Walking Dead

by Greg Rucka

  Then a voice came floating in from outside, muted by the stone and wood, speaking in Russian.

  “I know you're in there, David.”

  It was Arzu Kaya.

  “I've been waiting for you, watching your women,” he said, switching to English. It was the first time I'd heard him speak the language, and he spoke it well, and I wondered why he was using it, until he continued and I realized it was for Alena's and Bridgett's benefit, as much as my own. “You have very pretty women, David, even if they are too old to be worth anything.”

  His voice seemed to fall and rise irregularly, bouncing between soft and loud as it was deflected by the stone. None of us inside our darkness moved, each of us trying to get a fix on his position by sound.

  “The redhead,” Arzu said. “The one you were kissing at the airport, she's pregnant, isn't she? Your wife, David? I know a few who pay extra for pregnant.”

  Carefully, I started sliding my feet forward, back toward the door I'd locked when I'd entered, hoping I wasn't heading straight toward it, and hoping more that Arzu didn't just decide to open up and spray the wood with his submachine gun. Behind me, metal scraped stone as one of the women took up another of the farm implements.

  “Who is the other one, the dark-haired one? Some bitch to fuck when your wife says no?”

  I half expected Bridgett to respond to that, but she didn't. One of them was moving, though, I could hear her, but with Arzu's voice outside and the acoustics inside, I was having difficulty fixing her position.

  “Don't you have anything to say, David?”

  I had a lot to say, but I wasn't going to say it right then. My foot hit the wall, and with my free hand I reached out, feeling for the edge of the door. I'd come in close to it, within a foot, and used that as a guide to get my back against the stone wall. I took the axe in both hands, wondering who in the world I was trying to kid. Unless I could get around behind him, by the time I had managed to raise and swing it, Arzu would have shot me a dozen times.

  “Then I will say it.” Arzu's voice seemed closer now, as if he was just outside the door. “You and your bitches locked in an old barn, and I am outside. If you had a gun, you would have used it already, so you have no gun. So you have no defense. But I have a gun, and if you make me come inside for you, David, not only will I kill you, I will kill your women, too. I will kill your child. But if you come out, I will let them live. You understand me?”

  “You should have let it go,” I said.

  “Let it go?” Arzu's voice crackled with anger. “How do I let it go? The Russians, the Americans, everyone is looking at me because of you! They think I'm Bakhar, now, just like Bakhar! You did this, not me! You made this!”

  “You'll let them live.” I made no effort to hide my contempt.

  “Yes, I will,” Arzu said. “Or maybe I keep you alive long enough to watch what I do to them. Make you watch when I carve your baby out of the bitch's belly.”

  He went quiet, and the silence inside the barn weighed like lead. Then, just as emphatically, it broke.

  From the opposite side of the barn came the sudden sound of wood snapping, and a door I hadn't known was there flew open, and a silhouette filled it, large and lean. Theunis Mesick from Amsterdam with a submachine gun in his hands, and whether he could see me or not I didn't know, but he had his weapon pointed straight at me, and I had nowhere to go and no move to make.

  The sub came up to his shoulder, and then Alena slammed him in the face with the shovel she'd found, and Theunis Mesick staggered backward, finger heavy on the trigger, muzzle flash as a strobe light as bullets whined wildly off the stone walls and pierced the roof above us. She hit him a second time, knocking him to the ground, then brought the blade of the tool down and into the back of his neck.

  I grounded the axe as Alena scooped up the submachine gun, caught it when she threw it to me, pivoting in place. It was an old Sterling, and I tucked it against my side. Arzu was shouting Mesick's name, trying to figure out what had happened, and when no response came, he threw a burst at the door he'd been standing outside, and I stepped away from the wall and returned it with one of my own. The sound of gunfire echoing inside the barn was ferocious.

  With the light from the now-open door opposite, I could make out more of the interior. Alena was searching Mesick's body, and Bridgett had some tool of her own in her hands, was moving to her side. I turned from the door Arzu and I had just perforated, made for the other one along the same side, the one Alena had locked. Everything was down to speed now, the same as it had been for Tiasa.

  I threw the bolt back and opened the door, exiting hard and twisting to my left, the Sterling ready, thinking that planting four or five rounds in Arzu's chest would end this once and for all. I would've been right about that, too, except for one small thing.

  He wasn't there.

  I'd started to turn when I felt the muzzle press into my right shoulder from behind, and I lost the sound of the shot as a bullet exploded out of me from in front. I dropped the Sterling and found myself following it to the ground. My right arm absolutely failed to support me, and I went face-first into mud. I couldn't get my breath, tried to raise my head, thinking that it would be better if the last thing I saw in this life was the sky. The muzzle returned, the metal hot, jammed into the back of my neck, but the shot didn't come.

  “I told you,” Arzu shouted at me, rage and glee commingled. “You should have taken care of your women!”

  I managed to lift my head enough to look around and up at him, and he was leaning over me, the barrel of his Sterling still digging into my neck. I saw him, and I saw beyond him, and despite his gun and the bullet and the mud and pain, I had to laugh.

  “The women can take care of themselves,” I told him.

  Then Bridgett Logan buried a pitchfork into his back.

  CHAPTER

  Thirty-eight

  In mid-August, Alena told me that she wanted to visit Tiasa. We had resettled in Vancouver, Canada, and she was well into her second trimester. She was in New York a week, leaving Miata and me alone to continue our respective convalescences and to pursue our slow search for a more permanent home.

  The night she returned, Alena said, “She wants to come live with us. She doesn't want to go back to Georgia.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it's a good idea.”

  “You talk to Cashel about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She thinks that Tiasa will need counseling, therapy, for a long time to come. That she needs stability. Safety. Love. She wonders if we can give her all of these things.”

  “We can,” I said.

  “Yes,” Alena agreed. “We can.”

  In early October, Cashel and Bridgett brought Tiasa out from New York, to the house we'd purchased in Victoria. Alena and I met them at the airport. Tiasa hugged me when she saw me, and my right arm had recovered enough strength and mobility that I was able to hug her in return. She looked like a different person than when I'd last seen her in July. Somewhere along the way, somehow, she'd rediscovered her ability to smile.

  Bridgett and Alena kept their mutual hostility almost cordial, more for Tiasa's benefit than mine. Bridgett stayed with us for only two days, but Cashel was with us a week. With her assistance, we were able to set up counseling and further treatment for Tiasa.

  None of us had any illusions.

  On the last day of the year, at thirty-six minutes past three in the morning, Alena gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

  We named her Natalya, in memory of another lost friend.

  All the while, even into the new year, I'd been following the news, trying to keep an eye on the various outlets I'd sent my FedEx packs to.

  Some ran further with the story than others, and some ran with it not at all. Of the European outlets, Der Spiegel did the most with the material I'd sent, followed by The Guardian. In the U.S., as I'd seen, The New York Times took the lead, but in
early October, The Washington Post began its own series.

  It was, I knew, a drop in the bucket.

  All I had to do was look at Tiasa, holding her baby sister as she sang Natalya to sleep, to see the memories still fresh in her eyes, to know the truth.

  Acknowledgments

  The research for this novel was some of the most painful I've undertaken, and the efforts of everyone who assisted me is greatly and sincerely appreciated. Of the many who offered their time, observations, knowledge, and assistance, the following are but a handful.

  My thanks to both Eric Trautmann and Timothy O'Brien for research assistance. For an insight into the world of engineers, Andrew Greenberg—who really is a rocket scientist—was invaluable.

  As he has done on almost every novel I've written, Jerry Hennelly provided firsthand tactical experience, professional know-how, and a deeper understanding of everything from surveillance technology to firearm techniques. I remain, as ever, in his debt.

  My agents, David Hale Smith and Angela Cheng-Caplan, continue to supply moral and creative support, and consistently provide that most crucial of aid: they know how to listen, and they do so exceptionally well.

  Christina Weir took time from a busy schedule and an insanely difficult year to read the manuscript in progress and offer comment, constructive criticism, and encouragement. Mine's finished; where's yours?

  A special note of gratitude to E. Benjamin Skinner, a man I've never met, but whose book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Day Slavery, reveals one of the greatest evils of our time, and our failings in combating it. In combination with H. Richard Friman and Simon Reich's Human Trafficking, Human Security, and the Balkans, as well as Kevin Bales's remarkable book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, these works formed the foundation for this novel. Not a single scenario as presented herein was fabricated from whole cloth: everything is based in fact to a greater or lesser extent, gleaned from publications, testimonials, interviews, and documentaries.

  Finally, to Jennifer, who listened when she would rather not have done, and who lived with me as I went once more to the dark places; thank you, again, for being there when I came back into the light.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  GREG RUCKA resides in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children, where he is at work on his next thriller, which Bantam will publish in 2010. He is the author of nine previous thrillers, as well as numerous graphic novels, including the Eisner Award-winning Whiteout series, now a major motion picture starring Kate Beckinsale.

  WALKING DEAD

  A Bantam Book / May 2009

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2009 by Greg Rucka

  Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rucka, Greg.

  Walking dead / Greg Rucka.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90648-6

  1. Bodyguards—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.U2968W36 2009

  8132.54—dc22 2008049507

  www.bantamdell.com [http://www.bantamdell.com]

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