Citadel Of Fear

“Hey, Nika. Me and Arty fought hard. We did not give up until they turned our own damn cannons on us.”

“This I know. How you made bail when you are found at battle scene hand-cuffed to antiaircraft cannon in Poland? This I do not know.”

McCarter glanced around Luffy-Land dryly and managed a TV-worthy Russian accent. “Girls did not pass hat.”

Manning laughed unpleasantly.

The Gazinskiy brothers pulled back slightly. The Gazinskiy goon squad bristled and glanced back and forth at each other. They did not understand what was being said but they did not like seeing their bosses intimidated. Artyom was becoming both scared and angry. “Hey! Who are these guys?”

McCarter continued. “You did not make call. You were surprised. Who is bailing you out?”

Artyom stabbed out an accusing finger. “Listen! You—”

“I am listening, but I am not hearing answer.”

Ilya grew some backbone. “You don’t come into our place! Make us speak English!”

McCarter smiled without an ounce of warmth. “I already have.”

The brothers Gazinskiy blinked in unison.

Propenko’s already gravelly voice dropped a dangerous octave. “Who bails you out?”

Artyom made an unhappy noise. “We were told not to talk about it.”

“Yes.” McCarter nodded at the wisdom of this. “Who told you not to talk about it?”

Artyom threw a desperate look at Propenko. “Listen, I do not think you want to be screwing with these people.”

Propenko glanced at McCarter and Manning and spoke the truth. “I know for fact you do not want to mess with these men.”

Manning noted that Ilya was staring at McCarter, and the Russian’s brows slowly knitted as if he was mentally doing long division counting on his fingers. It had been a decent ploy, but things were about to go FUBAR. Manning smiled and punched Ilya in the throat.

Gazinskiy the Elder did a short, remarkable imitation of a seagull squawk-and-flap and fell to the grimy floor. Propenko instantly followed suit. He shot the heel of his hand forward and made a credible attempt to shove Gazinskiy the Younger’s nose into his brain. The Gazinskiy bullyboy brigade seemed to have spent more time stomping drunken sailors and looking tough than in getting in real fights; seeing their bosses fall in the space of two seconds left them hesitating for one more. It cost the one closest to Manning a kneecap. It cost the one closest to Propenko a left eye.

The last remaining goon screamed something defiant in Russian. He pulled up his tracksuit jacket with his left hand and went for his gun with his right. McCarter slapped a hand over each of the Russian’s wrists and gave him the Danish Kiss.

McCarter was happy to acknowledge the English had not invented the head butt, but he was rather insistent that they had perfected it. English soccer hooligans would have squealed in delight as a cranium of the United Kingdom met a skull of the Russian Federation and the hammerhead dropped like a cow that had just reached the end of the slaughter chute.

McCarter ignored the dancing lights as he caught motion behind him. The bartender swung. McCarter had known a lot of bartenders who kept baseball or cricket bats behind the bar. He had about one heartbeat to note that this was the first bat he had seen that had been scored with shallow, cross-hatching saw cuts and filled with several dozen safety razor blades. He stepped into the blow, caught the bartender’s wrist and heaved his sagging bulk over the bar. He kept the weapon as the barman landed badly in a clatter of bar stools.

McCarter regarded the hideous bludgeon he had acquired. “Nice hate stick, old son. You just earned yourself an appointment with your old Doc Marten, and the doctor is in.” McCarter gave the bartender his boots until the big man was reduced to twitching, bleeding and wheezing.

The floor of Luffy-Land was a sea of broken, moaning, screaming Russians. None of the girls had moved an inch or batted an eye, much less screamed. They seemed to have found the spectacle slightly more interesting than their soap opera. They watched avidly to see what might happen next.

McCarter turned to his team and held up the razor-enhanced baseball bat. “Did you see this?”

Propenko grunted. “I have seen this. In Vladimir Central Prison. It was used for rectal purposes.”

Manning gazed heavenward. “Could have gone my whole life…”

Propenko held out his hand.

McCarter handed him the hate stick. The Russian went and took a knee on Artyom’s chest. “I told you. You do not want to screw with these men. Now, answer their questions.”

Artyom bubbled and gasped around his shattered septum and the blood filling his mouth. “Listen, Nika, we can—”

“Do not talk to me.” Propenko glanced back at McCarter. “Talk to him.”

Artyom babbled. “Christos…”

“Do not talk to Jesus. These men are your god. God helps those who help themselves.” The Prison Spetsnaz officer spit on the razor club meaningfully. “Help yourself, Artyom. Help your brother. While you still can.”

Artyom Gazinskiy whimpered and began helping himself and his brother.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1f0344cd-2287-5f21-bb7c-1546459f75b8)

The Annex

Akira Tokaido sang to himself. “Money, money, money, muh-nee… Money!”

Kurtzman and Wethers exchanged weary looks of mutual sympathy.

“Boy couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket…” Kurtzman muttered.

Wethers glanced over at the young Japanese-American hacker. One of these days someone was just going to have to tell him that ponytails for computer geeks had gone out of fashion. “And he has exactly as much rhythm as one would expect…”

However, Kurtzman admitted to himself, Tokaido’s instincts were correct. When you lacked a face, a fingerprint or a smoking gun—though Phoenix had rather boldly latched onto a pair of smoking automatic cannons—you followed the money trail.

The brothers Gazinskiy had told a fascinating tale and almost none of it made any sense. It would have been clear to a child that the Gazinskiy boys were tools and nothing more. No one would miss them.

Nikita Propenko was a power tool—a tool of a higher order—but even if he died badly and in public, little more would happen than a few dangerous men in Moscow drinking a shot of vodka in his name, shaking their heads and muttering “He never should have gone into Poland.”

Propenko had been offered a big fee, big enough to tempt him from his lucrative private work in Russia and its former republics. They had hired a small army of hammerheads but they had also hired a very dangerous and disciplined man to run them. The cannons had been his idea and he had enough pull to buy artillery on the black market. Anyone other than Phoenix Force would have been wiped out, captured or extracted, taking heavy casualties every step of the way. Propenko had demanded cold, hard Euros.

The Gazinskiy brothers, besides being low-rent muscle and peddlers of extremely low-rent flesh, were also low-rent cyber criminals. They had a fairly lucrative sideline running online scams in former stan-suffixed Russian republics where entire rural areas were just starting to explore the internet and connectivity.

The Gazinskiys had accepted bitcoins as payment.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation had issued a statement stating that it considered the exchange of bitcoins for goods, services or currencies a “dubious activity.” This was a veiled threat, but both an admonition and an admission that the Russian Federation currently had almost no ability to regulate it or control bitcoin transactions.

Bitcoins were the first, real, online alternate currency and, despite many national governments trying to crack down on their use, they were still the choice of cyber geeks who wanted their transactions off the grid, as well as cyber criminals that wanted the same.

The Gazinskiy brothers had used their massive infusion of bitcoins to buy and sell drugs in Kaliningrad without the Russian mafiya “made men” above them knowing about it. Bitcoins were the currency of the cyber savvy; the technology behind them and the people running it continuing to evolve faster than governments and traditional financial institutions could adapt. The jury was out as to whether they were an abomination, the way of the future or little more than a temporary blip on the world economic radar. What they offered was anonymity and transactions at the rate of high-speed cable that left regulators scrambling.

Akira Tokaido was the kind of man who left entire intelligence agencies, state security services and militaries scrambling in his wake. This was just his game. His current problem was that he was not cracking government agencies, terrorist cells or databases; he was fighting people exactly like himself.

He was relishing the challenge.