The state of the place indicated a number of things right off, all working in my advantage. First, the lax security told me that Blok wasn’t expecting me to show up at his home. Whether that meant he didn’t believe I was in country or just didn’t think I knew where he was I couldn’t be sure, but either way it was a fact that greatly played into my favor.
Second, it also told me that Pavel wasn’t nearby. There was no way the famed brute could be on the grounds and let me get this close without doing something to stop me. Even if a trap was lying in wait on the other side of the door, I could be carrying an IED in this briefcase right now, wiping out half of the house. He would never allow that to happen.
Finally, it told me that Blok wasn’t taking me seriously. He had lived in a state of false superiority for so long, he didn’t fear the possibility of somebody walking up to his front door and doing to him exactly as he had done to me years before.
In all that time, the only thing that had kept me from being consumed with rage, from letting my thirst for vengeance overtake me, was the simple fact that I never had a face to aim it at. Even then, despite what I was working on at the moment, I had known the Juarez’s weren’t the ones that killed my family. If I had thought that for even a second I would have wiped them all from the face of the earth five years earlier, prison be damned.
The whole situation, from the depravity of the actions to the public display it was done under, was too deplorable, even for people like them. The kind of people that would go after a man’s family, that would murder his wife and daughter and stake their bodies out for the world to see, had to be nothing short of monsters.
For five long years I had lived not knowing who those monsters were, peering out into the darkness, wondering if they were lurking, suppressing my rage. Finally, I had a face, a name, a target for it. Someplace to aim everything I’d been carrying all that time.
I could feel it boiling within me, forcing its way to the surface. Despite the cold night air sweat bathed my brow, soaked through the undershirt, drenched my button down. My breath came in long, deep pulls, my heart rate pounding in my ears. Every sound in the neighborhood found its way to me, each nerve in my body tingling with sensation.
On the edge of the front porch I deposited the briefcase and the shoulder bag, dropping both to the floor and drawing the Mark’s from my back. The grips on each one slid easily into my hands as I pulled them free, moonlight flashing off their polished steel barrels.
Yeah, I’d made mistakes, but nothing compared to what Blok had done. He had picked a fight with someone he wasn’t equipped to handle, started something he couldn’t finish.
His mistake wasn’t in being a monster.
It was in creating one.
Chapter Forty
After ten months spent in the balmy, arid climate of Baja, it was a welcomed respite to be back in Russia. The familiar November chill had set in, this year a little stronger than the previous few, frost already covering the ground just hours into the evening.
Still dressed in nothing more than a t-shirt, Pavel drew in a deep breath through his nose. The cold air cleared his nasal passages and filled his lungs, the taste bitter in his nostrils. Just the mere scent of it reminded him that he was home where he belonged, far from the warm ocean breezes and sandy beaches of Mexico.
Once more a smile crossed his face as he circled around to the opposite side of Blok’s sedan and opened the door. Viktor’s unconscious body had been leaning against it and upon the release, his frame spilled out onto the ground, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall, his forehead not far behind. A gash opened on his brow, a tendril of blood running down into his eyebrow as Pavel put one hand into his armpit and hefted him upright.
Dipping at the waist, he positioned Viktor’s body over his shoulder and lifted him from the ground, his slight frame weighing almost nothing. Pavel slammed the car door shut and headed towards the front door, Viktor’s arms and legs flopping on either side of him.
The punch had been glorious, a long time coming and even longer overdue. If Sergey had not been standing there the entire time Pavel would have taken his time and really relished the shot, winding up for a haymaker that may very well have ended Viktor on the spot. As it were, the direct right had more than done its job, his still-unconscious state aided considerably by the alcohol flowing through his system.
After nearly twenty years in the business, the blow was more than just a punch to Pavel. It had been delivered on a direct order from Sergey, an order for him to strike a member of the family. For such a directive to be issued meant he was now considered on the level with everyone else, a sign of things to come.
What this meant for him moving forward he wasn’t sure, but it had to be a good sign. In no way did he want to return to Mexico, but if ordered he would do so happily, taking over the network there, making sure Krokodil became the next big thing to seize America.
Pavel adjusted Viktor a tiny bit on his shoulder and jerked the front glass doors open, stepping by the heat blowing down in the buffer zone and passing on through the second set of double doors. Even at the late hour they remained open, the evening shift on, the enterprise operating in full swing.
Stopping just within the main door, Pavel rested his hands on his hips and took a look around. The last time he had been inside was almost a year earlier, the process nothing more than Anatoly and a small group of scientists, all still working to perfect the product. Their lab was just thirty feet square, a plastic bubble rising up out of the middle of the enormous space.
In the time since things had expanded exponentially, with finished product now lining the west side of the building, raw materials in equal amounts standing on the opposite end. The once tiny research facility had quadrupled in size, a team that looked to be a dozen strong moving about inside, their white suits giving them all the appearance of beekeepers at work.
Pressing his lips together tight, Pavel nodded in approval. He passed one last gaze over the room, taking in what would soon be making its way to him in North America, before turning to the left and heading towards the corner. Around him he could hear the whine of forklifts speeding about, could smell their burnt rubber in the air.
His gait slow and easy, Pavel walked past a string of offices extended out from the wall. Many had glass fronts lining them, their doors standing empty as he passed, most with their lights off. Inside was the standard office fare of desks and tables, one housing snack and soda machines, a card table for workers taking a break.
Pavel made his way by each of them to the far corner, towards a solid metal door surrounded on either side by concrete blocks painted white. He ignored any stares that fell on his back from the workers outside, entering the room and shutting the door behind him.
A single switch on the wall brought a candescent light fixture above to life, a filmy yellow glow filling the space. Otherwise there was not a single thing in the room, the walls natural grey block, the floor polished concrete. The ground slanted inward from each side, culminating in a steel drain cap. Despite being clean and dry, the air inside was damp, smelled of mildew.
Tilting his torso to the side, Pavel let Viktor fall from his shoulder, his body landing with a slap against the smooth floor.
The decision had been Sergey’s, though Pavel had not fought him on it. Traditionally the room had been used for interrogations, occasionally to make an example of a wayward employee. In a previous life it had been used for storing harsh manufacturing chemicals, but the concrete walls worked just as well for muffling the screams of anybody inside.
Given the state Viktor was in, and what he had done, they stood in agreement that he was best served by a night or more in the room to think things through. While he was there Sergey would consider the proper thing to do with him, even suggesting creating a new post for him somewhere in Siberia.
Pavel had thought more along the lines of the bottom of the Baltic Sea, though he kept the thought to himself.
The order h
ad been to deliver Viktor to the storage room, but to do no further damage. As much as he wanted to drive his boot into Viktor’s face, ribs, groin, he fought back the urge, leaving him lying on his side in the middle of the floor, turning the lights out as he went. His next destination was bound for Kiev, and he would have ample opportunity to let out his rage once there.
He caught a few men quickly look away as he emerged, rubberneckers that hurried back to their work at the sight of him. The glower remained in place as he headed back towards the door, his phone vibrating against his hip halfway there.
It took a moment for his massive hands to fish the implement from his pants, lifting the device to his face and responding without looking at the screen. Sergey was the only person that ever called him, there was no question who it would be.
“Yeah, sir?” Pavel asked, pressing his left index finger into his free ear to block out the whine of tires on concrete behind him. Over the line he could hear heavy panting followed by the sound of a woman screaming. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded a lot like Anya, terror in her tone.
Extending his pace to great strides, Pavel covered the last of the ground to the door and pushed his way outside, the silence of the night flooding in around him. He kept his finger jammed into his left ear and pressed the phone down hard with his right, straining for any sound on the opposite side.
“Yeah?” he repeated, adrenaline starting to course through him.
“Pavel,” Sergey said between ragged gasps, his voice weak. “He’s here.”
Chapter Forty-One
Knock and announce. It was a maxim drilled into us when working with the DEA meaning that before we ever entered any private home we were to knock three times and announce who we were prior to going inside. One of the most basic tenants of American law enforcement, it was right up there with reading a suspect their Miranda rights for fastest ways to get a case thrown out of court.
The rules when working internationally were a bit different. Not entirely, but with many, many shades of grey. That’s why from day one, if there was even the slightest chance that a perpetrator would ever end up in a United States courtroom, we were sure to knock and announce.
Despite working against five years of muscle memory, I blew through the front door of the Blok home without doing either. If someone wanted to nitpick, an argument could be made that I did both by driving the heel of my shoe through the wood pane alongside the door knob, sending the front door hurtling backwards, shards of wood spraying up around me.
I was not law enforcement, and there was no way in hell these people would ever make it to see a courtroom.
Mark 23 held in either hand, I let the momentum of the kick carry me inside, arms extended, silenced weapons adding another ten inches to either one. The door opened into a wide front foyer, hardwood flooring extending out in every direction. To my right was a sitting room that looked to be barely touched, furniture resembling something found in the sixties. On the left was a formal dining room, table settings and a centerpiece all in place, the overhead lights off.
“Excuse me, sir, can I-,” an older man in a smoking jacket and slacks asked, appearing from the middle hallway and walking towards me.
I cut him off mid-sentence, a pair of shots, one from each gun, stopping him mid-stride. A low flash of light barked out of each on command, the recoil minimal in my hands. One bullet struck him in the left half of his chest, the other tore a hole between his eyes. His body fell straight back where he stood, blood pooling behind his head.
Guns still stretched out in front of me, I stepped past his body, avoiding the widening sanguineous circle beneath him, and descended the front hallway, the wood floor creaking slightly as I went. Long shadows moved over everything, only a few lights still on within the house.
The hallway ended in an expansive kitchen, a modernized affair with stainless steel appliances and a palatial refrigerator masked to look like cabinetry. A quick check found the place to be empty, the rich smells of food hanging in the air, dinner not far past.
I ignored the scent and continued moving through the house, every sense on high alert, my body rigid, moving one cautious step at a time. While my shots had been muffled, there was no way Blok hadn’t heard me come through the front door. From the outside the only visible lights were on upstairs, meaning he was most likely holed up there, waiting for me to come to him.
So be it.
Sliding the gun in my left hand back into the waistband of my slacks, I grabbed a cast iron skillet from atop the cold stove top and carried it with me. Again I stepped over the remains of the butler lying in the hall, the front of his coat now slick and stained with dark blood, the circle beneath him thick and shiny.
One step at a time I ascended the staircase, my back to the wall, gun in one hand, pan in the other. I held the cast iron cookware close to my head to help shield me from any gunfire, the thick metal more than capable of stopping most small arms fire. An inch at a time I rose upward, pausing halfway up and listening.
Somewhere above me, the smallest creak of a floor board sounded. My heartbeat evened out and my breathing receded to completely normal, my body tense but focused, feeding on the adrenaline I had starved it of all these years.
Hefting the pan in my left hand I lowered it by my side and tossed it high, aiming for the middle of the top landing. I paused a split second before hurtling my body upwards after it, the matte black object arriving just before I did.
Four shots rang out in rapid succession as it got there, two of them drawing iron, yellow and orange sparks flashing in the darkness. They slammed into the pan from the right, the shooter standing to that side, firing a handgun.
My mind managed to compute all that information as I leapt over the last few stairs and landed on my shoulder, gun trained out with my right hand, left cupping it for support. Without bothering to wait for suspect confirmation I squeezed off three quick shots, muzzle flashes igniting in front of me.
My target was a pudgy older man dressed in a maroon track suit, his shaved head making it almost impossible to decipher a definite age. The first shot whizzed past him, shattering the window at the end of the hallway, glass exploding out into the night air, a gust of cold wind rushing in behind it.
The second bullet struck him in the right shoulder, his upper body twisting to the side. His gun jerked at an angle as he did so, squeezing off another round that took a chunk of plaster from the wall. Blood spurted from the wound, slapping against the hardwood floor, blending in with the dark red of his suit.
My third shot struck him in the thigh, pitching his body forward at the waist. A throaty moan slid from him as he doubled over and pressed his free hand against it, blood bubbling up between his fingers. It pulsed forward in bright red stripes, spilling between his digits, streaking the shiny floor beneath him.
Artery shot.
Once more he fired an errant round into the wall before retreating into the room on his right, dragging his leg behind him, moving slow. A trail of blood smeared the floor as he went, hitting the ground in heavy droplets.
Leaving the cast iron skillet where it lay, I pulled myself to a standing position and drew the second Mark from my waistband. If anybody else was in the house that could fire a weapon, the odds were they would have already shown themselves, long before letting the old man himself take two direct hits.
Many times before I had heard the expression that someone sick with bloodlust was seeing red. Around me, the hallway downstairs, the floor in front of me, were both painted red. The metallic smell of blood hung in the air.
Even still, what I saw wasn’t red. It was black. Making Sergey Blok bleed was not enough, would never be enough, not for me or the memory of my family.
He would feel my pain, and he would die, just as they had.
I reached the base of the door he had passed through in just a few quick seconds, hitting a knee at the base of it. The trail of blood beside me was even heavier than I thought, thick spatters dotting the
floor. With a quick breath I spun out on the floor, both guns in front of me, my knees sliding across the slick boards.
Standing across from me was a woman in her sixties, a pink housecoat on over flannel pajamas, knit stockings on her feet. She stood ten feet back from the door, her husband’s gun held in both hands in front of her.
The moment I appeared around the base of the door the gun flashed twice, two harsh barks in quick succession. She wasn’t ready for me to be so low to the ground, both shots whizzing by above me.
My first shot caught her square in the chest, the beginning of a scream cut off halfway through, her voice and the air wheezing out of her. The gun fell from her hands as she wobbled in place, clutching her chest, the light blinking out of her eyes.
Taking my feet I kept one gun pointed in her direction and stepped into the room, my left hand aimed out wide.
Seated behind an expansive desk was who I presumed to be Sergey, his dumpy form slumped into a rolling chair. His right hand rested atop the desk, his fingers slick with blood, trying to operate a .38 revolver. In his left was a wadded up roll of cloth he pressed into his thigh, most of it soaked through with blood.
He stared at me with defiance in his eyes, the life fleeting from him just as surely as it was his wife. Given the gaping hole through his femoral, I gave him no more than thirty seconds before he was done too.
“Blok,” I said, stepping forward, malevolence dripping from the word.
“Tate,” he responded, the same tone in his response.
The fact that he used my given name proved just how little he knew about me. Nobody ever called me Tate, not even the teachers I had in school or my parents growing up. To this man I was never an adversary, not somebody worthy of respect or fear.
I was nothing more than a potential roadblock, something to be mowed down on his way to getting what he wanted.
“So you know who I am?” I asked.
He stared at me through narrowed eyes, sweat dotting his brow, breaths coming in shallow rasps. A small nod was his response, no words crossing his mouth.
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