The red menace 1, p.13
The Red Menace #1, page 13
The Soviet leader looked like a melting snowman in an ill-fitting blue suit. His great black eyebrow was a misplaced mustache glued over a set of dull eyes that held not a glimmer of warmth or human intelligence.
“The Soviet Union welcomes back its friend and comrade Colonel Ivan Strankov,” First Secretary Brezhnev said, as if Strankov had been on extended vacation in a dacha on the Black Sea these past eight years. “See to General Valtroikin for your new assignment. Good day, Comrade Colonel Strankov.”
A bewildered Strankov quickly learned that he was the beneficiary of the latest shakeup in the Soviet hierarchy. The Prague Spring of 1968 had strengthened Brezhnev’s leadership position and he had purged many whom he considered threats. The first secretary had been introduced to Strankov once many years before, and the former Motherland director was saved from exile based solely on having a firm, dry handshake.
But it was no longer the 1950s and Ivan Strankov was not the man he once was.
A cursory moment’s introspection would have revealed that Strankov’s first loyalty had always been to himself, but Strankov the self-proclaimed genius, Strankov the master manipulator of the Soviet system, was incapable of self-examination. In his mind, Russia had betrayed him. He therefore no longer owed loyalty to the USSR.
The Red Menace was long gone. This he learned his first day returned to Moscow. The masked figure had disappeared sometime in 1960. Several Iron Curtain services had claimed credit for his death, but no body was ever produced.
Strankov accepted his new assignment in Cuba, and there he marinated in his bitterness for two long years.
The former Motherland director oversaw completion of the secret Soviet base. The plans were drawn up well before the Cuban Missile Crisis, so all Strankov had to do was stand back and let the men under his command do their jobs.
He never gained back much of the weight he had lost in the gulag, and when after twenty-five months he started mysteriously losing what little he’d regained, he returned to Moscow from Havana. There he learned that the cancer that had been secretly gnawing away at him from within was already well advanced. There were no treatment options. At most, the doctors gave him three months to live.
The death sentence became the most liberating force in his entire life. Despite the advice of his Soviet doctors, Strankov returned to Cuba.
He became a man possessed.
By an amazing stroke of luck, Dr. Oleg Plassko had been teaching botany at Universidad de Habana for the better part of the Sixties, and Strankov had already brought the old Motherland scientist back into the fold.
“They have clipped my wings, Comrade Colonel Strankov. Clipped my wings!”
Plassko had slurred drunkenly while nursing his daily vodka bottle in the tiny office from which the Cubans had forced him to work at the university.
Plassko was delighted with the freedom Colonel Strankov gave him on the Soviet base and, his genius finally properly financed, was only too happy to keep his great work secret from the Cubans and KGB.
Certain modifications were made to the Soviet missiles under Strankov’s command. Engineers who learned early on to fear their base commander followed his orders unquestioningly, no matter how strange or dangerous.
Ivan Strankov’s work became his life, and his single-mindedness extended that life a month, then two, then a year beyond the best-case projections of his doctors.
Colonel Ivan Strankov had his own dying wish to fulfill.
The Red Menace was gone but the nation he still loved was still there.
But no one and nothing lived forever.
13
Colonel Ivan Strankov felt the familiar little twinge of euphoria that stirred in his belly every time he awoke to the creeping realization that he had not died in his sleep.
Every day was a gift; a new step towards the greatest act of vengeance in the history of the human race. He had been dreaming about his grandparents, about his career, his exile in Siberia, his recent years in Cuba. And, for some reason, the Red Menace.
That was strange. His old enemy was long gone and Strankov had successfully banished him from his mind long ago. So why was the Red Menace so prominent in his thoughts right now? And why, for that matter, was Strankov sleeping sitting up and why could he not move his arms?
Strankov’s eyes slowly fluttered open. He found that he was staring directly into the eyes of a waking nightmare.
“Well it’s about time, Comrade Crapski,” said the Red Menace. “For a minute there I thought you were going to sleep straight through Judgment Day. Which for you, incidentally, is about twenty seconds from now.”
The Menace had drawn up a folding chair and was knee to knee with Strankov in the small supply closet. He was leaning forward so that their faces were two feet apart, and was smiling placidly beneath his glowing red mask.
Strankov lunged, straining at his bonds, but all he managed to do was tip his chair forward. The Red Menace tapped his chest and sent all four chair legs back to the floor. Strankov launched a wild foot forward, but the Menace grabbed the leg by the ankle and shoved the Soviet ccolonel’s foot back down under the wooden folding chair.
“Only girls and commies kick, Strankov,” the Menace instructed.
The Russian colonel bellowed for help but all that passed his purple lips was a pathetic squeak. The Red Menace held up his index finger and Strankov saw the tiny barb that extended from the tip of the gauntlet.
“Light dose. Just the vocal chords,” the Menace said. “You can talk, you just can’t yell. So what should we two old buddies chat about? Hey, I know. How ‘bout you tell me everything about these nukes you’ve parked ninety miles from Florida?”
Strankov bared yellow fangs, as if by sheer will he could rip out the masked man’s throat. “You Americans are so prosaic.”
“I’d probably be insulted if I knew what that meant,” said the Red Menace.
“The MIC agent. Wilson. He is the reason you are here.” Strankov shuffled his feet beneath his chair. The Menace expected him to kick out again, but the fight had apparently drained from his legs. The Russian pulled them together, boot heels nearly touching. “I never thought MIC would be threat any longer. I certainly did not imagine that they would bring you from retirement. I should have been more careful.”
“And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. You were always lousy at the spy stuff, Strankov. The only guy on the planet who didn’t know you were a complete bust was you. Now, if we could move this along? The nukes?”
A soft growl rumbled in the Russian’s throat. “In a way I am actually glad to see you. For years I was in gulag my hatred of you kept me alive. Then I get out to find you are gone. Poof. Vanished. But now you are here at end. Is fitting. Before now I think only that I will wipe out America and only hope to get you. Now I know you die too.”
“Okay, let’s back up, Charlie,” the Menace said. “First, you’ve got maybe four missiles here, tops.”
“Three.”
“Fine. Three. No way you’re wiping out America with three nukes. Second, you’re assuming I’m not going to pull the plug on them which, for the record, I am. Third, don’t you find all this talk about killing in bad taste? No offense, and I don’t know if you’ve seen a mirror lately but, pal, you look like death warmed over.”
The yellow fangs returned, this time as part of a triumphant grin.
“That, as you Americans say, makes two of us.”
The Menace heard a soft scraping sound, like two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together. Too late he realized he should have bound the Russian’s feet.
The brilliant white flash came from Strankov’s boots. Something hidden in the heels.
In that strange split-second before an explosion, when time seems to slow to an impossible crawl, the Red Menace had a sudden burst of memory: schematics stolen from a Sarajevo apartment. A Motherland device secreted in a boot heel. A small explosive charge triggering a canister of poison gas.
The world suddenly tripped back to normal speed just as the explosive gas cloud blew out from below the chair in every direction.
Instinct kicked in. The Menace grabbed Strankov by the lapels the instant he saw the flash of light. Before the soft pop of the small explosion even registered in his ears, he was yanking the Russian forward. The gas exploded from Strankov’s heels beneath the chair, but the Red Menace and the Russian colonel were already flying away from the blast zone, away from the poisonous cloud.
The Menace hit the door hard just above the lock with the meaty part of his right shoulder. The doorknob shattered, ripping chunks of metal and concrete from the frame.
The Menace tumbled back into the hallway dragging Strankov with him. The two men landed in a tangled heap on the hallway floor. The chair to which Strankov was tied shattered on impact and chunks of brittle wood scattered crazily in every direction.
The poison gas cloud hissed harmlessly from the closet and dissipated along the high ceiling of the long corridor.
One broken chair leg slid end-over-end across the cement. It stopped only when it tapped the toe of a military boot that belonged to neither Strankov nor the Red Menace.
“Aw, crap,” said the Red Menace, flat on his back, when he saw the two shocked Cuban soldiers standing three feet away.
“Kill hi—!” Strankov gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Hold that thought,” the Menace said, and rabbit-punched the Russian sharply in the nose. Strankov’s head bounced hard against the concrete floor, rivers of blood spurted from both nostrils, and his bloodshot eyes fluttered shut. The Menace shrugged up to the two new arrivals. “C’mon, I can’t be the only one who was getting sick of that guy. Show of hands?”
The dumbfounded Cubans quickly gathered their wits. Both men grabbed for the rifles slung over their shoulders.
The soldiers were fast. The Red Menace was faster.
A foot shot out and caught one Cuban in the knee. There was a satisfying crunch of bone, and the man dropped to the floor, howling in pain and grabbing at his broken kneecap. One down.
The second soldier had his rifle free and was swinging it around, but in the time it took to grab his weapon, the Menace had already sprung to his feet.
The Red Menace grabbed the rifle in both hands, barrel and butt. The furious soldier expected the masked man to try to wrest the gun from his hands and he braced both feet firmly for the titanic struggle. But rather than tug on the gun, the Red Menace pushed; hard. The gun launched forward into the soldier’s face, the stock slammed the man in the forehead and the Cuban’s hands automatically sprang open.
The Menace swung the rifle around fast, slamming the butt into the woozy soldier’s temple, and the man obligingly dropped to the floor in an unconscious heap.
The victory was short lived. The Red Menace heard the heavy footfalls of running reinforcements before he could fling the gun away.
Five more soldiers raced into view far down the corridor. They had arrived on the scene with great urgency, summoned by the crashing door and sounds of a fight, but the men stopped dead when they saw the rifle clattering across the floor as if thrown by a ghost. Nearby was Soviet Colonel Strankov and two Cuban conscripts, all lying on the floor amidst the ruins of the closet door and a shattered folding chair. A thin cloud of mist slipped from the open supply room door.
Down the hall, the Red Menace stood stock-still.
Had they seen him? The hallway lights were weak, but he was standing almost directly under one of the caged bulbs. They were far enough that they wouldn’t see red, but in the light he’d likely be an indistinct black blob, a ghostly apparition.
Confusion. Shouts in Spanish. At the Menace’s feet, the man cradling his broken knee screamed something the Red Menace did not understand. Up the hallway, hesitation vanished. The men leveled their guns and ran toward their fallen comrades.
The Red Menace turned and ran. He flew into the shadows at the hallway’s edge and kept his head low as he raced for all he was worth in the direction opposite the soldiers. Gone were thoughts of age and mortality, of mental and physical weakness. The trip to the base had been exhausting, but in the heat of battle adrenaline kicked in.
A single gunshot rang out and he felt the bullet whiz past his ear. The Menace’s own gun was out, instinct took aim and he fired back as he ran. The shot took a charging soldier square in the chest and he collapsed to floor, tripping two of his running comrades. The men fell flat and their scattering guns bounced off the walls.
As the Red Menace raced around the corner he got a glimpse of Strankov. The Russian might be dead. The Soviet colonel lay unmoving on the floor in front of the closet, twin streams of blood dribbling down his ghastly purple face. He’d needed more time with Strankov. Another five minutes would have been enough.
No matter. Strankov was finished. He’d given the Russian ample warning at their last meeting. As he ran, the Menace took aim at Strankov’s chest.
A barrage of sudden gunfire from the two running soldiers forced his gun back beneath his flapping cape.
The two tripped soldiers scrambled to snatch up their dropped weapons.
The fresh salvo ripped chunks out of cinderblock in his wake as he raced around the corner and bounded up the stairs, furious that he hadn’t had the chance to finish off Strankov once and for all. He burst like an angry wraith into the missile control room.
The room was still empty. He slammed the door shut and grabbed for a deadbolt. Not only was there no deadbolt, there was no lock at all on the steel door.
“Why are Russkies always so blasted trusting?” he grumbled.
The Menace flung a chair up under the door handle one-handed and with the thumb of his free hand he flipped the notch on the butt of his gun.
Two soft gas pops were echoed by nearly simultaneous splats on the long, low window that overlooked the missile silos. As soon as he’d fired his gun, the Menace was diving for cover behind the main console in the center of the room.
Behind him, footsteps pounded up the bunker stairs. An angry rattle shook the door handle. The door popped open and the chair lurched on its castors, zipping across the room and slamming violently into another chair, toppling it to the floor.
The steel door swung back to reveal three soldiers. The instant the door opened, a wild twirling caught their eyes and one let loose a panicked barrage of automatic weapons fire. Pockmarks riddled the overturned chair, sending the shredded piece of furniture skittering insanely across the room.
A shout in Spanish. A cry of discovery.
One of them had spotted the Red Menace. Three guns took aim at the lurking shadow behind the central console. In the instant before the men could pepper the crouching body with bullets, the delayed charges on the window clicked. Two tiny little pops…and a typhoon of fire and glass engulfed the small control room.
The blast launched shards of heavy plastic in every direction. Chunks of window became sharpened spears piercing soft flesh. The three soldiers were blown back into the hall and the Menace heard one tumbling down the stairs. More shouting. The fourth, missing soldier? More voices? It did not matter. Many more would be coming.
As if on cue, the base klaxon sounded. The persistent “Ahn-ahn! Ahn-ahn!” hummed through the concrete like a living presence.
The Menace jumped from his hiding spot behind the console and flew to the open window. Up and over, he rolled across the secondary console and through the chips of shattered glass, acutely aware that in his youth he would simply have dived through. He knew the instant before he hit the soft ground outside that he had landed wrong. He had misjudged the unevenness of the surface. A funny angle, just barely an incline; a horrible crunch in his left knee.
The Menace sucked in a tortured gasp even as he hobbled off, the crunch of plastic under his feet giving way to the soft blanket of jungle.
The knee wasn’t broken. That much he knew or he would not be able to move at all. It was cold comfort, for the pain was excruciating.
He sucked up the pain and limped off into the night.
Behind him, soldiers appeared at the broken window. A few shouts in Spanish and suddenly there were flashes of light accompanied by the steady pop of automatic weapons fire. Bullets zinged blindly out into the night.
Screams from the direction of the missile silos. Lights flicked on all around the base to reveal frantic Cuban guards flinging themselves to the ground and covering their heads as their comrades in the bunker fired blindly outside.
The Red Menace hugged the wall of the bunker and ran as fast as injury would allow to the southeast.
Men yelled. Spanish shouts were joined by raised Russians voices. He strained his ears, but the Red Menace did not hear Strankov among them.
More lights. Click-click-click. One after another switched on until the entire area was washed warm in mock daylight.
Shadow was good enough most times, but complete darkness was best for his costume to work perfectly. He had neither now, and in direct light the Red Menace became visible. An indistinct black blob, yes, but a visible target nonetheless.
Into the jungle. A Russian soldier suddenly appearing out of nowhere through the overgrowth; startled at first, then grabbing for his sidearm.
The Menace’s weapon already in hand. A quick shot to the throat and the Russian was down in silence, a crimson stain blossoming across his uniform blouse.
The Red Menace jumped over the body and felt a stab like a knife in his knee accompanied by a strobe light flash of pain behind his eyes. Still, he ran.
The jungle was alive with stomping boots and angry shouts. Military discipline for the Cubans seemed to entail blundering around through the brush with no direction, with occasional burps of automatic weapons fire to relieve the tension. A band of soldiers came within five yards of the Red Menace but a volley of friendly fire from a rampaging mob of Cuban conscripts mowed most of the gang down.
More screaming, more stampeding boots.
The Red Menace skirted the scene of bloodshed. He ran.
