Ted Bell - Tsar

Stoke eased the throttles forward until he saw the tachs reading 2,500 rpm, mentally preparing himself like a bull rider in the chute.

“Ready?” Stoke said, glancing over at Yurin. They were mid-channel, almost out in open water, about to enter the funnel.

No reply. The copilot was wearing the thousand-yard stare, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into, if his life was worth a measly million bucks for a plastic play toy.

Stoke suddenly firewalled both throttles, and the boat came screaming out of the water, leaping forward with a thunderous roar of exhaust as the big props grabbed water. The boat went flying through the chute, wide open. At the other end, an oncoming wave was building, rushing toward them. It looked to be a green frothing wall about twenty, thirty feet high, and it was just getting started.

“Watch out!” the Russian screamed.

“Not a problem,” Stoke said calmly in his lip mike.

The Russian’s eyes went wide with terror. His client seemed intent on slamming the Magnum head-on into the oncoming wall of water. They were going to smash it like a bullet to the forehead. Wave had to be forty feet high now. The water was glassy green, so clear you could almost see through it to the other side. The props whined as the sharp prow of the Magnum struck the wave, pierced it, and then Stoke just drove the boat right through the wall, the bow eventually emerging from the other side.

The bow was suspended in midair, the back half of the boat, including the cockpit, was momentarily still inside the wave, and then they were through and pitching forward, the nose dropping and the bottom of Stoke’s stomach falling away as they went screaming down the wall of another big wave, into the trough of a brand-new wave just starting to build.

“Holy fuck,” he heard Yurin say, sputtering. Stoke looked over at his drenched passenger and liked what he saw. Fear.

What was left of the boat’s curved windshield was a mangled piece of chromed frame wrapped around the Russian’s chest, sheets of broken safety glass in his lap and on the deck around his feet.

“Not bad, huh?” Stoke said. “I thought we’d lose a lot more than just the goddamn windshield. Look, we’ve still got the spotlight up on the bow. Now, that’s good construction.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Easy, Yurin. No way to speak to a prospective customer.”

“Go back!” Yurin said. “Turn us around. You’re going to snap this thing in two out here!”

“I’ll go back, but first I’ve got a couple of questions.”

“Questions? About the boat?”

“No. About you.”

“Me? I’ll tell you about me. I’m going to fucking kill you, okay? I’m going to rip your ugly head right off your-”

He was clawing at his safety harness, desperate to get out of his seat and remove Stoke’s head. Stoke looked over at him, smiling.

“Look, just calm down, okay? Let me explain something. Only take a second. You’re an asshole, all right?”

A sudden surge threw both men back in their seats, snapping their heads back. They were angled sharply upward now, Stoke was using the powerful engines to climb the nearly vertical face of another building wave. And keep Yurin firmly planted in his seat.

“What?” Yurin shouted. “What the fuck do you want to know?”

“You’re Black Beret, right? All you security guys at the birthday party. Russian Black Berets?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just turn around and go back to the marina before you kill both of us!”

“I will, but bear with me a sec. Spend a lot of time in Chechnya, Yurin? Whupping Chechen ass?”

“Never been there.”

Stoke put the wheel hard over to port, and the boat fell off the steep climb and started skidding sideways down the wave. Then the wildly cavitating props caught water, dug in, and she was headed on a better diagonal course down into the trough. Stoke had just enough control for a second to pull the 9mm Glock from inside his foul-weather jacket. Yurin saw the gun, and it seemed to make his already perfect day even more complete.

“Yurin, listen up. Get out of your harness.”

They were in the trough for the moment. Stoke pulled the throttles back to idle and unsnapped his own seat harness. If you planted your feet wide, you could probably stay on them. At least long enough to do what he had to do.

“What?”

“You heard me. Get your ass down on the deck. On your knees, Red Rider. You’ve got three seconds before your brains won’t work so good anymore. One…two…

“Three,” Stoke said. He turned and fired a round about a foot in front of Yurin’s nose.

“Fuck!” Yurin unbuckled the fasteners and slid out of the harness, one hand still clenching the sissy bar, what the Navy called the “oh-shit bar.” They were still moving uneasily along the trough. The Magnum was rocking and rolling, and it wasn’t easy, but the Russian managed to kneel on the deck between the two seats without getting thrown out of the boat.

“Jacket off. Everything off, waist up.”

“Jesus. A fucking giant black homo with a death wish.”

“Now.”

Stoke tapped him gently on top of the head with the pistol butt. Yurin ripped at the zipper on his yellow slicker, somehow managing to get it off. The wind whipped it right out of the cockpit, and it disappeared aft in a cloud of spume.

“Now the shirt.”

He was wearing a black T-shirt, the same kind he had on the night of the party. Macho muscle-boy crap. People who had Ferraris didn’t wear Ferrari shirts. And people who had real muscle didn’t wear muscle shirts.

The shirt came off as Stoke carefully moved around behind him and jammed his left foot into the back of Yurin’s neck, shoving him forward, facedown on the deck, the man’s neck and shoulder muscles all thick cords and knots bulging as he tried to squirm away. Made the image Stoke had expected to see a moving picture, but yeah, there it was, all right. He saw just what he thought he’d see.

The Head of the Tiger.

The tiger’s head was tattooed right between Yurin’s shoulder blades. Stoke had to admit it was impressive, even though it was only about the size of a softball. But it was the work of an artist, beautifully etched into the skin. Below the scowling tiger’s face was the tattooed name Stoke had been thinking about ever since he’d first met Yurin and his black-shirted bully boys at the birthday blast.

OMON.

The Russian special forces, the so-called Black Berets. Death squads who had roamed Chechnya before and after the carpet bombing of Grozny, killing anything and everything in their path that remained alive. Elite forces during the war, paid killers after. He’d kept his mouth shut, hadn’t told Brock about his suspicions that night. He thought he’d pry around the edges a little and see what broke loose first. But he’d been doing his research.

Now that Putin’s second Chechen war was long over, OMON worked for the new dark forces of the interior ministry inside the Kremlin. They roamed Moscow in armored personnel carriers, wearing their trademark black and blue camo fatigues, doing odd jobs for the powers that be. When they got bored, or loaded, they picked up gutter drunks in Red Square, hauled them off to the tank at Lubyanka in the APCs, and beat the shit out of them. Or worse.

Stoke leaned down to speak directly into Yurin’s ear. He kept his foot planted on the guy’s neck, just to keep him from getting any frisky ideas. The kid had stopped squirming and bitching, but only because Stoke had put a little more weight on the back of his neck, compressing his vocal cords.

“What brings you bad boys all the way to Miami?” Stoke asked.