Eric Lustbader - Blood Trust

The car ahead entered the bend in the road. As it dipped into the swale, Asu momentarily lost sight of it. Baltasar stood up so that his head and upper torso were above the vehicle’s roofline. Fitting night goggles over his eyes, he looked out at the landscape ahead. He saw no sign of lights, front or rear, and he adjusted the goggles. Several moments later, he saw the headlights, then the car. Immediately thereafter, Asu accelerated, and the vehicle shot ahead.

Baltasar counted the seconds as Asu closed the gap. He was an excellent driver; Baltasar had absolute confidence in his abilities. Nevertheless, something was bothering him. From his elevated position, he should have been able to pick up the headlights even while the car was at the bottom of the swale.

Now they were on the straightaway. The acceleration leveled out, steadied, and, bracing his elbows against the rooftop, he took aim at the rear window of the car. He counted slowly to three, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

The tear-gas grenade smashed through the glass and detonated. Now it was only a matter of waiting until the driver lost consciousness. The car would begin to weave, then veer off the road as the driver lost control. Perhaps it would come to rest in a ditch or sideswipe a tree. In any event, Yassin’s turn would come. It was a beautiful thing, Baltasar thought, when everything proceeded according to plan.

He waited, but the car did not weave. It slowed. Asu put on the brakes and the military vehicle paced the car. Baltasar frowned. He wondered whether the driver, in his semiconscious state, had the presence of mind to step on the brake. But the moments of losing the headlights still bothered him, and he couldn’t rid himself of the nagging notion that something was wrong.

The next moment, the car stopped. Baltasar unscrewed the grenade launcher and changed magazines to regular rounds. All the time he kept his eyes glued to the car.

“Let’s go! What are we waiting for?”

He heard Yassin’s whisper from just inside the hatch. Yassin was right; they should be on the ground now, approaching the car. But something stayed Baltasar’s hand.

He ducked back down and said to Yassin, “Change in plan. Take one of the AK-50s and go over to the car. Asu will cover you with the thirty caliber.”

Asu popped his head out of the open hatch. He flipped the safety off the forward machine gun, then signaled that he was ready.

Yassin climbed out of the hatch and dropped to the ground. He circled the car warily, crouched down, the AK-50 at the ready. It was loaded with heavy, maximum-grain ammunition. Except for the chirrupping of insects, there was absolute silence. No traffic, and whatever wind there had been had died.

Yassin had made half a circuit around the car without seeing any sign of life. Then, a single shot caused him to spin around. Asu lay sprawled across the roof, his head a bloody pulp.

Yassin, instantly calculating the direction of the shot from the way Asu’s body lay, opened fire with the assault rifle while darting behind the protection of the car.

A second shot, coming from directly behind him, pitched him forward. He struck the rear fender of the car, then slid off onto the ground. He did not move. His blood became a black pool around him.

At once, the military vehicle rumbled into life, swinging around to face the spot where the second shot had come from. A thin whine was followed by a long gout of flame that penetrated the first line of pine trees with a blast of searing heat. First, the flames set the carpet of fallen needles alight, but soon enough the trees themselves were engulfed in flame and dense, black, chemical smoke.

FOR WHAT seemed like several moments after that, nothing happened. Then a figure, black and peeling beneath a hellish coat of flames, rushed from the smoking trees. Halfway to the military vehicle, it jerked upright, as if on a leash. Then it collapsed onto its knees, slowly folding over onto itself, forming at length a pyramid of crisped flesh and cracking bones.

The vehicle came to a halt, the rear battle slits snapped open, and a hail of machine gun fire bit into the trees on the other side of the road. In that moment, Annika ran from cover near the smoldering trees, primed a grenade, and slammed it between the front wheels. She was almost back inside the tree line when the blast blew the near-side wheels off and a hole appeared in the vehicle’s armor plate, into which the stinking smoke from the blast was drawn as if down an open flue.

Seeing this, Jack broke cover, sprinted across the road, and leapt into the back of the vehicle, which was stalled and hotter than an oven. As the top hatch popped open and Baltasar emerged, eyes streaming, Jack grabbed him and hauled him bodily out of the vehicle, throwing him down onto the road, where Annika was standing.

Baltasar grunted as he hit the pavement on his left shoulder. Annika kicked him in the stomach, and he flopped over. By this time, Jack had checked to make sure the vehicle was empty. Now he dropped down beside Baltasar. Together, they dragged him over to the pile of bones within which tiny flames still flickered and danced. Mostly, though, the superheated chemical fire had turned everything to brittle ash. But the nauseating stench of roasted meat was still in the air.

“Vasily!” Annika called.

Jack looked up to see Vasily, the remaining grupperovka member, striding over. Right behind him were Thatë and Alli. Jack could see how protective of Alli the kid was, and he was grateful.

Annika signed to Vasily.

The big Russian gripped Baltasar by the back of his head and slammed it down and ground it into the smoking pile of bones. Flames leaped into Baltasar’s beard and thick, curling sideburns and he began to yell. No one paid him the slightest attention. Then Annika delivered a vicious kick to his kidney and he fell onto his side. She rolled him onto his back so that he was looking directly up at her.

“Where is Arian Xhafa?”

He stared at her, his lips clamped firmly together.

“You will tell me what I want to know.”

He smiled up at her. His beard continued to smolder.

“Vasily, please stay with our friends,” Annika said.

She signaled to Thatë, who left Alli’s side. He grabbed Baltasar by the back of his collar, and together they dragged him into the woods.

Jack and Alli stood together, with Vasily’s tattooed hulk.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jack said in Russian.

Vasily grunted, but Jack could see that he was grateful. The big man turned and went to scavenge weapons from inside the military vehicle.

As soon as the car had entered the swale, the driver had doused the lights and, at Annika’s direction, they had exited, sprinting for the safety of the first line of pines. All except the driver, who had switched the lights back on and had set the car in motion with a homemade mechanism that had gradually released the gas pedal, so that the car would slow several thousand yards farther down the straightaway.

“What will Thatë do to him?” Alli said.

As if in answer, an unearthly howl pierced the night. It came again. There was nothing human about it, nothing familiar. The third howl made Alli shiver. It was impossible to imagine what kind of creature could make that sound, or what could be causing it.

Alli made a motion to go into the woods after Annika and Thatë, but Jack put a gentle hand on her forearm.

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

She looked at him. “She’ll get what she wants, won’t she?”

“I believe she always gets what she wants.”

Alli nodded. “Did you suspect that Thatë was hers?”

Jack sighed. “I should have.”

“In retrospect, it all makes so much sense: his position inside Xhafa’s network, his being sent to Tetovo to spy on Xhafa, his commanding an elite group of Russians in Western Macedonia.”