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

by J. T. Brannan

  It was a no-brainer really and – as the broad-chested mobster started back up the stairs – I turned to follow him.

  We emerged back into the bright sunshine of Jamaica Plain, the Russian with a minute’s head-start on me. I hadn’t wanted to stop what I was doing and charge out after the guy, as that would definitely have alerted the clerk.

  Instead, I strolled back past the guy and gave him some spiel about getting to an appointment, but I’d liked what I’d seen and would be back later to choose something.

  Maybe he believed me and maybe he didn’t, but it was better than just jogging out after my target without saying a word.

  When I got up to street level and out the front door though, I began to regret my decision. The Russian was already clambering into the back of a black sedan – not a Mercedes this time but a Cadillac STS – and before I could think what to do, the car was pulling out into the traffic on Washington Street.

  Luckily for me, Kane – who’d been waiting patiently by a bench on the other side of the road – saw me come out of the video store, saw the man and the car I was tracking, and made his decision quicker than I did. With a burst of speed, he took off after the big sedan in pursuit.

  Damn, that boy was good. I didn’t know what his chances were of keeping up with the car all the way to its destination, but he was fit and determined, and would have one hell of a better chance on foot than I would.

  I just had to hope that they didn’t see him and shoot him.

  I watched Kane chasing the Cadillac down Washington, wondering what to do now. I’d previously wondered if the video store might be some sort of base of operations, possibly housing a hidden sub-basement; but from what I’d seen, it was just a message drop-off and collection point. It didn’t seem to be protected as such, although I didn’t know if the building was being watched. I thought it unlikely though, a waste of resources.

  I checked my watch, saw that I still had most of the afternoon before my meeting with Christine Cooper, and decided to pay the Video Vault another visit.

  Chapter Three

  ‘That was quick,’ said the Russian clerk as I came back down the stairs. He looked nervous to see me, eyes flicking to the telephone on his desk. Had he called someone about me, was there a bus-load of Russian goons on their way here to deal with me?

  ‘Last-minute cancellation,’ I said, making my way over to the counter.

  I stood to one side as a customer approached, arms full of DVDs, and dumped them on the countertop. The clerk started ringing them through, eyes flitting across to check on me every few seconds.

  After a couple of minutes, he was done, and the customer left the store with a carrier bag full of movies. That, I figured, was a guy who wouldn’t be bored for a while.

  ‘You okay there?’ the clerk asked me. ‘You need some more help?’

  I looked around the basement, saw perhaps a dozen people strolling the aisles, none of them showing us any interest whatsoever.

  ‘I’m after something a little bit more special,’ I told the clerk.

  ‘You didn’t see anything you liked?’ he asked, wariness in his voice.

  ‘Not over there, no,’ I said, gesturing to the shelves with the Russian movies.

  ‘Somewhere else then?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Somewhere else.’ I leaned in, pointed to the far side of the counter. ‘Underneath there,’ I said. ‘The disc that man just brought back a couple of minutes ago. That’s what I would like.’

  Panic spread across his face, and his hand reached for something under the desk. I guessed it wasn’t the DVD he was going for, and I reacted quickly, leaning in further and clamping my hand down on his wrist, stopping him from getting whatever it was he was after.

  A weapon or a silent alarm were the most likely options, neither of which would have been good; and as I gripped his wrist, he looked into my eyes with a mixture of fear and defiance. I wondered which way he was going to go.

  With my other hand, I pulled my shirt to one side to show him one of the handguns in my belt, and shook my head. ‘Keep cool,’ I said. ‘Whatever else you think might happen, I will shoot you if you try anything.’

  ‘Okay,’ he breathed nervously. ‘Okay.’ He looked around the store for help, but nobody was watching.

  ‘Now I want you to reach back under that counter with two fingers – two fingers only, no thumb – and grab hold of that DVD, pass it over to me.’ I looked back down at my belt, at the gun. ‘And make sure you don’t touch anything else.’

  The Russian nodded his head and did as I asked, index and middle finger gripping hold of the disc and pulling it out from the shelf under the counter. He placed it on the top and looked at me, shaking his head. ‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, my friend,’ he whispered. ‘You’re dead, you’re a fucking dead man.’

  ‘People have said that before,’ I said, pocketing the disc. ‘Nobody’s been right yet.’

  The clerk laughed. ‘There’s a first time for everything, mudak,’ he hissed. ‘And you just crossed the wrong people.’

  ‘You have more of these?’ I asked, still holding onto his wrist while nodding at the DVD. ‘Special movies like that one, made for your friends?’

  A customer came towards the desk but saw my hand on the clerk’s wrist, the intensity of our body language, and moved away, heading back upstairs. Would he call the cops? Or tell the other clerk? And if so, would that clerk call his mob contacts? Either way, I couldn’t afford to spend much more time here.

  I noticed a door behind the counter then, painted to blend in with the wall. ‘Store room?’ I asked, but the Russian just shrugged his shoulders and kept staring at me.

  ‘Get back,’ I directed, pulling Pavel’s snub-nosed revolver from under my shirt, keeping it low and out of sight as I pointed it at the clerk.

  I moved around the desk as he moved back, and I gestured at the door. ‘Through there,’ I ordered, and the clerk pushed through into the back room, my gun trained on him as I followed.

  I was half-expecting to find a room crowded with Russian mafia thugs, ready and waiting for me with weapons drawn. I’d supposed that this wasn’t their hub of operations, but I’d been wrong before, and I started to wish that I’d found some way of bringing in that Škorpion machine pistol with me.

  But when the door opened, I saw that it was just a storeroom, stocked with shelves of discs, empty cartons and packaging strewn across the narrow floor space.

  I followed him in and shut the door behind us. ‘So,’ I said, ‘where are they?’

  ‘Where are what?’ the man asked contemptuously.

  I sighed, made sure he could see the gun pointing at him; then thought of a better idea, put the gun away, and pulled out a four-inch Fällkniven hunting knife instead, moving it so that the blade reflected the fluorescent light above us.

  ‘Please,’ I said as his eyes grew wider at the sight of the knife, ‘don’t fuck with me.’

  For all their efficiency and killing power, guns were still only second rate for intimidation; it was amazing how motivating the sight of a wicked steel blade could be. There is something about imagining that blade penetrating the human body that causes a deep-seated, instinctual fear response. It made sense, I supposed; humans have been stabbing each other for thousands of years, while we’ve only been shooting each other for a fraction of that time. The fear of sharp tools is probably as ingrained as our fear of snakes and heights. Probably has something to do with the age-old predators’ weapons of teeth and claws, too – things that penetrate, rip, tear and shred. Any way you look at it, firearms have a long way to go before they’ll catch up with knives, as far as our subconscious is concerned.

  ‘Where are they?’ I asked again.

  The clerk looked at the knife, up to my unforgiving eyes, then back to the knife.

  ‘I don’t have any more,’ he said earnestly. ‘Only the one in your pocket. They don’t stay here long, someone brings them in, then – normall
y very quickly, within an hour or two – someone else comes and picks them up. We don’t store any of them here.’

  I sighed; it made sense, I supposed. And yet I’d hoped that I would find a mob library, an archive of orders and instructions from the mafia’s top brass.

  ‘What’s on them?’ I asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ the clerk said, and I twisted the knife in the light as I edged closer, the reflection bringing his attention back to the blade. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, hands up in surrender. ‘I know that this is the way orders and information is sent between different levels in the gang, but nothing else, I don’t know specifics, I don’t watch them, don’t listen to them. I’m just the middleman, trust me. Why would I want to see something I’m not supposed to see, hear something I’m not supposed to hear? I keep my nose out of their business, and they pay me well.’

  I considered things for a moment. He was probably telling me the truth, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be of any further use. ‘So you deal with these people on a regular basis,’ I said, stating it as fact. ‘You know some of these people by sight, yes?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You know their names?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Get a pen and paper,’ I told him, watching carefully as he rooted through some of the refuse on the floor. Eventually he found a scrap of plain wrapping paper and a stubby pencil.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Now write down the name of everyone you know that’s connected to this gang, starting with Konstantin Kozlov and his two boys and working your way on down.’

  ‘I do not know many names,’ he said.

  ‘Bullshit,’ I fired back, having noticed how his eyes had widened at the reference to Kozlov. ‘You know the Ovcharka for one, don’t you?’ Again, I saw the fear in his eyes at the mention of the gang lord’s name. I twirled the knife closer to him, near his face. ‘So you can start by telling me the name of his gang. If you get it right, I won’t cut you. Lie to me . . .’

  I let the threat hang in the air. Of course, I had no way of knowing for sure if his answer would be truthful, but I was something of an expert in body language and would be able to pick up on the signals if he was lying.

  He looked up at the ceiling, struggling with a decision, then looked back at me. ‘It is called the Kryukovskaya Bratva,’ he told me. ‘The Kryukovo Brotherhood, after the district in Moscow where the Ovcharka was born.’

  I looked at him, searching his features; as far as I could tell, it was the truth. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Good enough.’ I gestured at the paper in his hands. ‘Now get writing.’

  Chapter Four

  A few minutes later, he handed me the notes. I took a look at the list of names; they meant nothing to me, but they might come in handy in the future.

  The clerk had been sat writing on the floor, and looked up at me with hooded eyes. ‘You working for Quinn?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Who’s Quinn?’ I asked.

  The clerk laughed. ‘You know who Quinn is,’ he said. ‘Everyone around here knows Quinn.’

  ‘Let’s say I’m not from round here,’ I said.

  ‘Mickey Quinn,’ the man explained, ‘is the head of the Irish mob here, the Quinn gang. I thought they must be moving in on the Ovcharka.’

  ‘I thought they’d moved on?’ I said, but the clerk just shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said. ‘But knowing Mickey Quinn, I doubt they’re going to let us just muscle in on all of their action. If they’ve been quiet, it’s for a reason.’ He looked at me again. ‘You sure you’re not working for them?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Get up.’

  ‘Then who are you working for?’ he persisted.

  ‘Let’s just say that I’m a concerned citizen, okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the clerk said, ‘whatever, man. Whatever.’

  Slowly, he got to his feet. I was about to crack him around the head with the hilt of the knife when another question occurred to me. ‘Where do the Quinn boys operate?’ I asked.

  ‘South Boston,’ he said with a look of surprise, as if wondering how I didn’t know. ‘Like all the Irish bastards.’

  ‘They’re still there?’ I asked, thinking back to what Gerry had told me.

  ‘They’ll always be there,’ the clerk said with half a smile, ‘like flies round shit, yes? Kozlov and his boys might be the heavy hitters there now, but the Irish will do something about it before long, you mark my words. The muscle end of their business has been affected by the police and the FBI, sure; they’ve got nobody who could go up against us, gun for gun. But Quinn’s a crafty little suka.’

  I nodded my head as I thought about what he’d said; brought the hilt of my knife across into his temple a split-second later, knocking him unconscious to the storeroom floor.

  I pocketed the notes and put the knife away, turning back to the door that led to the movie store.

  Checking that the disc was in my pocket, I pulled open the door to leave; but when I did, I was confronted by the clerk from upstairs. There was panic on his face, and a .357 Magnum in his hands.

  I immediately launched myself forward, deflecting the gun with the edge of my forearm; he pulled the trigger as I made contact, the powerful round blasting a hole in the wall, the sound deafening.

  At almost the same time as I deflected the weapon, I struck him in the face with my open palm; and after the strike, my fingers grasped his bearded face like a claw, ramming him hard back into the counter behind him. His spine struck the hard edge and he gasped, dropping the revolver.

  I stamped down on one of his feet with the heel of my boot, then drove my elbow into his face. I heard a cheekbone crack, and saw his eyes roll up into his head.

  I pulled back and watched as his unconscious body slipped to the floor. He wasn’t a fighter, just some poor dumb guy who’d gotten in over his head.

  I picked up the gun and kept hold of it; you could never have too many weapons. You never knew when they might come in handy.

  Some of the customers had seen the incident, and were busy running for the hills; or at least the stairs, anyway. I started to head that way myself, then thought better of it. What if a group of hitmen were already on their way here?

  Instead, I jumped over the counter and headed over toward the far wall, where the first of the fire exits I’d seen from outside was located.

  I heard commotion coming from upstairs, shouts from customers leaving and – I was pretty sure – shouts of Russians heading for the stairwell.

  I didn’t know what was waiting for me in the parking lot outside, but I figured I’d take my chances.

  Magnum in my hand, I ripped the door open, ready to face whatever was out there.

  I felt the impact of the fire door hitting something as I threw it open; saw, instants later, that it was man in a dark suit with a MAC-10 machine pistol. Saw, moments after that, two more men with similar weapons right in front of me, two more men at an Escalade parked in the lot behind them.

  I reacted even as I was still processing the information, firing with the big Magnum at the guy nearest to me; he took the slug in the chest and crumpled to the concrete. I whipped the revolver a few inches right, this time targeting the head. I squeezed the trigger, and the back of the second guy’s skull exploded as the .357 round punched straight through his face.

  Even as blood was erupting across the parking lot, my other hand was drawing the .38 from my belt and firing at the guy I’d hit with the door. Still stunned by the impact, he only got his MAC-10 halfway up before I’d shot him through the neck, a second shot taking off most of his jaw.

  I knew that the men by the car were going to be reacting now; they’d had enough time, and would be frantic to avenge their fallen comrades.

  I dove to the floor and rolled, dropping the revolvers and snatching up one of the MAC-10s as I went.

  Rounds from the men’s own machine pistols started peppering the fire door then, but I was no longer there; I was si
x feet over to the left, coming up out of the roll and already returning fire.

  I hit the first man and saw him go down in a spray of blood. But the accuracy of the MAC-10 – a classic ‘spray and pray’ weapon beloved of US gangs – was legendarily poor, and the barrel had pulled too much to hit the second with my opening bursts.

  The man took the opportunity to open the heavy metal door of the Cadillac and take cover behind it.

  Keeping his body hidden behind the door, he reached around with one hand on his machine pistol and opened fire. Without aiming, he was never going to hit anything, and I took my time building a secure firing position on the concrete floor, aiming at the target underneath the thick metal of the Caddy’s open door.

  I opened fire a second later, was rewarded by screams of pain and blood spurting from the wounds in the man’s lower legs. He tried to keep himself upright by hanging onto the door, but failed and fell hard to the ground.

  I was waiting for him, and unloaded the rest of the machine pistol’s ammo as his body and head emerged in my sight picture, under the car door.

  The shots hit home, and I knew the man was dead.

  I was on my feet immediately, all too aware of the noise in the video store behind me, and raced toward the open car door. I jumped in and turned the key that had once again been left in the ignition, pulling forward just as I saw four more men emerge from the fire exit.

  They took in the scene quickly and started to open fire on the Escalade. In response I gunned the engine and accelerated toward them, sending them jumping for their lives.

  I yanked the wheel left just before I hit the Video Vault’s wall, clipping two of the guys as I swerved and accelerated through the chain-link fence, smashing it down as I pulled onto Montebello Road.

  I kept my head down as the remaining two men fired after me, the rear windshield shattering, bullets and glass flying around the cabin as I put my foot down and soared off down the road in a desperate bid for freedom.