Krokodil

by Dustin Stevens

  The more pragmatic, realistic side of me pushed it away just as fast. What was more likely was the guy wouldn’t say a word, or if he did, it would be complete shit. They would talk fast, end up demanding immunity, live a nice long time on American tax payer dollars.

  I had no interest in sustaining a man responsible for the death of my family for even a day, let alone the rest of my life.

  Bringing the guns together in front of me, I fired a single round from each, sheering the u-ring in the lock off just above the base. The square chunk of steel fell to the ground, smacking to the concrete and leaving a small indentation on impact before tumbling to the side. The top half teetered in place for a moment before falling down behind it, ringing hollow and thin against the ground.

  Inside, the banging stopped as the door handle turned, slowly, evenly. When it had gone as far as it could it stopped, the world in slow motion, my guns trained ahead of me, before opening.

  The first thing out of the room was a plume of stench, urine and sweat and booze. It passed over me, barely registering with my adrenaline-heightened senses, swallowed up by the chilly warehouse.

  Behind it followed Viktor Blok.

  His hair and face were disheveled, the recognizable visage of a man on the back end of a three-day bender. His clothing, all black, made from silks and cashmere, hung from his lank form, swinging from side to side as he walked forward.

  “About damn-“ he started, his gaze tilted at the ground, before raising it to see the barrels of twin Mark 23’s aimed his way. His eyes and mouth all three formed congruent circles, his focus rising from the guns to me behind them.

  “You,” he said simply, realization setting in, followed quickly by unadulterated fear.

  “Me,” I replied, squeezing both triggers at once.

  Part V

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The moment I walked out of the warehouse in Vladivostok, my chief concern became invisibility. No longer was I concerned with the Blok’s, or the Juarez’s, or any other cartel on the planet. In that instant my chief worry became an enemy far more sinister, with a reach that extended beyond anything I’d yet encountered.

  The only thing out of X’s care package I took with me was the phone, leaving behind the weapons to be disposed of as he saw best. There were ways I probably could have gotten rid of them, but in the off chance they were ever found and tied back to what had happened, it might ignite a fiery investigation. That wouldn’t do for me, or for DEA interests in Russia, so I left them behind, trusting they would be swept clean, taken care of the way they saw fit.

  Shoulder bag looped over one arm I found my way back into town and made it to the train station, catching a return train back across country departing in two hours’ time. Using the station bathroom I cleaned up my face as best I could and pulled on the watch cap, the black wool covering the gash and most of the residual bruising. I wiped away as much of the blood and debris from myself as I could before my ride out of there arrived, finding a private compartment and commandeering it for myself.

  Using the strap on my shoulder bag I tied the door to it shut and stretched my body out across one of the benches, my legs doubled up, my feet resting against the wall. Folding my arms across my chest I let the gentle sway of the train lull me into a half sleep, the hours sliding by as I came down off an adrenaline high.

  For the first time in a week, I allowed my guard to drop just the tiniest bit. I rested knowing there was nobody left to come after me, not a soul alive who knew where to find me even if they wanted to. I was a ghost, a nameless passenger on a train, a cash fare that could be anybody going anywhere.

  The first grey streaks of dawn began to stripe the sky, shining down on the snow covered peaks to the north, before I stirred from my position. Leaving the tie on the doorknob in place I made a single call to Pally, asking him to get me home.

  The rest I left to him.

  He was nothing short of a genius.

  The train deposited me near Sheremetyevo a few hours short of noon, providing me plenty of time to catch a cab out to the terminal. By that point Pally had arranged four different itineraries for me, two under my actual name and two under my old alias. Each of the possible routes departed within an hour of each other, piecing together random trips circumventing the globe, all depositing me back on American soil late the next day.

  Using the last of my rubles I purchased a plain black t-shirt from an airport gift shop and a red hooded sweatshirt, letters stretched vertically down the left side of it in support of a sports team I had never heard of. Opting to keep the watch cap, I deposited my polypropylene gear in a bathroom stall and checked in for my flight, choosing an option that sent me through Berlin, London, and finally landed in New York City.

  Upon arriving into LaGuardia International, I caught a shuttle to a rental car counter and took out a Dodge Charger on my alias’s ID.

  That was six days ago.

  Not even two weeks had passed since the last time I sat on Hutch’s porch, though a great deal had changed. The last of the fall leaves had fallen from the trees, their orange and gold tones now turned to brown, piled along the curbs, ready to be sacked up and hauled away. In their stead were barren branches, gray fingers clawing against a slate colored sky, rattling with every gust of breeze.

  The temperature outside had dropped another ten degrees, forcing the casual outdoorsmen inside for the winter, leaving only a handful of hardcore types to troll the streets alone, bundled in wool and flannel. None of them seemed to notice me as I sat and waited, the toe of my shoes pushing the swing back and forth a few inches at a time, my hands balled into the pockets of my coat, a small red cooler on the ground by my feet.

  A year ago at this time I was back in Montana, putting the last touches on things before winter set in. Firewood to be stacked, a freezer to be filled, plumbing to be checked over for breaks in the line.

  Now here I sat, swinging on a porch outside of Washington D.C., every last one of those chores still needing to be tended to. If I didn’t get to them soon there was little chance I would make it through the winter unscathed, though that was a concern that didn’t seem to bother me.

  No longer was it so imperative for me to remain out of sight, hiding until the last possible minute from the world before emerging, doing just enough to make a living before going back into hibernation for the winter. In the past week a great many of the demons I had carried with me for so long had parted, drifting away in the night, my eyes opening to a world that seemed clearer, lighter, than the one I’d known before.

  I only had one last item I needed to tend to before I could truly be at ease, and it was of far greater importance than any amount of firewood would ever be.

  At half past six a pair of headlights made their way down the street, just as they had a few weeks before. Once again they paused by the street at seeing my rental sitting there, easing into the driveway and stopping halfway down it, casting a bright glow over the front of the house, illuminating my profile.

  There was no attempt on my part to hide my face, nor was any effort made to turn and stare at him, to wave and let him know it was me, everything was okay. After a moment they blinked out and the engine turned off, the hot inner workings hissing in the cold night air, an occasional pop audible. I remained seated where I was as Hutch opened the door and stepped out, his wingtip shoes clicking against the sidewalk.

  He’d added an overcoat to the ensemble he wore before, a long beige number with the collar flipped up around his neck that ended just past his ears. He trudged forward with his hands shoved into the pockets of it and stopped at the foot of the stairs, taking me in.

  “You’ve done well to keep so much hair, with so many out to take it.”

  A smile crept across my features as he took the stairs one at a time and walked forward, sliding down into the chair beside me.

  “Please tell me that cooler doesn’t have the same thing in it you brought me last time.”

  A snort jerked
my head backwards as I stared out at the silent neighborhood, remembering the desiccating hands of Mateo Perez and Lita Haney I’d showed up with last time. Even after everything that had happened I still didn’t know her real name, doubted I ever would, not that it mattered any longer. She, like everyone she was affiliated with, was a distant memory.

  “No,” I said, twisting my head back and forth, “this one is a celebration.”

  Bending at the waist I lifted the lid of the cooler and extracted a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue from it, holding it up to him and giving it a shake. “This is the good stuff, isn’t that what you told me?”

  His eyes crinkled around the edges as his lips curled up into a smile, seeing the bottle in my hands. “That it is.”

  I handed it across to him bottom first, the glass cool to the touch. “Please, do the honors.”

  Accepting it from me, he twisted the cap off and took a long pull, smacking his lips with pleasure. He held it out at arm’s length and examined the label in admiration before taking another swig.

  “Thank you,” he said, finishing the drink with a deep breath. “Damn, that is smooth.”

  “Better than that herbal tea you were choking down last time I saw you?” I asked.

  “Ha!” Hutch coughed out. “The reason I drink that shit is so I can have a pull on this every now and again.”

  I matched the laugh, a short, staccato sound, my gaze still aimed in the distance. “I bet. You know what I don’t understand though?”

  “What’s that?” Hutch asked, taking one more drink before passing the bottle my way.

  “Why the fuck you had to give them my family.”

  All traces of mirth, or friendship, or even acquaintanceship, were gone from my voice. I turned so he could look me full in the face, stare at me as he attempted to answer the question.

  Hutch’s mouth dropped open as he shifted to look back at me, the color flooding from his features. He kept the bottle extended my way a long moment before lowering it to the ground, the glass bottom sounding hollow against the floor board.

  The fingers of my right hand curled around the grip of the Derringer tucked away in the pocket of my coat, barrel aimed his way, poised to go off should he try anything. No indication of anything crossed my face as I sat and stared at him, waiting for him to try and formulate a response.

  “The first time I arrived here, you weren’t the least bit surprised to see me,” I said. “At the time, I bought your little story about keeping tabs on us, but little things kept creeping in, things that taken together didn’t seem to add up.”

  My voice remained even as I stared across at him, careful not to draw any attention from the neighbors.

  “The first was this house, the sudden taste in expensive whiskey, things consistent with a marked increase in liquid cash. You’re a lifer, suckling at the government teat since you were twenty-five years old. You’ve done well, but not finer-things-in-life well.”

  Across from me Hutch’s face took on an ashen appearance. A small sound slid from his throat, a tiny twitch flickered in the skin near his right eye, but otherwise he sat unmoving.

  “The second was your decision to go to West Yellowstone to see Pavel. You weren’t there to check on things for me, you were there to make sure whoever was there wasn’t spilling their guts. Once you arrived and saw who it was, you knew things were safe, caught the very next plane down to California.”

  Anger, bitterness, resentment, started to tickle the back of my throat as I spoke, almost daring my former mentor to do or say something that would allow me to squeeze the trigger.

  “After that, things really started to pile up. How did Lita happen to know when Mateo left witness protection? Where to find me? That he might come looking for my help?”

  Unable to respond, Hutch shifted his attention back to the street. He kept his hands folded, his fingers laced, hanging between his thighs, pointed down at the ground.

  “Once we were on the ground, they were always a step ahead of us. They knew where Carlos was, about the safe house. Everything.”

  My voice rose just a little bit, my body’s natural reaction to the anger, the feeling of betrayal, within me. My left hand squeezed into a ball so tight my fingers ached. The index finger on my right hand caressed the trigger of the Derringer, wanting, needing, to pull it.

  “You know what really did it for me, though?” I paused a moment to see if he would venture a response. When none came I continued on. “When Diaz told me about you bringing in the Juarez’s. Just months after my house was torched and I walked away, suddenly these guys come and turn themselves over to you? Cut a deal, go state’s evidence?

  “We had enough on the books to bury every last person in that network. Instead, you tossed Manny in minimum security, accepted a couple low-level pushers in exchange, and let the majority of the crew stay in place.”

  My gaze hardened, I stared at him a long moment before turning my head to face forward, looking down the length of the porch. “I admit it took a long time for me to put it together, but once I did, I felt like an idiot that it hadn’t happened sooner.

  “You were the only one with access to where Mateo and Carlos were being held in witness protection. You knew where the safe house was, because Manny gave it to you when he came in.

  “That’s why I knew not to bother going down to Baja. There was no way anything of value was going to be left behind. You had too much lead time to warn them. Instead, I went off script on you, showed up in Russia, caught them all with their pants down.”

  Again I paused, waiting to see if there was anything he wanted to say to refute me, any explanation he could offer for all of it. No words passed his lips though, in denial or defense. Instead he sat staring out, his features pale, looking much, much older than the man that had walked up ten minutes before.

  “You know the part I can’t for the life of me figure out though? The part that I’ve wrestled with every day since leaving Russia? Why the hell did you have to give them my family? Elizabeth loved you, Alice adored you. Was this house, those paintings on the wall in there, really worth all that?”

  My voice was raised to just below a shout, my face strained as I tried to keep myself rooted in place.

  The last five years had been time spent battling my own emotions. Most of that period was spent trying to suppress them, believing I had nowhere in particular to aim the rage, keeping it locked away for fear it might consume me.

  Two weeks ago that changed. The blind evil that haunted my dreams became real, it developed a face, a name. I had someplace to aim my ire, and I did so. I let it drive me forward, doing the very things I had always feared I might, and feeling all the better for it.

  Now that those things were out of the way, I had only one last emotion left to deal with. While the triggerman and the puppet master had both been cruel monsters so far from home, the lynchpin to all of it, the man that made it possible, was the one sitting right beside me. He had taken and abused my respect, the trust of my family, and invalidated them for his own personal gain.

  If I had anything left inside me, any form of emotion after carrying so much rage for so long, I would have turned my disgust inward. I would have aimed it at myself, thinking that I allowed myself to be duped, that even after all this time I had come to him when things went awry, thinking he was on my side.

  There was no point in that now though. Such a heavy burden had finally been lifted from my shoulders, there was no need to replace it with something that could never be cured.

  Five more minutes and it would all be over. Nothing would ever bring back my family, but at least their memory could be at ease.

  “Was it worth the trouble?” Hutch asked me, his voice thick, the words coming out distorted. I watched as his eyes glazed over and his tongue slid out over his bottom lip, saliva glistening off his chin.

  I leaned forward and put the bottle of whiskey back into the cooler, flipping it closed and standing. Hutch tried to track my movements as I
went, but his weakening form wouldn’t allow it. Pale blue ebbed into his face, his body going rigid as he swayed in place, throat constricting, fighting for air.

  “What trouble?” I asked, leaving him in place on the porch, the lights on the Charger flashing twice as I unlocked it and climbed inside.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  A subset of the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration was headquartered in a squat, boxy building along the Potomac River, its mailing address residing on Army Navy Drive in Arlington, Virginia. On the east wing of the sprawling Department of Justice campus, it had easy access to all DOJ buildings and infrastructure, along with clear sightlines to the Pentagon, the National Mall, even the White House if looking from a high enough floor.

  From the outside, the building looked like a multi-layered cake that had been cut in half. Each floor was drab brown with a thick white divider, windows used only sparingly, a stark contrast to the newer glass structures that seemed to dominate the city.

  Despite the winter chill biting the air, the icy wind whipping up off the river flowing nearby, Richard Rogan, Director of the Administration, had called a ceremony for the front steps of the building. Over his solid black suit with red tie he wore a wool overcoat that came almost to his feet, a red scarf around his neck, black leather gloves on his hands. His meticulously parted hair refused to move even as blustery winds pushed into his face, his cheeks growing pink from the cold.

  Well back from the proceedings, I leaned against a tree, watching the events unfold. My position wouldn’t quite be described as hiding, though I had no interest in stepping forward to partake in the events either. There were too many people around from a past life, the Director included, that I had no intention of ever speaking to again. My presence was to make sure one last thing was taken care before I drifted back into a better version of the life I had a month before, one with far less baggage attached, no dark storm cloud following my every move.