Psychic Warrior

Chapter Four

“No one knows, but more importantly, no one really cares,” the man in the long black leather coat said irritably. “You soldiers are fools caught in the past. Don’t you realize the State has changed?”

The other man wore an olive drab greatcoat, the three stars on the shoulder boards indicating he was a colonel in the army, the small insignia on his collar the symbol of the once dreaded GRU, the military’s KGB. The two men were meeting in a remote park on the edge of Kiev. The snow had been dusted off the concrete table they were seated at. A black Mercedes, smoke coiling out of the exhaust pipe, was idling on the nearby road, a hundred meters away. The car rode low, due to the armor plating built into it. The windows were tinted, hiding the interior.

Three men, also in long black leather coats with fur-lined collars, waited outside the car, their right hands suspiciously inside the front of their coats. The park had been chosen because it was very broad and open. Anyone approaching could be seen a mile away. It had originally been built for the power elite under Communism, those who summered in the villas along the river nearby. Given the fall of Communism and the bitter winter temperatures on this day, they had the park to themselves.

Colonel Seogky didn’t trust the man across from him, but he didn’t really trust anyone anymore, so that mattered little. His focus was on the metal briefcase the man had next to him on the bench.

The other man, Leonid Barsk, followed that gaze and knew the colonel would not be any trouble. “All is ready? You have the papers?”

Seogky rubbed his rough leather gloves together. “Yes. I’ve told you that.”

“The CD-ROM?”

“You did not give me much time,” the colonel said.

“Do you have it?”

“I have it,” Seogky said. “But it will cost you more.”

Barsk tapped a finger against his upper lip, showing off the expensive Italian-made gloves he wore, a further contrast between the wealth of the Russian Mafia and the poverty of the Russian Army. “We will not have any unforeseen problems, will we?”

“I have done what you wanted me to,” Seogky protested. “What happens beyond that is not my responsibility.”

Barsk waved a finger. “Ah, that is where you are wrong, my colonel.” He ran his hand over the metal case. “When I give you this and you give me what you say you have, you become responsible. Even for those things that happen that you know nothing about.”

Seogky twisted on the cold bench, anxious to be going. His vehicle was parked over two miles away. It would be a miserable walk through the snow and ice. Barsk had told him to park that far away, citing security reasons, but then why was Barsk’s car here? Seogky knew the reality of the situation was that Barsk had made him walk in and would make him walk back out as a sign of power. Seogky’s feeling of cold was replaced with a warm glow of anger in his gut, not so much at Barsk but at the breakdown of the system and the fools who had allowed it to collapse to the point where he was sitting in this park today negotiating with this reptile of a man.

Seogky stood. “I have done what you have asked. If you wish to ask more, it will cost you more.”

Barsk also stood. “No, that is where you are also wrong, Colonel. If I ask, you will do as I say. You are ours now.” He held out the briefcase.

Seogky hesitated, realizing the truth and import of what Barsk had just said, but he also knew that he had crossed too many lines already. He might as well be comfortably situated in his new position. Still he didn’t take the case.

“Why do you want this?” he reached in his coat, pulling out a sheaf of papers wrapped in plastic and bound by a rubber band. With his other hand, he pulled a plastic CD case out and put it next to the papers.

“That is my business,” Barsk said.

“This information is old. Surely— ”

“You are thinking too much, Colonel. Just give me the papers and the CD-ROM.”

Seogky hesitated. “Is the money in American dollars?”

“It is, as we agreed.”

Seogky threw the papers and the CD on the tabletop and picked up the briefcase. Barsk stuffed the items into an inside pocket of his coat.

Seogky paused. “You’re not going to check them?”

“Even you wouldn’t be that stupid,” Barsk said. “I assume you want to be able to spend your hard-earned money.”

Seogky turned and began walking across the park. He had gone less than ten feet when he felt pain explode in his right side, doubling him over. His first thought was that he’d been shot. His second that the firer had used a silencer, as he had heard no sound of a weapon. His hands were over the spot of the pain and he brought them up before his eyes— no blood. The pain came again and Seogky sank to his knees.

“What is it?” Barsk yelled.

Seogky turned his head. The Mafia man was backing toward the Mercedes. The three guards had submachine guns out, and they were turning to and fro, searching for the attacker.

Seogky went bolt upright as pain ripped up his spine, as if a fire were burning inside. His hands extended out in front of him on their own, the fingers rigid in a claw, as if there were someone stronger behind him, moving his body. As they came up toward his face of their own volition, he finally knew what was happening. It had only been a story, whispered about in the dark corners of barracks and officers’ quarters, only after much cheap vodka had been drunk, but he knew now the rumor was true.

His fingers closed on his face, despite his most strenuous efforts to stop them. He could see through them that Barsk had paused before getting in his car and was watching from a hundred meters away. It was the last thing Seogky ever saw as his fingers ripped into his own eyes, gouging the orbs out of the sockets.

Seogky’s scream jolted Barsk. “What is it?” he hissed at his guards.

“I don’t know,” Dmitri, his chief bodyguard, replied, a finger pressed against the plug in his ear, listening to the reports from the outer rim of security they had deployed around the park. “Our perimeter guards report we are secure. No one has passed. And I know no one was here.”

“What the hell is he doing?” Barsk stared at the colonel’s hands as they ripped at his own face. “Come on,” he said, tapping Dmitri on the shoulder. “He has our money.”

The two carefully walked across the snow to the colonel, who was still on his knees, bent at the waist, rocking back and forth and moaning in pain. Barsk paused as he saw the blood-covered hands.

“What is that?” he asked, nudging his hand-tooled boot toward something dark and red in the snow.

Dmitri took a closer look. “His eyes.”

“His eyes?” Barsk scanned the surrounding area. “What is going on?”

Dmitri knelt in the snow and grabbed Colonel Seogky’s shoulders. “What happened?”

Seogky moaned. Dmitri pressed down on the colonel’s shoulder, but that produced no response.

“What happened? Why did you do this to yourself?”

“Chyort,” Seogky whispered.

“What did you say?” Barsk stepped closer, avoiding stepping on the eyeballs out of concern for his boots.

“Chyort,” Seogky repeated, then he screamed, his head snapping back, his bloody sockets pointing skyward. His hands slapped against his ears. “Make it stop!” he shouted, then blood bubbled out over his hands from his ears while a gush of red also came out of his nose. The colonel collapsed forward into the snow, the area around the body slowly turning red.

Dmitri felt the colonel’s neck. “He’s dead.”

“Take the money. Let us go.”

Dmitri looked around suspiciously. “What did he mean, Chyort? What devil is he speaking of?”

“Let’s move,” Barsk snapped.

Dmitri scooped up the case, and they were walking quickly toward the Mercedes when Barsk suddenly paused. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Dmitri held the briefcase, his submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

“The voice.” Barsk turned to and fro. “There’s a voice.”

Dmitri gave his boss a worried look. First the colonel tearing his eyes out and dying in front of them, now this. “I hear no voice.”

Barsk held his hand up, silencing his bodyguard, straining to hear. Dmitri grabbed his arm and pointed at the snow to their left. A line was being drawn in it, but there was nothing visible that could be doing it.

The drawing turned into Cyrillic letters, rapidly appearing in the fresh white surface.

“What the hell does that mean?” Barsk asked as the first word was completed.

The invisible marker kept writing.

Barsk turned to his bodyguard. The man’s face had gone white. His mouth flopped open as he searched for words.

“You can’t— ” Dmitri began. He shook his head. “This is not possible. Words cannot appear in snow.”

“And men don’t rip their own eyeballs out,” Barsk noted.

Barsk reached for his pistol, but Dmitri was faster, dropping the suitcase in the snow and swinging the submachine gun up. The two other guards aimed their weapons at Dmitri.

“Don’t!” Dmitri yelled. “Tell them to back off” he ordered Barsk.

“Wait,” Barsk ordered the guards. He stared at the bodyguard. “It is true. The words are true.”

“You will find out how true when I take you in,” Dmitri said. “I’ve listened to— ” He paused as he and Barsk heard the sound of something moving in the snow to the right. They both turned. Footprints, large ones leaving the impression of clawed feet, appeared in the virgin snow. They were moving, circling in. But there was nothing there.

Dmitri fired a quick burst in the direction of the footprints. Now they both could sense more than see something moving, almost faster than their eyeballs could track, a hazy silhouette of something big, over seven feet tall, with two arms and two legs and what appeared to their disbelieving eyes to be wings on the back. It was on Dmitri before he could fire again. One of the arms flashed forward, into Dmitri’s gut.

Barsk could hear the skin rip. Dmitri screamed as his body was lifted into the air. The other arm of the shadow creature whirled down, and the two halves of Dmitri’s body flew in opposite directions. They fell into the snow, twenty feet apart, blood slowly staining the white.

Barsk had forgotten how to breathe. He stared up, the vague outline of the creature rippling, but still he could see through to what was behind it. Except for the eyes. Two bright red eyes, seven feet above the ground, glared at him.

Then it was gone, just as quickly. Barsk took a step back. He paused, still holding his breath, but nothing happened. He darted forward and scooped up the case Dmitri had dropped, then ran for the Mercedes, not caring how wet or torn up his boots got. He jumped into the backseat as the guards got into the front, one of them taking the wheel. The car skidded as the driver hit the accelerator too quickly, then the studded tires caught and the car raced for the park’s gate.

Behind, near the two bloody bodies, a whirlwind began to circle faster and faster, the unnatural wind blowing out the writing in the snow and the strange footprints, until all that was left were the two dead men. And then all was still.