Legion: V Plague Book 19 Page 2

  The helo was buffeted by the explosion and more alarms began screaming for attention as shrapnel from the warhead tore into the aircraft. The controls immediately began to feel mushy as Martinez fought to keep them somewhat stable so she could get them on the ground in one piece.

  “Brace for impact!” she shouted, hoping the men in back hadn’t already been killed by the shrapnel that had crippled the helicopter.

  3

  “NO!”

  Viktoriya looked at me with a half-smile on her face then spoke a single word into the phone. On the screen, the scope remained steady on Dog for a few moments, then slowly returned to Rachel. She turned to me, looking into my eyes, then made a production of shutting off the phone.

  I leapt out of the chair and grabbed a fistful of her thick hair, cranking her head back so far I heard several pops from the vertebrae in her neck. She gasped, but not in fright or pain. For all the world, it sounded like she was aroused. The two technicians stared in fright, then started to make a break for the door.

  “Stay where you are or I’ll kill you!” I barked, freezing both of them in place.

  Turning my attention back to Viktoriya, I wrapped my free hand around her exposed throat and put my mouth to her ear.

  “I told you I would cooperate, but if you harm any of them, I will crush your throat and watch you suffocate. Do you understand?”

  She gasped again and this time there was no doubt she was getting off on either the pain or the prospect of violence.

  “Interesting,” she said, her voice harsh from the pressure I was applying to her neck. “You seem to care more for the animal than your wife!”

  I felt her hand rub across my leg and I shoved her away to tumble to the floor. She wound up on her ass, looking up at me with a smile on her face. Reaching up, she rubbed the bright red handprint on her throat.

  “You won’t kill Rachel or Mavis. At least not yet,” I said. “You know I’d have killed you if you had. But you would kill Dog just to make a point.”

  “Hmmm. Perhaps I have underestimated you,” she said coyly as she climbed to her feet. “You do understand how the game is played.”

  “It’s not a fucking game,” I growled, lowering myself back into the seat. “Now, let’s get on with it.”

  She watched me for a long moment, but my attention was on the screen. Rachel and Mavis were laughing at something one of them had said. I turned to Viktoriya when she barked something in Russian.

  The man I’d frightened answered, then came forward and I docilely allowed him to start an IV in my arm. Soon, clear liquid was flowing from a hanging bag into my vein.

  “What’s that for?” I asked, unable to read the Cyrillic printing on the bag’s label.

  “Saline,” he said, wrapping a tourniquet around my upper arm. He found a vein almost instantly, swabbed it and inserted a large needle. My blood began to drain into a plastic bag hanging from the side of the chair. “It will help you compensate for what we are taking.”

  Viktoriya smiled at me as she slipped into the second chair. The other man started an IV connected to a large bag of saline in her arm as well as another blood collection bag. He saw me watching and felt the necessity to explain.

  “It is necessary to remove a volume of blood equal to what will be given to her so she does not experience hypervolemic shock.”

  I shrugged my shoulders after another few seconds of watching. Soon, unless I could think of something, the first bag of my blood would be hung from the IV stand and connected to her. I had no idea what hypervolemic shock was but didn’t give a damn if she got it or caught it or whatever.

  “I have a proposal, if you are calm enough to listen,” she said.

  I started to tell her to go fuck herself but thought better before I opened my mouth. There was no value in antagonizing her further, and a very real risk that she would grow impatient with me. At the moment, that wasn’t something that would end well.

  “What’s that?” I asked, trying to sound interested.

  “Is it not time to end this?”

  I stared at her, remaining silent. Waited for her to show her hand.

  “The conflict, I mean. It is bad for both our people.”

  “What do you want, Viktoriya? Just spit it out, already.”

  “Oh, honey. I never spit,” she said, gazing intently at me.

  For a moment, all I could do was stare back with my mouth open. Then she burst into laughter and I looked away, shaking my head and reassessing the woman. I’d had her pegged as ruthless and single-minded in her pursuit of power. Now, I was starting to wonder if maybe she was a little touched in the head.

  “Is that not what American men want?” she asked innocently. “What is the saying – a lady in the streets and a freak in the bed?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. There was no point. No matter what I said, she was one of those people who would twist it around.

  “I have made you uncomfortable! Very well. I am sorry if I have crossed a line. I will try to curb myself. What I wanted to offer was a truce.”

  I’m sure the surprise I felt was clear to see on my face.

  “A truce between us, and a truce between Russia and America,” she continued.

  “A truce requires trust,” I said, looking pointedly at the monitor. “Trust doesn’t come about by having a sniper target my wife and family.”

  “But trust must be earned, first.”

  “Yeah, well, that ship’s sailed,” I muttered.

  “Perhaps I have done things that seem horrific to you, but I am also sure you have done equally horrific things in service to your country.”

  “Don’t even try to go there,” I growled. “I’m a soldier, not a fucking spy. I’ll face you on the battlefield, but I won’t pretend to be something I’m not to manipulate people and then destroy them. I’m many things, but I don’t use people like you do.”

  “You are precisely correct!” she cried as if I’d just given the right answer on a game show. “And that is why, together, we would be unstoppable.”

  “Together? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps I am simply a realist. Someone who understands how the world actually works. It is rarely as black and white as fighting an enemy soldier. There are many shades of gray that must not only be recognized but navigated just as ruthlessly as how you fight a battle.”

  “Whatever you’re thinking, forget it. I’m not interested. Let’s just get on with what I’ve already agreed to.”

  “Hear me out. We have time,” she said after checking the status of my blood collection bag.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  She smiled and reached across the open space between our chairs to touch my arm. The look on my face caused her to hesitate, then pull back with a sigh.

  “Here is my proposal. Barinov must die. Several high-ranking Russian military officers must die. We have established that necessity and will be implementing that plan shortly. But I fear there will be unrest among your fellow Americans once they arrive in Arizona. It would be best for all if that could be preempted. Do you not agree?”

  “Worried about a slave uprising?” I asked with a grin. “There’s an easy way to not have that problem.”

  “But not a way that would be acceptable to my countrymen. That is what I need you for.”

  “If you’re asking me to kill every Russian that wants an American for a slave, I’m in!” I said with mock enthusiasm.

  “I am asking you to rule at my side,” she said, ignoring my comment. “Not as my equal, but as my number two. Your responsibility will be the administration of the American population. You will also consult on all state security and military matters as my personal advisor.”

  I’d been trying to figure out what she was leading up to, but this was something that never would have crossed my mind. For a moment, I was speechless at the enormity of her proposal.

  “You would be able to ensure your people were well taken care of. That
their needs were provided for. And you would live a privileged life,” she continued. “Neither you, nor your family would want for anything. And, there would also be special benefits available. Benefits that I seriously doubt you can get from your wife.”

  The look on her face left no doubt what she was referring to. My mind whirled at the supreme arrogance of the woman to think there was anything about this offer that would be attractive to me. Try as I might, I was unable to comprehend how she could have thought her proposal would result in anything other than my outright refusal. But, sometimes it’s better to keep the crazies calm instead of pointing out just how insane they really are.

  “Keep talking,” I said.

  4

  Igor peered through slit lids at a small rat nosing its way toward him. His eyes were almost closed from the swelling that came with repeated beatings. Naked as the day he was born, he knelt in a stinking pool of his own sweat, blood and urine. Chains attached to his wrists ran through a pulley system mounted to the ceiling.

  He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d been captured. The beatings had come often, several of them resulting in him losing consciousness and he had no way of estimating the duration of each of those events. His wrists were raw and bleeding from the iron manacles and his shoulders were a source of constant pain.

  He hadn’t seen Irina since they’d arrived together at the jail in Phoenix. But he’d heard her voice, screaming out in pain and terror. He didn’t know what the guards were doing to her, but it wasn’t hard to imagine. The ball of white-hot rage that had formed in his gut was what sustained him through the repeated torture sessions. His only thoughts were what he would do to every single guard once he found a way to set himself free.

  A loud clank from the cell door sent the rat scurrying away, but Igor didn’t bother looking up. He knew what was coming. The only visitors he ever received were the lead interrogator and his assistant, though interrogator was a soft, fancy word for a man who apparently got off on his job. Perhaps inquisitor was closer to the truth of the man?

  A shadow passed across Igor, then there was a loud rattle of chains from the back of the cell. His arms were jerked above his head and he was lifted to his feet. He rose slowly off the floor until his toes dangled several inches above the surface.

  His torturer stepped into view. The man was unremarkable, and if you were to meet him on the street you would suspect he was a banker or a CPA or perhaps a pharmacist. Anything other than a professional extractor of information through physical coercion. That is, until you looked into his eyes.

  Those same eyes now stared up into Igor’s. They reflected the black soul of the man they belonged to. Madness was behind them. It was barely contained, constantly struggling to find an outlet. And it had found one in Igor. But not just a target for its burning desire to inflict physical pain. The big Russian soldier had become a challenge the interrogator had gleefully accepted. He had not spoken a word in response to a single question, nor had he cried out in pain, even once.

  For Igor, this was simply who he was. Wailing like a child because something hurt was something he’d never done. If asked to explain why, he couldn’t, but the inquisitor was determined to make him scream. To plead for the pain to stop and to answer his questions. And, finally, to beg for death.

  “And how are we today?” the man boomed jovially in Russian.

  Igor stared back at him, watching a smile of anticipation spread across his face.

  “You will speak to me. You will tell me what I want to know. It is a foregone conclusion. So why do you continue to resist?”

  Igor had been given very little water since his capture. Only enough to keep him alive and conscious. He could not remember how long it had been since he’d urinated, but he’d been holding in what little his body had produced. Waiting for the right moment.

  The interrogator was standing close to Igor to look up into his broken face as he spoke. For a beat, he didn’t realize a dark yellow stream of piss was splashing against his body. When he did, he leapt backwards with a shout of indignation as he stared at the large stain soaking the front of his shirt.

  “You fucking pig!” he bellowed.

  Snatching a long rod from a wheeled cart his assistant had brought into the cell, he squeezed a button and an arc of electricity danced between two probes set in the far end. With a savage expression, he jammed the end tightly against Igor’s scrotum. Igor jerked and twisted, legs flailing as he futilely tried to pull away from the excruciating pain blossoming in the center of his being.

  “Fuck your mother!” the interrogator roared with glee at seeing Igor’s suffering.

  Withdrawing the electric prod from Igor’s balls, he hurried to face his back while waving the assistant forward. He gestured what he wanted and the man reached out and spread Igor’s ass until his anus was fully exposed. With a sadistic laugh, the torturer rammed the electric prods into Igor’s rectum and triggered the switch.

  Igor’s body went completely rigid, shaking as if from a seizure. The chains suspending him clanked loudly and his bladder voided the small amount of urine that remained after he’d pissed on his tormentor.

  After fifteen excruciating seconds, the device was withdrawn. Igor’s body flopped once before hanging limply from the chains. Tossing the electric prod aside, the man moved back to Igor’s front and stared up into his face.

  “Ahhhh, still alive, I see. Excellent. Gather yourself. I am going to clean up. When I come back, we will see if you are ready to answer my questions.”

  The man spun on his heel and left the cell, the assistant following with the cart. The door closed with an ominous clang. Alone, Igor breathed deeply to calm the pain that still coursed through his body. Compartmented it away from his consciousness as he envisioned how he would slowly dismember and kill the interrogator. In his mind, he was removing the man’s eyes with a rusty spoon when the door clanked again. Normally, he wouldn’t look up, but the soft squeak of a wheel that didn’t belong to the assistant’s cart alerted him to something new.

  Raising his head, he stared in horror as Irina was wheeled into the room on a gurney. She was completely naked. Her wrists, upper arms and legs were restrained so that she could only move her head. A thick block of rubber, normally used as a bite restraint for mentally ill prisoners, was strapped into her mouth so that she could not speak.

  The assistant pushed the gurney to a stop directly in front of Igor, then hurried away to bring his cart. Irina met Igor’s eyes, the sheer terror in hers causing him to pull against his chains. The interrogator stepped into view and stood next to Irina, looking up.

  “Which officers were cooperating to betray Comrade Barinov?” he asked, holding up a metal ball with several electrodes protruding from its surface.

  He placed the device on Irina’s knee, then slowly slid it up her bare thigh, never taking his eyes off of Igor’s. Reaching the top of her leg, he paused, tilting his head in question. Irina, terrified, stared at Igor. When she was sure he was watching her, she shook her head until she could see that he understood.

  Turning her face away, she closed her eyes as the interrogator shoved the ball inside her. A thin wire connected it to a controller which the man showed to Igor. He raised a brow questioningly, but Igor didn’t respond. The interrogator shrugged, pressed and held a button. Irina’s body went into a bow, supported only by the top of her head and her heels. A strangled scream of unbridled pain escaped from around the rubber block in her mouth.

  “This is only the beginning,” he said to Igor with a laugh. “Only the beginning.”

  5

  “Ten minutes,” Vance said, shaking Lucas’s shoulder to wake him.

  Lucas opened his eyes, yawned and sat up straight in the transport’s co-pilot seat. After checking his watch, he shook his head and grinned.

  “Bloody amazing,” he mumbled.

  “This baby’s as fast as a girl from Canada on vacation in the islands,” Vance chuckled.

  “Goo
d thing you didn’t say Australia,” Lucas growled.

  “Oh, Aussie girls. Nothing in the world that fast!”

  He grinned and after a moment Lucas let out with a laugh.

  “You hear back from the Colonel?”

  “Yeah,” Vance said as he adjusted their speed and turned to a new heading. “He’ll be there. Now, don’t bother me. None of the flight operations out of Pearl can see us and I don’t want to run into anyone.”

  Lucas settled back in the seat, watching the panorama displayed on the screen that took the place of a window to the outside world. The transport’s computers tagged, identified and tracked everything in the air within fifty miles. He could see a pair of F-15s moving slow as they flew a Combat Air Patrol over Oahu. But what drew his attention was the large number of helicopters buzzing about over Pearl Harbor’s perimeter fence, keeping an eye on the protestors.

  “Bloody idiots,” he grumbled to himself.

  “Who?” Vance asked.

  “Fuckers protesting outside the wire. Cocksucker that bombed and gassed the whole planet goes on the telly and lies his ass off and they instantly believe him. Decide to go throw a hissy fit and blame... ahhhh, fuck it. Don’t matter.”

  “Okay, here we go,” Vance said, completely focused on landing.

  He brought them down at the same airfield he’d used when arriving from Australia, the landing gear kissing the tarmac as gently as a lover. Then he stood on the brakes and activated the thrust reversers, slowing them to a stop on a runway that was far shorter than needed for an aircraft this size. But he got it done.

  “Good luck,” Vance said, sticking his hand out.

  “You, too,” Lucas said, gripping it quickly before hurrying for the back of the plane.

  The ramp was already opening and he ran out onto it, jumping to the ground without breaking stride. Jogging around the plane, he waved at Vance to let him know he was clear and kept going as the engines throttled up. The transport rolled to the end of the runway and swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees.