Full Black

CHAPTER 48

The Pearblossom Highway was an old, undivided two-lane blacktop interspersed with remote homesteads and dirt roads that led out into the Mojave Desert toward Las Vegas. Ralston had worked on a small, independent film in the Mojave years ago and almost missed the turnoff.

The dusty road wasn’t marked by anything more than a twisted Joshua tree and a large rock formation that looked like the side of an Indian’s face.

The heavy BMW sedan bumped and jolted as it hit numerous potholes and washouts along the way.

Finally, Ralston pulled off the access road into a small clearing ringed by sagebrush and turned off the ignition. Stepping out of the vehicle, he stretched his arms overhead and then leaned from side to side in order to stretch out his sore back.

When he was done, he grabbed his backpack from the backseat, fished out a flashlight, and walked around to the trunk. It was a clear night and the stars in the desert sky were fairly bright, but there were several different species of things Ralston didn’t want to step on if he could avoid it.

Popping the lid of the trunk, he clicked on the flashlight and shined it in Yatsko’s face. He had a small laceration on his forehead, probably from getting bumped around in the trunk.

“We’re here,” said Ralston as he pulled the Russian out and let him drop onto the dusty ground.

Yatsko was somewhere in his late sixties or early seventies. He had a broad, flat face that looked as if it had been hit with a shovel. His greasy hair was dyed unnaturally black.

Ralston used the flashlight to get his bearings. Once he figured out where he was going, he propped the Russian against the car and then flipped him over his shoulder. He weighed a ton.

Despite the pain radiating up his spine from his hip, Ralston kept going. He didn’t have far to go. The wash was just through the brush beyond the clearing.

When he got there, he set Yatsko on the ground, propping him up in a sitting position. He could see, even through his trousers, that his knees had swollen up like basketballs. He’d thought about bringing the baseball bat along, but had decided against it. He wouldn’t need it. All he had to do was tap the guy in the knee with the toe of his shoe and the man would be sent into fits of agony.

The question was, considering the pain he was suffering, would he cooperate? He’d worked with Russians before and had watched them take amazing amounts of punishment. They could be like plow animals.

It was time to find out if Yatsko was going to play ball. Reaching down, Ralston ripped the piece of duct tape from his mouth.

He expected a string of invective to start immediately. It didn’t. The Russian was trapped. He knew it and was sizing up his captor.

“You already have the money from my house,” he eventually said. “I can get you more. Much more.”

“This isn’t about money,” replied Ralston.

Despite the pain, the former FSB man smiled. “It is always about money.”

“How many people during your career in Russia offered you money? Deep in the bowels of the Lubyanka I’ll bet there were many.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m nobody. Just someone who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.”

Yatsko looked at him, a slow trickle of blood running down the side of his face. “Do I know you?”

“No. You don’t know me.”

“Then I must know the man who sent you.”

Ralston shook his head slowly. “No one sent me.”

“Then who are you, damn it,” he spat. “Why did you bring me here?”

“First, tell me who the man is in your trunk.”

“Who cares? It’s none of your business.”

Ralston took his flashlight and swung it at the side of the Russian’s face. It connected with a sharp crack.

Yatsko saw stars and when the pain receded and his vision returned, he looked up at Ralston and spat two teeth out at him. “Fuck you.”

Ralston hit him again, harder. “I’ve got all night and no place to be.”

He waited for the mobster to recover and then repeated his question.

“He’s a vagabond,” the Russian yelled. “Nothing. No one. Trash.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes, I killed him.”

“Why?” asked Ralston.

“You already know why.”

“So you could burn the body and disappear.”

Yatsko didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“Tell me who hired you,” demanded Ralston.

“Hired me for what?”

Ralston brought his foot down hard on the man’s left knee.

“Hired me for what, damn it,” the Russian cried out.

“You sent a team of men to kill a friend of mine.”

“I don’t do killings.”

“Bullshit.”

“I do lots of other things, but never killings,” said Yatsko.

“What the fuck do you call the dead guy in your trunk?”

“That’s different.”

“Tell me who hired you.”

The Russian looked up at him and with a straight face said, “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

Ralston was now at the end of his rope. This guy was one of the worst liars he had ever met. It was going to take him all night to beat the truth out of him. He decided to speed things up.

“Don’t move,” he said, knowing the man couldn’t, even if he had wanted to. “I’ll be right back.”

Leaving Yatsko alone in the wash, he trudged through the sagebrush back to the car.

Moving the corpse out of the way, he removed one of the cans of gasoline and shut the lid of the trunk. Walking around the edge of the clearing, he played his light over the ground. There were empty beer cans and wine bottles, but that wasn’t what Ralston was hoping to find. Then, several feet away, he saw it.

Returning to Yatsko, he dropped the tire on the ground next to him and opened the gas can. “I wish I could tell you that I was a patient guy, Yaroslav, but I’m not.”

The mobster looked at him, trying to figure out what he was doing.

“I’ll bet you’ve done a lot of bad things in your time, haven’t you?”

Yatsko didn’t reply.

“Have you ever necklaced anybody?”

Ralston waited for the man to respond, but he remained quiet.

“It’s a terrible way to die,” he said, standing the tire up on its side and filling it with gasoline. He then rolled it forward several feet and back again in order to evenly coat the inside.

Yatsko looked away.

“Legend has it that it began in Africa, but there are some who say it started in Haiti. The Brazilians also lay claim to it-they call it microondas-a play on the word microwave. Apparently, it gets pretty hot. But not so hot that you die right away. They say it can take up to twenty minutes.”

“Go to hell,” said Yatsko.

“I’ll let you go first and do some reconnaissance for me,” replied Ralston as he lifted the tire.

The Russian squirmed and tried to avoid being ringed, but sitting on his ass with two broken knees in front of him and his arms lashed behind his back, there wasn’t much he could do.

The pungent odor of the gasoline filled his nostrils as his captor forced the tire down over his shoulders.

“You sent a team to kill my friend, Yaroslav. Now we’re alone in the desert. No one’s coming to rescue you. This is going to end very badly. It’s up to you.”

“I told you to go to hell,” he repeated.

Fucking Russians, Ralston thought to himself. “It’s certainly not the way I’d want to go,” he said, producing a book of matches he’d found back at Yatsko’s house. Removing one from the pack, he struck it and leaned forward.

Yatsko turned to face the match and with a puff, blew it out.

Ralston grinned. “You’re a funny guy. Last chance,” he said as he struck another match and used it to light the entire pack on fire.

He held the flaming pack just above the tire. The Russian could huff and puff all he wanted, but he wouldn’t be able to blow them all out. What’s more, they were soon going to be too hot to hold on to and Ralston would drop them right onto the gasoline-soaked tire.

The former FSB agent seemed to realize he had no choice. “His name is Ashford,” he offered suddenly. “Robert Ashford. He’s a British Intelligence officer for MI5.”

“MI5?”

“Yes.”

It didn’t make any sense. Ralston figured the Russian was making it up to save his own skin. He wanted to make sure the man was telling the truth.

He dropped the flaming matchbook into the sand and crushed out the flames with his shoe. “Who were you hired to kill?”

Yatsko looked right at him and without hesitating said, “Larry Salomon, the movie producer, and two other men he was working with.”

“Why were you hired?”

“They don’t tell me and I don’t ask.”

“How many men did you send?”

“Four,” said the Russian. “One of my men was the driver. He was supposed to wait outside. Three others were brought in from Russia to do the job.”

“Brought in by you.”

“Yes. Brought in by me.”

“And you were hired by someone named Robert Ashford who works for MI5?” said Ralston.

“That’s what I told you.”

“Why would MI5 want to kill Larry Salomon and a couple of documentary filmmakers?”

“I told you, they don’t tell me and I don’t ask.”

Ralston found the man awfully flip for someone who still might very well get roasted alive. “You didn’t think the job was a little strange?”

“You could never do what I do,” stated the Russian.

Ralston looked at him.

“You ask too many questions.”

Yatsko was really pissing him off. “I believe that you sent that team to Salomon’s house,” said Ralston. “But I don’t believe this has anything to do with MI5.”

“I can prove it.”

He was negotiating again, but Ralston listened anyway. “How?”

“The portable drive you took from my safe.”

“What about it?”

“It has copies of my communications with him,” said the Russian.

“Really?” Ralston said sarcastically. “An MI5 operative was that careless. What do you have? Copies of the personal check he scribbled out for the hit?”

“Everyone slips up. Everyone makes mistakes at some point.”

“My mistake has been listening to you. I think you’re full of shit.”

Yatsko shook his head. “When you’ve been at this game as long as I have, you learn to protect yourself. Listen, you don’t want me. I’m just the middleman in all of this. You want Ashford. But to get him, you need what’s on that drive. The file is encrypted, though. If you want access to it, you’ll need a password.”

“Give it to me.”

The Russian smiled. “Once I’m safe and away from you, I’ll provide you with it.”

Ralston turned and began walking back to the car.

“Where are you going?” asked the mobster.

“To find some more matches.”

“Cobb 2-2-4-6.”

“Say that again,” Ralston instructed as he turned and came back.

“Cobb 2-2-4-6. Cobb has two b’s, as in Ty Cobb.”

Without a computer, Ralston had no way to know if the man was telling the truth or not. Bending down, he pried off the tire.

Once it came free, he gave it a shove and rolled it the rest of the way down into the wash.

“So what happens now?” asked Yatsko. “You take my car and make me crawl? I’ll eventually need some of that money you took from me.”

This guy really did have balls. Ralston looked at him and shook his head. “There’s still the matter of the two filmmakers at Salomon’s house who your Spetsnaz guys whacked.”

The Russian looked at him. “You.”

“What about me?”

“You’re the one Salomon was at the restaurant with. You drove him home. Who are you?”

“I told you,” replied Ralston. “I’m nobody.”

“You killed them. Didn’t you?”

Ralston didn’t respond.

“You’re not going to let me walk away from here, are you?”

“You couldn’t walk if you wanted to.”

“You know what I mean,” said the Russian.

“Yeah,” said Ralston, pulling out his revolver.

Yatsko’s face changed. There was nothing but hate in his eyes. “Fuck you,” he yelled. “Fuck you!”

He was about to yell it again, but the sound of Ralston’s weapon discharging drowned it out.

Ralston pulled the trigger once for each of the murdered filmmakers, Chip and Jeremy. He then fired a third time for the homeless man in the trunk of the car and kept pulling the trigger until the weapon was empty.

The Russian deserved much worse. He deserved to have been necklaced. Ralston, though, wasn’t the kind of man who could torture another man to death, not even one as evil as Yaroslav Yatsko. Ralston was, after all, still a man of principle.