by J. F. Kirwan
‘And now,’ the colonel said, addressing Salamander. ‘Time to drop this charade. In Russia we never capitulate to terrorists. So, either tell us where the warhead is, or take your thumb off the trigger, and we can all have nice military funerals and posthumous medals, and our families will be well looked after, for a while at least. Except you, naturally. So, what’s it going to be, Salamander? Thumb getting tired?’
Nadia was a little surprised by the colonel’s approach. Not exactly quoting the Russian negotiation playbook. But then it was a very thin book, mainly with the words ‘rush in and kill the terrorists at all costs’. Still, nobody breathed, all watching Salamander, and his thumb. Silence, except for Sergei, who looked like hell warmed up, still trying to catch his breath.
‘Charade,’ Salamander said, his accent glutinous. ‘Accurate.’
The colonel shook his head. ‘What is that supposed –’
Salamander’s tar-like voice snuffed out the colonel’s words. ‘What is it you most want?’
The colonel shrugged. ‘The warhead’s location, maybe? That will do for now.’
Nadia met her father’s eyes. He flashed a smile, then turned to Katya and leant forward, whispering into her ear.
Salamander was focused on the colonel. ‘When you were a boy, a man came to your house. He killed your father. While you watched. Are you a man now?’
Nadia watched Salamander closely. What was he doing?
The colonel bristled. His tone deepened. His face reddened. ‘Do not play games with me.’
Salamander persisted in his drawn-out way of speaking that seemed to slow time. ‘What would your father want from you? You have risen far. But it will never be enough. You have not performed your duty. As a son. As a man.’
The colonel’s face reddened further. ‘I warn you. As a man, I have my limits.’
‘You may be humping your aide in your office. You may kill people. You may order soldiers to their deaths. But you are still that little boy, still trapped in that moment, when you were helpless, watching your father as he was buried alive.’
The colonel swallowed hard, almost turned to his aide when she’d been mentioned, but managed not to, no doubt realising that his leadership was faltering right in front of his men. Nobody truly wanted him to pull the trigger that would kill Salamander and release his thumb, and yet, how far could a man be pushed?
Nadia glanced across the chamber to her father and Katya, who was staring up at him, her eyes glassy yet alight. He’s told her. And she believes him. It was the right move for her father, because death was closing in on him, on all of them. Nadia could sense it. The kill zone outside had been nothing but a warm-up. He could have cut and run, but his priority was clear: the daughters he’d deserted for eleven years. He’d already made some kind of peace with Nadia. Now it was Katya’s turn.
And it dawned on her that he might not have a plan after all, that perhaps this had been his goal, just to see Katya, and to try and keep both his daughters alive. Salamander was a strategist. He kept people running around thinking tactically, solving the problems right in front of their faces, while he alone played a longer game. Whatever that was.
The colonel drew a long-bladed dagger from inside his combat jacket, with a braided hilt and a guard that was tilted down at one end. A Russian naval officer’s Kinzhal, practically an antique. Probably his father’s, an heirloom; she doubted the colonel’s father had earned it. The dagger was highly polished, and razor sharp. The colonel puffed out his chest. ‘Let me show you want kind of a man I am.’ He took a step towards Salamander.
‘Ah,’ Salamander said. ‘Now I see a man. And what you really want.’ Salamander nodded towards Nadia’s father, alone with Katya in the corner of the room. ‘The one you seek is there, right in front of you, masquerading as one of your men.’
Shit!
The colonel’s advance, and expression, froze. There was a ruffle of firearms against uniforms as the other soldiers turned as one towards Nadia’s father. He glanced up at the colonel, then took off his helmet, placed it on the ground, and whispered something to Katya. She uttered one word, ‘Papasha,’ as the colonel took two steps towards the pair on the ground.
Nadia suddenly felt the badass end of a gun barrel against her neck. ‘If you so much as breathe heavy, I’ll blow your head off.’ A woman’s voice. The colonel’s aide.
The colonel stood over the couple. Dagger still in his hands. Arm unsteady. ‘Speak,’ he said, years of strain packed into that single word.
Nadia’s father stood until he was level with the colonel.
‘I am Vladimir Nikolayevhich Lakshev. I executed your father for his crimes.’
He had no weapon. He was right in front of the colonel, whose knuckles were white around the dagger’s hilt. ‘But I ask you, what is the endgame here? What does Salamander really want today? Are you going to deliver it to him? I know him. I know how he operates. He has us all here for a reason. What is it?’
Nadia reckoned logic wouldn’t work on the colonel, who could only see his father’s executioner finally within reach of his blade. The words pouring out of her father’s mouth must sound like so much ash to the colonel. But then maybe her father’s speech wasn’t for his benefit. Maybe Sergei, or Bransk. Or her. Her father was right. This was a charade, being played out for Salamander. But she still couldn’t work out the angle. She was missing something.
The colonel shifted from boot to boot. ‘Say goodbye to your daughters, you piece of –’
‘Wait!’ It was Sergei. He limped towards the colonel. Nadia noticed that only two soldiers were focused on Salamander, plus Bransk, who only had his knife. And meanwhile, she could not move.
Sergei approached the colonel. ‘You kill him here, now, you kiss your career goodbye, and probably end up in prison.’ He leaned forwards, and said more quietly. ‘There are other ways.’
‘He’s right, sir,’ his aide said. Looking after her interests.
The colonel turned his head slightly, and spoke to his aide. ‘If he resists, kill Nadia.’ Then he moved his head closer to Vladimir and spat full in his face. Nadia’s father didn’t move, didn’t even blink.
‘Bind him,’ the colonel said. He relaxed his arm a fraction, and sheathed his dagger. Two soldiers came over. They put down their sub-machine guns, out of reach of her father, and cuffed his hands behind him with black nylon bands.
Nadia owed Sergei one. She watched as he took her father’s rifle from him and checked its status, then used it as a crutch to help him stand.
The colonel took out his pistol. ‘One more thing,’ he said, and for one terrible moment Nadia thought he’d changed his mind. He raised the gun high, then brought it down in a savage arc across her father’s face. Nadia winced, and Katya cried out, but her father remained standing.
‘The enemy of my enemy,’ her father said, as if he hadn’t been hit at all, despite the stream of blood from his nose and the nasal distortion in his voice. He nodded towards Salamander. ‘Kill him now, while you can. Trust me. In five minutes he’ll be the only one standing.’
The colonel re-holstered his weapon. He turned back to Salamander. ‘There is no way you are leaving here with that warhead. The generals have given orders that if I am not out within one hour, they will flood this entire complex with nerve gas.’
Salamander was unfazed. ‘If the warhead is detonated here, the whole of Europe will suffer for generations.’
The colonel didn’t miss a beat. ‘Unfortunate. But preferable to your true goal.’
Salamander’s words spilled forth like lava. ‘You have no idea of my true goal.’
‘Ah, but we do.’ He glanced at his aide. ‘The G20 summit in London in one week. That is your target, along with MI6, and the rest of London.’
Nadia studied Salamander’s face. A statue. No indication of surprise, nor annoyance at having been found out, nor the faintest smirk because the colonel’s proclamation was false. Nothing.
So, either Salamander was very good, or else…this was all still part of the charade. She got distracted as one of the soldiers placed a black hood over her father’s head and fastened it around his neck. It was like a punch in the stomach for her. This was how he’d been taken away from her the first time.
Salamander spoke. ‘A deal, then. I give you the warhead, and you leave.’
The colonel’s jaw twitched left and right. His chin rose a fraction. Nadia guessed what he was thinking. Take the warhead, then flood the building with nerve gas afterwards. But Salamander, to have come this far, was anything but that stupid. He had a Plan B. No. Who was she kidding? His Plan A was doing just fine.
The colonel puffed out his chest again. ‘Agreed. We take the warhead and depart. You will go unharmed. This time.’
There was a lengthy pause. All eyes on Salamander. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘The warhead is through there.’ He nodded to an exit behind him, to his right.
‘That’s better,’ the colonel said.
To Nadia, it couldn’t be. Why had Salamander suddenly given up the warhead? She must have moved, because the muzzle nudged her neck, reminding her who was boss.
‘Sileyovich, go and check it,’ the colonel said.
A young, wiry commando, with hair and skin so white he looked like an albino, picked up a metal briefcase, and began walking towards the indicated exit.
Salamander’s lips curled into an ugly smile. Like a reptile. Nadia felt a chill. Her fingers curled, itching to shoot him dead, right now, as her father had instructed, as Bransk had urged.
Bransk glanced at Salamander then the albino soldier, then back to Salamander. ‘That was your plan all along.’ He turned to the colonel. ‘You fool, you brought him what he needed!’
The colonel flinched. ‘I don’t –’
But Bransk didn’t wait for him to finish. He drew his knife and darted forward, straight towards Salamander.
The muzzle scratched across the skin at the back of Nadia’s neck. A single shot rang out, a deafening explosion in Nadia’s right ear as the colonel’s aide fired at Bransk. His temple imploded, then blood sprayed out. His body collapsed. One moment a tower of strength and certitude, the next mere bones and flesh, a giant puppet whose strings had been snipped. Dead before he hit the floor, at Salamander’s feet.
Rage churned throughout Nadia’s body like a coiling cobra.
Her instincts told her to duck and spin, which was exactly what she did. But the aide wasn’t aiming the next bullet at her. The muzzle swung the other way, and drew a bead on the colonel, who stared wide-eyed and uncomprehending at his aide, his lover, her green eyes ice-cold.
Nadia didn’t know what was going on, only that the aide was the enemy now, and whatever she wanted, Nadia should want the opposite. Nadia was low, out of range of the pistol, so she thrust her right leg out hard, and snapped the aide’s knee with a reassuring crunch of bone and gristle. The aide’s gun fired twice, but missed the colonel, catching one soldier directly behind him full in the face, and another in the throat. Nadia realised the aide hadn’t missed; she was taking out the soldiers, protecting Salamander.
The aide landed hard, grimacing, but still clutching her pistol. She aimed towards Nadia and fired. There was no time for Nadia to get out of the way or fire her own weapon.
The muzzle kicked up a notch and Nadia saw the telltale flash of a bullet released, and heard a cry behind her. The albino. Nadia’s gun was now in her hand and moving forward, but the aide’s eyes locked on to hers, with an I’m dead, but you’re coming with me look. But the gun didn’t fire again.
The aide’s mouth opened slightly as the colonel rammed a knife expertly through the back of her neck, probably the fifth vertebrae, blocking the brain’s message from reaching the trigger finger. Nadia, her gun now ready, shot her in the left eye, and watched the bitch’s head slump backwards to the floor. She thought of Bransk, and fired one more time, straight through the other eye.
She swivelled on the floor. Priority. Her father had given it to her. Bransk had shown the way. Kill Salamander, no matter what. She locked on to Salamander.
Everything about him was grey. His deep-set eyes like two caves, the irises pale, as if they never saw sunshine; but also reptilian, as if he didn’t care. He stared back at her, his eyes full of loathing, and she suddenly felt like a fly facing a hungry chameleon, its extendable tongue within reach of her.
Her finger flexed. His thumb flicked off the plunger. And he moved, so fast, so bloody fast, and she saw the bullet scrape the top of his shoulder rather than his neck, a single drop of his blood spitting upwards before everything went absolute white, and a roar filled the air.
Not a bomb, then. A stun device.
She couldn’t see. It was as if she was being crushed from all angles. The grinding noise froze her mind. But her instincts were intact, and when it came to fight or flight, her father had trained her well.
Someone was firing on rapid auto. She emptied her own clip, tracing a wild curve in the direction Salamander had moved. Her objective was to hit him, but more than that, it was to make him run, before he could kill anyone else – no, everyone else – while they were incapacitated. Her clip empty, she tried to get onto all fours, her vision still completely white, then black, then red, then blotches and a migraine that felt like nails driven through her skull.
The noise subsided to the level of an endless train running over her head, but it was easing off, and she could see through shifting inky blotches sliding across her eyes. She took in the scene in snatches, like a camera taking a quick snap every three seconds. The colonel, down but alive. Sergei, shot, but also alive. The other soldiers, all down. Her father and Salamander gone, the briefcase too. And Katya…
Nadia crawled towards her sister, each move driving more spikes through her head. Katya was on her back. Her chest rose and fell in fast, jagged gasps.
No, no, NO!
Nadia reached her sister’s side. Katya’s eyes stared hard at the ceiling. Blood oozed from a chest wound. Her lungs would be filling with blood… She’d either drown in it, or her heart would give out first.
The words tumbled out of Nadia’s mouth. ‘Katya, I’m here, I’m with you, stay with me!’ She held her sister’s arm, her wrist, her hand, and bent forward to kiss her.
Katya’s eyes shifted, and she looked straight into Nadia’s. ‘Nad, I dreamt I saw Papasha; he was here. After all this time, he’s here again.’
Nadia couldn’t see clearly. She glanced once at the wound, heard the shallowing of Katya’s breaths, and then she just held Katya close, lifting her torso from the floor. ‘Yes, he’s here, you didn’t dream it, Kat, he’s here. Papasha is here for us. He’ll look after us now.’ Tears fell from Nadia’s eyes, and rained down on Katya’s cheeks.
Katya coughed, her eyes cloudy, and a whisper followed. ‘Nadia, it was always me and you, me and –’
Katya’s body shook, and Nadia pulled her closer and rocked her sister gently, even after her body went limp, and the last long breath left Katya’s mouth.
Nadia struggled to breathe. She felt hollow, as if her insides had been reamed out. But there was something there. Not grief. That would wait. The trembling stopped, and she inhaled fully, as if filling her entire body. She filled her lungs till bursting point, then she tilted her head back, still holding Katya in her arms, and let out a scream of rage that reverberated around the room and echoed down the tunnels. Nadia laid Katya down, closed her dead sister’s eyes, and kissed her once on the lips. She stood. Sergei made to help her, but she shook him off.
The colonel was standing, and had a deep cut on his forehead right on his left eyebrow, blood dripping constantly into his left eye. He disappeared for a minute through one of the exits, then returned.
Her vision had stabilised, and her hearing was back to normal, except for a high-pitched whine in her ears.
The colonel spoke, trying to stem the blood flow with a handkerchief, h
is voice shaky. ‘The warhead isn’t there.’
‘Probably never was,’ Sergei said. ‘Salamander needed the codes, the arming protocols, which are basically the same as those for disarming a warhead. Sonofabitch!’ he shouted. ‘I should have guessed. Now he can arm it, and we have no way to disarm it quickly.’
The colonel stared at Sileyovich, lying on the ground, a neat red bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. The briefcase was gone. ‘And I handed them to him.’
Nadia picked up a rifle from one of the dead soldiers. ‘Which way did he go?’
Sergei leant against the wall for support. Blood trickled from his thigh. At least it seemed to have missed the femoral artery. ‘That way,’ he said, short of breath, clearly in pain, pointing down one of the tunnels.
The colonel glanced at the exit then produced a small folded map. ‘You can’t go there,’ he said. ‘That path leads straight to the most radioactive area. What’s left of the melted core.’
She checked her weapon. Sergei picked up his. But he was wounded, and could barely stand.
‘You’ll only slow me down, Sergei.’ She turned to the colonel. ‘And you’ll get me killed; you’re half blind right now.’
The colonel shifted, blinking hard as yet more blood soaked his face. Still, he stood there. ‘You can’t go alone. My reinforcements will be here in five minutes.’
Nadia glanced down at Katya. ‘He’ll be long gone by then.’ She was about to leave, when a thought occurred. She went over to Bransk’s corpse. Just when I was beginning to like you. She reached into his jacket for the Geiger counter, slipped it inside a zip pocket on her right thigh, and pocketed his Stechkin inside her jacket. She closed his eyes. Look after Katya, and I’ll fulfil my promise.
She donned her head torch, shouldered the rifle, picked up the albino’s sub-machine gun, and toted it at waist height. She walked through the exit. Sergei and the colonel shouted after her. She wasn’t listening.
Within ten metres the counter began chirping loudly, and she knew it was going to get a lot worse. She tucked the dosimeter disc inside her sleeve.