The Russian's Pride (Avenging Angel - Seven Deadly Sins Book 1)
THE RUSSIAN’S PRIDE
AVENGING ANGEL
SEVEN DEADLY SINS SERIES
BOOK #1
CAP DANIELS
** USA **
ALSO BY CAP DANIELS
The Chase Fulton Novels
Book One: The Opening Chase
Book Two: The Broken Chase
Book Three: The Stronger Chase
Book Four: The Unending Chase
Book Five: The Distant Chase
Book Six: The Entangled Chase
Book Seven: The Devil’s Chase
Book Eight: The Angel’s Chase
Book Nine: The Forgotten Chase
Book Ten: The Emerald Chase
Book Eleven: The Polar Chase
Book Twelve: The Burning Chase
Book Thirteen: The Poison Chase (2021)
The Avenging Angel – Seven Deadly Sins Series
Book One: The Russian’s Pride
Book Two: The Russian’s Greed (2021)
Stand-Alone Novels
We Were Brave
Novellas
I Am Gypsy
The Chase Is On
The Russian’s Pride
Avenging Angel
Seven Deadly Sins Book #1
Cap Daniels
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, historical events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Although many locations such as marinas, airports, hotels, restaurants, etc. used in this work actually exist, they are used fictitiously and may have been relocated, exaggerated, or otherwise modified by creative license for the purpose of this work. Although many characters are based on personalities, physical attributes, skills, or intellect of actual individuals, all of the characters in this work are products of the author’s imagination except those used for historical significance.
Published by:
** USA **
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-951021-05-4
Library of Congress Control Number:
Copyright © 2020 Cap Daniels – All Rights Reserved
Cover Design: German Creative
Printed in the United States of America
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C.S. Lewis
THE RUSSIAN’S PRIDE
RUSSKAYA GORDOST'
CAP DANIELS
1
ZAKHVAT
(THE CAPTURE)
November 2003
The first man—long, lean, and in his sixties—wore the clothes of a man he had never met. The second man—shorter and thicker—looked over his shoulder as the pair made their way down the darkened, early morning alley of America’s oldest city. The ghosts of Saint Augustine drifted above them as if in morbid anticipation of the gruesome episode that lay in the coming moments of the two men’s interwoven existence.
Unseen by the pair, but in perfect focus of the Starlight night-vision scope, the predator waited, shrouded by darkness and a lifetime of prowling in the shadows. The predator’s veil, woven beneath hammer and sickle and tempered behind the Iron Curtain as the Cold War drew to a close, masked far more than the killer’s presence; it encased a skill set second to none within the realm of death’s silent delivery.
The watchers, though sworn by impenetrable oath to prevent the coming carnage, made no move and held no thought of upholding their sacred oath.
The two men, unsure of who or what had facilitated their release from the St. Johns County Detention Center, made their way deeper into the coming dawn and ever closer to their imminent rendezvous with what lay beyond the chasm of unthinkable demise before them.
Unknown to both himself and the demons who would receive his soul, the taller of the two men took the final step he would ever tread on the earth. The assassin’s blade pierced his navel and met the rounds of his spine, stopping both the man’s stride and the killer’s plunge. The gasp came in murderous synchrony to the upward draw of the blade. His legs incapable of lifting a foot from the gritty surface beneath him, the man succumbed to the trauma and spilled his life’s blood, where he melted to become one with all eternity in the fires of Hell.
The blinding speed with which the killer moved left the second man paralyzed in terror and disbelief. The first blinding slash came just beneath his chin, opening his neck to the pre-dawn air. He threw a wasted right cross well above the assailant’s head as the killer’s blade pierced the inside of his thigh, exposing and filleting the femoral artery. The man would bleed out beneath a breathless mist of coastal Florida humidity and depart from the realm of the living.
Certain the prey’s souls, devoid of Earthly shelter, sank into the bowels of the Earth, the butcher fled into the waiting depths of the city, where legions of spirits of Spaniards, Indians, and slaves drifted on the wind from the Mantanzas River. Like so many times before, the assassin would become the night and dissolve into the wind.
Though hardened by lives spent collecting trophies of men consumed by evil and devoid of humanity, the watchers felt their mouths grow dry and their stomachs heave at the indescribable carnage before them. Duty demanded they not succumb to their weakness, but humanity anchored their feet to the ground. The flooding lights consuming and splitting the darkness drew the watchers from their stupor and drove them forward toward their target. The assassin would fight, lunging with the fury of a cornered beast, but the watchers, superior in number, force, and might, would take the predator alive, regardless of the cost. No other outcome would appease their masters.
The watchers, six-strong—donned in black combat gear from head to toe and protected behind plate carriers bearing steel armor designed to stop the supersonic projectile of a sniper’s weapon—stepped into the stage-bright lights as the assassin raised an arm to shield blinded eyes from the piercing white light.
In blind reflective defense, the assassin drew an avtomaticheskiy pistolet Stechkina, a fully automatic Russian pistol, from an unseen holster and filled the air of the perimeter with 9x18mm Makarov lead until the magazine fell empty. Two of the six men felt the lead enter their mortal shells but never felt their bodies collide with the ground beneath their feet.
The four men who remained in possession of their souls fired tasers, sending barbed missiles designed to pierce the skin of and render the assailant incapable of continued combat. Two of the missiles found their mark: one in the bicep of the butcher and another in the unprotected thigh.
Reacting without thought, the assassin grasped the two pairs of hair-thin wires connecting the barbs to the pistol-grip launchers and yanked them from flesh before the debilitating weapons could do their masters’ bidding. Undaunted by their failure, the watchers unleashed another volley of stunning electrical charges toward their intended victim. The first became hopelessly entangled in the killer’s clothing while the second sank deep into the muscle at the base of the assailant’s neck.
A punishing surge of electrical current raced through the nearly invisible wires, sending spasms of indescribable agony down the muscular frame of one of the world’s deadliest collectors of souls, and sending the fighter collapsing in quivering convulsions of involuntary submission.
The needle of the syringe containing enough sedative t
o rock a giant to sleep pierced the flesh covering the assailant’s thigh and sank into the muscle, bringing undefeatable sleep.
* * *
As the narcotics surrendered their hold on the killer, light filtered through barely parted eyelids, giving the deadly operative the first view of the sterile surroundings: wrists cuffed to a ring welded to the surface of a stainless-steel table, ankles shackled and chained to a second ring bolted to the industrial tile floor, mouth as dry as the Sahara, and a two-way mirror consuming one of the cold, gray walls of the cell.
“Welcome back. Please accept my apology for the accommodations, but we thought it best to make you as uncomfortable as possible, given your history of taking advantage of your surroundings.”
Anastasia “Anya” Burinkova, former assassin of the Russian Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii, fully opened her eyes, sending daggers through her captor. “What is name?”
“My name isn’t important,” said the man clad in the cheap off-the-rack suit of the day. “The important thing is who—and what—I represent.”
Anya glared up at the man. “You are only representative. Or there are others behind door?”
He glanced across his shoulder at the door behind him. “There are plenty more. I’m far from being alone.”
“This means you are weakest of them. You are here only to fail while others watch and listen. It is possible I will kill you while others watch.”
The man cracked an arrogant grin. “I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be making threats. I clearly have the upper hand.”
Anya strained against her cuffs. “Is proof you are weakest. You do not identify threat in front of you.”
He shot a look at the ceiling-mounted microphones, planted two palms on the table, and leaned in. His whisper would be well beyond the capability of the microphones. “Before this is over, you’ll beg me for mercy.”
The man looked into her hypnotic blue-gray eyes and puckered up to blow her a kiss but was immediately met with a powerful headbutt that sent his lips against his teeth and blood spraying in all directions. Instead of recoiling backward, he fell victim to Anya’s vicelike right arm, her wrist still cuffed to the table.
She tightened the grip with crushing strength until the man’s throat collapsed beneath her forearm. His flailing and thrashing lasted only seconds as his body succumbed to the lack of life-giving air into his lungs.
Two men exploded through the door, the first grabbing the man’s waist in a vain effort to free him from Anya’s grip, and the second prying against her arm, uselessly trying to break her grip on his partner. Realizing their efforts were little more than a wasted expenditure of energy, the second man threw a punishing right cross to Anya’s temple. The blow would’ve been enough to turn the lights out on most men, but Anya Burinkova had conditioned her body, mind, and spirit to withstand attacks under which others would crumble.
She shook off the blow as stars danced around her head and the man locked beneath her right arm fell limp. The second blow from the man was enough to momentarily soften her resolve and ability to maintain the headlock.
In the next breath, the man who’d been Anya’s most recent victim collapsed to the floor, foam issuing from the corners of his mouth and his heart barely beating.
As blood dripped from her nose and mouth and her head pounded like thunder, she watched the two men drag the nearly lifeless body of the first man from the room. She wondered who would be the next to walk through the door.
The wait was shorter than she expected. A man in his mid-forties with sleeves rolled to the elbows came through the door. Without a word, he placed a plastic sports bottle with a protruding straw on the table in front of Anya. Beside the bottle he laid a pair of white pills.
She eyed the offering. “What is this?”
“It’s water and aspirin. The drugs we used to sedate you in Saint Augustine take a toll on your dehydration, and that one-two-punch you enjoyed probably left a nasty little headache in its wake.”
“I do not believe you,” she growled. “Is more drugs.”
He shrugged, pulled an aspirin bottle from his pocket, and deposited the two pills back into the bottle. Then he gave it a shake, poured two more pills into his palm, and lifted the sports bottle from the table. The man tossed the pills onto his tongue and drank from the straw, sending the pills down his throat.
He shook out two more pills and laid them behind the ring through which she was cuffed. Anya leaned forward, drew the aspirin into her mouth, and sucked a long drink of the warm water from the bottle.
“Spasibo,” she said, barely above a whisper.
In perfect Russian, the man said, “You’re welcome. I’m sorry this has to be so unpleasant for you, but it’s the nature of the business I’m in.”
“What is business?”
“I’m with the Justice Department, and my name is Ray White.”
Anya stared into his eyes. In another time and place—one in which she had not been drugged, kidnapped, and beaten, she might find Ray White attractive. He wore a quiet confidence, unlike the arrogance of the first man who’d threatened her. “Ray White is not real name.”
He blinked. “Maybe not, but does it really matter?”
She ignored the question. “Where am I?”
“That also doesn’t matter,” he said, “but I have a proposition for you.”
She waited in wordless anticipation for the next lie to pour from his tongue.
He lifted the bottle from the table and sprayed another mouthful down his throat. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you have a terrible choice in front of you, Anastasia.”
“Do not call me this name. Is not for you.”
“So, do you prefer Anya or Ana Fulton?”
When she’d defected to the United States, leaving her SVR past behind her, Anya had taken the American first name “Ana” and the last name of Chase Fulton, the American covert operative who’d flipped her. The American had fallen in love with her, just as her SVR handlers had designed, but the passion and compassion Anya felt for him had not been in their plan.
“Is Anya and no more.”
Ray sighed. “Okay, Anya it is. Here are your options. Take a look at this.”
He slid a pocket-sized video monitor in front of her and nodded toward the mirror. A grainy night-vision video began to play. The scene unfolded just as it had in the alley in Saint Augustine, of her slaughtering the two men and leaving their bodies in puddles of dark blood.
She mumbled, “They were bad men and should not be alive.”
Ray collected the monitor and tossed it toward the door. “I agree, but our opinions don’t really matter. I think you did the world a favor, but the Justice Department has a different opinion. You see, to them, you murdered these two men in cold blood, and you have to pay for that. You’re going to prison for the rest of your life, Anya.”
She stared at the cuffs binding her wrists to the table. “You said there is option.”
“Did I?”
“What must I do?”
“We’ve got a little job for you. If you do this for us, and if you do it well, you can go back to your little make-believe world down in Georgia.”
She imagined the simple three-bedroom house with the white picket fence near the University of Georgia campus. The home had once belonged to her father, an American operative turned psychology professor who fell in love with her mother on the gritty streets of Moscow in the bitter days of the Cold War. And she thought of the man, Marvin “Mongo” Malloy, the gentle giant who could rip an oak tree from the earth with his bare hands. His size and strength made the eyes of the world see him as a monster, but beneath his gargantuan exterior lay the gentleness of a lamb and the mind of a philosopher. Anya saw the truth in the depths of the giant, and he saw beyond her physical beauty and deadly skill set to find the humanity within.
“What is job?”
Ray cleared his throat. “We’re taking down the Russkaya mafi
ya, and you’re going to open the door for us.”
She let her eyes meet his. “I do not have keys to Russian mafia.”
He slid the bottle closer to her. “You are the key, Anya. Think about that, and I’ll be back.”
As Ray White pulled the door closed behind himself, Anya felt the clip of the ink pen she’d lifted from the first agent’s pocket while he was in her headlock. The broken metal clip was the perfect size to fit inside the keyhole of the cuffs anchoring her to the steel table.
2
CHEREZ ZERKALO
(THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS)
From behind the two-way mirror, Dr. Andrea Zabaggo watched with the concentration of a hawk in pursuit of a field mouse. “Agent White, why did you do that?”
“Why did I do what? I established trust by drinking her water and taking the pills, I presented options, and I gave her time to consider those options. That’s exactly what you profilers want those of us who actually get our hands dirty to do, isn’t it?”
Dr. Zabaggo glared at him. “There’s no such thing as a profiler, Agent White. I’m a criminal psychologist, and I highly recommend sticking at least two of your dirty fingers as far down your throat as possible; otherwise, you and your new pet project in there will be fast asleep in a matter of minutes.”
The doctor pointed through the glass where Anya sat covertly thrusting her stolen pen clip into the keyhole of the handcuffs that had been designed and built to be absolutely pick-proof by the Technical Services Branch of the CIA. “By my calculation, you and she will be sound asleep inside of three minutes. Her adrenaline rush will likely keep her awake only slightly longer than you.”
Dr. Zabaggo placed her foot against the metal trash can beneath her table and slid it toward White. “Fingers down your throat, Agent.”
White slammed his hand on the table. “Was it the water or the pills?”
Zabaggo slid her legal pad and colored pens away from his fists. “Agent White, control yourself. Empty your stomach or find a place to lie down.”