Brad Thor - State Of The Union

“Originally, I was hired just to find his body.”

“By the people who killed him, correct?” demanded Alexandra.

“I have no idea who killed him, or tried to kill him I should say.”

“Bullshit. Who hired you?”

“Please. Can’t I at least sit up?” pleaded Popov. It was a voice he had not heard himself use in a long, long time. It was the voice of the pitiful, defenseless orphan, but here he thought it might work. If she thought he was defeated, broken, she might let her guard down. It only had to happen for an instant. That was all he needed and she would be dead before her body hit the floor.

“I will tell you what you need to know,” continued Popov. “I just want to sit up so I can stop the bleeding.”

Alexandra nodded her head and stepped back, well aware that she had already fired six of her eight shots. She didn’t want to waste any more ammunition.

Alexandra set two teacups and saucers on the edge of the sideboard. She placed a tea bag in each cup and then walked slowly backward to the stove for the kettle, never taking her eyes off Popov.

She poured the boiling water into the first cup and as she began pouring it into the second, she heard her patient stir in the other room. He let out a long, struggling moan as if he was having trouble breathing.

Alexandra was so intent on the noise emanating from the other room that she failed to pay attention to the teakettle. As the lid fell off, the scalding spray of hot water caused her to drop it and with a startled cry, snatch her burning hand to her mouth as her gun fell to the floor. It was an opportunity Popov had to take advantage of.

No second chances, he thought to himself as he shot out of his chair and went straight for Alexandra’s throat. Before she knew what was happening, he was on top of her. He swung his right arm like a hammer, crashing it down onto her forearm with a force that reverberated throughout her entire body. Popov then swung the back of his left hand in a wide arc toward her face.

Even in the dull light of the kitchen, she saw the glint of the blade coming at her. Without enough time to raise her arm in a defensive block, Alexandra simply turned her head down and offered her attacker her face, rather than her throat. As unthinkable as the bargain was, it was the only thing she could do to save her life.

The blade cut into her scalp just above her temple. Hot blood rolled down her cheek and she spun her body away from Popov. As she continued to move, Popov continued thrashing at her with his blade. She put up her arms to defend herself and in a matter of seconds he had slashed her leather jacket to ribbons. In the scuffle, her gun was kicked across the floor, and she had no idea where it had gone.

Popov was in control and he knew it. Like a cat who had cornered a field mouse and was playing with it before the final coup-de-grace, he drove his beautiful blond captive into a corner of the small kitchen and wondered if maybe killing, at least her, at this point was a little premature. Surely she could be good for something else before she died. If she was good enough, maybe he’d even give Stavropol a discount on her murder.

He decided that the old adage of an eye for an eye very much applied to this situation. He would need to start by cutting off one of her ears. She would scream her pretty head off and it would be messy, but in a very perverse way, Popov thought it would be fun. In fact, it would be like the snuff film one of his underworld colleagues had once shown him. Right at the height of the action, the moment of greatest passion, the greatest pleasure, that’s when he would kill her, but not before then. The buildup would be a sensually excruciating game of foreplay. He was growing hard just thinking about it-pumping the seed of life into her as the spirit of life oozed out of her.

The gun, Alexandra thought.Where the hell was that goddamn gun? She had to find it.

Her eyes swept left and right across the floor and then finally spotted it, sticking out from underneath the kitchen table.

She needed to draw Popov’s attention away from the table, and so she raised her hands in a classic martial arts fashion.

Confident in his advantage, Popov laughed and said, “Do you mean to do me harm, little girl?”

Alexandra hoped to unbalance him by stirring the hornet’s nest. Clenching and unclenching her fists as if she was limbering up to really go at it she said, “I don’t know if your face could be any more ugly, but I’d like to give it a try.”

She had hit a very raw nerve. Though Popov might appear vain, he was incredibly insecure, especially about his face. “You don’t like it?” he asked. “You’d better get used to it as it is the last face you are ever going to see. In fact, before you die, I think I would like to finish what I started. I’ve only given you a little kiss with my knife. Soon, you two will become much more intimate and then we’ll find a mirror together and decide whose face is more ugly.”

Alexandra swung at him and caught nothing but air as Popov easily stepped back from the punch and laughed. She swung with her other arm and missed again, encouraging more laughter from Popov. “You’re actually not as fearsome as I thought you’d be. Especially not without your gun.”

“Passhol v’chorte,” Go to hell, she spat, as she put her hands back up in a traditional boxer’s stance. She moved her head and shoulders from side to side, looking for an opening.

“Is this supposed to intimidate me?” asked Popov.

Alexandra didn’t bother answering. She threw an obvious jab with her right hand that Popov easily parried away. He was about to say something else when seemingly out of nowhere Alexandra landed a left cross, followed by a right hook. Obviously, Popov knew nothing about boxing and one of the sport’s most popular three-punch combinations.

As an added measure of security, Alexandra lined up and kicked the stunned Popov in the nuts with everything she had. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he doubled over in pain. The forward weight was more than his injured knee could bear and he fell hard onto his side. Alexandra moved around him and dove for the kitchen table and the gun lying just underneath.

She was less than a foot away from it when she felt Popov’s hand grab her leg. He was clawing his way up her body, desperate to get to the gun before she did.

She was beginning to think that all was lost when the fingertips of her left hand touched the long metal tube of the weapon’s silencer. Alexandra struggled beneath Popov, using her free hand to slap at his head and shoulders.

Millimeter by millimeter her fingers slid down the weapon, brailling its features until she could finally feel the trigger guard and knew the butt of the pistol was almost in her grasp. As she was about to close in on it, Popov grabbed the silenced Walther, struggled to his feet and aimed it at her head. “I’m beginning to think that you’d might be more fun dead,” he said, wiping the blood away from where Alexandra’s left cross had caught him in the mouth. “What do you think?”

“Kooshi govno ee oomree!” she replied.

“Oh, I do plan on dying one day, but I don’t plan on eating any shit before it happens.”

“Guess again,” said a man behind Popov, who then whacked in the side of his head with an antique bedpan.

As Popov hit the floor, the Walther discharged, its silenced round ricocheting off the kitchen’s iron stove before exiting through the leaded glass window above the sink.

Though Karganov had succeeded in ringing Popov’s bell, the young Mafioso had been hit much harder many times before in his life. He quickly shook it off, and spun on his haunches to train his gun on the injured general. Karganov knew he was beaten. “Bliad,” Russian forShit! was the last thing that escaped his lips before Popov drilled a round right between the man’s eyes.