Buried Secrets (36 page)

—and I lurched out of the way and everything was happening in slow motion, the thunderous explosions and the muzzle flash, fireballs that lit up the entire room, the splintering of the door, and as I let go of the doorknob and the banister and leaped backward I felt a bullet slam into my chest, the pain staggering, and everything went black.

104.

When I came to, a few seconds later, my body was wracked with excruciating pain. Like something had exploded inside my chest while my rib cage was being crushed in some enormous vise. The pain in my left leg was even worse, sharp and throbbing, the nerve endings shrieking and juddering. Everything moved in a sort of stroboscopic motion, like a rapid series of still images.

Where was I?

On my back, I knew, sprawled on a hard cold floor in the near darkness, surrounded by the dank odor of mold and old concrete and the stench of urine. As my eyes adjusted, I saw snowdrifts of what looked like shredded newspaper all around me, and a lot of rat droppings.

Something scurried by, made a
scree
sound, and I lurched.

A large shaggy Brown Norway rat, its long scaly tail writhing, stopped a few feet away.

It gazed with beady brown eyes, maybe curious, or maybe resentful that I’d disturbed its den. It twitched its whiskers and scuttled away into the darkness.

Pale moonlight filtered in from above, through a gaping hole in the underside of a wooden staircase.

In an instant I realized what had just happened.

A bullet had struck me, slamming into the left side of my ballistic vest, but it hadn’t penetrated my body. I was alive only because two inches of solid oak had slowed the round’s velocity. But I’d been knocked off balance, shoved backward down the stairs. Then I’d crashed feet first through the termite-damaged, rotten planks and broken through, landing on the concrete floor below.

I tried to breathe, but each time I inhaled it felt like daggers piercing my lungs. I sensed warm blood seeping down my left leg. I reached down to feel the bullet wound.

But there wasn’t any.

Instead, the jagged end of a broken plank a foot long was sunk several inches into my left calf, through tough denim.

I grabbed the board and wrenched it out of my flesh. A couple of long rusty nails protruded from the wood. As painful as it had been lodged in my calf, it was far worse coming out.

I tried to recall the number of shots he’d fired at me. The .50 caliber Desert Eagle’s magazine held only seven rounds. Had he fired four or five? Maybe even six.

Maybe he didn’t have any rounds left. Maybe he had one.

I was short of breath and dazed and numb. A creak somewhere overhead, then heavy footsteps on the top steps. Zhukov was coming down the stairs.

Maybe he thought he’d killed me but wanted to make sure. Maybe he thought he could just finish me off. I had to move before he fired straight down as I lay here gasping.

I felt for my weapon but it wasn’t in the holster. I’d been holding it when the bullets struck me. Maybe I’d dropped it when I took a tumble. Now I felt for it on the cold floor, my hands sweeping over the concrete and the debris and the rat droppings. But it was nowhere within reach.

A light came on: a bare bulb mounted to one of the rafters about ten feet away. The ceiling was low. The basement was small: maybe thirty feet by twenty.

Wooden shelves were screwed on to the cinder-block walls, lined with old canning jars.

Rickety children’s bookcases, painted with clowns and dancers, were heaped with newspapers and magazines that had been chewed through, cobwebbed, littered with rat droppings. In one corner, in a square hole cut into the concrete floor, a rusty sump pump was planted in gravel, collecting dust and cobwebs. Here and there were folding tables stacked with old toasters and kitchen implements and assorted junk.

He took another step. I lay absolutely still, held my breath. Lay flat, looking up.

If I made a sound, he’d locate me, and he’d get a direct, unimpeded shot straight down.

The vest wouldn’t protect me.

He knew I was here. He’d heard me stumble down the steps. Surely he’d seen the broken boards, the gaping hole, the missing treads. But did he know I was directly below him?

As soon as he looked down, he’d know. Once he did, it was all over.

I looked over at the bare lightbulb again, and then I noticed the splintered two-by-four on the ground, the blood-spattered plank whose jagged end had sunk into my leg.

I grabbed it, and in one hard swift throw I hurled it, smashing the bare lightbulb, and everything went dark again.

In the dark I stood a chance.

But a few seconds later, a flashlight beam shone down the stairs. The cone of light swept slowly back and forth over the floor and the walls, into the dark corners. I could hear him coming down the stairs, slowly and deliberately.

Then the beam went off. The only light was the faint trapezoid cast by the open door above. Maybe he’d stuffed the flashlight in a pocket. He needed two hands to hold the Desert Eagle.

Now it was all a matter of seconds. I had to get to my feet to be ready to pounce, but do it silently. The slightest scrape would announce my location like a beacon.

The timing was crucial. I could move only when he did, when the sound of his tread and the creaking and groaning of the old wood masked whatever slight noise I made getting up.

Lying flat, I listened.

A dry whisking. The rat had come out of its hiding place, alarmed by yet another disturbance, maybe fearful that a second human being was about to come crashing down into its nest. It pattered across the floor toward me. Paused to make a decision, surveying the terrain with shrewd eyes.

Directly overhead another step creaked. Startled, the rat came at me, skittered across over my neck, the sharp nails of its paws scratching my skin, its dry hard tail whisking my face, tickling my ear canal. I shuddered.

Yet somehow I stayed absolutely still.

Abruptly clapping both hands over the thing, I grabbed its squirmy shaggy body … and hurled it across the room.

Suddenly there was a shot, followed by the clatter of metal objects crashing to the floor.

My ears rang.

Zhukov had heard the rat’s scuffling and assumed it was me.

But now he knew he hadn’t hit me. No one can get shot with a .50 caliber round without giving a scream or groan or cry.

So was that his last shot? Was that number six or seven? I couldn’t be sure.

Maybe he had one round left.

Or maybe he was on a new cartridge.

He took another step down, and I knew what I had to do.

105.

I had to grab his gun.

Through one of the missing risers in the decrepit staircase I could see the heels of his boots.

Then I heard the unmistakable metallic
clackclack
of the pistol’s magazine being ejected.

The weapon was directly above me, close enough to seize, wrench out of his hands. If I moved fast enough, took him by surprise.

Now
.

I shoved down against the floor with both hands, using the strength in my arms to rise into a high push-up. Favoring my right foot, I levered myself up until I was standing.

Then, reaching out both hands, I grabbed his right boot and yanked it toward me. He lost his footing, stumbled down the steps, yelled out in surprise and anger. The staircase groaned and creaked and scattered chunks of wood. Something heavy and metal clattered near my feet.

The Desert Eagle?

Go for the weapon, or launch myself at him, try to immobilize him before he could get back up?

I went for the gun on the floor.

But it wasn’t the gun. It was his flashlight: a long black Maglite. Heavy aircraft-grade aluminum with a knurled barrel, heavy as a police baton.

I leaned over and grabbed it, and when I spun around, he was standing maybe six feet away, pistol in a two-handed grip. Aiming two feet to my left.

In the dark, he couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see much either, but for the moment I could see more than he could.

I arced the Maglite at his head. He didn’t see it coming. It struck him on the bridge of his nose, and he roared in pain. Blood trickled from his eyes and gushed from his nostrils.

He staggered, and I lunged, knocking him to the floor, driving a knee into his stomach, my right fist aiming for his larynx, but he’d twisted his body so that I ended up delivering a powerhouse uppercut to the side of his jaw.

He dropped the weapon.

I landed on top of him, pinioned him to the floor with my right knee and my left hand.

His blood was sticky on my fist. But he had unexpected reserves of strength, like an afterburner.

As if the pain only provoked and enraged him and fueled him. As if he enjoyed the violence.

He levered his torso up off the floor and slammed a fist at my left ear. I turned my head but he still managed to cuff me hard just behind the ear. I swung for his face, but then something large and steel came at me and I whipped my head to one side though not quite in time, and I realized he’d retrieved his weapon.

Holding the Desert Eagle by its long barrel, he swung the butt against my temple, like a five-pound steel blackjack.

My head exploded.

For a second I saw only bright fireworks. I tasted coppery blood. My hands grabbed the air and I careened to one side and he was on top of me and cracked the butt of the gun on the center of my forehead.

I was woozy and out of breath. His face loomed over me. His eyes were an unnerving amber, like a wolf’s.

“Do you believe there is light at end of tunnel when you die?” he asked. His voice was higher pitched than I remembered from the videos and had the grit of sandpaper.

I didn’t reply. It was a rhetorical question anyway.

He flipped the gun around, then ground the barrel into the skin of my forehead, one-handed, twisting it back and forth as if putting out a cigarette.

“Go ahead,” I panted. “Pull the trigger.”

His face showed no reaction. As if he hadn’t heard me.

I stared into his eyes. “Come on, are you weak?”

His pupils seemed to flash.

“Pull the trigger!” I said.

I saw the hesitation in his face. Annoyance. He was debating what to do next.

I knew then he had no more rounds left. And that he knew it too. He’d ejected the magazine but hadn’t had the chance to pop in a new one.

Blood from his nostrils seeped over his beaver teeth, dripping steadily onto my face. He grimaced, and with his left hand he pulled something from his boot.

A flash of steel: a five-inch blade, a black handle. A round steel button at the hilt. He whipped it at my face and its blade sliced my ear. It felt cold and then hot and extremely painful, and I swung at him with my right fist, but the tip of the blade was now under my left eye.

At the base of my eyeball, actually. Slicing into the delicate skin. He shoved the handle and the point of the blade pierced the tissue.

I wanted to close my eyes but I kept them open, staring at him defiantly.

“Do you know what this is?” he said.

My KGB friend had told me about the Wasp knife.

“Dusya,” I said.

A microsecond pause. His mother’s name seemed to jolt him.

“I spoke to her. Do you know what she said?”

He blinked, his eyes narrowed a bit, and his nostrils flared.

That second or so was enough.

I scissored my left leg over his right, behind his knee, pulling him toward me while I shoved my right knee into his abdomen. Two opposing forces twisted him around as I grabbed his left hand at the wrist.

In an instant I’d flipped him over onto the ground.

Jamming my right elbow into his right ear, I tucked my head in so it was protected by my right shoulder. My right knee trapped his leg. He pummeled me with his right fist, clipped the top of my head a few times, but I was guarding all the sensitive areas. I gripped his left wrist, pushing against his fingers, which were wrapped around the knife handle. I kept pushing at them, trying to break his grip and strip the knife from his hand.

But I had underestimated Zhukov’s endurance, his almost inhuman strength. As we grappled over the knife, he jammed his knee into my groin, sending shock waves of dull nauseating pain deep into my abdomen, and once again he was on me, the point of his knife inches from my left eyeball.

I gripped his hand, trying to shove the Wasp knife away, but all I managed to do was keep it where it was, poised to sink in. His hand trembled with exertion.

“If you kill me,” I gasped, “it won’t make any difference. The others are on their way.” With a lopsided sneer, he said, “And it will be too late. The casket will be flooded. And I will be gone. By the time they dig her up, she will already be dead.” The knife came in closer, and I tried to push it back. It shook but continued touching my eye.

“I think you know this girl,” he said.

“I do.”

“Let me tell you what she did to me,” he said. “She was a very dirty little girl.” I roared in fury and gave one final, mighty shove with all the strength I had left. He flipped onto his side, but he still didn’t loosen his grip on the handle.

I drove my knee into his abdomen and shoved his right arm backward. The knife, still grasped tightly in his fist, sank into his throat, into the soft flesh underneath his chin.

Only later did I understand what happened in the next instant.

The palm of his hand must have slid inward a fraction of an inch, nudging the raised metal injector button.

Causing his Wasp knife to expel a large frozen ball of gas into his trachea.

There was a loud pop and a hissing explosion.

A terrible hot shower of blood and gobbets spat against my face, and in his bulging amber eyes I saw what looked like disbelief.

106.

I was able to hold out until shortly after the casket came out of the ground.

It took five members of the FBI’s SWAT team two hours of digging by hand, using shovels borrowed from the Pine Ridge police. The casket was almost ten feet down and the earth was sodden and heavy from the recent deluge. They hoisted it out on slings of black nylon webbing, two men on one side, three on the other. It lifted right up. The casket didn’t weigh more than a few hundred pounds.