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  “You see what he did to my cousin there? That was what convinced us to partner with the Russians in the first place. Not only did they offer us a way to keep moving product once the DEA started sniffing around, they got you off our asses for good five years ago.

  “They sent that sick son of a bitch out into the desert and he did the same thing to your wife and daughter before he torched your house to the ground.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The voice on the other end of the line was worried, frightened even. The fear permeated every word it said, driving home the message that it carried.

  Whatever Pavel had said to Wyeth Mender, it had worked. The man was on board, come what may, forever more.

  Viktor Blok sat with his feet resting on the corner of his desk, his bare limbs crossed at the ankles. His right elbow was propped up on the arm of the chair, keeping the phone in his hand pressed against his ear.

  His left hand was looped loosely around the rim of a crystal tumbler, the glass filled almost to the brim with Sibirskaya vodka. The remainder of the bottle sat nearby in a silver bucket filled with ice, only the top few inches of the label visible from where he sat.

  “Yes, glad to hear it,” Viktor said, his tone distant and bored. He waited as the man again launched into another apology for causing any delay, another cased promise about it never happening again, lifting the glass and taking a heavy swallow.

  The icy cold liquid slid smoothly along his throat, no trace of the customary burn associated with the low end forms most people in North America drank. Clear as water, it went down easy, Viktor pausing only a moment before taking another slug.

  “Yes, excellent, we’ll be in touch soon,” Viktor said once over half of the tumbler was drained, cutting the conversation short. There was obviously much more Mender wanted to add, effusive praise he wanted to heap on the operation, but Viktor wasn’t in the mood for it.

  Without waiting for a farewell, he dropped the phone back onto its cradle and took up his drink once more. He pulled it over onto his lap and held it between his hands, staring down at it, his mind racing.

  Tonight was supposed to have been a crowning moment, the time when he called his uncle and declared everything was ready, the operation could begin. The act would remove any lingering distrust the old man had, allowing him to once again take charge in North America.

  He, Viktor Blok, would control an empire running up the entire coast of California. Within months his new product would be in the hands of Hollywood stars and professional athletes, the entire country clamoring for Krokodil. Demand would explode, his network would spread. By the age of thirty-five, he would be a king.

  Instead, his night had once again been thwarted by the meddling of his uncle and his goon. He had been pushed to the side, shown to be impotent to a major distributor, the last remaining holdout. At a time when he should be celebrating a grand triumph, he had instead been reduced to nothing more than a secretary, answering the phone and mumbling through the acceptance of more praise of the family name, a name he had done nothing to build.

  In one movement he raised the glass to his mouth and tossed back the remainder of the vodka, swallowing it down without regard for cost or taste. The goal of the evening was not to celebrate. There would be no savoring of anything.

  Dropping the glass back on his desk, Viktor lowered his feet to the floor and shifted his body towards the bucket, lifting the bottle from it. Frigid water and half-melted ice burned his fingertips as he lifted it out, pulling the top and filling the tumbler once again.

  Halfway back into the bucket, a knock sounded at the door, three deep thuds followed by it opening wide, a massive figure filling the frame.

  Viktor stood with the bottle raised above the bucket, an eyebrow arched, and watched as Pavel stepped inside. The behemoth wore his customary dour expression, his face made even more harrowing by the dark circles underlining each of his eyes. He walked straight in and splashed himself down into the seat across from Viktor, not saying a word.

  “Please, come in, take a seat,” Viktor said, dropping the bottle back into place, letting the sarcasm drip from his words. “Get you a drink? I hear you’ve had a busy night.”

  Pavel stared across at him with the same emotionless eyes, pools that looked almost black, shrouded in mounds of dark hair. He sat in silence for a long moment, motionless.

  “Well,” Viktor said, raising the glass towards his unexpected guest, “I’m going to have one. Hope you don’t mind. Here’s to you!”

  Once more he raised the glass to his lips, draining over half its contents. Already he could feel the high-grain liquor starting to work on his senses, dulling his vision around the edges, making his tongue feel heavy in his mouth. He swayed just a bit as he fell back into his seat, pausing to collect himself before propping his feet back up into place.

  “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your little visit?” Viktor asked. “Stop in to gloat about your newest accomplishment? To catch me up on what you have been doing without my knowledge?”

  Still Pavel sat in silence, staring back at Viktor.

  Viktor matched the gaze for a long moment, feeling the hatred he had for the man, for everything he stood for, rise within him. Looking across the desk he saw his uncle, he saw Anatoly, he saw cold winter mornings and firewood riots and endless bowls of borsch, all of the things he loathed about his former life and would never again return to.

  “You know what I don’t understand?” Viktor said, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair and pressing the pads of his fingertips together in front of his face. “You’re not even family. Sure you’re big and scary and take orders like a damn dog, but at the end of the day, you’re nothing. You’ll never be a Blok. You’ll never be anything more than the son of a whore, some street urchin my uncle found all those years ago and felt sorry for.”

  Perhaps it was the alcohol allowing Viktor to finally say what he had always felt about Pavel. Maybe it was the realization that after tonight, the family would never allow him to ascend to the level he should. Most likely, it was a combination of the two, the sudden fear of losing a life he had become rather fond of playing no small part in it as well.

  Viktor twisted his head to the side and glared across at Pavel. He waited, looking for any sign of rage, any display that his words had found their mark. As much as he should have been afraid, he found himself unable to muster any terror, no matter what the giant might be capable of.

  Rather, he felt anger rise within him. A tiny bit that started deep in his stomach, further down even than the warmth of the vodka swimming through his system. It grew in size and animosity, rippling through him, pushing past the alcohol and forcing its way to the front of his mind.

  What he said was true. He was a Blok. He was the handpicked successor to the family dynasty in America. This was his time, the long overdue coronation of his place in the pecking order.

  This man was nothing, useful as a soldier but nothing more.

  “Say something, dammit!”

  In one sharp movement Viktor snatched up the tumbler from the desk beside him and hurled it at the opposite wall. The delicate crystal shattered on contact, shards exploding in every direction, their pieces tinkling softly as they fell to the floor. A stream of vodka traced itself across the floor between Viktor and the wall, light shining off the misshapen pools.

  An oversized amoeba of liquid showed itself on the wall, splattered out from the bits of shiny glass imbedded in the woodwork.

  Pavel turned his head and stared at the mess on the wall before shifting his focus back to Viktor. He pressed his thick hands down into his thighs and stood, letting a low groan escape through his nose as he reached full height and stood looking down at Viktor, contempt obvious on his features.

  “They’re coming.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Naval Base San Diego was the largest military installation on the entire western seaboard. Over twenty-six thousand people, more than three qua
rters of them active duty personnel, called the place home. In total it encompassed more than thirteen hundred acres, land and aquatic combined.

  After leaving the Metropolitan Correction Center, we didn’t bother returning to the desert. What we needed to do was apparent. Whoever had found Carlos within hours of him leaving clearly had a pulse on everything going on at DEA headquarters. If we were to have any hope of getting into Baja and finding the Russians that had taken over the Juarez Cartel, a move was going to have to be made fast.

  Waiting even a day at this point would give them too much lead time. They would be able to liquidate whatever they were doing and disappear into the Mexican countryside. If not with their entire stash of product, at the very least with every person that mattered.

  Our only choice, a fact we both acknowledged without saying it out loud, was to go tonight. Whatever we might lose in planning would be more than accounted for by the element of surprise. With the backing of the United States Navy, we both felt reasonably secure in the chances of success moving forward.

  The first call Diaz made while exiting the interrogation room was to the Commanding Officer at NBSD. More than once the base had provided support for the DEA on stings up and down the coast, the request met with open support. I could tell just from hearing one side of the conversation that there was surprise at the unusual proposition, even some trepidation about the truncated timetable it would be performed under, but no outright opposition.

  This would be a good thing, for the country and for their respective careers, and they both knew it.

  The second call was to her head analyst, a guy she referred to several time as Potts, someone I was certain I had never met before. I matched her step for step as we exited the building and climbed into the car, only half listening as she relayed to him that she needed a location and she needed it fast. Between everything the Juarez’s had handed over the last few years and the new information we had, there should be more than enough for them to find the new base of operations.

  If this guy was anywhere near as good as Pally had once been, he’d have something for her by the time the first boat pushed offshore headed south.

  While the flurry of activity of Diaz beside me slid in and out of my consciousness, my active thoughts focused on what Manny had said just a few minutes before. For five long years I had known that what happened to my family was a direct result of my work, but never once had I heard it stated that bluntly.

  Born of equal parts denial and self-preservation, I pushed aside the notion that what I did for a living had ultimately taken my life away from me.

  The sorrow of their passing was long since gone. There was not a single day that I didn’t think of them or long for their company, but the sharp stabbing pain of a pickax to the stomach had subsided some time ago.

  In its place was anger. Rage. Hatred. Full-scale hostility that roiled through my system, bubbling just beneath the surface. To stand ten feet away and look at me I would have appeared perfectly calm, sitting in the front seat, staring at the city of San Diego as Diaz followed the signs towards the base.

  To know me though, to look into my eyes, it was apparent that a tempest of adrenaline and acrimony was swirling beneath the surface.

  For five long years I had bit back the bitterness, forced it to stay down to keep from consuming me from within. Now it had found me, slapped me in the face and demanded to be dealt with.

  Somehow, I had made it out of that room without sprinting across and smashing Manny Juarez into the wall. Something told me very few of the others involved would be so lucky.

  Diaz finished her third call beside me and dropped the cell-phone into the middle console. She gripped the wheel in both hands and extended her bottom lip out, exhaling a puff of air over her face, a strand of air flying back off her forehead.

  “Bet you didn’t see this coming when you woke up this morning?” I muttered, my voice just audible over the sound of the engine whining.

  “You make one hell of an entrance, I’ll give you that,” Diaz said. By the tone of her voice I couldn’t tell if she was pissed I’d showed up and turned her world on its head, or just gearing up for what lie in store. I opted against responding, keeping my eyes narrowed as I stared out the window, the city just beginning to put itself to sleep for the night.

  “What happened to your wife?”

  The words surprised me, interrupting me mid-thought. My lips parted a half inch as I unconsciously turned towards her, silent.

  Hands still in a death grip on the wheel, she glanced over at me, pausing a moment before her attention back to the road. “That was our agreement. Before this was over, you’d tell me what happened.”

  I kept my face aimed towards her, though my gaze slid back through the front windshield to the road ahead.

  “That was our agreement,” I echoed.

  Five years had passed since that fateful night, though not once had I ever spoke of it. Not in its entirety anyway. At moments I had alluded to, maybe even acknowledged snippets of it, but never had I told the entire thing from start to finish. Not to Hutch after it happened, not to the appointed psychiatrists they made me talk to before accepting my resignation.

  Even my subconscious, lurking just beneath the surface every night when I closed my eyes, couldn’t bear the act of telling the entire story.

  “I’d been away for six weeks,” I said. “Myself and two guys from my squad, Diggs and Martin, both good guys, both out of the game now as well. We’d been tracking this known runner across most of Central America, starting in El Salvador, taking us through Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica. Finally caught up with him in Panama.”

  I flicked my gaze over to her to make sure she was listening, her face intent on the road as she drove. Halfway through a turn her eyes met mine, urging me forward, before returning to the task at hand.

  “Couldn’t have asked for a better bust. Panama, as close to an ally as we have in the region, with their beautiful extradition laws. Eight hours after finding his ass holed up in a shack on the edge of a cocaine field we had him and the entire operation under custody and we were headed home.

  “Up until that point, we’d had no idea how long the damn thing was going to take, so showing back up on American soil that night was a treat. We caught a one-way flight into NBSD, slapped each other on the back, and headed out.”

  I paused for just a moment, remembering the moment, the joy we had felt. In the parking lot we had toasted each other with a can of Natural Light, a more watered down horse piss beer having never existed. It was a big score for us, the kind of thing that would grant us a lot more agency leeway from then on.

  “I don’t know why, but I didn’t call my wife. At the time I thought it would be nice to surprise her, but looking back...”

  Again Diaz looked over, silently urging me to keep going. She avoided the freeway as we drove, sticking to city streets, pushing the straightaways as fast as she could, the engine revving and falling away each time.

  “Anyway, that night I was feeling good. I was back in my truck, I was going to go home and see my wife, my daughter, eat real food, sleep in an actual bed. You’ve been on the job before, I don’t have to explain it to you.”

  “Right,” Diaz managed, her voice showing she was a bit surprised by being brought into the story.

  “The first thing I remember was the smell. Even through my jacked up, can-barely-notice-that-shit-Hutch-is-always-drinking nose, I picked up on the scent. Fire. Smoke. Charred wood. Roasted meat.”

  My voice cracked just a tiny bit on the last words, pure rage obstructing me from delivering them without alteration. I squeezed my left hand into a tight ball and held it above my thigh, keeping it there a long moment before dropping it back into place.

  “Next was the sight of it. I hadn’t seen it before because of the setting sun behind me, but once it blinked out beneath the horizon, I could see the orange glow to the south, undeniable against the darkening sky.

  “Even thoug
h I spent a large amount of time on the road, I knew the area well enough to put it together in my mind. I don’t know why, I had no reason to even think such a thing, but I just knew. I knew based on where the glow was coming from, I knew because of the feeling in my stomach, everything.

  “I just knew.”

  Once more I pushed out a long breath. This part I had replayed in my mind hundreds, thousands of times before. It came to me every night, sprang into my thoughts at least once a day.

  The easy part was over.

  “I tried calling then, but it went straight to voicemail. Not even a single ringtone. It only confirmed my initial thought. My family was in trouble.”

  “So what did you do?” Diaz asked, a red light blazing in front of us, the car idling without moving forward. I could feel her gaze turned to stare at me, though I couldn’t bring myself to meet it.

  “I prayed,” I said, the words tasting sour on my tongue, an act that to this day I’m not terribly proud of. “God, Buddha, Allah, Odin, Pele, the Great Spirit...I hit them all. Made every promise I could think of, tried every bargain known to man. Begged them, please, somehow, not to let me be right.

  “But I was.”

  My eyes slid closed as I remembered the details of that night. A tremor ran the length of my spine, goose bumps rising like chicken skin over my arms.

  “The fire had been going a while by the time I got there. The second story had already collapsed, most of the first floor was gone. Everything was charred black, nothing more than cinders.

  “I pulled up as close as I could, but had to stop a good fifty feet away. The heat was so sweltering it scorched the hair from my forearms, singed my eyebrows. Even in the late evening sky I could see waves of it climbing high above, an invisible sheen rising into the night.

  “We didn’t live far from our neighbors, but somehow there was nobody on the scene. Someone must have, had to have seen it burning bright, but not one single person called the fire department or the police.”