by Joonas Huhta
Konrad doodled on random papers and started tapping a pencil he found against the table. “What the hell is going on?”
“Wait a minute. Gideon said he saw a black Mercedes parked in front the house. I remember seeing one at the university when I commented on someone’s hobby of looking at porn in broad daylight.”
“I wouldn’t condemn,” Konrad said. “Pornography has existed throughout recorded history, in every culture, in every civilization—”
“So, you don’t find it problematic that men’s brains are on porn everywhere? It starts with scantily clad cheerleaders in every sport you can name, women on sportscar hoods, weather forecasters with low cleavage. Do you know how many men feel trapped by their inability to stop consuming pornography?”
“I didn’t mean to pick up a fight or dig into this topic.”
“Is it okay for you that a naked female body hijacks your brain, hypnotizes you, and makes you incapable of making good decisions? How many times did you put your marriage at risk for videos of couples having sex?”
“This has nothing to do—”
“Pathetic. You don’t give a shit about young minds whose brains are most vulnerable to exploitation. Their closest sex partner is a machine. They warm up faster and are more reliable. Digital gadgets seem to beep more realistic sounding orgasms. And after masturbation, she can be turned off with a press of a button. No wonder teens don’t care about sexually transmitted diseases.”
There was a long pause on the line. Then a few mouse clicks.
“Konrad?”
He frowned at her voice, which vibrated on a whole new frequency. “Everything okay?”
“I think we’re not getting anywhere like this,” she said in a sudden 180-degree mood swing. “You know, we haven’t considered what the broken commandment of The Wicked Bible urges. Besides, I must make a confession. Gosh, how can one get so emotional—I’m beginning to like you, Konrad.”
Konrad tried to form a sarcastic comment.
“Spend a night with me,” she continued.
“What are you talking—”
“I knew you liked me. I’ll be right there. Your address?”
“Raevaarantie 4. But—”
“See you in thirty minutes.”
Ruut hug up.
Konrad stared at his phone in utter bewilderment.
What are you up to?
He glanced outside at the moonlit view. A plunge into the black icy water would make the circulation kick and get his head on straight. For as long as he could remember, he had always started the work day with a little dip, in the river or shower, but not because of the day-long energy boost and skin care it provided.
He explained the need to himself as the ritual of being macho.
17
HAIR DRIPPING WET off the back of his head, Konrad opened the front door. Ruut walked straight into his arms, planted a wet kiss on his lips, and forced him to back up to the first bed she could find.
Ruut closed the door and turned off the lights. She was coughing, but before Konrad managed to say anything about the mold, she jumped over him, knocked him on the bed.
She was on top, gazing down at him while removing her jacket, slowly. Seductively.
“Ah, I can feel your erection against my belly,” she said, her voice raised an octave. “It’s already so big!”
“It’s nothing yet, but—”
Ruut placed a hand over his mouth. “Let me find out.” She suddenly took a pair of handcuffs out of her pocket and threw the jacket aside.
“Do you trust me?”
Bondgage cuffs? Konrad nodded. But I’m sure you’re bluffing…
Ruut closed the ratchet rotating arm around Konrad’s right wrist, took the chain around a metal bar of the bed frame and secured the other one onto his other wrist. Meanwhile, Konrad let his eyes study her up and down: long-legged, slim and a sexy smile that shamed the moon. But he was ready to stop.
She moaned and roughly turned Konrad on his stomach, placing something next to the pillow.
A weird sensation spiked through Konrad’s body as Ruut took off his belt.
“Ruut?”
She kissed his neck and gently pushed the middle of the leather belt into his mouth; and she pulled his head back, holding the belt in one hand, the other finding a way under the clothes of his back.
The phone started to speak. Ruut’s ecstatic voice was easy to extract:
“Oh, kiss me, Konrad. Let’s make this a night to remember!”
Konrad was unable to speak.
What the heck is this? A recording?
The voices from the phone continued. But atop of him she spoke without words.
Her finger moved rhythmically on his back.
She was writing a warning, letter by letter...
We’re in danger.
18
PATRICK PRAYTOR POCKETED his phone at the gates of the forest road that wound down to the old veteran’s house where Konrad and Ruut shared a bed.
The Veteran had insisted on getting rid of the insects.
Neutralize the targets, Patrick played back the command in his head. An understatement of the force of the six killing machines at his disposal. Even among the world’s special operations elite, his team enjoyed near mythical status. Behind the blacker-than-black backdrop, they changed the course of history. They preserved the ground of life, prepared the way to everything that was good.
One of the soldiers broke radio silence, the voice coming from Patrick’s coin-sized subdermal embedded behind his ear.
“Green sniper… sights are hot.”
“Blue sniper… you too, Green.”
“Green sniper… screw you.”
“Blue sniper… already.”
“Red sniper… Green, Your Tango is Down at 6 o’clock.”
“Blue sniper…. what’re you? A priest?”
“Red sniper… your father.”
“Blue sniper… don’t fuck with me!”
Laughs.
“Alpha. Get your shit together,” Patrick said.
In three times, “Copy that, Colonel.”
Patrick stretched his neck in his sailor’s solid black wool coat that kept his body functioning in the cold and kept him focused.
He looked through his night vision riflescope and took aim at a Rottweiler. The dog was looking in his direction from a cage near the old house.
Scenarios began to rush through his brain. One after another the most dangerous men in the world collapsed in front of him, just like the goal of every responsible hunter to kill or incapacitate an animal—to drop-it-where-it-stands with a single bullet.
The dog initiated a deep growl, but Patrick squeezed the trigger before its alarming bark. Without noise, the dog dropped dead. Beautifully.
His men, from their positions, heard the woman reaching the peak of her sexual excitement. Each one of them knew that only by finishing this mission could they earn lasting peace and return to their families. The Veteran had guided them all on the only path to end all wars, to reach the higher domain of existence. A puppet was free only if it knew its strings and could fully control itself.
You two have nowhere to run.
After spearheading the war on terror for ten years in the top-secret US Army special operations unit, fighting proxy wars on both sides of the ideological fence and preventing many behind a myriad of codes names, he had grown tired of the endless battles, the endless vicious circle of revenge and soul-poisoning hatred.
New world awaits.
The front door opened. Patrick mentally prepared himself, then whispered to the microphone under his sleeve.
“Get ready.”
Patrick heard the woman voice in his ear clear as the cold night sky.
“...to McDonald’s and then we rent a movie…”
He watched the woman slipping behind the wheel of her Volvo. The man was about to sit next to her.
The beams from the car lit up the house’s edifice.
“D
amn, I forgot my wallet inside,” Ruut said. “Could you pick it up while I’ll turn the car around?”
Konrad was making his way inside as the car started reversing. But it stopped. The lights went out and the engine shut off. A few ticks later the car lit the house again, reversing. The path was long and narrowed by trees, and for that intention, there was a short side extension to the road that allowed a car to turn.
“Wait for my command,” Patrick said.
The braking lights indicated that the car was slowing down.
It was starting to turn to the side, the lights sweeping along the woods.
But then Patrick saw something unimaginable.
No driver in the window; the car swerved a hard turn back on the main road, launching a full-speed reverse.
Impressive. Ducked with a reverse camera, are we? “Tires!”
A split second later, bullets whizzed through the air from behind the surrounding tree trunks. One tire flat, the car smashed its side against a tree.
Glass shattered.
Patrick looked through the scope for a target. He needed only a glimpse of a head to put it down in a crimson haze.
Bullets flew, the tires exploded on all sides.
The car slammed into a tree with a thud that sent shock waves. Snow fell like a drapery of white fireflies. The tires spun, the damaged wheels shrieking. The car plunged forward from under the snow.
Patrick inhaled the sweet intoxicating smell of gunpowder and started walking the path toward the house. “Finish them.”
Raging spurts of fire came from the darkness. They pierced and sliced the air like the reaper’s random scythe. The metal frame of the bouncing car was soul-torn by sparkle and flame.
An explosion.
The car was on fire like a medieval battering ram of war. The car slammed through the wall into the garage and buried partly under the snow falling from the roof. A whoosh of flames resounded.
Patrick stopped and made a quick analysis. Could the car have been remotely controlled?
He stood at ease, the sphere of future in full control.
“Alpha, hold your position. Bravo, proceed.”
19
KONRAD GAGGED ON the smell of gasoline fumes and gray smoke inside the garage. “Nice driving.”
Ruut had sneaked in through the back door. She closed the steering wheel screen on her smartphone app and pocketed it. “A malfunction...”
Dodging the flames, she reached for something through the broken windshield.
Two Glock 17 firearms.
“Take this,” Ruut clicked off the safety.
Konrad’s ears rang. “What are we going to do?”
“Kill yourself along with your stupid questions.”
She was already shooting through the cracks in the wall into the darkness and receiving scores of bullets in return, curses bursting from her lips. Konrad jolted back to his senses. He tightened the shoulder strap of the medical bag and picked up the fallen keys from the floor for Lennart’s Arctic Cat snowmobile that he had been trying to start.
Beats skiing by a mile.
The growing flames lit the dark garage orange. Bullets tore through the wooden structures like they were made of paper. Konrad fired up the engine.
In the left hand of the side rear mirror, someone attacked Ruut. A knife flashed at her throat. Konrad whirled and heard the attacker whispering something in her ear.
“Ruut!” Konrad tripped and fell shoulder-first on the cement floor. He reached for his slipped weapon and pointed at the two shadows now struggling.
He closed his non-dominant eye, locked his hand and shoulder, and squeezed his hands around the grip.
Bang!
The bullet lodged inside the attacker’s heel, sending his face up like of a howling wolf.
Konrad kept a white-knuckled grip on the grip of the gun.
I shot at a man...
Ruut took the knife out of the attacker’s hand.
“Chyort voz’mi!” the man shouted as the blade shot through below his jaw all the way up to the upper part of his mouth. He gargled blood bubbles. Ruut pushed the man until he stood outside. A quick rain shower of lead exploded the man’s head, splatters of blood and brain matter sprayed Ruut’s face. He dropped dead onto his knees like a limbless doll.
Ruut gazed at Konrad, her eyes wide, both sharing the same question.
Russians?
The reality sent a bolt of anxiety up Konrad’s spine.
Someone barked commands outside; a voice to chill bone marrow.
The car caught on fire.
“Here,” Konrad said to Ruut, pocketing the weapon, he jumped on the Arctic Cat.
Ruut ran over, sat behind him and knotted her hands around his stomach. “Go!”
Konrad aimed at the wooden back door, gritted his teeth, twisting the throttle. With mounting terror and a horrible sound of wood exploding around them, they reached the backyard. The car and garage blew up into the sky, lighting up the riverbank before them. Konrad riveted his gaze on the far side of the river, but the ice cover didn’t reach that far.
Ruut started to shoot to their left.
Konrad glanced sideways at the neighbor’s backyard.
The huge muscle-bound man he had seen at the university stood on a forsaken and partly-crumbled pier, a big sniper rifle nestled in his arms, his head down as if meditating or praying.
“Faster!” Ruut shouted and fired at the man.
Ducking and blinking wind and water from his eyes, Konrad accelerated on the ice full throttle.
Ruut had run out of ammo, but squeezed the trigger repeatedly in some moment of paranoia. A bullet whizzed past Konrad’s ear. It broke through the bag strap. The Bible half slid out as the strap loosened, bouncing on the ice. Konrad pulled the bag, the strap tangling tight to his clothes, but he got only the lightened bag.
“Shit!”
“Let it be!” Ruut said. “We still have the membrane.”
“There’s water up ahead,” Konrad screamed. “We can’t make it.”
Ruut took the second Glock out of Konrad’s pocket and shot behind.
“Don’t slow down!”
A bullet flew past his temple.
The edge of the ice rushed toward them. Konrad eased on the gas.
“Ruut! We’re going to die!”
She reacted instantly, pushed his head down and took the controls.
The engine revved like a demonic beast.
Something burned in Konrad’s thigh, and the engine started spilling white smoke. He glanced down, and an intense burning sensation kicked in.
A hit.
He managed to bite through the pain. Luckily, it was only a scratch. He desperately searched for safety in the veils of starting snowfall.
Nothing.
Only black nothingness ahead and below.
“Ruut!”
She pressed her body tighter against him, bullets whizzing past and overhead. Water splashed up in the air, cloaking them with freezing embrace. The transition from the ice to the water happened smoothly, like butter sliding onto a frying pan.
They were too heavy; speed decreased.
Fortunately, they reached an underwater layer of ice. But the snowmobile came to a neck-breaking halt, catapulting them, flying on the ice. They rolled, ducked low, bullets still filling the air at random pulses.
For the span of three skipped heartbeats, Konrad took a mental inventory of his pain and injuries. They were bruised, badly wet, soon freezing to death.
She shot at something.
Once.
Twice.
Konrad had just turned his head when a statue of fire rocketed skywards. Ruut had shot the gas tank and blown the old piece of shit into oblivion. For their protection.
“Crawl,” Ruut shouted. “Behind the fire!”
Konrad noted the bullets had stopped flying; either the enemy waited for a clear shot or had withdrawn to circle the lake by car. Ruut’s lips were blue; she shook badly. Konrad’s bod
y was functioning perfectly. He pulled her slender body behind him.
“After this, you will eat cake to get some warming fat around you.”
“Shut the fuck up. We’re not safe yet.”
The second Konrad raised his head too high a bullet penetrated the flames and the top of his hat.
“Come on! My favorite hat!”
“Lucky bastard.”
A voice drew their gazes skyward. Konrad remembered his father had described such a voice before.
“Get down!” he said.
A grenade landed twenty meters in front of them. The explosion sent a myriad of tiny shrapnel all over. As the smoke blew aside, a gigantic hole in the ice appeared. Veins of breaking ice grew closer to their position, and upon reaching them, the ice creaked under their weight.
“For the love of God,” Ruut whispered.
They sank through the ice.
Konrad could feel the semi-strong current in the water. Fighting against the pull, he kept his eyes opened and fumbled for Ruut’s hand.
Gotcha!
Konrad brought her to the surface. Ruut hyperventilated with the Glock in her hand.
“I can’t swim!”
“What?” Konrad took the pistol. “You go ice-fishing with a snowmobile, and now you tell me?”
“I’m going to kill you, Konrad.”
“Save your last breath for them. Keep yourself moving because—”
“Hypothermia, I know.”
Konrad brought Ruut near the beach on the edge of the blown-up ice cover. He couldn’t get on top of it; the ice either broke under his weight or forced him to slide back.
“I can’t breathe,” Ruut said, her voice fainter than a whisper.
“You can. Relax.” Konrad looked at the beach. Ten meters. So near. Yet so far.
“Stay with me. Keep your hands on the ice. Do not let the current pull you under the ice.”
