The Mantis: Action Adventure Thriller Page 4

  “Don’t touch me.” Gabriella pushed the man’s hand away.

  “Come on don’t be like that,” the man said. “I can give you money if you let me have a little feel.”

  “Go away!” The young girl sternly tightened her body with the immediate feeling of repulsion for the man.

  “Your manners are poor. Let me show you that children should be seen and not heard.” Moving his hand quickly, the man slid it up the leg of the young girl, grabbing at her crotch then reaching for the button of her pants. Dropping to his knees he reached, pulling her close to him by her waist. The scratch of his unshaven face pulled across her neck as she squirmed to pull away. “Just do as I say, and it will be over soon. Keep quiet so I don’t have to hurt you.”

  Dropping her hands, the young girl held herself limp, giving in to the man’s advances. His grip loosened and there was no struggle from her.

  “Now that’s a good girl. I think you’re going to like this and want more.”

  Taking his hand from her arm, his hand fell to his waist and released the button on his pants.

  “Do you want me to lay down?” Gabriella asked, letting her voice lose all emotion and conviction.

  “Yes. That would be nice.” The man started to lower his pants. “Give yourself to me.”

  Reaching down to place her hand on the ground, the girl reached inside the leg of her pants to a steak-knife that was tucked into her sock. The knife held a four-inch blade and came to a point at the tip. Until this time it had been used for utilitarian purposes, but the girl always knew that it could be used to protect her.

  “Scum!” snapped Gabriella, pulling the knife out and plunging it into the man’s chest rapidly five times. The sound of suction from the blade entering and being removed grabbed her ears and imprinted itself on her brain. A cross between anger, disgust, and joy plunged through her mind at the sound of the knife.

  The man’s eyes looked at her with disbelief as his mouth quivered, searching for words. With his pants around his knees he fell to the side and reached out for the girl.

  “The rats will be here soon.” Gabriella’s voice was cold. “Better hope you’re dead before they start eating you.”

  Wiping the blade clean, the girl placed the knife back into her sock and stood up to leave.

  Like a lightning bolt crashing in front of her, Gabriella’s eyes snapped open to see the hotel room and the sappy wallpaper. Breathing rapidly, the haunting night of her first kill outside of training came to visit her when talk of Moscow entered her work, but it wasn’t enough to slow her down.

  Chapter Seven

  After a morning of scouting the area, Gabriella knew she was losing time. Arriving back in the hotel room, she closed the door slowly behind her. Hearing the familiar click of a locking mechanism, she paid it no mind. Hotels and motels were notorious for cheap locking systems that did very little to discourage the people from outside trying to get in. A cheap fabricated lock key with basic instructions from the internet could be altered in order to make entry much easier. In the end, safety wasn't guaranteed.

  Preferring her own way of doing things, Gabriella rigged up a simple tripwire with two simple eye hooks, one placed on either side of the door, running a small fishing line through the hole of the one on the non-locking side of the door over to the hole on the locking side of the door, approximately six-inches off the ground. From there, the line stretched out tight at a 45-degree angle, where she had perched a small semi-automatic handgun that attached to a tripod, and was locked on to the entryway of the door at approximately four-feet high. The fishing line moved behind the weapon, curling itself around, and anchored itself on both sides of the trigger from a small Y she had developed in the fishing line. The hope being that as the door opened, the line would extend itself, pulling the trigger in evenly from both sides and firing a single shot, impacting whoever was entering the room in their chest, giving Gabriella the time to react and make any move she deemed necessary.

  "Not bad, not bad at all," she congratulated herself, looking at the booby trap she had created. "Just as long as nobody tries to walk in here unannounced who's a friendly, I should be okay."

  The comment was made aloud, despite the fact that nobody was in the room. The vision of a time four years earlier where a young man had mistakenly made the choice of walking in the room next to his in the midst of a drunken stupor, causing him to take a single shot from a .45 revolver directly into his stomach. The assault wasn't warranted, and in no way reflected what Gabriella had hoped for. But once it happened, she was forced into a situation of trying to escape, as she was shown on the daily news as a person who had opened fire on a young man walking into the wrong room. It was phrased as an accidental killing on the news, as someone they felt was a woman terrified by a large man coming into her room that she did not know. But she couldn’t afford the attention on her.

  "I need to remember to lock the door," Gabriella muttered to herself, walking over to the door and locking the deadbolt as well as the lower bolt. There would be no more mistakes, as there were a few years before from the simple mistake of not locking the door behind her. "Nobody's gonna be after me anyways."

  Gabriella searched the room, looking for any surveillance equipment that could be there. Her presence in Moscow was one that many considered an aggressive act of the prodigal child returning home. Their knowledge of what she was doing there was minimal, and the most realistic thought that they could have is that she was coming for revenge, if they even knew that she was there at all.

  "Okay, England, let's see what you got." Gabriella moved over to the bed, and climbed up on it with her hands extended to unscrew the sides of the air vent coming into her room.

  Getting close to the air vents, she could already see the paint had been stripped away from the single screws that held in all four corners. Chips of the paint held below on the slight depression where the screws went in, indicating that it had not been long since a screwdriver had been placed there, ripping off the coating of paint and having it drop into place. In an instant she knew that the delivery had been made, but was it made to her specifications?

  "One more and that's it," Gabriella whispered to herself, removing the last screw and dropping the vent on the bed as she placed the screws in her pocket. Extending her arm into the vent, she held back for just a moment, wondering what she would encounter. The expectation was to find the bag that had been left there for her by British Secret Service, but instead she knew that it was a possibility to also find a rat or any other kind of creepy crawly that was setting up home inside the vents. "Probably should have used my flashlight first."

  As her arm extended all the way and she rose up on to her toes, Gabriella pressed her cheek hard against the wall as she tried to press her shoulder completely into the vent. Feeling fabric on the tips of her fingers, she pushed even harder, able to grasp the feeling of a gym bag between her index and middle finger. Pulling with her shoulder and on her fingertips, she used her arm as an extended machine, like a piston driving in as far as possible. She used her fingers to grasp tightly to the object, sliding it back inch by inch until she could get her whole fist around the bag.

  Sliding the bag out, Gabriella was impressed with its length. Four feet by two and a half feet wide, crushed tightly into the vent. As it snuck its way completely through, a burst of air hit Gabriella in the face with refreshing air conditioning that she had been waiting so long for. The bag dropped to the bed with a thump and a rattle of the plastics and metal that were inside. As quick as she could, she bent down, grabbing the vent and putting it back into place, replacing all the screws, in case someone did come to her door so they wouldn’t see the massive opening above her bed.

  Sitting down onto the bed, she twisted the bag to the side as she sat with her legs crossed.

  "I love this part," she said to herself, as she let her hand slowly drift across the top of the bag, feeling bits and pieces of the different contents and what she may be able to do
with them. It was an excitement that she felt each time, unknowing of what weapons she may be using and what surprises might lie ahead in the use of it. It was only the feeling that a sniper could get, only the feeling of someone who is a dead-on marksman that appreciated not just the aesthetics of a weapon that they would use, but every minute detail, the speed of firing time, the well-oiled mechanisms that would cause the shots to be fired in rapid succession with no hookups and no delays, the ingenuity in developing the least amount of recoil to keep the shooter's hand steady and under control. It didn't matter if the expertise in these weapons building was meant for a life or death situation or simply shooting for sport in a local tournament, the engineering feats that were done could not be denied, and were impressive to all who used them.

  Pulling the zipper down slowly, Gabriella widened the opening of the bag, seeing a collection of weapons that were massed together and intermingled. Each one was filled to capacity with the correct ammunition, and there were no more than two additional magazines for each weapon that were included.

  "That's what I'm talking about, baby." Gabriella smiled as she pulled out a Remington 850 shotgun that had been cut down for concealment. The Remington had been a long time favorite for hunters and ranch owners to do their daily work or enjoy their hunts. It had a reputation for being sturdy, solid, and having very few failures when put into action. Having the gun sawed down eliminated any issues if the police were to discover it, looking for the bore holes to match a bullet to the weapon. No investigation could match up the bore holes coming out of a shotgun with that of the bullet when it came to the sawed-off shotgun. All the elements that would be needed for direct identification laid somewhere in a trash heap with the rest of the extension of the barrel.

  Rummaging through the bottom of the bag, she found four different 12-gauge boxes of ammunition, two buckshot and two slugs. In her mind, she knew she'd alternate the pattern of putting them into the shotgun, in order to make her change from one projectile to the other in a flawless fashion. It would only take the time of one shot to move her onto the next one, if that was the one she indeed needed.

  Placing the shotgun on the bed, she patted it gently with one hand, reaching into the bag again and removing a 45-caliber handgun made by Colt.

  "Very interesting, someone's got a sense a history." She turned the weapon over in her hands two to three times. The Colt was not that of the traditional 45 that was used back in taming the Wild West of America, but rather this one was one issued to officers in the military, it had a magazine that was known for its performance and the status that came along with it. A bright silver from tip to handle made it something that would stand out. No doubt the hope was that a firearm as gleaming as this would have the possibility to draw the eyesight of a shooter, pulling his eyes slightly from his cross-hairs and looking to the gleam itself.

  "This could be helpful." She placed it down on the bed next to the Remington. Removing from the bag again two pieces, she found herself with the M249. A high-grade military, light, machine gun that could easily be broken down and transported within a small case. Its simplicity and ease of movement made it the perfect gun for moving into position and making long shots from a distance. Something that was Gabriella's specialty.

  "Oh, look at these babies." Gabriella said with a large smile crossing her face as she reached into the bag again and found small automatic machine guns that perched themselves onto a tripod. The tripods were meant to be stuck into the ground or screwed into wood or metal, and the small machine guns spanning no greater than 12 inches were easily hidden. They could be used by remote control to shift and find targets through a visor worn by the shooter at another end, or the more advanced method for the firearm was to lock onto its target through facial recognition. The small automatic machine guns could lock on a face and recognize it, knowing whether or not it was the enemy. It was an ideal weapon to be set up in a gathering area where it was completely hidden and able to check the identities of each person, and then when given the order, to start to shoot and eliminate those that it did not recognize. There were four in the case that sat awaiting their instructions to do the damage that they needed to.

  "I think I'm starting to like this mission."

  Chapter Eight

  Pulling his head back and into the upright position, the feeling of warm blood flowing freely from his mouth was unmistakable. The large man with the bald head and armless t-shirt was smiling in front of him as he pulled the leather gloves tight on his hands, getting ready for another strike.

  “Why don’t you make this easy on yourself, Otto,” growled the man with the thick Russian accent, as he moved out from behind the man tied to the chair in the center of the room. “I can assure you that Alexei will have no problem beating you to death. It will not be the first time he has done it, and it will not be the last.”

  The large Russian man covered in sweat, smiled the evil smile of a man that had everything going his way. He stood in the center of a room that was in total darkness, other than the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was high wattage and descended, stopping the interrogated person from having their eyes adjust to the darkness in the rest of the room.

  Sounds of footsteps, and the echoes they produced, were the only thing that gave any indication of how far the walls were from where Otto sat. Beyond the ring of light that he was centered in, the darkness became complete. There was no way to tell if there were other people out there or if there was simply nothing. Far too little information to plan an escape.

  “Another one?” questioned the big man punching a fist into his other hand.

  “Not yet. Let’s give Comrade Kline time to think about this,” said the calmer and more relaxed man, dressed in an all-black suit with a white shirt under it. The black tie cut down the middle of his shirt. His hair was slicked back, and he wore round glasses with light wire frames. He was fifty years old if he was a day, but he held the fitness of a man half his age. It was obvious that he had risen above the status of sullying his hands with the beatings, and he was there for the intellectual aspect of the interrogation. “I don’t know what to do with you, sir. I have tried sleep deprivation. I have tried beatings. I have tried threats, but you still stick to this insane story that you are in Russia to build a manufacturing company. I’m not buying that.”

  The man pulled himself in front of Otto and slapped his fingers under the restrained man’s chin. “You do not talk much. You have been trained. Other men would beg for mercy and try to lie if they were what you say you are. But you… You take the beatings and just stay silent. I wonder what secrets are held in that head of yours?”

  “No matter what I say, you will just beat me more,” Otto snarled as he pulled his head back down. “I know you’ll never believe the truth, so why should I try?”

  “Why?” the well-dressed man asked, keeping his tone calm. “You ask why? Because I could save your life. Do you think the KGB just lets people go back to their normal life after interrogation? Oh no, comrade. If you survive, you will be sent far away. You will never be heard from again. I will just charge you with one of the many unsolved murders in Moscow and nobody will think twice about you.”

  “So, you’re KGB…” Otto produced the first smile he’d had in three days. “Guess I’m the one getting the information now.”

  “It is only useful information if you have someone to give it to.” The man with the slicked back hair seemed to lose his calm tone and it fell into a more jaded and aggressive pattern. “I think your time here is done. Alexei, I need to move things up to a higher level.”

  “If you’re going to kill him please let me take care of that for you,” Alexei sneered as he locked eyes with Otto.

  “Yes, I will do that, but for now I need to have just him and I in this room. Thank you.”

  Disappearing into the dark, Alexei and the man’s feet could be heard walking away. A scraping sound of wood on concrete echoed off the walls, and the well-dressed man came back into
the circle of light holding a wooden chair that he placed down in front of Otto. A moment later he returned with another chair, and a small bag that looked like a doctor’s bag that was used for house calls in years gone by.

  Placing the bag on the seat of the extra chair, the man sat down directly across from Otto. “I did not want our relationship to come to this, but you have forced my hand.”

  “I haven’t forced you to do a thing, you sick son of a bitch,” Otto growled, bearing his bloodied teeth.

  “But you did. You have not been willing to cooperate, so I need to help you become motivated for me. This is your choice not mine. You can speak now.”

  “I have nothing to say. I have told you everything about me. You’re the one convinced that I’m something I am not.”

  With a smile, the man leaned back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I have risen up fast in the ranks of the KGB. I am fifty-two years old and I have a ranking of Commander, and I am on the short list of men to be considered to move up to Captain General. There is no telling how high I can rank with the years I have left.”

  “I am thrilled for you,” Otto said sarcastically.

  “Do you know how a man gets to that position so quickly?” the man asked rhetorically. “By never failing. I succeed in all my missions. I make sure of that. So, when I was asked to find out the information that you have, I said yes, quickly. I have broken men from America’s CIA and Britain’s secret service. You would prove to be just another victory for me, but you have a resolve that is seldom seen in men.”

  Otto watched as the man reached over and unbuckled the clasp of the doctor’s bag without uncrossing his legs. Leaning back in his chair he continued, letting the bag sit open and not reveling what was inside. “At times like this, I go back to my roots in the KGB. As young man I was an interrogator full time. I realized early on that helping people find the truth was sometimes a messy job. Do you know what I mean?”