The Wolves (28 page)

“Someone at the station can do it.”

“More important. The Hong Kong police, they won’t send in a SWAT team. Most likely, they think it’s a prank. Those calls are usually pranks. And this isn’t exactly Juarez. They send a car out, two cops,
guys who maybe see five robberies a year. They knock on the door. Buvchenko answers, says no problem, come on in. Then he shoots them both and takes off. Maybe he takes Orli, or maybe he shoots her, too.”

“He’d ambush the cops.”

“You think he’s coming out with his hands up?
You got me, boys. Well played.
”

Gideon barked in Hebrew at Ben. “He wants to know what we’re talking about.”

“Tell him.”

After a back-and-forth in Hebrew, Ben turned to Wells. “He says you’re right.”

Of course. He knows.
Wells leaned over to Gideon. “We going in? Or hanging out, hoping they move her?”

Gideon grimaced like he was having a Tourette’s attack and finally nodded. He parked on the service road beside Highway 1 while they came up with the barest plan. They would park the Toyota twenty yards down from Hip Tong, on the steep short road that ran between it and the highway. Wells would give Gideon a one-minute head start to navigate the alley behind the buildings. Then Wells would move in from the front. Ideally, Gideon would reach the back of the garage just after Wells came to the front door.

“You’re sure there’s a way in back there,” Gideon said.

“Has to be a fire door, at least a window.”

“Maybe it’s locked.”

“Then shoot your way in.” Wells had only one autopick and he needed it himself.

Wells would start with the pistol, try to be quiet, but if he ran into resistance, he would open up with the H&K. As soon as Gideon heard shooting, he would come in from the back.

Ideally, they would pin the Russians between them. If not, Wells would have to deal with them as they tried to escape to the street. Either way, they should count on being finished two minutes after Wells started shooting. One would be better. Automatic weapons drew cops like nothing else.

“You think we get her away that fast?” Gideon said.

“I don’t care if we get her away. We handle the Russians, she’s safe with the cops.”

“Speaking of safe,” Ben said. “I’ll stay. I can drive.”

“It’s okay.” The guy was nice enough, but Wells didn’t think he’d ever been in the field.

“What if one of you gets hit, you need help getting to the car—”

Maybe having a wheelman wouldn’t hurt. And Wells didn’t have time to argue. “Fine. But you stay with the car unless you hear one of us yelling for you.”

Ben grinned like a peewee who’d been picked for the varsity. Wells wondered if he’d made a mistake.

“Ready?” Gideon said. “Or you want to keep talking?”

“Let’s go.”

B
uvchenko and the FSB guys had talked about raping Orli most of the day.

When Buvchenko pulled her out of the BMW, she kicked and punched wildly, banging her hand on the underside of the trunk lid. He looked down on her curiously. Like she was a noisy but unthreatening animal, a squirrel or fawn, that had somehow found her way into his house. She screamed, and he put a giant hand over her mouth and nose and squeezed until she stopped. He slapped duct tape across her lips, and he and Sergei taped her to a cheap but sturdy metal chair and shoved her in an oily back corner of the garage.

“It’ll be all right,” Buvchenko said. She stared at the ceiling.

The afternoon ticked by. For an hour or so, they played Durak, a Russian card game
.
Then they shifted to chess, Nikolai playing Sergei and Buvchenko at once. The garage was airless, stifling, and they were as bored as campers on a rainy day. They couldn’t even call anyone or use the Internet. Nikolai had made them turn their phones off. The call from the station was supposed to come through the garage’s landline.

Sergei’s first suggestion was sly, almost offhand. It came after
Nikolai had demolished him for the third straight chess match. He wandered over to the corner and stared at Orli with all the subtlety of a dog eying a T-bone.

“Quit it?” Buvchenko said after a couple of minutes.

“Look at her. We’ll never have another chance at a piece like this. I’ll bet she’s tired of that old Yid and his limp dick, anyway. Let’s show her how real men do it.”

“Let’s just get her to the boat,” Nikolai said.

“Can I play some games on my phone, at least?” Sergei said. Like rape and video games were interchangeable substitutes for each other.

“As long as it’s on airplane mode.”

Sergei distracted himself for a while pretending to be a dragon. Or maybe a guy who hunted dragons with a machine gun. Then he disappeared into the room at the back of the garage that served as an office and kitchen area. When he emerged, he was holding two dusty bottles of Smirnoff.

“Look what I found.”

—

S
O THEY DRANK
. They drank to the success of the operation, which had already yielded the best intelligence on the Chinese air force in the FSB’s history. They drank to Russia. And for their third drink, Sergei raised his glass and said, “Let’s teach that thing in the chair a lesson. Something she won’t forget.”

This time, Nikolai didn’t argue. He smirked.

The more shots of Smirnoff they did, the more graphic Sergei’s suggestions became. “She’s stronger than she looks,” Buvchenko said. “She’ll make trouble.”

“You can’t hold her, Mikhail? She probably weighs fifty-five kilos. If
you’re not man enough, I’ll do it myself. Twist her arms behind her back until she knows not to fight.”

“Say you break them.”

“Then I break them. The boss can go first, then my turn. You last. Give her a kiss before you start, you’re romantic.”

“Nemtsov won’t be happy.”

“You think we’re sending her back to Tel Aviv? All these excuses. Worried about your
khuy
, Mikhail? Take a Viagra. I know you have them.” He looked at Nikolai. “Come on, boss. I’ve wanted one like this my whole life.”

Buvchenko wasn’t even sure why he was trying to protect Orli. Maybe just because Sergei annoyed him so much. It wasn’t as if he’d never forced himself on a woman. In a village outside Gronzy, his squad, eight men, had once had their way with a mother and daughter. But the mother had tried to blow them up with a suicide vest, only it hadn’t gone off. Then the daughter had grabbed a knife and cut his sergeant in the arm. She was fifteen, maybe fourteen, who could tell with the Chechens? Anyway, they’d deserved their punishment. When his last soldier was done with them, Buvchenko shot them both. Give the mother the martyrdom she wanted. As for the daughter, he was saving her from misery.

Orli was different. She’d come on her own, to protect her children. Yes, Nemtsov was probably going to tell them to dump her in the ocean along with her idiot husband, but they didn’t have to rape her first.

—

O
RLI DIDN
’
T SPEAK
R
USSIAN
, but Buvchenko could tell she knew what they were saying. She shrank in her chair whenever Sergei approached.
As they got into the second Smirnoff bottle, he took off his shirt, revealing pecs as big as hubcaps, and waxed so they shined under the garage’s fluorescents.

He poured cups of vodka, no more shots, dirty plastic cups with Honda logos, and pushed them on Nikolai and Buvchenko. Buvchenko choked the stuff down, he knew Sergei would be watching. Nikolai’s eyes had turned hard and stony. His hand strayed to his crotch every time he looked at Orli, the motion smooth, unconscious.

Nikolai went into the back to piss, and Sergei poured a fresh glass.

“Let this one settle,” Buvchenko said.

“Stupid. For her. Loosen her up.” He walked toward her and shook the cup, pantomimed drinking. She nodded. Sergei reached for the duct tape.

Buvchenko pulled him back. “You want her to scream?”

“Of course I do.” He reached over, tore Orli’s shirt neatly in half down the middle as she shook her head almost diffidently.

Buvchenko couldn’t help but look. She wore a simple white bra, lace at the edges, almost modest. Her skin was tan all over, no evidence of bikini lines, her stomach flat and smooth, as if she’d never had a baby. The word
beautiful
didn’t begin to describe her. She made him think of a line from his sister’s Bible:
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Nikolai came back. “Oh,” he said. He trotted to the chair, knelt beside it, looked at Orli like she was a prize puppy he was thinking about buying. He put his hands on the edges of her bra, pulled them back to expose her nipples, and gently brushed them with the back of his hands. She held herself rigid and stared at Buvchenko. She’d evidently decided that he was as close to a protector as she had in this room.

Buvchenko wondered whether they would do it right then. But Orli’s eyes turned wide and panicked and she flung her head back and
forth. Nikolai let go of her bra, kissed the tops of her breasts. He stood and walked out again. Buvchenko understood. Nikolai was married and had a daughter of his own. Still, Buvchenko knew Nikolai would overcome his reluctance soon enough. In an hour, maybe less, depending how quickly he drank, how cannily Sergei encouraged him.

Buvchenko couldn’t stop the wolves. They’d have her.

He might as well, too.

A
s Gideon disappeared toward the alley behind Hip Tong, Wells called Shafer.

“Anything new?”

“Phones quiet.”

“We’re going in.”

“That quick?”

“That quick.”

“Macao after?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but let’s find her first.”

“Talked to your Israeli friend about what happens when you do?”

“Not yet.” Gideon seemed to have made the same calculation as Wells, best friends forever, for the next five minutes.

“Might want to figure that out. Anyway. We have a helicopter chartered.”

“Thankee. Got to go.” Gideon’s head start was almost gone. Wells clicked off, grabbed an oversized black shopping bag, the H&K and the suppressed pistol inside.

“Remember, you stay here.”

Ben nodded. Wells stepped out of the Toyota. He wore a black long-sleeved nylon athletic shirt, black jeans, motorcycle boots, black gloves. All he needed was a bumper sticker:
TROUBLE: STAY BACK 100 FEET
.
Though no one was around to see anyway.

He turned left onto Hip Tong, keeping to the south side of the street, opposite the garage, looking for an angle. He had wrapped the pistol in black gauze so it wouldn’t rattle against the H&K inside the pack. The street’s silence surprised Wells, no televisions playing or apartment dwellers chatting, only a distant mechanical banging, metal on metal.

Then a scream. A woman’s voice, pitched to shatter glass, echoing between the apartments—

Gone, no more than two seconds, no follow-through, like someone had flipped a switch, the silence more frightening than the sound itself—

Wells pulled the H&K from the bag, slung it across his chest. He grabbed the suppressed pistol, dropped the bag in the street, ran for the front of the garage, watching the steel door, ready to shoot at any movement. The street was too narrow to offer cover. If the Russians knew he was here, they might be setting a trap, forcing Orli to scream to lure Wells close so they could drop him.

At the edge of the garage door, Wells stopped to listen. He heard low male voices speaking Russian, arguing, maybe. No woman, no sounds of movement, no signs that anyone knew that he and Gideon were closing. He crept to the concrete wall that separated the garage door and the front door, reached for the front door’s dull steel knob.

It turned.

Wells gave himself five seconds to think through the layout inside. From his position, he could see only the wall on the far side of the door. He didn’t know whether the door opened directly into the main
garage bay or whether the building’s thick concrete support pillars walled it off. He hoped for an open bay. He could pull the door wide, get low, open up with the H&K. A pillar would block his angles, make him an easy target for anyone watching the front.

No matter. He couldn’t wait. He knew, too, that on the far side of the building, Gideon must have heard the scream. Wells wanted to get in first. He put a hand on the knob, opened the door fractionally, eased it the rest of the way with his right foot, peeked inside.

As he’d feared, the door didn’t open directly into the bay. A support pillar inside formed a short corridor. Behind the pillar, the garage opened up. The light inside revealed racks of equipment stacked against the wall to Wells’s left. Behind them, a card table with three metal chairs. Beside it, a 250cc motorcycle. At the far end, maybe fifty feet away, Wells saw a brighter square of light, a doorway that he guessed led to the garage’s back office.

The voices started again. Then a low rip, fabric tearing.

Wells left the H&K against his chest, lifted the suppressed pistol. He stepped inside, peeked around the pillar. A BMW sedan was parked in the front of the garage, nose out. Behind it, in the back right corner of the garage, a huge man faced away from Wells, naked except for a pair of tight black boxers. Wells couldn’t be sure because he couldn’t see the guy’s face, but he didn’t think the man was Buvchenko. Beside the giant, a second, smaller man squatted beside Orli’s splayed legs. As Wells watched, he pushed them together, reached for her waist, grabbed her white panties and pulled them off.

Wells still didn’t know where Buvchenko was, if he and more guys might be in the back. Didn’t know and didn’t care. He came around the column so he had an open take. No hesitation, no second thoughts, he lifted the pistol at the standing man, aiming center mass. The guy was
so big he could hardly miss, he pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, the pistol hummed its notes—

Three rounds struck true, the guy’s back arched. But he didn’t go down, not right away. He roared like a bear that had been hit with a too-small tranquilizer. No matter, Wells could finish him in a few seconds. Wells put the pistol on the second Russian, who was standing and turning in response to the shots. As Wells had hoped. By moving up and away from Orli, the guy was giving Wells a clean high shot, one that wouldn’t kill her if Wells missed. He fired twice. The angle was tougher than he thought, he heard one shot slap the corner of the garage, he wasn’t sure about the other, he pulled the trigger again—

When to his right, peripherally, he glimpsed motion—

Buvchenko, coming through the doorway from the back office. He was shirtless, a blurred blue-black tattoo covering his massive pecs. He’d seen Wells already and was reaching for a pistol on a table beside the doorway. Wells spun toward him, knowing he was too late, Buvchenko had him covered and would get shots off, but he had no choice, he had to try, hope Buvchenko missed—

Buvchenko grabbed the pistol and in one motion
flung
it at Wells, a hard forearm strike. Wells realized he wasn’t looking at a pistol at all, he’d misunderstood, the thing was a wrench, a foot of steel. It came out of Buvchenko’s hand with incredible speed. The guy was a beast. It spun sideways at Wells’s head, and Wells ducked and raised his arm, bailing out like a batter caught wrong-footed by a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball, trying to, anyway, but he was spinning
into
its path—

The wrench caught Wells on the right shoulder and temple, the shoulder, mostly. Better than a straight strike to the head, but not much, because the blow opened his right hand as neatly as if he’d willed it, some accident of nerves. Wells dropped the pistol. He
stumbled backward, already feeling the blood streaming down his face. Darkness inked his eyes. He would have gone down, but the building’s pillar caught him.

He leaned against it, blinked the black away, made himself lift his head as Buvchenko ran for him,
charged
him, obviously planning to finish him with his hands rather than going for his pistol, wherever it was. Wells looked for his own pistol. It had skidded halfway under the BMW, out of reach. He grabbed for the H&K on his chest, tried to lift it. Too late. Buvchenko was on him—

Wells turtled, ducked low. Buvchenko turned a shoulder and slammed Wells into the concrete and hit him on the side of the head above the ear with a sledgehammer right hand. Wells had never been punched so hard before, again, again, a hurricane, the Russian was so strong—

Wells tried to hit back, but he had no leverage, couldn’t even raise his hands—

He felt himself slipping, the black rising. He knew that if he went under he’d never wake up, Buvchenko would put him on his back and choke him out—

The concealed carry—

The pistol on his back, Wells remembered it now, no way was Buvchenko expecting it, no way would Buvchenko figure Wells for another pistol on top of the one he’d dropped and the H&K, only he couldn’t get to it, Buvchenko had him against the wall and he had no room—

Wells made his left hand a claw and scratched at Buvchenko’s face, tearing at the Russian’s skin with his nails, grabbing for eyes and mouth, a move so cheap and desperate that Buvchenko stopped punching him long enough to grab his wrist and bend it back. The pain was
enormous, enough to clear the cobwebs the wrench had left. Wells wondered if Buvchenko was strong enough to break his wrist with one hand. Probably.

“The famous John Wells.” Buvchenko smiled. “This is all you have? Dress like a ninja, fight like a bitch.”

“Fuck you, Mikhail.” Not exactly the strongest comeback, but—
Just lay off for a second, give me one second to come off this wall—
Wells tugged his arm ineffectually, wriggled sideways like all he cared about was freeing his arm. “All the Viagra in the world won’t fix your two-inch
khuy
.”

“Fight like a bitch, bleed like a bitch. When I’m done with you, you’ll beg like a bitch.” Buvchenko gurgled and spat on Wells’s face. He forced Wells’s wrist back, focused on the arm, staring at it, watching it bend. Wells turned his hips sideways like they were the world’s two worst dancers and scraped his back away from the concrete and reached for the pistol in his waistband with his right hand—

Buvchenko pulled harder, and Wells’s wrist gave, snapped like an oak branch cracking. The pain soared into Wells, a miracle of agony, but he was ready, he’d known, he’d made himself ready, this was the only way, and he had the pistol in his hand. He screamed and jammed it into Buvchenko’s side and pulled the trigger—

The unsilenced shot echoed in the garage and skin and muscle sprayed off Buvchenko’s side and his back, two holes, entry and exit. The Russian’s eyes went wide and his mouth sagged. He grabbed at Wells’s broken wrist like he didn’t know what else to do. Wells pulled the trigger again, and this time Buvchenko stepped back and sagged like he’d tried to squat with too much weight. He went to one knee and braced himself against the ground.
“Blyad,”
he said.
“Blyad, blyad, blyad.”

Wells kept the pistol on him and watched the life spurting out of the holes in Buvchenko’s side and back, the blood coming slow and steady, a red stream washing his waist. The wounds were a couple inches above the waist, below the diaphragm. Wells guessed he’d hit Buvchenko’s liver or kidney but missed the big arteries, the wounds devastating but probably survivable if he got to the hospital quickly enough.

“Yebat menya,”
Buvchenko whispered, his eyes flat and empty as ever. And in English, “You shot me.” Like he still couldn’t believe it.

Wells looked at his hand, hanging limply off his arm like a flag on a windless day. It felt even worse than it looked. The pain made him gag. He heard steps at the back of the garage now, Gideon shouting in Hebrew.

The other two Russians lay in the corner. The smaller one was crumpled, unmoving. Wells had caught him with a shot under the armpit, through the heart. Better to be lucky than good. The big one was dead, too. He’d bled out while Wells was busy with Buvchenko. Orli was awake. She turned her head slowly, like her brain didn’t believe what her eyes were telling her. A shiner was rising from her right eye. Her panties lay beside her like a flag of surrender.

As Wells ran to her, she covered herself, one hand over her sex and the other across her breasts like she thought he was going to hurt her. Duct tape covered her mouth. He pulled it off as gently as he could.

“I guess I should say thank you,” Orli said.

“You should put your clothes on.”

She lifted her hands, exposing herself completely. Wells turned away.

“No, look at me. It’s my body, not theirs, and I want you to see.”

His face must have betrayed his confusion.

“You earned it. Your
arm
, man.” He turned to her, and she stood, raised her arms, pirouetted. Wells couldn’t take his eyes from her.

“Something else you should know,” she said when she was finished. “About what they were doing.”

Finally, shots from the back of the building, glass breaking. Gideon, one minute late. And in the distance, the first sirens. “Tell me later.” Time to go. But first, Buvchenko. Wells turned to him.

“Prisoner now, treat me nice.” Buvchenko’s skin was sallow now, his breathing labored. Still, he smirked. “Go to the hospital together.”

The laws of war made surrender an absolute right. But as he crossed the room, Wells thought of that winter day outside Volgograd when Buvchenko had shot a horse in front of him, cut down the animal to prove he could.

Buvchenko never blinked, but as Wells raised the pistol and put the tip beside his temple, he opened his mouth.
“Ny—”
Wells squeezed the trigger and blew off Buvchenko’s head. Nothing pithy, no last words. The Russian’s body slammed down. Wells forced his left arm against his chest and turned for the front door. He didn’t like leaving Orli, she was obviously in shock, but he didn’t have a choice. The sirens were louder every second.

—

O
UTSIDE
, a welcome surprise, the Toyota waiting, engine running, facing east. Wells slipped inside. “Go.”

“Gideon?”

“Go.” Too bad. One minute late. Wells owed him nothing.

They rolled off. “What happened to your hand?”

“Just drive.”

“I think there’s a hospital in Aberdeen.”

We’re going to Mong Kok.” Going to the consulate again would be pushing his luck. He’d meet Wright and Shafer at Wright’s safe house. Wright might know a friendly doctor. At the least, he could bring the consulate’s Marine medic. Wells just needed his wrist to be stable enough to survive a helicopter ride over the Pearl River Delta.

He had a date in Macao.