by Mike Gomes
As if being hit by a bolt of lightning, Gabriella felt Antonio’s words ring through her mind. They were simple and they were smooth. "Someday one of us will die."
"I know, Antonio," she replied to nothing but the voices in her head.
"We'll have to move on. If it's of old age it'll be wonderful, we can spend eternity here under the stars in the homestead that we've developed. But if it's because of our jobs, we will have to move on. We'll have to make a break some day and go somewhere else."
"Why did you have to be right?" Gabriella whispered, shaking her head as she pulled another scoop of earth from the ground and tossed it to the side. Antonio’s words kept ringing in her head that she needed to move on, that she needed to make another step in a positive direction to help save herself. "You always were right. You always used to tell me that I had too much of a hot head and I was too ready for the fight. But now, I think the fight is gonna come to me. He's out there, he's out there somewhere, Antonio."
Gabriella saw Antonio’s eyes inside her mind. She saw him looking at her, and felt the warmth of his heart. She also knew exactly what he'd say.
"Run! Get yourself out of here. Don't take the time to bury me, he's out there. Gabriella, you know he's waiting for an opportunity. He didn't travel all this way just to get me and leave you behind. You're the target, run!"
Gabriella shook her head in disagreement as she again plunged the shovel down into the earth. As she worked over the next forty-five minutes, the hole became deeper and deeper, nowhere near the six feet that in the civilized world people would use but instead, four feet, enough to cover his body, keep it in place.
The next step would be to cover him with stone so that animals couldn't get to him, unless they worked tremendously hard to do it. After the stone covering, would come another layer of dirt that the winds and the plains would clear up and make it look like nothing had ever been there. Antonio would go back to his creator within ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Bang, bang.
A high-pitched whine came out of Prima Guerra, screeching through the air as the horse kicked its legs back and began to turn itself in a circle quickly. Gabriella's eyes first glanced to Prima Guerra, seeing that the blood was starting to flow from the center of the animal’s chest. Kicking back one last time, Prima Guerra began to quiver before dropping to the ground in a heap.
Sensing the moment had come that Victor was going to make his move, Gabriella dropped herself down into the grave where she had planned to lay Antonio. By happenstance, Prima Guerra had fallen directly next to the grave, providing another layer of cover and making it easy for her to reach up and remove the rifle from the back of the horse.
"Fucking Victor," Gabriella seethed, pulling the rifle out of its holder and sliding back into the hole with it. "I didn't even get a good look at where it came from."
Gabriella slid her head up slightly, looking at the body of the animal that now showed two gaping wounds, excreting blood from them with each final beat of its heart. Sliding her hand under the horse, she felt for any softness or liquid that would indicate that the bullet had gone completely through.
"Nothing." She let her hand feel back and forth under the animal and found no exit wound.
Immediately, her mind began to assess the situation. He had to have shot at some distance in order to kill the animal but not have the bullet completely go through. Whether he had a standard rifle or that of a high-powered one was out of her knowledge. She only knew that he had fired and attacked quickly, and used a rifle that was able to drop a horse from whatever distance he was at.
"Come on out, Victor." Gabriella shouted, hoping he would answer and give away his location. "Do you wanna light me on fire, too?"
No words came in return to the question, just the wind that filled the air. Victor was not going to give away his position so easily, and would not take the time to let her distract him from the mission, which was simply to kill her. Which was now more a product of pride than anything else for the madman.
Crouching down in the hole, Gabriella looked at the ground beneath her, knowing it was the planned last place for Antonio to rest. It would be his eternal bed that held him and waited for him to survive into the afterlife. It felt cold and lonely to her, as she realized that it too could be her final resting place. She may have dug her own grave if Victor had made a cleaner shot.
"The horse walked in front, didn't it?" Gabriella yelled out, letting herself quickly pop up from inside the hole, but still behind the horse, and fired two quick shots into the distance. As the shots went out, her eyes took a quick look at the ground and terrain. There was one tree off in the distance five-hundred yards away, beyond that, nothing, just open land until the mountains had shown themselves.
Gabriella had no way to know whether the shot had come from such a great distance of up to a mile away, or whether Victor was cleverly crouched behind the tree just five-hundred yards away. The difference was whether she could try to make a run for it. The distance back to the farmhouse was rough and hard, posing uneven ground of ups and downs that would be a tough hike for any person. But trying to do it at full speed, with a gun in your hand, while a madman fired at you in the distance, was beyond what she ever had expected. Reaching into her back pocket, Gabriella pulled out her knife and attempted to use the blade to pick up on the reflection of the light.
If done in the right manner, she could shine the beam over to the tree, trying to blind Victor if that was his hiding spot. Moving herself to the south end of the horse she took the reflection, let the light bounce off of it and honed it in to the tree. She wiggled it back and forth waiting for some reaction from the man, but got none. Changing her tactic, she shifted the light over, seeing if she could make the glare pick up anything on the heels of the mountains. The hope was that the glint from her light would give away a scope on a rifle allowing her the opportunity to make a placement of where Victor was.
Bang bang!
A bullet crashed into the hind quarter of the horse, splattering blood as it traveled completely through the body. It hit the upper-quarter back leg and drove itself diagonally after striking the bone and popped out on the other side, barely missing Gabriella and sticking into the top section of the grave.
"The tree." Gabriella, again, moved her body down to the far end of the grave and pulled up to where the horse's neck laid. Using a stone that laid on the ground, Gabriella slowly slid it under the horse's neck and turned it on its side, giving two inches of clearance to slide the muzzle of her rifle through. From the distance where Victor was, she could see where he hid behind the tree but could not use the scope for accurate shooting. The neck of the horse blocked her vision, but still allowed her to have it trained on the area where he was hiding.
"You can speak to me, Victor," Gabriella called out. "You couldn't get me before, what makes you think you can get me now? Why don't you stop hiding behind that tree?"
A small amount of laughter drifted through the air, but Gabriella could feel the condescension within it.
"Do you think I worry about you, Gabriella?" came the voice from a distance. "I hope you dug that grave for two."
"I would never bury you in here with my husband. If you want to fight, let's do this hand to hand."
"You'll have to excuse me, my mom told me never to hit a lady," Victor spoke in a smarmy and condescending tone. "But she said nothing about killing them."
"You don't have a mother." Gabriella was purposefully trying to get under his skin at this point. "You're a KBG bastard, just like me. They used you and developed you into a sadistic animal. They tried to do the same to me, but I guess I just had too much morality, and you just didn't have enough."
"Is that what you call it, Mantis, morality? This is your version of morality? Killing people for a living. Are you also one of those types that makes yourself believe that you're doing the right thing? Why don't you just have the courage to say what you are, and that's a mercenary, an assassin. You kill people fo
r a price. So, I would tell you to get off your high horse, but your high horse is already dead." Victor laughed at his own joke. He was enjoying taunting her.
"That doesn't excuse why you won't fight me. Why you won't fight me one on one, right here in the field, right now." Gabriella quickly fired a shot off and hit the trunk of the tree. "Come on, this is your chance. Why don't you see how good you really are? The two best that the KGB ever made can square off once and for all."
"Do you think that's something to be proud of?" Victor said, catching Gabriella off-guard. Her simple assumption always had been that Victor was proud of what he was and proud of his position within the KGB. "I'm not going to be so foolish as to walk out there and fight somebody without knowing the outcome first. That's how I keep myself alive." Victor smiled to himself as he quickly turned and fired another shot into the horse. "I can tell you one thing, Mantis, I know you don't have more bullets than me. I am stocked and locked, and there is no way in hell that you've got the rounds to outlast me. So, I can sit here all night just waiting. Just waiting for the moment you have to make a run for it. And when you do, I'm gonna shoot you. I probably won't shoot you to kill you, just enough to get to you and start to torture you. I'm gonna send a message, a message to everybody, that I'm the number one, not you.
"You never know, Vic, I might just kill you first." Her words drew a smile from Victor. "As you said, I'm a mercenary, a stone-cold killer. Well, I guess I could put that to work with you, stick a bullet in your head or in your heart, or maybe just leave you for dead and wait till the wolves and the coyotes come out of the mountains to feed on you."
"Oh, isn't that just dramatic," Victor snapped from five-hundred yards away. "This is just a waste of time with you. You talk and you talk and you talk, and that's how you survive. But you don't have someone so dumb this time, someone that's gonna listen to your foolishness. Just show yourself, take the bullet, and have some honor."
Popping up from behind the horse again, Gabriella let her eyes drop in on the site that was no longer obstructed by the body of the horse. Honing in on the tree, she saw Victor's elbow sticking out slightly from the side of the trunk as his back laid against it.
Bang!
"Oh!" Victor yelled as the bullet hit hard into his elbow, causing the man to drop the rifle that was in his hands.
"Hurts like hell, doesn't it?" Gabriella allowed a smile to cross her face. "It's really nasty when you get hit by one and it doesn't kill you. Can you imagine if you try to run from the spot you're in, you won't get two feet with my shot."
"I don't need to run, Gabriella. Do you take me for a fool?” Victor snarled. "Do you think I would lay myself in this position if I didn't have reinforcements coming? I sent out the broadcast to my brothers in arms. The KGB is descending on this place right now, you have no hope of getting away. And once they come and they find a dead Antonio and an injured you, I will become a legend as the man who brought back the Mantis. I will be the one who changed the KGB again, and they can re-indoctrinate you the way you need to be."
A shudder shot through Gabriella, racing up from the bottom of her spine and going into the back of her neck. The thought of the KGB getting ahold of her and restarting her training and the mind control they once used on her, terrified her. That her personality and all she had become would become absent from the woman she was right now.
"It won't happen," Gabriella shouted, her voice slightly breaking at the end of the words.
"You don't sound confident, darling," Victor mocked. "You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"
Gabriella knew the exact thing that Victor spoke of. She knew the harsh realities that once you were tied into the KGB, it was a lifelong commitment, even if she wasn't the one who had made it for herself. They viewed her as property, as something to be manipulated and worked with, nothing more than a standard tool for their operations.
Pulling the gun back up to himself, Victor held it in front of him going across his body. Making a shot with a hole in his elbow would not give him the opportunity he needed to make a clean and accurate hit.
Knowing the injury that she had inflicted on Victor, Gabriella knew that she had to make a move now to either charge the man and put a shot on him, or run away and live to fight another day when she could better maintain herself in the fight.
The dragging concern was Antonio’s body, the body that still laid burned and crumbled on the ground thirty yards from the barn. The KGB would not have any respect for the life the man had lived or the one he wanted to live. He would simply be left out for the animals to feed on and to call the place he laid currently his eternal home.
Bang bang!
Gabriella fired off two quick rounds, then she pulled up her rifle again and looked through the cross hairs. Trying to clip the side of the tree, one of the bullets ripped through the bark and a large pinging sound shot through the air. She had made contact with his rifle. Knowing that an opportunity laid in front of her, Gabriella knew that the rifle was more than likely knocked from Victor's hands, and if it hadn't been, he would’ve felt the pain through his elbow.
Holding herself in a low crouch, she pulled herself out of the grave and began sprinting toward the homestead that laid a half a mile away. The more distance she put between herself and Victor, the less likely it was that the man would be able to hit her with a shot while she was on the move. There was no need for zigzagging while she ran due to the angle of his attack, it was more of a matter of whether he could connect the shot.
Two shots rang off behind her, no more than four feet away and then a third that landed in front of her. Keeping her focus hard, Gabriella ran with her gun slung over her shoulder, and she cleared the ground faster than she had ever had before. The shots continued, but the kick up of them was nowhere to be found around her. She had made the distance, now all she had to do was to make it to the truck, drop it into drive, and get out of the place that now reeked of death and held despair.
Chapter Sixteen
"Nikolai, he's after me." Gabriella snapped into the phone as she made the satellite link from beyond the outpost where she gathered her grain. She had spent the better part of the day racing her pickup truck as far away from the homestead as possible. Tearing up the road, she had only one thought in her mind, which was separation from the man that was trained to kill with no regard for any kind of life.
"What are you talking about?" Nikolai was surprised by Gabriella’s tone, she was usually temperate and calm with everything that she said.
"It's Victor." She felt as if she was still short of breath, despite the fact that it had been many hours since she had set foot outside of the truck. "Victor came to me, he met me where I live. I thought I put too much in the way for him to find me, but it didn't stop him. He did unspeakable things."
"Slow down, Gabriella, what do you mean unspeakable things?" Nikolai asked worried. "And where is home? I don't even know where you live."
"I'm in Chile, Northern Chile. My husband and I were looking to move off the grid, so we set up here a number of years ago."
"Your husband?" Nikolai asked, on instinct rather than feeling. Despite the fact that their relationship had ended some time ago, the sharp jab of learning that she had been married hit Nikolai emotionally like he had not expected.
"Yes. I've been married for five years," Gabriella let her tone calm. She could sense Nikolai’s feelings at the other end of the phone, and the pain that was inflicting him about learning of another man who had captured her heart. "Well, we've been married over five years. But what Victor did is something I can't forget."
Nikolai exhaled deeply, holding his mouth away from the phone, he knew the words that were about to come, even before she said them.
"He killed Antonio." Gabriella tried to hold back the tears and maintain her composure. "That's my husband’s name, Antonio. He came here while I was gone and he killed him, Nikolai. And it was nothing fast, he tortured him, lit him on fire, wounded him so he couldn't run away."<
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"That sounds like Victor." Nikolai took in another deep breath and let it sink out of his body slowly. "He has no soul, and he has no conscience. It's what makes him a good agent, but also makes him a terrible human being."
"I just don't even see the point of it from a strategic point of view." Gabriella was still trying to make sense of it all. "I could understand if he’d waited for me, if he took a shot at me and tried to kill me. But instead, he went after my husband, and he didn't hold him hostage, he didn't do anything like that. Instead, he tried to make him turn on me first, and when he didn't agree, that's when he put his plan into motion to kill him."
"That's Victor in a nutshell." Nikolai remembered back to the many times his partner took chances that weren't needed, but would always send a message to the others around him.
"When I was trying to bury Antonio, he took a few shots and killed one of our horses. Luckily, I could hide in the grave I built and fire back. I put one into his left elbow, which gave me the chance to run out of there because he couldn't aim."
"He was gonna try to stand off with you, wasn't he? He would have waited there for days for you to make a move, just to get the one shot. He has that kind of obsession and single focused mind."
"It just seems insane to me, why would a man do something like this. He had made me, he had shaken me off, but instead of leaving the person that's trying to attack you alone, he came after me. I zigzagged all over the world to get rid of this guy, and he still kept coming for me. Why is he inviting trouble?" Gabriella asked, confused, hoping to get some kind of answer from the man that she had once loved.
