We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  He laughed and said, “The only thing you need to understand about the Russkies over there is that they’ll shove an AK up your ass sideways as soon as talk to you.”

  “That’s impossible; all firearms are illegal within the city and state of New York,” I said flatly. That made us both crack up laughing. If the apocalypse ever DID happen, I’m fairly sure the Russians in Brighton, the Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, hell, even the Dominicans in Washington Heights, would be able to field everything up to and including T-90 tanks and attack helicopters. Of course, they would use them on each other, mostly. It made the job interesting.

  “Regardless, I just want to talk to them. Who is the main guy running shit over there now?” I didn’t wait for his answer; O’Brian was a beat cop from Manhattan South. He could tell me which socialite was going to go to jail tomorrow, or if the Triads were set to go to war anytime soon, but Brooklyn was on another planet for all he knew about it.

  “Says here,” I said, accessing the Special Services Intelligence files on my HUD, “it’s actually a Serb. Immigrant, former Serbian army Special Forces, name of Sasha Zivcovic.”

  “Gotta be pretty badass to make his way to the top of the Russian mob as a Serb,” said O’Brian. I knew what he meant, but often the Serbs and Russians played that “all Slavs together” nationalistic bullshit. In private, though, knives came out.

  “Well, we just want to talk to him. Talking is always better than shooting. Pretty sure the captain wants us to avoid a bloody mess.”

  My partner laughed again and said something about “political hack, naïve fucktard” under his breath. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Captain Hernandez or me. Probably both. Neither of us said much else, and I looked out over the bay. The Statue of Liberty was still encased in scaffolding, being repaired after anti-immigrants had blown off her arm. It was a wonder that the United States was still united, after all the bullshit of the last few decades. I supposed, though, that it looked that way from every part of our history.

  He turned down the street that led to Zivcovic’s ‘hotel.’ I’d never been there before, but I was sure the five NYPD cop cars parked out front, and the dozen or so officers in tac gear, wasn’t an everyday thing. O’Brian flashed the lights, and pulled up next to a detective in plain clothes, his badge hanging around his neck as he sheltered behind a car. He rolled down the bulletproof window about five millimeters and said, “Hey, Costas, what’s going on?”

  “World War Five for all I know, though it’s been quiet for the last five minutes.” Then he went back to talking into his throat mike.

  We looked at each other, and I blipped the Special Services freq. “Hey, Captain, this is Niner-Five, we’re outside a Russian mobster’s…” and O’Brian mouthed ‘Serb’ with air quotes, “…uh, a Mafiya HQ here at Brighton Beach, chasing down a lead on our target. There’s some kind of shit going down, the Mobile Tactical Unit is holding a perimeter around the building.”

  “So, do your fucking job! I gotta meet with the mayor in two minutes. Wait, Russian? Zivcovic’s place?”

  “He’s a Serb, not a Russ—,” I started to tell him, but was cut off by a stream of Spanish curses. I waited him out but did hear the words “putas” and “fucking organized crime unit jerk offs” several times.

  “OK,” he finally said, “enough of this interdepartmental bullshit. Go in there and figure out what the fuck is going on, on my authority.” Click.

  I let out a whistle and stepped out of the car. O’Brian had heard the whole thing, and he started to get out too, but I waved him back. “I got this, let me do a recon first.”

  Detective Costas, who I guessed was from the aforementioned Organized Crime Task Force, just pointed at the front door and made a “be my guest” gesture. Great.

  * * *

  Correction: what was left of the front door. It had been shattered inwards, like someone had fired a breeching round into the heavy deadbolts. Or kicked it with an augmented foot, I thought. I don’t know how she beat us there, probably ran the entire way while we sat in traffic. The door lay tilted on its hinges, and a body was crumpled on the floor behind it. An older Saiga Taktika shotgun lay ten feet away, and there was a single expended shell on the floor. I picked it up, pulled the drum magazine, racked the bolt, and then reloaded it. Being a tank was all well and good, but a shotgun beat the hell out of my Glock, and I wasn’t going to hold back against these guys. If it came to it.

  The foyer area had a set of glass doors with gold letter “Z”s etched into them. You know, I always thought my Italian family was bad enough, with plastic on the couches and gold horns hanging from our rear-view mirrors, but these Russian guys took the cake. The dead guy in front of me had five thick gold chains around his broken neck, and the hallway had gold filigree everywhere. Frigging showoffs.

  In front of the glass doors, a young woman—a girl really—cowered, face stained with tears and running mascara, making her look like a raccoon. She was dressed like a hooker—micro skirt, pushup bra, the works—but couldn’t have been more then sixteen under all that face paint. I flashed my badge, pointed to the door, and said into my mike, “One female civilian coming out.”

  “Roger, single female,” came back an unknown voice, and I assumed a precinct captain had shown up to take over the scene. He knew better than to tell me what to do. The girl ran past me like her ass was on fire. Good. I hoped she learned a lesson and went back to Russia or Long Island or wherever she had run away from.

  Since the glass doors were closed, I headed up the stairs. I know, I should have cleared the entire ground floor, but time was of the essence. If there were wounded, they needed to get treated. Plus, I had an idea that my target was already gone since the gunfire had stopped, and the big boys usually lived at the top. Thankfully, the steps were marble and held my weight without creaking. One step at a time, shotgun raised, steady sight picture, rock solid. I had become “The Tank;” I could take fire and give it out at the same time. Fear me, I chanted, like all my platoon mates had. It was to cover our own fear.

  Another man lay at the third-floor landing. His face had been kicked into his brain. I know it’s an old Hollywood cliché and basically bullshit for an ordinary person, nose driven into the brain, but this time, it was his entire face. A Sig-Sauer MPX-K, one of those stubby submachine guns, was in his hand, empty mag on the floor and new one clutched in his dead fist. Bullet holes stitched the wall, the last through a shattered window. She’d been moving too fast for him to track. I’d seen that a lot—tanks ate bullets, scouts outran them. I think, all in all, I’d rather have been a scout. Getting shot still hurt, even if they didn’t penetrate.

  I kept the shotgun up, but it turned out I didn’t need it. The remnants of the Quick Reaction Force were sprawled on the fifth floor, three guys in tac vests and body armor, loaded for bear. I saw the damage before I saw them. The entire landing was chewed to shit, holes blown in the walls, shattered marble underfoot. I stepped over a dented, expended RPG that hadn’t had time and distance to fuse after launch. They would have been better off using one with a frag warhead instead of antitank, but either way, it was too small a space and wherever it’d hit, it just bounced. The backblast would have been hell; I was surprised the building wasn’t on fire. All that marble and brick, I guess.

  One man was still alive. His legs were smashed to goo, and both hands crushed. That was probably out of spite, the hands. He was lying there, grunting in pain, biting back a scream. Tough bastard; I’ll give him that.

  “Which way?” I asked and got no response. “Kakim Obrazom?” I didn’t know if he was Russian or Serb, but close enough for government work. He weakly pointed his chin up the stairs, and passed out. Or died. I never did find out and didn’t care. Play games with the big boys, you take the losses as well as the wins.

  At the top of the stairs was a short hallway that lead to an ornate wooden door. It too had been kicked open, but had swung back on heavy hinges, jamming shut. I stepped forward, fl
ipping on my millimeter radar to see if anyone was behind it. One human figure, far end of the room slightly moving. Two more, one on each side of the doorway, carrying heavy metal. Could be more, though. In combat, I had learned to trust systems only so far.

  Screw it, I could take anything smaller than an RPG. I slung the shotgun across my back, drew my Glock in case I had to be selective of who I killed, and started to run. The good thing about being a tank is that, well, I might not have speed, but I sure as hell have mass and momentum. The door was thick, but it shattered like a block of ice being hit by a sledge hammer.

  I spun a full 360 as I came through, my pistol firing twice, then twice more, slaved to the targeting reticle in my right eye. Rounds bounced off me, and the second shooter was actually killed by the first, hammered backward even as my shots hit him in the face. As I came back around, the bastard on the far side of the room fired.

  The first round hit me in my side, and I grunted in surprise at the pain, like an electric needle zipping under my skin. The second caught my forearm, probably glancing off the titanium infused bones, coming out and then burying itself in my deltoid. Fucker had a Barrett rail gun with sabots; that shit was supposed to only be on the DARPA research shelves. This might get me killed, but I was committed and had been wounded before. Lowering my shoulder, I crashed into the desk and shoved it up against the man crouched behind it. With a yell, he dropped the rail gun, useless in close quarters, drew some sort of knife, stepped in and then danced way from me. His two swings had hit me, one across the arm and the other across my chin, close to my neck, and I dripped blood on the ground. That knife had some kind of mono-molecular edge that could get through my skin and cut my throat. Stepping back, I lowered the Glock, rock steady, targeting crosshairs locked on his face, my arms slaved to the aim point.

  “Sasha Zivcovic, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.”

  “Ya, ya, whatever. I’ll be out of jail in twenty-four hours, Tank,” he taunted. “Then I will call a man with another gun like that,” as he gestured to the bent and broken plastic and ceramic, “and he will shoot you dead from a thousand meters.”

  “Where’s the girl?” I asked. He was right, I knew. He would be out of jail, and I’d be dead, but twenty-four hours was a long time.

  The mobster shrugged, a fatalistic gesture. “You might try the ocean. She loved it there as a child, goes there to think.”

  “Child?” I asked, and a light went off in my mind. “Your daughter?”

  “Yes. She is mad at me that I make her join army and become like she is. Dutiful, she did this, but now she is a no one, not a human anymore. Like you. Both fucking machines.”

  “I’m more human than you, scumbag. Pimp, drug dealer, thug. I’ve read your file. How many have you killed on your way to power?”

  His gaze was hard, a tough man in a tough world, who thought he had the answers. “I don’t remember, after the first one. But I did it for me and my family, not some fat politician sitting in office thousands of kilometers away. What was it for you, Tank, that made you become killing machine? That made you give up, how you say, being human?”

  “Why did she come here?” I ignored the implications in his question, about why I did what I did. I didn’t know myself anymore. “Why did you push her?” He still held the knife, perhaps waiting for me to tire, but I could hold this position for days. I heard Captain Hernandez demanding a sitrep over my internal, but I ignored him.

  “Because she would make a great asset to my organization. The ultimate enforcer. She came here to kill me, but I guess she didn’t have the heart. I am very disappointed, not such the killer as I would have expected.” He had been edging closer as we talked, trying to distract me with his talking. The hole in my arm was already sealing, but blood had dripped onto the floor, and maybe he thought he had gotten me worse than he had. The one in my side I didn’t have time to think about, but my status bar was only yellow in my vision. His next slow step took me within reach of that foot-long blade.

  “Do what you must,” he said, and for a brief instant, I saw the pain of a father who had lost a child in his eyes. Then he lunged, fast.

  I shot him.

  * * *

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” said O’Brian as I sat down on the bumper of an EMS truck, waving the technician away. I would be OK; my systems were repairing my body as we spoke. I just needed time, and a shitload of food. He knew this and handed me the bag of donuts. I mashed them all together and shoved them in my mouth, almost inhaling them. My partner was always amazed when I did this, expecting me to choke to death.

  “No gag reflex,” I said, swallowing again.

  “Hey, can I set you up with my gay cousin? He’d love you.” It was an old joke between us, but in the guy code, it helped to hide concern. It was his way of letting me know he was worried.

  “No, thanks. Can I bang your sainted sister?” I gave back to him as I licked the bag.

  “She’s pregnant again. Go for it.”

  I took a deep breath and stood up, looking at the holes in my uniform. The one in my arm matched the one in my side, which had gratefully just been a score that glanced off my rib and went back out. Hurt like a bitch though. The one in my chest worked its way out and fell onto the sidewalk. That gun, whatever it had been, would have drilled me if he managed to hit me center mass. The knife wounds stung, but they hadn’t been deep, just a surprise.

  “Let me ask you a question,” said O’Brian, and I knew what was coming. He wasn’t stupid; he’d had been a cop a long time. “I know that when we catch this girl, she’s going down for at least three murders. Why would she shoot the bossman, though? Everything else was hand or foot strikes.” I had told him that Zivcovic was dead, gunshot to the face. I hadn’t lied, really.

  It was his way of telling me that he thought I had fucked up. He knew I had popped Zivcovic but didn’t agree with it. In his heart, my partner was a lawman. In mine, I was a soldier. Killing Zivcovic had been a tactical decision, and it could be argued that he would have killed me first, but the courts would keel haul me. Frigging New York City liberals. I had heard the Special Branch Captain yelling at me through my internal coms for about five minutes now, demanding updates. Screw him.

  “I dunno, she probably has some serious dad—,” I started to say, then stopped, and lamely finished, “serious issues.” I don’t know why I didn’t tell him about their relationship. I accessed the internal storage chip in my head, ran a military subroutine that played static over the hard drive recording, and piped the same virus back to the dBase at Special Branch. Might get caught, might not, but I think the captain would just write it off. It’s not like a cop had never deleted bodycam footage before.

  O’Brian shot me a look, guessing what I was doing, and just shook his head. “So where to now?” he asked, standing up. I tried to and sat back down. I needed time for the calories to catch up with my burning metabolism.

  “Gimme a minute, Tim. Can you deal with Hernandez?” He nodded and turned away, making a report to the captain.

  For my part, I sat and thought while my head cleared, running over the whole thing in my mind. She could have killed me, twice. Kicks that would crush a normal skull were strong enough to jelly my brains, regardless of how reinforced the bone was. All the dead Mafiya goons could be written off as combat, where bad shit just happened. After all, you have to get to your objective alive, or there was no point, and she probably had as little regard for the men who worked for her father as I did.

  Which left, what? When we first started, I thought she was a maniac killer. One of my own, gone bad like a rabid dog. The veteran who snaps was a common enough trope, and not really true, but it felt like there was more to this than that. I had to tell her, somehow, that her father was dead. Maybe then she could find some peace and stop. After that, well, we would see. I started formulating a plan in my mind.

  “Coney Island,” I said to my partner, who looked over, nodded, and signed out of t
he conversation in the middle of a loud ass chewing.

  He grimaced, and said, “Looks like I’m gonna be working traffic on the Triborough bridge until I retire. This better be worth it, Tony. Why Coney Island?”

  “Something her dad said, just before he died.” I took a deep breath, and said, “I’m going to bring her in,” and was met by an incredulous stare over the roof of the car.

  “You gotta be joking me. She almost killed you, like twice, and wasted the shit out of those guys there. I was only kidding!”

  I shook my head and said, “I think I know what makes her tick. She’s angry, sure as shit like I was, and she doesn’t have a home. You know, like you guys gave me.” He just shook his head and climbed in. I didn’t buckle up, since I didn’t know if I would have to bail again.

  * * *

  It was dark, or as dark as it ever got in the City. We sat in the parking lot of a White Castle, eating sliders and waiting. We both figured that she would wait until dark to come out, keeping the net from grabbing her mug for an ID.

  “You know,” I said, “it was easier in the old days.” My mind kept going back to how long it took Zivcovic to admit he was dead. The round had entered his throat, a perfect kill shot just under his chin, just as he started to dart forward and stab. His spinal cord must have been cut instantly, but the look of hate and despair in his eyes bored into me.

  “Whadda ya mean?” O’Brian asked, dipping fries into his milkshake and cramming them into his mouth.

  “Well, like a hundred years ago. My ancestors took care of their own business, and yours could break some heads to keep the peace.”

  “You read too many books, Tony. Sure, it worked, but it wasn’t the law, you know? It was just tribal bullshit. Now here’s me, and here’s you. We’re New Yorkers, nothing more or less, and we do our job to keep the world moving. Step outside of the City, and we’re outsiders, you know?”