Paladin of Shadows 3 - Choosers of the Slain.html

by John Ringo

  * * *

  "Oh....shiiiiit," Calthrop shouted, slamming on the brakes and turning hard to the right.

  As the Mercedes fishtailed across the road, Mikhail grasped a handhold and lowered the window on his side. As soon as it had more or less stopped he pointed his SPR out the window and opened fire.

  * * *

  "Fuck!" Bezhmel shouted as rounds began cracking into the SUV. "Out!" he continued, ducking and pushing on the driver so the idiot would bail out on the far side.

  However, the duck had been fortuitous since it permitted the 5.56 round meant for his head to instead strike the driver in the right temple.

  Chito's head snapped to the left as blood filled the interior of the vehicle and his body slumped in the same direction, tangled in the steering wheel and effectively blocking the door.

  "Fuck!" Bezhmel shouted again, pushing at the body and trying to get to the door latch. "What are you fuckers in the back waiting for? SHOOT!"

  * * *

  "Out!" Calthrop yelled, bailing out on his side. He was somewhat surprised to feel the sharp strike of high-heels in his back as Katya made her own time out of the targeted vehicle. Rounds were cracking through the air, and the car, before he could even get to his knees. But, in the meantime, the hooker had pulled Natalya from the back of the car and was already headed away into the darkness.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I am saving my life," Katya said, not looking back. "And hers, the primary, yes? You are going to help by killing as many of them as you can before you die."

  "Oh, that is so bloody..." Calthrop said, rolling behind a wheel for cover as AK rounds began thumping into and through the car. The two girls, however, were already fading into the darkness. "Whorish."

  He reached in with his right hand and drew the Walther from its shoulder holster then shook his head.

  "Not bloody likely," he muttered, reaching in to the other side and removing a Winchester .454 revolver. The weapon was a "pistol" only in technical description; the round it fired was similar in ballistics to a very heavy assault rifle. It also kicked like a mule. "Better. Right." He took a deep breath and then let it out, getting a good two handed grip and licking his lips as the fire died from the back seat. So much for Mikhail. "Right. Bloody James Bond time, right? Get my double-o rating and everything. Right. They so did not cover this in recruiting. Mum was right; I should have been an actor..."

  * * *

  Bezhmel finally managed to get the door open and tumble to the road as the fire died down. But the first thing he saw was one of the shooters from the back seat sprawled on the road, his legs still in the backseat of the SUV.

  There was only one of the former Spetznaz left alive, and he was clutching at one arm where a bullet had passed through the meat of the bicep.

  "Move," Bezhmel said, waving him forward and plucking the AK from the hands of the dead fighter sprawled out the door. "I'll cover you."

  "Right," the Russian grunted, hefting his SK-74. "I thought we were after a girl. Who are these guys?"

  "I don't know," Bezhmel said, shrugging. "Probably the Keldara."

  "Fucking Georgians," the former Spetznaz said, spitting and lifting up to stride forward. "Time for them to..."

  Bezhmel was never to be sure what the former soldier thought it was time for. He had been watching the back seat but as the fighter lifted up Yarok saw a flash of movement through the back window and there was a tremendous report, as if someone had snuck along a .50 caliber sniper rifle.

  The former Spetznaz trooper had just lifted up, also watching the back seat, and was tossed backwards as if pulled by a wire. He hit on his back and slumped to the side, revealing a fist-sized exit wound from a round through the upper chest.

  "Holy Fuck," Bezhmel shouted, aware that one, he was now entirely alone in this fight and, two, there was one big fucking gun on the other side.

  * * *

  One down, at least one to go.

  Calthrop had never been in a gunfight. He'd been in one barroom brawl that he got out of as quickly as possible, and once had a mugger threaten him with a knife. But this was the first time he'd been in a gun battle and he wasn't sure of the rules. Well, the one thing he was sure of was that there were no rules.

  But he'd watched quite a bit of the telly and movies. Actually, he blamed this whole thing on an addiction to James Bond movies, especially the early ones with Sean Connery. And while most of what he'd picked up from those, and other movies, was surely bogus, there was one trick he'd seen that might save his ass.

  So he got down on his stomach, mentally working up the expense report for his clothes, and scanned under the car for targets.

  There was one man apparently still standing on the others side. Calthrop could just see a knee past the left, front tire of the Rover. He sighted on it carefully, pulled back the heavy hammer of the beastly weapon and pulled back on the trigger.

  * * *

  "Bolgemoi!" Bezhmel shouted at the tire by his side exploded. Something hit him heavily on the hip, throwing him to the ground, but by the same token the Rover settled nearly to the ground, giving him more cover.

  The round, however, was quickly followed by three more, each of which punched through not only the far doors but both sides of the Rover, sending spalling and ricochets off into the night.

  "Fuck this," Bezhmel muttered, crawling to the dead fighter in the door. He patted at pockets until he came up with what he was looking for.

  "Take this you goat-fucker," he muttered, pulling the pin on the grenade and tossing it as hard as he could in the direction of the fire.

  * * *

  Calthrop leaned against the tire and opened up the cylinder of the revolver, pushing out the spent rounds and quickly thumbing more in. Reload whenever possible. That bit was coming back from very distant classes in tactics.

  As he closed the cylinder he heard a thump in the darkness beyond and looked carefully. When he saw the rolling sphere he remembered the other injunction that had been right up there with "reload."

  "Oh, yeah," he said, trying to get to the other side of the wheel as fast as possible. "I was supposed to move."

  * * *

  On top of the crack of the grenade was a scream and at that Bezhmel leapt to his feet, running around the side of the Rover and sprinting towards the Mercedes while firing a stream of bullets from the AK held at his hip.

  When he rounded the Mercedes he found that he needn't have bothered. By the front tire was a sprawled body, a very large handgun not far from his outflung hand. In the backseat was another body, face down, one hand still on an SPR, the other slumped down into a floorboard awash in blood.

  However, there were no women. Just the two dead men.

  "Where o where have my little lambs gone," Bezhmel whispered, setting the empty AK up against the side of the truck and drawing a SigSauer from his shoulder holster. "Oh, where oh where can they be?"

  * * *

  Chapter Forty-Six

  "Hurry," Katya said, pushing the girl ahead of her down the twisting goat path. She'd heard one explosion and one more burst of firing and now all was quiet. She took that for a bad sign.

  "I can barely walk," Natalya said, sobbing. "My feet are bloody."

  "Your whole body will be bloody if you don't run," Katya whispered, fiercely. She'd ordered the girl to take off her high-heeled shoes; they would be impossible on the narrow, steep, trails. But the ridge they were on was covered in rocks that had torn both of their feet to ribbons.

  "Katya," Lidiya said, calmly. "Situation report. It looks like Mikhail and the MI-6 man have both been taken down. The good news, such as it is, is that only one of the Russians is still alive. He's looking for you, but isn't directly on your track yet."

  "How long until..." Katya panted, wincing as the rocks cut further into her abused feet. It was like the time that one pimp bastard had whipped her on her soles. But she was doing it to herself, which almost made up for it.

  "At least seven m
ore minutes," Lidiya said. "I've made it clear that you're badly in need of support."

  "Tell them to hurry," Katya replied.

  "I have," Lidiya said. "Let me remind you, the mission is to recover the primary."

  "Yeah, I know," Katya snapped. "But I can't get my money if I'm dead."

  They'd reached the second level below the switchback that the firefight occurred on and Katya stopped, winded, when they did. Natalya slumped to the ground, clearly willing to die rather than run anymore.

  "This is no good," she muttered, looking up the hill.

  "Katya," Lidiya said. "He's found something. He's headed down the trail. The American say that he's following you, somehow."

  "Tell them it's probably the blood from our feet!" Katya whispered fiercely. Looking up the hill she could see the flashlight, clearly. "We can't run anymore!"

  "Then I suggest you figure something out," Lidiya said, calmly.

  "Easy for you to say," Katya said, looking around. There was a culvert, but since they were both trailing blood...

  "Natalya," Katya snapped. "Get down on your hands and knees."

  "Yes," the girl said in total resignation, doing as she was told. "I will die now."

  "The hell you will," Katya replied. "I don't get my money if you die. Now, trying not to scrape yourself up and leave a trail, keep your feet off the ground and crawl into that culvert."

  "Why?" Natalya said.

  "Because I told you to, you little whore," Katya snarled. "Get. And when you're in there, crawl as far back as you can and keep quiet."

  Katya had retained her shoes, barely, by carrying them by the straps. Now she sat down and, wincing, donned them again. Once they were on and Natalya was climbing in the culvert, she started tottering down the road, painfully.

  "Katya," Lidiya said, with a note of confusion. "Predator says that Natalya has gone to ground and you are moving very slowly down the road. What are you doing?"

  "Buying us time," Katya snarled. "Try to use it wisely."

  * * *

  Bezhmel spotted movement and turned off the torch, letting his eyes adjust for a moment. There, one figure.

  He ran uphill on the road for a moment until he spotted a narrow trail and then took it as fast as he could without breaking an ankle. Part of the time he was on his ass, sliding down the steep hill, but he reached the road just behind the stupid little bitch tottering along on her high-heels.

  "Stop," he said, panting. The fight, and the chase, had worn him down; he wasn't in the same shape he'd been in when he left the service. "Stop," he repeated, turning the torch back on and spotlighting the little whore who was still trying to hobble away. He'd seen the blood; her feet weren't going to carry her far.

  The girl turned around, wincing in pain from the light of the torch and held up her hands.

  Not the right girl. But she would know where the other one went.

  * * *

  "Where's the other girl," a man's voice barked from the far side of the light.

  Katya screwed her eyes shut against the light and fell to her knees, head bent and hands covering her eyes.

  "Please, sir," she begged, tears rolling down her face. "I don't know what is going on. I know nothing..."

  "Where's the other girl, bitch," the man said, coming closer. The torch was lowered and she could vaguely see his outline in the reflection. And the glint from a pistol which was centered on her forehead.

  "She left me," Katya whimpered, pulling her hands away a little but still keeping her head down. "My feet, they were so hurt. She ran away, down the road..."

  The torch came up and the man strode forward, looking down the hill.

  "I don't see her," he said.

  "She was there..." Katya said, reaching under her left armpit and pressing a valve four times in quick succession. Then she pushed, hard, on the small packet under her skin and let the drug take her.

  She wasn't sure what was in it. The American doctors had talked about pseudo-adrenaline and oxidizers and steroids and man-made endorphins until her head was reeling with unfamiliar terms. But they had given her one demonstration under controlled conditions so she would know what to expect. All she knew was that the world seemed to slow down and she suddenly felt light, the pain of her muscles from running, and the pain of her feet, drifting away as if they were nothing. She also felt strong and graceful, as if she could dance off the face of the world and drift away into space.

  Last, but not least, she felt angry. But, then again, that was how she always felt. And now she got to let it all hang out.

  * * *

  Bezhmel held the torch in his left hand and the pistol in his right, tracking back and forth down the road. The light from the torch was bright enough to clearly reveal the far switchback and there was no girl in sight.

  He started to turn back to the little whore that had lied to him and got one brief glimpse of her rising up off the ground then...she seemed to blur.

  * * *

  Katya struck the man's gun-hand with the side of her fist, hard, spinning both gun and torch away down the hill. There was a complicated disarm she had been taught, but in the grip of the drug all she could think to do was smash. So she smashed.

  She roundkicked upwards into the man's stomach, causing him to double over in agony at the drug enhanced blow, then kicked him again in the face on its way down. She got a sick satisfaction from the crunch of bone and the splash of blood as his nose pulped. The second blow felt like it broke something in her foot, but she could care less. They'd told her that she'd only have thirty seconds, at most, under the full effects of the drug and she intended to make the most of it.

  * * *

  The little whore was supernaturally fast and so strong it felt like being hit by a professional kick-boxer. Bezhmel was trained in hand-to-hand combat, but this was like fighting a rabid mongoose. He had been taken totally off-guard and couldn't even start to defend himself as blow after blow came out of nowhere...

  * * *

  Dropping her kicking foot and stepping forward, Katya actually turned her back to the man then spun on one foot, driving the side of her clenched right fist into his right temple then spinning back the other way for an identical blow to the left. That one was assisted by the fact that the man's head had been punched in that direction.

  She punched down with one heel into his instep, driving the stilletto all the way through to the sole of his boot. Then, as he doubled over in agony at the pain, she punched up with her elbow to strike his jaw. She heard a crack, that time, that might have been neck vertebra. She hoped not, she had more mad to get out. Hopefully it was just lots of teeth.

  For now, in this time and in this place, she could let out every scrap of hatred seared into her soul. This man, this fucker that worked for the Albanians, he was every man who had ever raped her, every man who had ever beaten her, every man who had ever touched her. And she intended to take her full time, sped up as it was, on this one man. It might be the only chance she ever got.

  * * *

  Bezhmel was out on his feet. His eyes were blinded from the head-blows, a TKO in any boxing rink. But this wasn't boxing, and the woman clearly wasn't going to go for a simple technical. It was all that he could do to manage to stand, to try to raise his arms in pathetic defense, as insanely powerful blow after blow struck from the darkness...

  * * *

  Katya, feeling the effects of the drug starting to ebb, kneed the man in the groin then punched into the solar plexus before he could even start to double over. Doubly bent, his neck was wide open and she drove one rock-hard, enhanced-strength, elbow blow into the back of his neck, dropping him to the ground.

  The Kildar had told her that that was often a killing blow, but the man still was writhing in agony on the ground. Oh, well. That was easy enough to fix.

  She raised one foot and drove the narrow tip of her hated stiletto heels into the top of the man's neck, just below the skull. The blow sunk the stiletto all the way up to the base. T
he man twitched once, much like a pithed frog, and then was still.

  She looked up, startled, as a helicopter raised up from below the level of the road and slid sideways towards her. She had been so concentrated on the beating she gave the man, she hadn't even heard it approach. A spotlight suddenly came on, panning around until it caught her in its light. She had to shield her eyes, again, at the brightness.

  The helicopter slid sideways, again, lining up its wheels with the edge of the cliff and Katya could faintly see movement behind the spotlight. She wasn't sure who it was, but she didn't really care anymore. She'd had her fun. If it was more of the Albanian motherfuckers, they could damned well kill her, but she was never going back into slavery.

  "Hey, Katya," Killjoy said casually, walking out of the light. He was scratching under his armor and if he was perturbed at the sight of a woman standing on the back of a man's neck with her high-heel shoved all the way through to his esophagus it didn't show. "Whatchadoin?"

  "Your job, motherfucker," Cottontail replied, finally pulling her stiletto out of the man's neck. Even over the rotor-wash, there was an audible "pop." "About time you showed up. Reinforcements my ass."

  * * *

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Mike tossed the last bag of ill-gotten gains into the helicopter and waved Oleg and Juris by. He wrinkled his brow at the two obvious hookers helping the big team leader, but decided not to mention it.

  "You gonna make it, big guy?" Mike asked the team leader, who was just about shot to shit but still limping along with the help of the sniper and the two girls, one of whom was carrying an AK.

  "I will be at my wedding, Kildar," Oleg said, grinning. "And you had better be, too. And so will Catrina and Elena!"

  "Glad to meet you," Mike said, making the connection.

  "And you, Kildar," the one with the AK said, dropping a curtsey that slipped her dress up far enough to see pubic hair and then helping the team leader up the ramp.

  "I'll be a monkey's uncle," Mike muttered as Adams ran up. "Well?"