Michael Bunker - WICK

He’d been angry before, and he still held on to the hatred he now felt for the people who had taken his love, Irinna. He’d also grown angry at Vladimir’s recklessness. He fumed at being played by that idiot Vasily.

Mistakes. Catalogued. Never to be made again.

His anger now gave him purpose and a larger view of what had happened and what was now occurring around him. He looked at the Spetznaz soldier walking in front of him, gun pointed toward the ground, and he thought how only a few hours ago he might have successfully ordered that soldier to fire into the crowd that was now lining the street.

The crowd. Boos and hisses could be heard coming from the mass of Warwickians gathered for the procession.

Mikail felt the red scar on his forehead throb, and he reached up with his handcuffed hands and brushed the hair on the back of his arm across the slope of his brow. He felt his temples pound, and glanced up into the sun. It was hard to imagine that only a week had passed since the Hurricane had ripped through the area. He’d gotten an education in that week. He readily admitted that.

Tuesday morning, a week ago, he’d been a prisoner trying to win over converts in his cell to help his cause. He’d used the time during the storm to convince even Todd, the guard of his cell block, to play along with his plans. The nor’easter had gone through just a few days later, and then there was the breakout and the coup. Now the EMP had been released right on schedule and everything should have fallen into place perfectly. However, rather than be on top and running this part of the operation for the new Russian government, he’d been abandoned by the troops sent to guarantee his authority and position.

Mikail thought about that for a moment as he walked, whether there was anything that could have been done to avoid this. He wondered whether he’d been too bold, too delicate, too reasonable, too extreme. Then he pushed these thoughts from his mind, and was about to turn them toward what came next, when a woman stepped from the crowd and placed herself squarely in his path. He barely had time to notice her and to look up into her eyes when she spat in his face. The crowd roared their approval as a soldier gently guided the woman back into line with the crowd.

In a way, Mikail’s rapid removal from power had been the fourth storm to hit Warwick, once the natural and human disasters were accounted for. If someone had asked him, he would have said that only one of them—the EMP—had been expected. Each of the others had occurred, in its turn, as an opportunity, and he’d merely taken advantage of the situation, using what seemed to be acts of God to hasten plans he’d been making with his secretive contacts in Russia for several years. Now he realized that this storm had caught up with him, and he began to wonder whether there might be some opportunity to be discovered even here. One thing felt certain: as a student of political movements, and a firm believer in the inevitability of his ultimate cause, he was sure that there’d be a fifth storm. He just didn’t know when or where it would strike. He determined within himself to be ready when it did.

The glint of gunmetal contrasted against the white of the snow, and Mikail’s brown boots made an indentation in the slushy, worn path just beginning to melt in the heat of the sun as he trudged up the hill. He noticed the heavier footprint of Vladimir, who was being marched along a few paces in front of him, and wondered what was going through his comrade’s mind, before he returned again to his own thoughts.

The coalition was going to seek his execution, this he knew. And if he was right about them and their need for blood in exchange for blood, the recriminations would start soon. Still, he had no fear. The newfound clarity in his thinking gave him a sort of certainty that his position and purpose in this world had not passed. Failure and humiliation can be crippling to most people, but Mikail wouldn’t trade what he’d gained from this experience for anything in the world. He was actually thankful that his efforts had failed, because success would have only left him naïve and foolish and weak. He knew now that when the time came someday for him to take power again — because even in that moment, he was determined that such a day would come — he would have valuable insight and experience that would suit him to the task. He rolled his shoulders in their sockets, feeling a hump form along his back, and he stretched and looked toward the ground and the melting snow and thought of the coming spring.

As they passed through the fences and slid back up the icy walks towards the prison, Mikail sought to put together all of the different and disparate pieces of information he’d gathered while he was in charge.

There was a way out, and it looked like Vasily, of all people, had been the one to find that way out. But Vasily would not have been working alone. Someone was helping that stupid boy. It simply had to be. But who could it be?

As the prisoners were escorted into the facility, the wide double doors swung outward into the courtyard, casting a shadow on the open snow, like two giant jaws opening to devour a prey. The prisoners stepped shamefacedly into the same corridor that they had emerged from only days before in cocky self-assurance. Mikail, Vladimir, and Sergei walked into the darkened corridor and focused their eyes to the compact blackness. They were led down the maze of hallways toward the pod of cells that would be their new home, the locks tumbling and the pins clicking with each successive door they stepped through, until they were pushed into their chamber. The thick prison doors swung open and closed with the expected thuds and clanks. All of these familiar sounds served to focus Mikail’s attention on the problem at hand.

He was thinking through the situation more linearly now, and walking into the prison had a way of clearing his mind. Thoughts he should have had, and memories forgotten in the clash and fog of war, were now occurring to him in crystalline clarity. As they were left alone in their prison cell, he turned to regard his larger comrades and noticed for the first time that his friends were white with agitation.

“Vladimir Nikitich, did you check through the family ties as you searched the village?” Mikail asked his aide, as the three shuffled into the corners of the cell.

“Vasily had no family, Mikail Mikailivitch.”

The young men stood in the dark of the cell. It was the same cell that had once housed the stranger named Clay, and old Lev Volkhov. The surroundings and the ghosts of the place caused Mikail’s mind to clarify even further. As the lock snapped on a door down the hall, he turned to Sergei and smiled, and then turned to Vladimir again with the smile still spread out on his face. “Not Vasily. Remember, there were two men housed in this cell. Vasily left here with two things, one from each of his cellmates.”

Mikail moved very close to Vladimir, so he could see the large man’s reaction, and as he spoke again he moved even closer. The cell was in almost complete darkness, and only a faint light came in through the glass window, criss-crossed with chicken wire. His voice was very low, and it was tinged with a certainty that it had not had for a few days. “Our little friend had a backpack that he received from the traveler named Clay.”

“This we know, Mikail,” Vladimir answered, “but we were unable to find Vasily or the backpack.” There was a slight tremor of fear in Vladimir’s voice as he said this, and that almost indiscernible hitch spoke loudly and clearly to Mikail. Mikail knew that it was his proximity, and his certainty, that was frightening his friend, a man who previously had shown no fear at all. He paused, to let that fear take its full effect.