In the dark, she started up the stairs. They had sealed one room up rather well. The rats had grown braver of late, but they were still able to keep away from them for the most part.
Suddenly, Katrina was distracted by a slight, whispering sound at the top of the stairs. An image formed in her mind of a fat rat with its distended belly sliding along the grimy floorboards as it moved across the room. The image was nauseating, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before within these walls.
There was a low rumble, almost a growl, from above. That was when Katrina knew it was not a rat.
The landing at the top of the stairs was in almost complete darkness. It was nearly two in the morning, and what little light filtered in from the street outside was merely reflected down the alley from the main street beyond.
So she had to wonder if the red eyes glowing at the top of the stars had picked up the ambient light or if they glowed on their own. Either way, it was all Katrina could do not to scream. They were animal’s eyes, and Katrina realized she had never felt more vulnerable, more exposed, in her life.
“What is it, darling?” Grigorii asked from below.
“It is death, my love,” she whispered in Russian, barely able to hear her own words, never mind communicate her terror to her husband.
“Welcome home, darlin’,” a voice growled in English.
Katrina went for the Glock that she had stashed in the rear waistband of her pants. She was fast.
The thing on the stairs was much, much faster.
Huge hands like talons gripped her by the shoulders, then the gun was ripped from her grasp. She was turned around, away from her attacker, so that she faced Grigorii. But she had gotten a shadowy glimpse of him before he forced her around. Huge and savage, the blond man was dressed in peasant clothes. He didn’t seem to have any weapons but his hands—at least that she could see—but they seemed deadly enough.
“Kat? Katrina?” Grigorii said, almost stammering, as he saw what had happened.
She wanted to curse him, to blame him, somehow. But the beast had moved so fast; what could Grigorii have done? And, after all, she had been trained just as well as he had. No, whatever this man was, she was no match for him.
“Darlin’,” her attacker whispered, “you ain’t so bad for an old broad. You an’ me could have some real fun … if we had the time.”
“Bring her down, Creed,” a woman’s voice said from the dark, rat-infested room below.
Then she was being manipulated, physically moved as if she were a marionette and the beast who held her throat the puppeteer. He moved her down the stairs effortlessly.
Something flared brightly in the darkness. A match. As Katrina was forced to the bottom of the steps and into the room beyond, she saw that Grigorii had also been captured. A handsome young man held a gun to her husband’s back, but he didn’t say a single word.
The woman who had spoken looked like a gypsy, but on second glance, even in the dark, it was easy to see that she was not. Or perhaps Katrina only concluded that because of her voice, which was certainly American.
“Americans,” she said in a low voice, her English passable. “But why do you come at us like this? We want to defect, yes? Are you from Interpol?”
The end of a fat cigar burned in the darkness, flared brightly as the smoker inhaled deeply. He stepped forward, and she could see him a little better. A small man, but clearly powerful. His hair was as wild as his eyes. At his side was a dark-skinned woman who nearly blended into the shadows. There were at least five of them, then.
“What does Interpol have to do with any o’ this?” the little man asked, and his English had an accent she didn’t recognize.
Katrina knew better than to answer. She’d made a mistake by mentioning Interpol at all. She had just been so hopeful, and now she had made a significant error.
“You are not here to help us, are you?” Grigorii asked.
“What was your first clue?” the large man holding Katrina growled.
But she kept her eyes on the short man. He seemed to be the leader.
“You want to live?” the wild-haired man asked. “You want to make it to America? Maybe we can work something out. But before we talk about any of that … where’s the disk?”
Katrina stared at him. She could feel Grigorii looking at her, silently pleading with her to cooperate. But she could sense what was happening in the room. These Americans might not kill her and Grigorii, but they would not help them to defect. They had come for the disk. Nothing more.
The short man repeated his question, in Russian this time.
Katrina blinked but still did not respond.
“Wolverine. We could just kill them, and then search their corpses, and this hellhole, for the disk,” the dark-skinned woman suggested.
Grigorii stared at Katrina, his eyes reflecting his panic.
“We don’t have time to search the place,” their leader said gruffly. “I get the feeling we ain’t the only ones who know about these two, and their little package.”
The man called Wolverine dropped his eyes, shook his head sadly, then looked up at Katrina. No, not at Katrina. At the huge human animal who held her too tightly, whose hot breath felt insidious against the back of her neck.
“Sabretooth,” Wolverine said. “Fox is gonna count to ten. At ten, you can kill her.”
“You don’t want me shootin’ her here, Wolverine,” Sabretooth replied. “Too loud. Draw too much attention.”
The short man inhaled deeply, chewing on the end of his cigar.
“It comes to that, you can kill her any way you like,” Wolverine said.
The false gypsy began to count. Katrina closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at Grigorii. At five her husband said her name.
“Grigorii, no,” she said simply, and opened her eyes to stare at him, to command him.
At eight Katrina closed her eyes again, steeled herself for the pain. Working with the KGB, she had seen death many times. She had imagined her own death dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. She didn’t want to die, but she also didn’t think that these Americans would kill her without knowing how to find the disk. What if Grigorii didn’t know, after all? They couldn’t risk …
“No!” Grigorii shouted. “Stop. I will tell you what you wish to know.”
“Too bad,” the monster gripping her throat said softly, then kissed the back of her head. “I was really lookin’ forward to that.”
Katrina stared at Grigorii. “You will not,” she said simply, in Russian.
The one called Wolverine understood Russian. He stepped forward, still smoking his cigar.
“You will agree to take us out of here, and we will bring the disk with us,” Katrina insisted.
The end of the cigar flared, the little man exhaled smoke.
“All right,” he said.
“How do we know we can trust you?” Grigorii demanded.
“You don’t,” Wolverine replied.
There was silence then. After several moments passed, Katrina moved forward slightly, and the animal called Sabretooth relaxed his grip on her throat. He still held her weapon, but she was free to move around on her own.
Katrina reached inside her waistband, undid the hook that held her skirt up, and let it drop six or seven inches. Beneath her belly button, on the gentle slope of her lower abdomen, silver tape ran around her body several times. She tapped the tape on her belly and they could all hear the hollow plastic sound it made.
“See, we should have killed them,” Sabretooth said. “Woulda had that disk and been gone by now.”
Katrina tried to pull her skirt back up, but Sabretooth grabbed her from behind. The skirt fell around her ankles as he slammed her against the filthy wall and pinned her there. With his other hand, the animal caressed her belly. His fingers ended in claws that were inhuman, like nothing she had ever seen. With his index finger, Sabretooth traced across the tape to where the disk was. Then he pushed.
A little ye
lp escaped Katrina’s mouth as the claw penetrated the tape and just punctured her skin.
“Sabretooth,” a voice warned.
Somewhere in Katrina’s mind, she realized that the voice belonged to the silent young man she had thought handsome. But he was with them; he didn’t seem handsome anymore.
“Not a word, Maverick,” Sabretooth said, and she could hear the danger in his voice. “Not a word.”
The claw sliced through tape and skin, and the disk was torn from her belly. Katrina bled, but not very much. The cut was very superficial. But the damage was far beyond any flesh wound.
Sabretooth tossed the disk to the false gypsy, who caught it and slid it inside her own clothes. Katrina saw something heavy and dark inside those clothes. A weapon, obviously. So she had more than one. They were all very well armed.
Despair washed over Katrina. It was over. She knew that, even before Sabretooth said, very bluntly: “We ought to just kill ‘em all now, Wolverine. Can’t be bothered with an extra pair o’ warm bodies on our way home.”
Logan stiffened at Creed’s words. He had no intention of bringing the Zhevakovs with them when they took off to meet Wraith at the extraction point. But just killing them outright seemed a little unnecessary.
Apparently, Maverick thought it was a little more than that. “Sabretooth, these people are defectors,” Maverick said, and glanced over at Logan, staring over Grigorii Zhevakov’s shoulder. “They’re looking to us for help, for asylum. We’ve got what we came for. There’s no reason we can’t take them with us. Kestrel can handle two more on evac without breaking a sweat.”
Wolverine met Maverick’s gaze without flinching. His mind raced. He looked over at Creed, saw the perverse smile on the big man’s face, and almost agreed with Maverick.
Almost.
“Mav, our orders have nothing to do with the Zhevakovs,” he said. “Except to say that they’re expendable. You don’t want to kill them, that’s aces in my book. But we ain’t bringin’ ‘em home with us.”
“Orders don’t say we can’t,” Silver Fox said from the shadows.
That brought Logan up short. Fox was changing a lot, it seemed. Or maybe she was just a little soft this op, for whatever reason. But she was siding with Maverick on this one, and Logan couldn’t think of a reason why. Except that maybe they were both right.
“They’re stranded now,” Fox went on. “Mystique killed their contact. She’s admitted as much. Interpol won’t know how to find them, and Mystique’s been using the agent sent to get the Zhevakovs out to hunt for this ‘Black Widow’ that she’s supposed to kill. I think we ought to take them with us.”
“You’re a bunch of bleeding hearts,” Mystique said suddenly. “But if you could make up your minds, I’d appreciate it. I get a little anxious just standing around.”
Mystique’s right, Wolverine thought. They were asking for trouble, wasting their time. And the last thing they needed on an evac was a bunch of dead weight.
“We leave ‘em,” he announced.
“Wimp,” Creed grunted, and shoved Katrina Zhevakov sprawling to the floor.
“Wolverine?” North said, obviously about to protest.
Logan shot Maverick a hard look that shut him up quick. North wasn’t stupid. He knew that look. It told him that the Zhevakovs were lucky to still be breathing. Wolverine was glad North didn’t push it.
“Let’s go, then,” Silver Fox said grimly.
She didn’t want to leave the defectors behind either. But it was the only practical choice. Fox was the first to the door. Maverick and Mystique followed her out, and then it was just Logan and Creed inside the rat-infested apartment with the Zhevakovs. And Logan wasn’t about to leave them alone with Sabretooth. He was neither that cruel nor that foolish.
“Go,” he said.
“Wolverine …” Creed began to argue.
“Go.”
Creed glared at him, but only for a moment. Then Sabretooth just shook his head, smiled, and went out the door. But Wolverine knew it could have gone the other way. That was the thing with Creed—you just never knew.
Wolverine looked at the Zhevakovs. Relief had already released some of the tension in them; they weren’t going to die—that was the good news. The bad news was they were still stuck behind the Iron Curtain and very much wanted. They looked at Logan as if they expected some kind of apology, as though he was on their side.
“Good luck,” he said, and turned to follow Creed out the door.
But Creed hadn’t gotten very far.
“What is … ?” Logan started to ask.
Creed didn’t even turn around. “Company,” he said.
Logan sniffed the air, realized Creed was right. They had a lot of company.
When the lights came on, it was like a night game at Yankee Stadium. Only in this stadium, the fans were much better armed. To the right, the alley ended in a high wooden fence. To the left, it opened into what, by day, was a marketplace.
There were trucks there, now, blocking the mouth of the alley. Lights were mounted on the trucks, but there was no missing the dozens of Volksarmee soldier silhouettes that cast long shadows. A dozen or so soldiers stood in front of the fence at the other end of the alley. Their weapons were aimed directly at Team X.
The foremost silhouette began to shout at them in German, telling them to throw down their weapons, to put their hands over the heads, and to surrender. They wanted the Zhevakovs, of course.
Only a heartbeat passed before the defectors came out of the house into the street, with their hands held above their heads. Smart, actually. They didn’t really have any way to get out of that house, and if they stayed inside, they were almost certain to be killed by the East German soldiers.
Team X was silent, awaiting Logan’s instructions. They didn’t wait long.
“Maverick, take out the lights,” Wolverine growled, almost inaudibly. “Sabretooth, you and me‘11 hit the fence. Shouldn’t be too much trouble. Fox, cover Maverick and follow our lead.”
Silence followed. They were waiting for him to count.
“One.”
The East German officer shouted at them again.
“Two,” Logan whispered.
The Zhevakovs were cursing them from behind. But getting captured was not part of the game plan. Not at all.
“Go!” Logan roared.
Maverick spun, pulling a modified Uzi from inside his baggy shirt. He fired at the precise moment that the Germans did. Their huge spotlights exploded with his gunfire, and David North went down, hit by a dozen bullets, at the very least.
In the new darkness, Wolverine and Sabretooth ran at the soldiers in front of the fenced-in end of the alleyway. Logan only got a few shots off before he took a bullet in the shoulder and dropped his weapon. Creed took several bullets as well, but he and Wolverine both kept moving.
Both men were already healing as Sabretooth shot the last of the guards.
Silver Fox blinked as her eyes adjusted, but she picked up Maverick’s Uzi without even glancing down at it. Her own semiauto pistol wasn’t much good in this kind of firefight. And Maverick didn’t need the Uzi anymore. He had other weapons.
David North rolled across the filthy cobblestones of the alley and rose quickly. He was virtually humming with energy, absorbed from the impact of the bullets that had hit him. They hadn’t penetrated his skin, of course. Maverick was a mutant, and he had the ability to absorb the kinetic energy of any such attack, and turn it back on his attackers.
Maverick lifted his hands, and energy erupted from them, streaking across the alley and slamming the East German troops back into their trucks with the force of a tornado.
He and Fox turned to keep pace with Logan and Creed, but Maverick glimpsed something from the corner of his eye that brought him up short. In a widening pool of blood and gore lay Grigorii and Katrina Zhevakov. It seemed they’d caught a bullet or two. North was saddened, but he’d seen senseless death hundreds of times before. The defectors knew th
e chances they were taking. Traitors often ended up taking a bullet.
“Maverick, move!” Silver Fox shouted.
Some of the soldiers behind them had recovered, and bullets were flying again. Fox started after Creed and Logan, toward a massive hole in the fence that clearly marked the trail of Sabretooth. But even as he moved away, something else registered in Maverick’s mind. Something not quite right about the bodies of Grigorii and Katrina Zhevakov.
Their throats were bloody. Even torn? There were bullet wounds as well, but bullets hadn’t done that.
Maverick was furious, but there was nothing to be done for it now. That was war. He wished he could believe that he wasn’t getting used to it, to the death and deceit. But he knew he’d be lying if he did. Where once David North’s stock-in-trade had been freedom, it had now become death.
They ran past dead East German soldiers, and Maverick pushed it all from his mind. If he had to be numb to do the job, then numb was how he’d live. He and Silver Fox ran through the hole in the fence, weapons at the ready. Wolverine was waiting on the other side.
“Where’s Creed?” Fox hissed, as they fell into step with Logan.
“He took point,” Wolverine replied. “Fox, you’d better give me the disk.”
Maverick frowned. They kept moving, but Fox reached inside her blouse to retrieve the silver disk. She hesitated a moment, and Maverick didn’t blame her. Now wasn’t the time or the place for …
A whistle.
Team X whistle, coming from straight ahead. From the open street where two men, one huge and one short and broad, stood silhouetted in the light from the street. Wolverine and Sabretooth.
“Fox, don’t!” Maverick snapped.
But Silver Fox had figured it out as well, and Mystique knew she’d blown her shot. She laughed, even as her body morphed into the stern-faced and short-haired Fraulein Haupt, whose face she had used when she first met them. Yet another person she had killed.
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