Frostitute 3: The Finishing School: A Violent Tale of Supernatural Revenge

by Glen Frost

  "Yes ma'am," Anya replied without hesitation. If the woman was capable of doing what the general claimed she was, then many more lives were at risk if she were able to escape the prison and make it out into the world at large. A psychopath on the run with the power to make anybody do anything hardly bore thinking about.

  "Good." The Director got up from behind her desk and walked around to rest a hand on Anya's shoulder. "You'll have to go in alone and relatively unarmed, except for a maybe a pistol at most; something easily concealable. We can't dress you as a guard, because the other guards would know you weren't one. There's a better chance of success if we try to pass you off as a prisoner and hope that every guard can't recognize every prisoner…well, that and the fact that there aren’t any supposed to be any other female inmates at the ADX. Mr. Cromwell has taken the liberty of bringing along several jumpsuits in various sizes. We'll have you fitted out right away."

  "Makes sense," admitted Commander Wilson. "What's our backup plan?"

  "Plan B is the direct assault." From the sound of his voice, Fellon really didn't like the idea of that at all. "As we discussed, we'll have two companies' worth of special forces ready to deploy on choppers, standing by on five minutes' notice."

  "I will do my best to ensure that they are not required," Anya promised, though she wasn't at all sure that it was a promise she'd be able to keep.

  "Glad to hear it, Agent Kurlyenko." Gina placed additional stress on the word agent, emphasizing the fact that Anya was no longer a recruit trainee. She had graduated from The Finishing School with flying colors, baptized in the blood of six criminals. Now it was time for the big leagues. "Commander Wilson, go and help get Agent Kurlyenko get prepped. We have a Black Hawk on standby. I want her wheels-up in thirty minutes."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was a long helicopter flight from the back woods of Kentucky to the salt flats of Utah. Anya and Neil had plenty of time to come up with a game plan en route, poring over plans and schematics of the Supermax on a laptop screen.

  The obvious ways in or out were out of the question. They had to assume that Corporal Jovacs would have turned everybody who was still alive inside the facility onto her side, which meant that not only was there no such thing as a friendly face inside the Supermax, there were also more than enough sets of prying eyes to watch the ingress and egress points such as the main and side gates...not to mention the fact that there would be video cameras set up all over the place, a fact that the guy from the Bureau of Prisons had confirmed before they'd left.

  "Our best bet is to insert you into the main exercise yard after dark, by doing a low flyby. Then we'll make out that we're surveilling the prison from the Black Hawk. They'd never believe we'd be crazy enough to put somebody inside there."

  "The helicopter doesn't have to stop," Anya said. "My body can easily withstand a drop from thirty or forty feet. I will jump."

  Wilson winced at the very thought of it. "Glad you had your blood today."

  "I am sure that when I reach my objective, Commander, blood will be in plentiful supply."

  It was just starting to get dark when the UH-60 crossed the Utah state line, the sun dipping below the western horizon. This was no accident of timing. The human eye is least effective at picking out movement at both dawn and dusk, when it is neither completely dark or completely light. Soldiers knew this of old, which was why military field units made a point of standing to and preparing for an attack at those times.

  The pilot knew her shit, which was unsurprising when one considered that she was a member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the infamous "Night Stalkers." She looped the Black Hawk around in a long arc before banking tightly to approach the prison complex from the west, thereby guaranteeing that anybody watching from the Supermax would be partially blinded by the last rays of the setting sun.

  Anya craned her head to look forward, noticing that the lights across the complex were already burning brightly. Not far now. She looked down at her bright orange jumpsuit, which had the word INMATE emblazoned across the black in block capital letters. A pair of tennis shoes completed the ensemble. The jumpsuit she had chosen was just a couple of sizes too big, which had afforded her the luxury of carrying a concealed Smith & Wesson .45 and a couple of spare magazines in a waist holster, along with two backup .38 snub-nosed pistols, one holstered on each ankle. Each was loaded with six rounds, and she was unable to carry extra shells for either of them — once they were dry, they were dry. Those weapons, along with a set of ear plugs in her pocket, were the only things Anya was able to take in with her. She had asked for a master pass key of some sort that would allow her access into the various secure areas of the prison, but the B.O.P. man had explained that regretfully, all guard access was granted via biometric computer technology, and that there was no way to import her fingerprints into the database remotely.

  "Stand by. Stand by. Here we go," the pilot's voice crackled over her headset. She took the clamshell earphones off and hung the headset up on a hook in the roof. Wilson flung the door open wide, letting a stream of cold air come blasting into the cabin.

  There was a sudden lurch in the pit of the Navy SEAL's stomach as the Black Hawk's pilot suddenly dumped altitude, clearing the prison's outer walls. He caught a glimpse of rooftops beneath him, and then suddenly it was clear, bare dirt, broken only by the occasional dim outline of a dead body.

  Anya was bracing herself in the open doorway, forming an ‘X’ shape with her hands and feet planted firmly in the four corners of the opening. With her headset off, there was only one way for Wilson to communicate with her; he gave her a hard kick in the ass with one of his combat boots.

  In a flash she was gone, disappearing into the twilight’s deep purple near-darkness. The UH-60 never broke stride, roaring across the exercise ground at just thirty feet above the deck, the wash of its rotor blades kicking up dust, sand, and grit, swirling it up into the air in a vortex. Wilson grabbed on for dear life as the helo gained height all of a sudden, its nose coming up to help it clear the far wall of the yard. The pilot skillfully brought it into a hover sixty feet above the main gate. Going through with his part of the masquerade, the SEAL commander switched on a high-power box light and began to play the beam into several of the windows as though searching for signs of life.

  A stellate flash of light from within one of the open windows was followed a fraction of a second later by the chatter of automatic weapons fire. Two rounds slammed into the Black Hawk's fuselage, spalling up metal fragments and flashing sparks. Taking that as her cue to leave, the pilot pitched the nose forward, pulled back on the collective, and sent the chopper racing away from the unseen shooter.

  "Good luck, Anya," Wilson said under his breath, meaning every word of it. His protege was sure as hell going to need it.

  Anya hit the ground hard from thirty feet up. Despite the fact that her knees were bent, the force of impact still sent shockwaves thudding up her legs and into her spine. A living human being would almost certainly have suffered heel, ankle, and femur fractures, but for a revenant body, falling from from three stories up was little more than a minor inconvenience.

  Tempting as it was to leap up and make a dash for the nearest place of concealment, Anya knew that it would have been bad tactics. Sometimes the best camouflage of all was hiding in plain sight, and so she simply lay there dead still, spread-eagled face down, hoping that she would blend in with the other inmate corpses that she knew also littered the exercise yard.

  She didn't know exactly how much time had passed, but Anya was able to count to a thousand without anybody coming out to check on her. She figured that it was finally safe for her to move. Slowly and cautiously, Anya raised her head. Other than the indistinct humps of dead bodies that surrounded her, the exercise yard was completely empty.

  The first stars were beginning to come out in the cloudless sky above. The quarter moon should offer some light too, but according to the data they'd pulled up on the f
light in, it wouldn't be up for another two hours or so. She wanted to be gone long before then.

  Anya spotted three doorways from her vantage point. Two were closed. One was ajar. Putting her head back down low, she angled her body in the direction of the open door and began to crawl. She was impatient, feeling hopelessly exposed and vulnerable out here in the middle of the exercise yard, and yet managed to discipline herself to move with a glacial slowness that was almost painful to bear. Hopefully, anybody that was looking down into the yard wouldn't notice that one of the dead inmates was actually moving, inch by inch, toward a nearby doorway. Even if they were using thermal or infrared cameras, Anya's body was every bit as cold as that of any other corpse and wound not give off a telltale heat bloom.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Anya finally reached the door. She quickened her pace ever so slightly, slithering inside into a brightly-lit corridor. Not bothering to close the door behind her, she got to her feet and dusted herself off, removing as much of the dirt from the exercise yard as she could manage.

  There were no signs of markings visible in the corridor to indicate either its direction or purpose. Basically a coin-toss then. With a shrug, she turned to her left and began walking. Although she had a pretty good idea of the prison facility's layout burned into her brain, it was only of limited use until she knew where Jovacs was hiding out. For all Anya knew, her target could be kicking back in the warden's office or holding court in the dining hall.

  Rather than make any attempts at being covert, Anya had decided that once she was inside the Supermax, she'd be better off trying to brazen it out instead of attempting to play it sneaky-beaky. She forced herself to walk casually, adding what she hoped was just the right amount of swagger into her step.

  The prison hallways were eerily quiet. The monotony of seemingly endless corridors full of locked doors was broken only by the occasional turn and corner.

  After a while, noises came from somewhere up ahead, what sounded like footsteps and something else...she couldn't be sure, but it seemed like the low, mechanical growl of some kind of motor. Anya slowed her pace, making an effort to walk more quietly. She finally came to a much bigger open space. The lights were out, but from the rows of empty tables and stacked chairs it seemed a fair bet that this was the prison dining hall, which also tracked with what she remembered of the facility’s layout from her study of the floor plans.

  She moved forward a few steps. Only then did she realize that there was a foot sticking out from underneath one of the tables. Anya crouched to look underneath, seeing the huddling figure of a prison guard hiding there.

  The face that stared back at her was terrified, a mask of horror. Raising one trembling hand up to his mouth, the corrections officer extended his pointer finger in the universal signal for ssshhh.

  "What is your name?" Anya whispered.

  "My name's Steve...Steve Barnard. Please be quiet!" the guard hissed, "If he hears us, he'll kill us."

  "Who will kill us?"

  As if in answer to her question, the rumbling noise that was coming from the shadows at the far end of the room suddenly kicked up in intensity, becoming the throaty roar of a device that Anya had heard before...

  ...a chainsaw.

  "Here, piggy piggy piggy."

  Advancing out of the darkness was a huge man, at least six and a half feet high and a good three hundred pounds if she was any judge. With an unruly mop of straggly blond hair, he looked like the bastard love child of King Henry VIII and a pro wrestler.

  "No!" Barnard whispered, horrified. "You've led him right to me, you dumb fucking bitch!"

  "Oh officer, officer, come out and play." The inmate revved his chainsaw harder, throttling it up and then letting it slacken off again. He caught sight of Anya and stopped dead in his tracks. His voice was surprisingly girlish and high-pitched, yet somehow managed to be full of menace at the same time. "And who might you be?"

  "Just a prisoner, like you," Anya shrugged, never taking her eyes off the whirling saw-toothed blade.

  "Just a prisoner, like me," the man echoed softly, difficult to hear over the chain saw's motor. "Somehow I doubt that."

  "Doubt that I'm a prisoner, or doubt that I'm like you?"

  "Well, aren't you just Little Miss Smarty Britches?" His eyes narrowed. "Are you making fun of me?"

  "Not at all. I do not even know you, and I certainly don't want any trouble." She held up her hands in an effort to placate the man, but now that he had closed to within twenty feet or so, one look into his ferret-like eyes told her that he was stark, raving mad.

  "It's a little too late for that, I'm afraid. My name is Sean Rice. Have you heard of me?" When Anya shook her head, the prisoner suddenly became angry. "Don't you read the papers or watch TV, you fucking moron? Everyone knows me! I'm the California Cutter! Killed fourteen people before they caught me and locked me up in this shithole. Fourteen! Carved 'em all up nice and pretty with my trusty Stihl chainsaw. Never thought I'd ever get my hands on one again, but the new boss...well, let's just say she's got some new ideas about how to run this place."

  "Who is the new boss?" Anya asked politely, knowing the answer perfectly well already, before asking the question she really wanted answered: "And where can I find her to show my respect?"

  "She's in the warden's office. It's not like she doesn't have the right. She’s the warden now. But sorry to say, you're not going to get to meet her."

  "Is that right?" Anya kept her tone of voice polite, but Rice was walking slowly toward her, the still-running saw held diagonally in front of his chest.

  "That is right, missy. You see, I'm playing me a little game of hide and seek. I'm out hunting me some little piggies. There's one of them in here. I can smell him. But first, I'm going to cut me up a little prison pussy."

  Rice jerked hard on the chain saw's trigger again, revving the motor to maximum capacity and sending a cloud of acrid white smoke pluming into the air. The jagged blade was nothing more than a blur streaming across the face of the metal bar as the self-styled California Cutter lunged toward her, sweeping the chain saw downward and out straight toward Anya; she side-stepped easily, presenting Rice with empty air where his target had been standing just a fraction of a second before. He stumbled, caught off-guard and off-balance, the weight of the chain saw pulling him forward. His legs went out from under him and the prisoner fell straight toward the plastic dining table, which broke in half under the remorseless assault of the saw blade.

  Still cowering underneath the table, Officer Barnard never knew what hit him. Fifteen pounds of chain saw and three hundred pounds of convict came straight down on top of him. The whirring blade tore through skull, brain matter, and soft tissue as though they weren't even there, bisecting Barnard's head and ripping his neck in half. The remnants of his head flopped down on top of each shoulder. Barnard's body began to thrash and spasm as a good third of his arterial blood supply pissed from his open neck wound.

  Although a large segment of the bar was embedded in the guard's now-headless torso, an eight-inch segment was still exposed. Rice's finger was still clamped hard around the trigger. The murderer took all eight inches of bar square in the face. His nose disappeared in a blizzard of blood and whirring steel. Screaming, he finally released his grip on the saw's handle, allowing the blade to spool down. Bright red blood gushed from a ragged hole ripped in the front of his face, pouring through shredded lips and glistening nasal bone. One eye was gone, reduced to a mess of pulp and goo, but at least the other was spared. Blinking sudden tears out of the single surviving eye, he watched in shock as Anya grabbed his bright orange jumpsuit and flipped him over onto his back, allowing the chain saw to fall to the floor — along with half his face.

  "You should have played nice," Anya admonished him, amused that the so-called 'California Cutter' was now California-cut. Acting on impulse, she decided to extend him a little mercy. Reaching out to grasp the sides of his head, she ignored Rice's keening wail of pain and twisted
with full force, snapping his cervical spine with a resounding crack. The body jerked once and went limp. She let it fall on top of his final victim, sorry that she hadn't been able to help Officer Barnard but equally determined to shed no tears for a piece of shit like this.

  Squatting down, Anya reached two fingers into the remains of Rice's face and scooped up a dollop of blood. Carefully, she daubed a vertical red stripe down her left eye, running from just above the eyebrow to below the bottom lash. Then she repeated the process on the right side. Anya imagined that she looked like a ghoulish clown of some kind, but the gesture served a dual purpose. Not only could she feel the strength-giving blood soaking into her skin and sending fresh energy coursing through her body, the blood stripes also sent out a very clear message: This was no harmless victim. This was an alpha predator.

  The gunshots took her completely by surprise

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Three bright flashes lit up the dining hall in rapid succession, followed a fraction of a second later by three thunderous booms. A bullet tore into Anya's left shoulder, drilling a neat 9mm-sized hole in the flesh and burying itself in the soft tissue.

  Acting purely on instinct, she dived for cover behind one of the dining tables, rolling over the smooth plastic surface and dragging it down on top of her when she hit the floor. No, Anya corrected herself, not cover — concealment. There was a difference, as Commander Wilson had taken great pains to point out to her; concealment hid you from the enemy's sight, to a certain degree, but cover actually stopped bullets. Huge difference. A plastic table wasn't going to stop shit, but coupled with the darkness of the room it would at least make her unknown assailant's life a little harder. She angled the table slowly toward her left, the direction from which the bullets had come, and waited.