Tainted Blood is published by White Cat Publications, LLC.
Copyright © 2011 Ferrel D. Moore
Cover art copyright © 2011 Sergey Kalinin
Rear cover art copyright © 2011 James and Jane Baxter
Cover design copyright © 2011 Melanie Hooyenga
Interior design copyright © 2011 Natasha Fondren
Edited by Charles P. Zaglanis
All characters within this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 978-0-9846920-1-9
Published in January 2012
Published by White Cat Publications, LLC.
33080 Industrial Road, Suite 101
Livonia, MI 48150
www.whitecatpublications.com
Acknowledgments
Tainted Blood could not have been written without the love and support of my family and friends or the tireless efforts of my editor, Charles P. Zaglanis.
It is dedicated to Ninja Grandmaster Robert Law and Michel Farivar, M.D. The Grandmaster taught me to think for myself and to act on what I learned. Michel Farivar, M.D., who will one day take on the mantle of Grandmaster Law’s ancient art, showed me the grace and respect to allow me to come to grip with the struggles of my life on my own terms. I have found no better friends or teachers than they in my life.
Chapter One
Sveta made a mistake when she signed on with Hauck. Now she just had to live through whatever was coming and get out alive.
Evgeny was posted with a sniper rifle and a spotter somewhere in the vicinity to cover the extraction. They never knew where Hauck positioned him on any given mission. He was always watching over them, as invisible as Hauck himself. Motionless in the cold, scanning with a Trijicon ACOG scope while Yuri’s electronic spotters fed him information.
Yuri was their eyes and ears. He was posted two blocks off Fort Street in a white delivery van jammed full of electronics; his face would be moving from monitor to monitor like a hunter scanning the woods. Bodin, Yuri’s bodyguard, squatted on a steel bench near the van’s double back doors, clutching his SIG 550 assault rifle, his eyes concentrated on what lay outside the vehicle. Yuri and his computers were the heart of the operation; both were too valuable to leave unguarded. Sveta knew that in the monitor’s pale radiance his eyes would gleam like liquid mercury. Tonight, their silvery brightness would shine with images of burned out vacant houses in Detroit that looked like Warsaw after the bombings.
“What do you see?” asked Hauck.
His voice in her electronic ear bud was as clear as if he were standing next to her.
“Hooker giving head in the doorway where that Mexican restaurant was,” said Yuri. “Couple of bags blowing down the sidewalk.”
“Any traffic?”
Sveta winced at Hauck’s tone, and pressed closer against the back wall of a garage one block away from the target house. Waiting for Crue and Chenko to show up. Trying to steady her nerves. Calming breaths weren’t cutting it. She had a bad feeling about tonight. The air was cold and moist and smelled faintly like a smoker’s car; the peculiar odor made her impatient. Something nagging at her thoughts. She wondered what was taking Crue and his repulsive partner so long.
According to their best information, Drogol was the only person living in the four block area of abandoned houses. Most people seemed to avoid the area subconsciously. Earlier recons failed to turn up even a homeless person. Evgeny reported back to Hauck that the only living creatures he could find moving among the broken glass and crumbled bricks were the “fucking rats.”
Hauck never took things for granted. He’d lost Drogol once many years ago, he’d told them, and wasn’t going to let him get away again. One last recon before they moved in. Sveta was glad it was Crue leading the sweep. She trusted him. He was one of the team. Slabs of muscle assembled into a six foot four frame. Twin Makarov PM pistols always with him. Three time winner of the IPA Kirov shooting championship. Someone who had proved himself trustworthy under fire.
Chenko, however, was another matter. A thin faced Muscovite with corrosive breath brought in by Hauck to take the old man known as Drogol back to Russia after they captured him. Why Chenko was chosen to do this, no one questioned. That was one of the things that bothered her. He reeked of Russian Mafia or Russian Police. Maybe both. Sveta wanted to ask Hauck straight out who Chenko really worked for, but she knew better.
Hauck gave instructions, not answers.
All she did know, if they were told the truth, was that thirty years ago, Drogol killed fourteen men and wounded Hauck while escaping from a high security prison outside of Moscow. Hauck was the KGB agent in charge of Drogol’s case file. He was held responsible. A price was placed on the spymaster’s head and he’d been on the run ever since. When they captured Drogol tonight and turned him over to Chenko, that price would finally be eliminated. He could retire without looking over his shoulder. He could come in from the cold.
That was the plan, anyway. That was what he’d told them and why he was paying them. What worried Sveta was what he hadn’t told them.
“All clear,” Crue’s voice came through her headset.
Overhead, restless clouds pushed and growled at each other as Sveta looked up and down the alley, her irritation building. If Crue didn’t hurry up and finish, they’d be working in the rain.
Sveta saw Crue and Chenko emerge from the shadows on the opposite side of the alley, their bodies like luminescent ghosts in her night vision goggles. Crue’s green-white form towered over Chenko.
“Let’s move,” said Sveta.
Unease gripped her stomach as she stalked silently forward, like she’d reached the top of a dangerous roller coaster and was about to plunge over the downward side. Chenko couldn’t be trusted; she’d known that as soon as she met him. He wasn’t one of them. He dressed like a convict on parole and Sveta felt his eyes on her even when her back was to him.
And there were the mercury filled bullets. Why were they using them and why did Hauck shut down anyone who questioned their use? Who was this old man they were hunting and why was Hauck insisting they use mercury bullets on him if he gave them trouble? He was, according to Hauck, fifty years old when he escaped Ryazan. He would be nearly eighty now. Why were they going after an eighty year old man with mercury bullets?
Something was very, very wrong. The others might not sense it because they’d been with Hauck a long time. She was the new hire, called in at the last minute when he decided he was one short for this mission after a car crash took out one of his regulars. With the kind of money he paid, she didn’t ask the questions she should have. She hadn’t left the GRU on the best of terms and needed the cover Hauck could provide. If only she didn’t have the sense that Hauck was lying to them.
Her father, a general in Soviet Army intelligence, once warned her that at least once in their career every operative had to choose between loyalty and life. “If your organization has betrayed you,” he told her, “choose life.”
They moved slowly, keeping to the edges of the alley. Sveta to one side, Crue and Chenko on the other. Sveta pulled her Stechkin APS free from its holster.
The wind suddenly whipped down the alley like a kid running from cops, ducking in and out of shadows and jumping fences. Yuri gave the team the forecasted weather details down to the minute before they left, including the good news of a thick cloud cover to hide their activities. Sveta’s gaze swept the alley before them. Overhead, the sky looked as if it’d been painted over like the windows of a Moscow interrogation room.
“Twenty feet from the backyard,” Sveta reported.
“Keep it low, keep it soft,” Hauck’s seductive voice whispered in her earphone. “No more talking.”
Prick, Sveta thought.
She’d never seen his face. Humphrey Bogart and Hugh Jackman were her current fantasy favorites. But Hauck stayed out of sight, always in the background. Invisible. Brilliant. Handsome and with a sense of élan about him. A man of wealth and discernment. Or, a fat, sweaty old spy who smoked cigarettes one after the other and wore cheap aftershave. Sveta preferred the former but feared the latter. She’d never met a good-looking spy.
What he was, though, was a persuasive digital phantom who ordered them about like a chessmaster pushing pawns.
*****
Crue sprayed the hinges of the back gate. The chemical glowed like radioactive waste in the night vision goggles. After a few seconds, he gently pushed it open and Sveta slid in. Crue grinned at her for good luck.
Trees and bushes choked the yard. The house, one light on in a wide second floor window, was quiet. It was three a.m. and thin ethereal puffs of fog floated in and out of the tree branches. Ground fog hovered over the yard. Sveta knew that wherever he was, Evgeny was not happy. Fog was not a sniper’s best friend.
Before moving forward, Sveta considered the lighted double window.
Drogol probably fell asleep reading in bed, she thought.
The night air was cold even for late October, and Sveta told herself that was why she felt the back of her neck prickle. Three operatives against an eighty year old man. There was no reason to be afraid.
But her intuition still told her this was a much more dangerous mission than she’d been led to believe.
They were halfway across the yard when Sveta held up her hand for Crue and Chenko to stop. The upstairs light was now off. She pointed at it with her left hand. Crue nodded.
Sveta motioned them to fan out.
Before they could obey her orders, glass exploded high overhead. Sveta looked up to see something massive hurtle from the second story window frame as a blood-freezing howl shook the night. She jumped to her right, hit the ground and rolled back to her feet as something crashed through the bushes and slammed into the ground. A pulsating green-white glow rose from within the shrubbery in front of her. Eight—maybe ten feet tall—with eyes white as LED’s. Sveta felt her chest constrict. What she was seeing was not possible.
From her left she heard a short burst of shots and knew without turning it was Crue letting loose. Sveta felt cold terror flood through her as she raised her own pistol to fire. But the thing moved so quickly all she saw was a blur of angry light across her night vision goggles.
“What the hell is that?” Yuri shouted in her ear.
“Bodin, move in,” said Hauck. “Now. They need backup.”
Sveta reacquired the target but saw it lift a body up between the two of them, blocking her shot. Chenko screamed and tried to break free as Crue fired off another burst. The creature snapped its jaws and bit through Chenko’s neck. Sveta fired straight at the beast’s head.
“Evgeny,” she heard Hauck say, “have you got a target?”
“No.”
“Why not?” demanded Hauck.
“Too bright, too big. Can’t tell it from them.”
“It’s fucking huge,” Yuri yelled into her ear.
“Move, Bodin,” snapped Hauck.
Crue ran toward it, not away. His image was a man-sized blur firing as he walked straight at the thing.
Sveta saw the shape of its head — like a giant demon wolf. She shot it three times in the throat. The beast slapped one hand over its windpipe and roared like a jet engine. Three bullets in the throat, and it was still standing. It swung its head between her and Crue. She fired again to distract it from Crue, but it went for him anyway.
“Get back,” Hauck shouted.
Too late.
A blur of white claws and Sveta saw Crue’s’ ripped neck spray blood like green white rain into the night. Six more bullets to the back of its head while it shredded Crue, ripping off his bulletproof vest and ammo belts; biting off one arm.
Sveta knew it was time to get out. She ran toward the gate but heard the beast ripping up the ground behind her, smashing through trees and bushes like they weren’t there. She veered left through a tangle of trees, ejecting one clip and slamming another in place as she bobbed and weaved past low-hanging branches. Her heart pounded with each step. She didn’t look back, but she could feel the thing behind her, closing fast.
It shrieked and she heard it hit the ground.
Evgeny to the rescue. Somewhere on a rooftop his scope found the monster.
She ran to a tall plank fence and a found a spot where the boards were loose. She pivoted to one side and broke them in half with a kick, then spun back, pistol extended. The thing was on its feet again and looking right at her.
Suddenly Bodin appeared like a ghost behind the beast, firing round after round. Sveta tried to tell him to run, but nothing could be heard over the sounds of the enraged creature. She fired, but it was already on Bodin. His screams were the last thing she heard as she squeezed through the hole in the fence.
Chapter Two
Sveta crouched low as she ran through the bushes at the back of the house. Couldn’t hear anything behind her. She didn’t know where Evgeny or the others were and she didn’t care. Crue, Chenko and Bodin were dead. Yuri and Hauck were shouting into her ear buds. She ripped them free and tossed them into the dark.
Got to keep moving. Her intuition was right and she had to act now. She had to make a clean break.
Hauck must have known about the beast. He sent them right into a deathtrap. To survive, she needed to focus on staying alive. Life over loyalty.
She ran through the adjacent yards as fast as she could. The alley was dark and she spun left without so much as glancing either way. She and Crue took out all of the alley pole lights with air guns the night before. Evgeny had night vision, but she thought he would be concentrating on the yards, thinking she would avoid the alley. As soon as they found out she’d deserted the team, she would be a legitimate target. If they could catch her.
Sveta moved quietly as she could, but concentrated on running fast and hard while the situation was confused. With no good options to choose from, she picked direction and kept going. One course and keep to it until she could boost a car and escape.
Drogol was Hauck’s primary target, she thought. She was now a secondary objective and not worth the trouble if they could take the old man instead. But that was his problem. She had to focus on survival. Besides, if she managed to escape, they would come for her later. No one left Hauck and stayed alive for long, but Sveta would be the exception to that rule.
She adjusted her night vision goggles before she got to a fence and quickly scanned for a dog. Nothing. Up and over the twisted chain link and moving across the yard swinging her head from side to side. She crouched low and listened.
Still nothing. She relaxed, turned around and was surprised to see a young woman standing near the edge of the yard looking straight at her. In Sveta’s night vision goggles, the woman’s face was pale green.
“Hurry,” whispered the young woman, urgently motioning toward Sveta with her hands. “Follow me. There is no time.”
Sveta raised the Stechkin APS again and pointed it straight at her.
“Quickly,” said the young woman. “Put away the gun. I have a car. Drogol sent me to help you. We’ve got to get moving or we’ll both be dead.”
The choice was whether or not to shoot her. One shot to take her down and then keep moving. The right move or not? Whose side was this girl really on?
It was a gut call. She would sort it out later. Sveta quit thinking and followed, wondering instead who she feared most—Evgeny or the wolf or the FSB? Hauck. She feared Hauck most of all.
“Where’s your car?” she asked.
Without turning, the girl whispered back, “Two blocks do
wn toward Fort Street. But there’s a streetlight and we’ll have to walk in the open for a short way.”
“No. You bring the car,” said Sveta. “Then pull into this driveway like you’re changing directions. Wait. Unscrew the overhead dome light first. Then open the door as soon as you stop in the driveway. I’ll get in, and then we can take off. I’ll stay low. With any luck, one of them won’t shoot you.”
The girl stared back at her, thick hair tossing about in a sudden gust of wind. Dressed in a long dark coat with wide eyes pale bright in the night vision. Then she nodded, turned and began walking away. Her footsteps clicked like a timer.
Sveta glanced around into the back of the yard, looking for movement, for the form of someone or something. Nothing. Nothing but a backyard. A scream cut the night a short distance away followed by a single shot. Then silence. Not even a siren. She moved a few steps forward and pressed herself against the side of the house in case a light came on, but none did. In Detroit, as in so many ruined cities she had been in, people stayed inside and pretended they didn’t hear.
The Stechkin felt heavy in her hand.
Headlights suddenly lit the street. Sveta took in a sharp breath of cold air as she ducked behind the porch, turned off her night vision, flipped the goggles up and raised her weapon. Suddenly the car pulled into the driveway, came to a quick stop and the woman driving it flicked the lights off but left the engine running.
“Hurry,” she urged. “Get in the car. He can no longer control the beast.”
Sveta hesitated only a second. It was suicide to stay. She took another deep breath, then crouched and raced to the car. The passenger side door flew open and after a quick glance inside to see that the young woman alone, she got in.
“Go,” she said, keeping the Stechkin raised and scanning the dark yards to either side.
The girl backed out of the driveway, threw the car into drive and hit the accelerator.
“Slow down,” ordered Sveta.
But parked just ahead no more than a block away, she saw Yuri’s white van. Before she could react something large and black ran across the street and smashed head on into it. The van rocked up and over and crashed onto its side. She saw the windshield split and sections of shattered glass spill onto the pavement.
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