by Geoff Wolak
I handed him a crumpled hundred dollar bill. ‘Gasoline.’
He straightened it out and opened the rear door with a squeak. I eased in, trying hard not to smile. He clambered in, started the piece of junk he called a taxi, and we set off as it grew dark, my nose wrinkling at the odd odours the back seat was giving off. Him sleeping on it came to mind, as well as him shagging on it, maybe one of those long-legged brown hookers.
I was soon sat staring up at yellow street lamps flashing rhythmically by, and they were kind of soothing, they reminded me of my youth somehow.
A mile along the road he stopped for gasoline, and he brought me back a Fanta without having been asked. We both hissed our cans open, and I sipped my drink as he pulled off.
‘English?’ he asked.
‘No. Ruski.’
‘Ruski? Russia, yes?’
‘Yes. No talk, drive.’
He shrugged, and we followed the road east and then south, a good enough road, a good speed maintained.
An hour and a bit later he pointed right, and across the water lay lights. ‘La Palma.’
I studied the town from this angle, but it was just a row of twinkling lights on a black canvas.
He added, ‘No police in road, south, many police, border, communists – bang, bang.’
It took half an hour of shit roads to reach the town centre, and a dump it was. I told him to find the hotel, and he stopped to ask, directed on and around a corner. Finding the hotel, I told him to drive on and stop, taking out my crumpled dollars, four hundred handed over.
‘No talk police, you dead,’ I said, trying hard not to grin at the absurdity of my own words.
He nodded, soon eyeing a hooker as she sauntered past in her short skirt. As I left his pleasant company and bad odour I figured that his dear lady wife would not be seeing the full four hundred, but that he may pass her a nasty disease.
Back at the run-down hotel I wandered in, finding a small reception desk of dark wood backed by uniform pigeon holes, a bar off to the right with a few patrons and locals sat about under brass ceiling fans, a few dark-skinned hookers plying their trade with visitors, a dated jukebox in the corner.
The man behind the desk looked me over, not a happy bunny.
‘Room?’ I asked, accented.
‘How many day?’
I shrugged.
‘Twenty dollar a day, if no papers.’
I ferreted around in my pocket, finding a crumpled hundred dollar bill, and I slapped in on the counter, figuring I was paying way over the odds for this shit tip. And I waited, looking mean and tired.
He handed me a key. ‘Numero ten.’ He gave ten fingers.
I nodded, pocketed the key, and eyed the bar. First I climbed up a creaking wooden stairs and found room ten at the end of a dark corridor, and I had stayed in worse. I hid the money from under my armpits, washed those armpits with the tiny soap-in-a-packet provided, washed my face and hair, and headed down to the bar. It was now 10pm.
As soon as I entered I spotted my mark, but ignored him; he was the only other gringo, a skinny guy that looked Russian from a mile off. Sat at the bar, I ordered a beer, a dark hooker soon approaching. I tapped my pockets and shrugged, and she sauntered off, since I looked cheap.
The beer tasted great, and was much needed, the heat sticky tonight. I was halfway through that beer when my mark sat near me, ordering a beer.
In Russian, he asked, ‘Is that beer cold enough?’
I made a face. ‘Could do with some ice.’
‘I like ice-beer myself. When I leave, follow.’ He sat back down, no one paying us any attention at all, which was a bit disappointing, my spy craft not being tested much.
When he left, after his beer, I paid for my drink and followed ten yards back, and he led me to another bar, but a better quality bar, a big doorman guarding the entrance. The local contact man waited on a corner, in the shadows, and I drew level.
‘Inside you will find who you want. I will be at the hotel each evening for a few days, 9pm to 10pm. If you don’t show I report it.’
I nodded and thanked him, turned about and headed into the bar.
The doorman eyed me warily. ‘Ruski?’
I nodded.
After eyeing me carefully, he tipped his head and I passed. Inside, the air-conditioning was much appreciated, the tacky techno-music not appreciated, and I found blue neon-backed bars, fish tanks, skinny Russian hookers, and more gangsters than I could poke a stick at. And most eyed me warily, the new face in town.
At the bar I beckoned a worried-looking Russian waiter, a young man. In Russian I asked, ‘Where is the boss? And what’s his name?’
He glanced about the room, unsure of whether or not to comply, but then waved a big man over. ‘He wants the boss.’
The big guy tried, and failed, to intimidate me. ‘Who are you?’
‘The world’s most wanted man. Number One ... on the FBI’s list, and Interpol.’
The big guy squinted at me. ‘What do you want here?’
‘Some help, a clean shirt, a car and a guide. I left Panama City in a hurry.’
‘Wait,’ he said before he headed off across the bar.
But I had found my mark, a face from Bob’s files, a man who had not met Petrov but liked to boast about his known associations with my alter-ego. I walked over.
The man was sat with girls either side, and I clocked the short fat ugly fucker next to him, the meat-head doorman now bent-double whispering in his ear. They stopped, and looked up at me, and I smiled at the mark, a nod given as if I knew him. He nodded back, but looked unsure of himself.
The mark, Rami, stood, frowning slightly but hiding it from the short guy.
‘Don’t say you forget my name,’ I quietly told him, no one else in ear shot. I put out my hand and we shook. ‘Petrov is memorable.’
Rami’s eyes widened. He turned. ‘This ... is the famous Petrov.’
‘Petrov?’ echoed off several lips, the short fat guy standing, no change in eye level.
Rami asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘On the run, FBI on my tail. I stopped in a flea bag hotel and they said there were Russians here.’
The short guy made space and gestured me down, shooing away the girls sat close. ‘Your exploits are ... legendary.’
‘Too legendary, I had fifty FBI guys on me in Panama City. Listen, I need some antibiotics, I have fresh wounds. I paid a local backstreet doctor, but I’m not sure what he injected me with.’
‘I can arrange that,’ Tomsk offered, playing at being the big man, despite his size, and I was working hard at not laughing; this guy was a living cliché.
‘Can you get me to Bogota? I have some cash, nothing else but these clothes.’
‘We have people on the border, and a pipeline. Why ... Bogota?’
‘A contact there will get me some papers.’
‘I probably know him...’ Tomsk nudged, as if testing me.
‘Yuri Slav.’
‘Ah. He was killed two days ago.’
‘Dead? Shit.’ I took a moment. ‘You have some work for me, in exchange for getting me some good papers?’
Rami put in, ‘The world’s best assassin, even with his hands.’
Tomsk nodded, easing back, and getting into character of major bullshit merchant, not least because his audience was listening in. ‘I have need for such a man, yes. You are a good sniper?’
‘The best,’ I told him. ‘Any weapon. In West Africa I had jungle training, camouflage, and I killed many men, some six hundred yards out.’
‘You are good in the jungle?’ Tomsk pressed.
‘Yes, but I need some equipment, good sniper rifle.’
‘You could ... move through the jungle, attack a compound?’
‘Depends on how many men inside, and how good they are.’
Tomsk nodded, thinking. ‘I have three good men, they were in the army, you could lead them. And we can get any equipment. Could you ... tackle a compound
with thirty men in?’
‘How well trained are the men inside?’
‘Local men, not well trained, no military service, just hoodlums,’ Tomsk explained with a dismissive wave of his hand.
‘Then yes.’
‘Then we may have some work for you, and soon. I have a rival here, he needs to go away. We suspect he is interested in moving on me.’
‘You have a place I can stay, away from the town?’ I asked.
‘Yes, a villa on the coast, very nice.’
‘There’s a reward for me, and the FBI will be looking, so be careful – hosting me might be more than you can handle.’
Rami said, as Tomsk hid his hurt pride, ‘The FBI are not the only ones who want your head. You killed Semov and his crew, and Slongkin. They have friends, and long memories.’
I shrugged. ‘I kill who I’m paid to kill, so why blame me, blame the man hiring me. And Slongkin is not dead.’
‘No?’ Rami puzzled.
I shook my head. ‘They way I do it ... I knock them out, and their bodyguards, then inject them under the hair with a chemical, no trace. They go blind and deaf, can’t taste or smell, but they are fully conscious inside their own skulls, but can’t communicate. They live a long time, slowly going mad, a silent black world.’
‘My god,’ Rami let out. ‘I think I’d rather just a bullet.’
Tomsk said, ‘A punishment, a real punishment, a life sentence in a black cell with no windows. I like it, I have this in mind for a few people.’
Working hard at not laughing at how ridiculous this was, at how stereotypical Tomsk was, how cliché, I firmly told Tomsk, ‘I’m visible here, I need to go hide.’
He nodded, a man waved over, and I was soon in an air-conditioned jeep and heading out of town on crap roads that became little more than dirt tracks, black jungle either side of me. An armed man at a roadblock checked us and let us through, and ten minutes later we arrived at tall gates in high walls, more armed guards checking who we were.
Down from the car, I was introduced to a big Russian, his eyes widening at the mention of my name, and they led me through a sumptuous villa and to a very nice room, like a five star hotel, white tiles and white walls.
I faced the man who had driven me here. ‘This is all I have,’ I told him as I tugged at my shirt, only then remembering the cash in the hotel room. Still, the money hidden there was a fallback position.
‘I’ll get you some clothes,’ he agreed. About to leave, he checked the wardrobe, finding clothes. ‘Try these,’ he said with a shrug.
‘What happened to the last guy in this room?’ I asked as I pulled out shirts.
‘He was killed, rival gang.’
I eased my shirt off.
‘Fuck,’ the big guy let out. ‘How many times you been shot?’
‘I stopped counting at twenty.’
He laughed, shaking his head. ‘And your back?’
‘Fell through a glass roof.’
After a shower, and with clean clothes on, the cash left in the room, I wandered out and found the kitchen, a few men sat around, all Russians, no dark skinned locals.
I accepted a beer from the big guy, who seemed to be called Sasha. ‘Who are the men with military training?’
‘We all did national service, not you?’ the big guy puzzled.
I shook my head. ‘Father was with Aeroflot, I grew up in Canada, England, Germany and Turkey. I fell out with my father at seventeen and stayed in London when he left. Lived mostly in London, some years in Romania and Bulgaria cage fighting.’ I sipped my beer. ‘Tomsk said there were good soldiers here.’
The big guy pointed at three men as they stared back at me. ‘They were paratroopers.’
‘Tomsk has in mind we attack some compound,’ I told them.
They exchanged looks. ‘You have ... soldiering experience?’
‘I was in West Africa many times, had good instructors, British special forces working as mercenaries, spent a lot of time in the jungle, good with tracking. I killed men at seven hundred yards out, had a good little team of blacks for a while.
‘I led them on missions through the jungle, living rough, camouflaged. We’d sneak up on a place, set explosives and decoys, kill the men inside. Last year I was in Sierra Leone for five months.’
One of the men fetched a VEPR and placed it on a table. ‘I have trouble with this. Maybe ... you can find the trouble.’
I smiled at his idea of a test, which he caught, placed down my beer and stripped the rifle quickly as I maintained eye contact with him, running the slide many times. ‘It’s the wrong slide for this rifle. Swap the slide; I know, I did a course on how to maintain rifles.’
The man sat and lifted the rifle, running the slide, and sticking in a few places. He nodded. ‘It’s sticking.’
‘Don’t use oil, that won’t help,’ I said as I reclaimed my beer. ‘Swap the slide. Someone has already swapped the slide, that’s not the original. The original slide would have been machine tested to a micro-millimetre.’
‘You are a useful man,’ one of the ex-soldiers acknowledged. ‘You can check all the weapons.’
I nodded and sipped my beer.
Big Sasha said, pointing at me, ‘Boss has more in mind than just fixing weapons; this is Petrov, the famous assassin.’
Eyes widened.
Tomsk arrived with a group of ladies a few hours later, and I had three rifles and two pistols on the table, busy cleaning and checking them.
The big guy said, ‘He is earning his supper, Boss, good with weapons.’
‘Excellent,’ Tomsk enthused, and he offered me a girl. She was nice enough, and when in Rome, or indeed Panama.
I took her to my room, a good blowjob performed, but told her I always sleep alone, and I claimed the large bed, the air-con whirring above me.
In the morning I made myself a coffee before most were up, and I sat on the balcony, staring at the ocean and the neatly tended lawns and bushes. Tomsk was not suffering any here.
He joined me on the balcony later, pancakes brought out to him. ‘You could train my men, lead a team?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to move on my rival soon ... before he moves on me.’
‘Get some camouflage clothing, gloves and facemasks, ammo bandoliers and webbing. Bring a variety and I’ll tell you which I want. Get me some boots, then I train the men, and if they work well together then we go. Get some radios with ear-pieces, and some green paint suitable for rifles, some camouflage cloth.’
He smiled widely. ‘You know what you are doing. Write down what you need, we’ll sort it today.’
After breakfast I cleaned and checked four rifles and two Browning pistols, two Berrettas, magazines stacked up. They already had webbing, and some camouflage clothing, so I pinched away trousers and a shirt, black dye used on both to create stripes.
With Tomsk out somewhere, a man delivered several bag loads of old military kit, and I sorted through it, shirts and trousers put to one side, webbing cleaned up and adjusted, ponchos checked and rolled up, green gloves washed and then painted.
I cut-up a camouflage shirt and created sleeves for the rifles, tying them on as the others observed me, and when the metal paint arrived I set-about the black metal parts. On the webbing I fixed green elastic chords ready for leaves.
At sundown Tomsk returned, but with several large bags of goodies, the local military stores missing a few items. I stacked up grenades, smoke grenades, first aid kits, telescopic sights, and adjusted the facemasks I found, some extra black stripes added, green elastic sewn in at the top.
Green utility waistcoats were cut and sewn as they observed me, magazines stuffed in, and I was still at it at midnight, the main dining area looking like and army surplus store.
In the morning, four of us stood lined up against tall bushes in the garden, Tomsk smiling widely at our camouflage, and the four of us looked a great deal like my lads on a job.
Facemasks off, I led my little t
eam to a nearby wood, and I moved them slowly through team tactics, covering fire, withdraw and covering fire, dragging a wounded man. I told them to approach a place downwind, to sniff the air, how to look for tracks and how old they were, how to set a grenade trap with a wire.
‘Gentlemen, if you apply some simple rules you will win, and stay alive. First, fingers off triggers till you’re ready to kill someone; if you trip over you kill your buddy. If you’re in a safe area, make safe, don’t cock the weapon for days on end you will destroy the spring.
‘Single well aimed shots, high chest, two shots. Before you approach a body, shoot again, but always best to walk around them just in case. When you are about to open fire, think about solid cover, not bushes, and where’s your escape route.
‘Stay in your pairs, move like one, always three to five paces from the next pair. Tourniquet in your top shirt pocket ready, tampons in your pocket – great for gunshot wounds. Keep plenty of spare magazines on your front, covering your chest, they work like body armour.
‘When you fire, count your rounds. Only ever put eighteen rounds in the mag - when you get to sixteen swap it, don’t click empty. Always keep a pistol handy, just in case, and pistols are better for house clearing.’
On the walk back I had a happy and chatty bunch of soldiers, the men more confident of their chances of surviving, no fondness for Tomsk by the sounds of it. Back at the house, kit off, I fashioned four silencers, one made from a plastic bottle, two made from aluminium tubes and painted, but Tomsk said he would try and find some proper silencers before he showed me a map.
‘This is where we are, and here, twelve kilometres, are the Colombians. They have about thirty men at any one time, and a fifty cal on a jeep I once saw. Behind the house are hills and jungle, easy to hide, but they have dogs and cameras.’
I nodded. ‘I would hit them quietly as they move in and out of the house, wear them down, and then hit the house. If men disappear then they send more men out to look.’
‘Up to you.’
I eased back. ‘What’s the aim here?’
He shrugged and held his hands wide. ‘Kill as many as possible, and try and get their fucking money, they keep a great deal in the house. I have more men that can assist, and shoot, but they are not experts.’