by Cap Daniels
I tried telling myself she was the deadliest person in the club—and probably on the whole island—and that I shouldn’t be worried about her, but I couldn’t quash the sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I needed to know what was happening on the other side of that door.
The Kazakh waitress returned to the table, but her playful smile was gone. “Where is wife?” she asked.
“She’s gone to the bathroom,” I said over the beat of the music.
“She is not in bathroom,” she said. “Both of you are in very big trouble. You should leave now.”
I grabbed her wrist. “What do you mean we’re in trouble?”
She twisted her high heel into the top of my right foot and yanked her wrist from my grasp. She knew exactly how to break free of a man’s grip. With a stern look similar to Anya’s, she scowled at me and walked away.
I tried not to overreact. I drew in a deep breath and surveyed the room. I’d counted five bouncers, and I was sure they hadn’t seen the waitress try to warn me. I knew they hadn’t seen me grab her wrist because if they had, they’d have been on me instantly.
I felt for my pistol, making sure it was still tucked beneath my shirt, then I set off toward the offices. I made it about five steps when the beefy hand of one of the bouncers landed on my shoulder.
“Hey, buddy, where do you think you’re going? No one’s allowed back here except the ladies.”
I turned around to size him up, and in my best drunken voice, I said, “Hey, I’m sorry, man. I was looking for the . . .” I bent over as if I were going to hurl on the bouncer’s feet.
He jumped backward, giving me the opportunity I needed. I stood up and kicked him in the crotch. After he collapsed, I pounded a fist sharply into the side of his neck, leaving him soundly unconscious.
I reached for the first door Anya had tried a few minutes before, but it was still locked. I stepped to the opposite side of the hall and delivered a kick beneath the knob. The door swung open, sending splinters of the jamb into the air. I drew my pistol and cleared the room. It was empty except for a dingy twin bed and a couple chairs. I grabbed the bouncer’s collar and pulled his limp body into the room. Then, from where I stood outside the room, and while still holding his collar, I pulled him backward and let his weight fall against the door, holding it closed against the busted jamb.
The next room to the right was the one Anya had disappeared into. I pressed my ear against the door, listening for voices from inside, but the music was too loud. With my pistol drawn, I tried to twist the knob. It didn’t turn. Scenarios of why the door would’ve been locked behind her ran through my head, and I didn’t like any of them.
A small sliver of light shone from beneath the door, so I watched for shadows or any sign of movement before I delivered another powerful kick, hoping to breach the door as easily as the previous one. My kick slammed the door open, and I powered through with my pistol leading the way. I caught a glimpse of Anya tied to a straight wooden chair with a gag in her mouth and blood dripping down her face. Two goons were standing in front of her. I couldn’t imagine what series of events led to Anya being tied to a chair, but my senses came alive knowing we weren’t dealing with small-time thugs. It would’ve taken someone with remarkable skill to put Anya in that chair.
The instant I realized I hadn’t adequately scanned the room for threats, I felt the thud of a wooden club against the base of my skull.
* * *
When I came to, I was shirtless, tied to a chair, and my head felt like it’d been crushed in a vice. I wasn’t sure what we’d gotten ourselves into, but it wasn’t playing out the way I’d hoped. Thankfully, Anya was still there and conscious. The look on her face told me that if she survived, she would kill everyone in that room. A pissed off Russian intelligence officer is like a cornered cobra—you may kill her before it’s over, but you won’t evade her bite, and you’ll never survive her venom.
Whoever our captors were, they’d gotten the drop on both of us. Based on that fact, they deserved some measure of respect for their aggression and violence of action.
“Oh, look,” came an echoing voice from behind my head. “The big man with the pistol and silencer is awake.”
The voice was familiar, but my head was ringing, and I couldn’t put the voice with a face.
“How does it feel, pretty boy? How does it feel to be the one tied up and bleeding? Did you really think you and your little slut over there could get away with shooting up my car and leaving me in that alley?”
Micky. Why did I let him live?
“You should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” he snarled.
I caught a glimpse of brass knuckles as his fist collided with my cheekbone. It was a good punch, but I didn’t go out. I swallowed a mouthful of blood and tried not to show my agony. Through my blurred vision, I could see he was holding an object in front of my face. I blinked, trying to clear my sight, but it wasn’t happening. I closed my left eye, and the whole room dissolved into a pink fog. When I opened my left and closed my right eye, I could almost see clearly.
Micky was holding Skipper’s picture. “Who sent you to look for this girl?”
I didn’t answer. He hit me again, but this time I rolled with the punch and took it as a glancing blow that did little additional damage. He held up the picture again and slapped it against my face several times. Each time, the picture came away with more smeared blood. With that much blood loss, I didn’t know how much longer I’d remain conscious. I needed a plan. I turned to Anya again, and saw she was blinking in a deliberate pattern.
Long-long-short, short-short-long, long-short.
I turned back to Micky, and when I saw his right hand, I realized what Anya had been trying to tell me. She’d been blinking the word gun in Morse code. Brilliant.
Micky was holding his Saturday night special .38 revolver. He forcefully struck my nose, sending my head back and my mouth open. He forced the short barrel of his revolver into my mouth just as I had done to him two hours earlier. I tried to remain calm, but staying calm with a pistol barrel in my mouth wasn’t easy.
Anya was not calm. She started yelling through the gag and flailing around to the limits of her restraints. She jerked and twisted so violently she managed to work the gag from her mouth. “Please do not kill him! I am having baby!”
She’s pregnant? Holy shit!
Micky grinned. “Oh, really?” Seizing the opportunity, he stepped back, pulled his gun from my mouth, and slowly approached Anya. He knelt at her feet and snapped his fingers at me several times. “Look at me, boy! Watch me put a bullet in your pretty little girl’s gut.”
“You won’t do it,” I said.
“What’s that? You think I won’t do it?”
“You don’t have the balls to do it,” I said. “You know I’ll rip your head off if you hurt her.”
He cackled. “You’re in no position to be making threats, little boy. Tell me who sent you to find that girl, or your little Russian girlfriend here gets gut shot, and you get to watch her and your baby bleed out.”
“You won’t do it. You’re too weak. You’ll slap us around, but you don’t have the stones to pull the trigger.”
His face burned blood red, and I watched the muscles in his jaws strain. I was getting under his skin. The plan was working.
“Shut up, or I’ll do it!” he yelled. “I’ll pull the fucking trigger if you don’t tell me who sent you right now. I’ll do it. I’ll do it right fucking now!”
“You won’t!” I was trying to push him over the edge.
The muscles in his jaw twitched, and he squeezed the trigger. I watched the hammer of the revolver rise until it reached its zenith at the end of the trigger pull. Anya squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away as the hammer started to fall. The explosion came in a deafening crack as the cylinder of the revolver fell open a fraction of an inch. Anya’s spring trick worked. The explosion blew the revolver apart in Micky’s hand and expelled super-heated g
as and flames up his arm and into his face.
Before the echo of the explosion ended, Anya lunged forward and twisted to crush her wooden chair into Micky’s recoiling body. The collision demolished the chair and left Anya with two chair legs tied to her ankles and a broken chair leg in her right hand.
Micky stumbled backward, grabbing his face and screaming, while the two other men reached for their pistols. Anya kicked Micky in the center of his chest, sending him colliding into one man, knocking the gun from his hand, and sending them both tumbling to the floor.
The second man leveled his pistol at her the same instant the broken chair leg left her hand. The spear-like point of the leg struck the would-be gunman at the inside bend of his elbow, burying itself into the joint, and sending the gun crashing to the floor at his feet. He grabbed the wood with his left hand and yanked it out of his gun arm. Blood poured from the wound, and the man dived for his pistol as it slid across the floor.
As soon as the man’s hand reached his gun, Anya discovered her favorite knife, still on the desk, and wrapped in the feather boa she wore into the room. She grabbed the knife and planted her right foot on the man’s hand as he gripped the gun. She spun around, tearing the flesh from his hand, and knelt on his shoulder as blood gushed from his arm.
The first man who had tumbled to the ground with Micky was scrambling to pick up the pistol he’d lost during the collision of bodies. Micky was still screaming, adding confusion to the already grisly and chaotic scene. Anya stood up and stepped toward the second gunman as he brought his pistol to bear on her chest. She positioned the knife in her hand in a perfect throwing grasp, but it was too late.
Two rapid pistol shots split the air and drowned out Micky’s screams. Terror overtook me as I waited to see the exit wounds in Anya’s naked back and watch her fall to the floor. To my surprise, the exit wounds didn’t appear, but the gunman was blown backward as a spray of blood covered the wall behind him.
Not understanding what I was seeing, and trying make sense of the last few seconds, I blinked repeatedly in a desperate attempt to clear my vision. Smoke streamed from the barrel of a Colt Government .45 in the hands of our pilot, Clark Johnson, who was standing in the doorway of the room.
Anya surveyed the scene and cut me free. She pulled the gag from around her neck and shoved it in Micky’s mouth. “Stop screaming like little girl,” she told him.
She cut the remaining ropes from her ankles and ran back across the hall to get her dress and purse. I collected my gun from the corner of the room and Skipper’s bloody picture from the floor.
We made our escape through the back door, dragging the whimpering Micky behind us. We piled into Clark’s rental car, and Anya sat in the back seat with Micky, already interrogating him again.
10
Drownproofing
“How bad are you hurt?” asked Clark as we tore out of the parking lot and headed east on Truman Avenue.
“Slow down,” I said. “We don’t want to get stopped by the cops and have to explain why two bloody assassins and a blown-up pimp are hauling ass down Truman in a rented whatever this is.”
Anya said, “I am not hurt, but I think Chase has maybe broken bones in face. Micky is not hurt, but soon will be.”
Micky wouldn’t survive the night if he didn’t start talking soon. Anya would drag the information she wanted out of him and then do what she did best.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we turned left onto White Street.
Clark didn’t answer. He fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone and punched in a number. “Billy, Clark Johnson. Can you get me in the gate? I’ve got one hostile and two friendlies in a blue rented Town Car. I’m on White Street, ETA two minutes. If you’ve got a doctor, we sure could use him. And a couple of guys to help the hostile answer some questions would be nice, too.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the seat beside him.
Anya was still questioning Micky and breaking his fingers one by one each time he chose not to answer her.
“What was that call about?” I asked Clark as I divided my attention between him and the back seat.
“I’ve got some friends on the navy base. They’re going to help us out a little.”
We pulled up to the gate at the Naval Air Station Key West Trumbo Point Annex to find two navy shore patrol vehicles blocking the intersecting road with their blue lights flashing. Clark didn’t slow down as he roared past the gate guard who was waving his flashlight and signaling us in. He flawlessly navigated the narrow streets of the navy base, and we were soon crossing over the bridge to Fleming Key.
I’d never been on the base, so I didn’t know where we were heading or who’d be at the end of the road, but Clark had saved our butts back at the strip club, so I thought I should probably trust him, at least for a few more minutes.
We accelerated, heading northwest on a desolate road that seemed to be headed for nowhere, but we soon approached a fenced compound with warning signs everywhere and well-armed guards at the access gate. One of the guards saw us coming and pushed the gate open far enough for our car to narrowly fit through. We slid to a stop outside an innocuous looking building as three men poured out of a dark doorway and approached our car. The men were wearing combat boots, tight khaki shorts, and black t-shirts that showed each of their powerful physiques. These were not common navy sailors, but they did appear to be on our side.
One of the men jerked open the rear door of our car, grabbed Micky by one foot, and yanked him out onto the gravel-covered parking lot. Micky kicked and tried fighting off the man, but it was no use. The man skillfully dodged each of Micky’s kicks, then rolled him over until he was facedown on the gravel, and planted a heavy combat boot at the base of his skull.
“Now you calm down while we figure out what’s going on here, okay?” the man said.
Micky squirmed and tried to cuss while his face was grinding into the gravel, so the man pressed a little harder with his boot and slid Micky’s face about a foot across the rocks. That shut him up.
We got out of the car and Clark approached the man with his foot on Micky’s neck. “How’ve you been, Billy?”
“Well if it ain’t Baby Face Johnson. You always did know how to make an entrance,” the man said, sticking out his hand.
He and Clark did some kind of secret handshake that looked more like a thumb war.
Clark turned toward Anya and me. “Guys, meet Sergeant First Class Billy Porter. Billy, meet Chase and Ana Fulton. We sort of work together.”
Billy nodded at us. “It’s Master Sergeant Porter now. The army finally got around to remembering they owed me a stripe. Welcome to the Special Forces Under Water Operations School. It’s nice to meet you folks. Why don’t we get your guest inside and see if we can’t get him to tell us whatever it is you want to know?”
The two other Special Forces divers yanked Micky to his feet and frog-marched him into the building. The facility was spotless and smelled of swimming pool chlorine.
Porter said, “It looks like you two got roughed up a little. We’re looking for a real doctor, but in the meantime, we’ve got a navy medical corpsman on the way. To tell you the truth, I’d rather have the corpsman put me back together than any navy doc. They’re either waking him up or sobering him up. Either way, he’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Micky had become quiet and was beginning to tremble. I’d say he had every right to be afraid. We kept moving deeper into the building until we came to an enormous indoor swimming pool with dive gear stowed all around it. The men dropped Micky to the concrete deck beside the pool and awaited further instructions.
Porter asked Clark, “So, what is it you want this piece of shit to tell you?”
Clark pointed at me. “This ain’t my gig. I’m just the driver and hired gun. This is their show.”
I pulled Skipper’s bloody picture from my shirt pocket and handed it to Porter. He wiped off most of the blood and stared at the picture.
“We’re looking fo
r that girl. She’s my little sister, and he knows where she is.”
Porter bent down, grabbed a handful of Micky’s hair, and lifted his head off the concrete deck. He held the picture in front of Micky’s face. “Are you going to tell me where I can find this girl?”
Micky turned his head and defiantly spat bloody saliva in Porter’s face. Porter calmly wiped the blood and spit and looked back at me. “He said he’s not going to tell us, so let’s get him cleaned up and send him home.” He paused. “On second thought, maybe he wants to tell us but needs a little confidence builder first. Let’s drownproof him, boys.”
Drownproofing is a military training technique that involves tying a diver’s ankles together and his hands behind his back, and then tossing him in a pool where he must slowly exhale and sink to the bottom. The diver then kicks off the bottom, pushing himself to the surface where he can briefly get his mouth and nose above water and take a breath before starting the process over again. With practice, this can be effectively done until Kingdom come. It builds remarkable water confidence and helps the diver learn to stay calm in stressful situations. Something told me Micky wasn’t going to do well at the exercise.
The two other men tied Micky’s feet and hands and tossed him into the pool. He flailed about like a panicked, wounded fish. Finally, exhaustion overtook panic and he sank. Porter checked his watch and let a minute pass. “Okay, go get him,” he said.
The two divers dived headfirst into the water, promptly came up with Micky between them, and they deposited him on the deck.
Porter knelt beside him and again held Skipper’s picture for him to see. “Now that you’ve had a chance to think about it, tell me where this girl is. Her folks miss her, and I’m an old softy when it comes to family.”
Micky was still spitting pool water from his lungs and trying to catch his breath. Through gasps and gags, he said, “Fuck you. You’re going to kill me anyway, so you can shove that picture up your—”
