THE THOUSAND DOLLAR CONTRACT: Colt Ryder Is Back In His Most Explosive Adventure Yet!

by J. T. Brannan

  When I was satisfied that there weren’t any, I carefully – and very slowly – got to my knees, checking the area for surveillance once more.

  When I decided it was clear, I moved toward the first open window, shotgun at the ready.

  I peered in, the weapon’s barrel aimed inside at anything that might move; but there was nothing to see, no movement at all. It was dark, but I thought it might be a changing room of some kind; there were rows of what looked like metal lockers, bordered by wooden benches.

  I exhaled slowly, took one last look around the rooftop, and then – leading with the barrel – I climbed inside the second floor window of the Russian bath house.

  I could only pray that I wouldn’t be shot as soon as entered.

  Chapter Three

  I braced myself for action as the toe of my first boot touched down on the tiled floor, my finger hovering near the shotgun’s trigger; but nothing happened, and a moment later I was fully inside.

  The moment I was in, I rolled across the floor in a tight crouch – to avoid being shot by someone hiding – and came up into a firing position on one knee, scanning the dark room over the barrel of my shotgun, sweeping from one side to another.

  It was clear, and I relaxed; not completely, but slightly, and I stood up and took in the room properly. It was, as I’d guessed, a changing room. An archway led to showers and toilets – also darkened – and from the absence of urinals and the presence of sanitary waste bins, it looked like this was the female changing room.

  That made sense – if this place was open after-hours for the Russian mob, then there wouldn’t be any female clients here. Women’s rights hadn’t reached very far in the Russian underworld, and anyone meeting here would be male.

  I approached a door that presumably led to a hallway beyond, pausing as I reached it, ear close to the wood, listening to anything that might be there. Only a small amount of light came through the cracks of the doorframe, not enough to be from the hallway on the other side and so more likely from a room further down, perhaps the male changing rooms.

  I nudged the door open, and saw there was indeed a hallway there; and a light came from a room on the other side, a little further down. I could hear the murmur of voices coming from inside, what sounded like two men talking quietly.

  I left the protection of the changing room and crept down the dark hallway toward the light, shotgun at the ready. As I came closer, I could hear that the men were speaking in Russian.

  I reached the open door and, keeping my body out of the way, I craned my neck in a little to see if I could look through the crack where the door met the door frame.

  I’d been right, this was the male changing room, and I could see the vague outline of one man toweling himself off as he chatted to someone on a bench opposite who remained out of sight.

  There didn’t seem to be weapons nearby – although I couldn’t be sure – and I wondered about my next course of action.

  I didn’t know the layout of this place, wasn’t sure how many rooms there were, or where they were; should I continue to creep about the place and build up a picture? On the other hand, here were two half-naked unarmed men that I could potentially question right now; the shotgun would surely loosen their tongues a little.

  Then again, if either man screamed for help, that would be it; their friends would come running, and I’d have to make a tactical withdrawal if I was interested in staying in one piece.

  I quickly pulled away and reconnoitered the rest of the hallway; there were other rooms – all unoccupied – and a stairwell at one end that led downstairs. Again, I could hear muffled voices from down there – not from right at the bottom, but perhaps from inside other rooms, behind other doors.

  As far as these guys upstairs were concerned though, they were on their own.

  And it was time for me to take advantage of that.

  ‘Dobriy vecher,’ I said with a smile as I strode into the changing room, shotgun levelled at the two men ahead of me.

  The one who I’d seen toweling off was now halfway through pulling his pants on, and he stopped dead on one leg, surprise and then anger flashing across his eyes. I was disappointed not to see fear, but there was none.

  The second man – older and fatter than the first – was sitting naked on a bench, gold chains hanging down a chest thick with hair.

  He regarded me coolly, as if I was an interesting diversion rather than any sort of threat to him.

  The first guy, on the other hand, was going to do something; I saw his eyes flicker across to a heap of clothes on the bench, knew that there must be a weapon there.

  And then, with one more look of vehement anger thrown my way, he dropped his pants and lunged for it.

  Not wanting to alert the rest of the building with a blast from my shotgun, I’d been resting the barrel on the Benchmade folder that I was carrying in my hand; and as the Russian moved, I stepped in and whipped that hand out from under the barrel, sending the knife spinning across the room.

  It caught the man in his bare chest, the short but sharp blade penetrating the breast bone and hitting vital organs; he let out a last, vital gasp and fell to the tiles, which became slick with his blood.

  I immediately switched my attention back to the older guy who looked at me and smiled, raising his hands in surrender.

  ‘American?’ he asked with only a hint of an accent, and I nodded. ‘Figures,’ he said. ‘Your Russian stinks.’

  ‘But my aim doesn’t,’ I replied, indicating the dead body of his friend on the floor.

  ‘Apparently not,’ he said, and I wondered how the guy was so cool; normally it was only people with vast amounts of experience or absolute lunatics who wouldn’t be at least a little rocked by seeing a friend killed right in front of them.

  Surely I couldn’t have stumbled onto the Ovcharka already?

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  The man smiled. ‘Nobody for you to worry about,’ he said. ‘Whoever you are.’

  ‘Okay, that’s great,’ I said. ‘But who are you?’

  ‘A friend of these people, that is all. A local businessman.’

  ‘Any relation to Oksana?’ I asked suddenly, remembering the name of the place, and the man smiled back at me.

  ‘She is my wife,’ he said, and I sighed; that ruled out my hope of finding the Ovcharka so early.

  So the guy owned the place, or at least his wife did. ‘She around?’ I asked.

  ‘She died,’ he replied, ‘several years ago now. I keep the place running in her memory.’

  ‘And your guests?’

  The guy shrugged. ‘What am I going to do? Kick them out?’ He shook his head and tutted, wagging a finger at me. ‘No, no, no, you know better than that. You do not say ‘no’ to these people. Never, not if you want your business to avoid being burned to the ground. Not if you want to live.’ He turned, spat on the body of the man who lay dead on the floor. ‘I shed no tears for him, for any of them. They are scum, but what can I do?’ He shrugged again. ‘They like it here, and they pay well. We all have bills to pay.’

  ‘You’re very relaxed for a man with a shotgun pointed at him,’ I commented, still curious as to why.

  ‘I’ve seen all sorts in here with these people,’ the man said sadly. ‘And I was in Afghanistan,’ he added, ‘the first time.’

  I nodded my head in understanding; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 1980s was a real shit storm, a horrible little war that had quickly gone very wrong for the Red Army. He’d probably seen some horrible things in his time, and those sorts of experiences tended to change your whole outlook on life. His calm demeanor started to become slightly more understandable.

  ‘Is Andrei here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the old man said. ‘Downstairs, in the steam room.’

  ‘How many others?’

  ‘Four comrades with him in the room, two more keeping guard outside with automatic weapons.’

  That made eight, including the d
ead guy, and there were three big cars outside. Three in one, two in the other; it could work out, but I wasn’t sure that the old man was telling the truth.

  ‘You sure about that?’ I asked him.

  He laughed in response, a hearty laugh that made his jowls ripple. ‘I am quite sure. You see, I do not care if you kill them all, why would I lie? I would like it, even. But I do not think it will happen,’ he said, brow furrowed.

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘It is simple arithmetic,’ he explained. ‘There are seven of them, and only one of you.’

  ‘But only two of them are armed,’ I countered. ‘The rest of them are sitting in the steam room with nothing but their dicks in their hands.’

  ‘That may be so,’ he said, ‘but never underestimate a naked man.’

  His eyes glanced over my shoulder and I tried to turn, but it was too late – I felt the barrel of a gun being held to the back of my head, heard the hammer being pulled back.

  The showers! How had I been so stupid? This changing room had an archway just like its female counterpart across the hall, and I’d not checked the showers and toilet stalls beyond. And more than that, I ‘d let this old guy distract me enough to miss the signals from the man that must have been hiding there.

  I could make out the vague naked form of the guy with the gun with my peripheral vision, could now hear the droplets of water from his shower-slick body as they hit the tiled floor.

  He exchanged words with the older man in Russian, and the bath house owner then looked at me earnestly. ‘I suggest you put your weapon down,’ he said and – finally – I did.

  As soon as the shotgun barrel was lowered, the old guy whipped his hand across to the pile of clothes next to him, pulling out the snub-nosed revolver his dead colleague had been reaching for.

  ‘You sure you’re just a businessman?’ I asked.

  The old man smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just a humble administrator. But it pays to do business with the right people, yes?’

  I nodded my head. ‘I guess so,’ I allowed.

  ‘Well, I suppose this works out well for everyone,’ he said as the cold steel of his comrade’s handgun remained glued to the back of my head. ‘You wanted to meet Andrei, and now’s your chance. Let’s go and see him.’

  Chapter Four

  I was steered through the bath house complex by my two new pals – who’d at least had the decency to cover themselves with towels, wrapped around their waists – and soon arrived downstairs, in the lounge outside the steam room.

  True to the old guy’s word, there were two men waiting on guard duty, armed with automatic weapons. I wondered if that meant there were genuinely five people inside the steam room too. I was all but unarmed myself now – my shotgun and pistols had all been confiscated, and my Benchmade folder was still sticking out of the chest of the guy upstairs. The only thing I had left was the punch-dagger in my belt.

  However, I had to try and look on the bright side – as Oksana’s husband had said, I’d wanted to meet Andrei, and now was my chance. It would save me having to creep through the building and just hoping for the best, anyway.

  The men with the automatic weapons – Czech-made Škorpion vz. 61 machine pistols, wicked-looking little things – swiveled toward me, their guns aimed at my chest, and the one on the right blurted out a slew of rapid-fire Russian, to which the bath house owner responded with a burst of his own.

  The guy on the left nodded his head and opened the room to the steam bath, ducking inside and closing the door behind him. I heard muffled conversation from behind the door, and then the man reappeared, drenched in sweat.

  He spoke to the owner, who then turned to me and smiled. ‘Andrei is glad you have shown up, one way or another,’ he said. ‘And he would very much like to meet you.’

  ‘Good,’ I replied jovially. ‘I’m looking forward to it myself.’

  ‘But it is very hot in there,’ the old man said. ‘He suggests that you remove your clothes. So strip.’

  Damn, I thought as I started to undress. There goes my last weapon.

  For a moment – as my hand rested on the belt buckle prior to taking it off – I wondered what my chances would be if I pulled the dagger now.

  I’d get at least two of them for sure; but they were too far away from each other to guarantee getting all four, and some of the bullets that would be fired during the fight would be certain to hit me.

  No, if I’d wanted to do something, I should have done it earlier, when there were just two of them; I’d lost my chance.

  Finally, I stood there in just my birthday suit, and the old man nodded. ‘Okay. Good.’ He shrugged. ‘You will forgive me, of course. As I told you before, I am just a humble businessman; and while you are a new customer, they are valued, long-term clients. And let’s not forget the math – there are more of them than there are of you. And you no longer have any weapons.’

  I shrugged my shoulders too. ‘I understand completely,’ I told him; and I did, too. Who in their right mind would cross the Russian mafia?

  He was wrong about one thing, though; I wasn’t unarmed.

  Because I’d spent most of my life turning my entire body into a weapon.

  I was escorted into the steam bath by one of the armed guards, who then withdrew, closing the door behind me.

  The air was thick with steam and it was hard to see, but I could make out the vague outlines of – it looked like the owner hadn’t been lying – five men sat on benches that lined the tiled walls.

  ‘Welcome to the schvitz,’ said the man in the middle, ‘Mr. . . .’

  ‘Doe,’ I said. ‘John Doe.’

  ‘Figures,’ said the man with a rough laugh. ‘That’s what’s gonna be on your tag in the morgue, right?’

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed. ‘When I finally get there.’

  I was edging closer and closer, and could make out some details now. The man who had been talking was tall even while sat down, and I guessed that he must have been six four or five. He was broad too, with a long scar line running through the dark hair of his chest. His features were rough but handsome, his wet hair matted over a thick forehead, above a nose which had been broken more than once.

  He commanded attention, the type of man who was used to leading, and used to having people do as he said, without question.

  ‘Well, Mr. Doe, my name is Belinsky. Andrei Belinsky. But I guess that sonofabitch cop that’s gone missing probably told you that, right?’ He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter though. Doesn’t matter at all. We’ll find him, and his family. If you’re still alive by then, I’ll get my boys to take some pictures, show them to you.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like that, Mr. Doe?’

  ‘Depends how good the photographer is,’ I replied.

  Andrei chuckled. ‘I don’t suppose it matters anyway though. The chances of you still being alive by then are zero, my friend.’

  ‘You planning on taking your time tracking them down?’ I asked, playing for time, trying to assess the other four men, see if they had weapons of some kind.

  ‘Cute,’ Andrei said. ‘Very cute, Mr. Doe. But I think you know what I meant – it is not that they will take long to track down, it is that you will be quick to die.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very friendly.’

  Andrei chuckled again. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Doe, you won’t be killed quite yet. We need some answers first. I was going to take you somewhere else, a more . . . shall we say, private, venue? But now you have decided to turn up all by yourself and catch me unawares, I think we should have our little talk right here. What do you think?’

  ‘Great idea,’ I said. ‘I could so with a little schvitzing.’

  Again, the chuckle. ‘You are a funny man, Mr. Doe. It will be a shame when you are lying there on the floor, your bones broken, your organs bleeding inside your shattered body. It will be a shame when, instead of jokes, you are reduced to begging for mercy instead.’

  I looked around the room. ‘So how�
�s this going to work?’ I asked.

  ‘Straight to business, eh?’ he said. ‘I like that. Well, I’ll tell you what is going to happen. On my right,’ he said, gesturing with an open hand, ‘we have Sergei and Vladimir. Sergei is a sambo specialist, an expert in breaking arms and legs in a variety of interesting and artistic ways. He was on the Russian national squad for many years, before he killed a man in a contest and was forced to flee the country. Vladimir is a weightlifter and freestyle wrestler; not quite Olympic level perhaps, but close; and he’s been learning a lot from his friend Sergei there, too. He’s had special dentures made to make his biting more effective, which I am sure you will soon experience for yourself.’

  At that, Vladimir smiled, showing a horrifying set of metal teeth. Both of the wrestlers were thickly muscled, heavyset men; they looked as if they could bend iron bars in half and lift elephants above their heads, real circus strongmen. Sergei even had the handlebar moustache to go with it.

  ‘And on my left,’ Andrei continued, gesturing to the men at the other side, ‘we have Nikolai and Mikhail. Now, these two have different specialties. Nikolai is a boxer – an almost perfect record as an amateur, and a completely perfect record in his bare knuckle, underground fights, of which he has had . . . Nikolai?’

  ‘Six hundred and fourteen,’ the man grunted, and – looking at his gnarled face and sinewy muscles – I believed him. He was like one of those prize fighters from the turn of the last century, a product of a hard upbringing and a hellish life.

  ‘Six hundred and fourteen,’ Andrei confirmed. ‘Mikhail there, he’s into taekwondo, a sixth degree black belt. He will literally kick anything, he loves it. I once watched him kick through a plate-glass window rated for a fifty caliber bullet. Can you believe that shit? Son of a bitch is accurate too. Does this demonstration where one guy sits on the shoulders of someone else, holds up a razor sharp samurai sword with a little apple perched on the end. Does a turning jump kick – blindfolded, I shit you not – and kicks the apple right off.’