But then there were so many people fleeing the fighting that Kane surely wouldn’t know who was who; he’d probably be waiting there for me, ready to respond to my commands when he finally saw me.
It was then – as I kicked another guy in the balls, threw another to the side – that I started to wonder who else might be outside. Surely the four Russians had a driver? And when everything had kicked off inside – especially the sound of gunshots – would he not have automatically called for back-up?
So who might be out there now?
But – as much as had just happened – I realized that almost no time had passed, perhaps two or three minutes at most. Not enough time for more guys to arrive, surely?
But the driver would be armed, I was sure; would he be there, waiting to take his shot when I ran out?
I was at the door then, and knew that – for better or worse – I would soon find out.
Chapter Six
I heard the scream as I opened the door and raced into the warm night air; saw moments later a fifth Russian – the driver, his car behind him, door open – gun in hand, writhing around on the floor, Kane’s jaws latched around his forearm.
The man’s hand convulsively squeezed the trigger and a young girl running from the bar took the bullet in her calf. She hit the ground hard, her screams mixing with the Russian’s as blood poured from the wound out onto the sidewalk.
Kane bit down harder and the gun dropped from the man’s hand as the screams grew louder.
I was running toward them as the Russian from the bar got there and blasted Kane in the ribs with his heavy boot, before making a grab for the fallen gun.
Kane barely felt the kick but let go of his man’s arm and snapped at the new guy, barking fiercely as the Russian recoiled in fear, his hand now well away from the gun.
He turned just as I got there, and I planted a straight right into his face as we collided, the impact knocking him down and out, his head bouncing off the sidewalk.
Kane, meanwhile, had returned his attentions to the driver, who was now being held down to the ground by his neck. Kane wouldn’t break the skin – well, not too much anyway – but the guy wouldn’t dare move anywhere. He was probably too busy dealing with the pain of his savaged arm to think about escaping, anyway.
I could hear sirens incoming, and knew I didn’t have long to make some decisions. I had time to move one of the two Russians into the car; I could drive while Kane kept an eye on them in the back seat.
The sirens grew louder, and I made my decision. ‘Off,’ I ordered as I grabbed the gun, and Kane dutifully released his hold on the man’s neck. I pulled him to his feet and half-shoved, half-carried him back to his car, opening the rear door and folding him inside. I stepped aside and called for Kane, who jumped in after him.
‘Lie down,’ I told the man, but he looked at me stupidly. Maybe he didn’t understand English, maybe he didn’t want to do as I said, or maybe he was just too scared of Kane – and in too much pain – to process the information. Whatever the reason, I didn’t have time to mess around and so smacked him around the head with the gun, dropping him to the seat cushion.
‘Hold,’ I told Kane, and he once again took the Russian by the neck, pinning him to the rear seat. I could see the man’s eyes go wide with fear and panic – one of the main reasons I’d selected him instead of his friend, who was still lying unconscious in the street.
I slammed the rear door shut and looked toward the man on the sidewalk, wondering for a moment if I should put one in his head. But I wasn’t an executioner, despite the number of people I’d killed over the years; shooting an unconscious man in the head in cold blood just wasn’t my style.
I noticed the fight spilling out of Whitey’s, some of the customers – and maybe some of the staff too – continuing the brawl in the streets. I was pretty sure I saw one of the Russians too, holding his head and walking dazedly out of the front door.
But then I was behind the wheel, shutting the door and – key left by the driver in the ignition – I gunned the engine just as I saw the flash of police lights arriving on the street behind me.
I accelerated off up West Broadway, my prisoner whimpering helplessly in the back. I’d taken this guy over the other for a couple of reasons. First of all, the other guy was unconscious, and I had no idea when – or even if, considering that he’d cracked his head on the concrete sidewalk on the way down – he would wake up. The Russian I had taken was wide awake, however; wide awake and scared out of his wits by Kane, which was my second reason for selecting him. He’d already experienced the pain that Kane’s jaws and teeth could inflict, and he sure as hell wouldn’t want to experience it again. If ever there was a Russian mobster likely to do so, this one would sing like a canary.
I watched in my rearview as two cruisers pulled a left onto the street behind me, wondering what they’d do, how they’d play it. Would both cars stop to deal with the ongoing situation at Whitey’s? Or would one of them choose to pursue the escaping vehicle?
I turned a hard left onto St Casimir Street, and was soon passing Orton Field, floodlights covering the area; and yet I still picked up the other lights in my rearview, those of the cruiser still chasing us.
I checked again, saw that it was only one car. Would others soon follow? It seemed all too likely, and as I pulled the wrong way onto Flaherty Way – the traffic was light at this time of night, but I was still forced to weave in and out of the odd oncoming vehicle – I considered my options.
If I was stopped, things wouldn’t look good – I had a gun, and what would certainly look like a kidnap victim in the back of my car. Sentences were stiff for crimes like that, and I didn’t fancy spending the rest of my life in a federal penitentiary. But if it came to resisting arrest, I wasn’t willing to use lethal force either; not on innocent cops, anyway. So I had to get out of there without being stopped, one way or another.
I knew the South Boston Bypass was close by, and wondered if I could get there and lose the tail; but at the same time I knew that other cops could block me off, and quickly discounted it.
I went through a mental map of the area, drawn up from my walks around the place over the past few days, and remembered that there was a major transport hub – the Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority – just around the corner, and decided on that as my target.
There would be huge parking lots there, plenty of vehicles and buildings to get lost in, and plenty of onward transport options to get the hell out of there.
I figured I might even have the chance to ask the Russian a few questions first.
Chapter Seven
The cops were still on my tail as I took another left, onto the bypass. There still only appeared to be one car back there, but I didn’t know if there were others en route.
I was being held up by a couple of cars in front, but with the oncoming traffic I couldn’t get past them. I saw an overpass ahead of us, Dorchester Avenue passing over the bypass, and then I looked into my rearview and saw one of the cops leaning out of the passenger side window with a shotgun aimed at my car.
What the hell?
Before I could swerve anywhere, I heard the boom of the shotgun – once, twice – and then felt the tug on my car as a tire was blown out and the vehicle started to fishtail all over the road.
I was pulled into the opposite lane, right into the path of a hatchback doing fifty; the driver tried to dodge me, but didn’t quite make it, sideswiping my front fender and sending me into a wild spin.
Dazed and hurt, I felt a second impact as another – unseen, unknown – vehicle hit us, and my car smashed straight through the concrete base and chain link fence at the side of the bypass, crashing into the graffiti covered, ten-foot-high wall beyond.
The airbag went off as we smashed through the barrier, and although it protected me from that initial impact, it had deflated by the time we reached the wall, and my face bounced off the steering wheel. I felt my nose break, but that was nothing new; over the y
ears, I’d lost count of the number of times I’d broken it. It still hurt like a sonofabitch though, and – as steam rose from the engine block ahead of me – I struggled to stay conscious.
In my daze, I hoped that Kane was okay; and then I wondered if he might have accidentally bitten through the Russian’s neck during the crash.
I turned in my seat, my own neck aching, to take a look. The Russian was out of it; not being strapped in, he’d flown all over the rear compartment and I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.
One of the rear doors was open, and Kane was hanging half-in and half-out of the car. For a second I thought he was dead, but then I realized he was moving – whining, but moving – and I felt an overwhelming happiness, at least for a moment.
But then the other rear door of the car was ripped open and I saw a blue uniform standing there, shotgun in his hands.
And as I looked on, the shotgun boomed again and the Russian’s head exploded across the leather upholstery of the rear seats, blood and brain matter sprayed everywhere.
I turned further in my seat, and felt my eyes widen in sudden fear as the shotgun turned to me.
Shit. What sort of cops were these?
And what the hell was I going to do now?
Chapter Eight
The cop had moved now, was aiming through the broken window of my door with his shotgun pointed in my face.
‘Hey, fucker,’ he said with a smile. ‘Get out of the car. We need to talk.’
I processed what was happening, educated guesswork born from years of experience. The guy was on the take, probably from the Russian mob; he hadn’t been responding to a call from the police, but from the gangsters. Maybe the driver had called home when the gunshots had started, and the bosses had called their men on the Boston PD, checked who they had in the area.
The bosses must have told the cops to kill the driver, probably in case he’d told me anything in the car.
Shit. I wondered what he’d known that was worth killing him for? A little while longer and I might have found out.
The fact that I’d not already had my head blown off indicated that there were people still interested in who I was, who I worked for; and until those questions were answered, I was still valuable.
I was still going through plans of action in my muddled brain when I heard the other cop shouting over from the other car. ‘Tommy!’ the voice yelled. ‘Look out!’
I turned further, saw that Kane was gone from the doorway; and the next moment was filled with the most terrifying screams I’d heard in a long time, as Kane emerged on the other side of the car, biting his sharp teeth deep into the cop’s lower leg.
Pistol shots rang out, and I knew the cop’s partner must be shooting at Kane; and despite the dull fog I still felt shrouding my mind, I reached out and pulled Kane back inside the cabin, shielding him from the pistol fire.
At the same time, I reached over and grasped the cop’s wrist, banging it against the dashboard and forcing him to drop his weapon; and then I dropped my other hand into the passenger foot well – where my own gun had fallen during the crash – and turned back to the cop, ready to fire.
But I was too late – Kane was already at the guy’s throat, and this time he wasn’t worried about being gentle; with the savage ferocity of the born predator, he tore it open with his razor-sharp teeth, blood covering his fur as he ripped out the flesh and cartilage from the cop’s neck.
A plan emerged in my mind and Kane – once again reading my thoughts – left the cop for dead, body hanging limp from the car doorway, and burst away from the vehicle, racing off down the narrow alley toward the underpass.
I knew the other cop would be tracking him and – sure enough – I heard the sound of gunshots moments later. At the same time, I emerged from the car – my body bruised and battered, but mercifully still functioning – and aimed my own handgun at the second cop, still by his cruiser and momentarily distracted by Kane.
He saw me emerge but he was too late to respond; before he could address the new threat, I’d fired a shot of my own, which caught him flush in the left shoulder. It wasn’t the same arm that held the gun, but it was the only side I could see and it did the job anyway; the cop dropped his weapon due to the shock and pain of the gunshot and fell to his knees, mouth wide open.
Keeping my gun aimed at him, I limped over to his pain-wracked body and pulled him to his feet, placing the barrel to his head.
Kane waited by the underpass, whining softly for me to follow. And I did; Kane knew what I wanted to do, and was helping to direct me to a suitable place.
‘Come on,’ I said to the cop as I manhandled him down the alleyway. ‘You and I need to talk.’
With the Russian dead, it was possible that this cop might just do instead; I had questions, and I was going to get answers, one way or another.
Chapter Nine
‘They’ll kill me if I tell you anything,’ the cop said as Kane sat watching him, panting just inches from his sweat-soaked face.
‘I’ll kill you if you don’t talk,’ I advised him, placing my thumb into the gunshot wound in his shoulder and squeezing gently.
The cop screamed, but shook his head vigorously at the same time. I released the pressure, and he gasped for air, panting like Kane. ‘Not like them you won’t,’ he said when he’d come round from the pain, and I could see genuine fear in his eyes. ‘They’d kill me, my family too. Rape my wife, my daughter, they told me, they . . .’
He looked like he was going to be sick, and I pulled away for a moment. To be fair, I couldn’t compete with that. I might have killed him – he was a dirty cop after all – but I would leave his family well alone. What kind of people was I dealing with here? Threats of sexual violence against female family members seemed to be a common tactic, which was pretty low. Effective though, I supposed.
We were holed up in a big warehouse a few blocks from the scene of our crash, across the massive set of tracks that ran through the MBTA terminal. There was the danger of being caught – we were barely half a mile away from Croke Park Whitey’s after all – but this entire area was so full of warehouses, transport depots and service buildings that it would take days to check them all, so I felt fairly safe for the time being.
But now I had to figure out how to get this guy to talk. Kane was snarling right next to him, saliva dripping from his razor-sharp teeth, and still the cop didn’t look ready to cooperate; the Russians must have really shaken him up.
Still – despite his fear of what the Russians might do to him or his family, if they found out – I guessed that the actual experience of pain, right here and right now, might break him out of that mindset.
‘Last chance,’ I said to him. ‘I want you to think about it carefully. I’m not messing around here.’
‘No,’ he whispered, still shaking his head. ‘No . . . I can’t . . .’
‘That’s too bad,’ I said, shaking my own head. ‘For you.’
I turned to Kane, and nodded once.
It didn’t take long, given the right motivation; Kane hadn’t even had to get further than the right hand for the cop to start talking, in between his cries of pain and gasps of misery.
He was a tough sonofabitch, I’d give him that; my manipulations of his shoulder wound had made him scream and beg for mercy, but hadn’t been enough to get any information from him. Kane’s teeth were a different story altogether though, and I supposed it was just the reptilian hindbrain, that part of us that is sheer instinct, that makes animal attacks so terrifying, so hard for the psyche to handle. It’s a ferocious savagery that no sane person ever wants to experience.
I wasn’t a big fan of torture, but I had to admit that it had its place if you wanted quick results; and with the cops and the Russian mob probably combing the area for us right now, quick results were what I needed.
And – although he might be a cop – he was hardly an innocent man. I’d seen him. He’d taken mob money, and had been willing to kill on their say-
so. He’d made his bed, and now he had to lie in it.
‘Who pays you?’ I asked.
‘Andrei,’ he gasped through the pain. ‘I think his last name’s Belinsky, Andrei Belinsky.’
‘That’s your contact?’
‘Yeah.’ He coughed, and I checked for blood; there wasn’t any, which was a good sign.
‘What’s the name of the gang?’
‘I don’t know, it’s got a Russian name, like Kruk-something, I can’t pronounce it.’
‘And what’s Andrei’s position?’
‘His position?’ he asked, confused.
‘In the organization,’ I explained.
‘I don’t know, I’m just a street cop, okay? I don’t know what his rank is, or whatever, I just know that’s . . .’ He coughed again, harder, and the spasm caused blood to pulse out if the wounds in his shoulder and hand. I’d bandaged the bullet wound, but the hand was still bleeding freely, to act as a reminder to keep talking. ‘That’s who pays me off,’ he continued finally, eyeing Kane nervously, ‘gives me jobs.’
‘Who does Andrei report to?’ I asked next.
‘I don’t know who he speaks to,’ the cop said, ‘but the main guy, the head of the group that’s working here, that’s a guy called Konstantin Kozlov, nicknamed the Ovcharka – don’t ask me why, but that’s what people call him – but the rumor is he’s tied in to the main families operating out of Little Odessa in New York, a trusted lieutenant kind of thing. Nobody wants to fuck with him here, believe me. Got a coupla sons working Southie too, Pyotr and Grigory, like underbosses.’
‘You ever meet them?’
The cop almost laughed. ‘Nah man, nobody meets them, I’ve just heard their names mentioned, on the streets and back at the PD. And before you ask, I don’t know where they operate out of, or anything else. I just speak to Andrei.’
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR CONTRACT: Colt Ryder Is Back In His Most Explosive Adventure Yet! Page 5
