Dragunov took a seat at the card table with his cup of coffee. “It’s not our responsibility,” he said.
“What’s the GRU doing working with the Russian mob?”
A shadow crossed Dragunov’s brow as he sat looking up at Gil. “You’re saying the CIA never works with criminals? That no one ever gets fucked?”
Gil sat down across from him. “One of those girls out front can’t be a day over sixteen.”
Dragunov gazed at him. “What do you want me to do about it?”
Gil leaned back in the folding chair, exhaling with a sigh. “Nothin’.”
“Good,” the Spetsnaz man said. “Because there’s nothing that can be done. This is Turkey, and even if it was Ukraine or Belarus, what are we going to do, eh? Start a war with the Russian mafia?”
“Doesn’t sound like the worst idea I ever heard.”
One of the older women, perhaps twenty-six or so, came into the kitchen, her black hair flowing around her shoulders, and went to the coffee pot. It was empty, so she took a coffee can down from the cupboard. Her black nightgown was transparent and left nothing whatsoever to the imagination, her upturned nipples and dark patch of pubic hair clearly visible.
Gil couldn’t help being stirred, so he turned away.
Vlad came into the kitchen, grinned when he saw the woman making coffee, and said something to Dragunov.
Dragunov looked at Gil. “I guess she speaks English, if you’d like to fuck her.”
Gil glanced at Vlad and shook his head. “Tell ’im no thanks.”
“He says no charge — professional courtesy.”
Gil looked at the girl, who immediately lowered her eyes. “No thanks,” he muttered.
Vlad chortled, speaking at length with Dragunov before leaving the room again.
“What was all that about?”
“He says we’ll leave in the morning and drive to Georgia. We’ll cross the border with one of their shipments. It’s all set up with the border guards. There won’t be any trouble.”
“Shipments of what?”
An ironic grin crossed Dragunov’s face. “What do you think?”
A short time later, they were busy discussing their plan to eliminate Dokka Umarov, when Vlad marched one of the teenage girls into the room, gripping a handful of her blond hair. He took a half-inch dowel rod from behind the refrigerator and began to beat the girl across her backside, snarling at her in filthy-sounding Russian as she squealed in pain.
Gil stood up from the chair. “That’s enough, goddamnit!”
Dragunov was on his feet an instant behind him. “Gil, this isn’t our business.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn!” Gil was on the verge of drawing the M9.
“What’s he saying?” Vlad demanded.
Two more big men appeared through the blue-beaded curtain, one with a submachine pistol slung under his arm.
Dragunov ignored Vlad, his eyes cutting into Gil. “Do you want to get us both killed? The girl too? Because this foul-smelling bastard will cut her throat just to spite you.”
“What did he say?” Vlad demanded again. “Tell me what he said!”
Dragunov turned around. “He’s not used to this. You know how soft the fucking Americans are. Maybe you could beat the bitch in the other room.”
Vlad glanced at Gil and laughed. “You’re serious? Is he queer or what?”
Dragunov shook his head, realizing it was going to be long twelve hours with this gang. “He just doesn’t want to see you beating the girl, that’s all.”
Vlad let go of her hair and tossed the dowel rod onto the table. “Then he can do it. She refused to suck the customer’s dick, so she gets thirty lashes with the stick. That’s the rule.”
Dragunov knew he had to defuse the situation. “That’s not his job. All I’m asking is for you to do it in the other room. I’m asking you one Russian to another.”
Vlad shook his head. “This has nothing to do with you and me.” He pointed at Gil. “It has to do with him and that fucking look in his eyes. You tell him he can give the girl her thirty lashes, or I’ll give her sixty — right here in front of him.”
“This isn’t professional,” Dragunov said, his tone suddenly peremptory. “He’s just a sheltered American.”
Vlad shook his head, staring at Gil who stared right back at him. “No, he’s not sheltered. Not this one. This one is a killer — I can see it. He’s already killed me fifty times in his mind. You tell him what I said, or I’ll beat this fucking whore to death. Tell him!”
Dragunov looked at Gil. “He wants you to beat the girl — or he’ll kill her.”
Gil smiled, his gaze still locked with Vlad’s, silently consigning himself to death. “Let him kill her.”
“What?”
“I said, let him kill her. He’ll be dead before her body hits the floor.”
To give himself and everyone else a moment to decompress, Dragunov took Gil’s cigarettes from the table and shook one loose from the pack, taking time to light it before finally saying to Gil, “I’m not going to tell him that.”
“Then I guess we got a problem,” Gil said, still locked in a stare-down with Vlad.
“What’s he saying?” Vlad asked, glad for the excuse to break eye contact with the American who obviously wasn’t afraid to die.
Dragunov drew from the cigarette. “He said he doesn’t beat women, but you should be his guest to beat her as many times as you want.”
“Good!” Vlad grabbed the stick from the table and seized the girl by the hair again, giving her a thrashing the likes of which no one in the room had ever seen. She screamed the entire time, trying to block the blows with her hands, and receiving a couple of broken fingers for her troubles. The stick finally snapped after sixty-five lashes, and Vlad threw her on the floor at Gil’s feet, where she lay sobbing in agony.
“Fuck you!” Vlad said with a sneer in passable English. “This is my house!” he added in Russian. “These whores belong to me!”
Gil was as calm as the sea on a windless day, having decided his course of action after the first couple of blows, tuning out the girl’s agonized cries.
“That was your doing,” Dragunov told him quietly. “Has he made his point now?”
Gil nodded. “He’s made his point.”
Vlad shouted for the other women to take the girl to her room, to get her cleaned up and back to work.
The girl was taken away, and Gil crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, exhaling from the corner of his mouth. “You might wanna finish that smoke, partner.”
Dragunov looked at him, his adrenaline surging. “Why?”
“’Cuz there’s gonna be a gunfight, and I don’t think you wanna be standin’ there with your dick in your hand.”
“Don’t.” Dragunov’s face was composed, but he was readying himself for violence. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
“Before this shit kicks off,” Gil said, casually tucking the pack of cigarettes away in his pocket, “I wanna thank you again for saving that SEAL’s life on the beach. You taught me something about Russians I never knew.”
Dragunov leaned forward to crush out the cigarette, knowing there was no way to stop what was to come. “What was that?”
“That you’re no worse than the rest of us.” Gil jerked the M9 from his pocket and shot Vlad right between the eyes. Vlad’s head snapped back, and his body dropped to the floor like a sack of cement.
Dragunov was only barely behind on the draw, whipping around and shooting the two men behind him as they grabbed for their guns.