Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Jack grimaced, then moved over to the other body and pulled the jacket and shirt off. This man was as festooned with ink as the other man, and he had the same Seven Strong Men tattoo on his lower torso.

“Why are these Seven Strong Men after you?” Jack asked.

“The same reason they are after you, I guess.”

“Which is?”

“Lad, I don’t have a fucking clue. I’ve had no run-ins with Russian mafia. Ever.”

“You think the guys that jumped me today were part of the same group?”

“Did they have little banana knives?”

“One had a small hooked blade. Is that what you mean?”

“Yep. Seven Strong Men.”

Jack could not fathom it. “ Here? In the UK?”

“Of course they are here. London is Londongrad, after all. My God, if you are not as dense as your daddy.”

Jack sat back in the chair. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you such an asshole?”

Oxley just shrugged and sipped tea.

Jack was still trying to find some sort of connection between his work at Castor and Boyle and the past of Victor Oxley. The fact he had been under surveillance since before his father had mentioned Bedrock meant that the two situations were related somehow, or else it was one hell of a coincidence, and Jack had been at this game long enough that he naturally leaned to the former. One question occurred to him: “How do you know all this about Russian prison tattoos?”

Oxley looked at Ryan. For several seconds there was no sound in the flat except for the ticking of some unseen clock, but with a shrug the white-haired Brit reached to his waist, grabbed hold of his threadbare sweater, and pulled it up.

Jack saw now. Victor Oxley did not have the Seven Strong Men tattoo on his torso, but he wore an incredible amount of ink nonetheless. There were stars and crosses and daggers, and a skull with a teardrop and a dragon, all just on the small portion of the big man’s chest and belly he’d exposed to Ryan.

Jack said, “You were in a gulag?”

Oxley lowered his shirt and reached for his mug of tea. “Where the hell you think I learned the bad manners you keep complaining about?”

Oxley finished his tea sitting over the dead bodies of the two Russian mafia hit men, then rose from the table and began slowly pacing the little room; each time he arrived at the windows over the road out front, he glanced through the curtains. Jack’s mug had cooled somewhat on the table next to him, but he hadn’t touched it.

For the past few minutes, Jack had tried questioning Oxley, although the Englishman’s answers had remained vague and evasive.

“When did you leave SAS?”

“Eighties.”

“And you joined MI5?”

“Don’t know where you heard that.”

“When were you in the gulag?”

“Long time ago.”

“When did you return to the UK?”

“Long time ago.”

Jack growled in frustration. He was not nearly as calm as the older man was. “You have a problem being specific, don’t you?”

“It’s all ancient history.”

“It might have been ancient history until the Russian mafia kicked in your door, but these dead guys indicate to me that your past is pretty damn relevant to the present.”

A phone started ringing on one of the bodies, but Oxley ignored it. Instead, he said, “Go home. Leave me be.”

“I can’t just leave. You aren’t safe here.”

“You going to protect me, are you? Look, as far as I can tell you are the reason these gents came kicking in my door.”

“The next crew might have guns, you know.”

“Seven Strong Men doesn’t use guns. Not in the UK, anyway.”

“That’s the first good news I’ve heard today.”

“They don’t need guns. They favor knives, metal truncheons, that sort of thing. They work in pairs or teams of three or more. They are right brutes.”

Jack said, “What are you planning on doing with these bodies?”

Oxley shrugged. “I’ve got a saw and a bathtub and some garbage bags. I can make this problem go away.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious. I ain’t going to the police. I live a very quiet life, forgotten by my government, and that’s the way I like it. The moment the British government learns Russian gangsters are trying to kill me, then I will become interesting to them again.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything is wrong with that. The British government are the people who turned on me.”

“Turned on you?”

Oxley stopped in the middle of the room. “Turned on me.” He walked back to look out the curtains for a moment, then paced across the floor, all the way to the little kitchen. He turned around and walked back in the other direction.

Jack knew the man was trying to figure out what to do. Jack himself was thinking about the dead men, and what this would mean for him. There was no way he could hide this, but revealing this to his father would put an end to Jack’s time here in London. He’d be on a plane before nightfall, or else a Secret Service protection detail would be sent over from the embassy to keep him company 24/7.

Shit.

As Ryan considered his own predicament, he noticed Oxley had stopped his pacing. Now he stood at the front window, looking down into the street.

Jack said, “Listen. We’ve got to come up with a plan here.”

Oxley did not reply.

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

“I don’t like you.”

“You don’t even know—”

Oxley stepped back from the window, shielding himself behind the wall. “No, lad, I don’t know you, but I will sign a truce with you for the time being, because I also don’t know the two bastards that just climbed out of a car at the end of my street. I do believe they are on their way here to check on their mates.”

“Shit.” Jack stood quickly. “More Russians?”

Oxley shrugged. “Dunno. You piss anyone else off of late? These two out front are coming fast. I’d be surprised if they didn’t have at least one more heading up the back stairs. Make yourself useful and check it out.”

Ryan leapt up, pulled a small knife out of a drawer in the kitchen. Oxley pulled a pair of brass knuckles out of the pocket of his trousers and slipped them on his hand.

Jack raced down the hallway toward the back of Oxley’s little building, and here he looked out the window. The back garden had just enough room for a few washing lines and a car park large enough for four vehicles. Jack scanned the tiny car park and the linens hanging over the garden, but he did not see anyone approaching the rear of the building. He checked the other back gardens on the street, looking for any threats, but he saw nothing. Quickly, he turned to run back up the hall to Oxley’s place to help him with the two men heading there, but he’d taken only a couple of steps when he heard footfalls on the rear stairwell.

Whoever was coming for Oxley was already in the building. From the sound, Jack determined there were two of them, they were big, and they were ascending the stairs quickly.

Jack flattened his back to the wall in the hallway next to the entrance to the stairwell, and he held the carving knife in his right hand.

A man stepped into view on Jack’s right; he was surprisingly big, but his attention had been focused on the flat at the front of the building where Oxley lived. Jack took advantage of this and fired out a left jab just as the man turned in his direction. The blow took the big man in the jaw and snapped his head back; he rocked back into the second man out of the stairwell, but before Jack could execute a second attack, both men were charging forward again.

Jack saw the knives almost instantly. Both Russians swung their short blades at him in the hall; Jack ducked left, went low and raised back up between the attackers, then struck out with his own knife and felt the tip of his blade sweep across the outside of the first man’s right shoulder.