Rob Thurman: Chimera

I didn’t bother with planning or subtlety. That sort of thing would be wasted with these guys. Within seconds they were in front of me, faces as predatory as the vulpine face of any wolf. I hit the one without the knife first. His empty hands were even more threatening. A knife I could deal with; a gun out of nowhere would be a little trickier. Flashing a cheerful grin, I leaned against the closed driver’s door. “Nice jackets. Can I help you guys? You lost? Out to spread the word of God maybe?” I couldn’t look innocent. Life had made damn sure that was something my face would never be able to wear. But I gave it my best shot only to see it reflected back at me in a sudden uneasiness in the face of the man with the switchblade. Wolves recognized their own. On the other hand, the one I kicked in the stomach didn’t look uneasy. In fact, he didn’t look anything but nauseated.

One hand on the car supporting me, I twisted sideways and planted a foot in the abdomen of the one whose empty hand had suddenly darted toward his jacket. Before he hit the asphalt, I gave him another on the point of his chin, taking him out of the game then and there. No flies on him when it came to self-interest, his buddy had already lunged at me. With sharp silver metal and teeth bared in a twisted face, he slashed at me while hissing curses like a foul-mouthed pit viper.

Kids.

I blocked his arm with my left one, my hand fisted. My other hand was wrapped snugly around the grip of a Steyr 9mm. Yeah, flies weren’t exactly roosting on me either. I planted the end of the four-inch barrel firmly in the center of his pimply forehead. Could be he’d planned on stripping the car and trading the parts for zit cream. He froze, the shiny black eyes no longer empty. Fear, pure and simple, shone clearly, along with a desire to be anywhere but here. Tough love worked wonders.

“Go home, Junior,” I said flatly. “You’re not ready to play with the big boys yet.” Only five or six years separated me from this piece of shit barely out of diapers—half a decade, but it may as well have been a lifetime.

The knife clattered on the asphalt, shortly followed by his ass. Scrambling backward for several feet, he then flipped over to a crawl before lunging to his feet and running down the street. Half in front of the car, his friend still lay unconscious and obviously forgotten. There’s no honor among thieves and apparently no loyalty either. Sighing, I holstered the semiautomatic and bent down to slide my hands under the slack shoulders to drag him to the sidewalk. He was lucky. Some guys I knew would’ve driven over him and raided his wallet for the car wash money.

It had all taken less than thirty seconds, but as I slid behind the steering wheel, Konstantin still pinned me with an expression of sharp annoyance. “ Tat? ” he demanded, fingers drumming on his suit-clad knee.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. Tat referred to common thieves, unworthy of the respect given to their more murderously organized brethren . . . us. “And pretty shitty ones at that.” Pulling away from the curb, I raised a hand in a casual wave to the small knot of tourists gaping from the curb. This had been more fun in the sun than they’d bargained for, I was thinking.

“Pity.” Gurov leaned back against the butter-soft leather of the seats. Closing his eyes, he linked fingers across a stomach amazingly lean for a sixty-year-old man.

Raising my eyebrows, I repeated the word, curious.

Face serene, he said, “Pity. If your heart was with your family, your work could be truly phenomenal.”

Being phenomenal in a career of brutality; I wasn’t sure the two belonged in the same sentence . . . or in the same man. As for family, I knew who it was, and who it wasn’t.

Gurov and the others didn’t even come close.

“ Ihate you, you son of a bitch.”

Unimpressed, I kept the night-vision goggles up to my eyes and replied absently, “No one held a gun to your head, Skoczinsky.”

“Bullshit.” Beside me, he shifted on his stomach and with a snarl swatted at a buzzing mosquito. “It may as well have been and you know it.”

He was right, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. The amount of money I’d offered Saul had made it almost impossible for his mercenary soul to refuse, but almost is just that—almost. What carried it beyond that was the question I’d asked, a simple one: What if it were your brother? It was a fairly desperate attempt on my part, and I hadn’t expected it to do much good. Some people don’t give a damn about the brothers they do have and some don’t have any at all. But sometimes those desperate attempts work best of all.

It wasn’t a gun to his head, that question, but to Saul, combined with the money, it had been every bit as convincing. I’d seen it in the tightening of his jaw and the ice behind his glare . . . a brittle ice running with cracks in all directions, ready to break. If you were a bodyguard, reading people was a crucial skill. I didn’t know exactly what had changed Saul’s mind, but he had changed it and that was all that mattered. I wasn’t going to waste time feeling guilty about it, I thought obstinately, doing my best to promptly squelch the supposedly nonexistent emotion. After all, with the chunk of change I was giving him, he could stock up on plenty of long spoons for the next time he supped with the devil.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll cry for you later.” I needed Saul for this. If that meant manipulating him, I would do it. I would do it and deal with the consequences to my questionable conscience later. I would also give anything I had to get him on board. That anything came to pretty much every penny I had to my name and then some, but I didn’t have any doubt it would be money well spent. “Make yourself useful. Take the east side, and check back in fifteen.”

With another grumbled curse, he slithered off into the night with an alacrity that would’ve done any soldier proud. It might be a job he regretted taking, but he would do it to the best of his ability nonetheless. His morality might reside on a level far more shadowy than that of your average upright citizen, but Saul did have principles he followed rigorously and questions he wouldn’t answer. The principles might always come back to that bottom line, the almighty dollar or euro, but they did exist. And because they did, he had led me personally to the “school” he’d followed the children to two days before.

He’d been on the nose with his description of the place. If this was a school, then Stalin was the headmaster. The compound, and it was that without a doubt, was smothered in concealing gloom. There was none of the garish orange glow that blanketed the sky over Miami to lighten the night. The lack of moon or urban lights led to a blackness as thick as the depths of a tar pit—thick, sticky, and virtually impenetrable. Despite that, the NVGs provided by Saul let me see the details of the place. In fact, I could see them clearly enough that I swore silently.

Walls topped with razor wire and a twisted iron monstrosity of a gate that belonged at Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, it was one goddamn impressive setup, I was forced to admit. Nearly three hours from the city limits and on the edge of the Everglades, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more inhospitable spot if you had years to search. With sand, scrub, and low-lying water filled with creatures more ill-tempered than my boss, it didn’t make for a real estate agent’s dream. More important, it didn’t bode well for a fast escape.

Exhaling, I dropped the goggles onto the ground and rubbed my eyes with a thumb and forefinger. The sand gritted under my elbows and aside from the croaking of frogs, it was the only sound to be heard. This wasn’t a job for two men; hell, even the ATF would’ve been screwed. Not that that was saying much.