Russian Roulette

by Austin Camacho

  “Hang on, man,” Hannibal whispered. “Help will be here soon.”

  Ivanovich shook his head, and offered Hannibal a half smile. “Only one left. We saved her. Finish it for me.”

  “Fuck that asshole, and the girl too,” Hannibal said, pressing a gloved hand against Ivanovich’s neck wound. “You need to focus on saving yourself.”

  “No,” Ivanovich said, staring into Hannibal’s eyes in the darkness. “This time, you know the song. I’ve held it for my final words for years.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ivanovich swallowed hard, clenched his teeth as if accomplishing his next task was vital, and mumbled out, “I try to save myself but my self keeps slipping away.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Ivanovich continued, as if it was a mantra to guide him into Valhalla. “Try to save myself but myself keeps slipping away. Try to save myself but myself keeps slipping…”

  When life slips away, a human body feels different. Startled by the change, Hannibal dropped Ivanovich’s head to the path. These were not final words to be remembered by, so he mentally stepped over them to Ivanovich’s previous words. Finish it for me. He stood straight up and stared at the last man. He thought it was Vladimir, the man they met at Boris Uspensky’s office.

  “Just you and me now.” He said it softly, but he was sure the other man heard him. “Soon, just me.”

  He stepped over Aleksandr Ivanovich and off the boardwalk. His foot sank ankle deep in the soft earth but he kept going. Vladimir fired at him and Hannibal had no idea where the bullet went. The clouds jostled each other again and the moonlight vanished.

  He could make out the other man’s form on the ground in front of him now. Vladimir fired again. Pain lanced through Hannibal’s right arm but the bullet didn’t throw him down. That meant it had not encountered bone, but just dug a divot of flesh out of the side of his arm. Too bad for Vladimir that Hannibal was lefthanded.

  In the distance he heard a loud hailer asking for whoever was in the park to identify themselves. He kept going. Left foot, right foot, like he remembered his father saying when he was small. That’s how you get where you need to go. Left foot, right foot.

  A dozen feet away, Vladimir raised his gun and Hannibal raised his as well. As Hannibal stepped closer, waiting to be in certain one-shot-kill range, the two men looked down their sight posts into each other’s eyes.

  A light beam slid between them and Vladimir squeezed his trigger. Hannibal heard the hollow clack of a hammer falling on an empty chamber. It seemed that Vladimir had lost count. Vladimir turned on his back, watching Hannibal between his own feet. Hannibal continued on until he stood inches from Vladimir’s shoes. Now he could see that Vladimir was bleeding from his right side. His face was calm, placid, as Aleksandr’s had almost always been. Did this man understand that Hannibal had to finish his friend’s business?

  “He was already mortally wounded you know,” Vladimir said. As if that made any difference.

  “You don’t want to shoot me,” Vladimir said. “You are not like us. You are not a killer.”

  Hannibal lowered his weapon, took a deep breath, and raised it again.

  “You think you know what I am? I’ll tell you what I am.” Hannibal took another deep breath, and heard Ivanovich’s voice in his head. Or Trent Reznor’s.

  “Broken. Bruised. Forgotten. Sore. Too fucked up to care anymore.”

  Vladimir nodded slightly, indicating that he recognized the lyrics. Hannibal squeezed, but never felt the trigger let off. The slide rocked back and slammed forward, but Hannibal never heard the blast. Vladimir’s forehead offered no resistance to the jacketed hollowpoint on its way into the ground. Then Hannibal dropped to his knees. Some number of seconds later he heard a familiar woman’s voice scream. Then a cluster of light beams flashed around him, illuminating the entire swamp. There was a lot of conversation, but it all seemed muddled to him. A coat fell around his shoulders and he heard Orson Rissik’s voice.

  “Hannibal. It’s Orson. I got here as fast as I could.”

  “Seemed like all night. Is it midnight yet?”

  “Midnight?” Rissik asked. “Son, it’s barely six. We had daylight until we arrived but finding you out here in the dark was a bitch. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine,” Hannibal said as Rissik and another man laid him on a stretcher. “At least, better than anybody else out here except…did you find the girl?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. Not a scratch on her.”

  “Yeah, that figures,” Hannibal said, rummaging through his jacket for his phone.

  “Hey, we need to get somebody to look at that arm,” Rissik said. “Whoever you’re thinking of calling, it can wait.”

  “No,” Hannibal said as they bounced him along the boardwalk toward the parking lot, “no, it can’t.”

  Epilogue

  There was no way to see in the window at Kinkead’s, just a couple blocks from the White House. Watching snowflakes melt as they hit the restaurant’s fogged-up bay window, Hannibal spared himself a smile, thinking of the conversation he had on his cell phone while sitting in the emergency room.

  “It’s your own fault for being in the office so late, Mrs. Abrogast,” he had said. “I’ve already tried her home phone and her BlackBerry. And I’ve got a feeling you know where she is.”

  “She left late, Mr. Jones. I believe she had an appointment.”

  “And that would be where?”

  “I don’t have her appointment book handy.”

  “Come on, Mrs. A. You keep it all in your head anyway.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you. Maybe if you hadn’t stood her up for lunch…”

  “Look, Mrs. A,” Hannibal said through clenched teeth. “I have had a really shitty day.”

  “Excuse me, young man?”

  “I haven’t eaten since breakfast, I have huge bruises on my throat from where a guy tried to strangle me, and I’m sitting here watching some guy from Pakistan stitch up a bullet hole in my right arm. The jacket’s ruined too. I just need to talk to her, all right?”

  There was a long, hard pause. He heard a deeply drawn breath. He was through. If she didn’t talk she wouldn’t, but he would not ask again.

  “She’s meeting him for a late supper,” Mrs. Abrogast said.

  “Terrific. Where?”

  And that was what brought him to Kinkead’s. He ignored the maitre d’s questions and glanced only briefly at the stairs. No, she wouldn’t want to go up to the formal dining area. She would prefer the more casual feel of the street-level café and bar. He brushed past the man telling him how long the wait was. He brushed past the congressional staffers and lobbyists who crowded the tables, talking shop and making deals. Their conversation, and the lady churning out predictable jazz on the piano, made it unlikely anyone would hear him approach. No one even looked up until he was standing beside the table.

  Reggie Johnson sat to his left. Cindy sat on his right. Both looked perplexed when they noticed him. Cindy opened her mouth to say something he was sure he didn’t want to hear, so he focused on the man.

  “Blow,” Hannibal said, nodding his head toward the door. “We need a little privacy.”

  “Hannibal, what the hell?” Cindy said. He had been right. He didn’t want to hear that.

  Reggie stared for a second, his brows knit together in confusion.

  “You got a hearing problem?” Hannibal said, just a little louder. “Hit the bricks, bud.”

  The two men locked eyes. Reggie stood, very slowly, to his full height and looked down into Hannibal’s face. Hannibal never flinched.

  “You don’t want none of this, son. Don’t make the mistake of deciding to fuck with me. Not now. Not today.”

  “Reggie,” Cindy said. “Please. It’s all right. We do need to…to talk. Let me call you, OK?”

  Was it the consoling tone in Cindy’s voice? Did he see something behind Hannibal’s dark lenses that he didn’t want to disturb
? Did he notice the bullet hole in the right sleeve of Hannibal’s mud-encrusted suit coat, just above the elbow? Did he guess the significance of the twin bruises on Hannibal’s throat? Whatever the reason, Reggie Johnson turned his face to Cindy, said “Another time,” and walked out of the restaurant. Hannibal let out a long breath and sat in the chair Reggie just emptied. He folded his hands on the table between him and his woman.

  “That was rude…”

  “Damn straight,” Cindy said.

  “… but I couldn’t be away from you another minute.” Then he pulled his glasses off and laid them on the table. Cindy looked closely at his eyes, then looked around the rest of him. He knew his hair was dirty and his jacket was caked with dried mud. He saw her eyes linger on the bullet hole and with the jacket pressed against his arm he knew she could see the white bandage beneath.

  Hannibal closed his eyes. He wanted to tell her how much he had missed her in the last week. He wanted to tell her why he had been away. He wanted to ask her what there really was between her and the man who had just left. He wanted to tell her how much he needed her. He wanted to believe she could see all of that in his eyes.

  Cindy leaned close, almost as if she was reading his fine print.

  “You hurting, baby?”

  He nodded. His mouth opened but nothing came out.

  “You need some healing,” she said. He nodded again. His lips curled in to his teeth. She took his hands and stood up.

  “Come on. Let’s go to your place so I can get started.”

  The End

  BOOK CLUB INVITATION – PLEASE READ

  Gentle Reader,

  Authors of Victorian novels used an odd literary device: speaking directly to the reader. You know, that point when they write, “Let us take advantage of this lull to whisper a few biographical details.”

  This "Gentle Reader" technique is rare in modern fiction. But since you just finished Russian Roulette I think it’s okay for me to address you directly to ask for an invitation to your next book club meeting.

  I know that many of you meet with other readers to discuss your favorite books. If you enjoyed this Hannibal Jones mystery I would love to discuss my book with your book club. If you are within the Washington, DC metro area I would be happy to attend a meeting of your book club so you can ask all the tough questions about my plot, the setting, the clues and the characters.

  If you are farther away, I can still attend your meeting virtually if you have a speakerphone available. We can even make it work as an online chat if you prefer. Either way I would be able to give live responses to your questions and comments.

  To invite me to join your book club at a meeting – and I hope you do - just send the information below in an email to dbcamacho@hotmail.com.

  1. Book club name

  2. Contact name

  3. Contact telephone number and e-mail address

  4. City and State

  5. Date and time of the meeting

  I look forward to meeting you!

  Austin

  Austin S. Camacho

  Austin S. Camacho is also a public affairs specialist for the Department of Defense. America's military people know him because for more than a decade his radio and television news reports were transmitted to them daily on the American Forces Network.

  He was born in New York City but grew up in Saratoga Springs, New York. He majored in psychology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. After three years, he enlisted in the Army as a weapons repairman but soon moved into a more appropriate field. The Army trained him to be a broadcast journalist. Disc jockey duties alternated with news writing, video camera and editing work, public affairs assignments and news anchor duties.

  During his years as a soldier, Camacho lived in Missouri, California, Maryland, Georgia and Belgium. He also spent a couple of intense weeks in Israel during Desert Storm, covering the action with the Patriot missile crews and capturing scud showers on video tape. While enlisted he finished his Bachelor's Degree at night and started his Master's, and rose to the rank of Sergeant First Class. In his spare time, he began writing adventure and mystery stories set in some of the exotic places he'd visited.

  After leaving the Army he continued to write military news for the Defense Department as a civilian. Today he handles media relations and writes articles for military newspapers and magazines. He also teaches writing classes at Anne Arundel Community College and is deeply involved with the writing culture. He is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, Washington Independent Writers, and the Virginia Writers Club.

  Camacho has settled in Springfield, Virginia with his wife Denise and Princess the wonder cat.

  Also in the Hannibal Jones Mystery Series

  The Troubleshooter

  A Washington attorney buys an apartment building in the heart of the city, but then finds the building occupied by drug dealers. Police are unable to empty the building for use by paying residents. No one seems willing or able to take on this challenge until the lawyer meets Hannibal Jones. He calls himself a troubleshooter, but he finds more trouble in Southeast Washington than he expected. Hannibal soon finds himself facing off against a local crime boss and his powerful, mob connected father.

  Blood and Bone

  An eighteen-year-old boy lies dying of leukemia. Kyle’s only hope is a bone marrow transplant, but no one in his family can supply it. His last chance lies in finding his father, who disappeared before Kyle was born. Kyle’s family has nowhere to turn until they learn of a troubleshooter named Hannibal Jones. His search for the missing man leads Hannibal down a twisting path of deception, conspiracy, greed and murder, but with each step the danger grows.

  Collateral Damage

  Bea Collins is certain her fiancee wouldn’t just leave without telling her. Troubleshooter Hannibal Jones is skeptical until the missing fiancee turns up dazed, confused and holding a knife over a dead body. To find this killer Hannibal will travel to Germany, Vegas and through Dean’s past, which includes the murder of Dean’s father, his first childhood crush and brings Hannibal face to face with Dean’s convicted mother.

  Damaged Goods

  The death of Anita Cooper’s father crushed her dreams of a better life. Then a hard man named Rod Mantooth stole both her innocence and her father's legacy, a secret that could have rebuilt her life. Anita was lost until she encountered another hard man - the professional troubleshooter named Hannibal Jones. Like a rolling mass of icy fury, Hannibal follows a trail of corrupted human debris leading to Rod Mantooth and a final showdown in the icy waters of the Atlantic.

  Also by Austin S. Camacho

  Stark and O’Brien Thriller series

  The Payback Assignment

  Morgan Stark, a black mercenary soldier, is stranded in the Central American nation of Belize after a raid goes wrong.

  Felicity O'Brian, an Irish jewel thief, is stranded in the jungle south of Mexico after doing a job for an American client.

  In the first novel of this series they learn they've been double-crossed by the same man: Adrian Seagrave, a ruthless businessman maintaining his respectability by having others do his dirty work.

  Morgan and Felicity become friends and partners while following their common enemy's trail. They become even closer when they find they share a peculiar psychic link, allowing them to sense danger approaching themselves, or each other.

  But their extrasensory abilities and fighting skills are tested to their limits against Seagrave's soldiers-for-hire and Monk, his giant simian bodyguard. A series of battles from California to the New York lead to a final confrontation with Seagrave's army of hired killers in a skyscraper engulfed by flames.

  The Orion Assignment

  Retired jewel thief Felicity O'Brien travels to her native Ireland to defend her uncle's Catholic parish. With her is her partner, Morgan Stark, a retired mercenary soldier. The job looks easy until they meet Ian O'Ryan, an IRA terrorist who believes he
is the reincarnation of Orion the ancient hunter. He is determined to keep the violence alive in Ireland and to spread it throughout the island.

  To avoid bullets, bombs and beatings, Morgan and Felicity rely on a special gift, a psychic link that alerts them to danger. But against O'Ryan they face danger from an entire army of enemies.

  Trying to separate patriotic mercenaries from heartless terrorists leads them to a sniper mission on the rocky Irish coast, a deadly high speed motorcycle race in Belgium, and a final confrontation on an island off the coast of France where Morgan could die by slow torture if Felicity doesn't find him in time.