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

Russia would begin to circle in on him. Already the howls he had consistently heard in the distance now sounded closer.

The lower the sun got, the closer the howls and yelps began to sound and he clenched his gun tightly. He was glad now that he had opted to keep his rifle with him, despite the awkwardness of it swinging across his back while he walked with the stick.

It was pitch black by the time he reached the clearing; his breathing was harsh and rasping and his leg was numb. It looked unhealthily pallidin the moonlight. He stumbled unsteadily over to the hut, and after banging on the door, collapsed to the ground, his fingers grasping handfuls of the cold green grass as he breathed in the smell of the hard earth.

The door opened and light flooded out over him. He heard a man laugh and then felt himself being roughly dragged inside and fought to keep the darkness from overtaking his vision.

He was thrown onto a canvas camp bed but was only semi-conscious. Suddenly, ice cold liquid was poured onto the wound and his eyes burst open. He roared and saw Colonel Klitchkov pouring vodka onto what he could now clearly see was a gash that had taken a deep groove of flesh away from his powerful thigh.

“Lie still, it needs to be cleaned.”

“It hurts, Colonel.”

Klitchkov grabbed Nikita by the collar and pulled him up, rage in his eyes.

“Listen boy, to be KGB is to conquer pain. Today you failed. You missed your helicopter; a flesh wound is no excuse to be late. You are weak. I will not accept another failure; you would do well to remember your family’s safety is in your hands.”

Nikita said nothing but turned on his side and lifted his leg. He bit down so hard that he drew blood from his lip as Klitchkov worked on fixing the gash, and salty tears poured down his adolescent face.

Through the tears, he saw on the floor just behind Klitchkov an unfamiliar-looking bullet which had fallen down from a half open, unmarked ammunition box on a table by the wall. He reached for it under the guise of reaching out in pain and grasped it tightly in his hand.

Later as he lay back on the bed in the darkness, he inspected the bullet in the moonlight streaming through the window behind him. Along the side it said .45 ACP. A bullet made for the Colt 1911 pistol. He looked over to Klitchkov’s sleeping form, his body rising and falling gently, and hatred burned through Nikita such as he had never known. He pocketed the bullet. One day he would have his revenge.

***

Nikita snapped back to the present, but the memories continued to course through him as he knelt on the floor of the secretary’s bedroom, breathing deeply as he worked to conquer the pain.

“Down on the floor, you Russki scum,” said the voice of Conlan above him. He laughed loudly. “I’ve not felt this alive in years. I can’t believe they sent such a young amateur, to not even guess I’d have a gun under my pillow.”

Nikita inwardly berated himself for his lapse and looked up at the man standing above him laughing, a gun pointed at him and he remembered the sound of Klitchkov’s laughter as he pulled him into that Kamtchatkan hut, remembered the bullet on the floor and remembered the Colt, just the same as the one above him.

He closed his eyes and focused. The pain was in his shoulder but he had endured worse. He could endure more.

There was a knock on the door and a voice said, “Sir, is everything OK, sir? I thought I heard a gunshot or some such.”

“Everything is fine; leave me alone, Amancia.”

“Yes, sir, sorry to bother you, sir.”

Looking back to Nikita he said, “See. Why couldn’t you have just known your rightful place in the world like Amancia? Bottom feeders, not spies.”

“OK, OK, I’ll do whatever you ask, just stop talking,” Nikita said, putting a hand to his injured shoulder, feeling the bullet grind against the bone.

“You goddam Russkis are all the same, spineless to the core. Now lie down, I won’t ask again,” he said and took another swig from the bottle of whiskey, which was now two thirds empty, before slamming it down on his bedside table.

Nikita nodded, and hand on his left shoulder, moved sideways to ease himself onto his right shoulder then onto his back. Suddenly he fell sideways and swept his leg up, kicking the gun from Conlan’s grasp and rolling backwards and propelling himself back onto his feet. His shoulder protested loudly and he physically felt a pump of blood splurge from his shoulder, as a dark stain worked its way across his black top.

Conlan threw himself forwards to grab the gun from the floor, displaying impressive athleticism for a man in his seventies, but he was no match for a KGB agent honed to optimum physicality, even one with a bullet wedged in his shoulder. Nikita stood on the old man’s hands as he stretched for the gun. With his good arm, he reached down and picked up the gun and aimed it back at its owner.

“You see, Secretary, I’d really wanted to do this the easy way, but you’ve just made life a lot harder for yourself.” He awkwardly shoved the politician and threw him back onto the bed with his working arm, and grunted heavily at the exertion. “How will it feel, I wonder, to be killed by someone you think so far beneath you?”

“I’ll die a patriot.”

“You’ll die a racist, pathetic, old man.”

Conlan slumped and suddenly looked every inch the old man as he lay back, jowls around his neck engorging his face. Just another rich, white landowner living off his power. Never had Nikita wanted to shoot