C. Graham - The Solomon Effect

“What the hell is this place?” said Kirkpatrick.

“I don’t know.” Rodriguez signaled to the Russians in the Durango to pull over. “But I think we’ve just found our boy.”

The chopper came down on a grassy helipad beside a dreary Soviet-era building of dirty glass and rust-stained concrete. Two blue-and-white militia vans stood at the ready, their idling engines belching clouds of white steam into the cold air.

A tall, lean militia captain with high cheekbones and a tight mouth snapped to attention and delivered a stuttering report.

“What do you mean you lost the men watching the widow’s farm?” Andrei bellowed.

“They just…left.”

“And your men didn’t follow them…why?”

The militia captain swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple up and down. “One of them was taking a leak.”

“And the other was-what? Asleep? Screwing his girlfriend in the backseat?”

A rush of scarlet darkened the militia captain’s face before slowly draining away to leave him a sickly white.

Jax said, “I can think of only two reasons they’d leave. Either they’ve given up trying to find the boy and are pulling out, or…”

Tobie finished for him. “Or they found him.”

Andrei stood with his fists on his hips, a muscle bunching and flexing along his tight jaw as he stared through the silently drifting snow at the distant cluster of wooden houses. “If you were a sixteen-year-old kid too scared to go home, who would you turn to?”

From a distant barn came the lowing of a cow and, nearer, the disgruntled caw-caw of a crow perched on a nearby electric pole. Looking toward it, Tobie saw the spire of an ancient church thrusting up above the bare, snow-covered branches of a stand of willows.

“The priest,” she said suddenly. “Remember when Anna Baklanov was showing us Stefan’s picture? She said Jasha used to make fun of the boy for being so devout.”

Andrei swung toward the nearest militia van. “It’s worth a try. Let’s go.”

Stefan sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, his spine pressed against one of the iron columns supporting the stable block’s soaring roof. Tipping back his head, he could see a giant hook hanging from the center of the beam above. He craned his neck, following the line, hook after hook, disappearing into the gloom. It seemed strange that the hooks should still be here, long after all the blood stallions and broodmares had disappeared.

He shivered. The interior of the stable block was starkly empty and open, the fine polished oak that had once formed the stalls having long ago been ripped out and carted off for firewood. The row of small, arched windows set high on each side wall let in little light. He shivered again, and reached over to draw the dog closer. The pup let out a little whimper and licked his face.

“It’ll be all right once Father Alexei gets here,” whispered Stefan, his voice echoing eerily in the vast, hollow chamber. “You’ll see.”

He heard the whine of the priest’s motorbike long before he saw it. Scrambling to his feet, he was standing in the broken archway at the end of the stable block when the priest brought his old Ural to a coughing standstill and cut the engine.

Stefan bolted out the door. “Father!”

Climbing stiffly off the motorbike, the old priest turned to open his arms wide. “Stefan. My boy.”

Stefan flung himself against the priest’s broad chest. “Father,” said Stefan again. Pressing his face into the habit’s scratchy wet wool, he breathed in the familiar, comforting scents of incense and vodka and cooked cabbage.

“Come, come,” said the priest, drawing back to cup Stefan’s cheek with one big, work-worn hand. “It’s all right. Tell me what has happened.”

“They want to kill me!”

“Who? Who wants to kill you?” said the priest, just as the dog at Stefan’s side let out a growl that rumbled low in his chest.

Looking up, Stefan saw a shadow, heard the crunch of snow beneath a heavy boot. He took a step back, whispered, “It’s them. It’s the men who killed Uncle Jasha and the others.”

Turning, Father Andrei shoved Stefan behind his big body and shouted, “Run, boy!” just as the men across the clearing opened fire.

Stefan dove through the broken archway, his shoulder exploding in pain as he hit the litter-covered concrete floor and rolled to one side, his arms coming up to wrap around his head. A cascade of gunfire chipped the brick walls of the stables and pinged off the rusting iron columns. Scrambling to his hands and knees, he screamed, “Father!” Then, “Pup!” and provoked another volley.

Pushing to his feet, he sprinted down the long stables, beneath high-arched windows that showed patches of dull white sky overhead. He heard the voice from his nightmares shout in stilted Russian, “Nikolayev, stay outside and take the left perimeter. Zoya, you take the right. Kirkpatrick and Salinger, come with me.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” whispered Stefan, flattening against the nearest wall with a shaky gasp.

The hollowed-out shell of the stables stretched before him, long and narrow and totally empty except for the two marching rows of iron columns and the silent line of hooks that marked the center of each overhead beam. He could see a side door about halfway down the far right wall that had once opened to the pasturelands beyond. But if he tried to make a run for it, the Russian named Zoya would cut him down in an instant.

He was trapped.

The militia vans were just turning under the stud farm’s high gateway when Jax heard the distant crackle of gunfire. “Shit,” he whispered under his breath.

They’d learned from the priest’s housekeeper that the old man had bundled up some clean clothes and a slab of roasted pork, fresh bread, and apples, and set off on his motorbike for the ruins of some abandoned royal stables. But from the sounds of things, they were too late.

“Step on it!” yelled Andrei. He hit the siren, the wailing notes blaring out as they bounced and swayed over the rutted lane.

They fishtailed around a stand of pines, breaking out of the trees into a stretch of abandoned pastures with row after row of stable blocks of red brick and stucco walls and collapsing red-tiled roofs.

“There,” said Andrei, pointing to a rusty Ural motorbike with a sidecar parked in front of the relatively intact stable block at the far end. A dark mound of faded black lay halfway between the motorbike and the arched entrance to the stables.

As the wailing militia vans bore down on them, a man in a heavy gray sweater broke away from the near side of the stable block. Leaping the tumbled remnants of a fence, he bolted across the abandoned pastures toward a thicket of willows edging a distant small stream.

“Give me a gun,” Jax shouted to Andrei.

“Here.” Andrei tossed him a Makarov pistol, military issue, with a special twelve-round detachable box magazine.

Sliding on leaf mold and snow and mud, their van skidded to a halt beside a silver Range Rover and a black Durango, heat radiating off their engines to melt the surrounding snow. Andrei handed a second Makarov to October. She took it without comment.

They piled out of the vans, Andrei shouting orders, directing half the militiamen after the dark figure heading for the creek, the others around the far side of the stables.

Jax charged his pistol by pulling back the slide, then pushed down the side-mounted safety lever. “Stay here,” he told October as he and Andrei and the militia captain headed for the broken arch of the entrance in the end wall.

“Why?”

“In case they slip past us and double back around to the cars.”