Assault or Attrition (3 page)

Sen.
Jenkins:
Wait, how is that a related note? And are we finished?
I thou—

O’Neill:
Thank you for being here, Senator. And now a word
from our sponsor.

“
Are you out
of your mind?”
the nurse shouted from just beyond the
threshold. “Lay down, you’ll pop your stitches!”

With my bare
feet dangling from the side of the hospital bed, I scanned the room
through bleary eyes, tired and stinging from the harsh glare of
fluorescent bulbs overhead. I’d forgotten where I was, and how I’d
arrived.

By the time the
nurse reached me the blood had already seeped through my gown. “Lay
back,” she instructed, rapidly unfastening the buttons around my
abdomen. The gruesome gash beneath my ribcage looked freshly
sutured, with a single stitch popped out of place. “It doesn’t look
too bad. Just take it easy, and I’ll find a doctor.”

I glanced at
the translucent bracelet fastened around my wrist. ‘Joseph Brant
Memorial Hospital. Burlington, Ontario’. It all came back to me in
broken, jagged fragments. Screams. Blood. Flashing lights. And
questions – lots of questions. Doctors and nurses asking me if I
knew my own name, and what day it was, and if I could count how
many fingers were being held up in front of me. Surprisingly simple
questions become quite a challenge to answer when you’re fading in
and out of consciousness, blood streaming from a gaping wound in
your body.

I craned my
neck in search of clothes and quickly realized I wasn’t alone.
Valentina was slouched into an angular wooden chair, cradling a
paper cup in her lap. Using her ability to manipulate water she was
creating a tiny show for herself, forcing the liquid to dance and
flow in long, spiralling streams. When she averted her eyes the
water fell, splashing back into the cup.

“Good morning,
sunshine.” Her voice was scratchy and dry from the winter air. The
dark circles around her eyes indicated that she hadn’t slept in
days – possibly since I was admitted. “Do I submit a form for
overtime pay, or will the funds show up on my next paycheck?”

“Don’t worry
about it. You’ll be compensated.” I squinted at the oversized clock
on the far wall, which marked each passing second with an annoying
click.

“Sixty-two
hours, nineteen minutes,” she stated, before I had the chance to
ask the question. “They said you can leave as soon as you’re able
to climb a flight of stairs. You were lucky, Mox. The blade missed
every major vein and artery.”

I never
believed in the absurd notion of luck, but as I continued to cheat
death time after time, the concept was slowly growing on me.

As Valentina
continued to fill in the blanks of the previous two and a half
days, a towering, dark-skinned man strolled into the room with a
briefcase in-hand.

“Officer...Dziobak?” I remembered him from Manhattan, when he was
hired as private security for Cameron Frost. Even with my memory
functioning at a hundred percent, I still had no idea how to
pronounce his name.

He chuckled and
extended his hand, shaking mine gently. “I told you, Mox – call me
Todd. And it’s ‘detective’ now, which is why I lost the blues.” He
gestured down at his perfectly pressed khaki pants and crisp white
shirt. “How are things? Aside from being a human pin cushion?” His
eye trailed down to the fresh bloodstain that dotted my hospital
gown.

“I’ve been
better,” I said flatly. “But they said it’ll be
months
before I can break dance again.” I motioned to my bodyguard, who
scrambled to her feet and attempted to straighten her blazer and
skirt. The outfit was rumpled with a coffee stain marking the left
arm; after sleeping in her clothes for two consecutive nights,
there was no amount of fussing that could have made it appear even
remotely presentable. “This is Valentina Garcia.”

“I read the
reports,” Todd replied with an affable smile. “Nice work up there
in the tower, Miss Garcia. A little messy, but effective. Is that
what they taught you in Central Africa?”

I raised an
eyebrow, glancing back at her.

“I see you did
your homework on me,” she replied, her words frosting over as they
spilled from her lips. “Africa was just a job.”

The detective
had clearly struck a nerve. Valentina’s posture stiffened, hands
balling into tightly clenched fists. I’d never known her to have a
short fuse, so the visceral reaction to the officer’s question
caught me off-guard.

Before the
conversation spiralled out of control I decided to intervene,
projecting as much authority as I could while lying prone in a
hospital gown. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on
here?”

“Your bodyguard
has quite a resume,” Todd explained. “She protected a military
dictator for over a year. Quite an evil bastard from what I
understand, even by the impressive standards of that region.” His
eyes flicked back to Valentina. “Not too picky about the clients
you work for, I’m guessing.”

“The money
spends the same as anyone else’s,” she fired back.

Todd smiled
once again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sure it does, Miss
Garcia...once you wash the blood off.”

I threw my legs
over the side of the bed, forcing myself to stand. The sudden
movement caused a burning sensation that stretched from my lower
abdomen straight up my spinal column. I swayed. Todd reached out
and clasped his hand around my arm, keeping me upright. I made a
mental note to ask for some additional pain-killers when the nurse
came to re-stitch my stomach.

I thanked the
detective for his assistance, and asked Valentina to step outside
for a moment so we could speak privately. She agreed, replying with
nothing more than a sharp nod.

Todd waited for
the heavy wooden door to slam shut behind him before speaking
again. “She’s a piece of work.”

I couldn’t
argue, but her results speak for themselves. “She has her moments,
but I owe her my life.”

The detective
said nothing, but the look on his face spoke volumes. In his line
of work, you survived by putting faith in the people watching your
back. When someone takes an oath to protect you – and pulls through
in a life-or-death situation – it’s hard to pass judgment on their
track record, no matter how sketchy the details might seem at the
time.

“Should you be
walking around?” he asked.

I groaned and
leaned back, using the edge of my bed for support. “Probably not,
but I need to get out of here sooner than later.” I glanced down at
his briefcase. “I appreciate the visit, but I assume you’re not
here for a social call.”

He laid the
case flat on my bed and unlatched the locks, flipping open the lid.
Inside was a tattered manila folder six inches thick. Old school
cop, old school filing system, I suppose. I couldn’t blame him;
given the choice, I still preferred the texture of paper against my
fingertips to scanning a lifeless holo-screen.

Riffling
through the stack of photographs and hand-written notes, he yanked
out a creased eight-by-ten snapshot and held it up for my
inspection. “Recognize this beauty?”

It was the
waiter who stabbed me; a stocky, unshaven man in his mid-thirties,
with closely cropped black hair and a broken nose that looked as if
it had been continually deviated from a lifetime of bar fights, and
had never been allowed enough time to properly heal between
brawls.

“His name is
Oleg Vovchanchyn, a Russian who immigrated to Canada three years
ago. When the Toronto PD fished his body out of Lake Ontario I gave
them a call and asked to see some of the evidence.” Todd pulled out
a second photo that showed the man’s shirtless chest, likely taken
just prior to an autopsy.

Tattoos –
seventeen of them, to be exact – blanketed his torso, all with
distinct meanings. I assumed at one point they were black, but over
the years, the symbols and images had faded to a time-worn, muddy
blue. A grim reaper stretched around his ribcage, clutching a
sickle in one skeletal hand and a newborn baby in the other. Todd
explained that, in a Russian prison, a tattoo of the reaper
signifies that you’ve killed before. I didn’t want to know what the
baby meant.

Vovchanchyn
also had a pair of stars that adorned his shoulders, barbed wire
wrapped around his midsection, and the Crucifixion of Christ
emblazoned across his chest. Although they all meant something
different, they had one thing in common: they were old. Nearly ten
years, by the looks of the most recent ink – all except for one. A
single tattoo was not only in color, but practically glowed like a
fresh coat of paint: a bright red hammer and sickle emblem on his
left bicep.

“So he’s a
Russian,” I said flatly, tapping the photo. “Aren’t they into that
Soviet-era stuff?”

“Maybe,” he
replied. “But Oleg here went out and got inked
recently
.
What significant event in this guy’s life could have prompted him
to get his first tattoo in a decade?”

“He’s Red Army.
How did he know I would be at the CN Tower?” My first reaction was
to assume that I was being followed, or that, however unlikely,
someone in my inner circle had leaked my location.

“He didn’t,”
Todd said with a small shake of his head. “His phone records and
Emails came up clean. Not to mention he’s been working at the 360
Restaurant for the last two years. I think it was a
coincidence.”

It didn’t seem
possible. “So someone who wanted me dead just
happened
to be
serving a plate of fries at the table next to me? Shit...guess I’m
not as lucky as I thought.”

“It was going
to happen to you sooner or later, because it’s been happening all
over the world.”

“What, people
getting attacked by angry Russians with poor hygiene?”

“No,” Todd
replied gravely. “People getting terminated who look a hell of a
lot like you.” He leafed through his file folder and produced more
than a dozen photographs of dead bodies. All of the victims were
around thirty years old with short brown hair, a square jaw line
and blue eyes – it was uncanny. The man who got his throat slit in
Oslo could have been my twin.

“This file
represents the body count that piled up during the three months
you’ve been gone. This is the first killer we’ve caught thanks to
your bodyguard, but after a shooting in Budapest last month I dug
up this security footage.” He pulled a tablet from the inside
pocket of the briefcase and projected a small holo-screen into the
air. The soundless video played instantly, displaying a young girl
with shoulder–length blond hair, dressed from head-to-toe in black
leather. She was circling a corner to duck into an alley, making no
attempt to conceal the smoking revolver that she was clutching in
her hand. When her back faced the camera, Todd commanded the
footage to pause and enhance three-hundred percent. With her hair
flowing in mid-stride, the base of her neck was exposed, and it
revealed a bright red tattoo. Fresh as a new coat of paint.

I studied the
video as it flickered in the sunlight that began to pour through my
room’s lone window. The pieces came together with terrifying
clarity. “How many?” I asked, unable to unglue my eyes from the
holo-screen.

“No idea,” Todd
replied softly. “A hundred? A thousand? Hell, we don’t even know
how
the Red Army is communicating. All we know is that there
are a
lot
of them, and they’re everywhere. And today my
theory was confirmed.”

“What’s
that?”

“That the
group’s objective is pretty simple,” he said. “If there’s a chance
to kill Matthew Moxon, take it – no matter what the cost.”

***

The reason I
hired a bodyguard in the first place was because I anticipated the
backlash
, even before news reports started flooding in about
the rise of the Red Army. I just had no idea things would escalate
this rapidly, or to this degree.

Despite the
deepening economic divide in America and around the world, violent
crime had actually decreased across the board. Angered with the
disparity between the privileged and the rest of the population,
people vented their frustrations online and during the occasional
protest – but for the most part, the working poor remained silent.
Not because of apathy; at least that’s not how I saw it. I think it
was simply a case of exhaustion. Over time a grim realization set
in: no matter who they voted for, the man or woman in the Oval
Office would maintain the status quo. It was unfair, and
demoralizing, and it was certainly worth shouting about, but the
average person was simply too tired to continue ice skating
uphill.

Now, this was
something different. In the aftermath of Sergei Taktarov’s death, a
spark had been ignited that birthed a movement. Russia’s Son had
embodied everything people wished they could be: he’d been strong,
assertive, and powerful beyond measure – and they thought he would
be the answer to their prayers. Whether he had the power to carry
out his promises and enact massive change was irrelevant, because
his followers believed in him. For the first time in generations
there’d been hope, and I’d dashed it.

The Red Army’s
backlash certainly had the potential to escalate, although it
seemed unlikely. Movements, violent or otherwise, were always
stomped out before they had the opportunity to spread. The Chicago
riot of 2030 was the last public protest of any consequence; it
erupted when Congress passed a bill to lower the already stagnant
minimum wage, and the result was a silent massacre. People took to
the streets, only to be met with tear gas, cattle prods and worse.
Only a handful of fatalities were reported, but some estimate the
real number was closer to a thousand. In the aftermath, anyone
wearing a ‘Remember Chicago’ armband anywhere in America was
detained and questioned, being accused of sympathising with
domestic terrorists.