The barely conscious woman stumbled closer and did her best to look seductive, but her bloodshot eyes kept rolling back in her head, and there were crusted sores at the corner of her mouth and one nostril.
“Albina likes you. Do anything you want.”
Zlatan turned to the pair, and raised his voice to a slurring shout. “Fuck off, shlyukha!”
The woman shrunk back at the old Russian word for whore, and Weasel-face showed a row of small, dark teeth as he backed away a few steps. His eyes never left Zlatan’s watch. Behind them, groups of men whispered, sizing him up, planning.
The Kurgan lifted his beer, sipped and spat it out on the floor. “Dog’s piss.”
An empty bottle slammed into the back of his head, causing Zlatan to lean forward momentarily, and then turn to the small device on the bar to nod. When his head came up he was totally devoid of expression. He got to his feet, and headed for the door. Catcalls, whistles, and more projectiles followed. Other men also got to their feet, intent on following him outside.
But he didn’t leave. When he got to the door, instead of exiting, he slid the deadbolt across, locking it, and then turned. The first men to come at him were big, raw-boned, covered in gulag tattoos, and their faces carried broken noses and numerous scars from lives lived fighting.
One swung a wooden chair down on Zlatan’s head and shoulders so hard it shattered, but before the man had even finished on his follow-through, the Kurgan had caught a chair leg out of the air and used it like a dagger embedding the splintered end deep into the eye socket of one of the men. He shot out a tree trunk-like arm and caught the other man by the throat, and then grabbed his waist, lifted him above his head, and slammed him down across one knee. The sound of his spine cracking was like a rifle shot.
The women fled and the room exploded in shouted curses, frantic movement, and a rush of bodies as they all came at him at once with knuckle-dusters, knives, and guns.
The small device on the bar top caught it all.
Back at the laboratory Viktor Dubkin blanched as he watched blood spurt, bones break, and limbs pulled from sockets. Never had he witnessed such methodical brutality inflicted on other human beings.
One big man with a face like a potato swung a long blade into Zlatan’s ribs. He struck hard, but the knife barely penetrated. The man probably thought the giant wore body armor, but the reality was his armor was grown internally. Zlatan merely pulled the knife from the man who tried to turn away, and swung the blade back at him so hard, the shaft passed through the back of his neck, coming out his mouth to then nail him to the wall, so he hung there like a coat on a rack.
Dubkin blew air softly through pursed lips. The other thing that amazed him was even with the bestial ferocity the massive Kurgan displayed, his face remained impassive, not even breathing hard.
In another few minutes it was all over, with just two men left — the barman, ashen-faced and holding his hands up, and another man on the ground attempting to rise.
Zlatan looked down briefly at the struggling man, and casually lifted one size-fifteen boot before bringing it down on the face of the man so hard his skull caved in.
Slowly he lifted his gaze to the barman. Dubkin pressed the communication button, and his voice transmitted directly to a small pellet in the Kurgan’s ear.
“No mercy, no survivors.”
Zlatan reached down, picked up a discarded gun, pointed it and fired twice — both bullets hitting the barman between the eyes.
Dubkin nodded, satisfied. He checked his watch. “Three minutes and seven seconds; very good.” He turned to the scientist. “I have a mission; I will need them.”
The scientist’s eyebrows rose. “How many? Several are ready for…”
“All of them.” Dubkin turned away. “Get them ready for immediate departure. I will brief them as soon as Zlatan returns.”
CHAPTER 8
“A tragedy.” Colonel Jack Hammerson, ‘Hammer’ to his friends and enemies, had the phone on speaker and leaned back in his chair as five-star General Marcus Chilton related the events of the Orlando space shuttle orbiter crash.
“Revelation Mountains, Jack, bad news for recovery; almost inaccessible, and this time of year, even an airdrop is suicide for any normal rescue team — nothing but white-outs, blasting winds, and rock faces that make the Matterhorn look like a playground slide.”
“I know the area, Marcus; we’ve done some training work there. It’s a little bit of hell, right here on Earth.”
He turned to the large window overlooking the parade grounds, and waited for the general to get to the point. Hammerson was the head of the elite Special Forces group known as the HAWCs. They went in when everyone else wouldn’t or couldn’t, and did jobs the other security and military agencies didn’t even want to know about. And just as well, because his team made their own rules, and when they were done, there was blood and broken bodies — always the other guys’.
Chilton’s voice lowered. “Okay, Jack, that was the above-the-line speech, and now for the ears-only upload.”
Hammerson took the phone off speaker, and plugged the pellet into his ear. He sat forward, his large fingers clasped together on the desk. “Go, sir.”
“Jack, the Orlando was using one of our latest model deep-ground penetrating imagers. As the orbiter was going to be circling the world 300-plus miles up, we decided to make use of its altitude to take a few pictures — in fact loads of pictures. We set it to capture images and then let it run.”
Hammerson knew all about the capabilities of the DPIs. “Oh, good lord.” Hammerson tilted his head back and shut his eyes momentarily. “We mapped ourselves, didn’t we?”
“Oh yeah,” Chilton replied. “Problem was, we couldn’t transmit the images back to base — the probability of them being hacked and intercepted was too great. We needed to physically accept that device back into our hands.” He grunted. “Jack, that film is as lethal as it is invaluable.”
“Who else knows about it?” Hammerson had a sinking feeling.
“We know the Russians and probably the Chinese know about it, but they couldn’t do a damn thing about the Orlando when it was in orbit. Now that it has fallen out of the sky, they can.”
Chilton drew a deep breath and let it out in a low rumble. “That was the bad news. Now for the worse news — the Russians now have the jump on us. Our intel tells us they’re about to dispatch a team or already have. Jack, we can’t have an unarmed NASA recovery team running into a few Russian torpedoes up on those cliffs now, can we?”
“No sir, that we cannot.” Hammerson smiled grimly. “You want us to ride shotgun?”
“NASA is calling the shots on this as they know their bird. Normally, we’d send a standard Spec Ops team, but this has complications. We understand that Russia is putting a top team in for a fast snatch. They intend to blitz the site. These guys are displaying a distinct lack of respect; Jack, we, and by that I mean you, need to remind them who they’re dealing with.”
“Be a pleasure, sir.” Hammerson smiled grimly.
“One more thing, there’s a quarantine order over the entire site, and it’s not just for show. Where the Orlando went down we managed to get some initial satellite images before the cloud cover closed it all in. Looks like some sort of contamination dispersion. I’m sending you the Sabers images and initial report… now.”