by Jonas Saul
Darwin shifted to the other foot. A wave of nausea passed over him. His stomach twisted and tightened. Dizziness followed.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
“I remember the day we got caught,” Yuri continued. “It was stupid of us, really.” He had a faraway look on his face as he thought back. “We had taken the train to another part of New York to hit a pack of jewelers we’d never seen before. On the way back at the train station, as we were getting ready to board, a police officer stopped us.” His clouded eyes focused and he turned to Darwin. “Do you know why?”
“Because you’re an asshole,” Darwin mumbled through the hooks.
Yuri smiled. “I like you, I really do.” He puffed on the cigar. “I’m going to miss you. I have never met anyone as formidable as you, Darwin.” He blew the smoke out. Rosina continued to sleep her drug-induced slumber beside him. “They caught us because it was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Observant Jews are strictly forbidden to travel. The security guard was Jewish and asked if we were, now get this, Observant Jews. Can you believe it?”
“No.”
“There was a gun fight. I spent time in jail. I stopped robbing jewelers when I got out. Started thinking bigger. And here I am.”
“Impressive.”
Yuri eyed him sideways. “You’re being sarcastic again.”
“What are you doing?” Darwin asked. “Why tell me all this shit?”
“I’m stalling. Waiting for the meeting to start. I always want the man I’m going to kill to know who killed him. Since I’m not gay, this is as intimate as we’re going to get.”
“But you’ve got it wrong.”
“How so?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
Yuri laughed. He got up and stepped in front of Darwin. “Damn, I wish I had an ounce of your tenacity in my men. Even in this state of constant agony, hooked up to the wall like a side of beef, you threaten me. Wow. If I didn’t get so much pleasure out of killing you, I would hire you to work for me.”
“I would never work for you.”
“I know. That is why you have to die. This world cannot have the both of us.”
“I agree.”
Darwin’s leg slipped as it weakened. He hopped onto the other and almost fainted. The room spun then came back. The pain soared from the hooks in his legs. The crazy Russian who had hooked him up moved behind him with the wooden stick to apply Super Glue where the bleeding had started again on his legs. Darwin felt it trickling down his ankle.
“That was close,” Yuri said. “You almost came undone. Not long now. The meeting will start in fifteen minutes. Then a bullet will enter your skull at close range near the hairline behind the right ear. Your wife goes first, though, since you’re tied up at the moment.” He chuckled. The Russian behind Darwin got to his feet and laughed too.
Yuri walked to the door, then turned to talk to the Russian torturer. “When I call, wake her with smelling salts and walk her out here,” he pointed. “Then walk Darwin out. The execution will go as planned.”
“Yuri?” Darwin said.
The large Russian had stepped out the door. He stopped but didn’t turn around.
“What?”
“How long was I out?”
“All night. We drugged you. It is almost noon, nearly twenty-four hours since you snuck onto the golf course. Why?”
“You’re having a meeting with the Chinese and the Italians?”
Yuri turned and faced Darwin. He pulled the cigar out of his mouth. “That’s right. I almost forgot, thanks for the documents you had in your pants. The ones the FBI gave you. It’s good to know what they have on us.”
“They’re on their way.”
“No, they’re not.”
“They told me they knew about this meeting.”
“Sure they do. It’s true. They just don’t know where it’s being held. They think we are meeting fifty miles from here at a restaurant in Chinatown. I even have a couple of Russians and Italians meeting for lunch there so the FBI can listen to them discuss whores. No,” he wagged his finger, “they will not be here. They will not come in and save you. It is truly over, Darwin. No heroics this time.”
“The police car I drove here in. They will track it.”
“Already covered. After you got here yesterday, the police car was taken away. Investigators were raising it from the bottom of Lake Simcoe near Barrie, last I heard, looking for the body of the man who stole it, The Scythe. They think he hightailed it out of Toronto and lost control near the lake.”
“The Scythe?”
“Yeah, you told the adult store clerk and the strip club guys that you were The Scythe. That’s what the authorities are working with. No one knows where Darwin ended up.” He tapped ashes off the end of his cigar, then puffed on it. “And no one ever will.” He looked at his watch. “You and your lovely wife have about ten minutes to live. Enjoy them.”
How could anyone save them now? He had recklessly raced through Toronto, blinded by rage and ended up walking into a trap that snared them both.
By using Scythe’s name, he had hoped to get out of this mess with Rosina and not be jailed. It was reckless, stupid and crazy. Once they picked the real man up, he may even have an alibi. All Darwin ended up doing in the end was deflecting the police from finding him and Rosina. And now they were going to die.
“I’m sorry, baby. I tried.”
Tears streaked down his face.
“We never really had a chance, did we?”
Rosina stirred in her stupor. The Russian walked over to her and checked her pulse.
“She’s waking,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Good timing.” He smiled wide, the kind of smile a kid wears when he’s about to go have ice cream and waffle cakes.
Darwin wondered if he would see that smile in hell when he arrived.
There were a thousand things he wanted to say to Rosina, but she would never hear them. They would just disappear. No one would ever see them again. They would be buried in that double coffin thing and would remain on a missing person’s list eternally.
“Oh, baby …”
If there was anything he could do, he would. Even if it meant he could die to save her. The despair held weight, an uncanny pressure on his psyche that made him feel he couldn’t stand anymore. He tugged on the hooks until the chains pulled taut from the wall and the pain increased. His skin lifted tent-like from his back and legs.
Short of ripping himself off the hooks, there was nothing he could do. Even if he did that, everyone in the next room was armed. What chance did they have?
He slumped back allowing the chains to slacken. At least his torment would be over soon. His failure as a man to save his wife, to protect her, colored his heart a dark gray.
If only things were different.
Yuri called from the other room.
It was time to die.
The Russian pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked Rosina’s restraints. Then he tossed them aside and put the key away. His hand came back up with something else, which he waved back and forth in front of Rosina’s nose. She gasped and jolted awake, coughing.
Her eyes wide, she took in the room, settling on Darwin.
He tried to smile, but all he could do was wince as the last time she would see him was in such a defeated, despicable way.
He looked away. The sadness in her eyes was too much to bear.
“Darwin?”
Their eyes met as the Russian hauled Rosina to her feet.
“Darwin?” Her voice grew stronger, louder. “Darwin!”
The Russian manhandled her to the door and shoved it open.
Extreme rage hit Darwin like a tsunami of molten lava. It covered him in its wake, pulsing every muscle into action, the pain welcoming and stirring him on instead of debilitating.
“Rosina,” he shouted, his voice a growl, the hooks in his cheeks sliding along his teeth, cutting his gums. Then he roared her name,
vibrating the chains that held him.
He ripped his right arm up in a vain attempt to grab the Russian, but the man had stepped out the door.
He had pulled too hard. The hook in Darwin’s triceps tore through his flesh. The chain slapped harmlessly into the wall behind him, useless now. Blood seeped down his elbow, but his arm was free. The pain added to his will to survive and to get to his wife.
Through the open door, Yuri held a small silver gun in his hand. He watched the Russian walk Rosina across the floor toward him. Three men watched: one Chinese, one Italian, and Yuri’s bodyguard. Other men lingered by the double doors on the far side.
“Rosina,” he yelled. “Rosina!”
He pulled against the chains. He couldn’t move again for fear of passing out, but he had to do something. They were about to shoot his wife.
The Russian handed Rosina to Yuri and started back to the office.
Rosina screamed as Yuri kicked her legs out from under her and dropped to her knees.
“Kneel bitch,” Yuri yelled at her.
“I will kill you again and again, Yuri,” Darwin shouted.
Yuri looked over his shoulder at Darwin. He grinned like a mischievous feline and brought the gun to the back of Rosina’s bowed head. The Russian torturer got to the door and slammed it shut, blocking Darwin’s view.
He shouted an inhuman growl and pulled against the hooks.
“Wait,” he bellowed, his voice hoarse.
Then he gave up on the pain and the resistance. There was nothing left to live for without Rosina. They were in a nightmare not of their making, but he could change things. He could make it worse. One thing he could not do was hear the gun that blew his wife’s head open.
He clenched his teeth, allowed the rage to fuel him, grunted deep in his throat and stepped one leg forward, hard and firm.
The hooks ripped out and dropped to the plastic, the chain part rattling against the wall. He stepped his other leg forward, knowing the damage he was causing, but he needed to get to Rosina. Without her, the damage to his flesh was nothing.
The Russian hadn’t turned around yet. He must have assumed Darwin was only jerking around, rattling the chains. He stood in the corner by the table that held the torture implements, his back to Darwin. As Darwin struggled, the man’s head twitched and he looked over his shoulder. When he saw what Darwin had done, his eyes widened.
Patches of flesh and meat still clung to each hook.
The pain of what was happening to Rosina was a thousand times worse than the pain from the hooks.
Darwin pushed with all the willpower of a possessed man and ripped the rest of the hooks out of his back, tearing flesh and meat with them, blood shooting from each wound.
Wearing only his underwear, Darwin moved toward the torture table and the man who impaled him with the hooks.
The Russian grabbed a hammer off the table. He brought it up fast, but Darwin was filled with such a rage that his focus was clear, his strength that of ten men. In his mind, the Russian was already dead.
Darwin shoved the handle of the hammer back, twisted it in the Russian’s hand and pushed the claw end toward the Russian’s face. A struggle of raw strength ensued, until the hammer entered the man’s mouth. Darwin yanked down hard. With a crack and a snapping sound, the lower section of the man’s face dislocated.
He screamed as Darwin ripped the hammer out of his hands and flipped it around. Then he brought it down again.
The scream stopped as the claw end gouged into the Russian’s right eye and sunk a couple of inches deep inside the orbital bone.
The Russian’s mouth sagged open at an odd angle as he slipped to the floor in a pool of his own blood mixed with some of Darwin’s.
He tore the hammer out of the Russian’s face with a sickening twist and wet, mushy sound.
At the door, he sucked in a couple of breaths and said, “I’m coming for you, baby.”
He gripped the knob.
A gun fired in the other room.
Darwin screamed and ripped the office door open.
Chapter 21
More weapons fired. He kept his head low and his eyes on Rosina. Men fell around him and bullets fired in a chaotic mess. He couldn’t tell who was shooting at whom.
Still by the door in the office, he waited because a couple of Yuri’s men were still alive, shooting at an unknown enemy. Moving out of the office at that second would make him a target.
Yuri and his men moved toward the doors that led out of the convention center with Rosina clutched in their arms, under fire from someone out of Darwin’s range of sight.
“No,” Darwin shouted as he moved into the cavernous room.
Both bodyguards turned to him as their back hit the exit doors. They leveled their weapons at him.
Pockets of blood popped out of the cheek of one man and the forehead of the other within a second between them. Neither one got a shot off at Darwin.
He ran after them, slipping in his own blood, and as he made it across the convention center’s floor, it was a struggle to stay on his feet. Yuri opened the door with his back and yanked Rosina through after him. The door closed before Darwin got halfway across the room.
He shouted after them, a raw animal sound. Five feet from the door, it opened and men in fatigues, helmets and goggles barged in, almost colliding with Darwin. He tried to slow down, but his feet slipped. He fell on his butt and slid with a squeak.
Before he could get back up, arms restrained him.
“It’s okay,” someone shouted into his ear. “It’s over. We got them.”
Darwin stayed on the floor, nearly hyperventilating. His vision blurred for a moment as he tried to get his breathing under control. As everything came back into focus, he took in the room. Men dressed in emergency task force gear circled the area. Doors opened and closed. Men came and went, toting assault rifles.
“Where—” Darwin swallowed, “—is my wife?”
“One sec,” a man said, his hand raised. He listened for a moment, nodded to himself and then spoke into a microphone on his collar. “The area is secure?” He waited. “Copy that. Bring the injured to the ambulances. I got Darwin Kostas.”
The man faced Darwin. “You okay?”
“Where did all of you come from?”
The man tore off his mask.
Agent Williams. Relief washed over Darwin.
“I told you we knew about this meeting and that we would swoop in before they killed Rosina.”
“Is Rosina okay?”
Williams nodded. “My men told me all combatants are dealt with and hostages released. Yuri didn’t have a chance.”
“But how?” Darwin asked. He sat up and tried to stand. “How did you know about the meeting?”
“Stay down. You’re bleeding everywhere. Paramedics are outside. They’re coming in now.” Williams stared at the hooks still embedded in Darwin’s cheeks. They were the only two that didn’t have chains attached to them. “That’s got to hurt.”
“Not half as bad as the ones I tore out of my backside. Yuri said he had tricked the FBI.” Darwin had to know. “There was no way you could know where the meeting was or when, he said.”
“He didn’t trick anybody.” Williams spoke into a microphone and then looked back at Darwin. “We had a man on the inside.” He turned and pointed up at the rafters. “One of Yuri’s snipers was ours. He was instructed to start shooting if they were going to kill any innocents.”
“You had someone on the inside?” Darwin asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kirk’s face grew stern. “Yeah, right. And jeopardize a three-year operation to reassure you? Put a man’s life in danger so you didn’t have to worry so much? Darwin, we’re the professionals here. We got this. I told you I would handle it. This cowboy stuff you pulled is going to get somebody killed. Look at you. You’re all fucked up.”
Williams turned around as the door banged open and paramedics rushed in with a gurney.
“Ove
r here,” he said to them. “Get this guy patched up and stop the bleeding. Looks like he’s lost a lot,” Williams added as if the medics couldn’t see that for themselves.
They dropped the stretcher to floor level and on the count of three hoisted Darwin onto it.
