The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

he mowed down guard after guard. As the weapon began to move round in Cato and Maria’s direction, Cato threw himself down on top of the old woman, who moaned loudly, and the bullets passed above him. He could feel the back of his shirt move from the wind of the closely passing bullets. His senses still slightly askew, he viewed it all as if from far away, the screams of the security guards feeling like an abstract backing track.

Suddenly the bullets stopped, and daring to look up, he saw the gunman grappling with the feed of bullets.

Maria pushed at him with her good arm and he rolled off. “Help me up,” she croaked, the old cantankerous energy feeding her again. He pulled her up and she staggered over to the gunman who widened his eyes in surprise, and reached for the gun at his waist.

“No need for any of that.” She swatted at him. “Now move over.” She stood beside him and lifted the ammunition belt with her good arm.

“Cato, don’t just stand there ogling; don’t pretend you don’t know how these work. I know all about your old activities against the Turkish swine.”

He loped over, aware of gunfire now beginning to return in their direction. He put his hand under the long shaft of the APB, which was still balanced on the knee of the black garbed man. He felt the skin on his hand sizzle from the intense heat of the weapon, but gritted his teeth and with the butt of his left hand, threw his force behind it and hit the opposite site of the loading belt. With his burned hand he pulled at the belt until he felt the familiar click of the jammed bullet dropping into place. He stepped back and the shooter nodded at him with cold eyes. He was a lot younger than Cato had first imagined; he couldn’t be more than twenty years old, the butler realised with a jolt.

He squeezed the trigger and began the awful slaughter once more. Some of the remaining guards had got closer and now the trio could see with dreadful closeness the damage the automatic weapon did to the victims, ripping through muscle and bone like knives through butter. The many Alsatians were fleeing from the bullets, their owners all now lying dead or dying, and the gunman passed over them, a fact not unnoticed by the butler.

Maria had a ferocious look in her eyes, her grey hair loose and her right arm hanging limp and crooked at her side. She looked more like a battle-hardened old warrior than a septuagenarian maid.

Suddenly the shooter stopped and surveyed the scene. The windows were broken, the walls pitted and around twenty bodies littered the field and track within the barbed wire fencing.

There was no sign of Zurga.

Maria cackled. “It reminds me of beating the Turks in seventy-four, and what a glorious day that was.”

Cato smiled in spite of himself, but the dark shooter eyed them suspiciously. The butler turned his attentions to the old woman’s arm, despite her trying to bat him away. He looked at her. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“The same place as you, you think I don’t know of your time in Limassol for the Cypriot Guard, Cato? You’re a Greek hero. I was there to nurse the wounded.”

He smiled fondly at her. “Then it sounds like you were far more the hero than I.”

Her eyes crinkled as he touched her forehead on his and she kissed him on both cheeks.

As she pulled away to lie down, suddenly she was thrown backwards as a bullet went straight through her heart. Her look changed from a gentle smile to one of mild surprise as she clutched the crucifix at her neck.

“Theé mou,” she muttered. My god, and breathed her last breath.

Outrage and pain ripped through Cato’s whole bean-like body. He snatched the sniper from the ground and spun, spotting the guard on the roof and in one swift movement took aim, exhaled and fired. A distant cry was heard as he hit his mark and the guard fell forward from the roof and toppled the two storeys to the ground to land in a crumpled heap.

He tossed the sniper to the ground and knelt back next to Maria. He brushed his fingertips across her brow and gently closed her eyes.

“Wait here,” Nikita said to Cato, as he crouched and softly but quickly made his way towards the fortress.

The accent of the strange gunman was not placeable to Cato, who sat back on the grass and wrapped his arms around his long legs.

Nikita glided across the grass, moving past the litter of corpses lying in his wake and towards the door. Now for Zurga. He pulled the Makarov from his shoulder holster, nudged the front door open with it and made his way cautiously inside. He padded confidently through the house, the blueprints tattooed into his mind from his studies and meditation earlier, and moved up the stairs towards Zurga’s room.

He heard him before he saw him.

A gurgling and sputtering sound was emanating from the bedroom and Nikita kicked open the door, gun raised. Zurga was on his bed, again shirt open and bottle of wine beside him. The most obvious difference from the scene Maria had earlier seen was that this time Zurga had soiled himself.

Zurga’s eyes were half closed, but narrowed further as he saw Nikita enter the room.

“The wine?” he asked, before breaking into coughs and sputters again.

Nikita nodded, and pulled the hooked, serrated knife from the sheath at his waist.

If Zurga was shocked or afraid of the knife he did not show it. “They said that wine would be my undoing. That, but never… one of you.”

Nikita could see the effects of the massive dose of pink oleander flowers he had inserted