Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters!
Sorry it took me so long to update – choreographing action scenes is not my strong point. Thanks to emptyvoices, royalty09, and my favorite National Guard soldier for extensive consultation and help!
Chapter 11
When Jackson walked through Rade's bedroom door disguised as a building inspector, I found myself speechless for the first time in my life. I dropped the bottle of sleeping pills I still held and glanced down at the prepaid cell phone, understanding now that Jackson had tracked me here, that the weird black thing hidden there could only be a tracking device.
Before I could decide what I wanted to do more, hit Jackson or kiss him, he strolled over to me and studied my face, taking in the damage I'd sustained under Rade's tender care. But his eyes were flint and I could see in his face no trace of last night's lover. When he spoke, his voice was restrained, low and even.
"I know we have things to talk about," he said, "but they'll have to wait. When we get out of this – and we will – you can slap me, scream at me, and say whatever you need to say. But right now you need to listen to me. If you want to live through this, you need to do exactly what I say without stopping to figure out whether it's the right thing to do. You have to trust me. This is what I do, and I'm good at it.
I started to speak. He laid a finger across my lips and said, "But know this: I won't leave you again.
Angling the handle of the pistol toward me, he said, "Do you know how to load it?" I shook my head. He pulled a cartridge from his pocket and showed me, snicking it crisply into place. "You have 15 rounds to a clip," he told me. "Take it. And keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire. And don't shoot me, okay?"
"I'm going to need 15 rounds?" I asked as I took the pistol and gripped it tightly with both hands.
"Maybe you won't need any. Maybe Rade comes back, we're waiting for him, and that's the end of it. But…" he shrugged and pulled another pistol from his waistband.
"But what?"
"But Rade is a cagey son of a bitch. He didn't get where he is now by being dumb. But according to Aleksei here, Rade has left to investigate a little problem at one of his clubs. I suspect they will find it to be arson." Jackson shook his head slightly, as if bemoaning the sad state of the world. "But he isn't dumb and he could be back here any minute. Isn't that right, Aleksei?"
Aleksei, groaning, had begun to stir. Now he looked up at us and grinned horribly. "Suck my – "
Jackson's Diesel clad foot connected solidly with Aleksei's nose. "Maybe some other time, buddy."
Bemused, I watched blood pour from Aleksei's nose onto Rade's nice wool carpet. "So we just what, wait for him and shoot him in cold blood?"
"You'd rather wait until he shoots at you?" He shook his head and gestured toward Aleksei. "Your incessant concern for mankind is touching, but sadly misplaced in this case. You'd die, babe. Watch him, would you?"
I pointed the pistol toward Aleksei's head. Maybe, I thought, I should be aiming at his chest. I really didn't know. Jackson strode toward the bathroom and asked, "You have a baby sitter outside your window, don't you?"
"You mean the guy with the gun? Yeah; why?"
I heard Jackson smash the window glass and then I heard two rapid shots. At that moment, Aleksei's hand started creeping toward the edges of his suit jacket. "Don't make me shoot you," I warned, desperately hoping he wouldn't.
He spit out a bloody tooth, grinned, and kept reaching. As I steeled myself to pull the trigger, I heard a rapid 'phthum phthum'. Aleksei quivered and was still. Jackson, lowering his gun, said, "If you hesitate, you die."
I nodded and hoped he didn't see the tremor in my hands, hoped the tremor would go away. "Did you have to kill the guard?"
"Yes."
"You told me once you were a lousy shot," I said.
"Sometimes I get lucky," he said. "Look, Leese. There is going to be more blood and there's going to be more killing. You may have to kill someone. I want you to remember what Rade did to you and think about what he wanted to do to you. He didn't bring you here to serve you afternoon tea. Keep those things in your mind and don't hesitate. Hesitation, as you just saw, will cost you your life. There is not a doubt in my mind that you can do this, Leese." He grabbed my chin and kissed me hard.
I kissed him back and when he let me go, I slapped him.
"Got that out of your system?" He grinned. "Good; now let's go to war."
---------------------------
We edged our way down a long hallway, pistols in what I considered alert position, toward the back stairs at the end of that wing. We saw no one and heard nothing but steady hammering from the other side of the house. We took the stairs down to the ground floor. Jackson, who seemed familiar with the layout of the lower part of the house, led the way through a labyrinth of hallways in the back quadrant, stopping finally beside a closed doorway. He turned the handle, kicked the door open with his foot, and, after determining no one was in there, I followed him into a large room paneled in dark wood and smelling heavily of sweet pipe tobacco.
Two walls of the room were lined with books. Heavy drapes, drawn to let in the mid day light, covered mullioned windows on adjacent walls. Leather chairs, done in that color I think is called oxblood, stood before a stone mantled fireplace at one end of the room and a large desk dominated the other. A set of closed double doors bisected the library shelves on one wall. They would lead, I was sure, the grand entry hall.
After Jackson determined that the other set of doors was locked, we took up a position by the front windows to await Rade's return. We didn't speak; a wooden globe sat on a small table between the windows, and as we waited, Jackson spun the globe back and forth with carefully restrained impatience.
I don't know how long we waited; it couldn't have been long, but it felt like ages. When the white limo finally came sweeping through the gate, I felt a strong shiver of terror. I swallowed hard and clamped down on it as best I could. The car stopped in front of the stone staircase, the back door opened, and Katya stepped out, wearing a bulky sweater, leather pants, and knee high boots. The two tawny Weimaraners leaped out of the seat behind her, hitting the grass with lithe grace.
"Fuck!" Jackson said, as she closed the car door. "He sent her instead! He's still –" The globe next to his hand exploded. He swiveled toward the door we'd come in from and began firing, crossing the room quickly and tossing something through the air toward me. I leaped forward, caught the back-up clip of ammo in my left hand, and stashed it in the pocket of my sweat pants.
"Stay back," he yelled, reaching the doorway. He flattened himself against the wall, slammed in a new clip and moved into the hallway, spraying bullets. Then there was silence. Easing back into the room, he kicked the door shut, saying, "Peter's down." And then he stopped, frozen, with his gun aimed straight at me. His face was expressionless.
Even before the arm clamped around my neck and before I felt cold metal against my temple, I felt the hair lift on the back of my neck. "Drop it, whore," Rade whispered into my ear.
"No!"
He cracked the gun barrel against my temple. "Last chance." Blinding pain dazed me and I sagged back, dropping the gun.
"It's me you want to kill, Comrade. Not her."
"I want you both, Rippner, but one at a time. I like to spread my pleasure out. Drop your gun, and maybe I let you breathe another moment."
Jackson's lips curved upward in a disdainful smirk and, although his gun never wavered, he seemed to relax slightly.
"Rade!" It was Katya's voice, shrill and coming from the hall, behind us. She spoke to him in Russian, and he laughed and said something back to her. I didn't know what the words meant, but his tone was contemptuous.
"Rade." Her voice was firmer this time, and her words slower. This time one of her words caught my attention. She confirmed what I thought I heard when in English, she said, "Miss Reisert, I am placing Rade Vaschenko under arrest. Should anything go wrong, you will please not shoot me. I am Interpol agent."
As I felt a strong wellspring of hope rise in me, Rade laughed again, a deep, belly laugh, and arced us just slightly in her direction. "Fuck Interpol!" he spat and laughed again. "Fuck Interpol is what I did, yes, Katya? Over and over, night after night, my little slut; until you begged me to stop. You think you are match for me now, Interpol whore?" Rade, I noticed, had a limited English vocabulary when it came to talking to women.
He shot Jackson then, and as I screamed, he twisted, swung his gun hand across my face and shot Katya. The force of the bullet knocked her backward a few feet, just as her own pistol went off. She fell, a petite bundle of black and white, onto the white marble tile, and was still. Rade tightened his arm on my neck, choking off my screams. To my right, Jackson was on the ground, trying to stand up. His gun was still trained on Rade, who laughed and said, "Throw the gun away, Mr. Rippner. You have no chance. She is between you and me, and you must shoot her to get to me."
Jackson gripped the top of a leather chair for support, but his gun hand held steady and his eyes were glacial.
"Is interesting dilemma, yes, Lisa? Your Mr. Rippner must decide. Will he shoot you himself? Or will he give you to me?" Rade dragged me backwards, toward the double doors. "When I finish with her, Mr. Rippner, I will come for you, bring you to her, so you see what I have done to her. And then you will join her in death. Unless you wish to shoot her now, and then we will finish this, one on one, like men."
Something wet dripped onto my shoulder, and then down my arm. I looked up at Rade – looked into that terrible, smug face, and saw that Katya had winged him; a bullet had grazed the side of his head and blood dripped steadily from it.
Jackson lowered the pistol toward the floor and Rade paused in his backward retreat.
My hand closed on the cartridge clip in my sweat pants pocket. I took a quick breath and clamped my teeth on Rade's forearm. I bit down hard and at the same time drove my elbow into his ribs. Rade was a big man, a very strong man, and I could not hope to best him in a physical contest. I could only hope to startle him enough to make him loosen his grip briefly. As he yanked his arm instinctively away from my teeth, I twisted around, whacked hard at the side of his neck with the edge of my hand, the way I'd been shown in kickboxing classes, slung my arm back and slammed the cartridge clip with all my might against his windpipe. His arm flew toward his neck and he gasped for air.
"Move, Lisa, move! Go, go, go!" Jackson shouted. As I moved away from Rade, I heard a shot. I whirled, snatched up my own pistol and turned to see Rade running through the doorway, into the hall. Blood dripped from his gun hand and his gun was still spinning on the hardwood floor where he'd dropped it. I spit blood from my mouth and picked up Rade's gun with my free hand. With Jackson yelling at me to stop, I started after him. I knew I had to kill him. I wanted to kill him more than I'd ever wanted anything in my life. I bounded through the hall as Rade darted through the open door and down the marble steps. I followed him outside and stopped at the top of the stairs, momentarily distracted as a truck full of highly alarmed construction workers whipped down the driveway and flew out through the open gate. As the dust cleared, I saw the tower guard taking aim at me. I danced to one side to throw his aim off, looked down the sights of my gun at him and squeezed the trigger. He went down. I started down the steps, intent on tracking Rade, but stopped, suddenly aware of an ominous sound.
Katya, who I later learned wore Kevlar under that bulky sweater, stood on the veranda. The two huge Weimaraners were seated elegantly at her feet, growling fiercely.
"Miss Reisert," she said, her face oddly peaceful. "I will finish this."
In her hand she held a large, black leather glove. As I watched, she dropped to her knees and offered it to each of the dogs, which, one after the other sniffed it politely and returned their attention to Katya. Then she spoke quietly to them. As one, they leapt into action, growling and snarling, and disappeared in the direction Rade had gone.
His screams reached my ears very quickly.
A tear appeared on Katya's cheek, but she wiped it away very quickly. In the distance I heard sirens.