Rise: Luthecker, #2

by Keith Domingue

  Alex observed Two-Good’s fidgety movements and darting eyes, fueled by a slightly-elevated heart rate that indicated a lack of comfort with flying. The occasional deep breaths Two-Good took were to brace himself emotionally for the journey, and considering the size of the aircraft, the required engine rpm to move the fully-fueled plane, these things indicated it would be a long flight of at least ten hours, which to Alex meant they were headed overseas.

  Although he had forbade Alex to speak, Alex knew it was Two-Good who would want to talk. Two-Good would want to know why Alex made him feel the way he did. He would want to understand the disturbance in his soul caused by his brief encounter with Alex, and Alex knew this. It was the source behind the impulse Two-Good had to keep looking back at Alex. In the end, Two-Good wouldn’t be able to stop himself. The nervous agitation in his body and the questions behind the stirring of his psyche that Alex caused by reading the man’s fate would force his hand. It would be like a moth to a flame, and Alex smiled as he realized it would be Seng Ge, the Snow Lion, that would be the catalyst.

  Alex was also beginning to realize that it wasn’t simply a misguided alpha male dynamic that would make Two-Good force his control of the situation. It would be much more than that. Alex was beginning to realize a truth about his unique perceptions; in him was every answer to every question Two-Good could have about his life—why he had done the things he’d done, and why he’d been born in the first place; Two-Good also knew, on some level, what Alex was. It was not only David Two-Good who knew, but everyone Alex encountered. They were shown this reality, at least on a subconscious level. This was why some people had an irrational fear of Alex while others were inescapably drawn to him.

  Everything that Winn, Mawith, and most recently Kunchin had tried to explain to Alex was all starting to come together in his mind. It was this stirring sense of awareness, this enabling of forgotten freedom that Alex brought to those whose fates he read. It was stripping away the illusions people created to protect their souls that drew some to Alex. It acted like an unstoppable gravitational pull on them, an existential call to home, bringing them back to their true identity. And as he had experienced time and again, many of those who encountered Alex had considerable difficulty facing the truth about who or what they really were.

  Two-Good glanced back at Alex again. “Remember what I said. Not a word.”

  Much like the interrogator David Lloyd in Los Angeles, Two-Good thought Alex was his captive. And much like David Lloyd, he was about to discover that the exact opposite was true.

  17

  The 417

  Vasilevich flinched instinctively from the sound and concussion of the explosion. It was the second one to take place at Parks’ command in as many days. Vasilevich smiled at his handy work as he watched chunks of concrete that made up the subway entrance land all over the street as the doorway itself crumbled in a blast of blue-grey smoke. He lowered the RPG tube from his shoulder and turned to the others to get their reaction.

  Just as he turned into it, the first strike from the aluminum Kali stick hit him square on his right cheek, cracking the bone on impact. Before the sting registered, the second Kali stick struck; this time on the other side of Vasilevich’s head, cracking the orbital bone of the left eye.

  Vasilevich dropped to the rooftop unconscious, and Winn was already in mid-attack on his next target. He used the momentum of the swing from the last stick strike to turn his body and drive a back kick dead center into Mitchell Jr.’s solar plexus, the force of the blow knocking the wind out of his opponent—just as he was removing his weapon from his waistband. Winn kept his motion continuous, cracking a Kali stick across Mitchell Jr.’s skull while preparing to engage his next opponent.

  Winn’s technique wasted no movement. He used the direction and force his body had generated by the kick to plant his feet directly in front of Logan. Logan realized what was happening, but it was too late. Winn poked the Kali stick in his left hand into Logan’s wind pipe, simultaneously swinging the stick in his right hand. The second stick landed at the top of Logan’s skull, the impact shorting out his brain circuitry and shutting it down. Logan’s muscles slackened before his body clattered to stillness on the rooftop.

  Winn did a quick scan of the carnage he had lain out across the roof. They had never seen him coming, so focused on the subway attack, and it had taken him less than seven seconds to nullify the four men on the rooftop, starting with Drugal; yet he swore at himself for getting here too late.

  Now, with all four men laid out and unconscious, Winn quickly gathered their firearms and tossed them into a large air conditioning vent, the weaponry clanging against the metal walls of the shaft as they fell. Winn then approached Logan’s awkwardly-angled body and searched his pockets for a cell phone. He found what he was looking for in Logan’s jacket pocket, an older model Blackberry. Winn quickly dialed 911 and informed the operator about the explosion, the perpetrators, and where the authorities could find their weapons before putting the phone in his own pocket. He would go through the contact list on Logan’s phone later and see if he could find Parks’ contact in the directory. Perhaps he could negotiate some sort of truce. He then turned his attention to the subway. Over forty people were trapped inside, and he had no idea if they were hurt or even alive. As he heard police and rescue sirens approaching, Winn strapped his Kali sticks across his back and took one last look at the men on the rooftop before he made his way to the fire escape. He climbed over the roof’s edge, landing without a sound on the metal grill of the fire escape. He quickly began his decent down the metal stairs to the street below, knowing that if Parks had authorized this strike, it was because he had both Alex and Nikki in his grasp.

  As he made his way to the rubble that used to be the entrance to the 417, Winn knew that Alex would have to face Parks. It seemed to be Alex’s destiny to face down evil men. They were drawn to him, Winn knew, in part because of the power Alex possessed and their desire to control it for their own gain; but also because of their deep need to find meaning and justifications for their actions, for their lives as a whole. Powerful men needed adulation and meaning, and Winn speculated that perhaps they felt if they confessed their sins to the one man who knew all, they would be absolved of the crimes behind their ideology.

  Winn had hoped to be able to help his top student understand this, but right now he had to focus on the task at hand. He approached the rubble that made up the entrance to the 417, grabbed a large piece of concrete, moved it aside, and started digging.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Rodriguez yelled, the instinctive question of a police officer, his voice echoing off the cracked concrete walls of the 417. Something dripped down the side of his face; he put his hand on his forehead and felt the wetness of blood. The explosion had literally knocked him off his feet, and his head had hit the concrete hard. He had scrambled to get upright as soon as he could, but the blow to the head had left him dizzy and disoriented. The 417 was now a mass of dimly-lit rubble, the ceiling partially collapsed, with only scattered flashlights providing illumination.

  “Everyone stay calm,” he yelled, as he heard a combination of screams and panicked conversations in many languages echoing throughout the rubble. He pulled his flashlight from his waistband and clicked it on just as he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” Yaw asked Rodriguez.

  “I’m fine, you?”

  “I’m okay. We need to do a head count. See who’s hurt; see who needs help.”

  Rodriguez ran his flashlight over the partially-collapsed hall of the abandoned subway station. The beam cut through dust to reveal porthole views of fallen concrete intermixed with frightened faces huddled together in clusters. Rodriguez pushed away disorientation and focused on his sense of duty as an officer. His flashlight beam settled on the only exit from the 417. A pile of rubble sealed the tunnel tight.

  “Glen. Goddamn it,” Rodriguez whispered, knowing his partner and fellow officer lay within the rubble.
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  “I’m sorry,” Yaw said.

  “We have to find a way out of here,” Rodriguez responded, deflecting his emotions by focusing on the task at hand. He ran his flashlight over the walls, the ceiling, and the entrance. The walls were cracked, and a massive pile of rubble sealed the entrance like a tomb. He turned to Yaw. “We’re gonna run out of air.”

  “I know,” Yaw confirmed. “Let’s finish our head count, help who we can, then grab the able bodies and start digging.”

  18

  Trans Dniester Moldovan Republic

  Lucas Parks took one last look at Nikki Ellis to make sure she was seated and buckled in before he fastened his own seat belt. The Cessna Citation X, one of the fastest long-range private jets manufactured—and one from a fleet of four aircraft that Parks owned—was making its final approach into the Chisinau International Airport, the main international airport in the Republic of Moldova. Parks had arranged for a limo to be waiting for him, along with security personnel carriers, and a transport vehicle for his hostage. From the airport, the small caravan of vehicles would make the two-hour trek to the city of Tiraspol, the capital city of the controversial break off Republic of Trans Dniester.

  Although Parks held business assets and real estate throughout the world, the Trans Dniester Moldovan Republic was the true hub of his operations. And this was because, outside of the United States, this little strip of land in Eastern Europe was the gun-running and illicit-merchandise capital of the world.

  A de facto sovereign state located between the Eastern Moldovan border and the Ukraine, Trans Dniester had declared its independence from Moldova in 1990, the break spurred by the Perestroika and Glasnost policies brought on by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during the dissolution of the USSR. A brief and bloody war with Moldova in 1992 secured the break off region’s autonomy, leaving this internationally unrecognized state—that was less than two thousand square miles in size—with not only a huge cache of weaponry, but also the bulk of Moldova’s manufacturing capacity. Trans Dniester quickly used that capacity to manufacture more weapons—machine guns, RPGs, mines, anti-aircraft missiles, and much more—which were assembled and exported to conflicts all over the world. By the mid-‘90s, Trans Dniester became the very definition of an illicit state, trafficking not only illegal weapons, but also drugs and slaves. All of it moved freely and state sanctioned, if not overtly than covertly, due to the criminal elements that took over the government, capitalizing on the opportunity created by the crumbling Soviet empire that had long dominated the region. And since Trans Dniester was unrecognized as a sovereign state, the international community literally had no idea how to deal with it. The republic’s economy was free market in its purest sense, with no regulations to hinder business interests and extremely high profit margins on all its exports. It was also well armed, and aside from a few thousand Russian “peacekeeping troops” stationed in the area, who were more than happy to look the other way if properly compensated, the rogue republic was left alone by its neighbors. As it was, the Trans Dniester Moldovan Republic could not have been better designed for Lucas Parks’ business needs.

  Parks had set up shop in Trans Dniester shortly after the 9/11 attacks due to the subsequent national security measures put in place in the U.S., which had severely hindered his operations. Already having a strong reputation among dictators and insurgents across the globe—matched with a large network of established buyers in nearly every conflict in the world—an alliance with the Baltic crime state was a perfect fit and quick and easy for Parks to establish. The venture had proven hugely profitable for both parties, and in short order. Trans Dniester was completely untouched by international law, and even during his incarceration, Parks kept his weapons, drugs, and slave trade operation running smoothly.

  Trans Dniester’s culture, for all intents and purposes, was a throwback to the early-‘80s Soviet era. Nostalgia for the USSR ran high here, the Hammer and Sickle visible on nearly every corner, along with well-worn statues of Lenin that still stood in front of most official buildings. More important and useful to Parks than the bland Soviet architecture was the Soviet era oppression on the populace that was still the accepted way of life here. The general population’s knowledge that their government was watching them was ingrained into their psyche, and thus they behaved accordingly. No one asked questions, and no one dared use a camera phone. Many of the enforcers behind the police state were former KGB agents and disaffected members of the Communist Party, who were now under the employ of Parks and his local partners.

  At three thousand feet, Parks looked out the window and examined the angular micro-circuitry appearance of the city as the aircraft began its final descent into Chisinau Airport. He realized he was anxious to touch down in Moldova and was happy to be free of the American justice system—back to the place where he ruled without question. Parks owned a well-fortified castle turned-high-tech estate just outside the capital city of Tiraspol, the multi-building property being a dichotomy of modern communication and surveillance technology against medieval 16th century Ottoman architecture. The centuries -old castle grounds had seven structures, with the main building consisting of one hundred and twenty rooms. The Oligarch estate had cost Parks over one hundred and seventy million dollars to purchase and renovate, and, even with absolutely no bureaucracy standing in the way, the project’s construction had still taken nearly five years to complete. Parks had yet to see his massive custom-designed estate realized as final construction had been completed during his incarceration.

  Parks felt the bump of the Citation X’s wheels touching down on the tarmac, followed by the roar of the twin Rolls Royce turbofan engines being reversed and the pull of the aircraft slowing to taxi speed. As the airplane completed its deceleration and rolled down the runway toward the terminal, Parks looked out the window and noted the overcast sky. Winter was coming to the region, and the cities and towns with their bland communist architecture would soon be covered in a thick blanket of snow. He checked his watch. It was 6:35pm local time. Parks had been informed that the aircraft containing Alex Luthecker was less than ten hours behind him.

  The Citation X rolled up to the terminal and ground to a halt, simultaneous with the engines going quiet. As soon as the plane stopped, Parks released his seat belt and got to his feet. He walked back in the cabin toward Nikki.

  “Hold out your hands,” he said to her.

  Nikki slowly complied.

  Parks fastened a zip-tie around her wrists and pulled it tight.

  “You’re in a foreign land. Few here speak English, and they all work for me. So there’s nowhere you can run, and there’s nowhere you can hide. Say you understand.”

  “I understand,” Nikki replied, never taking her eyes from Parks.

  “Good. Again, I don’t want this to be difficult. As I said, I don’t want to hurt you. But I will without hesitation if I have to. Stay seated, someone will be here for you momentarily.”

  Nikki watched as Parks walked to the front of the airplane and lifted the large bar that kept the entrance locked. Once he released the door, Parks stepped out of the aircraft and out of view.

  Nikki looked down at her hands, now bound at the wrists, and saw that they were shaking. Parks was, without question, the most intimidating individual she had ever encountered. His cold and lifeless eyes only served to make his calm manner that much more threatening. Whenever he engaged with her, whenever he stood close, his very presence created fear, not only in her, but also in those around him. It was an impression that he had likely perfected over time, but Nikki sensed it was more than that. There was an inherent darkness to Parks, an evil that seemed beyond human capability. She wondered what Alex would make of this man, would make of the patterns that defined his life. She wondered if Alex could see this man’s end. She wondered if, by reading Parks, Alex could see her own end at his hands. She wondered if that’s what Kunchin meant when the old Tibetan monk told Alex that someone he loved would be lost, and ther
e would be nothing Alex could do to prevent it this time. She wondered if it was her who would be lost.

  She immediately dismissed her speculation. If it was in her power, she would prevent Alex from ever being exposed to this psychopath. The last thing she wanted was to make Alex vulnerable to this monster because of her. And despite Parks’ warning, if she had the chance, she would indeed try to escape. If Parks didn’t have her, he would have no leverage against Alex. And if she could get access to a computer, and subsequently access to PHOEBE, she had the potential to turn the tables somewhat by wreaking havoc on whatever Parks and this “foreign land” had in mind for her. With PHOEBE, she could hack into power grids, computer systems, bank accounts, and wipe out any electronic system imaginable across the world, regardless of her own location. She could destroy whatever business transactions her captor was engaged in. She realized that what Alex could do with people, she could do with electronic infrastructure. At the very least, she believed she could distract Parks and buy time for Alex.

  Parks had mentioned that Alex was several hours behind them. She decided that that was her time frame. That she must find a way to escape, then find a computer work station with access to the Internet, all before Alex arrived.

  Parks stepped off of the ramp and onto the tarmac. The sun was setting and the temperature was in the low 40s Fahrenheit. He took a deep breath of the fresh evening air to refresh himself after the long overseas journey. He looked at the escort that awaited him, a pair of black Cadillac Escalades with tinted windows that sandwiched a black Mercedes Benz Maybach 62S. He knew that the Escalades were armor plated, with soldiers to match, and he knew who was waiting for him in the similarly-armored, million- dollar Maybach. He was approaching the line of vehicles when the phone in his pocket rang. He pulled it and checked the number. It was Howe.