Tainted Blood

by Ferrel D. Moore

“You know the only thing I hate about all this?” said the Instructor.

  “Tell me.”

  “I hate putting on these gas suits and breathing tanks. They ain’t natural.”

  “They will protect us from the gas.”

  “But I’m okay with the rocket launcher.”

  *****

  Zoe woke but didn’t open her eyes.

  She felt warm and safe and wanted to stay that way.

  There was silence all around, and she felt none of the stress that afflicted her body with tension and insecurity. She’d worked undercover for so long that she welcomed moments such as these, knowing even as she did that they wouldn’t last. People that worked for Hauck either learned to handle the tension or left his employ. Zoe considered that option as she laid there, her eyes closed, her mind resting on the silence like she was floating on warm milk.

  How could she have known when Hauck first assigned her to impersonate a psychic that her target was not in fact a horrific madman, but instead a holy man from another century enduring a curse that she could not imagine? Drogol had been kind to her. In fact, she believed that he’d truly brought her back from the dead or close to it. Either way, without him she would be dead. How could she betray his kindness by contacting Hauck and revealing the existence of the man’s underground sanctuary?

  But that was what she did.

  Spies betrayed people.

  Gradually, carefully, she opened her eyes to find that she was alone.

  What if, she thought, my phone doesn’t work underground?

  She hoped that it didn’t. If it didn’t, she wouldn’t have to make a decision. There would be no chance of betraying Drogol. No chance of causing his capture or death.

  What a weakling I am, she thought. I have a job to do; now I just have to do it and this will all be over.

  As she sat up on the cot, her hand subconsciously rubbed over the spot where she she’d been stabbed. She paused, and leaning over, she lifted her shirt. Her stomach was flat, lightly muscled, and her skin was unblemished where there should have been a scar. The watcher who tried to rape her got worse.

  I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t call Hauck and betray Drogol.

  But that’s what spies did.

  Spies betrayed people.

  Zoe saw her coat on a paper-strewn drafting table. Her satellite cell phone would be in her right pocket. Like any other person getting up to go to work, Zoe stood, stretched, and thought that if she knew how to do anything else, she would find another job.

  *****

  Dr. Pazyryk sat in the backseat of a black Lexus while Ivan, who sat on the opposite side behind the driver, examined the doctor’s cell phone. A layer of uncomfortable sweat began to form along his shirt collar as he watched Ivan pry the device apart with a thin screwdriver. Although he’d never fired a gun before in his life, Dr. Pazyryk was quite sure that if he had one now he would kill the pale-skinned priest without a second thought.

  “Well, Doctor, your cell phone seems to be just an ordinary cell phone, but you understand that I must be protective of Mrs. Kazakova.”

  “By breaking apart my cell phone? What did it ever do to you?”

  The priest stared at him thoughtfully before he spoke, as though weighing what to say.

  “I am convinced that we have a traitor in our midst still. Everyone, including you, is suspect until this is over. She is unforgiving on the issue of loyalty and depends on me to protect her.”

  Especially, thought Dr. Pazyryk, since you have her son locked away in a cage.

  The tension in his shoulders eased just a little. The electronic square hidden in a second pocket of his coat contained all the electronics necessary for his coded communications with Hauck. Unless the two were connected together, there was no way to understand how or if the cell phone was used to transmit or receive.

  “It will give you something to do while waiting for Kirill to bring you to us when we have captured our prey,” said Ivan.

  Dr. Pazyryk looked toward the heavyset driver whose shoulders filled half the front seat.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ivan. “He will protect you.”

  “I’ve seen that thing in the video. I don’t think whatever he’s carrying will even slow it down.”

  “You worry too much, Doctor. Kirill would be a last resort. The beast will be unconscious long before then. We have equipped our men with the tranquilizing rifles we brought along with us on the plane. One such dart would take down an elephant. We have automatic weapons for backup, but Mrs. Kazakova wants it alive so that you can draw its blood.”

  “And you?”

  “Don’t become inquisitive, Doctor. It could become fatal.”

  Dr. Pazyryk looked out the window at the construction barrels, signs lit by hidden spotlights and the endless mounds of brown grass that passed for scenery. He wondered how his life could have come to this moment, how one night of drunken surgery had resulted in the destruction of his career, his life and his future. Sitting in a limo with an albino maniac obsessed with religious vengeance. He might as well be strapped to a bomb with the timer running.

  “But I will tell you this,” continued Ivan. “When you are through with your science, when you have drained enough blood from this monster to satisfy our mistress, then it will be I that cuts its throat and drinks whatever will be left.”

  Hauck, get me out of here, thought Dr. Pazyryk. I’m a wretch with a burned out soul, but surely even I deserve better than this.

  It was at that exact moment and just over one mile ahead that a fifty foot high fireball burst over the freeway. So bright did it burn that Ivan screamed and slapped his hands over his sensitive eyes in agony.

  Kirill instinctively threw up his arms to cover his face and forgot to brake. The car ahead screeched sideways and they crashed into it. Airbags exploded into the car and squares of the windshield broke away.

  Everyone inside the vehicle slapped into the airbags and fell backward.

  The sound of blaring horns, emergency sirens, and the smell of burning rubber filled the night air.

  *****

  Anna Kazakova lay in her medical bed, the room lit only by the soft green and white screens that flashed her vital statistics. Her eyes were dry, lips parched, and still she did not reach for the water pitcher and glass sitting on the metal stand near the side of her bed. She breathed in, felt the air fill her lungs like dust pouring into thin paper bags, and cursed every unfiltered cigarette that she had ever smoked.

  Outside the door, two bulky men stood guard in the near empty building. They were hard men, who would defend her with their lives, but she knew death came quietly, unannounced, and there was nothing their guns could do to stop him if he came calling. Death, she believed, was always a man. Women gave life. Men took it away.

  Men like Drogol.

  All men, no matter how charismatic their words or charming their ways, were beasts inside. They lied to women to ravage and control them. They took what they wanted and went their way.

  Drogol was the worst. His dark, brooding eyes tinged with the madness of conviction. His wild hair and repressed vitality. His obsession with the long dead Alexandra. How could she, Anna Kazakova, have been so utterly and completely under his power?

  He was not handsome, no not at all. He was strong, immensely strong, but his arms were too long, his hands too big and his shoulders too narrow. His nose was too large and yet his eyes, his eyes would sometimes glow as though lit by an inner light.

  When he took her he was overpowering, as though he were wrestling her into submission. And he took and he took and he took.

  She hated him.

  So when Ivan had come to her, she listened to his entreaties, heard what he desired, and licked her lips with anticipation when he offered himself as her long arm of vengeance. Ivan would punish Drogol in ways that her frail body could not. Ivan would bring her first his blood, and then his soul.

  Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and she wiped
it away with her sleeve. Water, she must have water. Her lips were cracking like desert parchment.

  Wires and tubes dangled from her arm as she reached for the pitcher. Her fingers were only inches away from its handle when she felt something clamp down on her heart. She gasped with a pain like nothing she had ever felt before and her arm went numb. Harder it squeezed and harder and her eyes locked as wide open as her mouth. Her extended hand began to shake and spasm and she knocked over the pitcher. It crashed in broken splinters that shot across the floor.

  Hear that, she screamed to her guards.

  But the scream was in her mind.

  No thought. Too much pain. Just a scream.

  I won’t die like this, she thought. I will not die without seeing Drogol’s face again.

  She tried to rise but it was as though someone had thrust a knitting needle through her heart and pinned her to the bed. The Ryazan prison massacre video was the last thing that flashed through her mind before she died.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Yuri sat at a keyboard typing furiously. His mouse hand circled, clicked and moved on. Diagrams popped up on one screen, slid to another to be replaced by still another. He was a conductor exhorting his electronic musicians to fill the room with information. Top of his game, best in the world and, more importantly, the highest paid person in Hauck’s organization. This was why Hauck paid him twice what he himself took in. He could penetrate any network and make it his own. He typed twelve hundred words per minute and was pushing for more.

  I’m no tourist, he thought. I own Detroit.

  And own it he did. His brain was an eidetic sponge absorbing information.

  He pulled up schematics for the city’s underground water system and any associated information that he deemed helpful. Newspaper clippings scanned into storage appeared on the screens like an electronic exhibit of tired paper.

  “Yuri,” came Hauck’s voice. “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “Answer me. Where are you?”

  “I’m here. Where else would I be?”

  “Check the police scanners. What was that ignition?”

  “That what? You mean Evgeny’s fireworks? He’s closing down I-75 north of the city like you asked him to.”

  “What the hell did he blow up?”

  “Later, okay? Right now I’ve got some interesting stuff for you. You ready for this?”

  “Don’t try my patience, Yuri.”

  “Right. Well, Detroit’s like an underground parking lot in places. No, not like a parking lot, it’s like an underground city. They built all sorts of stuff over all sorts of other stuff, if you get what I mean.”

  Silence from the other end.

  “Okay, let me try it another way. Area you’re headed to has a lot more underground than just sewers and maintenance tunnels for gas and electric. What I’m looking at here is an assortment of projects going back maybe fifty to seventy years. Excavations for this or that. They’re in the paper; they’re not in the paper. Blueprints filed with the city that don’t match what’s supposed to be going on. Very weird stuff. Hard to say exactly what you’re going to run into down there. There’s been some heavy tampering over the years is my best guess and I think we’ve got a network of tunnels and abandoned construction projects that could hide an army of Drogols.”

  “Yuri?”

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up and find me the best way in.”

  *****

  Dr. Pazyryk came to with his face pressed against the unbroken passenger side window. He heard sirens and what sounded like distant foghorns but could only have been the sound of approaching fire trucks. He pulled his head back and rubbed his hands over his face. They came back bloodied.

  “My head, son of a bitch, my head.”

  Gingerly he moved his head back and forth to reassure himself that his neck wasn’t broken. He blinked the blood out of his eyes and saw Kirill pressed between an inflated air back and his seat. But neither Ivan’s nor his own airbag had remained inflated. Whether defective or by design, they had both hissed away their shape sometime after the doctor had passed out.

  Ivan lay slumped forward, held up only by his seatbelt. In the beams of headlights that shone on him from cars spun round in collisions and pointing at their car, Dr. Pazyryk saw him as though he were on stage, held up only by a seatbelt marionette wire before the spotlights.

  Car doors slammed and he heard shouting.

  Kirill was down.

  Ivan was unconscious.

  A glance over his shoulder, shielding his eyes against the headlights shining through the shattered back window. Where were the other Red Mafiya cars?

  Somewhere in the distance, he heard the irritating, continuous blare of a jammed car horn. Everywhere was confusion. His head started to pound as though it would never stop and he looked down at his palms and stared at the blood.

  What was the worst case? He had a concussion? Internal injuries? Whiplash? He seemed to have no broken bones. He ached all over and knew it would get much worse but could he run?

  Maybe he could.

  With a thumb and forefinger he un-clicked his seatbelt, watching closely for any sign of consciousness on Ivan’s part. Nothing. Not a fluttering of eyelids; no sudden movement of his fingers like the Frankenstein monster coming to life. Nothing.

  He reached for the door handle, and then stopped.

  What about Hauck?

  They had an agreement. If he would spy for Hauck, then Hauck would get him out; give him an untraceable new identity, money, and protection. It was a good deal. No one could escape the Iron Woman and her albino priest without help and protection. And it was not good to betray Hauck. If he broke and run, would both Hauck and Anna Kazakova be after him? What would his life be worth then?

  Running.

  Since that night in the surgical theater he had never known a moment when someone was not after him, nipping at his heals. The Moscow police. He shuddered at the thought. It was an accident. He was drunk. The scalpel slipped. It could have happened to anyone. Anyone that was drunk. They had called for him. He protested, saying he was drunk, but they told him to come anyway. The State apparatus would not be denied, of course; the State apparatus could never be denied. It was always benevolent in its errors. There was always a citizen to be blamed. The State itself was never wrong. Only the citizens.

  So when Anna Kazakova saved his neck, she owned him.

  When Hauck promised to get him out from under the old woman’s thumb if he spied for him, then he owned him, too.

  But now he saw a chance to get away from them all. Outside on the freeway, the night was chaos. He was used to chaos and the streets of Detroit were enough like the streets of Moscow that maybe, just maybe, he could get his life back and disappear somewhere in the big country that was America.

  To hell with the Moscow police, to hell with the state police, to hell with Anna Kazakova and Hauck the invisible spy. This was his chance and he was going to take it.

  Without even a look over his shoulder, he grabbed the door handle and pulled it. Locked. No, it moved, just a fraction. Jammed, maybe in the collision. He removed his seatbelt entirely and threw his shoulder into the door. It opened an inch further. Again, this time with more force. Another inch. Once more he slammed his shoulder against the door, this time with the full weight of his desperation behind it. Ivan had checked his cell phone before they left. The strange priest suspected him. That wasn’t good.

  The door came open all the way and Dr. Pazyryk spilled halfway out onto the asphalt freeway. He thrust his hands forward to protect his head but ended up slapping down on his forearms. The shock of the impact jarred his jaw and cracked his teeth together.

  People were milling about in the middle of the freeway like zombies, staring at the bright burning catastrophe somewhere up ahead. In the confusing glare of headlights and taillights and the smell of radiator fluid pooling on asphalt, he saw an opening between two cars, a glittering corridor o
f windshield fragments that shone like jewels in the reflected light of the overhead halogen lamps. Beyond that were cold, empty streets, abandoned buildings, and many, many places to hide.

  Keep moving, he thought.

  He placed his hands flat on the ground and pushed up enough to pull himself out of the car. There was a small grassy hill after the concrete embankment followed by a long cyclone fence. No barbed wire. No gun turrets. Just a simple fence. He would do this and never look back.

  But he did look back, and saw Ivan leaning forward to grab his ankles.

  Panicked, he pulled himself out of the car and took a step toward the concrete embankment just as three black cars and a van drove up between him and his destination. A door sprang open on one of the SUV’s as Dr. Pazyryk turned his head looking for another way out. A grim-faced man swung out onto the street with a black pistol hanging loosely from his left hand.

  “Get in,” he said, motioning to the doctor.

  The doctor looked back as Ivan pulled himself out of the wrecked car and into the street. He was brushing himself off and straightening his robes.

  Behind him.

  The doctor looked back toward what used to be oncoming traffic but now just a narrow parking lot. Could he lose them in the confusion?

  Two more car doors opened; two more men stepped out onto the side of the freeway with pistols.

  “Move,” said Ivan, thrusting him forward with the palm of one hand.

  “Kirill,” protested the doctor. “He might be hurt.”

  “He is dead, Doctor. He came to but could feel nothing in his legs. “

  Dr. Pazyryk regained his balance, and as he was hustled into a car he called out, “But I thought you said he was dead.”

  Ivan, his red sunglasses in place now to protect him from the car headlights, said, “He is. I cut his throat myself. Men who cannot walk are not needed. Now get in the car.”

  The last thing that Dr. Pazyryk saw before the car door slammed shut on him was Ivan wiping off his jewel handled knife on a dark rag. His eyes were fixed on the doctor the entire time. Although it only lasted a moment, in Dr. Pazyryk’s mind, it stretched to the edge of sanity.