Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

Garin opened his pocketknife and put the blade across the smuggler’s throat. “Keep driving.”

“My chances are better with them.” Boris pushed away Garin’s hand contemptuously. “Not every crossing succeeds. That is how I stay in business.”

He opened the car door and emerged into the searchlight’s hot beam, blinking, his right hand at his eyes to block the brilliant illumination. Seeing gun muzzles pointed at him, he raised his hands in a show of surrender and waved peacefully at the two border guards approaching through the mist.

Boris had a meek, innocent smile and the contrite manner of the wrongly accused. He walked quickly, speaking Ukrainian, a language Garin understood well enough. Shithead.

Garin motioned for Olga to slide across the front seat and get behind the steering wheel. She was rigid with fear, her eyes wide, and her breath came in fits. Garin looked at her calmly, almost affectionately, and spoke in a gentle, coaxing voice. “Do what I say. The life of your child depends on it. Do you understand?” His expression hardened. “Drive toward the men standing ahead of us. Now!”

She nodded almost involuntarily.

“Don’t stop. If guns are fired, keep driving. Stop for nothing.”

She nodded again, then moved across the front seat, sliding over the center console and gear shift, and dropped into the driver’s seat. She clutched the wheel with nervous hands and gripped the gear shift, trembling.

“Good,” he said. “I am getting out. Drive when I close the door.”

Garin stepped into the searchlight, squinting against the glare. Border guards, who’d taken Boris into custody, added Garin to their coverage. They sent Boris back to the Soviet checkpoint and turned their weapons on Garin, who retreated one step, and then a second step, and he slapped the Mercedes once when he heard Olga fumbling with the ignition.

Without an active intention on his part, and not through any obvious mistake, Garin found himself vaulted into a future he’d always known awaited him, where things could go very wrong—but they could also go right. Now, suddenly, that future was upon him. His mind calibrated and recalibrated the risks.

The answer came to him as he retreated from the car. A vexed sky let go a lightning bolt that was immediately followed by shattering thunder. The frightening rumble passed, but it diverted the attention of the border guards, and as darkness fell again, Garin pounded twice on the Mercedes. His saw the two young border guards turn their heads at the sound of the Mercedes’ revving engine. Then its tires squealed in violent acceleration.

An urgent chorus of voices shouted, and an alarm went up. The confusion of the moment climaxed in a burst of automatic gunfire. One border guard had the presence of mind to lift his Kalashnikov and direct the weapon at the fleeing car, but he fired from his hip, so the hail of bullets hit the pavement in white puffs, other shots straying wildly toward the Czech customs hut, shattering a window. Czech guards ducked for cover. A second border guard carefully aimed his rifle, shattering the car’s rear window and taking out the rear tires. One hissed as it deflated and the other burst, so the rubber flapped against the pavement, bringing the car to a halt. It was stopped short of the Czech border’s raised barrier. All eyes settled on the car in no man’s land. A precarious silence lengthened as everyone waited for a sign of life.

“Over here,” Garin shouted. He had crossed the few yards to the car, waving at the Czech guards. He peered in the window and then quickly opened the doors, helping a stunned Olga from the driver’s seat. Petrov emerged, holding his frightened son. Garin faced the Soviet border guards, a human shield, giving the family time to retreat into the line of Czech guards, who opened their ranks.

Garin was alone in the frontier. A tense standoff between opposing armed forces ensued. Garin stared at the nervous Soviet guards pointing their weapons, and then he felt a presence at his side. Mueller had crossed the short distance and joined him in the open.

Garin heard his name called. It was a vaguely familiar voice from deep inside the thickening fog, a voice without provenance that had spoken his real name.

Behind the two Americans, and protected by the dubious comfort of the invisible political divide, Czech guards stood with their commanding officer. Rositske took a position on the front line, joining the drama. All were alert, all were anxious, and all were eager to protect their success. Months of planning, long nights of worry, and two days of extraordinary suspense on two continents were over. This was to be the victorious moment when Mueller and Rositske pulled Garin back to the caravan that would drive everyone to the waiting G4 executive jet, which would fly them to London and then on to Washington, DC.

Mueller put his hand on Garin’s shoulder. “Let it go.”

Garin ignored the command and peered through the fog, alert for the woman’s voice. The purling blanket of mist diffused the light’s beam and made it hard to recognize who was on the other side. Garin heard his name called a second time, and he knew her voice.

He stepped forward to peer into the puzzling haze. And then his name again, louder, pleading, luring him with dangerous bewilderment.

Mueller put a restraining hand on Garin’s arm. “Forget it. Let’s go.”

Forty meters away the fog opened up and revealed a silver Chaika limousine that had stopped at an acute angle just inside no man’s land. The rear door was open, and Garin saw Natalya. She stood erect at the door in her KGB uniform.

Garin heard her call his name again—a loud, harassing voice that came with a plaintive plea.

“Don’t,” Mueller said.

Natalya wore the sullied uniform that she’d been in when he left her on the floor of the cell—her smart tunic and buttoned white shirt torn, and someone had tried to clean the bloodstains. Her cheek was swollen, her arm bent at a terrible angle, and her expression vacant. And then Garin heard pain in her voice. He wondered how long she’d held out before their brutality had gotten her to talk.

Her voice again. A melancholy pitch. There was a disembodied hollowness to her request that he help her. A warning? he wondered.

She was beaten but defiant. It was hard for him to look at her proud figure bent slightly from abuse and to see her pronounced limp when she stepped forward. She wore her pain bravely, and her clothes covered the bruises of her torture. She raised her hand to her eyes to look through the gauzy light.

Deputy Chairman Churgin stepped out of the silver Chaika and joined Natalya, gripping her elbow firmly. He held a nine-millimeter Makarov service pistol in his other hand.

Churgin’s presence was a startling surprise, but the value of Garin’s professional training was its preparation for the unforeseen. Churgin’s appearance caused Garin to rethink things. Vengeance laid its cold hand on his heart. He stared at Churgin through the fog, thinking about old wounds. Urgency stirred. Things were not playing out as he had expected. Ever since they’d arrived at Uzhgorod, he’d believed they would safely cross the Czech border and then he’d enjoy a glorious success.

“Let’s go,” Mueller repeated. “There is nothing we can do.”

Garin threw off Mueller’s hand and stepped forward. There were only four of them in view now on the Soviet side, or five with the driver, hardly visible behind the windshield. The driver turned, and Garin saw Lieutenant Colonel Talinov behind the wheel. Deputy Chairman Churgin and Natalya were visible, as were the two nervous border guards, but he knew others were hidden in the eddying fog. Talinov remained in the car. The odds were terrible. That was Garin’s thought as he stepped forward.