The Equalizer

by Michael Sloan

  He smelled fuel leaking.

  One spark would do it.

  He looked down at his trapped left leg. It was almost free of the bent steering wheel. He put both hands onto the seat and heaved again.

  His leg came free.

  Pain immediately shot through it. McCall started taking deep breaths to help absorb it. There was no way for him to climb into the back. It was too mangled. The Kedr submachine gun lay on the passenger-seat floor. He leaned down and scooped it up. He pulled himself through the jagged space where the driver’s door had been. He fell onto the ground. It was cold. Vestiges of snow clung to it. He pulled himself up and leaned against the wreckage for just a moment.

  Listening hard.

  Now he heard the sounds of pursuit through the forest. A truck engine. Some crashing through the undergrowth. Muffled shouts. They were all pretty far away to the west.

  McCall set down the submachine gun and staggered to the back of the jeep. He was afraid of what he was going to see. But Serena was still below the seats where she’d wedged herself before the back window had been blown out. There was a shroud of glass over her. She was moaning softly now, moving a little, trying to pull herself up. Unlike him, she didn’t seem to be trapped by any of the protruding wreckage, but she couldn’t get out on her own. She didn’t have the strength.

  McCall reached down and caught her fluttering left hand. He pulled her up … slowly, so slowly.…

  And then the direction of the pursuit changed.

  It was coming closer.

  McCall put his left hand under her right shoulder and heaved up.

  She came up into his arms with a cry and no farther.

  Her foot was trapped by the crushed front seat.

  McCall leaned farther down while she lay awkwardly across the mangled backseat. He found her foot. It was bloody and twisted in the wreckage. Gently he turned it one way. She gasped, but stifled her cry. He turned it the other way. It gave a little. He turned it a little more and heaved up.

  Nothing doing.

  The sounds of pursuit were closer.

  McCall tried again.

  One last heave.

  Her foot came away.

  He straightened, caught her body, and lifted her out of the wreckage. Both of them stumbled and fell heavily to the sodden ground. They lay there gasping in deep breaths of the frigid night air. McCall pulled himself to his knees beside her and ran his hands over her arms and legs. No broken bones. He felt her ribs on both sides. He didn’t find any breaks. Her sides were swollen; there might be internal bleeding, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  She turned her head and looked up at him.

  There was fire in her eyes.

  “I’m all right.”

  McCall got up, grabbed her hand, and pulled her to her feet. She swayed, but stayed on them.

  There was more muffled shouting from their left.

  Much closer.

  “Can you walk?” McCall asked her.

  “I’ll have to.”

  “I can carry you.”

  “I can walk.”

  She shivered violently. He picked up the Kedr submachine gun, thrust it into one of the big pockets in Gredenko’s overcoat, took it off, and put it around her.

  “It’ll be a little heavy with the sub in it.”

  She nodded. That’s okay. The bottom of the coat dragged on the ground. He put an arm around her shoulders. They ran toward the shelter of the trees.

  They got twenty yards.

  Behind them the UAZ exploded in a fiery rage.

  The blast knocked them both to the ground.

  Heat blazed across the back of McCall’s head. There were fiery cinders tossed into the air along with the drifting snow. Some of them sprayed through Serena’s hair. McCall rubbed them out and dragged her up to her feet.

  She was shaking.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  He took hold of her hand.

  That explosion will bring them right to us, he thought.

  They ran into the trees. Moonlight speared down through the branches, some of it reaching the forest floor. There was enough radiance to see where they were going—just. The ground was treacherous, covered with a layer of snow that disguised the tangles of vines and protruding rocks. They continuously stumbled, McCall holding Serena up. A light snow began to fall again, big heavy flakes lazily swirling among the trees, heading with no urgency toward the ground. The muted shouts had diminished, but McCall knew that was illusionary. The wind had risen, blowing the fat snowflakes around, soughing through the closely packed trees. It was masking the sounds of pursuit.

  “I heard a chopper,” Serena said, her voice coming out in fitful gasps as they continued to navigate between the dark sentinels.

  “That was our extraction. It got hit.”

  “So it’s not going to pick us up?”

  “Granny will be lucky if he can land it somewhere safe. It won’t be here, even if he found another clearing in the forest. He might not be able to take off again.”

  “Leave no one behind,” she said.

  “He had his orders. Besides, Granny’s a pragmatist. Two agents trapped on the ground, that’s bad. Stranding four of them, that’s worse.”

  They moved on, McCall never taking his arm from around her shoulders. She was limping badly on her right foot. Both her feet were bloody, but the constant stepping into the snow was washing the blood away each time. Their breath came in plumes. They didn’t speak for several minutes. The running took too much out of both of them.

  “You call him Granny?” she finally asked.

  “Nickname. He wears these square-cut granny glasses at all times. I’m not sure if they’re necessary for his eyesight or just a prop.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “No one uses it. He’s a good operative. If there’d been a way for him to land and pick us up, he would have.”

  “Is he Company or a mercenary for hire?”

  “Company. Used to be a mercenary. He’s out of the equation. We’re on our own.”

  “I’m just talking because I’m scared and I haven’t heard the sound of my own voice in so long. It sounds weird. Like it’s not really me talking.”

  “How long did they keep you in solitary?”

  “I don’t know. I lost track of time. Maybe a year. Maybe longer. What’s your name? Or do you have some kind of a funky nickname, too?”

  “Robert McCall.”

  “You look exactly like the description of Arbon.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Where are we heading?”

  “The nearest town to that abandoned automobile factory is thirty miles away. Not in the direction we’re going. It doesn’t matter. We’d never make it there.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Away from the Soviet army.”

  “They’ll send tracker dogs after us.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  She stumbled hard and fell. McCall couldn’t stop her. He knelt down beside her.

  “Thirty seconds to rest,” she gasped. “Please.”

  McCall nodded and turned around.

  He could hear the roar of the jeep burning, but he couldn’t see the glow of the conflagration through the trees. They were too tightly packed together. He couldn’t hear any of the telltale sounds of pursuit now, but that didn’t mean there weren’t soldiers in the woods coming toward them. It meant the ground here was thicker with snow and the wind was loud and fierce.

  “Why won’t they send out tracker dogs?” Serena asked.

  “Because this is an army unit. They’re not trained for search and destroy. They were little better than a security detail. They weren’t expecting trouble. Their General Palkovnik is dead. There might be a premier/major who’s now in command, but he’ll be completely disoriented. He can’t seal off all the forest roads. He can put soldiers at one end of the main road, at the abandoned factory, and more at thousand-yard
intervals, but that’s shotgunning. He has no idea where we’re going to run.”

  “That’s because we have no idea.”

  McCall looked back at her and smiled. She was feisty. Even with all the torment and abuse she’d taken, even with the months of darkness and isolation, there was a spirit there that couldn’t be broken.

  “There’s that,” McCall said. “All the premier/major now in charge can do is send his men into the woods in various directions. That jeep explosion brought them close to us. There are no roads near us. He’ll have his troops converge on this area.” He offered his hand and pulled her back to her feet. “But we’ll be long gone.”

  He winced a little and rubbed his shoulder.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “Bullet just grazed the top. The bleeding’s stopped. I’m fine. We have to move on.”

  “We could make a stand. How many rounds are in that PP-91 Kedr sub?”

  “Not enough. We have to find some shelter and get out of this forest.”

  “So we just run like rabbits.”

  “That’s right,” McCall said. “But faster.”

  “Too bad you had to pick up a gimp with bloody feet.”

  “You’re doing great.”

  He put his arm around her shoulders again. She looked up into his face.

  “In that room … you were everything I’d ever heard about that monster.… I was terrified. Pee-yourself terrified. The way you moved … so fast … it was great.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I scare myself,” McCall said, and smiled. “Let’s go.”

  They ran on through the trees, which seemed to be getting closer together. In a couple of places they had to transverse them in single file, then McCall would put his arm around the girl again and they’d stumble on. The wind howled around them as it blew harder, disturbing the big swirling flakes, bringing visibility down to a few feet. They were almost feeling their way along. McCall took comfort in the fact that if it was tough for them, it was really tough for the troops behind them. He could hear some vague shouting, the words indistinct, snatched away by the swirling wind. But they seemed to be going off to his right. And they were farther away. He remembered a ribbon of a road that led from the crashed Russian jeep. It wasn’t even a road, barely a dirt track. The soldiers probably thought the fugitives had taken off down that track. They were hurt, especially the prisoner, and would take the route of least resistance. It would be much more difficult for them to try to make their way through the thick trees that shouldered in on the wreckage site. A mistake on a new commander’s part.

  McCall and Serena continued on through their obstacle course.

  Their world telescoped down to the trees and the snowy perilous ground beneath their feet. The moonlight was restricted as it fought a way down through the foliage. Branches tore at them. Snow showered down on them as they pushed their way through. McCall knew the girl wanted to stop again to rest, but she wouldn’t ask. Freedom, even this kind of desperate liberation, was too sweet for her. She was running away … she felt the wind in her face … it was cold and invigorating. The pain in her limbs and her feet made her feel alive.

  It was McCall who stopped them half an hour later. They came to a small clearing in the forest. He hoped that might mean some kind of shelter—maybe a small stone hut or a cabin. There was nothing. McCall looked over to his left. That wasn’t true. There was a structure of some kind on the edge of the trees; it was in ruins. But at least it would give them some respite from the storm.

  They ran over to it. There was no roof and only one wall, three feet of a second wall on the other side, and a partial back to the structure, but they huddled into it. The moonlight was stronger here without a canopy of branches to splinter through. The wind howled, but its scream was not as high-pitched or as loud in the small clearing. The snow continued to swirl. The flakes were falling faster now, hitting the forest carpet and covering whatever was there.

  Including their footsteps.

  McCall put his mouth to the girl’s ear.

  “No talking.”

  She nodded.

  He stepped out of the ruined structure and stood in the center of the clearing.

  Listening hard.

  Hearing nothing.

  He believed the soldiers had gone off on a tangent. They could also be very lost. The forest had no distinctive markers. It all looked the same, no matter which way they turned.

  But, in the heavy silence, with the snow falling, McCall did hear something.

  He walked farther away from the pile of snowy ruins, through a leafy archway in the trees, forest crowding him on both sides. He stopped again. It wasn’t really a sound, or if it was, it was so ephemeral in his mind it was almost an echo.

  It was more a feeling of being watched.

  It raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He looked into the forest on all sides. Shapes moved liquidly, and then they merged into the foliage and were gone.

  Just shadows in his mind.

  Then he saw the first pair of eyes.

  CHAPTER 31

  They weren’t yellow. Not wolves. But the eyes were diseased, glowing in the darkness, a dark shade of blue that was shot through with red. McCall remained absolutely still. He could wait, but the creature could wait longer. After three minutes McCall moved again. There was no sound of the animal following, but the glowing eyes were gone. McCall knew there were more of them. He’d had intel about packs of wild dogs roaming throughout the forests of Siberia, particularly on Sakhalin Island. But there were packs of wild dogs all through Russia. On the streets of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Statistically you were more likely to get bitten by a dog on a Moscow street than mugged.

  Not all of the packs of wild dogs were rabid, but he’d seen the disease in that one mongrel’s eyes. If one was rabid, they all were.

  He heard a cry from behind him.

  McCall ran back into the clearing.

  Twenty wild dogs had surrounded the old ruins.

  Serena’s figure was pressed back into the stones. She had no way of escaping. She clutched a large stone in one hand. She was frightened, but it was not the terror of looking up at the monster in the interrogation room she had believed was Arbon, the Devil. There was a wild look now in her eyes. She would smash the rock against the head of the first dog that attacked her.

  And she’d be dead within a few seconds.

  She still wore the heavy overcoat with the Kedr submachine gun in one of the pockets. But she couldn’t use it and neither could McCall. The gunfire would summon the Russian troops to them, and right now McCall believed they were some distance away and going in the wrong direction.

  But he could use the coat.

  He picked some rocks out of the snow and hurled them. He hit three of the dogs, who yelped, turning. Two more turned and snarled. The pack started to lose interest in Serena and creep toward him. He knew they wouldn’t make a real move.

  Not yet.

  Not until the alpha dog made its move.

  McCall wasn’t sure which of them it was. He didn’t think the alpha was in the clearing. It had sent the pack on ahead. McCall moved slowly, but showing no fear, toward the ruins. He didn’t want to shout. He gestured to Serena. Throw it to me! At first she misunderstood and hefted the large rock in her hands.

  He shook his head and mouthed: Throw me the coat.

  Now she got it.

  She slowly took off the overcoat and shivered violently. He circled closer to the ruins, keeping the dog pack in his line of vision the entire time. He reached out a hand and she threw him the overcoat. He caught it.

  What had to be the alpha dog ran out of the trees like a blur.

  No slinking into the scene, no caution, no assessing the situation.

  The alpha dog had already done all the processing it needed.

  It attacked.

  McCall grabbed the Kedr submachine gun out of one of the big pockets in one hand and wrapped the overcoat around his right arm. The alpha dog hit him
with the force of a linebacker on a football field. McCall fell hard and his head hit a rock hidden in the snow. He blacked out for a second and felt the hot, fetid breath of the wild dog on his face. He opened his eyes to see the creature’s jaws open, the teeth, yellow and dripping with saliva, going for his throat.

  McCall twisted. The dog was not heavy. It was scrawny and hungry. But it was not to be shaken off. It snarled and snapped at McCall’s face until McCall was able to throw up his overcoat-wrapped arm. He shoved it into the alpha dog’s mouth and its jaws clamped over it. They were so sharp they bit almost through the doubled-up material right to his arm. McCall clubbed at the dog with the barrel of the sub, smashing it against the side of the rabid animal’s head. It had little effect, although blood spurted from the creature’s ear.

  McCall could feel the other dogs feeding off the energy and ferocity of the attack. He saw movement in his peripheral vision. He turned the Kedr around, instinctively to fire, but it was Serena who had moved. She leaped out of the hut, smashing the rock against the alpha dog’s head. Behind her, McCall sensed the movement of the others, stirring, edging closer, but they wouldn’t attack until they saw what happened to their leader.

  Serena’s blow distracted the alpha dog long enough for McCall to shift on the cold ground. He dropped the Kedr into the snow, reached into his trouser pocket, and came out with a large penknife. He tried to snap up the blade, but couldn’t do it. The alpha was thrashing wildly and McCall’s head was turning almost as wildly back and forth.

  Serena grabbed the knife out of McCall’s hand, snapped up the blade, and stabbed it down into the alpha dog’s head, just above the ear. It howled and the pressure on McCall’s wrapped-up arm diminished. She should have gone for the creature’s eye, and maybe she knew that, but its head was away from her.

  It gave McCall the second he needed.

  He twisted half off the ground and pulled his arm away from the dog’s jaws.