Deliver Us From Evil

58

STRONG HANDS grabbed Kuchin, pulled him over to a crypt, and tied him down on top of it. Kuchin looked slowly around. Whit, Dom, and Reggie had surrounded him.

“Who are you?” Kuchin said calmly.

Whit said, “I’m a bit disappointed the man’s not more impressed.”

“We’re people who know who you really are,” answered Reggie, her eyes on the Ukrainian. By her tone and attitude she was no longer role-playing as the naïve American Janie Collins. She was Reggie Campion and fully in the zone to finish this man.

“Fedir Kuchin,” added Dominic. “The real butcher of Ukraine.”

“And we brought back some of your victims,” said Reggie.

“Before we do to you what you did to them,” added Whit. “Although we’re normally very nice people, we’re working really hard to be cruel and evil for your benefit.”

Whit spread his arm wide. Kuchin looked up at the ceiling and over at the walls that were awash in light as Dominic’s projection equipment continued operating. Nothing Goya could have conceived would have equaled the horror captured in these images. The pictures of the dead or dying men, women, and children stared back at them. On one wall was the photo of the mass grave with the exposed small bones of the children buried there.

“One atrocity after another,” said Reggie. “Take your time. We want you to relive the past.”

“Who are you?” asked Kuchin again.

“Why does it matter?” retorted Whit.

“Because I want to know who I’m going to kill in the future. The near future.”

“I don’t see that happening,” said Whit.

“Then you are blind.”

Reggie pointed to one wall depicting a stack of bodies piled up like cords of wood. “The slaughter in Sevastopol.” She indicated another image on the ceiling where gaunt near-death faces peered out from behind barbed wire. “The torture camp in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in western Ukraine.”

A third image was of the skull-like countenances of women and children lying in the dirt. “Kotsuri in Volyn Oblast,” said Dominic. “You took a page from the Holodomor with that one, didn’t you? Starving rural farmers?”

Kuchin stared up at the pictures as they glimmered across the stone ceiling, like heat rising from a desert floor. When he looked back at them his face held no trace of remorse. “There is no need to show me any of this. I remember it quite well.” He smiled. “Down to the last skeleton, in fact.”

Whit snapped, “Okay, screw the pics. Let’s just do it right now and throw him in the bone box.” He pointed to a crypt along the side of the wall with its top off. “That’s where your skeleton’s going to be, Fed. Hope you’ll enjoy rotting in old Gordes for all eternity.”

Fedir ignored this and continued to stare at Reggie. “I should have been more cautious. Never trust a beautiful woman when she plays, how do you say, hard to get?”

“Look at the pictures,” said Reggie. “And if you really are as religious as you claim, make peace with your God.”

“And how will the fatal blow come. Gun, knife?” Kuchin cocked his head. “Will you strangle me with your bare hands? But do you dare get that close to me now? I can smell the fear you have of me. No, you will keep your distance, I think.”

“You’re not the first monster and you certainly won’t be the last.”

“Never lump me in with others,” barked Kuchin. “I stand alone.”

Whit looked over at the open crypt. “Well you won’t be lying alone. There’s another set of bones in there. I actually feel bad some poor bloke has to share it with the likes of you.”

The click of multiple gun hammers made Whit freeze and mutter a curse.

Reggie slowly turned to see the men standing there, pointing weapons at them. She recognized two of them as Kuchin’s other bodyguards.

Reggie’s forehead was lined up on Pascal’s front pistol sight. “Gun down. Now.”

Reggie bent down and placed it on the floor.

“Kick it away.”

She did so.

Alan Rice stepped out from behind his hiding place. He stared inscrutably at Reggie before saying, “Untie him. Now.”

As she started to move forward Whit said, “No, I’ll do it.”

He took the straps off Kuchin, who rose slowly, rubbing his wrists and ankles. When he stood fully upright he nodded at Whit and then drove a fist into his gut, doubling him over. A kick against Whit’s head slammed him against the crypt, where his blood mixed with centuries-old bone dust. Dominic and Reggie darted forward, but Pascal fired a bullet in front of them and they froze.

Kuchin put out his hand and Pascal tossed him a spare pistol. He turned to Reggie. “You seem to know a lot about me. Enough to send two Muslim terrorists after me. I assume they were imposters whose sole purpose was to funnel me here.”

Reggie said nothing. Her breathing was shallow, all in her throat, but controlled.

“You don’t wish to answer?” Kuchin motioned to the images on the wall. “You bring me here under false pretenses, to show me all this? And then to kill me? And yet you don’t wish to explain yourself?” His easy smile disappeared as he grabbed her neck and squeezed on a point near the left jugular vein. Reggie bit her lip but made no sound. He increased the pressure and she felt the blood and oxygen supply disappearing from her brain. She finally grabbed his arm and hit a nerve point that made his hand weaken. He let go and she gasped and fell back. She planted a hand against a wall and righted herself, her gaze holding on him.

He said, “Impressive. But if you couldn’t endure such a small measure of pain I suppose you would not be in this line of work.” He looked at Dominic. “You mentioned a butcher: You think I’m dangerous? The second coming of the Holodomor? I actually like that description.”

He placed the muzzle of his pistol against Dominic’s forehead and pulled the trigger. Reggie screamed and Dominic flinched but then opened his eyes. There was no entry wound. The front and back of his head were still intact. No blood. No death. He looked bewildered by his survival.

Kuchin looked furious. “Never hand me a pistol, Pascal, without a round in the chamber.”

Kuchin corrected the omission and started to line up his shot again, taking his time, completely in control. This turned out to be a very significant miscalculation.

The blur of motion to his right made Kuchin look away for a vital second from Dominic. Shaw catapulted out of hiding, both elbows raised horizontally to the top of his delts. An arced jab of hard bone against soft face threw one of the guards with such force against the stone wall that he crumpled to the floor, the fight and his senses driven completely from him. The element of surprise distinctly his, Shaw kept moving forward and caught Pascal in the throat with a strike that left the smaller man flat on his face gasping and gagging for air, his gun bouncing across the floor. He stopped gagging when Shaw slammed his foot on the back of Pascal’s head, ricocheting it off the stone and knocking him out.

Alan Rice made the mistake of following the effect of the attack rather than the source. He screamed and fired his weapon; his wild round barely missed Kuchin’s head and unfortunately embedded itself in Dominic’s forearm, shattering bone and burning tissue. Dominic grunted and fell to the floor.

Whit launched and caught Kuchin in the sternum, sending him heels over ass, the Ukrainian’s weapon sailing away.

Shaw pounced on Rice, swung him around, and slammed him against a crypt. He slid to the floor unconscious as blood streamed out of his smashed nose.

Kuchin got to his feet as everyone scrambled for weapons or cover in the ongoing shimmer of the images on the wall. With the added human movement the entire spectacle took on the aspect of some bizarre performance art. Reggie lunged for her pistol but Kuchin kicked her in the face, slashing her cheek with the heel of his shoe. When Whit hurled himself at the man a second time, Kuchin was prepared. He deftly sidestepped the thrust and, taking a page from Shaw’s attack method, slammed a bony elbow into Whit’s face, dropping the Irishman in his tracks.

Kuchin snatched up Reggie’s Beretta, turned, aimed, and would have fired a bullet into the fallen woman’s brain from inches away if Shaw hadn’t connected with such a massive uppercut to the chin that it lifted the two-hundred-and-thirty-pound Ukrainian completely off his feet. He crumbled backward and hit the floor, spit out a tooth and tried to rise, but he was too dazed by the terrific shot he’d taken.

Shaw jammed one gun in his belt and grabbed another pistol off the floor and tossed it to Whit, who’d staggered to his feet holding his face. Shaw stooped, snagged Reggie’s arm, and pulled her up. With his other hand he hauled Dom to his feet. “We have to get out of here. Now!”

“Not before we kill that bastard!” screamed Whit.

At that instant Kuchin managed to get to his feet, and he ran out of the catacombs.

“Hey!” yelled Whit. He ran after Kuchin, followed by the others.

“Stop!” barked Shaw, and he grabbed Whit, who was lining up a shot. “He’s got other muscle, and they’re probably on their way right now.”

As soon as Shaw had finished speaking, three more armed men clattered down the stairs and saw them. They opened fire. The sleepy hamlet of Gordes probably hadn’t seen such aggression since the Romans had been in town two millennia before.

“This way,” yelled Reggie. She led them to the passage that would carry them to the doorway near the villa.

Kuchin ran toward his men and screamed, “Get them, but don’t kill the woman!”

Shaw turned and fired at the men. As the bullets ricocheted off the stone walls Kuchin’s guards scrambled for cover. Whit pulled a slender canister from his pocket, popped a tab, and tossed it into the room. Dense smoke formed a wall between them and their pursuers.

They turned and fled down the passage, steel-jacketed rounds chasing them every step of the way.

Fittingly for a church, they all mouthed silent prayers as they fled.