She plucked Gura’s phone from her pocket and powered it on for the first time since she’d acquired it. In the list of recent calls, she found a contact labeled The Man. Had to be Streinikov. She hit redial.
This ought to be a fun conversation.
* * *
In the greenhouse, Streinikov lifted his ringing phone. The name on the caller ID screen was Gura.
“It’s her,” he said to Ilya. “Calling on Gura’s mobile.”
“Why the hell would she do that?”
“Suppose we find out.” Streinikov took the call, putting it on speaker. “Miss Parker. How nice to hear from you.”
“Yeah. Pleasure’s all yours. I heard some assholes shot up my house and my place of business a few hours ago.”
“What a shame. Your country is still very much the Wild West, nyet?” Streinikov switched to an app on his phone.
“It’s about to get a whole lot wilder. You’re gonna have a bad fucking day.”
“Am I?” He scrolled rapidly through a list of names.
“Way I look at it, you’re my whole problem. You go away, and my problem goes away, too.”
“It sounds most logical.” The app allowed him to pinpoint the location of any mobile phone used by one of his associates. He clicked on Gura’s name. “Though you forget that others will avenge my death.”
“You already told me you’re a lone wolf. The rest of the vory don’t give a wet fart about you. I’m guessing your closest compadres are hanging with you at your Neverland ranch right now. The others’ll have bigger things than me to worry about after their boss gets snuffed.”
“Colorfully expressed. I can find no flaw in your reasoning.” A map came up on the screen. A blinking bull’s-eye marked the phone’s whereabouts. It was close. “But sadly, you’ve lost your arsenal. You left it behind at the motel.”
“No biggie. I’m a resourceful gal.”
Streinikov zoomed in on the bull’s-eye. “You’ve acquired other weapons?”
“I got Cool Whip and Beefaroni.”
He didn’t know what this meant. “You’re injured, also. You’ve been winged, my poor Firebird.”
“Nah, your guy missed me.”
“You left a patch of blood.”
“That was chianti. I’m a sloppy drunk. So you want a preview of tonight’s action?”
“I listen with interest.”
“Long story short, I’m gonna go Batman on your ass. I’m busting in, and I’m gonna kill your whole crew, and then I’m gonna to kill you.”
“And just when may we expect the honor of your company?”
“Any time now.”
Streinikov smiled. “You’ve got a fucking pair on you, my friend.”
“Wish I could say the same, no-nuts.”
“Charming as always.”
“Let’s dance.”
Silence on the line. The call was over.
“Think she means it?” Ilya asked.
“Da. But she didn’t know I could find Gura’s phone. She’s at the Swanson place.”
Ilya turned to leave. “I’ll take Barsky and Lukin.”
He was at the door when Streinikov said, “Zdi.” Wait. “She’s smart, this girl. Yet she called to announce her intentions, when a sneak attack would be more effective. And she used a phone we could trace.”
“She didn’t know that.”
“Didn’t she?”
Ilya frowned. “Why give herself away?”
“Perhaps to lure some of our people out of the compound. Divide and conquer.”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s more than possible. It’s how our crafty Firebird thinks.”
“So we send no one?”
“One man. Just one, through the front gate. She’ll assume there are three or four soldiers in the car. She’ll be expecting our numbers inside the fence to be correspondingly reduced.”
“All right. I’ll send Barsky alone. And I’ll alert the patrols.”
He was gone. Streinikov stared after him, smiling. He had not expected Parker to go on the offensive. It was a wonderful stroke of luck. It would save him the trouble of hunting her down. She would die tonight, here on his property, and the whole matter would be settled.
Stupid, impetuous girl. She might have lived a few days longer, even a whole week, had she gone to ground.
37
Barsky was pissed off. He didn’t appreciate being used as a stinking decoy. All the action would be going down inside the compound, and here he was, driving out through the main gate in Streinikov’s customized Range Rover.
He’d given Ilya some lip about it, and Ilya had told him to shut up and follow orders. He didn’t much like that, either. Goddamn punk treated him with no respect. Ignorant chajnik hadn’t even heard of Bonnie and fuckin’ Clyde, for Christ’s sake.
It would all change when Barsky himself was Streinikov’s right-hand man. Oh yes, that was going to happen. For a long time now, he’d suspected that Ilya Kvint went both ways. Sure, he’d had his share of whores like everyone else, but Barsky had also caught him sneaking glances at pretty young boys. The only thing necessary was to catch him in the act of buggering one of them. Streinikov was a man of old-fashioned morals. He wouldn’t have a faggot as his aide-de-camp. And the way Barsky had it figured, he was next in line for the seat at the boss man’s elbow once Kvint was out of the picture.
It was a pleasant prospect, and it lifted a smile to his lips as he parked the Range Rover outside the Swanson place.
His job was to stay in the Rover for at least ten minutes. That would give the little blonde tyolka enough time to attempt to penetrate the perimeter of the estate. He’d been told very explicitly not to get out of the SUV, in case she was watching. She had to believe there was more than one man inside.
A sensible plan. Still, it rankled. His MP9 was tucked into a shoulder holster under his coat, ready for business. Thirty rounds in a box magazine. He’d dearly hoped to put several of those rounds into the American whore. Now someone else would get that pleasure. Kvint, probably.
Movement.
Barsky leaned forward. He’d glimpsed a flicker of shadow by the house’s side door. A slim figure slipping out.
Parker. On the move.
Barsky knew his instructions. But he also knew that if he could bag the girl on his own, he would gain favor in the big man’s eyes. And he’d have the satisfaction of unloading the MP9 into her body.
What the hell. He would do it. Fortune favored the bold, and all that happy shit.
The Rover’s ceiling bulb had long ago been disabled, so there was no telltale flash of light as he opened the door. He left the door ajar; shutting it would make noise. A fellow in Donetsk had made that mistake once, when coming for Barsky. That man was dead and Barsky was alive.
He unholstered the MP9 and moved quickly across t
he lawn to the side of the house. Tall arborvitae shrubs were arrayed along a wall of cedar shingles. The girl wasn’t in sight. She had been headed north, presumably intending to cut through the backyard as a shortcut to the cul-de-sac. He could catch up with her, gun her down from behind before she reached the street.
And take the head. Right. The boss wanted it for some reason. Well, he had a banana knife sheathed in the small of his back that would do the job. Messy, but he’d never minded getting his hands dirty. It was better than digging for potatoes in the dirt, which would have been his fate if he’d lived an honest life.
He ran lightly along the side of the house, ducking behind each bush in turn, his attention fixed on the darkness ahead. She couldn’t have gone far.
At his back, a rustle of leaves.
Barsky almost had time to pivot, and pain burst in the back of his neck, an electric flare of pain that shocked him into silence. It lasted less than a second.
Then it was gone, and so was he.
* * *
The medulla oblongata is a hub of the central nervous system, a meeting point for all vital nerve centers. It is located at the base of the skull and can be accessed by a small sharp blade angled upward with force. The blade of a paring knife from the Swansons’ kitchen, for instance.
Really, it was amazing, the stuff you learned by watching Spike TV.
Bonnie had jammed the blade into his neck and punched it home with the heel of her hand. The method wasn’t foolproof; the target was small, no bigger than a chestnut, and there was the risk of a finger twitch, a spray of shots from the sub-gun. But she’d gotten lucky. He’d dropped instantly, without so much as a gasp.
She pried the gun free of his hand and checked the magazine. Thirty rounds. Nice. She was already rebuilding her arsenal, one bad guy at a time.
She wasn’t worried about handling the weapon. She’d already pulled on the rubber gloves scavenged from the bathroom. And yeah, she’d wiped down all surfaces she’d touched in the Swanson house. If she lived through this thing, she would leave no prints for the bag-and-tag brigade.
Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3) Page 20