Tainted Blood

by Ferrel D. Moore

  Men who cannot walk are not needed.

  He felt like throwing up.

  *****

  Evgeny pulled into a dark side street with his headlights turned off. The mixture of houses and empty lots were silent.

  Like Moscow, he thought. When the fox comes calling, the chickens cower in their coops.

  But maybe not this time.

  Maybe this time, the chicken coops were filled with wolves.

  He U-turned and parked his truck facing back the way he came. With his left forefinger, he turned off the GPS. He could see his destination two streets over. He knew where he was going.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, Evgeny,” came the voice in his ear. “Hauck’s going to string us up. You’re supposed to be running interference against the Kazakovas. I’m supposed to tell him where you’re at.”

  “Then tell him. I did my job. I slowed down the traffic. Now I’m scoping the area for him. Put him on with us. You worry too much.”

  “Hang on,” said Yuri. “Hauck? It’s me, Evgeny, and you. That’s it.”

  “Did you find me the quickest way in yet?”

  “We need to take care of something first. Evgeny’s a couple of blocks over from the house where our info said Drogol’s escape car is.”

  “Good. Evgeny, what do you see?”

  “Nothing. But it’s too quiet here. Just as dark as the house last night. Same feeling in the air. Not even gangs or dope dealers.”

  “Nobody’s home in that part of town” said Yuri. “But Hauck, did you okay Evgeny moving in on the house.”

  “What’s your point, Yuri? It was his original destination before I sidetracked him.”

  Evgeny grinned. He could feel it coming. Yuri was always, always the untouchable. He got paid to know everything. He got paid to keep Hauck and the teams informed and out of harm’s way. Everything was supposed to go to him.

  But Evgeny knew that Yuri was always suspicious of a back door channel. Nothing he could ever identify. Nothing blatant enough to question Hauck directly. But he didn’t like it that he couldn’t be sure.

  “Nothing, I just got the impression that you wanted him to continue to run interference between us and the Kazakovas.”

  “No,” said Hauck. “I wanted one major distraction and now I want him on point to watch above ground while we enter from below. Are we clear on this?”

  “What about a spotter? Shouldn’t he have a spotter, too? He always has a spotter.”

  “What information did you uncover about his last spotter?”

  “Point. I get your point. Just had to make sure. It’s what you pay me for.”

  “Right now I’m paying you to find me the best entrance. Get me an answer.”

  Evgeny bit his lip.

  “Okay, you heard the man,” said Yuri. “Got to go to work.”

  “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “You remember what you were saying earlier, about not knowing why he’s in Detroit?”

  “Sure. You got an answer?”

  “No,” said Evgeny. “But I have a hunch we’re about to find out.”

  Yuri clicked off.

  Hauck always had his secrets.

  What Yuri didn’t know was that he and Hauck went way back. Everyone on the team owed Hauck something, something more than their work for hire arrangement except maybe Sveta. It was how he bound them together. Hauck never completely trusted anyone who worked just for money.

  *****

  “Ten blocks away?” Hauck asked. “That’s the best you can do?”

  “You asked for the best way in,” said Yuri. “It’s like a maze down there. The tunnels are different ages and different sizes. Some dead end or are closed off. This is the cleanest shot you’ve got. I could bring you in closer but the tunnels are in ruins.”

  “What’s he saying?” demanded the Instructor. “Put him on speakerphone. You have a speaker phone on that fucking thing?”

  Hauck linked his cell phone to the car’s computer system and switched over to speakerphone. He had Yuri repeat what he just told him.

  “No wonder this city smells like shit,” said the Instructor. “The sewers are no good.”

  “I’m giving you the best way in,” said Yuri.

  “Don’t give me that, you little asshole,” said the Instructor. “You’ve never been down there so you don’t know crap from shinola. All you know is some city blueprints and whatever you can pick up from some jack-assed search.”

  “It’s all we have and we don’t have any time to get more information,” said Hauck.

  “Say anything about rats in that crap you’re pulling up on line?” asked the Instructor. “They got those big, filthy rats with rabies?”

  Silence for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” Yuri said finally. “There’s nothing I see so far that—”

  “How about sewer gas like methane and all that? Is the air clean enough to breathe?”

  “How the hell would I know?” said Yuri.

  “Exactly. Why don’t we just use a crystal ball?”

  “I’ll keep looking.”

  “For what?” said the Instructor. “We go with what we got.”

  “Tell me where we’re going in,” said Hauck. “Then keep researching the area. There’s a reason Drogol went to ground here.”

  “That’s what Evgeny said.”

  “Who said that?” asked the Instructor. “That little prick with a rifle? The one that couldn’t hit the ten foot monster with a high powered rifle and a six thousand dollar telescopic sight? Yeah, now I’m feeling better.”

  “Enough already,” said Hauck. “Yuri, you heard me. Keep digging and see if you can find out why he’s here. We’re running short on time and this location is the first new variable we’ve had to work with. Get to it.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Zoe was no longer asleep. She was sitting on the edge of the cot where they last left her, looking down at her feet.

  “You see, God has healed her because of her true heart,” beamed Drogol.

  When Zoe looked up at her, Sveta stared her down. The girl knew that she knew, she saw it in her eyes.

  Drogol went forward and took her hands.

  “Can you stand, my child? We have much to do together, and I need your help.”

  Zoe looked about like a trapped animal, and then, with a look of resignation, she stood.

  Sveta appraised her. Young, pretty, and with a certain look of helplessness about her. A perfect choice to gain Drogol’s confidence. She would never be perceived as a threat. Now if she could just get her away from Drogol long enough to ask her whether or not Hauck was already on his way.

  “How much does she know about you?” Sveta asked Drogol.

  “Enough. She knows that I am a man in search of regaining his soul, and although she did not know of this place or the cursed technology I will now make use of, she knows my pain and I believe she will gladly help me. Is that not so, dear child?”

  Zoe’s eyes darted between Sveta and Drogol, bewildered.

  “Why do you hesitate? Are you afraid, little one?”

  Finally she answered.

  “No, Father.”

  I hope that cost you, thought Sveta.

  “Then come—the time is upon us. Come with me.”

  He put his arm around her waist, concerned for her, and like a father leading a child, they began walking. Sveta, having no good choice, followed silently behind them. He would never believe the girl was a traitor and he was not stable. Having seen what he was capable of and not knowing the real truth about the beast, she would have to wait for the right moment and then make a break for it.

  Her hatred for Hauck and his entire world of betrayal grew with each step she took. Drogol was mad. Hauck had no such excuse.

  *****

  The Instructor picked the lock on the concrete bunker door in less than ten seconds. They were in and down the iron rungs wearing their fire and chemical resistant suits and thei
r weaponry. They wore headlamps, and moved through the knee deep water and the cement tunnel like coal miners from a different era. Hauck led the way, following Yuri’s directions, stopping occasionally to check in and make certain of their location.

  They heard nothing but themselves as they sloshed through the water. It was as though they were in the catacombs beneath a European city, exploring hidden secrets while those above slept or moved about unawares on dark, rain-slicked streets.

  “Yuri, can you hear me?”

  “You’re breaking up a little, but yeah I can still hear you.”

  “There is a fork in the tunnel here, which way do we go, left or right?”

  “Give me a minute. There’s no fork in the schematics I’m looking at.”

  “Take your time and give me your best shot.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Hauck felt the Instructor’s hand on his shoulder and turned to face him. In the beam of his headlamp, he could see the transformation. He was on the hunt now, moving in for a kill. No mercy in his face. No more banter, no jokes. Just an overwhelming sense of dark focus.

  “Here’s the deal. We find this thing, and anybody between me and it is going down, you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. And here’s the deal with the old lady and me.”

  Hauck tensed so hard his back muscles hurt.

  “She wants the thing alive. I told her to fuck off. Then she talked to me about taking you out. She doesn’t know I’m working for you now.”

  “That’s acceptable.”

  “But after her guys have captured it or I’ve killed this whatever it is, she wants you put to bed. I told her I’d wait three days. If she’s still alive, then I’m coming for you. If you take her out first, the deal’s off. You got that?”

  Hauck searched the old man’s face. Somehow he’d believed that it would not come to this, that the Instructor felt some small degree of affection for him, and would not have accepted Anna’s offer. But he was at least giving him a way out. That had to count for something.

  “You got three days to whack the old bitch. You take care of business and you and me are good. I figured you could handle that. She paid me half up and I get to keep that. So that’s the deal. It was good money. I figured three days was enough time for you to take her out. Can you bury her that quick?”

  Hauck nodded again.

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  “Yuri is trying to find which way will take us there. We have to wait.”

  “Yuri’s a dumbass. We go left. Let’s get moving.”

  Hauck started walking. He gripped the gas gun tighter and began to consider what to do about Anna Kazakova, because he very much wanted to stay alive.

  “Evgeny,” he said, “can you hear me?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I have a new assignment for you.”

  “Not a good idea, the competition is arriving.”

  “Already?”

  “Like I said.”

  He was beginning to have a bad, very bad feeling about this.

  “Listen to me carefully. No matter what happens tonight, your new priority is to track down Anna Kazakova’s location and eliminate her, is that understood?”

  Silence.

  “Evgeny, are you there?”

  But Hauck had lost radio contact.

  *****

  “Here is close enough,” Ivan told the driver. “Tell the others.”

  They were only a block away, but he did not want to be too far in case things got out of hand.

  He felt the presence of his old enemy and could barely contain his excitement after so many years of hunting him. At last he would fulfill his destiny. The beastman’s blood would be his, Anna Kazakova be damned.

  “Roll down my window,” he instructed the driver.

  As the glass lowered into the door, he felt the cool rush of moist night air and listened to the pitiless night wind pushing down empty streets. There were no streetlights in this section of town still working. Most had been shot out and left that way.

  Detroit was a city that he could understand. It was as brutal in its way as Siberia, but with a colder heart. A machine’s heart, without feeling, without remorse.

  Ivan looked at his driver, a man whose bulk was that of a small bear. His bearded face was expressionless, a man who did what he was told with no regrets. He stared straight ahead, waiting for instructions.

  Anna Kazakova had armies of men like this scattered all over the world. She ruled them like a monarch. Those who obeyed and executed her orders without question did well. Those who failed her expected no mercy.

  Before the disease had overtaken her, her brilliant mind and ruthless ambition had propelled her to the top of a criminal empire that generated more wealth than many countries. Blackmail, greed and brute force had been her weapons. Those whom she could not co-opt with blackmail, she lured in with money. Those whom she could not control with such means, she terrorized by executing their close friends and family members until they finally submitted.

  As her health failed, she had brought her son into her business. He lacked her analytical mind, but his zeal in dealing with her enemies won her confidence until Ivan began to undermine it. It was the method of his sect to rise to power by gaining the position of advisor to the powerful, then weakening them by planting the seeds of suspicion until they destroyed each other, leaving behind the spoils.

  Ivan had a true hatred for all Russians. For centuries they exploited and repressed his people. But Siberians were the ones destined to rule, not Russians. There was a saying among his people that no Russian was fit to wear a Siberian’s shoe, and Ivan believed it with every fiber of his being. When he had the beastman’s blood running through his veins and Drogol was dead, he would demonstrate just how true that saying was by taking over the empire that Anna Kazakova had built.

  “Vasily, you will be by my side at all times,” he said to the driver. “We are hunting tonight, you and I. We will be the zayats—the hunters of this night. We must let the others be the dogs who charge into the bushes while we are patient and wait to shoot what comes running out. Some dogs will be lost. Perhaps many dogs will be lost. But the hunters must live to claim the game, yes?”

  The thick-bodied Russian nodded his agreement. Once up and once down. His face as severe as a stocky Lenin, his nod of agreement slow, thoughtful and final. He had the chin of his famous ancestor, who received the order of Hero of the Soviet Union for his brilliant marksmanship and ferocious combat accomplishments. He had the shoulders of his famous ancestor. They were broad and densely packed with muscle.

  “In the heat of the hunt,” continued Ivan, “some dogs may turn on the hunters. The smell of blood may drive them mad. They must be put down quickly.”

  Ivan waited a few moments for a response, but when the driver said nothing, he continued.

  “So if anyone turns and runs, shoot them down.”

  This time, Vasily nodded with enthusiasm.

  *****

  Dr. Pazyryk sat on a plastic crate at the back of the van behind Sasha’s cage. Sasha lay sideways on a metal bench, still chained into place like an animal. His eyes were closed and he wore the same clothes that he wore when the doctor last saw him.

  Near the double doors sat a guard on a plastic folding chair. His head was bald and gleamed softly in the muted moonlight filtering through the windows. He casually held a dark pistol that rested across his knees. When he felt the doctor staring at him, he turned and smiled a metallic smile.

  A pair of pointed scissors on an open shelf only two feet away was the only weapon that Dr. Pazyryk had been able to find. Compared to the dark pistol, they hardly seemed like a weapon. Besides, what would he do with them? He had never struck another man in his life and certainly never stabbed one with a pair of scissors. But being a doctor, he knew where to do so.

  It had to be from behind, he knew that. The idea of stabbing someone from the front seemed li
ke a good way to get shot. No, he would have to bide his time until a situation presented itself where he could grab the scissors and drive them straight into the spot at the base of the man’s skull, severing the nerves and preventing him from getting off a shot.

  “May I have a drink?” he asked. “Perhaps you have a flask?

  The man turned his deep-set eyes on him again.

  “Maybe you could shut your fucking mouth.”

  He raised the pistol and pointed it toward the doctor.

  “I could do that.”

  With his free hand, the man pulled a flask from beneath his coat, placed it between his knees and unscrewed the cap. Lifting the liquor to his lips, he stared at the doctor while he took a long pull, then returned the flask beneath his coat quickly and efficiently, like a magician finishing a trick.

  Dr. Pazyryk decided that if he ever got the opportunity, he would gladly stab the man just to get at his flask.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The van doors opened suddenly, and Dr. Pazyryk saw the crowd of dark men standing outside. Mishka must be among them, but the doctor could not make him out.

  “Doctor,” he said, “how is our bait?”

  “Out cold.”

  “Then inject him with something to wake him up. Soon we may need him to play his part.”

  “I can inject him with the stimulant, but he will wake up groggy. It will take time for him to be fully awake.”

  “Just do it.”

  “Too much too quickly could damage his heart.”

  “Just do it,” hissed Ivan, then turned away. “I have received word that his mother is dead. His utility to us is much less.”

  His men followed him, leaving only the open night behind them. They were in a neighborhood that defied polite description. Somewhere in the distance were the blurred lights of the city, but here there was only darkness and cool, moist air. A light rain drizzled down, and the doctor tried to see something, anything that would indicate which way to run when the time came, but then his guard closed the doors.

  The Iron Woman was dead. He was her doctor. His utility was less, too.

  “I need my medical bag,” Dr. Pazyryk said.

  His guard kicked it across the floor toward him.