Ian Slater - Warshot

While Cheng finalized troop dispositions for the battle defense of the borders, and the Siberian OMON Black Berets were taking Alexsandra Malof to the cells in Harbin, over five thousand miles away Jay La Roche was high, drunk, and aroused in his eightieth floor New York penthouse above the Il Trovatore bar, asking Francine what the hell she thought she was doing.

“What you told me, Mr. La Roche.”

“Don’t ‘Mr. La Roche’ me, you slut. You love it, don’t you? You—” He lurched up from the bed, pulling the strap from her, flinging it across the room. “Don’t have to be invited, do you? Like it, right? Bitch—” He lunged at her, both hands grabbing her breasts, losing his balance, falling back on the waterbed, the heavy slush sound mixing with Francine crying in pain on top of him.

“Shut up, you bitch!” They rolled off the bed onto the thick shag carpet, he still hanging on to her, letting go only when her rain of blows became too difficult to fend off. She was screaming at him. She ran to the bedroom door but couldn’t open it. He laughed. There was a tearing noise like crushed cellophane, and she saw him pulling on a condom. For a moment or two he had his back to her and she saw him searching for something, then he swung around, holding his hand up victoriously, showing her the snuff box, flicking the lid open, snapping it shut, tossing it at her. “Take a snort!”

She did, and in a few moments felt another rush. “I don’t want to hit you again, Mister—”

“Jay!”

“I don’t want to hit you again, Jay.”

“Turn around!”

“No — please, Mister — please, Jay,” she gasped.

He jerked her hard toward him, then unsteadily swung her about, slamming her face first up against the wall, and she felt the searing pain as he entered her, and tepid liquid running down her legs onto the carpet as he poured the bourbon over her buttocks, the liquor spreading in a pool about her feet. “You’ve been to Melville’s,” he charged.

“Yes, but I—”

“You clean?”

“Yes, I—”

“The fuck you are. Thought you could pull a fast one on the boss eh? Eh?”

“No — no.”

He smacked her hard on the buttocks with his left hand. “I’m not getting your shitty germs.” She gasped again at the hot, raw pain inside her rectum. Her arms spread-eagled against the wall, nails hard into the wallpaper, she felt she was going to black out. He was breathing hard, panting, “Oh — oh — oh,” calling out, “I love you, baby. I love you—” But she knew he was talking about his Lana. Now he was making blubbering, crying noises as he pumped her harder and harder, until he fell full against her, lathered in sweat, his breathing irregular, and then he was sobbing, clutching her waist, and off to her side she could see he was still clutching a picture of his wife. A moment later he staggered back from her, collapsing on the bed. “Get… get… out, you slut!” His voice was hoarse, and the next time he spoke, barely audible. “I’ll get her back — you’ll see. I’ll get her back—”

Francine ran toward the bedroom door, expecting it to be locked, but this time it sprang open. She didn’t know how he’d done it — the place was full of buttons and traps — and she didn’t care, moving quickly out into the living room, lifting the phone, punching the bar button. “Jimmy — you gotta help me, I—”

“You in the penthouse?”

“Yes. For God’s sake, Jimmy, he’s—”

“He use the knife on the bra?”

“What — yes, why?”

“Get out, I’m on my way up. Meet you at the elevator— Francine?”

“Yeah?”

“You get out real quick. He’s not finished, babe. Next cut won’t be your clothes.”

Francine dropped the phone, slipped off the chain, and a moment later was standing out in the hallway next to the elevator.

In the Il Trovatore, Jimmy had called over a waiter to fill in, walked quickly into the elevator and pushed the button for the penthouse floor. The moment the doors slid open, in she came, stark naked. Jimmy gave her his bar jacket, his other hand holding down the bypass lever, his thumb pushing the button for the thirteenth floor. She was shivering. “This is the only building in New York with a thirteenth floor,” Jimmy said suddenly. “Wanta know why?”

“He’s crazy.” Her eyes were closed, her breathing rapid.

“He has it to show he’s not superstitious,” said Jimmy. “Says he doesn’t believe in voodoo — destiny’s in your own hands. Always quoting some guy called Neatcha.”

“He’s crazy.”

“No doubt about it. But the money’s good.”

“Not if you’re dead.”

“You mean you won’t keep it?”

“I mean I’m never going back.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy, watching the floor lights flit by. “And I’m Father Christmas.” The elevator came to a halt. “A grand’s good money.”

“I mean it,” she said.

“I know you do. Listen, if you want a good proctologist — a few stitches — five hundred bucks. No questions. That leaves you with five, sweetass.”

“That supposed to be funny, Jimmy?”

“Don’t get shitty, Francine. Just a joke. You’re in one piece. Look on the bright side — you could be his wife.”

“Huh — wonder why she divorced him?”

“Not divorced,” said Jimmy, walking her to her apartment door. “Separated, honey. He isn’t finished with her yet — or her boyfriend, the crackerjack ace.” Jimmy seemed to like the idea. They heard someone coming up the exit stairs. They walked faster. Whoever it was stopped, then kept going up to the next floor.

“One of the boys,” said Jimmy. “Probably wants to make sure you’re still on the premises.”

“Oh my God,” she said.

“What?”

“My damn keys — I forgot my keys!”

“No sweat,” said Jimmy, taking a credit card from his wallet and working open the door.

Once inside, she handed him back the jacket. “Thanks, Jimmy.”

“Don’t try to leave him, babe, like that Lana Brentwood dame. If I know anything, he ain’t finished with her yet. And remember Hailey.” Jimmy could see she didn’t recognize the name. “Congressman,” he explained. “Didn’t do what La Roche wanted him to. Something about having his wife transferred. Congressman Hailey had an accident. La Roche’s tabloids said it was suicide. Months later La Roche’s wife was transferred to the Aleutians— another congressman in his pocket, I guess. So you be careful, hear?”

“Yeah.”

“Francine?”

“Yeah?”

“You enjoy it?”

For Marshal Yesov, Beijing had given the answer, his forward observers reporting that from the ruins of Kublai Khan’s Xanadu, 190 miles north of Beijing, on the Great North Plain, as far north as Manzhouli, just south of Siberia’s Argunskiy Mountains, and in the northeast as far up as the Black Dragon River that formed the northernmost Siberian-Chinese frontier, Chinese garrisons were being reinforced to repulse any incursion by the Americans through northern China’s river valleys into Siberia.

Yesov was so pleased with the Chinese action that he ordered all his forward observers and consulate liaison officers, like Ilya Latov in Harbin, to simply refer to the Amur as the “jiang”—the river — in deference to Chinese sensitivities. And if so much as one American footprint or one shell or one American helicopter was sighted straying, even for an instant, across the border, both Siberian and Chinese headquarters were to be notified immediately. Given their common watchdog duty, some of the Chinese and Siberian junior ranks formed congenial relations during their daily radio reports to each other on the status of the wide ribbon of frozen river, where temperatures had dropped to minus thirty in the passes. The cold was no special travail for the northern troops from Shenyang Military Region in China, or for the Siberians, but it was a torture for the Chinese regiments who came from south of the Yangtze. These southern Chinese regiments, some from as far away as Canton, hated the cold and were grateful that patrols were kept to a minimum so that the American helicopters buzzing up and down the border during the cease-fire would see nothing else but normal Chinese patrol activity along the western part of the Amur hump where the northern part of China’s Inner Mongolia jutted like a blunt spearhead around Hulun Lake into the northeasternmost sector of Siberian Mongolia.