Black Scorpion (14 page)

After completing his hand-to-hand and knife combat training with Alexander, Michael paused atop the straw tatami mats.

“This is just the beginning,” he said, after Alexander tossed him a towel. Directly to his rear stood a canvas-covered
makiwara
board that looked like an archery target from his knife throwing practice. “But you know that already, don't you, Alexander?”

His interview with the police had been detailed, but ultimately unproductive. It was clear they had no idea what had shut off all the power for those five minutes. The entire Strip and surrounding area had gone dark. They had no suspects. They probed Michael for some connection to the death of Edward Devereaux which, in itself, was hardly surprising given that Michael's seemed to be the first name that came to mind whenever something unusual happened anywhere in the city. This time the difference lay in the detectives' probative questions about the hotel itself and how a death like this could possibly have happened. Any connection to the greater blackout suggested possible murder, while a mere random occurrence suggested a tragic event linked to some structural flaw in the design of the Daring Sea suites. And, as a precaution, the FBI had ordered all those suites closed until further notice, although Michael had steadfastly refused their overtures to shutter the entire hotel.

None of which boded well for Michael, the Seven Sins Resort and Casino, or Tyrant Global. The FBI decided not to interview him until tomorrow, when Michael's old friend Special Agent Del Slocumb promised to handle the chore himself.

He continued to look toward Alexander, as a huge chunk of meat descended from the Red Water feeding time for the sharks above. Snatched up by Assassino, himself, in a wild flurry that scattered the rest of the sharks.

“There's a predator out there,” Michael told Alexander, “and we're the prey.”

 

P
ART
T
HREE

THE DEVIL

 

If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

Genghis Khan

 

THIRTY

V
ADJA,
R
OMANIA

The convoy of massive black Range Rover SUVs, their windows blackened, thumped down the flattened earth road like steel monsters from a far-off future. It seemed to stretch forever, a dust storm kicked up in the convoy's wake. A road that could for days be traveled only by single flatbed trucks lugging loads from farm to market seemed to rebel against their presence, slowing their approach to the town center with pits and potholes forged by the last storm and the one before that.

At the first sign of their presence, Scarlett and Ilie had veered farther up through the hillside that steepened appreciably as they drew closer to the actual mountain range itself. Scarlett assumed the vehicles had taken one of several major spurs that ran off the Transfagarasan Highway to reach such an out-of-the-way spot settled by gypsies years before, atop land to which no one else had laid claim.

She had mixed a bit with the villagers and enjoyed hearing tales of their rich history that had been waylaid in large part by the efforts of former communist dictator Nicolae Ceau
ş
escu to end the roaming that had for so long defined their lifestyle. So the gypsies who'd managed to survive the Nazi onslaught had become virtual prisoners placed, for no better alternative, in fixed locations that could be best described as internment camps that replaced their traditions with strict rules and regulations often brutally enforced.

While things had greatly improved for their people after communism's fall, many of the residents of Vadja complained to Scarlett about the loss of the true old ways. Roaming the countryside had become akin to homelessness and poverty, leading many of what had once been called tribes to settle in villages like this where they could keep their memories and live as they saw fit.

As a result, to the occupants of those Range Rovers, the village of Vadja in Romania's Transylvanian region must have looked plucked from another time. The central square was little more than a tight cluster of clapboard buildings with peaked roofs, comprising both homes and small businesses that served as a gathering point for the once migratory residents. They walked around socializing, enjoying a monthly community lunch, a long tradition kept up now to keep hold of as many of the old ways and spirit amid modern times as possible. Even the larger homes dotting the landscape were uniform in design, square with central chimneys and simple entryways fronted by heavy wooden porticos layered with straw matting to catch the dirt and manure laden within the grooves of the men's work boots. Besides the farm store, combination restaurant and market, old church building, and modest town hall, no structure stood out amid the barns and storage sheds that froze the village in time.

From her perch with Ilie just short of the start of the steep mountain grade, Scarlett saw a dust cloud announce the convoy's presence well before it entered the central square. At the final curve, the ten black Range Rovers seemed to emerge out of nowhere, as if conjured by some mystic or magician, looking as foreign here as spaceships in a modern city. Even more anomalous was the presence of an old blue bus at the convoy's rear.

A pair of Romanian national police officers armed only with pistols, the detail assigned to Vadja, emerged from a small shack and approached the vehicles as they ground to a halt in eerie synchronicity. A small crowd of residents had gathered and the officers sifted their way through them, stopping just short of drawing their weapons when the doors to the Range Rovers flew open.

Scarlett stood alongside Ilie in a shroud of brush, watching from the hillside as upward of sixty men spilled out fast and hard from behind the Range Rovers' blackened windows, brandishing a mix of submachine guns and assault rifles either slung from their shoulders or clutched in their grasp. All wore tight black, form-fitting masks, stitched with thick weaves of white in the pattern of a skull to make them appear like an army of the walking dead. The police officers held their hands forward in a conciliatory fashion, addressing the first gunmen to emerge when the set immediately behind those viciously gunned the officers down. Their bodies crumpled to the dusty town square paved with thin gravel, and the gunmen stepped over them as they advanced into the gathering crowd that collectively shrank back in fear.

Those who turned to flee were swiftly caught, the gunmen sweeping their legs out with blows from the butts of their assault rifles. Others who'd emerged from the Range Rovers paid the gathered townspeople no heed at all, fanning out to search the nearest of the buildings and surrounding homes, while the next wave out did their part to herd the curious and frightened townspeople into a tight cluster in the center of the square.

A third phalanx of gunmen rushed for the homes that dotted the village's perimeter and outskirts. This while a dozen men kept their weapons trained on the increasing numbers being gathered in the town square itself, a number of the villagers not shy about voicing their protests. For the oldest among them, this brought back memories of the persecution they'd suffered under the communists, their reaction understandably indignant, while whatever urge to resist they might have felt was tempered by the bodies of the two police officers now lying atop widening pools of blood.

Though it was daytime, the sky had turned unusually dark, filled with thick black clouds that had begun to sprinkle raindrops instead of unleashing torrents of water from the sky. As if the convoy had somehow dragged the darkness here with them and would take it away again once they departed.

Some of the men who'd dispersed from the vehicles returned to the square shoving stray residents, including the elderly and infirm, ahead of them. Another group continued the process of going door-to-door and breaking into any building that was locked, collecting those residents by any means necessary to shepherd them into the square. Others returned with several dozen grade-school-age children in tow. They ranged from six or seven years old to several boys and girls in their mid-teens.

With the village deemed “cleared,” four of the gunmen took up posts on either side of the SUV centered in the ten-vehicle convoy. Then more armed men fanned out through the crowd, their positions chosen strategically to keep all the villagers in their sights and to avoid catching each other in a cross fire should the need arise to let loose with their weapons.

The rain picked up slightly, the sky seeming darken even more, while the villagers watched a rear door of the center SUV opening to allow a figure to emerge. He was garbed entirely in black, from his gloved hands to his shoes and long coat that scraped across the ground. But what the residents of Vadja noticed more anything else was a dangling, shroud-like black veil draped over the figure's head to conceal his face.

A second figure trailed him out the open door, the SUV rocking on its springs as if grateful to be relieved of his vast bulk. Virtually all of that bulk was muscle, showcased by a military-style jacket that fit his massive frame like a glove, only half of his face covered by a mask. The massive figure had blond hair slicked back to ride his scalp tightly. Standing as close to seven feet as six made his frame seem even more laden with rippling muscle. All told, a terrifying and impossible sight that left the villagers gawking.

The veiled figure, meanwhile, stepped over one of the police officers' bodies and kicked at the next as if to make sure he, too, was dead.

“I wear this veil for your own good,” the man began, his voice measured and even, almost mechanically calm. “Because if you saw my face, I'd have no choice but to leave all of you dead. I believe you've heard of me. I believe all of you know who I am.”

A few of the old women crossed themselves, muttering words indistinguishable to those even next to them who were mumbling the same thing.

“Now,” he continued, rotating his eyes about the crowd, “there's something your village has that I want. Where is the archaeologist you have become familiar with?”

The villagers exchanged blank stares, none offering a response.

“A woman in her late twenties,” he added. “An American familiar with your ways and language.”

More silence.

“Please don't make me repeat myself,” he addressed them, in the same measured tone. “If you know who I am, you know what I'm capable of.”

“Diavol,”
a villager uttered in little more than a whisper.

“Close enough,” said the dark man.

 

THIRTY-ONE

V
ADJA,
R
OMANIA

“Black Scorpion,” someone in the crowd muttered.

The villagers closest to the dark man caught a flash of white behind the front portion of his veil, a hint of a smile.

“I see you are acquainted with the name both myself and my organization are known by. So it would seem no further introductions are necessary, and we may attend to the business that has brought me here so you may return to your normal lives.”

Standing before those cowering in fear, Vladimir Dracu seemed not to blink, his gloved hands clasped before him. Some days he had to remind himself of his own name, since he was almost never addressed by it, and could count on a single hand the number who knew him by any name at all. And Dracu was glad for that, since the years in which he'd gone by his real name were riddled with nothing but misery and memories better forgotten.

But Dracu couldn't forget; not everything, not even most. The tortured experience of those times had forged the essence of the man who became Black Scorpion and one could not exist without the other. The bridge between who he'd been and who he was was soaked in blood, lots of it, shed by those both powerful and weak, the latter not unlike the hopeless lot gathered in the square before him now.

Dracu walked into the cluster of villagers, his huge bodyguard following at a discreet distance behind him. Dracu circled amid them, feeling their fear and hearing their sobs at the realization that a dark legend had come to their town. The rain stopped, the clouds moved on, and the sun's rays hit him like a spotlight, turning his black garb and veil shiny, more like a sheen of paint slathered over his skin than clothing. Parents drew their children in closer, clutching them as if that might provide some protection.

“Yes, I am real,” Dracu continued. “Not a legend, or a nightmare, or some phantom conjured by the organization to which your village has been paying tribute for so many years now. But I will be here only as long as it takes someone among you to tell me where I can find this American female archaeologist, where she might be hiding.”

No one spoke. A few of the villagers exchanged taut glances.

Dracu shook his head again, expression tightening, angered now instead of regretful. “Who speaks for you?” he asked the villagers clustered before him.

There was no response.

“I ask again, who speaks for you?”

Hesitation followed once more, before a big bearded man wearing an old black hat faded to gray in places raised his hand.

“Me, sir,” he said, voice muffled by his hood. “I am Arek, chief elder of the village.”

Dracu moved to him, close enough to feel the heat and fear on his breath. He stretched a hand outward and laid it atop Arek's shoulder, feeling the man stiffen fearfully.

“Can you feel my touch? Because it's the touch of a man. See, I'm not a monster, am I?” He turned toward the massive figure behind him. “Armura isn't a monster either, in spite of his appearance. Show him, my friend.”

With that, Armura tore off his sleeveless military-style jacket to reveal one side of his chest and neck to be horribly scarred by what looked like crisscrossing claw marks.

“Appearances, you see, can be deceiving. Armura means
armor
in Romanian because as a young man growing up in Siberia, his face was mauled by a tiger he ended up killing with his bare hands. He paid for that with the loss of his senses. Armura cannot touch, taste, or smell. He sees and he hears, and that is all he needs. But I call him Armura because he has felt no pain since that fateful day and is physically incapable of ever feeling it again. Some days I envy him for being shielded from the painful world in which we live.”