David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

It was a deck-mounted machinegun. It looked to Miles like an M2HB. Fifty calibre. A brown tarpaulin flapped around its base in the wind. Miles snatched a pair of binoculars from a mate standing near him. The man swore, but Miles didn’t care. He focussed them on the boat.

“Oh shit,” he said to no one — because no one was listening.

The gun was manned.

And it was swivelling in their direction.

“Kill them all.”

“Amar,” said Gepetto Bucci, “I’m not sure you want to get into this here.”

Amar Shadak stood on the bridge. Bucci was beside him. Two of Bucci’s guys from St. John’s were working the gun. And for now, Bucci was handling the wheel.

“If we don’t,” said Shadak, “then they’ll turn on us. Look at them.”

“Fuck.” Bucci squinted. “They’re fuckin’ fishing. We should fuckin’ cover up the gun. I got half a mind to turn this boat around on you, Amar.”

“You are already in,” said Shadak, “for kidnapping. For torture. Arms smuggling. Racketee—”

“I’m in for a lot of shit,” agreed Bucci. “But my question is: how much more? This shit is all very interesting — weird fuckin’ hotels and ghost towns and shit. But at the end of the day, Amar, you and me are businessmen.”

“You owe me,” said Shadak.

“We are past even on this thing.”

“I will kill your family,” said Shadak.

“Promises promises.” Bucci sighed. “Gimme the binoculars.”

He held them up to his eyes and scanned across the flotilla of boats. Shadak counted eighteen of them. He knew from talking with the prisoners down below that there would be more than that on their way. The prisoners hadn’t been much help at first. In addition to Bill and Marie, there were eight others. When they left Cloridorme the previous day, at first it seemed as though they hadn’t a clue. But as they rounded the coast of Labrador, and drew nearer to New Pokrovskoye, they became more cogent — uttering their little threats. By the afternoon, Shadak had executed two of them, when it became clear that they were possessed by Babushka. Amar Shadak , one would say, you have no hope. The world will soon be mine and you will be trapped forever in your metaphor and there will be shit you can do. And Shadak would put his fingers over the sleeper’s mouth and pinch the nose, and give Babushka a taste of death. After that, he’d have the sleepers to himself — locked in with their delusions and their understanding based on those delusions as to what lay ahead.

The fleet was something that they kept bringing up.

This, Shadak understood, was the fleet.

Bucci whistled. “Okay,” he said, “I’m convinced.”

“Did you see—”

“—guns,” said Bucci. “Nothin’ bigger than an assault rifle. But those fucks aren’t fishing. They’re looking for something.”

Bucci stepped around the wheel, tapped on the glass. The gun crew looked up at him, and Bucci gave the thumbs-up.

Reflexes are a funny thing. Genetics have a lot to do with them, as does early conditioning. But far more important is experience: reinforcement by recent encounters. Miles Shute drew on that experience as the machinegun opened fire on the fleet. He dove for the deck shouting—”Attack! To starboard!” and winced at the sound of limp bodies falling to the deck. There was a cry of pain that first he thought he heard, then knew that he felt. And for a moment, he could sense the agony of Babushka as she lost parts of herself. Then, confusion. It was all Miles could do to avoid running to the edge of the vessel and pitching himself into the ocean.

And for an instant, the barest of instants, Miles Shute was himself: the security chief of the Emissary Hotel, stuck on the deck of a boat while bullets tore at the gunwales and men and women screamed and gurgled away their lifeblood.

And for a moment again he thought:

What the fuck am I doing here on this boat? Who am I fighting for?

Even as another voice that seemed to echo off the back of his skull wailed:

Hurts!

It brought back a memory: of two, three years back, when Miles had found himself in a quarry up in Maine — finishing some work for Kolyokov. He hadn’t completely been himself, of course — his Master was with him, in the back of his head.

Miles was taking care of a situation: a private investigator who seemed to have a bit too much resistance to the Master’s ministrations — who kept asking questions — who in short wasn’t going to go away, until he found out what his client’s husband had been doing with a tenth of his income all these years. Miles had taken him out here to shoot him and be done with it. Fyodor Kolyokov had been along to make sure. But when they got out of the car and Miles was getting the crowbar, the detective had pulled his ace: a piece of piano wire taped on the inside of his belt. He contorted around the handcuffs so his hands were in front, pulled the piano wire out, wrapped it around Miles’ neck, and damn near killed him.

Fyodor Kolyokov had bolted. He screamed in shock and unexpected pain — and for a moment, Miles was all alone with his executioner. Miles struggled and squirmed, but the detective had the upper hand. Miles blacked out.

But here was the thing. He didn’t die. He came to in what must have been a very short time; standing over the detective’s body, wiping his hands on an old rag. Fyodor Kolyokov lurked at the back of his mind, returned and rejuvenated, already giving orders for the cleaners to come and dispose of the evidence.

Miles crawled across the deck to the starboard gunwale and propped himself up. He raised his own gun — an MP5 that he’d brought with him in his duffel bag — and waited for Babushka.

He waited longer than he’d have liked, alone in his skull. It was long enough to wonder at how just days ago, he’d come to this place hoping for kinship and liberation — with poor old Richard, who’d been so grateful for his freedom that he couldn’t stop weeping. When he’d come here, there had been no Empire of New Pokrovskoye — no Babushka. It had been a community — it had been something to live for. It had —

Better , said a voice in the back of his mind. And Miles stopped thinking of those things. Something squeezed the trigger for him as he emptied his clip along the alien coastline.

Bucci ordered his guys to take a wide berth around the fleet of fishing boats, to keep out of range of their smaller arms — but it was easier said than done. The boats were spreading out now, creating a great net across the water, a line they’d have to cross.

“We won’t get around ’em,” he said to Shadak, who was bent low behind the wheel. “We’re goin’ to take some bullets.”

On the foredeck, the gun went silent for a second as Devisi reloaded. A bullet careered off aluminum nearby. Shadak swore under his breath.

“We have to get around them,” he said. “But we won’t take bullets.”

Bucci looked at him. “What?”

“Keep your distance and keep them covered,” said Shadak. “I am going below.”

Keeping down, he ducked into the hatch and the converted cabin below. This was no luxury yacht, so things were tight. There were two men with guns there, guarding the half-dozen hostages that they’d brought with them. Along one wall crouched the old man Bill and Marie, along with the California girl (who was named Andrea). Along the other wall sat the older Californian (Martin Lancaster, according to his driver’s license) and the surfer (who was actually a cop with the Los Angeles Police Department, name of Michael Baker), along with the quartermaster of Cloridorme. They were each handcuffed to steel hoops that had been welded into the bulkhead for precisely this purpose.