Текст книги "Don't kill"

Автор книги: Boris Gorowoi

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He went up to his outdoor pavilion like a mini-arena. It was crowned by rotating monumental installations like a throne, called 101.

Hundreds of stars were shining in the sky and below at the foot of a big city they were preparing the largest laser show in the world, which was paid on ninety-three per cent by the master. A great fireball flew along the dark lilac sky and crossed the horizon with the bright line.

– It’s incredible. This is an omen for me! – thought Maher.

At that moment, there appeared a huge giant named Nephele, who managed the security. There was badge on his lapel, something similar to the sheriff's badge, which could change color in case of danger and recognize a special code as Morse. A red Morse code showed that the danger was very close, and it was in the fourth category of five ones. However, Skull didn’t move and the first chords of the laser show coincided with his first short juvenile Symphony, he composed by himself. And as in childhood, he instinctively stared at the sky, where there were shining the only main black star behind the Crab Nebula.

*

Colonel was sitting on a stone of the bay Tai Tam on the Hong Kong Island. He understood that the day would be one of the most difficult of his life. He went for a jog for five hundred meters along the reddish spit across the milky dawn. He had three hours to think about.

His next move could be compared with a skillful game of chess or a very difficult solitaire, where not only his own life was at stake but something immeasurably more.

His brain was feverishly replaying dozens of versions and hundreds of scenarios of this strange game.

White gulls were chittering in the sky. A pair of gray peacocks which, probably, only at nights turned into the firebirds, were slowly crossed the shore at the cliff.

There were far more questions than answers, but as a regular officer of the military reconnaissance party, he got used to it long ago.

When he was a child, Dux succeed in all intellectual games such as folding the matches, chess, checkers, backgammon, dominoes, crossword puzzles and puzzles. He spent six months to do the Rubic cube that was successful, and even was a street champion in the distant eighties. The brain was lack of effort and Colonel specially hunted for new products and looking for a special delicacy exceeding all bounds of sharpness.

The hardest thing was properly spread those puzzles that could be called well-established facts, like truth islands. Hence, he could calculate the different alternatives with the lines general direction which should start tallying somewhere.

There was enough information to think about. One has tried to kill him three times during his trip for ten days. The first attempt at the hotel was quite transparent. Probably, the dramatization was made by the special service of Kyrgyzstan. The customer was one of the local nomenclature maybe of westernists. But the second attempt!?

*

With incredible pain he again sacrificed to the worst ten minutes of his life: because he came to himself under a huge, clear blue sky and his wounded body cured with an unknown languor force. She kissed him with infinite, mad, wandering kisses. And that couple plunged into the fog called love from the golden age that is rarity nowadays. The grass was rustling and grasshoppers were chirring and they were falling into the infinite passion. And he hardly heard the sound of the lock. He delayed that tenth part of a second, because at that moment she firstly said the only main word that sounds in all languages of the world. He could find a “Saiga” and see how thick blunt bullets were sticking into her beautiful body. And he filled up with tears, was killing those guys, howling and screaming like a mad beast. For the first time, he wanted to die.

*

An hour later everything was over. Guys were really featureless. They tried to shoot, but couldn’t hit him. And he strangled and killed them in twenty minutes. Long enough, this fought with Grinev required a lot of attention. He had a cover nearby, a sniper was shooting professionally. The situation was difficult.

Dux noticed a frightened deer running with a young one on the right side which Grinev couldn’t see. In a mad paranoia, Colonel whispered the deer, "I'll hurt you a little bit. But you will live. " He wounded the deer in its flesh and she jumped straight to Grinev. Dux had time hit him in head.

For a few seconds Dux lost the sniper. Instinctively Colonel turned off the SMERSH pendulum, he handled perfectly. The sniper's bullet passed next to the head ten of microns away from him and burned his cheek. The sniper was really broken. Shooting sluggishly, he was running away the large hole. He awkwardly darted out to a small sparkling stream. With the last two shots, Colonel broke the weapon spring and knocked out of sniper’s hands the rifle.

The sniper raised his hands, without turning face to his death. Colonel was fearful. Since his first internecine battle in the far 1985, across the border river, he was ready strangling the last enemy with his hands.

– Take away the gun – he said he indifferently– take off a service jacket, we will fight.

The sniper hopelessly threw away the charger from the gun Makarov out of the pockets of the dense shirt. He went to the middle of the cold stream, reeling slowly. One could see on his stooped back that he was not ready for fight.

The sniper was stifling by the horror and stream babbling was having something in common with inarticulate mumbling. He hung his head and half-turned guiltily.

– Damn, Sasha, is it you, – Colonel suddenly dumbfounded – one in a million! How did you get here?

They were lied waiting with that guy, they were under heavy fire many years ago.

He grabbed Sasha by his belt and began howling like crazy people.

– Come on.

It was all the same to both of them. One could see Vasyatka running away shamefully in an unknown direction. They were walking reeling approaching the last refuge of beautiful dead muse. Then Dux gave a slap on Sasha's face and cried.

*

It wasn’t clear, who was the customer of the second attack. But Sasha mentioned that it was someone from the Centre. That thing has completely changed the whole picture. It turned out that Vasily Ivanovich played a trick on him on the off-chance. However, one gives a slap on one’s face for it. Perhaps, the chief was forbidden to deal with it but why didn’t he prevent me? There were two versions left. Either Vasily Ivanovich is played up by someone. This could be only federasty. Or Vasily Ivanovich play for his stakes.

He found a lot of small multicolored round stones and began throwing twisting disks along the quiet morning wavelength.

*

Before the trip to Moscow, he met Shadow. A headquarters not far from the flag station Dobryatino looked like a century-old hut, in the Murom dense forests.

They tried to collect the information little by little. Day and night, they have been pressing the laptop keys, having a direct detached communication line codified by the space satellite communication, eating crumbled potatoes.

Statistics are stubborn. Each year, two million people are lost in the world. Most of them return safe and sound. Some of them become the victims of natural disasters or crimes. Some accidentally or voluntarily die in the forests, rivers and seas, fall into abyss. A big rate of people disappears in depths of security government or armed bands, without leaving a trace. A small rate gets other surnames, these are so-called intelligence agents. Some of them leave their wives, rarely their husbands. Many people in the whole world take to flight. One of the significant factors of people disappearance is transplantation. They often use sophisticated abstruse criminal schemes, for a suitable living organ, where law enforcement agencies and medical facilities and criminal elements and often the representatives of state institutions are involved in. The amounts are so high that there aren’t any questions.

The revenue from this terrible shadow business brings their owners all around the world to ten billion dollars and the number of semi-legal and illegal victims reaches two hundred thousand a year.

Nevertheless, at least twenty thousand people annually disappear absolutely without a trace. In such cases, there is even no a hint of any reasonable version. With different degree of zeal, these people are looked for by the police, relatives, special services. In a couple of years the dossiers are shelved.

Once, a disappeared person has been searching by the whole village, as in the book by Mark Twain. Since appearance of trains, cars and planes it became almost impossible to find a disappeared person. Real search require big material costs. If a person is lost at his territory, it’s more probable to find him because there are numerous connections.

Everything is completely different if a person was lost no one knows where, especially in another country. Interpol is built along the territorial system of the NCB (National Central Bureau). It, generally, deal with security of communications by the local police with the general name L-24/7. A small international organization with a staff in thousand people can’t involve about one hundred and eighty countries. Of course, rarely, like a miracle, live people or identified bodies are found by orientations. The management and coordination of the Interpol with the information twenty-four-hour is just the facade of different political forces than the real world police of the globe. The Interpol is, generally, deals with tracing of criminals, passports, DNA profiles, fingerprints, searching for stolen vehicles and works of art, and also the thematic training of police officers in different countries, as an additional specific aid to the operational police forces. There are known seven circulars in the Interpol, the main is the international request for a provisional arrest.

Thus, the Interpol is absolutely powerless in search of people.

That’s why, if there is an average person in front of you lack of means, probably, he would sink into oblivion. If the person is known, his destiny is to be an eternal undisclosed sensation, a blockbuster of new young generations, of young journalists’ disturbing fantasy by the mysterious.

*

Colonel and the Shade have been crystallizing the main idea for two days. They thought up dozens of different versions of people disappearance and, as it seemed to them they found the right way of searching on the second day. The idea was either crazy or absurd and even terrible. He found some connection no less than three hundred disappeared people by different signs but by the only way. It could take place in any country. The main thing was the absence the skin on their bodies. To the end of the day, Dux and the Shade thought up working name, the DPWS (A disappeared person without skin) and drunk a bottle of vodka.

It was awfully. Partially the DPWS disappeared without a trace. If one found the traces of blood and flesh there weren’t skin in those remains. They couldn’t just scatter. Probably, these people are stolen from the crime scene. Take, remove the skin and the remains either burry or dissolve. Probably, a high-technical group works at it, organizing the work in a way not to leave any traces.

*

– Take off you clothes, – ordered Colonel, – or I’ll kill you. Change your clothes. Take the certificate from that guy and take your passport, just in case. Work quickly. Put all the dead bodies into the jeep.

Dux also changed into Grinyov’s neat clothes, took his certificate and also put the dead bodies into the jeep.

– While they will be doing the DNA test, you will have minimum two days.

– And where is my document? – Sasha said resignedly.

– Unfortunately, you will never need it. Go to the taiga. You seem to be from Krasnoyarsk. Go far across the Baikal, find a young bride and never appear. And if you appear you will be found.

The jeep was full of dead bodies as of herring. Sasha has prepared this horrible trophy near the abyss. Colonel reeling approached the jeep. He turned around with a frozen in which one can see pain, hopelessness and despair. There was a “Saiga” in his hands.

– Go! Goodbye.

He was silent. Then he added.

– If I am old some day, I will find you.

Aida slept with eternal sleep not far from the clearing. He dressed up the girl, sat looking at her, she was beautiful. Then he took her to the middle of the jeep and put her among dead soldiers. Spread several charges of C4, a lot of bullets and a couple of old TMN-46 under the wheels. He calculated the trajectory of jeep’s traffic so that the explosion would occur near the stream.

"Even if they investigate everything seriously and for a long time, they would never identify Aida who would be at the epicenter of the explosion," – thought Colonel. In a few seconds he saw a bright flash.

"Now, it will be the most important investigation for me", – thought Dux, looking at the intense fire which was destroying jeep’s contents.

– Now I know exactly what I exist for! – he said.

*

He got Issyk-Ata in the evening. Late in the evening he found a post number 222, which Aida was saying about, and he recognized strange trucks under cover of darkness. The loading was lasting to the utmost. Cars of different calibers arrived there. Dux found a perfect shelter that in the ancient wooden fence with many gaps. He estimated the situation. The loading will be lasting for a couple of hours. Immediately he felt and saw agents in white shirtfronts. The boxes were loaded by strong young people without any particular marks. He scanned the number of the consignment note, using the old way through a hole in the fence using a night vision miniature camera of recording high-resolution printing. Colonel waited for the time they leave and local loaders of trucks go on a smoke break. He emerged from the darkness, took aside the main loader and showed Grinyov’s certificate. Probably, this document impressed him but he was pleased more with the pack of banknotes of five hundred soms. Dux gave him two banknote and they plunged into the black call of the trunk.

– Look here, the situation is. I'll rummage in a little bit. Did you understand? Give me fifteen minutes for it without anybody. Don’t worry, I won’t touch the seal.

– I don’t worry.

It wasn’t difficult for him, due to experience, to open the side wall of the trunk for a few minutes. To tell the truth, he was nervous. What could it be? Over the wall, there was a black coffre of good quality, the musicians have. Colonel carefully examined the box. The lid easily opened. He turned on the light for a moment. He was ready for anything. But the thing he saw terrified him. His jaw dropped, he dumbfounded.

Soon, he closed the lid of the coffer. He gave the Kirghiz chief, who punctiliously didn’t let anybody enter, another couple of thousand soms.

– Remember: you didn’t see either me or anything else and you will live for a long, or I will strangle you. Did you understand?

The chief turned pale and began quickly nodding with the bleat "macula, maculae." Colonel disappeared in the black night, and merged with high clear Kyrgyz sky full of the milk nebulae and bright stars.

*

Dux had a painful dull feeling that he get into a long and dark story and he will have been in difficulties as ever. Why should he solve the problem out of his forces? He would have to clean a lot of other awful fates, forever go out of desperate situations. He has been turning for the whole night, went out on the porch several times, listened to the silent forest with rare bursts of noisy wind sighs. Dux was at the crossroads of his fate. He felt a very tired warrior from a senseless tough battle called life. – To leave the game? – thought Colonel. – To start over in a small unknown country. To buy a small cozy house with a front garden, four bedrooms, a spacious living room and a bar in the middle. To water bindermayer’s red roses. Enjoy the stylized crane well and a small whirling mill. To play bridge in the evening. If there is an audience, tell the neighbors tall tales. In the morning, writing detectives of an average class. Several of times a year to go to fashionable resorts, if I have money for it. To drag the young milkmaid from a neighboring district, giving her cheep gifts, sometimes, in the evenings, together with her going to the green fields and looking at the full moon.

But, alas, where he worked, there wasn’t retirement in accordance with desire. As a rule, employees of the office died under mysterious circumstances. Sometimes, for edification, they were burned alive in a crematorium, which was nearby. In any case, he will be sentenced to death, figurative or real. That’s why he had the only crazy way out. By some incredible way, to explode, to beat one of the most powerful totalitarian organizations specializing on enemy destruction during the war and in peace.

At the dawn, like a phantom, he again, returned mentally to Aida. He remembered a pile of old bright moments, remembered how she saved him from death and loved him. And somehow this love should destroy the evil.

*

The next day Colonel appeared in the Office. Most of them he just looked over, others he friendly welcomed and some colleagues he patted on the shoulder. He entered the department of the Second Division management and drank a cup of coffee with a staff officer named Kuzia. He was, as always, unbearable. He told Dux nonsense. One could smell from him stealing of others millions and his friendship with Rublevka.

– Kuzma, what are you doing in this out-of-the-way, go to the neighbors. Or do you work as a pen pusher here? – Colonel laughed crackling.

Kuzia’s face showed a whole range of masks, from an evil one and unpleasant to the thoughtful and sad one, and then he forced something like a smile.

– Listen, have you already seen Ivanovich?

– Yes! He has already scolded us.

Long ago, Colonel figured out this office, where Kuzia worked. There was seen a piece of the corridor Vasiliy Ivanovic went via the secretariat to the Chief, there and back. Having worn round black glasses with mirror rim for a secret survey, Colonel opened some thick folder with the dossiers. Inside the folder, he prudently put some pages of a bestselling book and waited patiently.

If the budget in neighbors SVR was higher, with the brand-new Land Rover garages, stuffed with special electronic, with spacious rooms and high salaries, there was much easier and more modest. However, the quality and quantity of the reconnaissance intelligence were quite comparable.

Qualified and those who had military intelligence in different countries and in this sense, stewing in their own juice, in a sense, they were more viable. It is wondering, that during the hard times of the nineties, they not only were able to survive, but they became more firm.

*

Give a man a bit of freedom and faith in himself and he will work miracles. Half of those guys ran around the whole world, entered the intelligence service, some of them started their own business or started work as security guards, where they were taken gladly in all countries. But some people left in the field. In general there were those who were burned with military conflicts and for whom military brotherhood was not empty words. As a rule, those people were financially secured, moreover, their horizons allowed earning money without much efforts. More than money, belonging to the big country effected them. And in some distant village parts of the big country, now and again was duplicated a fairytale dream about another kind, reasonable, non-aggressive and prosperous Russia.

*

For an hour Dux has read hundred pages of the horror "New Hunger" by Isaac Marion, enjoyed modern military posters like: "We give an open and honest fight," "traitors won’t be mercy" and "The most powerful tornado in the world" and saw as Ivanovich was heavily walking along the corridor paneled with wood. Colonel stood up in the middle of the long red corridor, hunched up like a man who does not know well where to go, and when Ivanovich’s heavy footsteps approached, he quickly turned, took off his glasses and looked into general’s eyes long and carefully. For a second Ivanovich tried to bypass the soldier, without looking at him. And even if he was confused for the first second, the next moment he was ready for a friendly smile of his favourite boss.

"These people don’t have soul" – thought Colonel – "tabula rasa, a clean plate!"

–What is the masquerade? – Ivanovich muttered. – Why are you silent?

They were slowly walking along the long, slightly bending corridor. Dux stopped and was hampered by a false wooden facing.

– I was dismissed.

– May I ask?

– Of course.

– Vasily Ivanovich, did you clean me up in the valley?

– Let's go to the smoking room.

The main smoking room was on the outside by the army parade ground. Fates of some people and sometimes countries often were solved there.

– It’s not a kindergarten here, – forced the general – I repeat, you and I are dismissed. Take a full holiday for three weeks, until everything settles down, do you understand? Then he said, more quietly:

– They are serious about it, forget it. I warn you, don’t interfere in this topic.

The conversation ended.

– Go to the cashier and be here in three weeks.

At the end of the general smiled.

– Whose school it is! And I'm really happy that you were able to get out.

"A swine" – thought Dux – "but, damn, he is so nice!”

*

Colonel talked to people remembered the past, went to the cashier. To make sure, he entered his little office, where he had a half of the table, a chair, and a safe. There was living a strange green youth. As Dux was a typical scout in the field and hated the staff work in all forms, he easily gave his table to anybody, without any jealousy. He barely passed through the piles of others things opened his safe, took all the contents and destroyed carefully unnecessary things. The night was falling. In twenty minutes, he had to cross the board of the aquarium, because the office was closing.

"I’m merged" – thoughtfully thought Colonel – "to an indefinite leave."

There wasn’t any sense to do something here. Dux slowly walked along the Hodynka, walked aimlessly along familiar streets, remembering his reckless youth. He went to the Leningrad Prospect, passed two "taxi" cars, caught the third one, then suddenly quickly crossed the street, caught the moonshiner driver by Moscovitch, passed one station and plunged into the subway. It was clean. A habit of a scout of many years, long ago entered the flesh and blood, and became the second breath.

At twilight, he met Shadow in the square next to the Profsouznaya. He prepared a passport and tickets Moscow to Bangkok for him. For reliability, Colonel played a happy family holiday on the Phuket. The couple named the Ivanovs even had a small child half a year.

– You did well, – Dux said Shadow.

Shadow and Colonel slightly smiled. People said that it was Shadows’ child, although it was only a version.

Shadow disappeared in the century lime trees of the brick seven-floor houses of fifties of good quality. At last, Colonel got his spare secret address. Dux entered the third entrance of the ground floor. The entrance met him with darkness, smell of cats, dirtiness. He suffered opening a shabby wooden door. A reinforced as a safe door called "the beast" was already glistening behind with expensive metal. The door opened quietly. Colonel pulled out off a small hiding place a dozen of banknotes in fifty hundred euros, checked two TT guns, turned on the TV on a channel where there was an dirtiness with Steven Seagal, undressed and went to the bathroom with pleasure. It passed just ten days since he left the hotel " Caesar’s Temple." The most awful thing was that he could not wash well. He remembered a cool story in Bishkek, there wasn’t time for the bathroom. And, in the forest hut, were only four big buckets each of them of twelve liters of ice water from the stream that was in the forest in half a mile from the cabin. "If there had been a bath" – thought Colonel about Shadow.

Dux rarely used his spacious apartment of the fifties of the last century for secret meetings. It was given to him by one of his friends, who once grew rich with the oil.

– I don’t need it, and you do – said Sergei, – you have a job as in a movie.

Colonel, as he could, strengthened the door, fixed candid mini cameras and put special frames with bulletproof glass by the brand SPbSN-4. With pleasure he stood under the tight ice shower jet. Suddenly, Dux heard an insistent impudent doorbell.

– Can I take a shower as others do? – thought Colonel. He put on a fluffy white bathrobe and went to the front door.

– Who’s that?

– This is a fire brigade.

He could see the silhouette of a big fellow in his prime.

– You don’t look like a fire brigade – he growled.

– But we are! – said the fellow not convincingly.

Dux turned on the mini-cameras. He saw other four silhouettes away from the door. Colonel rushed to the window. Commandos wearing masks got out of the dirty-green minibus. Delay might mean death. The doorbell again rang insistently.

– Open, it’s the police!

Colonel, putting on the trousers, shouted:

– Show your certificate!

They will break the door now.

Once upon a time, long ago, when we were boys, we were coached at Kubinka in dressing with the removal of gun’s safety device for thirty seconds.

– Thirty seconds! Thank good captain Klubov, may his memory live forever thought Colonel. Other thirty seconds to check the documents, money and bank cards and putting smoke shells at the door and an aperture. Just a minute. At the same time there were heard three powerful blasts and the members of riot squad started running from everywhere, shooting to kill. Again the death hissed unnaturally around him, death with a silencer. Dux threw a grenade into black puffs opening a steel hatch of his escape. At the last moment, gasping, he threw to the guys an ampule of the domestic intensified and instantaneous gaseous of fentanyl or as it was called in Moscow, “Fent”. It was used, a few years ago, by the directors of the famous sad musical. Already in the depths of the basement, he put on immediately a gas mask, put on an overall with a flash, closed on the inside, the heavy steel hatch with a stuck on a piece of linoleum and rushed into the black musty dust.

*

– Look for holes, burry yourself and you will live – said captain Klubov.

In the far eighties, at the second term, Klubov firstly took him to the underground. A strange captain’s hobby kept Colonel from the fear, horror and smells. A group of such crazy people has always spent time with him. Wearing black overalls, and sometimes hydro-costumes on a naked body like “Tegor” or “Chaika”, with gray gas masks, they could walk along multi-leveled systems of Moscow and Moscow area, for hours. At the second and third course during the "practice" in Angola, he had to use this invaluable experience in business, caves of the underground rivers and secret communication of 4 million population in Luanda. Dux became gradually turning into an idol of the underground, handling the theory and practice of many world cities.

*

He darted out into an opened basement, climbed through the narrow duct ventilation into a long pipe for sewage and withdrawal of spring waters, and in twenty paces got out of the sewer manhole, and he could escape from there.

But it was too late. Three men were waiting for him near the manhole and ran another seven people were running off the bus. There weren’t any way out.

– I'm sorry guys– thought Colonel.

Having knocked out the gun of young commando by two shots, he maimed boy’s both hands. The last yelled. The one who was far and another who was closer, instinctively jumped, looking for the rescue. There was enough a couple of seconds for Dux to partially cut down the injured. He grabbed him by the collar and rushed to the hatch, using the boy as a human shield, and the commandoes were confused. That was enough to get to the hatch. Suddenly the chief of this mad commando decided "Fire!" The swarm of nine-millimeter bullets Bison turned a young boy larded by them into some bloody mess from movies about Terminator.

– Their treatment to their people is cruel– thought pity Colonel, without removing the gas mask.

Sounding shrilly, the last bullets bounced off at the rebound of the hatch and scared the other two running away at incredible speed.

– Now, run very fast! – thought Colonel.

He jumped on all fours from sewage and piles, fired rare cameras of the sewage for warning for and went farther and farther along the great communications of the underground big city. He got out to the surface and in a dark alley of duct of some gloomy building like the UZPS, almost next at Profsouznaya. One could see through the bars an empty dark street. Dux took off an overall which ozonized badly and a gas mask, put them into special tight package, listened to the deceptive silence, carefully opened the hatch using the master key and walked along the footpaths of the multimillion city away from the epicenter of that drama. He slowly passed three quarters and sat on the back seat, having ordered Airport Vnukovo.

*

Colonel wore black smoky glasses, pulled out the first-aid kit, as he was injured by bullets in two places and washed scratches. Changed his jacket and put some makeup. He was in a hurry before in all airports, railway stations and police stations will be hung his photos as a dangerous criminal. Dux paid the taxi driver and entered the airport. It was a completely different person.

"You can track me only by my smell," – thought Colonel – "so this is my job." Some touches of makeup, putting the balls into his mouth, handling the muscles in motion and you see an unrecognizable werewolf.

Rest of time he spent in the toilet treating scratches, finished reading Marion and dozing a little bit and at half past six AM, he met Anna Ivanova, as she introduced, with a nice boy named Kolya.