Tainted Blood

by Ferrel D. Moore

  Sasha paid no attention to either man. His desire for answers was like a fire burning him up from the inside. When Dr. Pazyryk interrupted his mother’s answers by arranging a tray table on the bed railing and then swinging it around in front of her, Sasha felt like pushing him out of the way.

  “How did the beast get into the prison? That, at least, is simple. We let it in ourselves. Where it came from originally is difficult to say, although Drogol himself told me its origins. I just did not believe him. I was too young and stupid.”

  “Then tell me this—what was it?”

  The first smile that Sasha could remember seeing in many years crossed his mother’s face. Her teeth were yellow with nicotine stain, and she showed iron from years of Soviet dentistry, but still she smiled.

  “It is not exactly for certain what that thing is. All I know is that it is still out there, and I want it captured. But Drogol is the key to everything, Sasha, and we must take hold of him again.”

  “But what about that creature?”

  “What is important, what is the single most important thing, is that we draw Drogol out of his lair. The creature cannot be avoided.”

  “I don’t understand. How will we accomplish this? He is in Detroit, not Moscow. We cannot burn the streets of Detroit to get at him.”

  “Who would notice? But no, I have a better plan. And remember, I have captured him once already when others failed.”

  Sasha relaxed a little. The thing on the screen had been terrifying, but his mother was right, she had taken him once before and she could figure out how to do it again.

  “And what is your plan?”

  His fear was fading. They were, after all, Red Mafiya, and it, whatever it was, was only a beast.

  “We need bait. Something that Drogol and the beast want so badly that they cannot resist our trap.”

  “But what can we use as bait, Mother? That was no ordinary animal.”

  Ivan stepped over to him, but he tried to waive the man away.

  “No, Ivan. I cannot drink now.”

  His mother nodded as though he had made a good choice, but Ivan did not leave. Sasha looked up in annoyance and saw the man smiling for the first time since he had known him, and then Ivan the Terrible stuck the two metal probes of a stun gun against the skin of his neck.

  His back arched violently and he began to spasm uncontrollably. Ivan held him down in the chair as he shuddered into a final collapse. His eyes stayed open as lay there, aware but confused, conscious but unable to speak. Terror and chaos overpowered his thoughts. It was difficult to tell how long he lay there, staring up at Ivan’s impassive face. Eventually, the starets stepped away. Sasha could not feel his arms or legs.

  “Move his chair over toward my bed so that I can see him,” he heard his mother say.

  “Anna, let me look at him first,” said Dr. Pazyryk.

  “Fah” she said, “Bring him to me.”

  Sasha had never been so terrified in his life. His mind did not seem able to communicate with his body. Tremors raged through his muscles like electrical storms. Nausea seized him as he saw Ivan’s face again and was lifted up to see his mother, who propped herself up on her elbows again. Her visage was grim. Sasha felt sick. The sudden smell of his own urine made him sicker still.

  “You asked what I would use as bait. You will be my bait. You who act so devoted and loyal. You who are so respectful. You. Yes, you will be my bait. You who conspire with my lieutenants. Did you really think I didn’t know? I have done all that you have done long before you were born. Like all children, you fantasize that your parents do not know your thoughts. If you studied chess, you would not make such mistakes.

  “How do you think the beast got in, you wonder? More importantly, Sasha, how did it get out? You do not study chess so you do not think analytically. Think. Think, boy, for what else can you do now that your body will not obey you?

  “Ahh, so now you see? I betrayed Hauck. I betrayed the Directorate and I betrayed my country. I fell in love, Sasha. Yes, with Drogol. And yes, I had been sleeping with Hauck. He was a handsome, brilliant young man. Much younger than I, but I was permitted because of my position. But Drogol had power. Power over anyone who met him. He was the most sexual, charismatic man I have ever come into contact with, and I would have done anything for him.

  “Can you believe that I fell in love with him right in his own cell? That we first had sex against the stone walls of his prison?

  “I became his willing tool. I smuggled him keys and codes and told him everything about the layout of the prison. I became a woman I never dreamed I would be, a woman at the mercy of a man I did not know but needed more than anything in life. Are those tears leaking from your eyes, Sasha? Don’t worry; I will have him back again. You will be the bait that returns him to me, to us. He and his beast will not be able to resist coming to save you.

  “Yes, Son, that beast, that thing as you called it—it is your father.”

  Tears continued to flow from Sasha’s eyes.

  “Ivan,” said his mother. “I’m done with him; we understand each other now. Take him to the storage compartment and lock him in the cage. We don’t know if he will change as we grow closer to his father.”

  *****

  Dr. Pazyryk adjusted Anna’s Kazakova’s intravenous stand while Ivan took Sasha to the storage compartment to lock him away. The ride was smooth, with a few inconsequential bouts of turbulence, but the doctor was taking no chances. They were on the approach now to Detroit. He knew what would become of him if anything happened to Anna.

  The old woman lay sound asleep on her bed, blanket pulled up to her chin, and pillow fluffed beneath her pallid skin and thin hair. An almost peaceful smile graced her lined face as she slept. He checked the oxygen flow again, considered for less than a second the idea of strangling her in her sleep, and then left the room to pour himself yet another drink.

  How did he end up in this situation?

  One simple mistake all those years ago. Showing up drunk for surgery on an important party member. A slip of the scalpel. One simple slip. Maybe two. An incompetent nursing staff. But he was the surgeon. He was responsible. He was going to be sent to prison for the rest of his life. Or to the Gulag. Or he would be shot and possibly a combination of all three.

  There were witnesses. Too many. And a very angry and powerful family. He had considered suicide. It was inconceivable that he, an educated, trained surgeon could survive in a work camp. But Anna Kazakova had sent someone to fix the situation. She had sent Ivan to offer him a position as her private physician and protection from the authorities. Anna Kazakova had the power to save him.

  Now, she owned him.

  But if he could find a way to save Sasha, perhaps the young man might be grateful enough to set him free. That was a possibility. It might work. He reached behind the bar and uncapped the next-in-line bottle of vodka as he thought about it.

  Bullshit.

  The son of Anna and Drogol would not move aside a stone to set Jesus Christ himself free.

  And there was the fact that he had lied when he told the old woman that Sasha was the son of herself and Drogol. He was, in fact, Hauck’s son. It was a simple matter to switch the DNA results following Hauck’s instructions. The arctic coldness of the man’s directions still chilled the doctor. He had relegated his own son to captivity and probable death—all to get his hands on Drogol before the old woman.

  He reached in his coat pocket and felt for his keys. Inside the door opener clipped to his key ring was a small encoded communication device that connected to his cell phone so he could send simple text messages to the only ally he had. But if Anna found out that he was spying on her for Hauck, he would no longer have fingers to type text messages.

  Chapter Seven

  Hauck slammed his fists against the steering wheel in frustration.

  What had gone wrong?

  The bullets filled with mercury-silver amalgam should have killed the beast. According to all the
legends, according to all the lore, the amalgam should have stopped him dead. What was he missing? What was this thing?

  He drove a Ford F350 pickup truck, was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans and his thick black and gray hair sprouted out around the edges of a Detroit Tigers baseball cap. A Styrofoam cup of lukewarm Dunkin Doughnuts coffee wiggled in his dashboard cup holder. Immersed beneath the surface was a small cube of gel explosive with enough power to flatten a city block.

  He stopped carefully for a red light and took a deep breath to calm himself. Anger was not enough. Logic and analysis were what would win for him as they always had. But he needed more facts. This beast seemed to defy both myth and logic.

  A white van pulled up beside him to his right. Its engine idled so loudly that he could hear it even with his windows up. Hauck looked straight ahead. The light stayed red as cross street traffic drove past him heading west toward the I-75 entrance ramp. He cut his eyes to the right slightly and saw the van driver look away quickly. In the passenger side rearview mirror he saw the back doors of the van burst open and a man dressed all in black hit the ground and ran up between the idling vehicles.

  Shit.

  Carjacking.

  He drew his Bulgarian made 9 mm and depressed the power window switch to lower the passenger’s side window. In the dim light he saw the man swinging his shotgun to his shoulder as he approached.

  Hauck sneered slightly as he brought his pistol up quicker than the man’s shotgun. He depressed the gas pedal hard. The truck jumped forward as he missed one oncoming car and swung the wheel to the right. He fired off three sound-suppressed rounds into the van’s windshield, deliberately missing the driver by nearly a foot. Glass shattered and collapsed onto the driver.

  Risking a quick look behind him, he saw the man with the shotgun lower the barrel. He was standing out in the open with a weapon and if a cop car or citizen with a cell phone saw him, he was going down. After a moment’s frozen thought, the thug made a run for the back of the van to jump back in, but the tires spun and shrieked as the driver sped away, heading the opposite direction from Hauck and leaving the would be assailant by himself, a man with a shotgun and no excuse.

  Keep moving, thought Hauck. Keep moving.

  No time for petty crime.

  He drove past a row of wounded houses, window frames boarded like wooden eye patches on sightless eyes, then turned away and thought hard.

  The girl was the key. She provided the first clue that Drogol was in the United States in the first place. From there, Zoe had insinuated herself into Drogol’s confidence. He had to find her quickly. But she had gone missing, and Hauck’s communication network was damaged with Yuri down. And he couldn’t even contact the minder he had planted with her as a friend.

  Too much was going wrong in one night.

  Sveta was on the run. Something had spooked her. Zoe was missing. And Anna Kazakova knew by now that he had betrayed her. It was a necessary risk on her part to get what she wanted. She would be bringing in reinforcements, probably including her son Sasha. It was going to get crowded on the streets of Detroit, he thought.

  “This is Evgeny,” came the words in his ear-bud.

  “Go ahead.”

  He wanted desperately to ask Evgeny if he had actually hit the beast with his shots, but he knew better.

  “We are in place. Our friend is being looked after.”

  “Assessment?”

  “Functional. Fractured, not broken. Cuts and bruises and maybe a concussion. He can heal on his own time. The doctor gave him medications.”

  “How long before he is able to get back online?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Hauck glanced at the clock and saw that it was quarter to three in the morning. The night around him was filled with abandoned cars and litter. Stop signs sprayed with graffiti. He braked at an intersection. This time, he was alone except for the body of a cat five or six feet in front of his truck, lit up in his headlights like a crime scene victim. A family pet or a wild animal, he wondered idly. Across the street he saw someone crouched beside a massively dented mailbox, clutching a brown bag by the neck. With so much freedom and money, what had Americans done to their country?

  “Make sure he can think straight.”

  “Understood. Second team?”

  “Have our friend or yourself contact me to reassure me that the game is still in play before we join in again. And Evgeny?”

  “Yes?”

  “Call me with news about our friend watching the Tarot reader. I fear he’s not feeling well but want it confirmed.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Hauck terminated the conversation.

  They employed a simple, but elegant solution for avoiding Homeland Security intercepts. Yuri ran an online multi-player role playing urban fantasy game where players from all over the world communicated via voice over internet telephony. Communications were about targets, weaponry, kidnapping and gun battles. The infrastructure and sheer numbers allowed Hauck’s own communications and those of his team to blend in with the game traffic. Still, they watched what they said.

  Raindrops tapped against the windshield, glistening cold drops that disappeared in a fluid swipe when he flicked the wipers on. They came harder and faster still until the sound was near deafening and the water surged and flowed past the windshield wipers as though they weren’t there. After a moment, the pelting slowed and he could see more clearly. The light changed and he drove forward down a black glass street. Streetlights now haloed the wet pavement and the lights from a neon liquor store sign bled toward a storm drain in moving pools of smeared colors.

  It was time to call in the Instructor.

  Hauck didn’t want to do it.

  First there was the cost. Second, the man was difficult to work with. He was a gruff, brutal force of nature crammed into a five foot four body more muscle than anything else. Third, he was scarcely controllable in the best of times. But he was unusually well qualified to reacquire Drogol. If he would agree to take the job. He had to agree to take the job. And the Instructor was the only man Hauck knew that might survive an encounter with the beast.

  Mistakes should be assessed, even analyzed, but not repeated. He had made a mistake thinking that Drogol and his beast were older and weaker. Sveta, Crue and the team should have been able to terminate an eighty year old man, even working with Anna’s thug Chenko. She wanted Drogol and his beast alive. Hauck knew they both had to die.

  That was my mistake, he thought. Thinking nobody could be dangerous at that age.

  Since Hauck knew that no plan survived its first encounter with battle, he always prepared for chaos and recovery. He seeded three fully equipped command posts throughout the city. Three team levels was a heavy operational expense load to carry, but Hauck knew too much about his opponents to go in with only one team and he’d funded it mostly with Anna’s money.

  He drove around for another ten minutes, getting the feel of the city streets, driving over potholes big as car tires, letting his mind float as he looked for answers.

  “Evgeny here,” came the voice in his ear.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Our friend passed away tonight.”

  “Is that so?” said Hauck irritably.

  “Yes.”

  “Details?”

  “Dead before he hit the floor. Blow to the head.”

  “The woman?” asked Hauck.

  “He had a knife in his hand. Blood on the blade. She was gone. Car missing as well.”

  “I see.”

  “Network is live, Yuri says.”

  “Understood.”

  They clicked off.

  Zoe’s watcher was dead. Zoe was gone and her car along with her. And if it was Zoe’s blood on the knife, then it was better for the watcher to be dead than for Hauck to get hold of him.

  Chapter Eight

  Sveta opened her mouth to scream for a guard, but closed it quickly without saying a word. Gunshots cracked like the
re was a war going on outside her cell. The screams and bestial howlings made her press her body back against the concrete. She knew before the thought formed that the beast had followed them.

  Desperately she shook and pulled at her restraints; she knew she had to get away, but her wrists, ankles and neck were banded and chained to the wall. She sat on a metal shelf bolted to the back wall, manacled into place like an exhibit in a torture museum. Her back and shoulders stretched to the limit as she tried to break free.

  Nothing gave way. No bolts pulled loose from the wall, no cables snapped. She was still a prisoner.

  Automatic weapons fire joined in and Sveta felt her breath catch in her throat. She flashed back to Chechnya where she had been handcuffed to a pole in a room with three guerillas when a firefight broke out in the stairway. But in Chechnya the shots had been fired by her team coming to set her free. She knew instinctively that whatever was loose in the warehouse was not coming to save her.

  For once she was glad to be locked up. She was safe behind a metal door, with riveted metal strips and an electronic key lock with thick bolts sunk deep into a lock-plate to secure it against forced entry. Whatever was happening to the men outside her room, she was glad she wasn’t involved. After the beast was killed, she would have to figure out how to get free, but for now she was safer in the room than in the warehouse.

  Zoe was somewhere in the building. If she was being examined by a doctor, if Mishka hadn’t been lying about that, she too, might be behind a closed door. Or, his men could have taken her into the alley behind the warehouse and shot her in the back of the head. There was no way to know what happened to her. And there was nothing Sveta could do to help her until she was set loose from her chains.

  More screams than shooting came from the other side of the door now. Loud crashes like equipment being thrown about. Sveta felt her heart beating faster.

  Suddenly her room was plunged into darkness. She tried to remain still and was about to bite her lip to control her trembling when it crossed her mind that the beast might smell her blood.