Was that how the animal had tracked them here? By sense of smell?
If so, there was really no place to hide from it.
A concussion rocked the room as the door burst inward along its hinges. With a percussive blast the thick metal door shot at her and bounced off the wall only inches away from where she sat. It clanged to the floor and skipped once to rest on a metal desk. Pulsing red light flashed behind a dark silhouette that filled the doorway, outlining it like a demon cutout. A smell rushed into the room like a suffusing spirit—the odor of wet fur and blood.
She fought the urge to scream.
It snarled, low and guttural, like an angry earthquake.
Sveta closed her eyes to block out the horror. There was no shame in fear. She waited, listening to the slavering growl build in intensity. Her body began to shake as it howled again. With her hands chained, it was impossible to block the sound. It was so painful that she imagined blood pouring from her ears.
Suddenly angry and defiant, she opened her eyes.
The beast was gone.
*****
“I need to speak to the Instructor,” Hauck said into his secure phone.
He loosened his top collar button and walked to one of the thirty-three original paintings of Detroit that hung on his walls. This one was of a dark alley somewhere near the Institute of Arts, he suspected. How peculiar that the artist left the canvas unsigned. But that was what Hauck enjoyed most about the work. It was a stark masterpiece, painted by an artist with no need of recognition.
The apartment had checked clean. Team Two had run through every square inch of the place. The walls were covered with lanthanum doped ceramics particles that defeated any attempt to eavesdrop on his conversations and obscured the room from sophisticated thermal imaging scans. Random pinpoints of the same material coated the window as well, to prevent anyone from monitoring glass vibrations. He was an extraordinarily careful man when it came to security. With today’s espionage technology, a great deal more of a modern spy’s life was spent looking at computers than at people. Although Hauck connected his organization with them, he never lost sight of the need to build a network of informants. He stayed alive by knowing people, not by surfing keyboards.
He punched in the requisite security codes, gone through the switches and electronic security gates to reach the Instructor, and was now talking to a woman with a French accent.
“He is busy.”
“And so am I, Madame. Tell him this is the Magician. I’ll call back in five minutes. If he’s too busy to take the call, I’ll give the money to someone else.”
She started to say something, but he depressed the “off” button.
Gatekeeper, he thought, and wondered what she looked like.
He was in a loft apartment at the edge of Detroit. Three stories tall with only four neighbors in the bottom two floors. Hauck occupied the entire upper floor of the building. He came and went as he wished using the cover of an environmental photojournalist. In Detroit, the city was simply glad to have tenants. As it was in so many of the world’s major cities, not many questions were asked when a potential buyer showed up with money.
Five minutes were up. Hauck punched in the number again. He went through the electronic identification sequence and got the gatekeeper again.
“He will speak to you.”
“Thank you.”
“But not at this number.”
“Tell him it’s urgent.”
“He says to convey to you, monsieur, that he received an earlier call from an elderly woman who would very much like him to kill you.”
“Put him on now, please.”
“The minimum is five million.”
“I will only discuss money with him.”
“Then this is good night.”
The phone went dead.
Hauck removed his Bulgarian-made Pelitza 9 millimeter from inside his coat just to feel its weight in his hands. Depending on what she looked like, Hauck wondered how it would feel to shoot the gatekeeper. Not good enough, he decided, to risk pissing off the Instructor.
Night tightened its bitter noose about the barren streets of Detroit.
Hauck put the pistol away and waited.
Fifteen minutes passed.
He punched in the number again, went through the secure switching, and waited til her voice came on the line again.
“I need to speak with him.”
“It is your lucky night.”
“Thank you, Madame.”
Patience, Hauck reminded himself.
A full minute passed before the Instructor’s gruff voice barked in his ear.
“The fuck you bothering me for? I’m retired, I told you.”
“Will you come?”
“Five million.”
“You will pay me when you see the target.”
“Is that so? I don’t pay nobody nothing. You out of your fucking mind? I don’t pay nobody nothing. You call me in the middle of the night while I’m banging the missus to tell me I’ll pay you?”
Ten seconds passed as Hauck considered how honest to be. He needed this man desperately. The regular teams were professionals, well trained and seasoned in their line of work, but Hauck now realized that Drogol and his beast were beyond anything they could be trained to confront.
“I think you’re the only man alive who can take it out.”
Pause from the other end of the line.
“It? What are we talking about here?”
With a now steady hand, Hauck poured himself a whiskey neat, lifted the glass, and sipped its warmth.
“The challenge of a lifetime, monsieur.”
“Don’t give me that French bullshit. Think it impresses me? Don’t dick me around. Just because I taught you don’t mean you can waste my time. You know what I mean. I’m a busy guy. I’m old and I want to get laid right up to the last minute. So what have you got?”
“One million dollars for you just to watch the video I am about to transmit to you.”
“You’re a whack job, but send the money before the picture shit. I’m not promising anything. I got to get back to the wife.”
Hauck idled over to one of his computer keyboards and pressed the enter key to begin transmission of the digitally converted file. It was from his stolen copy of the video taken so many years ago at the prison. He would wire the money after the Instructor accepted the job.
“I’d watch the video first. You might find it better than sex.”
“Dream on, Pancho. Give me another hour and I’ll take a look.”
While pocketing his phone, Hauck noticed that one of this cuffs was not buttoned.
The trouble with disguising yourself to look like an average American, he thought, was that you so seldom had the opportunity to wear cufflinks.
Chapter Nine
Sveta shook so hard she almost collapsed with relief.
She was alive.
Sweat slicked her wrists. In a frantic spasm she yanked hard, narrowing her hands to try to slide free. She pulled again. Links of chains clinked taught, but did not give. Again. Her wrists chaffed and bled but she could not break free. She was a trained soldier with all of the skills to fight back, but she could not escape from her manacles. It was her nightmare. All her training did nothing for her in that moment.
She was vulnerable, and it drove her to a fury.
Like a contortionist she twisted her body this way and back, pulling and yanking futilely. She needed a key, but her guard was no doubt dead.
A horrifying thought rushed into her mind. What if everyone was dead and the beast left? How long would it be before anyone came for her? She could die here, chained to a wall in a Mafiya warehouse. The thought filled her with despair and anger. Her mother would never know what happened to her.
An angry roar brought her back to reality. The beast was still loose in the building. It may have sensed that she could not escape and felt no need to kill her right at that moment. But it would be back.
&nbs
p; When it was hungry.
Silence settled in. Sveta strained her ear, but could hear nothing. The pulsating red emergency lights continued to flash in the attenuated darkness, but a sudden unease filled her. Moments passed like the silent, inexorable descent of a crushing weight. What was happening?
Then came the footsteps. Heavy, evenly measured, like an executioner walking towards a gallows.
Someone was coming.
Sveta wanted to call out, to warn them, but fear clamped her throat like an urgent warning. Who? Who was coming?
Was that why she could not hear the beast? Was it lying in wait for this person, ready to lash out and kill whoever them?
She made her decision. Whoever was coming, at least they were human. Maybe, just maybe they could find they keys and set her free so she would have a fighting chance.
“Be careful,” she shouted. “There’s a wild animal loose in the hallways. Help me. I’m chained in her and need to get loose. Find the keys. Please. But if you don’t have a gun don’t take any chances. It’s dangerous.”
The footsteps came closer, but there was no answer.
Sveta didn’t like the feeling that coursed through her body.
She lost control, shook her chains and shouted out, “I need a gun. Somebody get me a gun.”
And then she hung from her chains, limp from the effort, exhausted. She stared at the floor, seeing the red lights strobe across it like warning lights. Emergency. Emergency. Danger.
The footsteps stopped at the door to her room. For a moment, she was too tired, too filled with hopelessness to look up. Then she heard a rough voice, exhausted and haggard.
“I have come for you.”
She raised her head and saw a tall, dark silhouette where a short time before she had seen that of the beast.
*****
Sveta recoiled and pressed her back against the wall.
“Who are you?”
She instinctively knew his name, but she realized that was not enough. He had to say it himself.
“Drogol. I have keys,” he said, and walked toward her.
It was true. His voice was deep and heavily accented. For a moment she wondered how he had gotten past the beast. Her nerves were overloaded. She felt balanced at the edge of her sanity. Chained to a wall and terrorized by a beast. No weapon. No way to escape or defend herself. What kind of soldier was she if she could not fight?
“I found them on the floor next to what was left of your guard.”
The room grew smaller as he approached. She felt her breath catch.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said.
His eyes were a soft luminous green in the darkness, but she could already see that he was not as old as Hauck said. Sveta felt her heart pounding with fear at the unexpected sight of the man. He stepped close to her, and with a fluid motion like a conjurer producing a spray of flowers, he held the guard’s keys in front of her eyes. She felt the first hope she had felt since being chained like an animal.
“Hold out your hands,” he said. “Obey me, or I will leave you here.”
She hesitated.
“We have to find the girl before it is too late,” he hissed. “She is in danger, I feel it.”
Sveta thrust her hands forward. The metal bands fell away as he twisted the key in their locks. She touched a hand to her blood-slicked, swollen left wrist and had to bite back a yelp. The strobing red light flashing through the darkness disoriented her.
Drogol squatted down and began to remove her ankle irons. She considered how a blow to the back of the head would take him out. She had trained all of her adult life for such attacks, and her chance to regain control of her situation was right that second. But she did nothing. This man held more than the key to her restraints. He held the answers to what was really going on. Sveta wanted that information very badly.
When he straightened up, he towered above her. He stood close. More than was comfortable; as though he had no sense of personal boundaries. But it was more than that. He exuded a sense of magnetic power. Sveta wondered at the fact of it. Moments ago she had considered killing him. Now, for some reason she couldn’t explain, she did not think that it would have been enough to stop him.
“Where did they take her?” he asked.
His voice was thick with power. She saw before her a man who, even in the midst of this mindless terror, was completely in control of himself.
“Who?”
“The girl. Zoe. Where did they take her?”
“I don’t know.”
“She has little time,” he said angrily. “I feel it.”
For a moment, she hesitated again. Could it be Drogol who attacked and injured her? No. If Drogol had attacked Zoe, Sveta knew that the girl would be dead. No, that couldn’t be. Zoe had said that Drogol sent her.
“I don’t know. They took me away before I saw what happened to her. I asked for a doctor. She was wounded. Bleeding.”
Even in the red-black darkness, Sveta could see his expression harden.
“Follow me. I will find her. I must find her.”
He turned heel imperiously and strode away.
Sveta struggled to keep up. Her ankles were swollen and sore, but as painful as that was, she was yet more conscious of the scent of blood and death around her. The smell of the thing was everywhere like a fog of musk. It was so strong Sveta worried whatever animal it was that left body parts ripped and torn and thrown everywhere was still lurking about, watching them, waiting to attack and devour her. Yet she hurried to keep up with Drogol, because it seemed to be his beast.
“I have come for you,” he had told her earlier.
And indeed he had.
“The animal,” she called after Drogol, “what is it?”
“Stay very close to me,” he said without so much as looking over his shoulder.
Sveta hurried to catch up.
*****
They moved down the dark halls quickly, Drogol stopping to listen and sniff the air at each corner they turned. At the third corner, Sveta saw a bearded head lying against a stack of files. Dark fluid pooled away from it. The blood odor mixed with the nearly overpowering stench of the beast; she held her collar in front of her face to screen out some of the smell.
“This way,” he said.
Sveta wondered how he knew where he was going, but then she saw him stop once, sniff the air, and then press on with still longer, quicker steps than before. The idea that Drogol was tracking Zoe the way that a bloodhound tracked its quarry terrified her.
“Down this hall, quickly. Stay close to me.”
When he stopped suddenly before a closed door marked “Maintenance Supplies,” she almost collided with his back.
With his tilted slightly toward the ceiling, he was sniffing the air, inhaling long moments of it as though sifting through its aromas.
“What is it?” she asked.
He grabbed the doorknob, twisted it, and pushed the door open. Zoe lay crumpled on the floor near a broom and pail of mop water. Her skin was pallid gray-white. Sveta moved into the room, pushing Drogol aside, and dropped to her knees.
“Bastards,” she said. “I asked for a doctor. I told them she was wounded. I hope they burn in Hell.”
No pulse throbbed beneath her fingertips as she held them lightly against the side of Zoe’s neck. Sveta bit her lip, holding back the desire to scream. Another death. Another incomprehensible event in an irrational night. She looked up at Drogol and shook her head.
“She’s gone.”
Even in the muted red darkness she could feel the anger radiating from him. What had this young woman been to him? Granddaughter? Friend? Protector?
“Move aside,” he said.
His voice was strong, authoritative.
“I told you, she’s dead,” Sveta said.
“She is not yet gone.”
Sveta backed away to let him see for himself.
“We have to leave. These men who left her here may be dead but others will return.”
“Let them,” he said as he sat down cross-legged and placed the dead woman’s head in his lap.
“I’m sorry for your grief, but you don’t understand. These men, they are Red Mafiya. Even your beast will not be able to stand up against them. They have many men and as many guns as they need. If that’s not enough, they’ll bring more. If they find us here, they will kill us.”
Drogol’s rough long hair swung to one side as he cupped Zoe’s head in his hands, then bent down to kiss her forehead. Sveta thought she saw a faint glistening track move down his cheek, as though he were crying. He began to rock back and forth, then side to side.
“She’s dead—we must leave the dead behind us or we will join them,” she said.
Softly, and then in a rising crescendo that coursed with power, he began to chant in an old Russian dialect that Sveta didn’t understand. As he sang them, she felt a shiver shake her spine. A word here and there was clear and had not changed over the years. He drew out the word God as though it were an entreaty.
There was no time. She had to at least find a weapon.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
Drogol continued to chant as though he had not heard her. The small room was closing in around here, as though his chants were stealing the air. She saw the light in Drogol’s eyes grow brighter, but looked away, knowing that it was an illusion brought about by stress and lack of sleep. She had to get away.
Without another word, she turned and left.
Sveta searched the hallways until she found what she was looking for, its shoulder strap wrapped around a dead man’s arm. It was all there was of him, and she wondered for just a moment if it was his head that she had seen earlier. Although she’d seen worse in combat, there was something about this whole night that was too much for her nerves. Hauck. Drogol. The beast.
That was when it hit her. Hauck would somehow learn of the warehouse carnage. He would be on his way when he got word of it. Maybe he was already coming.
Without another thought, she unwound the bloody strap, then tossed the arm down the hall. She didn’t like the blood. Blood drew carnivores. And what had torn through the warehouse was definitely a meat eater.
Every separate hallway had an emergency light. She moved to the nearest to inspect the AK she’d retrieved. More by feel than sight she looked for damage and found none. The magazine was more than half full. Whoever the gun’s former owner was hadn’t the time to get off a full clip from a weapon on full-auto.
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