Black Scorpion

by Jon Land

  “There isn’t,” Scarlett told him, looking away and sounding evasive. “It’s historical value I’m after. Money isn’t everything.”

  “But it’s plenty important if you want your digs funded.”

  “Carrying the money for my next one in your pants?”

  Michael looked down at his ripped pockets. “Not anymore.”

  * * *

  It turned out her archaeological team was here under the auspices of INRAP, or Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives of France. Comprising twenty or so college students, accompanied by six professional archaeologists and two armed guards supplied by French Guiana. They were here studying tribes indigenous to this rain forest thousands of years ago and had unearthed a wealth of pottery, funeral “boxes,” and other evidence of how their civilization had functioned.

  “They should’ve learned from what happened to the other bloody teams that came down here,” Paddy lamented.

  “What’s that?” Michael asked him.

  “None of our concern, mate. Back to work now.”

  Learning skill sets was one thing; the real purpose of the training he was about to endure was to survive by making them instinctive. True to Paddy’s teachings Michael began to feel things before he could see or hear them. Paddy made him strip to his boxers one night to make him especially vulnerable to insect bites that first stung, then itched, then stung again.

  “You been too comfortable for too long, mate,” Paddy explained disdainfully. “I want you to be uncomfortable and learn how to fight while you are.”

  Spoken just as a mosquito the size of a dragonfly bit him on the back of the neck, Michael’s hand coming away streaked with blood when he crushed it.

  “Men die just as easy when you know how to kill them,” Paddy winked.

  During this kind of hand-to-hand practice, Paddy was fond of going all out and pummeling Michael to submission, until one morning Michael thought he’d finally bested the bloke. Turning from a beaten Paddy and walking away, only to drop straight into a trap hole Paddy had dug.

  “Means no breakfast for you, mate.”

  Instead, Michael was down at the river when the gunmen came.

  FORTY-NINE

  HEATHROW AIRPORT, ENGLAND

  And, true to form, Michael hadn’t seen or heard from Paddy ever since.

  Until now, five years later. According to plan, they’d be transferring onto this much smaller Citation jet arranged by Paddy that Alexander and Michael would pilot themselves for the remainder of the trip to hide any connection to Michael, Tyrant Global, or King Midas World once they left London. And that precaution would be supplemented by the fake IDs, passports, and visas Paddy had brought along for them to use once in Romania. The last five years had seen him become associated with GS-Ultra, the world’s largest private security company, further enhancing his ability to produce trained personnel for private high-level security needs, weaponry, and documents—all strictly first rate and at first-rate prices.

  “You look good, mate,” Paddy said, taking the seat on the Citation across the aisle from Michael, after tucking an envelope stuffed with large bills given to him by Alexander into his pocket. He drew a finger along the scar that ran down his left cheek as if it were the blade that had left the wound originally. “Been keeping up with your lessons, I take it.”

  “What have you got for us?”

  “My man found no trace anywhere of your archaeological team. Scene had been sanitized.”

  “Sanitized?”

  “I don’t suspect any of those folks’ll be home for the holidays. Let’s leave it there.”

  “One of them got away and contacted me.”

  “I bet it’s a woman.”

  “Nice guess.”

  Paddy grinned. “You taking your arse halfway across the world about her?”

  “In part.”

  Paddy smiled broadly at that, coming up just short of a laugh. “When it comes to bloody women, there’s no such thing.” He thought for a moment. “And another archaeologist yet.”

  “Not another.”

  The big man narrowed his gaze, features tightening to make his scar look more pronounced. “I don’t like what I see in your eyes, mate.”

  “You put some of it there, Sergeant-Major.”

  “Not what I’m looking at right now, I didn’t. Kind of look you got right now belongs to a man who could let things get away from him. That’s the opposite of what I taught you.”

  “I’ve got Alexander with me this time,” Michael said, glancing his way.

  “Even he’s not enough for what you’re going up against, mate. What little is known about Black Scorpion is all in here,” Paddy said, handing Michael a thin manila envelope. “Let me give you the quick version: Drugs, gambling, murder, blackmail, gunrunning, prostitution, loan sharking, street crime, and they’ve cornered the market on human trafficking all over the world, including the United States. Black Scorpion has its bloody fucking hand in everything the underworld has to offer. Might even say, they’ve become the underworld.”

  “If you know that, it stands to reason law enforcement worldwide does as well.”

  “Most law enforcement entities worldwide, according to this report, don’t believe Black Scorpion even exists, the man or the organization. They believe they’re both legends, myths. After all, you can’t arrest what you can’t identify or even find. This is an organization that has insulated itself on all levels, clinging to the dark and avoiding the light at all costs. Those who go looking don’t normally come back.”

  “In countries like Romania,” Michael said, nodding, understanding, “where the authorities can be easily bought or persuaded to look the other way.”

  “According to my sources, Black Scorpion is thought to have powerful friends in legitimate branches of government all across the world, many of which were bought and paid for from the time they were candidates. Forget bullets. The greatest weapon wielded by an organization like this is corruption. They know to exploit that. And any official they can’t bribe they extort, often going as far as to manufacture the very incident that becomes the source of their blackmail.”

  Paddy’s assertions left Michael shaking his head. “And you’re telling me the authorities worldwide, including Interpol, have done nothing to stop them?”

  “Stop who exactly? That’s the blasted problem, mate. In spite of everything I just told you, authorities internationally can’t point to a single person and tell you he’s part of Black Scorpion. And its leader is a shadow, protected by the Romanian government and the country’s military officials because he keeps them and their families very well fed. No one knows his name, his nationality. What he looks like or how he takes his tea. There’s nothing about him in these pages at all,” Paddy said, flapping the file’s contents lightly. “The man’s a bloody ghost.”

  “There’s not a single photo of him anywhere?”

  “Google Black Scorpion and all you get is the insect. My sources say this is an organization with a reach that stretches across the globe to groups with similar interests on every continent, in every country.”

  “And we’re talking about criminal interests.”

  Paddy nodded. “With huge resources and manpower scattered all over the world and with good reason. Human trafficking alone is a forty-two-billion-dollar-a-year industry and Black Scorpion has basically cornered the market on it. I’ve seen a lot of bloody shite in the world, mate, so much that I’ve learned not to use the word evil lightly. But I make an exception in the case of Black Scorpion.”

  “Your sources have any idea what their interest could possibly be in an archaeological dig?”

  “Not a clue. I’d say because nothing happens in the Transylvanian region without their knowledge and approval, so maybe they were pissed at you for something, like not paying them off. Of course…”

  “Of course what?”

  Paddy tightened his gaze even more. “Maybe there’s something about that dig site
that’s important to them, maybe they’re sending some kind of message. All the more reason, if you don’t mind me saying, why you got no business going up against them.”

  “This isn’t about business.”

  “Take such things seriously now, do you?”

  “When it involves somebody I care about, you’re damn right, Paddy.”

  “Tell you what else is right: That it’s for real this time. That you should leave such things to the experts like Alexander and me,” Paddy finished. “Say the word, put up the cash, a lot of it, and I’ll make it happen.”

  “There’s no time.”

  Paddy snickered. “Oh, nearly forgot. This blasted woman … Smart man’d walk away while he’s still got his legs under him.”

  “Is that what you trained me for? To walk away from someone I care about very much, leave her in the hands of these fucking slave traders?”

  “I get it, mate, but I trained you to survive, not die. You getting killed’s not about to free her.”

  “And I get that, Paddy, but there are lines that can’t be crossed. I can’t help the code I live by.”

  “Bollocks, mate. Right now the only code that matters is the one that gives you maybe another twenty-four to forty-eight hours before this woman is off the map for good, something you’d best keep in mind. Remember, I trained you to know where the snakes were so they couldn’t kill you, not so they could. Black Scorpion’s like the snakes that pop down out of the trees. You can’t see ’em until they’ve already bit you.”

  * * *

  The small man in the rumpled suit watched the Citation arch toward the sky from behind the terminal window, twirling his Mont Blanc pen. He wedged the pen back in his pocket and pressed a preprogrammed number on his phone.

  PART FOUR

  BLACK SCORPION

  It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

  Seneca

  FIFTY

  HOIA-BACIU FOREST, ROMANIA

  Vladimir Dracu’s convoy headed along the narrow road through the Hoia-Baciu Forest. He felt the brush, extra thick in the warmer months, whipping against the Range Rover in which he rode. Occasionally a stray branch thwacked against the windshield, though at this low speed no damage resulted.

  Dracu kept looking out through the SUV’s tinted rear window, checking to make sure the bus was able to negotiate the difficult terrain of this route that had been literally carved out of the forest. And with each glance back, he thought of the blond girl with the green eyes.

  Such beauty …

  The same could not be said for the view around him, explaining why Dracu had opted to base his headquarters here. The fact that the “Black Forest” was rumored to be the most haunted wooded area in the world kept locals and tourists alike far away. And for the few that ventured or strayed too close to these woods laden with warped, dense trees that resembled gnarled arthritis-riddled fingers, well, their “disappearances” served to further fuel the legend that left this part of Transylvania the private domain of Black Scorpion.

  Even those, in law enforcement and otherwise, who came looking would find their quests fruitless for good reason, one that revealed itself moments later when the road approached the Apuseni Mountains. This particular range was riddled with massive caves carved out of the rock and flora, most notably the Coiba Mare and Coiba Mica systems. These were well known, far more so than the Coiba Moarte system that Dracu had christened himself, fittingly since moarte meant “death” in Romanian.

  The convoy rolled on, heading straight for a waterfall spiraling down the dark lower ledges of the Apuseni range. Beyond it was more of the dark sheen indicative of the unbroken jagged sprawl of the mountain, but this was an illusion, a trick of reflection off the cascading waters. The convoy slid to a halt at the shore of the shallow lake into which the waterfall spilled, apparently reaching a dead end.

  Then a transmitted signal from the lead vehicle in the convoy lowered a bridge fashioned to look like a huge section of the mountain face, spanning the entire width of the lake to the shore on which the vehicles waited. The convoy eased forward, passing directly under the waterfall and into the fortress that Dracu had built from the remnants of a nuclear command and control bunker the Soviets had constructed within Coiba Moarte. It was connected to a network of silos constructed during the height of the Cold War, strategically placed beneath the ideal cover of the manmade lake that enclosed the mountain. Black Scorpion had added ten levels to the original structure and gutted the existing interior, rebuilding it from scratch.

  The result was a marvel of construction in all respects, completed against impossible logistics and in half the time anticipated. A true miracle when the challenges posed by turning a long abandoned compound mired within a massive internal cave structure into a habitable and defensible fortress were considered, even with cost being no object. Each task proved more daunting than the last. Installing appropriate plumbing and wiring, for example, or a newly expanded air filtration and circulation system.

  The one feature Vladimir Dracu barely touched at all was the command center itself, erected by the Soviets in a single underground layer protected by thousands of tons of steel, concrete, and natural stone fortifications. From here he intended to stage his greatest operation, one that would allow him to claim what was rightfully his.

  The massive construction project also required Black Scorpion to spend vast resources on forging roads through a veritable wilderness to allow for proper passage of vehicles. This even though much of the bulkiest materials were ferried in by freight helicopter after being trucked to the nearest city. Some of those roads had been destroyed, overgrown by vegetation again in practically no time inside the Hoia-Baciu Forest. The single access route the convoy had just traversed was camouflaged and could be best negotiated by powerful SUVs with off-road capabilities.

  One thing that had proven no problem at all was manpower. Black Scorpion’s structural engineers were culled from the best minds the former Soviet-bloc nations had to offer, then unemployed and just glad to have a job to feed their families no matter how challenging or dangerous. Dracu had also found an endless source of labor from the human trafficking network that he’d built, teenagers mostly taken from a host of isolated, surrounding villages on the false promise that hard work was their ticket back home. Hundreds of virtual slaves entrusted with backbreaking work on ground that would eventually hold their graves.

  Dracu had long lost count of the dollars the process had expended, nor did it matter to him; the mountain fortress was now an unprecedented, secured residence, one with a bevy of propane-fueled generators buried within rock. Deep within the bowels of the fortress lay stores of emergency rations, enough to feed his entire complement of men for a full year. The bridge rose after the last vehicle in the convoy had swung into a sprawling internal courtyard within the monolithic fortress built to conform to the cave’s shape.

  He rode the private elevator down to his suite of rooms. Once there, he left Armura posted at the door and entered his study, dominated by his art collection consisting of items stolen or taken from by force from Romania’s National Museum of Art or Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery. Chosen not for their notoriety, but the design and vision of the artists in crafting a world that appealed to him, the way they used light to illuminate the worlds they had fashioned. He could gaze at them for hours, always finding something new to see in each and glad for the beauty they brought to the fortress’s chilly, dark confines, replacing both windows and something else.

  Mirrors.

  Dracu had no desire to look at himself, even in the reflection of glass, to which he avoid turning at all costs. He had learned to shave and perform other menial tasks without the benefit of viewing his reflection, hiding the view from himself just as the veil he wore whenever in the company of others hid it from the rest of the world.

  His collection of paintings made for a striking contrast with the contents of
a side room just off his study, housing the only reason he was still alive today. He entered it through an inner door, struck as always by the humid blast of heat in stark contrast to the ever-present chill in the rooms beyond.

  The terrarium was kept always at ninety degrees to mimic the climate best tolerated by his collection of deathstalker and black scorpions. So they might thrive even more, Dracu had had the terrarium constructed to take on as much of the creatures’ native semiarid environment as possible. They crawled in and under the thick sand layered with patches of recirculated water to maintain the proper levels of humidity, though most of the scorpions seemed to prefer the branches of the brush and shrub growth that thrived in the indoor climate. That climate was made remarkably hospitable for them by a combination of sprayers and incandescent sun-like lighting that burned in the very same degree and hours as the sun in their natural habitats. Within it, though, Dracu felt the makeup he wore over the thinning flesh of his face beginning to recede, thanks to the perspiration soaking through it in the terrarium’s fetid atmosphere. He welcomed that heat, though, since it was one of the few times he ever felt warm.

  As a result, Dracu’s scorpions were able to thrive beyond his greatest expectations, even mimicking the creatures’ battle for survival with endless fights for supremacy that occurred in the wild. Dracu was convinced such a practice enhanced the creatures’ ability to manufacture vast amounts of the venom that was responsible for his continued survival.

  He rolled up his right sleeve to reveal a host of ugly purplish bruising and extended his gloved right hand into the bramble and thickets to snare one of the creatures in his grasp. His treatment required only a single sting per day, sometimes every other, to flush their venom through his diseased blood and hold the pestilence inside him at bay.

  Dracu eased the scorpion he’d snatched from the terrarium into place on his forearm and watched its stinger snap downward in an arching motion, felt the needle-like prick as is it pierced his skin and a flush of heat as its venom joined his blood. Then the pain started, an awful, wrenching agony that struck him everywhere at once, briefly freezing his breath. It had been like that the first time he’d been stung and had never abated; if anything, growing more intense over time, even as his veins blued and seemed to expand before slowly returning to normal after the agony peaked.