The Repairman- The Complete Box Set

by L. J. Martin

  "Where is she?"

  Coleen said nothing, but nodded toward the window. He could see one of the boards had been pried away, the window left open, the curtains flopping in the breeze.

  "How long?" he demanded.

  "I don't know," Coleen stammered.

  Alexei took the cigarette from his lips and ground it out on Coleen's bare leg. She screamed and covered the burn with both hands, crying hysterically.

  He threw the cigarette into a pool of Yegor's blood, then reached out with one hand and grasped Coleen by the throat, squeezing hard. Her eyes bulged, and her tongue distended, but she couldn't scream. Then he threw her, coughing and choking, back on the bed. "You are nothing without her. If she gets away, you die. How long?"

  "An…, " she coughed and choked, "….an hour, maybe more," Coleen managed between sobs.

  Alexei spun on his heel and met Alena coming up the stairs. "Out of the way. You watch them, don't leave the room. I am going after the other one. Find out exactly what happened here…no matter what it takes."

  When he hit the bottom of the stairs, he yelled at his three contrite comrades. "You are worthless. He has been dead an hour while you slugs watch some stupid American television show. Get up. The general's daughter is gone. If we don't find her…."

  Vadim, Zak, and Vlad clamored to pull on boots then gather up weapons and find flashlights. Alexei also changed his shoes for combat boots.

  It was dark, but with a bright moon. They walked outside and carefully circled the dacha, using the flashlights, looking for prints leading out of the small yard surrounding the clapboard structure, then Alexei stopped. The lake was only a hundred paces to the east, so unless she was an excellent swimmer, she wouldn't have gone that way.

  He gathered his men. "If we do not find her, this mission, and our money, has flown to the wind. Zak and I will take the northwest, you two take the southwest, stay a hundred paces apart. The forest is very thick, so search the openings for tracks. It's two kilometers to the nearest neighbor. Search every house you come to and every outbuilding. Do not fail, stupid fools."

  The others all nodded, sheepishly, and then they dispersed.

  The countryside, from what I can see in the moonlight, is scattered with random-shaped farmed fields, mostly meadow grass with the occasional wheat or barley and less often a stand of corn, bordered by conifer and evergreen forest. I look forward to seeing it in the light. There seems to be no order in the shape of the fields, not divided into townships, sections, quarter sections and so on as is most of America, but totally random with amoeba shapes from small fields I'd guess at ten acres to large ones over a hundred, nothing consistent.

  At eleven thirty we enter the city. Having never travelled in Russia—and Estonia is a former part of the Soviet Union—I'm a little surprised by the quality of the roads and the modern buildings among older ones I'd more expect in a communist country.

  I've heard, and read, that Estonia is blossoming in a free enterprise system after many years of communist rule.

  I guess I shouldn't be surprised to pass a McDonald's. Nor should I be surprised when Skip, who's always hungry, pulls up beside me and points at his helmet speaker, and only then do I realize I haven't turned on the two-way in my helmet. I do, and he says, "How about a Big Mac?"

  I shake my head and use the helmet radio. "We have a deadline. At nine A.M. Red Baltic says they're gonna start cutting parts off the girls if Holland hasn't sent them schedules of NATO movements and other documentation."

  He doesn't reply, merely drops back to fall in line with the others.

  And three Big Macs would have been closer to what he would have ordered.

  We do our best to obey the law going through Tartu, seeing only one vehicle that looks like it could be the local police. He eyes us carefully, but I suppose motorcycles are not an unusual sight, even very late at night, and he doesn't bother to turn around and follow.

  I've put the location of Betty Jane's computer in as a waypoint on the GPS function on my iPhone, and it takes us over an hour to get to a point on the highway nearest that location. I can now see we're very near the lake.

  It's time to do a little recon and we gather up and kill the engines.

  "Pax, move on down the road aways and see if you can find a lane or driveway heading toward the waypoint."

  And he fires up his bike and disappears as we wait, and I call Natele to report in. She picks up on the first ring.

  "Where the hell are you. We've been at the hotel for a half hour?"

  "We're on target, only a click from the last known…I just wanted to bring you up to speed."

  "You may need some of what we have in the van?"

  "Time is our enemy. I'll get back to you within the hour."

  "Ten four," she says. I like this woman, who doesn't talk too much.

  Pax returns and kills his engine. "I've got a driveway, not more than a two track, but looks like it's regularly used and it's flanked by a mailbox…only about three hundred yards further on."

  "Okay, by the GPS we're one click or so from the last location we have. I don't have any idea what we'll find. Probably some kind of structure if they are holed up…if they're here at all. Certainly there's a house in there if there's a mailbox. I'm charging it, head on, with Hank. Pax you and Skip will break away into the forest when we get a few hundred yards out and flank us to the right, toward the lake. TooBad, you take the left flank. If y'all can't make it through the underbrush, go on foot. Everybody is on 7.7 on the radios?" I get a nod from all of them. "Break out your Ingrams and your sidearms. We have no idea what we're facing."

  And they do.

  The Ingrams are equipped with slings, so easily handled on the bikes. We move down to the driveway, only hoping against all hope that it leads to the target. After we're a half click down it toward the target, I wave the guys away, and before they're twenty yards they are out of sight into the copse of evergreens, deciduous, and thick undergrowth. I give TooBad and Pax and Skip a few minutes as they ease into the forest.

  It's my plan to idle up to within a hundred yards and see what we can see. And I do, and see a two-story structure, and strangely at this time of the morning, lights are on both upstairs and down. In fact, probably every light the place has is on.

  Two vehicles are parked near the front gate. A van of some make I don't recognize, and a new black Mercedes.

  So Hank and I decide to join the party. I've taken Hank with me as the former SEAL speaks enough Russian to get by—not to speak of the fact that, like Pax, I'd trust him with my life.

  We leave the bikes, ten yards off the two track driveway, well hidden in the underbrush, and proceed on foot.

  I motion for him to take the back and he circles away from me. As quietly as I can, I mount the stairs to the front door, move to a window, and carefully survey the inside.

  It looks vacant, and innocuous enough, until my eyes focus on a corner, and there leaning against the wall, is an SAG-30 Russian shoulder mounted rocket launcher. Probably not your average Estonian farmer's weapon of choice for wolves or coyotes or whatever they have in these farms and woods.

  13

  B.J., her legs and bare midriff scratched and bleeding from the undergrowth, had been moving steadily since she climbed down an outside drain pipe to the ground and slipped away to the east until she came to the lake, then, forced to choose, she turned north along the shoreline. In the distance, what could have been twenty kilometers across a curve in the huge lake, she could see the dim lights of a village, and that was her destination.

  She moved as quickly as she felt safe, climbing over sharp rocks and around lakeside stones in her bare feet. But it was slow going.

  When she figured she was three or four kilometers away from the dacha, she stopped to rest, but more so to listen.

  So far, nothing but forest sounds, and she'd spent enough time in the woods at the survival school that she was sure they were no threat. No wolf howls, no growling of bears, no snake
rattles, only the occasional sound of a night bird and the breeze through pine needles and the leaves of whatever kind of trees were out there.

  Just as she was about to take up the trek again, she heard voices in the distance. It was time to run. So she did, and only made it a hundred yards or so, up and down over rocks, jumping blow-down logs, before she fell, cutting her calf and skinning her knee badly, as well as burying sharp pebbles in both palms.

  Tears flooded her eyes but she choked back crying out. She paused, washed her knee and calf as best she could, cooling her bloodied hands in the soothing cold water of the lake, and taking a drink. Then she set out again, but now with more care.

  She'd only gone another hundred yards or so when she heard voices, this time much closer.

  Glancing behind, she realized she was leaving easily followed tracks in the muddy voids between rocks.

  She had to move inland, away from the lakeside, inland where the shadows of the trees would make the traveling even more difficult.

  And it was a good thing she did, as when only a hundred paces or so into the woods, she looked back to see the beams of flashlights scouring the lakeside for tracks.

  She had to move more quickly, and silently.

  The forest opened up a little and she was able to jog. She barely saw a wooden railed fence, but managed to stop before she tumbled over it, instead she scaled it, and found herself in a pasture. She could only imagine what was squeezing up between her toes. A nearby moo rattled her backbone and made her almost jump out of her skin, then she smiled to herself, making out a black and white cow only feet away. She turned back to her task of escaping, but slowed, then stopped when she made out a low light a few dozen paces ahead. She moved quietly and then realized it was a curtained window, with a candle behind.

  Moving even closer she made out the house that surrounded it, and beyond, a tall barn was backlit by the stars.

  Then she again stopped short. Checking behind her she saw no flashlights. What she heard were voices…singing, singing quietly, but singing. And it was coming from inside the house.

  She considered moving on, but then reconsidered as there could be a phone in this house. Dare she risk knocking on the door?

  Then she glanced back across the wide pasture, and deep in the forest she caught the flare of a light—a flashlight, swinging back and forth as a man moved slowly, following.

  Her legs hurt badly and her feet were almost too sore to walk on, not only from the rocks by the lake, but from the twigs and sticks of the forest.

  She decided to take a chance and moved to the plank door and knocked softly. The singing inside did not quiet or even hesitate. She knocked louder, still no sign of someone answering. The singing continued. She knocked, almost as hard as she could, and the singing stopped.

  She waited what seemed a long time, then could hear a bolt being thrown, then the door opened and a soft light flooded her. Fine gray hair, in wisps, was backlit by more than one candle in the room.

  An old woman, an ancient woman, and across the room at a table near the window lit by the candle on the table, sat an equally old man…maybe older. His face was withered as a walnut, and almost as brown. For a fleeting moment B.J. thought she'd stumbled into a Disney movie, or a Hansel and Gretel nursery rhyme.

  The woman was dressed in a multi colored costume, her hair other than the wisps escaping, in a dust cap of at least three bright colors. Her white blouse had a chain with a triangular piece of metal between her breasts, and coins jangled on the chain. Her skirt, equally bright in color, hung almost to the floor. She was red riding hood, only eighty or so years after the story.

  The woman stared at her for a moment, then seeing her bloodied legs, pulled her inside and pushed her to a chair. Before B.J. could catch her breath, the woman was ladling water into a white porcelain bowl, much like the one she'd used to crush Yegor's skull, then was at her side. She handed the bowl to B.J. as she arranged herself so she could kneel. It seemed she could hear the old woman's knees creak as she carefully sunk to the floor, then dipped a rag in the water and began washing the blood and dirt away from B.J.'s ravaged legs.

  B.J. put a hand on her shoulder and the old woman looked up. B.J. made the sign of holding a receiver to her mouth and ear. "Telephone. Do you have a telephone?"

  The old woman clearly understood, and smiled tightly, and said, "Nyet. Nyet telephone."

  The old man said something, then rose slowly and walked to another window and pulled aside a curtain and stared out. Then he turned and snapped at the woman, who gave B.J. a questioning look.

  "Russians," B.J. said, fearfully. "Ruskies." And she made a sign with her fingers, a running sign.

  The old woman repeated, "Ruskie," and spat on the floor. She rose slowly, then pulled B.J. to her feet and led her through one of three doors leading off the main room, into a room that turned out to be a bedroom. A large four poster bed was surrounded with curtains, and the woman led her over and pointed beneath it. B.J. dropped to the floor and slid under the floor length coverlet and moved deep under the bed.

  The woman limped away, but left the door to the main room open.

  By the time B.J. got her breathing slowed, there was a loud rap on the door, then another, then another, each louder in turn, and finally the door swung open without the old couple answering.

  The old man yelled something at the doorway, and B.J. could not help but pull the coverlet up just enough so, laying on her ear, her head flat on the floor, she could see what was happening, but was limited by the width of the bedroom doorway.

  The old man was shaking his head, no, and each time the man yelled, his head shake became more pronounced.

  She heard the old woman yell, over and over, "Nyet. Nyet. Nyet." And knew she was saying no, no, no, presumably denying that B.J. was there.

  To her surprise, the old man stood with a double barrel shotgun, aimed at the doorway, and fully cocked.

  Whoever was at the front door, yelled, and the old man yelled back. The front door guy yelled again, this time even louder, and the old man brought the shotgun to his shoulder, his jaws clamped tightly, his eyes focused as if he was about to pull both triggers.

  14

  I stand, listening for a long moment, then realize I'm hearing a girl or a child crying, then she screams. I try the front door and to my surprise, it's unlocked. The hinges creak some as I slowly pull it open, and I lead my way with the muzzle of the Ingram. I can see through the building to the back door, where Hank is now positioned. I wait while he, too, opens the door and steps inside.

  There's the bottom tread of a stairway only feet from the front door. What ever they're doing to the voice upstairs, they begin again, and she screams loud enough to rock the walls. He gives me a sign to wait.

  I motion to Hank that I'm going up and he moves to the only door leading out of the main room, again motioning me to wait. He swings that door aside and leading with his Ingram, steps inside. I can see it's a kitchen. He gives me a thumbs up and I move up the stairway as he closes the distance between us.

  There are three doors out of the short upstairs hall. At the end of the hall I can see it's what passes for a bathroom in this old dacha, the next is closed, and the one closest to me is open.

  A woman, shapely, blond, is standing with her back to me. On the floor, her legs angled up, feet resting on the mattress but bound to the foot end bedpost, is one of the girls who I recognize as Coleen Clarkson. She could see me if her eyes weren't closed tightly and so full of tears. The woman takes a cigarette out of her mouth and grinds it into Coleen's calf, as the girl shakes the walls with another scream. Then I realize another girl, the brunette, Phyllis Everettes, is on the bed, but she's up against the headboard, her back to me, wrists bound behind. She's shaking violently, crying I presume, but noiselessly.

  The blond never sees it coming as I drive the butt of the Ingram in between her shoulders. She flies across the room turning while crumpling to the floor. Only then do I realize a si
dearm is stuffed into her belt.

  "Alexei," she screams, and I believe she thinks I'm her lover for a moment. What a nice guy he must be. Then she realizes I'm not him and, sitting on her butt on the floor, her eyes widen and she tries to pull a semi-auto from its position stuffed in her belt, but it's cramped by her position. I take three steps and kick her in the solar plexus and as she rolls, I reach down and jerk the weapon.

  She coughs deeply, then upchucks on the rug. Her legs are extended in front of her, and I have to laugh aloud when Coleen regains some composure, sees her there with a calf only two feet away, grabs the woman's foot and drags the leg to her, and bites down on her calf hard enough to make the blood flow and the blond screams as loudly as Coleen had been doing.

  "Jesus, cat fight?" Hank says, who's stepped into the room behind me, after clearing the other bedroom. He drags Coleen back.

  The blond is now coughing and spitting, and rubbing her calf.

  I reach down and grab Coleen under her chin and make her look at me. "Where's Betty Jean?"

  She shakes her head, hard, back and forth.

  "I'm here from her father, here to take you girls out of this. Where's Betty Jean?"

  "Thank God," another voice says, and I look up to verify the other girl is Phyllis Everettes. "Thank God, thank God," she says, then manages, "Let's go."

  "Where's Betty Jean?" I repeat to her this time.

  "She escaped, and all of the assholes…the men…are out looking for her."

  "How long?"

  "Two, maybe three hours. This fucking sadistic bitch has been torturing us while they've been gone."

  Hank pulls his battle knife and begins cutting the plastic cable ties from the girls' ankles and wrists.