by Matt Rogers
As possibly the only person aboard who didn’t think they were about to die, he shoved and pushed and hurried Viktor and Iosif through the throng of terrified civilians.
They burst out onto the platform at the same time as all the passengers running along the entire length of the train.
Pandemonium broke out.
Slater seized the nearest officer, who looked as if he’d been caught in the middle of a war zone, and pointed a shaking finger back at the train. With eyes wide, he screamed, ‘Murderer! Help! Gun!’
The guy seemed to understand, and although he didn’t burst off the mark to throw himself into the line of fire his attention turned imperceptibly to the body of the train itself.
Slater followed the dozens of passengers sprinting for the train station’s giant exit building. They’d reached the apex of chaos — the policemen had lost their one opportunity to form a rudimentary barricade around the fleeing passengers, and instead several streams of sprinting civilians opened up, hurrying straight past the officials who were focused on the train itself.
No-one knew who was in charge.
No-one knew how to react in the heat of the moment.
And no-one knew exactly where the threat was coming from.
That suited Slater perfectly.
He put all his strength into keeping as tight a grip on Iosif’s collar as he could — that was the most volatile aspect of the entire ordeal. At any point the guy could break away and disappear into the streets of Vladivostok, and then Slater’s best avenue of enquiry would be lost.
He paid less attention to Viktor — the man had already pledged his allegiance to Slater before things had gone awry, and Slater imagined the man would continue to stick with him.
The three-man unit, joined by Slater’s vice-like grip, hurried straight into the giant train terminal. The building’s domed ceiling stretched far overhead, an impressive sight in any other circumstance, but Slater wasn’t interested in the architecture. He barely paid the giant stone walls and colossal interior any attention, instead focusing on every shadowy corner for signs of law enforcement.
It seemed the policemen’s actions had ended up being their biggest hindrance. The terminal was completely empty. Staff had been evacuated, passengers told to disperse. Slater couldn’t see a single soul standing in their way. Even if there had been, there were dozens of other people all around Slater, sprinting for the road outside Vladivostok’s downtown train station with the verve that only materialised when they thought they were at risk of being shot.
Slater forced Viktor and Iosif across the shiny floor of the terminal and smashed open a pair of giant wooden entrance doors. The building opened out onto a wide road covered in a thin layer of snow, almost entirely devoid of vehicles at this time of day. It was mid-morning, and the streets seemed quieter than usual — the early morning’s commuter rush had subsided.
Slater took a moment to catch his breath — even though he’d been the one to cause the carnage, the adrenalin spike had materialised all the same. A giant cloud of fog steamed out from between his lips as he exhaled, keeping Viktor and Iosif in a tight grip. A sweeping set of concrete stairs fanned outward from the entrance to the station, leading onto a wide footpath.
Across the street, a row of residential apartment complexes hovered ominously.
‘Where to?’ Viktor panted.
Slater saw terror in the man’s eyes. Viktor didn’t want to be in Vladivostok. He wanted to be hundreds of miles away, in relative safety, but he had been called back to face his fate. Stepping out of the relative comfort of the train station had been a significant checkpoint, a realisation that he was here, in the place he had fled from just days earlier, a place that could only spell trouble.
‘Relax, Viktor,’ Slater said, still panting. ‘We’ll sort this out.’
The hint of a reassured smile began to creep across Viktor’s lips, and he took a pause to gather his senses. Passengers from the train were fleeing into the streets all around them.
‘We’ll sort this out,’ Viktor repeated.
He seemed to enjoy how the words sounded.
Then a warm burst of liquid hit Slater in the face, and a half-second later he felt a horrendous tugging sensation against his fingers clutching Viktor’s collar, and a half-second after that the deafening crack of a long-distance gunshot resonated across the road.
It took Slater far longer than it should have to understand that Viktor’s head had exploded.
16
Now, he wasn’t causing chaos.
He was right in its midst.
Reeling, thrown to the wolves, his mind raced as he instinctively ducked at the knees, minimising his target area. The burst of weight against his fingers had been him taking Viktor’s entire deadweight in his grip — the man had become a corpse in the blink of an eye as the top half of his skull disintegrated, showering Slater in a fine mist of gore. He let go of the dead man, recognising a lost cause when he saw it, and started piecing together what the hell had happened.
Sniper rifle, or a long-range assault rifle, fired from across the street.
He thought he’d caught the slightest hint of a muzzle flare out of the corner of his eye before Viktor had died. That left him completely exposed to a follow-up shot, and he scrabbled across the freezing concrete in an attempt to throw off the gunman.
Which meant he lost Iosif in the carnage.
If he’d thought the civilians all around him had been panicking before, he was entirely unprepared for what came next.
Rabid screaming broke out everywhere at once — at least a dozen people had seen Viktor die. A body slammed into him from the side — a heavyset man running full-pelt toward the stairs — and he lost purchase on the slick stairwell. He slid out, crunching into one of the steps and taking another civilian off their feet in the process. Bodies trampled him, and he squinted in a feeble attempt to get his bearings.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think.
Pain tore across his body, but he’d been through the ringer before. It was all superficial — no bones were broken, which meant he could ignore the sensations entirely. He pulled himself upright halfway down the stairs and searched the screaming crowd for any sign of Iosif.
Nothing.
The guy had disappeared.
Fuck.
It was all he could think. He repeated the curse over and over again under his breath as he covered the last few steps and leapt down onto the pavement underfoot. Another couple of bodies crashed into him, sending him spiralling in different directions. He caught his breath and finally shoved a sprinting man aside, sending the guy sprawling across the icy asphalt on the road — otherwise, the guy would have barrelled straight into Slater and taken him off his feet for the second time in the space of five seconds.
Composing himself, he took a moment to pause in the middle of the pavement, ignoring the pressing urge to duck below the line of sight in case the gunman deemed it necessary to take out anyone attached to Viktor.
He searched desperately for Iosif, still finding nothing.
Then the man himself hurried straight past Slater, materialising out of nowhere, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. Slater wheeled, snatching out a hand to grab at the bottom of Iosif’s jacket, but he missed by inches. He considered pulling out the Grach in his waistband and firing a shot into one of the man’s limbs, but that wouldn’t guarantee survival in any capacity. Any direct impact had the chance to sever an artery, and Iosif would almost certainly die from massive blood loss unless an ambulance arrived in minutes.
Slater didn’t think the man deserved to die just yet.
He didn’t even know who he was.
So he watched miserably, helplessly, for the three seconds it took for Iosif to reach a jet-black van with windows tinted to the highest degree that had screeched to a stop in the midst of the procession of terrified train passengers.
Slater grimaced as a woman running full-pelt across the road did
n’t stop in time. She bounced off the hood of the van and sprawled across the asphalt, tearing off skin in the process. The occupants of the van barely noticed. A man in heavy tactical gear with a balaclava covering his features leapt out of the passenger seat and grabbed hold of Iosif as soon as he surged into range. The side door slid open on its tracks, and the guy in the combat gear hauled Iosif into the dark space. A second later the door slammed closed and the passenger dove straight back in the van. Its tyres spun, accompanied by the sound of screaming rubber, and the van shot off the mark. It veered around a cluster of civilians, clipping one man who couldn’t get out of the way in time, spinning him off to the side where he collapsed in a heap.
Then it screeched around a corner and disappeared from sight.
Slater stood motionless in the midst of the crowd, the only one not panicking. He searched the windows across the street for any sign of a gun barrel, but found nothing.
The gunman was gone.
Iosif was gone.
Viktor was dead.
Slater stood alone in a desolate stretch of Vladivostok and wondered how he’d managed to lose a grasp on the situation so completely, all in the space of a fleeting moment.
17
He didn’t know what to do.
Slater walked dejectedly through the streets of downtown Vladivostok, one road blurring into the next, everything clouded in a hazy fog of grey sleet.
Including his own mind.
He couldn’t believe how quickly things had changed. He had been willing to let Iosif escape if worse came to worse, given the fact that it would have been hard to control the actions of a man who wanted nothing to do with him. But he’d been relying on Viktor as a back-up plan — he could have wormed out more information as soon as they found a safe place to bunker down.
But the man had not been lying.
He’d come to Vladivostok to die.
And the people organising his departure hadn’t wasted any time in doing so.
They must have known exactly what train he’d been on. They’d had a man in position to take him out as soon as he filtered into the streets — they hadn’t known that Slater had intervened and caused a critical incident on board the train, but in the end that hadn’t mattered. Whether he was fleeing for his life or not, Viktor had ultimately walked straight through those doors all the same, effectively signing his own death warrant.
Misery washed over Slater. He lowered his head and cursed — it was a two-pronged assault on his senses. On one hand he was furious at himself for allowing Viktor to succumb to his enemies so quickly and Iosif to escape into the hands of his friends, but on the other hand he couldn’t believe how little information he’d been able to gather.
One man would carry his secrets to his grave, and the other was gone forever, vanished into the dark underbelly of Vladivostok, never to rear his head again at risk of Slater finding him. Iosif had seemed genuinely scared of Slater.
Slater doubted he would ever see the man again.
No-one would be that foolish.
Which left him in an odd kind of limbo, where he had almost nothing to investigate other than a loose connection to the Medved Shipbuilding Plant.
Wherever the hell that was.
Even when he managed to locate the plant, what on earth was he supposed to do? Run around kidnapping construction workers until he managed to get someone to spill their secrets?
If there was some kind of illegal operation unfolding within the plant’s limits, then nothing Slater could do would uncover it. As soon as one member of the guilty party sniffed trouble the entire entity would pack up shop and move on. Perhaps that was already taking place, as Iosif revealed that a strange American man had seemingly come all the way to Russia to investigate their dealings.
You can’t do anything, a voice told him.
He decided on sniffing around Medved Shipbuilding Plant at the earliest available opportunity, just for the hell of it. There was a ninety-nine percent chance he would turn up with nothing, but he had come this far, and he wasn’t going to book a trip back toward Moscow for at least a few days.
The same voice in his head told him it was over, but he reminded himself of his past.
It never ends up being over.
Learn from history, Will.
So he would investigate.
Because that seemed to be the only way his life unfolded.
But not now.
He had just watched a man’s head explode from less than a foot away.
Now, he needed a drink.
He tightened the thick overcoat around his torso to mask the droplets of blood staining his undergarments. He’d taken care of the blood on his face and neck by melting snow in his hand and rinsing it off.
He stepped into the first bar he found. It was an old-school traditional Russian tavern, complete with exposed wooden ceiling beams and a hearty fire on the far wall. The tables were populated with locals, all of whom turned to the entrance with raised eyebrows as a black man stepped into their local drinking hole for what Slater imagined was the first time in years.
Most of the patrons looked to be well over two hundred pounds — Russians sure enjoyed their drink.
Slater found himself consumed by the thirst for alcohol — he had used all manner of substances to dull his senses for the better part of a decade now. It probably wasn’t the healthiest use of his downtime, but he didn’t care. He preferred it over therapy.
This way, he didn’t have to talk to anyone.
He could stuff all his emotions up into a tight ball and shove them down deep inside himself and suppress them with a steady stream of drink.
It had worked so far.
He wasn’t about to unpack his mind. He simply moved through life at a blistering pace and dwelled on nothing. Maybe he figured he’d die before slowing down, and then he could take his twisted mentality to his grave, never having to deal with it if he departed from the land of the living.
Quite a sinister worldview, all things considered.
Once again, he didn’t care.
He liked the taste of a drink, and all else be damned he would allow himself that reprieve. The rest of his life consisted of throwing his broken body into the line of fire for anyone he could help.
He wondered what Jason King would think of all this…
He wondered how King dealt with his demons.
He zigzagged his way around the wooden tables spread across the floor of the tavern and drew up a stool at the bar, ordering three fingers of vodka in a tall glass. The bartender was a stout man with thick white hair and a creased, weather-beaten face. He seemed to be in his early sixties.
‘English?’ Slater said, more to fill the silence than out of genuine interest. He couldn’t care less whether this man spoke English.
His thoughts were consumed by the memory of the top half of Viktor’s head separating from the rest of his body.
‘Da,’ the man muttered, then smiled at the irony. ‘Sorry. Yes. I have to. Tourists end up in here every now and then. Like yourself.’
‘Seems everyone I’ve run into in Russia speaks English in some capacity.’
‘Changing world. Have to keep up. I am online now. Search for “Vladivostok bar” and I’m the first result. My son helped me with that. Best to speak English if you want to do well.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘You looking to stay the night?’
Slater looked around. ‘I don’t understand.’
The bartender jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. ‘Rooms upstairs.’
Slater shrugged. ‘Maybe. Let me think.’
He tipped the contents of the glass into his mouth and swallowed in one massive gulp. It was strong and didn’t taste cheap, and it burned its way down his throat before settling in his stomach, warm and satisfying. The effects would take a few minutes to hit.
Until then, Slater ordered another.
As the bartender poured, he cast a look over Slater’s shoulder. ‘You here to vi
sit your friend?’
‘What?’
The man cocked his head. ‘You two don’t know each other?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just a coincidence, you know. Two Americans in this place. Very odd.’
For a moment Slater tensed up, wondering how his past had caught up to him. There could be any one of hundreds of people sitting behind him right now, enemies long forgotten who had stalked him through Russia and finally lay in wait in this tavern, ready for him to come strolling through the door to put a bullet in his head.
Then he realised how ridiculous of a concept that was, considering he’d made the decision to walk in here less than a minute earlier.
And he didn’t think he had psychics for enemies.
He craned his neck as the bartender poured another couple of fingers of the top shelf vodka into the same glass, and noticed the woman across the room staring at him from the shadows.
It was hard not to notice her.
Her green eyes were piercing, as if she could see exactly who Slater was without a word exchanged between them. Her hair was curly, the colour of autumn leaves, and her figure was lithe and athletic — although it was wrapped up in winter gear, Slater found it hard not to notice. He held her gaze for a brief moment before turning back to the bar.
‘Don’t know her,’ he said.
The bartender grinned. ‘She’s staying upstairs. Maybe you should get to know her.’
‘I don’t think she wants to know me.’
‘That’s…’
Slater stared at the man as he battled to find the right words.
‘…pessimistic.’
The bartender seemed pleased with himself for nailing a difficult English word.
Slater smirked. ‘My life is pretty pessimistic.’
‘You are young. Strong. Healthy. Your life seems okay.’
‘Healthy physically, maybe.’
The bartender tapped the side of his head. ‘We are all fucked in here. Can’t be mad about that.’
‘Think I should I go introduce myself?’
