THE THOUSAND DOLLAR CONTRACT: Colt Ryder Is Back In His Most Explosive Adventure Yet!

by J. T. Brannan

  Unable to tense in time, Andrei’s arm bent in a loop, and I fed the punch-dagger – still held in his own hand – right into the big man’s neck, the point digging straight through the carotid artery.

  His eyes went wide and – with the last of his strength – he pushed me away as he fell to his knees, his other hand going to meet the first, helping it to pull the dagger free from his neck.

  It was the last thing he should have done, as the dagger was the only thing holding the blood in check; when the blade popped out, it was followed instantly by a huge geyser of blood from the carotid that spewed across the floor in a violent, crimson arc.

  And then his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed to the floor.

  There was no point checking him; the guy was dead before he hit the ground.

  I looked around at the carnage around me and sighed.

  Shit. Nine dead bodies down here, one upstairs.

  Which meant that there was nobody left to question.

  Chapter Seven

  There was another shower room off the foyer, and I decided to use it; I was covered in other people’s blood and who knew what else, and – with my open wounds from the bite and the knife – the risk of infection was uncomfortably high.

  I figured it was unlikely anyone else would show up in the five minutes it took me; after all, there had been no comings and goings throughout the duration of this ordeal. And if anyone did turn up, there were plenty of windows to jump out of. Still, I kept one of the Škorpions within arm’s reach at all times.

  When I’d scrubbed myself clean, I put my pants on – punch-dagger retrieved from the body, wiped off and put back in the belt buckle – along with my socks and boots, and went in search of a first aid kit.

  I found it in the reception area, through a double door from the lounge, and I immediately started to clean out the wounds with the strongest stuff I could find. The knife wounds to my gut and leg were fairly easy from a logistical perspective, but the bite to the back of my shoulder was much harder to reach. Still, I did what I could and then stitched up my stomach wound and bandaged my shoulder and leg.

  I returned to the lounge and put my shirt back on, slipping the handguns used by Pavel and his comrade into my belt and letting the shirt hang over them.

  Then I started to look around, careful not to step in any of the rapidly congealing pools of blood that spilled across the floor.

  Everyone might be dead, but that didn’t mean there weren’t clues to be found. Who knew, maybe I’d find the ubiquitous book of matches that you could only get from a certain nightclub, the clue that would lead me directly to Konstantin Kozlov? Hell, maybe it would even have a private cell number handwritten inside, just to top things off?

  Unfortunately, all I could find were cleaning products, massage oils, and a truckload of old magazines for clients to read while they were waiting. There were a few loose sheets of paper too, near where the guards had been originally, along with a DVD case for something that looked like Russian porn. There was Cyrillic script scrawled all over the paper, and I couldn’t make head or tails of it. Still, I pocketed the papers anyway; maybe I would bump into someone who could translate them for me.

  I guess I wasn’t much of a detective; that was why I liked questioning people directly instead, it didn’t require as much imagination.

  There was something that bothered me though, and I sat down in one of the easy chairs as I mulled it over.

  Wow, sitting down felt so good, I thought I might fall asleep if I stayed there for long, and so I got back up, stretching out my painful, battered body.

  And then I saw the DVD again, and realized that it was the case that was bothering me. Why was it there? I looked around the room again, but there were no DVD players, not even any TVs; and as I cast my memory back on my earlier tour of the building, I didn’t seem to remember seeing any anywhere else either. The computer at reception didn’t even have a DVD drive.

  So why was it here?

  I walked back over to the side table it was resting on and picked it up; I couldn’t read the Cyrillic script, but the scene on the cover seemed to depict some sort of dungeon-based bondage midget gangbang – real weirdo shit. I opened the case, saw the DVD still inside. A small label with the name of the rental store was stuck to the opposite side, some place called the Video Vault.

  I breathed out slowly. It was time to get out of there. I was run down – exhausted – and I needed to get some sleep. I decided to go back to my rented apartment, get something to eat, and then get my head down.

  The apartment was fully furnished, and even had a TV and DVD player; I’d look at that disc, either tonight or when I woke up. Something about it just didn’t fit in.

  I slipped it into the cargo pocket of my pants, then went round and picked up all the weapons I could find – I even retrieved the folding knife from the dead body upstairs – and stuffed them inside a gym bag that had held one of the men’s clothes. I gathered up their wallets and IDs too, and shoved them all inside the bag.

  I was almost ready to leave.

  But there was still one more thing left to do.

  I was back in my apartment just over an hour later; I’d taken the stolen car back across town but left it far enough away from where I was staying to avoid drawing attention to me.

  The sun was starting to come up as I looked out of my living room window, half expecting to be able to see the blaze that was raging back on Chestnut Street from the fire that I’d set.

  With so many chemicals and cleaning products to choose from – not to mention the age of the place, and how it must have been violating every fire code known to man – setting the fire had been easy, but even I was surprised by how quickly it took hold. I almost didn’t make it out of there myself.

  But the inferno would do a good job of covering my tracks, until I could make my next move.

  I called Gerry, who’d apparently only just left the police station; his kids were still there, being interviewed about what had happened that evening. I neglected to tell Gerry anything about my activities, but assured him that things were progressing, and reiterated my suggestion that – when they finally got free of the police – Joe and Mary should take an extended vacation, far away from Boston. I had a feeling that things were definitely going to get worse before they got better.

  I was about to turn in for the night – Kane was sensibly asleep already, curled up on the rug – but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I’d checked out that damn DVD.

  It probably wouldn’t be anything, I told myself – it probably was just some crazy midget porn – but still I found myself taking it out of the case and putting it in the player.

  I’d stocked the place with painkillers and first aid products, and cleaned my wounds again as the disc fired up, re-bandaging them as the normal piracy warnings were displayed on the TV screen.

  The movie started then, and I was disappointed – and pretty disgusted – to see that it was, in fact, exactly what it looked like on the box, only worse.

  I fast-forwarded it, but still the scenes continued; there were no secrets here. None that related to the Russian mafia anyway.

  I stopped the fast-forward, watched for a few painful seconds, but there was still nothing out of the ordinary. I was about to fast-forward again – perhaps there was something further on, footage of the Ovcharka performing some sort of gangland assassination perhaps – but my finger froze over the button.

  Damnit, there was something.

  It was a man’s voice, speaking over the moans, screams and general mayhem of the onscreen gangbang; but it was a voice that had been overlaid onto the DVD. It had taken me a few moments to realize at first, because the man was speaking Russian – but although I didn’t understand the words, it was clear that the voice had nothing to do with the movie. It was embedded in the movie, and I thought I knew what it was.

  Orders.

  With US intelligence so capable of intercepting electronic and
telephone communications nowadays, terrorists and criminal organizations had started to go back to old-school methods, hiding their messages in a wide variety of highly imaginative ways.

  I wondered if this was a standard operating procedure for this mafia group, if all their communications were handled this way. I wished I knew what the guy was saying, but I genuinely didn’t have a clue.

  I went to my room, and grabbed a digital voice recorder from my backpack. I went to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge, then settled down on the couch and sighed, realizing I was going to have to sit through the entire movie. I’d record all the parts where the man spoke, then figure out some way of having it translated.

  I started the movie from the beginning, staring up at the ceiling to avoid having to watch any of it, my finger paused on the ‘record’ button as I waited for the man to talk.

  I drank my beer, and tried to blank out the rest of the sounds.

  Eighty minutes later – those midgets had stamina, I’d give them that – the movie had finished, and I had about twelve minutes of voice-over recorded.

  I sat up, drained the last of my beer, and went to the DVD player, ejecting the disc and putting it back in its case.

  As I put it away, I checked the label again.

  The Video Vault.

  It gave a website address and a telephone number, but no physical address. I would have checked the website, but I didn’t have a computer. Or a telephone.

  But I moved off the couch and pulled out the yellow pages that was shoved in one of the kitchen drawers.

  I went back to the couch and looked it up. To my surprise, the place was listed. Even without the Russian mobster voiceover, how was this shit legal?

  The address it gave was somewhere in Jamaica Plain, about half an hour southwest of where I was staying in South Boston.

  Well, at least I knew what I would be doing in the morning. I’d try and find someone who could translate that recording – and maybe those papers too – and I’d take a trip over to Video Vault and see if I couldn’t rattle a few cages and see what shook loose.

  But first, I had to get to bed, or else I wouldn’t be capable of doing anything in the morning.

  But my eyes grew heavy before I could gather the energy to move, and I never made it to the bedroom; with the yellow pages draped over my chest, I fell asleep right there on the couch.

  Chapter Eight

  The leafy, tree-lined boulevards of Boston University – just seven miles from my apartment, a little west of Fenway Park – might have been a million miles away from Chelsea, and the area that surrounded Oksana’s Russian Steam Bath. It was a different world altogether, and one I’d not had much experience of. I’d graduated high school, but that was as far as I’d gone, academically; the rest of my education was in the military and – after that – on the streets.

  The building I was after was right next to an open plaza and a pretty church on Commonwealth Avenue, and as I strolled along the grass-bordered brick path to the main door, I noted the young people all around me, going about their business – school bags over their shoulders, smartphones in their hands, smiles on their faces as they laughed and joked with their friends on their way to class. There were serious ones too, and I supposed some of them would find the whole thing stressful, what with exams and coursework, and the constant pressure of being monitored, of having to live up to the expectations of their teachers, their parents. A tough life was all relative, I supposed. I wondered how they’d cope if they had to follow me around for a week, help me with my ‘business’? They’d appreciate their own lives one hell of a lot more, that was for sure. It would probably be good for them, if it didn’t break them completely.

  Apparently the Video Vault wasn’t open until one o’clock, and so I’d decided to see about getting that recording translated first. I’d only managed to get two or three hours sleep, but I was used to that – one of the main tasks of Ranger training is to prepare you for carrying out your mission even when dog-tired, to teach you how to keep on going even when you’ve got nothing left in the tank. Three hours of uninterrupted sleep was sheer luxury.

  I walked the route with Kane; I didn’t want to steal another car, especially in the daytime, and public transport wouldn’t have taken much less time. A taxi was also out of the question – I didn’t want anyone knowing where I was coming from, or where I was going to. Not that many cab drivers were fond of having huge dogs in their cars, anyway.

  But it was a nice morning for a stroll, and we were there in under an hour and a half; I even had a chance to stop for coffee and a bagel on the way.

  I paused at the door of the building which housed the department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature, which made up only a small part of the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. Apparently, Modern Foreign Languages were based on the sixth floor, and it was there that I hoped to speak with someone associated with the university’s Russian language program.

  The door opened as I got there, and two girls exited, chatting excitedly to one another and almost bumping into me.

  They looked surprised, and I thought they were going to apologize when they spotted Kane and became even more excitable.

  Without a word to me, they began cooing at him, ruffling the hair on his head and chest. He’s so adorable – Beautiful – Aww, he’s so sweet . . .

  He didn’t seem to mind one bit, and I left him in the girls’ adoring hands as I entered the building.

  That was the funny thing about Kane, he was a love him or hate him kind of a dog; some people were terrified of him, and would cross the road as soon as they saw him coming; others, on the other hand, thought he was the cutest animal they’d ever seen. Go figure.

  Inside the building, the foyer was small but extremely well-kept, and I checked the list of departments that was hanging up on the wall by the wide staircase.

  Sure enough, Modern Foreign Languages was there, on the sixth floor.

  I started climbing.

  ‘Do you have an appointment with Professor Cooper?’ the lady behind the reception desk asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said. Call me paranoid, but I didn’t like calling ahead. The chances of some random academic – probably from the other side of the country – having ties to local Russian gang bosses were probably as close to zero as it was likely to get. However, stranger things had happened, and I didn’t want an unfriendly welcoming committee waiting for me when I showed up.

  Besides which, I hadn’t known the names of any of the staff in this faculty, and had only selected Professor Christine Cooper’s name from a list next the reception desk itself. There were a couple of Russian names on the board, but I wanted to avoid those people if at all possible. The government couldn’t use racial profiling, but I didn’t have a problem with it; if one of these people was going to have links to the Russian mob, it was more likely to be a Russian. I chose Cooper over the only other non-Russian name on the list, Professor Harold P. Goodwin, because I thought I might be able to charm a woman into helping me easier than I could charm a man. I’d be more likely to threaten to guy into helping me, and that just didn’t seem right in a place like this.

  ‘You really need an appointment,’ the lady behind the desk said, looking sternly at me over the top of her horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘The semester has only just started, and the teachers here are extremely busy.’

  I pulled out a badge and showed it to her. It was a fake ID made by an old friend up in Detroit, and showed me to be a licensed private detective from New York, authorized by the New York State Division of Licensing Services. I’d toyed with the idea of a fake FBI badge, but that was too easy to check-up on; and FBI agents normally operated in pairs, whereas I always worked alone, and a single FBI agent might well arouse suspicion. Agents also wore suits to work, and I didn’t routinely carry one in the military rucksack that operated as my wardrobe.

  The badge – legitimate as it seemed – didn’t really allow me to work in Bo
ston, but I was hoping nobody would know that. New York was a big, important place with lots of crime, and working there seemed to make me okay in most people’s eyes, wherever I was in the country.

  ‘It’s a personal matter,’ I told the receptionist softly, so that the passing students wouldn’t hear me, as if I really did have a secret. ‘A discreet matter.’

  The woman stared at the badge for a moment, then back at me. ‘That’s a New York badge,’ she said.

  Shit. What were the chances that this woman was going to call me out on that?

  But then she continued. ‘Is this about Mark?’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. That was the other thing about New York – wherever you are in the country, somebody is always related to someone who lives there.

  I looked around nervously, as if uncomfortable answering the question. ‘Err . . . I can’t really tell you, I’m afraid. This is for Professor Cooper’s ears alone, it’s not the sort of thing she would want me talking about.’

  Give me an Oscar.

  The receptionist regarded me for a few more moments, then nodded her head. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay.’ She picked up her desk phone and called an internal number. ‘You’re lucky,’ she said as the phone rang, ‘she’s got five minutes before her next class.’

  Thank you, I mouthed as someone on the other end picked up. ‘I have someone here to see you,’ she said, ‘I told him you could spare him a couple of minutes before your next class.’ There was a pause as Cooper responded. ‘It’s . . . a private matter apparently. He’s a private detective,’ she whispered into the mouthpiece. There was another pause. Then, ‘Okay, I’ll send him in. Thanks.’

  She turned back to me and pointed down a corridor. ‘Take the first left down the hall, then her office is the second door on the right.’

  I smiled. ‘Thanks.’

  To my surprise, she smiled back.

  And then I was on my way, off down the hallway for a couple of minutes with Professor Christine Cooper.