Born to Run

“Moscow?”

“Idiot,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not worth the plane fare. We got one in Brighton Beach now. Just like the original.”

Those words-just like the original-sent his heart racing. Demetri had never visited the Kamikaze Club, but stories of it were Russian Mafya legend. It was for men only, except for the high-priced prostitutes brought in to service them. The night’s entertainment climaxed with the arrival of two unlucky souls who had been yanked off the street. It was not just a fight, but a barehanded fight to the death-the human equivalent of cock-fighting. Guys like Vladimir would place their bets, wagering on everything from which of the two warriors would win to which of the whores sitting ringside would end up with the most blood splattered on her tits.

“Who wants to watch an old man like me fight?” said Demetri.

“Don’t give me that ‘old man’ crap,” said Vladimir. “Plenty of young men have fallen for that line and ended up in the dirt. We’ll have to give your opponent a hatchet just to keep it interesting.”

Before Vladimir could laugh at his own joke, the window suddenly exploded and the Venetian blinds danced with the rattle of machine-gun fire. Demetri dove to the floor. Vladimir slammed against the bullet-riddled wall, smearing the white wainscoting with a bright crimson streak as he slid to the floor. His body collapsed in a heap right beside Demetri, bits and pieces of his shattered skull sticking to the wall.

Another spray of machine-gun fire popped the fluorescent ceiling lights. Groping in the darkness, Demetri yanked Vladimir’s gun from its holster.

The machine-gunning stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Demetri lay perfectly still, his body covered with thousands of glass pellets. He listened. With the window blown out, he could hear footsteps outside. The click of leather heels on asphalt sounded like two men. The clicking turned to crunching on grass made stiff by the winter drought. The men were crossing the courtyard and coming closer.

Demetri got a comfortable grip on the pistol. At first touch, fumbling in a blackened room, he couldn’t tell what it was. He was certain now that it was the Russian MR-444 Baghira, a 9-millimeter pistol that incorporated thermoplastics and many other of the Glock’s best design features. It was no machine gun, but with a seventeen- round magazine of Parabellum ammunition, he had more than enough stopping power for any gunfight.

The approaching footsteps slowed with caution and then stopped altogether. The men were standing right outside the window. Demetri waited, his pistol at the ready. A flashlight switched on and shined into the conference room. Busted Venetian blinds cast zebra-like shadows on the walls, and the sweeping beam of light came to rest on Vladimir’s bloody streak on the wall.

“Bel colpo!” said one of the men. Good shot.

They were Sicilian, Demetri realized, and instinctively his forty-year-old thirst for revenge took over. He rolled to his right and squeezed off a half dozen rounds-rolling and firing, rolling and firing. The fall of the flashlight and painful cry in the night told him that at least one round had found its mark. The return of machine-gun fire told him that one wasn’t nearly enough. Bullets whizzed overhead as Demetri scrambled through the noise and darkness to the door.

The machine gun fell silent.

Demetri quieted his breathing and listened. For a moment-it seemed much longer-he heard nothing. Then, faintly at first, he heard something in the distance. He started counting the number of rounds he’d fired, trying to see how much ammo was left, but then his focus returned to that growing noise.

Sirens blared in the distance, and for a brief instant Demetri almost let himself believe in God.

Someone called the cops!

Suddenly, the sound of footsteps returned-crunching of dry grass, then heels clicking on the asphalt-but this time it was the sound of one man running. A car door opened and slammed shut, the engine turned over, and tires squealed in the night. The gunman was making a run for it, leaving his dead partner behind.

Demetri hurried back to Vladimir’s body and rummaged for his car keys. They were bloody, but they would still work. He jumped to his feet, pushed the busted blinds aside, and hopped out the window. He was at full speed when he stepped on the dead man’s chest, his pulse pounding with adrenaline.

Hang on, Sofia.

Chapter 37

From across the room, Jack counted the small liquor bottles on the nightstand. There were at least a dozen. Mika had gone through the entire minibar stock-brandy, scotch, bourbon, rum, gin, vodka-and stacked the empties into a pyramid.

Jack wondered how much longer Mika would stay awake.

Mika had the look of Miami’s first-generation Mafiya, an insanely arrogant breed that Jack had prosecuted during his brief stint at the U.S. attorney’s office. The undercover agents used to joke about how easy it was to walk into a bar in North Miami Beach or Hollywood and pick out the Russian mobsters who consciously played to the stereotype-loud, muscle-bound, tons of gold jewelry-so that people would know not to mess with them. Most feared was a guy called Tarzan, famous for his drug and sex orgies on his yacht off South Beach, until he landed in jail for trying to buy a nuclear submarine from a former Soviet naval officer. His plan was to smuggle Colombian cocaine to Miami-underwater. For every criminal visionary like Tarzan there were scores of foot soldiers like Mika, street thugs who would shoot you just to see if their gun was still working.

“I’m starving,” said Sofia. She was seated on the floor beside Jack, their backs against the wall.

“I’m hungry, too,” said Jack.

Mika propped himself up on one elbow. He was still shoeless but fully dressed, relaxing atop the bedspread.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Order us some food,” said Jack.

“How about champagne and caviar?” said Mika, clearly being facetious.

Jack said, “The room is on my account. It all gets billed to my credit card.”

Mika smiled. It was as if Jack had said the magic word: free.

Mika climbed off the bed and grabbed the room service menu from the desk. He started flipping through the pages, but the confusion on his face said it all. He looked as if he were trying to calculate the square root of 367,000 divided by nineteen.

“You want me to read that to you?” said Jack.

“Fuck off,” said Mika, and then he threw the menu across the room. Jack ducked, and it hit the wall behind him.

Mika raided the minibar one more time, grabbed a can of beer, and went back to the bed. The soccer game was over, and he started channel surfing.

“There’s news at ten o’clock on channel seven,” said Jack. He was hoping to find out if the police were looking for him or Sofia.

Mika ignored him. He switched to paid programming and started scrolling through the adult movie menu. The screen lit up with the provocative images of a dozen soap opera rejects turned porn star. Mika chose the sexy blonde in a flick called April Showers. It took about thirty seconds for her to land in the shower with a pizza delivery boy who could only be described as a freak of nature from the waist down.

“Can you at least kill the sound?” said Sofia.

Mika laughed and hit MUTE. “You no like the movie?”

Sofia didn’t answer.

The shower scene was getting steamier. Jack wasn’t really watching, but it did trigger a brief recollection of the one and only time he and Andie had showered together. She washed her hair, conditioned it twice, shaved her legs, applied the exfoliant to her entire body-all while Jack stood off to the side shivering and waiting for someone to throw him a coat or a blanket.

Mika stood up and grabbed his crotch.