The summer days could kill a man, cook him alive in the blazing sun. His own blood would boil over from the heat. A man lacking water and shade from the sun might live to see nightfall, if he were strong, but he would be in no shape for fighting.
The mujehedeen had grown up with the harshness of that Afghan sun, played in it as kids, worked through it as adults. They could march 20 miles a day in it with only three sips of water, and fight all night after. Ivan Kuznetsov could not fathom how they did it. He had been in Afghanistan for two months, long enough to acclimatize. Even so, most of his training was for cold weather fighting. That might come in handy in four months when the temperature would drop below freezing and the high mountain winds blasted through the valley, but for now the sun was killing him. He endured it in silence. Showing pain or fear in front of his peers was not acceptable.
Ivan Kuznetsov was not his true name. He had not worn the name his mother gave him in years. The opposition had named him "Beast", a title he had earned in blood.
He and three other men laid face down in the dirt, suffering in that unbearable heat while they watched. They wore mottled green and tan camouflage, tan patrol hats to keep off the sun, and thin bandannas to soak up the sweat. They had been laying in place for a little less than two days, undetected and motionless, simply observing the patterns of life in the valley below them. One was parked behind a Dragunov sniper rifle, but he wasn't looking though the scope yet, preferring to scan with binoculars. Another was manning a PKM light machine gun. Kuznetsov and the last carried AK-74s. The fourth man also carried a radio in a backpack.
The valley below them had been eating empires since before Russia was even on the map. Legend had it that the western mouth of the Tangi valley marked the furthest Alexander the Great could push into Afghanistan before bogging down. One Greek historian, echoing Soviet frustrations centuries in the future, described the Pashtun fighters as a mythical Hydra- if you chopped off one head, three more would grow. The fighters who lived in that stronghold were the descendants of the same men who had harried Alexander's armies, who had slaughtered Arab occupiers even as they absorbed Islam, who repelled the British army and massacred the survivors as they tried to retreat.
The westernized city dwellers might accept outside domination, but the hill men would not. They would die where they stood before they showed submission to atheist foreigners.
The spetsnaz team didn't care if the muj gave in or not. They only cared about killing whichever enemy was placed in front of them and staying alive. Kuznetsov had a somewhat broader view of the world, and knew enough of the Soviet military leadership in Afghanistan to understand that there was no possible way to win. The locals just could not be cowed. Genocide was the only solution he could imagine, and it was not considered practical.
The sniper stopped the slow sweep of the binos as he acquired a target. He reached down beside the rifle to pick up a pebble, which he tossed at the KGB attache. The pebble bounced off the brim of his cap and tapped inthe dirt. Kuznetsov slid down from his position and slithered over to the sniper.
There was about 300 enemy fighters within a mile. If anything gave their position away before they were ready for it, odds were none of them would return to base. So the sniper mouthed his report, barely breathing, "East, about five hundred meters. On the road near building two."
Kuznetsov took the binos and locked them onto the target. Sure enough, there was a group of eight men loitering near the building, with slung rifles and ammo vests. His heart rate picked up for a second- eight was about the size of the HVT's bodyguard. Ahmed Shah might be in that building even now.
The assassin mouthed to the radioman, "Contact base, tell them to get the quick reaction force on standby. We might be able to wrap this up today."
The fourth man started to unfold the antenna whip, taking care to keep it extended out along the ground. He began muttering into the hand mike while the sniper started prepping his rifle.
Kuznetsov saw the target exit the building, recognizing the face from the brief four days before. "It's on," he said.
He set up a small spotting scope and started rattling off information to the sniper-
"Range- four eight zero. Wind- right cross, 10 miles an hour. Humidity- ten percent-"
The sniper made minor adjustments to his sight with each update.
Ahmed Shah was overconfident. He was on his home turf, a warlord in his own stronghold. He stayed out in the open talking to his bodyguards without a care in the world. He would never have exposed himself for that long anywhere else.
Once the sniper confirmed he was set up, Kuznetsov gave the radioman the go ahead to start sending out the QRF. With luck, the Hinds would show up just as the muj figured out where the sniper team was.
"Brezhnev. You're gold. Shoot when you're ready."
The sniper pulled the trigger almost before the KGB man finished speaking. For a trained shooter, the range was easy. He could have made the shot with iron sights. With a sniper scope and a spotter, Brezhnev could choose which eye to put the bullet through.
"Go go go go go GO-"
The radio man and the sniper withdrew first, crouch running along the draw that led westward towards safety. Kuznetsov and the machine gunner stayed just long enough to cover them before falling back as well.
The muj spotted them fast- they knew the valley, and there was not many places Ahmed Shah could have been shot from. Bullets splattered the sniper nest seconds after they abandoned it.
The heat is going to kill us all, Kuznetsov thought as he ran across the hills of the Tangi Valley. He had trained with the spetsnaz for months prior to being assigned here, but he was sharply aware that he was the weakest man on the team. Running around with this gear, in this heat. Miles left before they were safe again. Afghan sun blazing down relentlessly. The mujehedeen could not match the Russians for speed, but they'd last a lot longer in this damn heat-
Where the fuck was that air?
Fucking pack weighs a ton-
Good thing he'd been drinking water all day-
How long until the enemy got up on an elevated ridge line and got a clear line of fire-
Muj couldn't shoot straight at this range to save their lives but fuck, they only had to get lucky once-
Fuck this heat-
Brezhnev got the sonofabitch-
Damn Hinds are taking their sweet ass time-
Grovenor jerked awake ready to kill somebody until he realized he was in Blackgate prison, not Afghanistan. He breathed in and out hard, willing himself to relax. Ahmad Shah. He hadn't thought about that piece of shit in years. His first success in his Afghan posting, though not his last. Not that any minor victory could change the clusterfuck of the occupation at all.
"Jesus, man. You alright up there?" Walt asked from below him. Grovenor could hear the concern in his voice and wondered what kind of noises he'd making in his sleep. Sleep talking was a bad habit to get into.
Grovenor didn't answer.
"Yo, man. Bad dream, or something?"
"On the contrary," Grovenor said. "Just remembering the glory days."
With no further explanation, he turned onto his side and closed his eyes until sleep came for him again.
Walt Green got his parole without incident. Grovenor's new cellmate, a skinny white junkie named Thomas, jumped him on his very first day. Possibly because he heard taken the age old advice that new fish needed to beat someone up or become someone's bitch.
Grovenor sent him to the hospital wing with ten broken fingers and a fractured skull. Security camera footage showing the fight was started by Thomas exonerated him, despite his having targeted the fingers once the fight ended. He avoided solitary confinement.
His next cellmate heard the rumors in time and minded his manners.
It was just like the old days.
Routine set in for Grovenor as the first weeks in Blackgate passed by.
The rules of prison life were largely the same as the ones he'd been playing by his entire life, so Grovenor knew instinctively to not bump into anyone in the halls. A shoulder brush was a violation of personal space, which in turn was a reason to fight. He knew that looking someone in the eyes was a challenge, but only if it happened in public. In his previous life he had been trained to blend with crowds, to become a blurred face in the crowd that eyes passed over without a thought. After that first time in the cafeteria, no guard even glanced at him.
He collected empty packs from the prison yard and stocked each one with two cigarettes. He then made himself popular with a lot of inmates by giving away his last cigarettes, over and over again.
Each prison gang saw a different face to him. To the Italians, Grovenor was a professional hood who was dying to go back home to Russia one day, which was about the same song they all sang about Sicily. To the black gangs, he was a cold blooded cop killer, someone who would drop a body over nothing. To the Irish, he was a good buddy who enjoyed a good brawl and a good drink, and held an astounding amount of sympathy and knowledge about the Struggle back in Northern Ireland.
Grovenor blanked the Salvadoreans. He was still angry that they had managed to come close to killing him when he was still weak.
Between the cafeteria brawl, Killah Croc's protection, and his own diplomatic efforts, nobody in the prison was laying in wait to catch him with his guard down, though he could tell the Maras felt slighted and cheated. If Waylon Jones ever withdrew his protection, they would be gunning for him, but for now they kept their distance. As a precaution, he compiled a mental list of which of the Salvadoreans to kill preemptively if Jones ever left him hanging. Assuming he had some advance warning, he could bump off three of them before any one realized he was on the war path.
He memorized the guard schedule and monitored for any deviations. He continued to press his body to the limits in the gym. He watched his food intake in the dining facility, making sure to eat enough protein to let him rebuild some muscle mass and avoiding all the sugar and fat. It was in places like this that good agents go to seed. Above all, he started looking for ways to break out.
The obvious route was to stage a prison riot and duck out during the chaos. But at the slightest sign of unruliness the guards shut down the facility and broke out the shields, batons, and shotguns, and sometimes even pumped in tear gas through the air ducts. No, prison riots were one thing the guards were wary of. Grovenor concluded that escape opportunities during an uprising were severely constricted.
Grovenor considered a host of other schemes. He thought about faking an illness to get into the hospital wing again and smuggling himself out in a body bag, which is not as stupid than it sounded. A British spy had once slipped through his fingers in East Berlin using a similar trick.
He considered catching a guard unawares and killing him, taking his uniform, stashing the corpse, and bluffing his way out the front gate. He measured how long it would take to tunnel out, how much it would take to bribe a guard to look the other way while he crawled out through the laundry room chute. Every plan he developed came up short, either due to limited resources, limited intel, or sheer impracticality.
"I've been thinking," Grovenor said.
"Dangerous past time," Waylon said.
"About how to work off that debt I owe you."
"Ah," Waylon said. He pulled a deep drag off off his cigar and blew it out. "I'm listening."
They were sitting at the top rung of the bleachers watching the basketball game below them. It was a relatively friendly game between different crews who had never had much conflict in the past, the Irish Longshoreman Union and the 10th Street Comanches. There was plenty of other inmates, but they all remained standing on the side lines. The bleachers were theirs during the yard time, everyone knew that.
"I don't intend to serve my sentence like a good little citizen. Even if I wanted to it, it would take a while."
Waylon wheezed out a small laugh.
"So I've been thinking on ways to bust out of here. My question is- do you want in on this? Breathe some free air again before Uncle Sam says you should?"
Waylon shrugged. "Last time someone shot me it stung a little." He barked out his doberman laugh. "So I'd be up for it if I thought it would work."
"More importantly, if I got the two of us out of here, would you consider the debt paid off?"
"I ain't got it too bad in here. The guards don't fuck with me, the other guys piss themselves every time I walk by. I can get shit smuggled in when I'm jonesing. It's not that bad. Ah shit, here we go!"
Below them, a young black guy with dreadlocks went for a lay up and was shoulder checked into the concrete. He bounced up and threw fist at the beefy Irishman who hit him. Within seconds the game dissolved as the crew mauled each other trying to protect their own.
"You got to hand it to him," Waylon said, nodding towards the kid who got checked. "Roy's been getting fucked with since the moment he stepped off the bus, but he don't step down."
The brawl ended in a heartbeat. Roy's head was bounced off the tarmac, loud enough for the bounce to be heard all the way up the bleachers. Dark red blood quickly pooled under his head. The other players decided it was just a prestige fight, not worth getting maced over once the guards showed up. Both gangs pulled a fast fade to the other side of the yard. They left Roy where he fell, his dreads getting thicker with blood as he struggled to sit upright.
"I lost my, whadayacallit, train of thought. Yeah. I don't have it too bad here. So it's not like you're saving me from a life of fear and shower sex, you know?"
"I'm not just talking about freedom. I'm also talking about economic opportunities."
Waylon smoked his contraband cigar in silence.
Grovenor continued, "You know this city better than I do, but I have contacts around the world. I can get us some top of the line hardware. Between you and me, we can take this city for everything it's got."
"What are you saying- like a stick up crew? Knocking over banks or something?"
"Power flows from the barrel of a gun, man. If we have the best guns in town, there's nothing we can't do. Sticking up 7-11s? Sure, to start with. But I'm talking big time. Banks, sure. Extortion. Blackmail. Kidnapping. Murder for hire. Jesus, man, we get a few more trigger fingers and we can outgun Gotham PD."
Waylon nodded. "I'm in." He scratched his chin as he watched Leroux loll bonelessly on the court. "I might even have some ideas about recruitment. Assuming you actually can get us out of this joint."
"Give me time, Waylon. I've only been here three weeks. Rome wasn't built in a day."
It took the guards two minutes and ten seconds to show up after the fight started. Grovenor timed it.
The same day that Roy got his head broke, a painted maniac robbed Gotham National bank, leaving five corpses behind and taking 68 million dollars.
It was all over the news, even in Blackgate's cafeteria hall where the TVs were protected by metal cages. Talking heads jabbered and speculated, while Grovenor silently absorbed the information and thought about the future.
