by L. T. Ryan
The blow had slowed my momentum, but I was close enough to hit back. I gripped the pistol by the hot barrel, swung my right arm out like I was swinging a mallet, and drove the handle into his face. Cartilage crunched. He choked on tears and saliva and blood.
I pulled him in close, lifted my right leg, drove my foot into the side of his knee. It buckled, and he tumbled forward, relinquishing his grasp on the rifle.
“Who the hell are you?” I grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head. My right arm was cocked, ready to deliver another blow to the bloody mess of a face. But I stopped.
I knew the son of a bitch.
47
The guy who Charles had introduced to me as Matt stared up at me. Blood lined his lips, dripped off his chin like a leaky goatee.
“The hell are you doing here?” I yanked his head back as though that would get him to speak up.
His eyes rolled back, he licked his lips.
“Who sent you? How long have you been tracking me?”
He raised his left hand, index finger pointed upward.
“What’re you saying? God sent you?” I drove my knee into his chest.
His eyes clenched shut, face twisted. His limp bodyweight threatened to pull his scalp free from the hair I had a grip on. And then he moved faster than a man that injured should. It felt like a snake bit my right calf. The pain was sharp and confined at first, then spread clear down through my Achilles into my foot.
Matt then drove his shoulder into my legs. I planted my right foot to brace myself, but my knee gave out and I toppled over. Instinctively, my left arm went up to shield my face, my right arm out to cover my chest and core. But there were no additional blows. The guy had clawed his way up and was trudging through the woods.
“Not today,” I yelled.
I pulled myself up and started toward him. Pain flashed through my leg and I stumbled forward. I reached down and grabbed the wound. The gash was wide and felt deep. Blood dripped from my fingers onto the fresh snow. I took off my coat, tore the sleeve from my shirt and wrapped it tight around my leg. It’d have to do.
I grabbed his rifle off the ground and got to my feet. The long firearm made a decent cane to support the injured leg. With every second that passed, Matt slipped further away. I’d lost sight of him shortly after falling. Now I wondered if I’d encounter him again. He was too wounded to stand and fight, so fleeing was his only course of action. Where would he go? Did he have a vehicle waiting? Did he know about the Taurus parked on the side of the road? I took a course directly toward the street rather than the car.
Each step sent a wave of pain through my body. Shot on one side. Stabbed on the other. Next time I got my hands on the guy I wouldn’t give him a chance to talk. I’d FedEx his head to Charles and wait for an explanation.
As I neared the wood’s edge, I heard an engine crank. It whined high a couple times, then went silent before finally turning over.
“Come this way,” I muttered, leaning into a tree and lifting the rifle. I waited there for several seconds as the Taurus idled in the distance. No point in moving any closer. I’d make myself vulnerable, and miss the shot if the chance arose.
Headlights washed over the road. They came from the wrong direction though. The sound of another vehicle overtook the Taurus. A white truck rolled past, leaving thick impressions on the snow-covered road. It’s loud V-8 subsided as its taillights faded into the distance. The area grew quiet except for the sound of the snow tapping the ground.
How had I let Matt get away? This wasn’t the first time in my life I’d been surprised to come across somebody I knew while working. The community was a small one, and chance encounters were bound to happen. I let it get the best of me. If Matt had had a little more strength, he could have gone for my femoral artery instead of my calf. It must have taken everything he had to attack me, then run off.
I waited a few more minutes to see if he’d ducked and covered upon hearing the approaching truck. But I never heard the sound of the Taurus again. I wanted to wait there, see if he appeared. But the warehouse had to be dealt with before anyone arrived and notified the authorities.
I skirted the edge of the woods until I reached the clearing in front of the building. It stood out like a steel giant in the snowfall. Light leaked along the roof line in a few places. The loft seemed secured. I realized then that the wind had died down. It made the trek across the field a little easier, but not by much. I left a spotted trail of blood in my wake. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stand on my feet before addressing my wounds.
Once inside the building, I shed my coat and went about looking for supplies in the offices off the hallway. There had to be some kind of first aid kit in there. A yellow tinted box was mounted to a wall in a room with a conference table and seven chairs. Looked like it had been handed down over a couple generations. I pulled it free from its mount and hurried to Christiana. I glanced at my calf, grimaced at the thought of what it looked like under the red-stained makeshift bandage.
Even before I reached her, I knew Christiana had passed. I dropped the kit next to her legs and took my time kneeling down at her side. Her neck revealed no pulse. Her skin had already started to cool. I rested my elbows on my knees and buried my head in my hands. Her loss tore at my soul. Why did I feel this way over someone I hardly knew? Someone who, if Yashkin had given the order, would have aimed at me and pulled the trigger without a second thought, no regrets on her part.
Why did I have them?
Maybe she was my counterpart in this crazy life of a killer and I felt drawn to her for that reason. Maybe part of me longed for what she had back home. A family. And it hurt to know they’d never see her again. And this prompted my own realization that loved ones weren’t something I could have in my life.
I rocked forward onto my knees and began searching her body for anything useful. I found a phone wrapped in a wallet case in her back pocket, as well as a pocket knife. Both could come in handy.
The first aid kit contained a roll of tape, gauze, peroxide, ointment, some bandages, and a few other items. I used the pocket knife to cut away my pants leg. The wound was deep and smooth. It’d picked up some debris from outside. I poured the bottle of peroxide over the gash. Intense stinging lasted for a solid thirty seconds, and offered a perfect opportunity to seal the wound. I gripped my calf and pressed it together, mashed some gauze over the wound, then wrapped the medical tape up and down my lower leg going a couple inches past either end of the gash.
It hurt like hell standing up, but I made it. Maybe I’d luck out and there’d be no muscle or nerve damage. I had little confidence in that after the first step.
I limped over to Thanos. The guy was spread out on the floor the same as I’d left him.
“What the hell did you do?”
I looked around for the rest of his clothing. Had they stashed his belongings somewhere in the room? Stacks of boxes offered plenty of places to hide an item or two. I walked the perimeter of the space, stopping to investigate the little cubbies randomly placed along the way. Nothing. With the pain in my calf increasing to the point I no longer felt the flesh wound on my hip, I was ready to call it a night. I pulled my phone out and started to dial Frank.
Then I spotted it. A blue sport coat hanging on the wall next to where I’d entered and exited the room each time. I made my way over. Blood trickled through the bandage, over the tape, and down my leg. I ignored it. There’d be time to patch it up again soon enough.
I pulled the sport coat off the hanger and flipped it around. Zegna. Expensive, coming in around two grand, maybe more. The kind of thing Thanos might wear. He was laid out in his boxers and socks now. Where were his pants and shoes? I slipped my hands into the chest pockets, came up empty. The front pockets were sewn shut. I bunched the jacket up in my fists and felt all around. Something had been sewn into a small compartment at the lower back.
Another use for Christiana’s pocket knife.
“You’re still
doing a good job,” I told her. Maybe she heard me, maybe she was already gone. Either way, she was helping out.
I cut a slit wide enough to slide two fingers into the lining. It was out of the way, not too obvious if someone else inspected the jacket. I worked through the compartment and locked down a folded piece of paper between my index and middle fingers.
But before I could open it and take a look, I heard a banging against the side of the building.
“Door’s open over here. Come on!”
48
I shoved the paper into my pocket and braced for the attack, knowing I couldn’t withstand another physical assault. The door slamming shut reverberated through the drywall. There were at least two sets of feet pounding the floor, moving fast. I couldn’t brace myself well enough to use the rifle, so I stood there with the pistol held out, aimed at the spot where they’d enter the room.
A deep voice bellowed, “Jack?”
The ground beneath me turned to Jell-o. My right leg slid out from under me and I dropped to my left knee, gripping the wall with my fingertips.
“In here, Bear.”
Lexi sprinted into the room, head turning side to side. She nearly tripped over her feet when she spotted me and tried to stop too quickly. Her gaze traveled around the room, stopping for a moment on the lifeless bodies.
“Christ, Jack,” she said. “What happened?”
“Did you find him?” I said.
Bear rushed over and began a medical assessment on me. “Find who?”
“Matt.” I tried to lift myself off the ground.
Bear put his hand on my shoulder and pressed me down. “Who’s Matt? He the one that did this?”
I eased down to the floor and leaned back against the wall. “Yeah, he did all this.” I gestured around the room, then to myself. “The guards were our handiwork.”
“What about Christiana?” Bear asked. “She turn against you?”
“Just the opposite, man. We formed into a team pretty damn easily.” I lowered my shaking head into my hand. “He hit her from the loft after nailing Thanos.”
“How’d he miss you?” Bear had his hand on my calf.
I winced in pain as he felt for muscle damage. “I was outside checking the guard for a key. I unloaded when I came back in, but it was too late. He’d already done the damage.”
Bear nodded. “What about your leg?”
“Matt went out the door up there and I followed. We got into it in the woods. I made a mistake, underestimated him. Thought I had it all under control and the bastard pulled a knife and sliced my leg.” This was the first chance I’d had to reflect on what went wrong. “The Taurus, you find it?”
“Find what?” Bear said.
“The car, man. The one we came out here in.”
Lexi walked toward us. “We followed a phone signal out here. Found it on the ground maybe a quarter mile from here.”
“The white truck.” I recalled waiting with the rifle, hoping Matt would come my way, when they drove past my position.
“Yeah, that was us,” Bear said. “All we found was the phone, no car.”
“Wasn’t there a blank spot in the snow where the car had covered the ground?” I said.
“It was laying in the middle of the road.” Lexi pulled the phone from her pocket and showed it to me. “No car.”
“He got away.” I clenched my fist and slammed it back against the wall. “Wait, how’d you two get out?” I hadn’t considered how the two of them had managed to get here.
The right side of Bear’s upper lip twisted into a smile. “They got lackadaisical.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” Lexi said. “I don’t know if they thought three against two put things in their favor, or what, but one of those guys walked right past Bear with his MP5 dangling from his harness.”
Bear mimed his movements. “One lunge forward, snatched it and put two rounds through his ribcage at heart level. Turned him around, then got the guy across the room. Lexi finished off the third guy with a choke hold.”
“Ginger?” I said.
“Kozlov?” Bear said. “Yeah, he left shortly after you did. Half-expected to find him here.”
I wondered if he and Matt were connected. Had Kozlov dropped Matt off here to take us out? Was the semi that pulled up a coincidence?
“What bout Yashkin?” I said.
Bear lowered his chin to his chest and shook his head. “He’d gone into a backroom maybe five minutes before it went down. Guess at the sound of the first shot he bolted out a window. By the time I made it outside, he was gone.”
“All wasn’t lost, though.” Lexi held up a device that looked like an early nineties cell phone. “They were tracking Christiana’s phone with this. That’s how we were able to find you.”
She’d brought two phones, it seemed. The one I pulled off her body was her personal cell, the other she’d left in the car. When Matt stole the vehicle, he tossed the phone. Maybe he knew they were tracking it.
Bear hopped up to his feet. “You’re in pretty bad shape, partner. Don’t know what would’ve happened to you if we hadn’t shown up.”
“This?” I gestured toward my hip and calf. “Flesh wounds. I’m good to go.”
He held out his hand. “Prove it.”
I grunted as I pulled myself up. Bear offered no assistance other than allowing me to yank on his arm.
“Good as new.” I turned toward Lexi. “You got a burner on you?”
She nodded, pulled the phone out and tossed it to me. “Who are you calling?”
“No one.” I limped across the room until I stood over Thanos. The folded paper I’d taken from his coat felt like a brick in my pocket. “Give me a hand turning this asshole over.”
Bear put his gloves back on and flipped Thanos over like he was nothing more than a human-sized pancake. I snapped four photos of the guy, then sent them off to a secure number owned by the Old Man. On the final picture, I added a note that said, “Done. Send Payment.”
I tossed the phone back to Lexi, who proceeded to reset it to factory settings and then dismantle it.
“All right,” Bear said. “Let’s get outta here.”
“One more thing.” I pulled Frank’s phone out. There were two numbers stored in the contact list. One went to Bear, the other I assumed to Frank. I selected it, pressed send, and waited.
“Jack?” he answered. “Christ, I’ve been waiting to hear from you. What’s going on?
“I’m gonna be brief, so listen up. I’m standing in a warehouse in Wisconsin with two dead bodies on the floor. The man is Thanos. He was shot with a high powered rifle from twenty yards out. I don’t know the identity of the shooter. I had him and he got away. The second body is female, belongs to a woman named Christiana Zhenya. Killed by the same shooter with the same rifle. This is what you are gonna do. You’re taking her body, and you’re gonna set it in one of those cheap planes you keep on hand when we need an accident. You’ll fly that thing over some remote corner of western Pennsylvania, and you’ll crash it into the woods. When it comes time for her family to find out what happened, she was taking a flight to another meeting and the small craft lost signal and went down, leaving no survivors. Her family is not to find out what she was doing here. Got it?”
“Yeah, Jack, sure. I can do that.” He paused to clear his throat. “What the hell happened there?”
“You prove to me you had nothing to do with this, and I’ll fill you in. Until then, I don’t trust your ass.”
“Look, stay put where you’re at—”
I hung up the phone and tossed it onto Thanos’s chest. Bear did the same with his cell. He looked over at me, nodded.
“On our own again,” he said.
“Seems to be a recurring theme,” I said.
“Is there usually a female lead on these missions?” Lexi said.
“No,” I said. “But we’ll make an exception this time.”
“Good choice,” she said. “Now let’s get somewher
e we can make an ID on that shooter.”
49
Lexi lingered a few steps behind us while on the phone. All I picked up from her conversation was someone would meet us in a couple hours. I was leery of trusting her, but given what had happened that night, there was no other choice. She was as deep into this as us now. Whoever Yashkin was, if we hadn’t pissed him off before, he had surely crossed the line between dislike and hate by now. Was he the type of man to stick around and fight, or would he regroup and come after us later?
I stretched out on the rear bench seat of the pickup truck. Bear took the wheel. Lexi ended her call, pocketed her phone and hopped in the passenger seat. She leaned back and looked at me.
“Get you anything?”
“Got some water up there?”
“We’ll stop and get some,” Bear said. “Almost outta gas anyway.”
“Great.”
Seemed every time we stopped at a gas station, something went down. Not only that, having to stop meant a chance we’d get caught on camera. The damn things were everywhere now, and all linked together. If an analyst had the right credentials, they could get access to multiple feeds, and using special software, locate a license plate. From there, LPRs, license plate readers, would spot us on any major highway we traveled on. It came down to how much pull Yashkin had, and who he worked with. If he had a friend or two in the right places, and I had no doubt he did, all he had to do was give them the license plate of the pickup Bear and Lexi had stolen. We had to hope he didn’t have it memorized. A guy like that, though? He probably did.
Bear stopped at the first open gas station he spotted. While he filled up, Lexi ran inside, paid for the fuel, some water, and snacks. She returned to the car with a stockpile of beef jerky and almonds, which she split evenly between the three of us.
“Not quite a steak dinner,” she said.
“It’ll do.” I peeled back the plastic and took a bite. It was tough and salty and spicy and hit the spot. I washed it down my scratchy throat with half a bottle of water, then ate another piece while the afterburn of the first lingered.