A Wild Justice

by Craig Thomas

  He glanced around him. A shot shattered the car’s windscreen.

  Glass and snow flew. The girl waved to him from a nearby shop doorway, her gloved hand raised beside a heavy grille. He waved back, gun raised, gesturing her to begin retreating down the block. She shook her head, gesturing towards the other side of the street. She’d seen where the shots originated.

  He gestured to her, crouched only a matter of yards away, turning his wrist as if turning a key. She pointed at the car. He signalled understanding with a raised thumb, then he heard shouting.

  The flames from the club belched through the shattered windows and the open door, to be lashed and sculpted by the storm. Panshin was standing in the light of the nearest street lamp, waving frantically, nis figure bulky, recognisable.

  Lock opened the passenger door of the car and slid into the seat. He moved awkwardly over the brake and gear lever, roughly brushing the seat as he shuffled himself into a half-lying position behind the wheel. Panshin was still on the pavement, arms waving, dinner jacket whitened with snow. He raised himself in the driving seat, feeling for the ignition. You’ll have to be better than most Russian cars, he thought. A lot better.

  He turned the key, hearing two shots in the moment before the engine caught. He watched Panshin’s body slowly, heavily, collapse into the snow and become half-buried, knowing that he had witnessed an execution. They’d known who it was, and he’d died because they were house-cleaning. He thrust the gear lever into reverse and let out the clutch. The car squealed and swung, lurching backwards like a drunk.

  Two shots careened off the snow-covered bonnet. The storm half-blinded him through the shattered windscreen. He sensed the prick of glass in his buttocks and thighs from the partly littered driving seat. Shots against the door, impacting, distorting metal and padding. The car swerved, slid sideways, skidded. He was sweating feverishly, his hands slippery inside his gloves. The window behind him shattered.

  The car would afford protection for only seconds now. It bucked as he accelerated in reverse, the rear wheels spinning wildly against a huge ridge of rutted ice. He waved frantically at Marfa, a white blob of a face — waving her to keep pace with the car but not to get in. Yelling:

  ‘Keep behind the car, behind the car!’

  He thrust the gear lever into second and accelerated forward, braked and then threw the car again into reverse. Once more, it bucked against the obstacle but wouldn’t surmount it. A rear window shattered behind his head and he heard the ominous, dead pluck of bullets into the upholstery.

  A rotund little bear jiggled on a short length of elastic in the rear window, its arms wide in hopeless surrender. He thrust the car forward again, the tyres squealing, then accelerated once more in reverse. Maria’s face, as she crouched behind the car’s moving shield, was white and astonished, as if she feared he was trying to expose her to the unseen marksmen. The car bucked like a horse kicking out with its back legs and then mounted the ridge in the road and skidded away like an escaping animal because his foot was still jammed down on the accelerator.

  It careered across K Street towards the buildings that housed the snipers.

  Marfa was left stranded and exposed. Bullets struck the car.

  Panshin’s body, suddenly a hundred yards away, was slowly being covered with snow.

  He stopped the car in a skid, then accelerated back across K Street towards Marfa. As the car mounted the pavement only feet from her, he saw her gesturing towards a dark, narrow alleyway beside a bar where neon struggled. Cowboys’ Bar. Seeing her gestures, he realised they had a better chance on foot.

  The car shunted against the grille across the windows and came to a halt. He switched off the engine, opened the passenger door and scrambled out onto all fours, rising like a sprinter to dash into the shelter of the alley. He slid into a tangled heap with Marfa as he collided with the girl.

  Bakunin stood over the body of Valery Panshin, which the snow was inexorably and tidily masking, and considered the Tightness of the whim that had ordered the club owner’s demise. The snow melted on Bakunin’s cheek and settled on the epaulettes of his uniform greatcoat and on the crown and brim of his cap.

  It had been correct, sensible, inspirational even. Turgenev had kept him in ignorance regarding the American, Lock, and the extent of his knowledge and influence. His danger was unimportant, despite his temporary escape from the marksmen.

  Already, his troops were flooding that alleyway and the whole area around the burning club in pursuit of Vorontsyev and Lock and their feeble entourage. Bakunin could now feel the heat from the fire welcomely on his face. No, his position of massive ignorance, deliberately imposed by Turgenev, was intolerable.

  It could have exposed him. Panshin — the worthless, cretinous, greedy Panshin — might have already told, confessed. However, in the event that he had not, he had been put beyond any ability to do so. Opportunity, means, motive — Panshin was bereft of all three with two neat holes in his forehead.

  Whatever Panshin knew was imprisoned in that broken vessel that had leaked a small amount of blood and brain tissue into the snow. He stirred the body with his foot. Then he looked up.

  ‘Find them quickly,’ he snapped, ‘and finish them. Reinforce the roadblocks — and warn whoever’s in command at the airport.

  Do it without publicity, on a secure channel. You understand?’

  The lieutenant, his features frozen by cold and obedience, nodded. ‘Good. He may have let something slip, but I imagine they’re interested in nothing greater than their own skins. However, it doesn’t do to be sloppy, Lieutenant.’

  Turning away from the junior officer and the body, he strode through the snow towards his staff car.

  ‘Alexei, for God’s sake, get into the boot of the car!’

  Dmitri Gorov’s patience was as exhausted as his heavy frame.

  Vorontsyev stood in the driving snow, staring into the well of the old car’s boot, unmoving and silent. Lubin was absent, hiding the BMW amid the detritus of a building site which wouldn’t see the resumption of activity until the blizzard ended. He and Vorontsyev were in a narrow slit of a street, poorly lit, between blocks of workers’ flats. Three streets from the flat in which the drug courier, Hussain, had been murdered by an explosive hidden in a paraffin heater.

  ‘Not yet,’ Vorontsyev replied. ‘Dmitri — V he burst out, turning to Gorov. ‘There has to be something else we can do. The airport will be guarded.’

  ‘And Turgenev himself will be there,’ Dmitri offered seductively, immediately whirling round at the sound of someone approaching. Lubin appeared, hands raised in mock surrender, then passed out of the light of the lamp into shadow.

  That’s a guess, Dmitri, nothing more. Is the car well hidden, youngster?’

  Lubin grinned and nodded, his teeth chattering with cold, his boots crusted with dirty snow.

  ‘It’s a good guess, Alexei. It’s his plane they’ll be using, and only his muscle will get it airborne in this blizzard, weather window or no weather window. He’Jl need the runway cleared, the plane de-iced, the pilots briefed … I think he’ll be there, if only to make sure we aren’t!’

  ‘OK, OK — it doesn’t matter anyway, does it? We don’t have any alternative. I’ll get in — in a moment.’ He smiled. His ribs ached slightly less now that his breathing was level, unexcited.

  The escape had been quite straightforward, given the circum

  308 stances. The big BMW had got them out of the trap of the alley in a rush and they’d skirted the one car that had attempted to block the exit before it could get into position. The pursuit had been organised, but slow to react. Arrogance, overconfidence.

  They’d slipped into the canyons of the town’s poorest quarter and into the storm before they could be effectively tailed.

  Now, they had to bluff their way through the roadblocks and drive into what amounted to a trap already set. Dmitri’s theory concerning TurgeneV was probably rubbish, but it comforted, even inspired him, so
let that be. For himself…? One passenger intercepted while boarding would be enough, one nuclear physicist to wave like a flag. The security people would swamp this place, the UN would have apoplexy, Yeltsin would destroy Turgenev to maintain his own credibility and clean hands towards the West … they needed just one, or the evidence of one.

  ‘Dmitri, if all else … doesn’t work out, buy a camera and some film in the airport shop, will you?’ He looked intently at Gorov, who understood and nodded.

  ‘We’ll get something out of this, Alexei — something.’

  ‘Of course. Right, then — let’s get moving. Lubin, you say you can hotwire this heap — you can drive it, too. And, Lubin, you did well, back there.’

  ‘Sir!’

  God, the enthusiasm of youth. All he had ever wished was to be saved from the fervour, as if he had menopausally passed the age where he could be impregnated with a cause, a sense of right. Now, it was just as Lensky the pathologist had predicted for him — he had become a middle-aged idealist… But he was mortal, vulnerable, and knew as much only too well. His arm, dulled by painkillers, confirmed that much! He was sensible about life, knew that it ended quickly enough without taking risks. Now, he was doing just that. He shrugged.

  ‘What’s wrong, Alexei?’

  ‘Someone just walked over my grave,’ he replied sombrely.

  ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he added brusquely. ‘You two help me in

  — I can’t do it for myself.’

  It was a black Cadillac, hardly even a half-stretch limo. So unexpectedly American that it amused him, despite his hunger and exhaustion. It was sitting on the snowy drive of a large dacha which appeared totally out of place. It was surrounded by high-rise blocks of flats encroaching on the poorly lit outskirts of the old town. A narrow street of six-storey blocks was the umbilical that connected this wooden house with its older, shabbier country cousins, which trailed out towards the tundra like uncertain spectators of vastness.

  ‘Whose car is it?’ he asked.

  They crouched in the shelter of a builder’s skip, one of as many as a dozen scattered like dice in the space between the blocks of flats which rose like dark draped curtains behind the storm. The few lights showing at five-thirty in the morning were like rents in their material rather than signs of habitation.

  Marfa whispered hoarsely: ‘He used to consider himself a gangster, a biznizman — in the early days. Two telephones in the house and a pink bathroom suite and he was the tsarevich.’ She snorted. ‘He was bought or frightened out of business, but they let him keep the car and gave him the money to build this place.

  He was a pimp, about Teplov’s level, but in those days the girls were still on the streets. He used to have a coupJe of ramshackle caravans parked around here which served as the accommodation.’

  She sniffed. ‘He wasn’t a talented crook.’

  ‘Not like Pete Turgenev, the prince of tides, uh?’ She looked blankly at him. ‘Not as smart as Turgenev,’ he explained.

  ‘No, not that smart.’

  ‘OK, I can get that car to start — it looks just about good enough for a gas company executive. We’ll take it. No deposit, nothing to pay for six months, right?’ Again, she seemed nonplussed.

  ‘Forget it. Let’s get the car. Does he have a dog, this guy?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just an old woman to look after him. His wife died of AIDS — she was his first girl. Nothing but the usual transmissible diseases for years, then—’

  ‘Don’t tell me, the Americans arrived and brought their diseases with them!’ Lock snapped. ‘Let’s get the car.’

  As they came out from behind the skip, the wind ripped at them, growling with renewed threat. There seemed not the slightest chance that there would be a break in the weather.

  Which suited, anyway. He wanted the airport closed in all day.

  He leaned against the force of the wind, stepping high through the snow like a child exaggerating the difficult new art of walking.

  Maria huddled beside him, using him as shelter without any suggestion of contact or companionship.

  The drive sloped slightly. The Cadillac, mapped like a cow by its colour and the blowing snow, stood in front of closed garage doors. Lock sidled furtively beside the driver’s door and removed a short length of lead pipe from his overcoat pocket. The things you can pick up off the sidewalk … He fitted it over the old fashioned door handle and jerked it violently downwards. The lock broke and he tugged the door open.

  The car alarm bellowed at him

  ‘Carefully now,’ Dmitri warned. The GRU vehicle’s headlights blared through the snow, picking them out moving along the airport road at a snail’s pace. ‘Just pull over and wait.’

  The road had been cleared the previous evening and would be cleared again, he presumed, at first light. At six in the morning, it was clogged with the night’s fall and drifts, a tumbled landscape in miniature. Beside him, he could hear Lubin breathing hoarsely, quickly.

  ‘Calm down, lad, calm down.’ Then, almost mischievously, and to release his own tension, he added: ‘And get ready to run if they don’t like the look of us.’ He was chillingly aware of Vorontsyev in the boot.

  The UAZ jeep drew alongside them, its canvas hood white under the weight of snow, its wipers flicking like drowning arms.

  A face inspected them with minimal curiosity from behind a streaked driver’s window. It was, for a moment, apparent that the jeep would pass on down the road towards Novyy Urengoy.

  Then it stopped and Dmitri heard its brake being dragged on.

  His heart thudded in his chest.

  ‘We’re maintenance men at the airport — really security, right?’ he reminded Lubin.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ the young man replied with quick nerves.

  Dmitri wound down the window of the old car. A decayed Mercedes now only fit for the scrapheap; which meant the Turks and Pakistanis in Novyy Urengoy. He hoped it hadn’t yet been reported stolen. On the other hand, Police HQ wouldn’t give a toss if the caller had an Asian accent.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked the frost-featured soldier who leaned down to the half-open window. There was no deference in his voice.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘Security. We’re checking for — criminals,’ he concluded, as if remembering an item of rote learning that meant nothing.

  ‘Criminals, eh? Our business, too, as a matter of fact. Out at the airport.’ He flipped open his wallet, displaying a piece of plastic to which was attached his photograph. Something he’d had for years, a temporary posting out to the airport in the early days of heroin smuggling, when the most daring they had been was to disguise themselves as maintenance people. ‘OK?’ he asked. ‘We’ll be late clocking on if we hang about here.’

  The soldier indicated that he wished to see the ID once more.

  A corporal’s stripes on his greatcoat. His word would be enough for any officer in the jeep or nearby. Come on, come on —

  Dmitri gestured as if to close the wallet again, and the corporal nodded. The snow was melting between his collar and his cap as he bent to the window and he resented his discomfort.

  ‘OK,’ he grumbled. ‘I wonder you buggers didn’t stay in bed on a day like this!’

  ‘Double shift — lots of overtime,’ Dmitri replied, sensing Lubin’s tension mount after a momentary sense of relief.

  ‘Thanks, mate. Good luck.’

  Lubin drew slowly, very slowly, away from the UAZ. It diminished in the mirror, swallowed by the storm as the corporal was still engaged in climbing back into the rear of the vehicle.

  His breathing clouded the windscreen, despite the puffing of the heater, and Dmitri leaned across to wipe it clear. Snow rushed into the headlights as if the blizzard had gathered new strength.

  ‘We’re through, boy — we’re through!’ He raised his voice and turned in his seat. ‘We’re OK, Alexei — on our way!’

  * * *

  The last block of flats had disappeared into th
e snowstorm like a drifting liner, the few scattered dachas looked like boxes abandoned in the snow. And immediately there was the roadblock; two long-necked lights on parked dollies, the red and white pole, even the glow from some kind of trailer vehicle that served for accommodation. It was disconcerting, appearing as if it had been in place for some considerable time and had well-rehearsed routines. Marfa was catlike in her display of nerves in the driving seat.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and her whole frame flinched at the contact. ‘Take it easy,’ he murmured, excluding all emotion from his voice.

  They’d had the old Cadillac off the snowbound drive and down onto the street before a light had come on in the old biznizman’s dacha. No other lights, no flicking of curtains; people chose not to know. He’d gotten the bonnet open and found the alarm circuit. Ripped it out, silencing the noise. The door of the wooden bungalow was cautiously, fearfully opening as Marfa accelerated away. Yet somehow the noise, the hurry, had unsettled her more than the action on K Street, when she might have been killed so easily. Perhaps she’d just run out of resistance?

  Lock didn’t know—

  didn’t have time to care right now, he reminded himself.

  A door in the side of the trailer vehicle, army drab showing where the snow had melted on its flanks, opened and light spilt out, gleaming through the snow. The girl shivered and Lock made as if to grip her shoulder once more, then resisted the impulse. His own nerves might be betrayed through his fingers.

  Two guards, both armed with folded-butt assault rifles. Reluctant in the snow, but obedient. A corporal and a private by the flashes on their greatcoats.

  Lock had damaged the door where he had broken in, denting it purposely to give the appearance of an impact by another car.

  Marfa, masquerading as his Russian driver, wound down the window as the corporal leaned close to it.

  ‘Papers? What are you doing out here, this time of the morning?’

  The private yawned, but his eyes never moved from the girl the car, the shadowy passenger behind her. ‘Well?’