Hail Warning

Termez, Uzbekistan

The weights that Victor Kornev was lifting were not particularly heavy, but each of the dumbbells, in each of his hands, felt as if they were connected to the ground by rubber straps. Sitting upright on his weight bench in his home gym, Kornev curled each dumbbell up to his chin, alternating hands, counting the reps until he reached twenty for each arm. His muscles burned and he felt, at one point, he might pass out from the exertion.

Perspiration poured from his forehead and dripped onto the matted floor. He had started working out a few days ago, understanding he would heal faster if he put a little effort into it. Sitting around and allowing his muscles to atrophy would not get him back on his feet. Thus, he had begun with a leg workout. His back had hurt so badly during that first stint in the gym that he dreaded going back that same afternoon and doing an upper body workout. But he had. The Russian had worked through the pain, and he was still working through it.

Each morning he awoke, dreading going back down to the gym located in the basement of his home. Pushing through discomfort was not uncommon to a former soldier. He had been hurt dozens of times during his career in the Russian military, and then with his cargo company, Air Cress. He had been shot twice, stabbed many times, beaten up and left for dead more times than he cared to remember. That had all occurred after he had deserted the Soviet Army. His unceremonious exit from the military had taken place during the Soviet Union’s breakup. With the crumbling army in disarray, no one had really given a damn any more what happened. Kornev had taken advantage of the opportunities that had come his way. As far as Kornev was concerned, if you didn’t take advantage of a government in crisis, then you deserved to end up with nothing. Maybe even less than nothing. If your life was meaningful to you, that might be all you walked away with. After the fall of the Soviet Union, for years Russia had turned into the wild, wild west. Everyone was on the take. Everyone who had struggled to become someone was working an angle. Crime was so rampant and so deeply entrenched in the new Russian empire, that common street thugs were getting rich. And a related nuance was the rich were turning into common street thugs. Why? Because they had not played the game, and they had lost everything. It all depended on how much you wanted and what lengths you were willing to go to get it.

Kornev grunted and set the dumbbells down on the floor. He arched his back and winced in pain. That last series of reps was about all his damaged body could take today. He got up slowly, moving like an old man, and walked sluggishly to the bathroom. Moving as little as possible, he dropped his gym pants, pulled off his shirt and stepped into the walk-in shower. He turned the faucet and stepped under the cool water; it felt wonderful. He would let the water cool him down for a moment before turning on the hot water, letting it bake his sore muscles.

Fifteen minutes later, Kornev emerged from the shower, steam coming off his red skin, feeling a little more like his old self. He arched his back again. It didn’t hurt as bad as it had a few days ago.

The Russian toweled off, returning to his bedroom to pull on some underwear. He walked to his bedroom window and looked out at the interior courtyard. He plopped down in an overstuffed chair and admired the flowers. He had hired a professional gardener to tend to the shrubs, trees and flowers in the backyard. The gardener entered his property via a tunnel. The tunnel the gardener used was the only one he knew existed. The entrance to the tunnel was in the garage of the home behind him. A narrow staircase led down into the tunnel, traversing property lines and then surfacing inside the potter’s shed within his courtyard. From the small garage in the little ramshackle house behind his own, the tunnel was wide enough for a man to carry gardening tools. It was only a tunnel out of one-half dozen tunnels leading both in and out of his compound. When Kornev had been considering building his new home in Termez, it had been contingent on purchasing the homes surrounding it. He could come and go via his tunnels, making it nearly impossible for anyone to follow or set a trap for him.

Kornev lit a half-smoked Cuban cigar. He blew out a smoke ring that drifted lazily through the room before being sucked into the air-conditioning intake vent in the ceiling. Kornev poked a finger at his laptop, and his computer woke up and showed his e-mail program. Kornev rarely received any, and on those rare occasions when someone had sent him an e-mail, most tended to be about critical business issues. Nobody wrote Kornev to ask him how his day was or if he wanted to catch a movie. But the new message that was on his laptop was close to that. It had been sent by Tonya Merkalov, the woman he had met in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia at the Volna Hotel.

With great interest, Kornev clicked on the message and read,

Dearest Victor: It’s been so long since I heard from you. I hope you haven’t forgotten about me. But how is that possible? lol.

Kornev did not know what lol was. Probably some silly American colloquialism of which he was unfamiliar.

He kept reading, hoping the message would lead somewhere — not just a tease.

It just so happens that I am between projects, and I am bored. I would love to come for a visit and maybe we could go someplace fun. Tell me that you won’t be working, else we can make it another time. I want to have fun! Do you? Your friend, Tonya

Kornev did indeed want to have some fun. He wanted to relax, drink and smoke his cigar. The only other thing he was missing was female companionship. The woman who called herself Tonya Merkalov would more than fit the bill. Other than the single night he had spent with her a month ago, he knew very little about her. He had Googled Tonya Merkalov and looked over her Facebook account. The vivacious woman appeared to be who she claimed to be — the rich daughter of an international banker. That sounded good to him as well. Who knew, if things went well with the woman, his future father-in-law could be an international banker. He could use a man like that to launder his cash. But Victor knew he was jumping the gun. There was a very good chance that the woman who called herself Tonya was not a Tonya at all. Maybe she was a Patricia, Linda, or a Barbara — American names that belonged to spies or CIA agents. Or she could even be with the Israeli Mossad and have the real name of Dinah, Eliana, or Naomi — strong Hebrew names that belonged to Jewish women. But all of that really didn’t matter. Kornev could take care of himself. Tonya hadn’t been a problem for him a month ago, and she wouldn’t be a problem for him now.

Kornev pulled his laptop onto his lap and began stabbing his big fingers at the keys.

Dearest Tonya: It was nice to hear from you as well. For a very short time, I am in a city near Termez, in the Country of Uzbekistan. Termez has an airport. Please let me know when you are arriving, and I will pick you up. We will have lots of fun. Lol.

Kornev added the lol without knowing what it meant, but since she had used it, it must mean something silly. Silly was a disarming trait, and Kornev wanted her to feel comfortable. After all, he was asking her to fly into the middle of nowhere. That type of woman either didn’t know the meaning of danger, or she didn’t care about her safety. Or the third case, she was too naive to know that shacking up with a strange man was innately dangerous. Either way, he sensed that Tonya Merkalov was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And thinking of knives in the drawers, Kornev decided to err on the side of caution.

He got out of the chair, went to the kitchen, and removed all the knives from the kitchen drawers and hid them.