Czechmate

by Seth Harwood

  “Yeah,” Niki says. He falls back with Akakievich on top of him, trying to push the gun up toward Akakievich’s head.

  Outside, a loud series of police sirens comes closer, and Niki hears a screeching of tires. On a megaphone, someone announces the San Francisco SWAT team is on the scene and tells everyone inside the warehouse to surrender their weapons and come out.

  Then the sirens blare a final screech and stop.

  Niki fights against Akakievich, clutching at his throat with his left hand, his right holding the gun out from his shoulder and trying to lift it off the ground as Akakievich tries to hold his arm down. When Niki gets the right grip on Akakievich’s neck, starts to press his thumb into the man’s Adam’s apple, Akakievich fights against that arm with his right. The two of them hold like that as Niki tries to draw his breath, to summon the strength to take control.

  That’s when Akakievich rears back his head and new tendons of pain stand out on his neck. He gasps. Above them both, Niki sees the back of Freeman Jones’s wheelchair and Freeman looking back wild-eyed. He’s just rolled his big back wheel over Akakievich’s leg and now he pushes the wheel hard again backward at the same time as he thrusts his shoulders in the same direction, toppling himself and the whole chair over onto Akakievich’s back. For a moment, this flattens Niki under the weight of the others, but then Freeman thrashes and Akakievich tries to turn away from his fall, and the two of them slide off Niki to his side. He shakes his head and draws his Makarov on Akakievich in about as long as it takes him to blink.

  Freeman mumbles something through his broken mouth and his face turns to a mask of pain from what he’s just done to himself and his bandaged legs. It seems to Niki that the word he’s just tried to say must have been “motherfucker.”

  Niki jabs Alexi in the bone under his eye with the barrel of his gun. “You see me?” he yells, punctuating the question with another jab in Akakievich’s cheekbone.

  He lowers the gun and shoots Akakievich in his stomach once, in a place he knows will cause considerable pain and make the man really start to bleed, but that won’t kill him for a long while.

  “Akgh!” Akakievich burbles a throaty sound out of his mouth. “You faggot. You shoot me too soft. Show me that you are not afraid to kill!”

  Niki pushes himself up onto his hands and knees, then to one knee, still holding the gun trained on Alexi. He lifts up the back of the wheelchair and rights it, stands, and offers his left hand to Freeman. Then, with a considerable amount of effort, he pulls the big man up and off of Alexi and helps him get back into his chair.

  “I will kill you,” Niki says, when he’s turned back to give his full attention to Akakievich, who lies on the ground, both hands over his stomach, blood seeping out through his fingers. “When I am ready.”

  Behind him, Niki hears a rough sound come from Vlade and he turns to see him trying to pull his arms away from the last of the heavy guards, even as the man bleeds over him profusely. It takes Niki all of three steps to put the gun up against the heavily muscled temple of the Russian guard. He doesn’t hesitate before pulling the trigger, sending the round through his head and crumpling the man to the floor.

  Vlade gasps and falls forward onto his chest, rolling to hold his left shoulder with his other hand. Even through a thick jacket, Niki sees the blood coming out through his old wound.

  He turns back toward Akakievich and steps closer, stands above him, and releases the clip from his gun. It still holds three bullets, so he slams it home.

  Three bullets, and he plans to use them all.

  44

  Resurrection

  Jack looks around, sees the Bay in front of him and the black leather of Gannon’s fed car all around. “What hit me?”

  “Yeah, Jack. That’s a good question. I did.”

  He looks over to see Jane Gannon in the seat next to him, her shirt unbuttoned even more than normal, two cups of breast in front of him that he can see almost the whole curve of along their insides. He just wants to stick his face in there. Really, that’s all he wants. His chest is heaving, his breath coming like he’s just run five miles at top speed.

  She snaps her fingers. “Jack.”

  He looks up, sees her lipstick’s smudged across her mouth, wonders why.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  A car goes past on the road outside, behind Gannon. It looks like it’s going eighty miles an hour. Jack turns to watch it go by. “Jesus. That was fast.”

  “It’s OK, Jack. Calm down.”

  Jack holds up his hand. “Look at this. I’m fucking shaking.”

  “I just hit you with a shot of adrenaline. You’re fucking flying right now.”

  Jack takes stock of the rest of his body, looks down, sees his legs shaking. He notices he’s got a hard-on like his best morning high school wood, bulging in his lap. “Jesus.”

  She laughs. “Nice one, champ.” Raises her eyebrows.

  Jack shakes his head enough to clear it. “I remember Akakievich locking me in a chair. Shooting me up with H.” He remembers shooting Mills Hopkins but doesn’t say anything about that. Gannon’s still looking at his lap. She reaches across the car seat and touches his thigh, keeps going up toward his pelvis.

  “I’m a girl who knows what I want, Jack. Can you handle that?”

  Jack blinks as she grabs onto his erection. She gives it a good squeeze, but it’s not going anywhere. He wouldn’t be surprised if it could pound a nail. She starts to rub it more gently. He looks at his lap, still breathing fast, his blood racing, and somehow her touch starts to slow the world. The sound of his own breathing grows less deafening in his ears.

  “Will you be upset if I’m not afraid to take it, Jack?”

  Jack looks at her eyes, down her chest. She follows his gaze with her left hand, runs it down her chest and along between the two curves Jack’s admired before. She goes all the way down the side of her left breast, along its bottom, then back up its curve. She starts the same up and down motion on Jack.

  Behind them, Jack sees the big American back seat: black leather, plenty of leg room to kneel in, the width of the car wide enough to not cramp their style. “Yes,” Jack says, his mind still racing. With his eyes closed, he sees Akakievich moving toward him with a long syringe in his mind’s eye, Hopkins a mess on the bed in front of him.

  “Yes what?”

  He opens his eyes, sees Jane Gannon in front of him, a much prettier sight than Hopkins’s body, and looks down at her chest again. “Yes,” he says. “Just yes.”

  She keeps moving her hand up and down on him, his pants in the way, and touching her cleavage. She opens another button on her shirt, and Jack sees the front clasp on her bra, down around her fingers’ lowest range.

  “You don’t mind if I take what I want?”

  “No,” Jack says. “I don’t mind.” And she reaches to his pants with both hands, starts to unbutton his fly.

  45

  With Hands Raised

  Niki walks over Akakievich and steps onto each of his arms just above the elbows, half on the man’s jacket and half on his actual arms, holding the Makarov between his legs. Akakievich tries to move, struggles to get Niki off him, but when Niki shakes his head to tell him no, the movements stop.

  “That is better,” Niki says. “We make this slow, but not too slow.”

  From outside the building, Niki hears the voice of the American police calling to them, telling them to disarm and come outside peacefully. “Peace,” he says to Akakievich. “These fools do not know the meaning of our war.”

  Akakievich sucks his teeth. Niki can see the pain in his one open eye, hears his breathing come in wheezes as he holds his stomach and tries to keep his life in.

  “They do not know war like us.” Niki leans down to hold the Makarov against Alexi’s left shoulder and fires. He stands back, watches Akakievich kick his feet and writhe in pain on the floor.

  “That is for Vlade.
” He turns toward his friend. “Vlade, you seeing this?”

  Vlade looks up at Niki and Alexi. He’s holding his own shoulder. His face is pale and he will need medical attention soon. “Yes,” he says, nodding.

  “Good.” Niki kicks Akakievich in his stomach, and a fresh spurt of blood pours out of him. “You like to fuck and sell the girls?” Niki asks, pumping his hips at Akakievich. “You like this?”

  Akakievich tries to say something, but before he does, Niki bends down and shoots him in the other shoulder from point-blank range. The explosion shreds Akakievich’s jacket and burns the skin around the entry wound. “That one is for Jack.”

  “Fuck!” Akakievich yells as best he can. It’s a moan and a scream and a cry all together, spit and blood flying off his lips.

  From outside a megaphone squawks an empty tone. Then a voice: “This is the San Francisco SWAT, Commander Marshall speaking. We have your building surrounded. Come out now and you will not get hurt.”

  Niki shakes his head. “You believe that?” he asks Akakievich, who’s too busy trying to stop the bleeding in his stomach to respond. He rolls over onto his chest, turning his back to Niki.

  “Oh, no, fucker. This is not over yet.” Niki grabs Akakievich by the back of his jacket and rolls him up to show his face. He steps over him again, standing on the sleeves of his jacket, keeping him down, and Akakievich takes two deep breaths then looks at Niki with a cold eye.

  “You are pussy,” he says.

  “Yeah. And those SWAT outside would be your friends, I am certain. They will like you and pay for your help with bringing us in.”

  Akakievich doesn’t blink, look away, or take a breath. Finally, he breathes once through his nose, holding himself together admirably. With three bad gunshot wounds, he’s bleeding enough that Niki can start to see a new paleness in his face.

  The SWAT Commander repeats his order for them all to come outside.

  “It would be nice if we had more time to make this hurt,” Niki says. He pushes the barrel of the Makarov up under Akakievich’s chin, knowing he’s got one bullet left and that’s all he needs.

  “I do this.” Vlade stands next to Niki, looking down on Akakievich and holding his shoulder.

  Alexi’s eyes shift toward him and then back to Niki. “Fuck,” he says.

  Niki stands off him, hands the gun to Vlade.

  “Fucking get on with—” Akakievich starts. Vlade bends over and before Akakievich can finish his sentence, puts the gun to his temple and blows what’s left of his mind out the back of his head. Akakievich’s skull bucks at the force of the shot and comes off the ground a few inches—far enough for the spray out the back to grow about two feet wide around it—and falls back onto the ground. The hole in the middle of the burn on Alexi’s forehead isn’t wider than a dime, but the burn around it and the skin peeling back is a bigger mess. Niki knows the hole out the back of his head will be even bigger.

  “Let’s go,” Niki says. He nods toward the back of the warehouse, away from the front lot and the stairs down.

  Vlade drops the gun. “I stay, my brother. I face this and get to hospital. You run.”

  A pair of gunshots shatter two of the windows at the front of the building and Niki and Vlade both duck.

  Freeman says something from his chair behind them that sounds like he wants them to go.

  Vlade drops to his knees beside Akakievich and the Russian thug on the ground. “Go,” he says.

  Niki looks around at the mess: the girls still strapped to tables, what’s left of Freeman, Vlade, and Andre, whose face looks even worse than it did ten minutes ago, the general mess that he’s had more than a fair share in causing. Mills Hopkins, or what’s left of him, strapped to a table.

  At the back of the warehouse is a wall that’s mostly windows above three feet of concrete blocks. Their floor can’t be more than twenty feet off the ground, whatever kind of ground that there is behind a building like this in this part of town.

  The SWAT megaphone squawks again, and a peal of automatic rounds shatters the quiet below them. “We are coming into the building. We will be coming up the stairs.”

  Niki and Vlade exchange a look. “Do not gas us,” Vlade calls. “We are coming out with peacefulness. Our hands are raised.”

  And Niki goes: his feet hit the concrete floor of the room in a dead sprint for the back window. Whatever’s outside it, whatever he finds, that’s the way out, the only one he can see.

  At the back wall, he jumps up to clear the wall below the window, shielding his face with his arms.

  46

  Give Me Your Love

  Something about the effects of the adrenaline works exactly like you’d hope for and keeps Jack’s erection like a totem through several acts in the front seat and a couple in the back as well.

  When he and Gannon are through, Jack sits back against the leather seats in the car’s rear, his pants around his ankles and his shirt partly unbuttoned. The blood pounds in his veins. He can hear it in his ears.

  “Jesus,” he says. “I got to get me some of that shit again sometime. This stuff’s better than Viagra times ten!”

  “Shhh.” Gannon strokes Jack’s leg. She’s breathing heavily, looks at him again with bedroom eyes. They both look at Jack’s knee, the way it’s still bouncing up and down in its own shaky rhythm. “You hold that thought, OK? But remember you’re off the drugs now for good.”

  Jack nods. He looks down at Gannon’s bare chest, her breasts, her nipples, and down her front. There’s nothing there that’s not stunning. “Fuck,” he says. She starts pulling on her skirt, asks him what’s wrong. “I took the drugs. Alexi’s, the doctor’s, the alcohol. I have an addictive personality.”

  She clutches the back of his head with one hand, kisses him hard on the lips. “You’re an addict, Jack,” she whispers into his face. “When you admit that, you’ll be OK. Down the road.” She kisses him again, but Jack pulls his face away.

  “Where are the others? What’s going on with them right now and with Akakievich?”

  She shakes her head, shrugs. “Fuck if I know. I turned off my phone.”

  “Put it on,” Jack says. “How far are we from where they are?”

  Gannon strokes Jack’s leg and reaches one of hers across it, into his lap. He hasn’t seen her put on underwear but the thought of her cruising around doing FBI work all day with nothing on under her skirt is more than he can handle. The panties must be in the front of the car somewhere.

  She reaches into the front seat to her purse and gets her phone. “Here.” She turns it on and drops it onto the seat next to Jack. “Find out what happened to them.”

  Jack leans all the way back, and she kisses his neck. Not only does it feel good, but something like this has been too damn long in coming. Still, even if he’s still got a cock full of adrenaline, there’s something nagging at him about helping the others. He knows it has to be done.

  “We need to find out.”

  “Something will have happened by now. When we left there the police sirens were coming fast and loud.”

  “The fucking cops?” Jack pushes Gannon off his leg and moves around on the seat to face her. “The ones who’re after Shaw and me, who think we’re dangerous criminals?”

  She shrugs. “OK,” she says, and wraps her bra around her chest, starts fixing the clasp. “We’ll find out what’s happening.” She flicks Jack’s erection and it stings for a moment, but still doesn’t affect its strength. “Damn. Look at that. We are going to have to try this stuff again.”

  “In the right setting,” Jack says. “We could make this a very interesting night.”

  Gannon smiles. “You know I’m a married woman, don’t you?”

  Jack grabs his pants and starts wriggling them up his legs. “Yeah, how’s that working out now your boy’s headed for prison?”

  “Fuck him.” She starts putting her shirt on, buttoning it up the front. Jack gets his jeans on
and starts working at buttoning his own shirt, which isn’t easy with his arm in the sling, but he manages to work the buttons over to the left side so he can get at them with both hands.

  When Gannon’s dressed, she gets out of the car and goes around to the front. She puts her shoes on as Jack crawls over the seats. Jack looks at her phone—she has four missed calls, three messages. He starts putting on his shoes.

  She winks at him as she shifts the car into reverse. The engine’s been running the whole time. “I’m taking us back over to Akakievich’s place right now, you fucking boy scout.”

  “OK,” Jack says. “There’s bound to be shit that’s gone down.”

  47

  Mushmouth

  “Freeze!”

  The first SWAT soldier pops his head up the stairs, leveling a short automatic rifle at Freeman. As two more of the guys in black suits and body armor, helmets even, come up behind their pal, Freeman watches carefully, not moving at all. The SWAT guys each hold automatic weapons in both hands. They’re all yelling for everyone to get down.

  “Backside of the building!” one of them calls down the stairs, as soon as he sees the broken glass.

  Freeman uses his good hand to point toward the bed. He knows that with his ruined mouth he might not sound like he’s making words, but does his best to say, “Lift that shit up to see what these fucks did to Hopkins.”

  When no one looks, he points toward Akakievich, Andre, and the other dude that Niki shot, the big dude on the floor next to Vlade.

  The officers look at him like they have no idea what he’s just said.

  “They all with that bald dude. He’s Akakievich, man. Motherfucker selling girls to your bosses.”

  The closest soldier holds up his hands, trying to calm him, dismiss his concerns. “Relax, big man. We got this under control, now.”

  “You got this under control? Motherfucker dead.”