Oceans Of Fire

“Mean both.” Sokolova’s accent was thick enough to cut with a knife. “You ask what do such damage?” She opened a tray beneath the metal gurney and pulled out a plastic bag. The contents tinkled onto the stainless-steel tool tray as she emptied them into a glittering pile. “Twenty-five silver, Csar Nicholas, ten-kopeck pieces. Twenty-five more pulled from body armor in chest.”

“Bloody hell.” McCarter shook his head. “Shot him full of silver.”

“Da,” the doctor agreed. “Shotgun loaded with silver kopeck do such damage.”

James ran his hands through the coins. They were pitted from being fired from a gun and many had deformed when they’d hit bone, but each was genuine minted silver with Csar Nicholas on the face. They were about the diameter of a dime but twice as thick, and by James’s estimation twenty-five of them would fit just about perfectly into a 12-gauge shotgun shell. “You know, the Italian Mafia used to do this kind of shit in Sicily, back in the day. They killed you with enough money to pay for your funeral. Some kind of messed-up, old-school respect thing.”

McCarter stared at the pile of coins that had been pulled from Aidar Zhol’s skull. “Dr., you said kopeck was the method and a man’s name.”

“Da, every cop in Moscow know Kopeck. Kopeck is assassin. Double-barrel shotgun loaded with silver kopeck is his MO. One barrel in chest. One in face.” Dr. Sokolova tossed her head. “Kopeck is bad man.”

“What else do you know about him?” McCarter asked.

Dr. Sokolova went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a thick folder. File after file had pictures of horribly, unmistakably, coin-mutilated corpses. Sokolova pulled out a separate file. It was written in Cyrillic, but it was clearly a police rap sheet. McCarter gazed at the mug shot at the top. Kopeck’s face was all brutal bulges of brow and cheekbones and jaw with cauliflowered ears, and his hair was clipped close to his skull. He had bad teeth. McCarter could tell because Kopeck was grinning shamelessly into the police camera.

“Name, Pietor Shulin, alias ‘Kopeck.’ Was wrestler in ninety kilogram weight class but failed to make Olympic team. He lose sports dispensation and do army service in Chechnya. Implicated in atrocities against civilians but not prosecuted. Honorably discharged. Shulin became doorman at Moscow club where it is assumed he made mafiya connections. First ‘kopeck killing’ in Moscow occur two years ago. Victim was witness to alleged mafiya slaying. There have been eleven kopeck killings within last twenty-four months. Shulin has been arrested in conjunction with three but unsuccessfully prosecuted. Once before, murderer with this same MO escape police pursuit by using manhole trick you describe.”

McCarter shook his head at how they’d been eluded. He’d been in the bowels of Moscow before. The modern sewers connected with the ancient sewers built during the time of Peter the Great as well several extensive systems of catacombs that were even older. A mind-numbing labyrinth existed below the streets of Moscow and Russian criminals had been making use of it for centuries.

“Dr. do you have any idea which syndicate he’s with?” James asked.

“Kopeck is thought to be freelancer. You wish man dead? You have money? Kopeck kill. You wish woman or child dead? Kopeck kill them, too.”

McCarter had seen the type before. In the old days hit men had been the soldiers of their syndicate. They were trusted members of their families who did the dirty work of defending them. The family system in organized crime had steadily eroded since the 1960s with the rise of the narcotics trade. Kopeck was part of the new breed of killer. He wasn’t a hit man so much as an assassin, and aside from his colorful MO, he was true to type.

Kopeck was a sociopath with no loyalties to speak of. He killed for money and because he liked it.

“Kopeck’s a bad man,” James stated.

“Yeah, and if he’s freelance, that means he doesn’t have a syndicate backing him,” McCarter stated.

James grinned. “Maybe we should go and have ourselves a Come to Jesus with this boy Kopeck.”

“I wish you would.” Dr. Sokolova favored them with a predatory smile. “I weary of pulling coins from faces.”

“We need to put together a snatch, then.” McCarter turned to James. “Get on the horn to the Bear, we—”

A pair of orderlies entered the room pushing a gurney laden with a sheet-covered corpse. Dr. Sokolova gave the two orderlies a withering look and spoke in Russian. “I specifically gave orders not to be disturbed.”

McCarter cleared leather. James shoved Sokolova to the floor and drew his weapon. The orderlies withdrew PP-2000 machine pistols from beneath their smocks as McCarter and James opened up. McCarter’s Browning Hi-Power “Detective” model was an Argentine weapon with a three-and-a-half-inch barrel for concealed carry. The 13-round magazine was “Dutch-Loaded” with 9 mm +P+ hollowpoints and Teflon-coated, armor-piercing ammunition. The high-performance ammo screamed from the shortened barrel in ear-splitting blasts of fire. An armor-piercing round punched a neat hole through the first assassin’s heart. A hollowpoint round exploded his throat and dropped him to the floor.

James’s Heckler & Koch boomed four times in rapid succession. The big .45 smashed the second killer across the room and dropped him flapping to the floor. The man on the gurney sat up out of his shroud like the living dead, a sawed-off double barrel shotgun in each hand.

McCarter and James emptied their pistols into him.

The assassin jerked and shuddered under the fusillade. His right-hand shotgun boomed out of both barrels, and McCarter felt the sting of the hit in his left arm. He dropped his left arm and fired one-handed until his pistol racked open on an empty, smoke-oozing chamber. The killer lay back on the gurney in final rest with fifteen holes in his chest.

James slapped in a fresh magazine and shot his slide home on a fresh round. McCarter ignored the burning in his arm and reloaded, as well. Out in other areas of the morgue people had begun to scream. Dr. Sokolova started to push herself up and McCarter put a hand on her shoulder to keep her down. “Wait.”

James went to the double swinging door and kicked it open. He led with his pistol as he quickly scanned the corridor. “Clear.”

Sokolova rose and touched McCarter’s arm. “You are hit.”

James stayed in the doorway. “You all right?”

The doctor took a scalpel and cut away the sleeve of McCarter’s jacket and shirt. Blood ran in a river down McCarter’s arm from a pair of ragged but shallow wounds. She took a pair of forceps from the tool tray and stopped. “My God.”