Avenger

by Chris Allen

  Morgan brought both fists down hard upon the roof of the Mercedes. His revulsion was palpable. Every instinct told him to finish her off right now. Who would ever know? He looked around. There was no one in sight. Hemsworth and Armstrong hadn’t arrived yet but they soon would. Every moment, every aspect, every excruciating minor detail of the operation to find and capture Voloshyn was now streaming unfettered through his mind; her betrayal of thousands of human lives – men and women, children, entire families – all serving life sentences to work in her brothels and factories while she traveled the world first class and lived in luxury off the back of their forced labor. Every year thousands of innocent, desperate people were lost into the black hole of the multibillion-dollar industry that was human trafficking, and all so that people like Darja fucking Voloshyn, the Night Witch, could profit from it. It was time for her to die. Morgan wiped the tears from his eyes and reached for the Glock. Fuck! Where was it? Then he remembered.

  He made his way around the front of the vehicle. He stumbled over the bricks and rubble, fell down, got up, fell down again, frustrated and angered by his own physical failure. He reached the passenger side of the car and, after a few arduous attempts, managed to prize the jammed door open. There was the gun. He reached in and grabbed it. Then, with the familiarity of one more used to handling heavy lumber than human beings, he took hold of Voloshyn’s wrist and pulled her from the driver’s seat, across the center console and the passenger seat and out of the car. As she fell heavily upon the bricks and rubble she let out a scream, but Morgan was unmoved. He pulled her through the debris until he reached a secluded patch of sand, shielded from view by a small copse of palm trees and ferns. He dropped her and stood back.

  “On your knees, Voloshyn,” he said. “This is as far as you go.”

  “What are you doing?” she cried. “You can’t!”

  “Knees!” he ordered. “Now! And look me in the eyes, because I want you to see in mine the lives of every poor bastard and child you’ve ever profited from. Today, they’re all getting payback.”

  “You can’t just kill me!” she snarled. “Godek was right – you’re a cop. I should have known. That’s why you kept coming back, putting up with his shit. So, cop, you know that if you kill me, your life is fucked!”

  Morgan raised the Glock and took a pace forward so that the end of the barrel was just inches away from her forehead. His anger barely contained, he kept his eyes on hers, channeling her attention. He wanted her to see, hear, and smell every second of her last moments as they unfolded in painful slow motion.

  The sound of an outboard motor getting louder and louder caused Morgan to turn and look down the beach. He saw a twenty-five-foot aluminum fishing boat approaching fast across the surf from the south, with one man standing at the controls and another at the bow.

  Morgan turned back to Voloshyn, his hand curling even tighter around the grip of the gun, arm outstretched. She was looking up at him, an unnerving arrogance in her face. She held his gaze with confidence, like she’d already won ahead of the toss.

  “I’m guessing they’re your friends,” she said. “Wouldn’t look good to be seen murdering a defenseless woman in cold blood, would it? So I reckon you’d better get it over with before it’s too late.”

  Morgan’s resolve faltered. Could he kill her now, in clear view of Hemsworth and Armstrong? Surely they’d understand? Do the same in his shoes? Yes, they would. Without question. Perfect alignment of eyes, weapon and target. Finger on the trigger and squeeze …

  A broken piece of brick hit Morgan on the forehead, just above his left eye. He pulled the trigger but the round bit uselessly into the powder-white sand and the Glock fell. Before he had time to recover it, the Night Witch was all over him. She launched herself like a banshee from the sand, talons out, teeth bared and eyes blazing. She punched and kicked wildly, clawing his eyes. Morgan fended off her attacks, wave after wave, blocking with shins and forearms, blood gushing from the deep wound above his eye. The two of them fell to the ground, locked in battle. Voloshyn screamed and screamed. Morgan had never experienced such an inhuman encounter. Her unrestrained violence had the detachment of a wildcat killing to survive. Morgan’s only hope was his resolve to avenge his friend’s death and his commitment to deliver the Night Witch to justice.

  With Voloshyn’s crazed eyes just inches from his face, Morgan brought his hands up and under her chin, drove his thumbs deep into the sides of her wide open mouth and locked his fingers over her ears and around the back of her neck. He clamped down hard. She gagged, and as the shock of the move checked her attack, Morgan brought the bridge of her nose down repeatedly, as hard as he had ever managed the move in his life, against his forehead. He felt her nasal bone shatter under the third impact and her body wilted on top of his. Morgan brought his knees up and lifted her over him with a flick. She landed on her back in the sand. In a second he was up, blood streaming down his face, and sitting on top of her. With her face clasped between his thumb and fingers once more, Morgan squeezed hard, just short of breaking her jaw.

  “Now you listen to me, you fucking bitch,” he began. “If I had five more minutes, you’d be fucking bait. The only reason you’re still alive is because of those two guys out there, coming in on the boat. I know they’d have my back if I killed you, but I would never put them in that position. Consider yourself lucky.”

  With the gun back in his hand, he grabbed her by the collar of her jacket, hoisted her to her feet, marched her across the sand and slammed her back against the car.

  “You alright, son? You don’t look so good,” said a familiar voice.

  “Couldn’t be better, George,” Morgan lied. He was exhausted beyond words and took a moment to regain his bearings. “Where’s AJ?”

  “Tying off the boat, he’ll be along any minute. How’s the leg?”

  “It’s holding up. Good job on the wall, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Hemsworth replied. “The second breach is about fifty feet back that way.”

  “You never did tell me how you got hold of all that PE and det-cord,” said Morgan.

  “Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer,” said Hemsworth.

  “Fair enough. You got the gear?”

  “Right here in the echelon bag.”

  “Great,” he replied. “You mind taking care of this one?”

  “Gladly,” replied George. “This is her, right, the Russian?”

  “Yeah, it is. Watch her, mate. Don’t give her an inch.” Morgan went to the back of the car and began herding the two bean counters out and down to the beach.

  With Voloshyn on her face in the sand and one of his knees in the small of her back, Hemsworth extracted a large coil of rope from the echelon bag and began the process of binding her wrists and ankles with a single strand so that they were joined down the front of her legs, with just enough give built into the knots and binding around her ankles to enable her to shuffle. Then he took a roll of duct tape and taped her mouth shut. With a permanent marker he wrote “Voloshyn” on her forehead and right hand. Finally, he dragged a sandbag over her head and secured it loosely around her neck.

  “Here you go, AJ. She’s all yours.”

  AJ Armstrong had walked up from Voloshyn’s private jetty where he’d secured the boat and was now standing beside Morgan.

  “Watch her, AJ. She’s the catch of the day,” he said. “Take her down and secure her onboard while George and I sort out these two. We’ll bring them down to you when we’ve got them ready.”

  “No worries, boss. Sweet as a nut,” said Armstrong, ignoring the deep, bloody gouges on Morgan’s face. Without another word, AJ led a stumbling, moaning Voloshyn to the boat.

  “Fuck! Jovana,” said Morgan. “Where is she?”

  “She didn’t come,” said Hemsworth. “I kept an eye out for her further down the beach but no-show.”

  “Poor kid’s probably scared out of her brain, hiding somewhere. Jesus! OK, let’s get these two sorted and
I’ll go back and find her.”

  Hemsworth set to work urgently on each of the accountants while Morgan covered them with the Glock. Both men tried desperately to plead their innocence, offering inordinate sums of money to buy their way out of trouble, but Morgan and Hemsworth remained absolutely silent. Just before he sandbagged them, Hemsworth labeled them “Bean Counter #1” and “Bean Counter #2” with the permanent marker. Then Morgan and Hemsworth marched the two prisoners across the beautiful white sand and along the jetty and handed them both over to Armstrong.

  “Right, boys,” said Morgan. “You know the plan. Stay on the heading I gave you for twelve miles until you’re out in international waters and an inflatable from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship RFA Wave Knight will be waiting for you there. Hand these three over to them and then come back and wait for me here. If I’m not back by seventeen hundred hours, then get yourselves out of here and call that number I gave you.”

  “So what about those Triad guys?” asked AJ. “Have we missed ’em?”

  “Don’t worry about them. We’ll have them intercepted at one of the airports. I have a feeling they weren’t the main players anyway. Time will tell.”

  With that Morgan turned and ran back along the jetty toward the villa. Voloshyn was quite literally in the bag, along with the two accountants from the investment cartel. Dariusz was dead, as were two of the Night Witch’s bodyguards, and the Triad gangsters would be picked up at a frontier somewhere. Morgan’s instinct was telling him that Wu Ming had played Voloshyn at her own game by sending a doppelgänger to represent him, because there was no way a Triad crime lord with the reputation of Wu Ming would travel halfway around the world for anyone, let alone with just two bodyguards and one accountant to accompany him. Kajkowski had flown the coop, probably out through the front gate in one of the other cars. With luck he’d be picked up too.

  Now all that was left was for Morgan to keep his word – he had to find Jovana and get her out of this mess.

  A scream from the center of the mangroves told him exactly where he was headed next.

  CHAPTER 63

  Alex Morgan sprinted down the beach and ran through the second hole Hemsworth had blown in the wall. He found himself in the lush tropical gardens at the rear of Voloshyn’s villa and oriented himself immediately toward the gate that led to the mangrove swamp. He heard Jovana scream again, this time more clearly. It was a desperate cry for help.

  He ran as fast as he could, legs burning from the effort, found the gate, tore it open and raced down the funnel of wire-mesh fence and path all the way to the cabin. He was closing fast. He raced around a long bend and, when he saw her, realized instantly that she had not fled here to hide. She was lashed, just as he had been, to the outside of the fence, arms above her head and feet dangling into the sludge and muck that lapped around the edge of the fenceline. Another human sacrifice. Morgan had the gun up and was scanning frantically for the perpetrator. It could only be Kajkowski. Only he would be vindictive and sick enough to do this in the midst of everything that had gone down today.

  Morgan slowed his pace and moved cautiously toward the cabin. He didn’t call out to Jovana, try to reassure or console her. He had no concept of how he was still functioning. His subconscious appeared to be in control now, his mind and body on autopilot and he was going with it. He shut down any consideration of exhaustion or pain or any further moral conflict. He didn’t have the reserve capacity to entertain those things.

  Jovana was crying out. It was loud, desperate and building in intensity. He kept moving, slowly, staying as much as possible in the cover of the palms and ferns that had grown through the fence. The Glock was firmly clasped in both hands, the line of the sights moving in practiced unison with his eyes. He took the final fifteen feet even more slowly, left shoulder leading, eyes following the line of his right arm and along the top of the gun. The girl was terrified but, from what he could see, not in any immediate danger. That was good. She was being used as bait. Nothing more than a distraction. Kajkowski had decided on a hostage to buy him some time while he worked out how he’d escape, and perhaps squeeze in a thrill kill for good measure.

  So, now to find him.

  Morgan reacted instinctively to a movement on his left side. It was the merest flash, the sudden appearance of a silhouette where there hadn’t previously been one. Something that didn’t belong in the mangroves. Something that broke the previously straight line of the corner of the cabin. A man’s head and shoulders. And a gun.

  The Glock erupted with three well-placed rounds. They hit within inches of the target but bit uselessly into the rendered cement exterior of the cabin. The attack was answered with half-a-dozen shots in his general direction. Morgan moved fast. He threw himself forward and landed heavily on the path, crawling behind some overgrown ferns. But his cover was only from view, there was nothing to protect him from the bullets here. His opponent had the advantage – the cabin provided cover from fire, plenty of actual protection. Morgan kept his eyes locked on the cabin, his peripheral vision scanning constantly. The silhouette appeared again, this time on the opposite side of the cabin with Jovana helplessly strung up behind it – Kajkowski. If Morgan fired and missed he would almost certainly kill her.

  He aimed and deliberately fired two rounds in quick succession into the wall near where Kajkowski had fired from. Both rounds buried themselves in the brickwork. The move let the other guy know that Morgan was aware of where he was and that he wasn’t afraid to engage, no matter how close he was to the girl. In the seconds it took Kajkowski to realize that, Morgan seized his chance to get up and move. He sprinted straight for the open door of the cabin and bounded inside, his movements masked by the noise from the mangroves and Jovana’s terrified cries.

  Not long, darlin’. Just a little bit longer.

  Kajkowski was moving back around the cabin to where he’d originally fired from, Morgan could hear him. His shoes were scraping across the rough strip of concrete that edged the foundation slab. Step by step, Morgan could almost trace the man’s exact location on the other side of the wall. He waited patiently. Kajkowski reached the corner again. He would be preparing now, remembering where he’d last seen Morgan. The gun would be up, pointing at the sky just like in the movies. Morgan heard a quick shuffle of shoes, a pause – two, three – and Kajkowski fired again. Three rounds first, followed by two more. Morgan didn’t react. He remained inside the cabin but moved slowly, quietly, into a position far back in the room from where he could clearly engage anything that traversed the doorway. He brought his breathing under control and raised the Glock into a steady, perfectly aligned firing position. And waited.

  Kajkowski was waiting too; waiting for a response from Morgan’s Glock that wasn’t going to happen. Morgan could feel exactly what the guy was going through right now, wondering if he’d killed or at least badly wounded Morgan. A guy like Kajkowski would probably prefer to wound, then he’d be able to enjoy some quality torture time with his victim. Well, not today.

  Two more shots echoed across the mangroves. Morgan braced for action. He was listening intently now for the scrape of Kajkowski’s shoes or a stumble, anything, because now the bastard would have to find the body to make sure Morgan was dead. But all he could hear was Jovana sobbing, scared beyond words, thinking that her only chance for rescue had just been killed.

  His eyes were locked on the doorway. It was just like a training shoot: “Target will appear for three seconds. You must engage within the three seconds. Impact areas are head and center of the chest only. Hits outside those areas will not count.”

  OK then. Let’s see that target.

  A gun barrel appeared at the right-hand edge of the doorframe, followed by hands and arms. Then they stopped moving. They were not coming into the cabin. Kajkowski was looking for Morgan’s body. Keep moving, Morgan willed him. For a time the gun, the hands and the arms stayed put, but then they moved again and the arms became a shoulder, a flank, a head and back, all now framed
in the doorway. “Target will appear for three seconds. You must engage …”

  “Gorbachev!” Morgan yelled.

  Kajkowski spun around, positioning his body perfectly, front on, gun pointing at the sky. Target appears. Engage.

  Morgan fired – three rounds to the chest, directly into the heart. Kajkowski was frozen, mouth agape, shock and disbelief plastered across his tattooed face. The last output of his still-functioning brain managed to drop his gaze to inspect the small cluster of red bullet holes in his chest. The head and gaze lifted back to Morgan once more and then the body fell backward against the wire-mesh fence, bounced off it and tumbled face first through the doorway into the cabin.

  Morgan walked over, kicked the gun out of Kajkowski’s twitching right hand and fired two finishing shots into the back of his head.

  Then human impulse returned to him.

  He raced out to Jovana. She’d been through enough for one so young and it was up to him now to change all that for her. He holstered the Glock and with infinite care cut her free from the bindings and eased her down. Her body had been through all it could take and now she needed help, care and protection. Once he had her down, he lifted her in his arms and carried her along the path and out of the mangroves. Away from the villa, away from Placencia and away from the cruel life that until now had been all she’d known. She lay against his chest with her arms wrapped around his neck like a small child being carried off to bed. Her eyes were closed and her breathing labored. Soon she’d be getting all the attention she needed.