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

through the garage, thankful that he would not have to escape down the drainpipe.

The blood was beginning to pump harder out of the hole in his shoulder as his heart beat double time to keep his blood pressure up. He made his way across the prairie towards his car, much slower than his earlier sprinted approach had been. His legs felt weak and he could taste bile, sour and burning at the back of his throat, whether from blood loss or from his latest assassination, he was not sure. His mind was clear of everything other than making it back to his car as quickly as possible. He put his hand under his shirt and tenderly felt the hole where the bullet had entered. It was slick with blood, which was spilling out in pumps. Grimacing, he put a finger gently into the hole to try and plug the stem of blood.

Clouds now covered the sky like inky silhouettes and there was little risk of moonlight revealing his presence. It was nearly half an hour later that he arrived back at the copse of trees where his rental car was hidden.

He clambered behind the wheel and sped off across the prairie due south. The interstate lay some three miles away which would allow him to enter Odessa from the south. Time he could ill afford to waste, but it was essential to him to maintain what the KGB always referred to as ‘plausible deniability’. As Nikita reached Interstate 20, he saw a sign pointing south to Toyah and his eyes flashed. The town was famous for only one thing — the brutal lynching of J. I. Pitts. The whole town had turned out, late at night, to drag Pitts from his bed through the streets as he begged for his life, before stringing him up to the sound of cheers. All for the crime of being in love with a white woman.

The pain brought Nikita back to the present and he veered onto the interstate, ploughing in the opposite direction to Toyah. As he approached the edge of Odessa, the pain became unbearable. He pulled over to the side of the road and leant his head on the steering wheel, breathing deeply, drenched with sweat.

“Focus, Nikita,” he said to himself loudly, again inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. He felt his heart rate slow slightly and the pumping of blood sensation in his shoulder ease just slightly. He looked around him, and saw that he was on what could only just be described as a high street, in a downtrodden area on the outskirts of Odessa. In the dark night the street was deserted but he could see a flickering neon sign about fifty yards away.

He quickly checked himself in the rear-view mirror, and using some tissues from the glovebox, wiped away any visible blood as best he could. He would have to trust to darkness to disguise the rest of it. He knew he needed to call in the completed mission to his superiors, who would be anxiously waiting, but he had to make sure he survived first.

With a groan, he climbed out of the car and made his way towards the bar, reminding himself that he was Nathan from Daytona Beach, and adjusted his gait to a relaxed swagger, trying to block the pain from his mind.

As he approached the bar, he saw the buzzing sign saying Paddy’s Irish Bar, with a green shamrock flickering next to it. He pushed open the door and entered the gloom beyond.

The room was long and narrow, with a bar stretching out on his right with stools beside it and tables beyond. It looked like St Patrick had thrown up, with green paint splashed over every door, and pictures of Guinness, bric-a-brac and hurling sticks inauthentically plastered over the walls. Nikita doubted an Irishman had ever set foot on the premises, and as he looked around the bar he wondered if a black man had ever entered either.

Conversation had stopped as he entered, as a sea of white faces all turned to look at him with a mixture of rage and disbelief plastered across their faces.

He walked cautiously towards the bar and conversation seemed to gradually begin again. As he reached the bar, the bartender walked over.

“You lost, boy?” he asked gruffly, a bear of a man with a greying beard and tattoos on his forearms.

“No sir, I’m here to drink.”

“Look around you, boy, you’re on the wrong side of Odessa,” said the barman again in a slow Texan drawl.

Nikita glanced around, aware of a fat man with a thick black beard sitting on a stool just to his right, glaring coldly at him, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lower lip. Further up the bar another man, who looked similar but slightly younger, with a grey-flecked red beard and squinty eyes, bared a toothless grin at him.

“I can see you serve whiskey so I can guarantee I am in the right place,” replied Nikita, trying not to grimace at the icy agony now coursing through his shoulder as he signalled to the line of bourbons on the wall behind the bartender.

“I don’t want no trouble here, son,” the barman said.

“Unless that’s the name of a whiskey, I don’t want none either.”

The barman grunted and turned to pick up a bottle of Wild Turkey. He slammed down a grimy glass on the bar and poured Nikita a whiskey, which he drank whole immediately, feeling the burn run through his body and numb his senses.

The barman turned away, but Nikita grabbed his arm and said, “Leave the bottle.”

The barman looked down at his hand with disgust, pulled his arm away and held the bottle away from him.

Nikita cocked his head sideways, “How about the bottle to go?”

The barman grunted again and relaxed slightly, slamming the bottle down and taking the twenty