Kuzmo is Marko’s most faithful servant. He’s a good right-hand man: loyal and precise in following instructions.
But at the end of the day, he’s a dog with a master. He responds to authority.
In my most commanding tone, I call out, “He’ll want to take this call. It concerns his daughter.”
Kuzmo hesitates a moment longer, torn between the imperative to never enter my cell, and the possibility that harm might come to Nix Moroz because he didn’t listen to me.
I stay silent.
Then I hear three rapid steps toward my cell, and the grit of stone as Kuzmo leans forward, pressing his eye against the retinal scanner.
The lock clanks open.
“Stand back from the door!” Kuzmo orders. “Don’t fuck with me, Ivan.”
I stand back, calm and quiet as ever. I sit down on the folding chair, allowing Kuzmo to cuff my hands behind my back.
Kuzmo stands in front of me, his boyevik Mykah right next to him with his rifle pointed at my chest.
“Why do you want the phone?” Kuzmo demands. “Do you know who’s in the tunnels?”
“I’ll only speak to Marko,” I say, stubbornly.
Sweat gleams on Kuzmo’s shaved scalp, even in the chilly cell. He doesn’t know whether to face the attackers in the tunnel, stay close to me, or allow this phone call. I think it’s his own desire to hear his boss’s voice that compels him as he pulls out his phone.
All the while, slowly and quietly behind my back, I’m dislocating my thumb.
This is a trick I learned at the age of eighteen. It was much easier to do then, before my fingers thickened and my joints stiffened. I haven’t attempted the maneuver in twenty years. Yet I find I can accomplish it still, with only a popping sound that I disguise by clearing my throat.
Kuzmo’s fingers tremble slightly as he finds Marko’s number. When your men fear you too much, they make stupid choices.
Gripping the steel manacle with the fingers of my left hand, I pull my right hand free, keeping it hidden behind my back.
“Don’t move,” Mykah says, his barrel pointed at my face now. “Don’t even breathe.”
Something funny about all these soldiers and all their guns: I don’t think they’re actually supposed to kill me. Shoot me, maybe. Stop me from escaping, most definitely. But I don’t think Marko wants me to die at any hand but his own.
Kuzmo holds the phone up to my ear.
Foolishly, he’s stepped partway between me and his boyevik.
I wait as it rings twice. Then, right as I hear the rough, familiar voice of Marko Moroz saying, “What is it?” I bite down hard on Kuzmo’s hand.
Shimmy Shimmy — El Michels Affair
Spotify → geni.us/spy-spotify
Apple Music → geni.us/spy-apple
I seize his thumb between my teeth, crunching down through muscle, tendon, bone. Kuzmo shrieks and tries to rip his hand away, which only tears the flesh more. The phone goes flying. I take my own newly freed hand and grab him by the front of his shirt, wrenching him sideways so that when Mykah tries to shoot me in the leg, the bullet hits Kuzmo in the back of the thigh instead.
I spit out a chunk of Kuzmo’s flesh, grabbing him in both hands now and flinging him at his soldier. They crash against the cell wall in a pile.
I’m already running, wrenching the rifle out of the Mykah’s hand and jamming the barrel in the crack of the cell door, half a second before the soldiers on the other side can pull it shut.
I yank the gun like a lever, pulling the trigger the whole time, sending a spray of bullets out like a fan. I hear the grunts and thuds as at least two soldiers fall to the ground. Then I ram the door with my shoulder, shoving it outward and hitting the third soldier with the full weight of the metal door. He stumbles backward, hands up in a useless protective gesture. I shoot him in the chest, feeling a small pang of regret as I realize it’s Borys, who used to be my favorite of the guards.
Ihor, my least-favorite, slashes at my legs from behind with an old-fashioned trench knife, taking a chunk out of my calf. He’s bleeding in at least three places from the spray of bullets I put in him, but he still lunges at me from the ground, dragging his useless legs, swinging his knife wildly. I kick him in the face, which probably hurts me more than him, seeing as I’m barefoot. I finish him with two shots to the chest, which definitely hurts him more.
Kuzmo and Mykah are scrambling to get out of the cell. I kick the door shut right in their faces, locking them inside. The irony of this is not lost on me.
“I’m sorry Kuzmo,” I say. “I’d open the door for you, but I’m afraid you’d have to pluck out your eye and pass it to me through the slot.”
I can hear his snarl of rage and incoherent cursing in Ukrainian. He hammers at the door with his fists, something I often longed to do myself, but always refrained because I wouldn’t give Marko the pleasure of watching me lose my fucking mind.
But now I’m ready to lose it.
I’m ready to wreak the havoc these cretins deserve.
They kept me chained in that cell for three and a half years. One thousand, two hundred, and sixty-eight days away from my family, away from my home.
I’m going to slaughter every one of them standing between me and my wife.
I strip the soldiers’ bodies of guns, knives, and ammunition, as well as a pair of boots that are only a little too small for my feet.
Then I begin to run down the tunnel of the prison that I’ve never actually seen.
33
Nix
“Come on,” Adrik says, looking over the map once more. “If we came up here, in the center . . . I think we should go this way.”
“How do you know?” Dean says. “We don’t know where they’re holding Ivan.”
“I’m guessing,” Adrik snaps. “Do you have a better idea?”
Hedeon isn’t listening to the argument. He’s walking the opposite way, out of the chamber, following something he seems to hear rather than see.
“Stay together,” Leo calls, but Hedeon ignores him, pulled onward by whatever’s drawing his curiosity.
“For fuck’s sake,” Rafe mutters. He follows after Hedeon, which means I’m following too, since Rafe has a firm grasp on my arm.
Hedeon is a long way down the dark corridor already. We jog to catch up to him, Rafe hissing, “Hedeon! What are you doing?”
Hedeon turns to face us, still looking around in the gloom.
“Do you hear that?” he says.
Now that we’re standing quietly, out of the echoing chamber, I do hear it . . . distant and steady, a faint churning sound. Running water.
“I think there’s another river,” Hedeon says.
“That’s not on the map,” Rafe says.
“Well, the map’s shit,” Hedeon replies, with a shrug.
Rafe can’t argue with that.
We keep following the sound of water, taking two wrong turns before we double back and find the source: an underground dock with a boat tied up against the pull of the river.
A dock guarded by three armed soldiers.
They fire at us, the first bullet hitting the wall a foot from my ear, sending several shards of stone flying across my face, cutting my cheek.