The Blade
Page 19
“What ahh …” Darwin paused. “What’s next? Can we go get something to eat?”
Arkady smiled at him. “You just saw the Judas Cradle and this man here bleeding all over the floor and you’re asking about food. I like that. You’ll fit in well here.”
Arkady led him back to the stairs and up to the room where he’d been asked all the questions about the cube and horse. Before they entered the room, Arkady turned to him.
“The Bratva have decided to let you in. While we were downstairs, they have set up the initiation ritual. After that you will be given our commandments and sent out on your first job. Your time has come. Only enter the room if you’re prepared to go all the way.”
Darwin moved past him, grabbed the doorknob and stepped into the room.
Over thirty men lingered along the perimeter of the room, leaning against the walls. No one sat at the table. There was one chair that he guessed was for him.
The light in the room was off. A candle had been lit and burned strong on the table.
On the table by the candle were a human skull, a gun, and a dagger.
The dagger made him falter. He stopped and stared at it, a renewed fury growing inside. He hated knives. The threat of a knife made him lose his mind.
He knew the initiation would involve the dagger, otherwise it wouldn’t be on the table. He was already trying to find a way to get rid of it. He couldn’t possibly run now. He’d seen too much. He was stuck in the Russian lair as white-hot rage boiled in him. There was no possible way he could fight the amount of men in the room and make it out alive.
What the fuck do I do now? I’m doomed.
Chapter 21
Carson Dodge drove his car hard, leaving Jacksonville as fast as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was tell Rosina that Darwin had left his office and disappeared. Carson only hoped Darwin had shown up at the safe house where Greg and Rosina remained hidden.
As he drove, he cursed the Bureau, cursed the system, and cursed the men he worked with. How could they let Darwin walk away? The Bureau was so intimidated by the Russian Mafia that sometimes they would charge members with lesser crimes to get them off the streets for a few years instead of taking bigger risks to go for the bigger fish.
He recalled a case where two men had offered weapons to two undercover agents. A meeting had been set up. Once a deal was made, a delivery date established, and the proper amount of vodka drank, the two suspects offered a bigger item for sale: a dirty bomb. The heat had gotten too high. The threat to the agents had grown exponentially. The order came down to arrest both men on the weapons charges. Getting a dirty bomb into the States could have consequences no one wanted to face for the sake of an arrest. Both Russian brotherhood members spent three years in jail, got released and flew home.
Three years. Carson shook his head. That’s nothing for these guys but another tattoo of honor.
Greg had insisted they use the same safe house where Rosina and Darwin had been situated before Gambino came after them. No one would expect them to stay there. Carson was the only contact they had with the Bureau office in Jacksonville and Carson was the only one who knew where they were, other than Darwin.
He made the last turn and started up to the gate. Two men stepped out of the shadows. It was nearly midnight. Shift change had already taken place. Carson wondered who he’d have to deal with to get inside.
He pulled up to the gate and lowered his window.
“Carson Dodge, here to see Greg Stinsen.”
“ID please,” the guard said as he stepped close to the vehicle, his hand on the butt of his weapon.
Carson detected movement in his mirror. Another guard had exited the woods and stepped up to his trunk with the third one staring in at him from the passenger side.
He reached inside his suit jacket slowly and pulled out his Bureau ID, handed it to the guard, who walked away and entered a little booth.
Crickets sang in the bushes and a light breeze rolled over his forearm as he rested it on the door. After several moments, the guard stepped out of the booth and nodded at his men. The gate began to open.
“Special Agent Dodge, Agent Stinsen is waiting for you. Go on up.”
Carson took his badge back and drove through the gate. When he looked in his mirror, the guards at the gate had disappeared.
Good, as it should be.
“Bit late for a meeting,” Greg said. “Everything cool?”
Carson stepped through the door, past Greg. “We need to talk. But not with Rosina.”
Greg nodded. “She’s in the other room watching a movie, trying to keep her mind off everything. She’s worried sick about Darwin. Where is he?”
“Gone.”
Greg stepped back. “Gone? What are you talking about?”
“Take me somewhere private where Rosina can’t eavesdrop.”
“Outside then. We’ll go out the back door.”
Greg shut and locked the front door. He led Carson through the house and onto the deck.
“You want a beverage of some kind?” Greg asked.
“No, thanks.”
They sat opposite each other at the patio table.
“What happened? I thought you were going to tell Darwin about the Russians.”
“We did. Darwin wanted no part in it. He wouldn’t meet with them working for us. He claimed it was all some kind of dumb luck that he survived as long as he had.”
“He’s partly right and he’s not trained to do undercover work. Frankly, I’d be scared for him if he met the Russians, especially if they thought that he was working for us.”
“I know, but we discussed this. If he ignores the problem, it won’t go away. The Russians ordered him brought to Arkady or executed. He became too big a problem for them. Have you heard from him?”
“No, nothing. When did you last see him?”
“I brought Special Agent Mike Keans and Victor Ivanovich in to talk to him. I think we pushed too hard and scared him. He walked out of my office mid afternoon. No one has heard from him since. This really sucks.”
Greg was smiling as he looked up at the stars.
“What are you smiling about?”
“You,” Greg said and turned to face him. “A week ago you were trying to find Darwin to kill him and now you’re trying to find him to save him, and both situations are eating away at you.”
“Cut me a break. I didn’t have all the facts. Let me ask you something. Do ants sleep? Can a horse vomit? What color is a hippo’s sweat when they’re upset?”
“What?”
“Answer any one of those questions.”
“As far as I know, ants don’t sleep.”
“What about the horse or the hippo?”
“I have no idea.”
“There, because you don’t know the facts, does that make you an idiot? Are you to be laughed at?”
Greg looked skyward again. “Tell me?”
“Horses are not able to vomit and a hippo’s sweat turns red when they’re upset.”
“Wow, that’s something. Didn’t know that.” Greg turned his chair to face Carson. “What’s next? What do we do?”
“Nothing, really. We have no leads on Darwin. Arkady has disappeared. No one knows where either one is. Our two undercover agents in Toronto have nothing for us and won’t report back for a day or so. We have nothing.”
“Darwin is a survivor. Don’t sweat it. I’m worried about him, but if there’s nothing we can do, then have a drink with me.”
“I didn’t come here to drink.”
“Don’t move,” Greg said and got up to enter the house. He came back with two glasses half-filled with an amber liquid.
“Islay scotch whiskey. Nothing like it. There’s a good quantity of peat in it, giving it a smoky feel going down. Try it.”
Carson sipped his drink and savored the smoky aroma as it traveled up through his nose. “Good shit.”
“Tell me some other trivial facts.”
“A rat can
last longer without water than a camel.”
“Wow, didn’t know that either.”
“The total weight of skin in the average adult human is six pounds. Hugo Boss designed some of the Nazi SS uniforms and the original name for a butterfly was flutterby, because that’s what they did.”
“Wow, where do you get all this stuff—”
The lights in the house blinked and went out, cutting him off. Carson dropped his glass of whiskey on the patio table and yanked out his sidearm.
“Is there ever an end to this shit?” Carson asked. “Where’s the power box?”
“In the basement or the garage. I normally know this stuff, but I just got here and thought everything was over,” Greg whispered. “You take the garage. I’ll check on Rosina and do the basement.”
Greg entered the house with Carson close behind. He followed until Greg turned down a hallway.
Rosina stepped out of a room on the left. “What happened to the lights?”
“We don’t know yet,” Greg said as Carson moved past them toward the garage.
“Who is that?” she asked. “It’s too dark.”
“Carson Dodge came over for a drink,” Greg said. “Everything’s fine. Come with me to the basement to check the fuse box.”
Carson moved toward the front and looked out the living room window, both hands gripping his weapon.
No way we’re under attack. It has to be a simple power outage.
He could detect nothing moving outside. The door to the garage was positioned beside the front door. He walked across the window, grabbed a flashlight from the front closet and stepped into the garage.
Automatic weapons fire broke the silence of the night and brought goose bumps to his arms and adrenaline to his stomach.
What the fuck is happening?
He found the fuse box and checked the master power switch. It was in the On position. He yanked it up and down to no avail.
“Shit.”
He reached for his cell phone, but realized he’d left it in his car. A motor vehicle revved its engine outside. Tires squealed.
The Taurus PT145 in his hand was loaded with its ten-round magazine. The rest of the ammunition was in his glove box.
He ran out of the garage and almost bumped into Greg.
“You find it?” Greg asked.
“Yeah. No good. Power’s been cut from the outside. Maybe they knocked down a transformer.”
“I thought the lines to the safe house were buried.”
“Guess not,” Carson said as he leaned to look out the front door’s window. “Whoever it is, how did they find us?”
“Followed you here, maybe.”
“Impossible.” He turned to look at Greg in the dark and could barely make out his head, Rosina standing behind him. “I would’ve noticed a tail.”
“What now?” Rosina asked.
“We wait,” Greg said. “I tried the phones … all dead. If that gunfire from a moment ago meant our guards are down, how much ammo you got on you?”
Carson waved his gun. “Just this. The rest is in the car.”
“We have to get to the car.”
“We could wait and as they approach, pick them off one by one. The dark is as advantageous to them as it is to us.”
“I don’t like this,” Rosina said, a slight whimper in her voice.
“We don’t either,” Greg said.
Carson could feel his weapon slipping in the sweat on his palm. “I’m going outside. I’ll try to get my extra clip and stay hidden behind the car. You take Rosina out the back door and get ready to run for the back fence. Find something in the garage to cut through the fence.”
“Got it. Go.”
Carson slipped out the front door. He ran bent over and dropped to the ground by the right front wheel of his car. An engine idled somewhere down the driveway. Whoever had arrived was taking their time advancing on the house.
Or are they up to something else?
A branch snapped on his left, about twenty yards away and close to the edge of the house. A red light moved up the pavement and stopped on his chest. In under a second, Carson understood what it was and moved away as fast as he could manage.
The bullet came faster. It hit his left hand, the one with the missing thumb, passed through, and ripped open his skin at the edge of his left eye, the bullet falling useless in the trees behind him.
Carson dropped to the pavement. He hadn’t been able to see out of his left eye since his time in India. He’d lost his vision in that eye after meditating and drinking a batch of homemade liquor for three days straight. He ended up in the hospital and almost lost a kidney too.
His hand was numb, but he knew the pain would come soon. The ache in his face near his left eye grew in intensity, the blood running. He remained as still as he could, letting his blood flow onto the driveway for whomever watched.
Getting shot in the face was devastating to most. If the shooter wanted to finish off the job, there wasn’t much Carson could do to stop him. But if the shooter was after Rosina and Greg and had felt his shot to Carson was good enough, it could give Carson the edge he needed.
Scuffling noises surrounded him. He tried to count the number of feet running by, but he stopped at eight as the pain took over. Nausea threatened him. He wanted to curl into the fetal position and wait for an ambulance stocked with pain killers.
Rosina screamed from behind the house. A gun fired. Then another.
Carson lifted himself off the pavement and raised his weapon. The tall silhouettes of the trees surrounding the property and the house were all he could see in the dark. He started around to the back of the house, wobbly on knees that were losing strength as shock set in. Blood flowed freely down the side of his face. He held his wounded left hand near the base of his neck, above his racing heart.
Another gun fired in the dark ahead of him. He heard two words in Russian that sounded like “get her”.
Russian? No way.
He stepped around the corner and balanced himself against the edge of the house, leaning on the wall.
Six men stood with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. One of the men held a large white box in his hands.
A drinks cooler?
The reflected light from the moon glinted off the edge of a long blade.
A sword? What the fuck?
He felt like falling to the ground and lying out flat. Sleep would be good. Rest for a while, think about everything later.
A man kneeled in front of the six men. The man with the sword raised it. Carson understood what they intended to do in that second.
He brought his weapon up and aimed with his one good eye. The gun erupted in his hand, and the six men jumped and spun to look at him.
Carson slipped behind the wall and fell to the pavement, but not before two more bullets entered his right shoulder.
Where’s Rosina? Did she get away?
He fell asleep on that thought.
Chapter 22
“Darwin, this is how we welcome our new soldiers,” Arkady said. “You passed the test in the other room. Now you must pledge your life to us and acknowledge our commandments. Take a seat at the table.”
Darwin wondered if he would be sick again. He’d never been in such a hard place. The men around him looked permanently angry. A team of psychiatrists could spend years studying their childhoods and discover that it wasn’t bad parenting that created men like this. It was raw anger. Their parents were angry and their parents before them.
He stepped forward and stopped. He couldn’t do it with the dagger on the table. Whatever plan they had for the blade had to be substituted.
“The knife has to go.”
The room erupted in a soft murmur as the men whispered to each other.
“What did you say?” Arkady asked.
Dolph stepped away from the door, moving closer to Darwin. At that moment he didn’t care. All he could feel was the power the knife had over his ability to remain calm.
“We can’t do that. It’s part of the initiation. You need to be pricked. You need to bleed. Don’t they call you ‘the Blade’ in the newspapers? I thought you’d be happy that we brought the dagger.”