Red Reaper - Soldiers of Fortune [book one]

Chapter SIX

Konstantin Ivanov

....eight weeks later....

It is cold out tonight.. The breeze is so beautifully frosty and fresh..

I live for the winter months when the city is blanketed in white and the nights are long.. It is the only time I feel as if the world is as it should be.. For a few fleeting months, I am almost comfortable in this country..

Almost..

From my solitary perch atop the fifteen story high-rise, opposite the downtown precinct, I wait patiently for my mark to appear.. With a lit cigarette wedged between my lips, I watch as policemen pour in and out of the building, going about their evening.. Clocking in and checking out like the idiotic little sheep they are, rolling through the motions of their everyday routines.. None of them even acutely aware of my crosshairs trained upon them..

Weeks ago, a green light had presented itself to me in the form of Diago Juarez, a dirty homicide detective known to be working for the Mexican Cartel Capo, Javier Carrera.. Diago is known among Bratva mercenaries as the man who launders Carrera's dirty money and pedals his drugs through the Darkport gangs.

So far I have learned a great many things about Detective Juarez during my reconnecence.. I know that he is well respected among his fellow lawmen and that he is the recipient of multiple valour awards.. I know that he lives alone on the Southside in the 818 district with his two American Bulldogs.. I also know that has a perverse taste for sex trafficking and in particular a connection to several underage girls who have gone missing from the Southside..

But Diago's depraved extracurricular activities aren't what had signed his death warrant.. Truthfully I have known men far worse than Juarez, hell, I have called these men brothers.. No, it had been his involvement in the underground auction circuit, known to those in the business as 'The Shadow Loop', that had finally placed him on my radar..

Or should I say, on The Bratva's radar..

The Cartel smuggling ring that Diago protects, moves money, guns and girls and has long been undercutting Bratva business.. That was The Detective's fatal mistake..

The Darkport Pakhan, Nikolaj Kalashnik, hates to lose a single cent to the Mexicans and since it is he who has so graciously allowed me to stay in his city despite my blacklisted status, the man now owns my loyalty. Nika is the most feared Russian in all of America and not a man to be refused.

He is a man with no morals. Ruthless as they come.

There is no life he would not order me to take, men, women, children.

There is no end to his thirst for blood and the war he has started with the Cartel means he will see plenty more of it before he meets a violent end.

Knowing Nika, that is exactly the way he would like to die. In a blaze of bullets and a hail of hellfire..

For me to continue to live in this place and earn my living in his domain, I must oblige his requests or suffer the consequences of his wrath.. Over the past five years I have served him well enough to become a Captain in his Zarkone.. For the most part I keep to myself.. I run my dicehouse and wash my hands clean after each kill, and now Nika has advised me to take care of this Mexican problem, so I will.. That is what I do.. That is what I have to do to survive..

I will kill as many Mexicans as I must to protect my comrades and end the threat to the brotherhood.

That is my job..

I am a hitman after all, a contract killer.. And Diago's death is worth half a million exactly.. Easy money for me.

Perhaps when I have cleaned up the mess Nika has made in the Russkiy district, he would finally allow me to retire my rifle and disappear..

That is all I want.. I dream of it.

I think I would like to become nobody..

I would like to go north and live in the mountains where it snows all year round..

I would like to forget what it feels like to end lives and to know what it is to live one..

This sounds peaceful to me and peace is something I have not known since leaving my beloved Myshkin.. My home..

Ah, how far I have fallen from the man I once was..

Many years ago, I was once a soldier of moral substance..

Made of ambition and good intentions..

I fought in the Special Operations Forces and after I had served my way through the ranks of the KGB earning many medals of service for my duty.. That was until the branch I worked for was disbanded for corruption.

I was imprisoned for crimes I didn't commit during those dark days and everything was torn apart.. The 26th of December 1991.. Nothing would ever be the same after that day..

I had been so wrong in my beliefs and everything I thought I knew, everything I bled for was a lie.. Disillusionment took me into the abyss and everything I knew was destroyed, my life stolen, my family sacrificed and all the pieces that made me who I was was lost as collateral to a cover federal up.. Meanwhile my comrades and I were swept beneath the rug to be forgotten.. Locked away in The White Swan prison of Siberia.. All the loyalty I had in my heart, all the patriotism pinned to my chest, was set alight and burned to ash..

That was the beginning of my end..

After I was released from prison, I did what any poor and starving ex-soldier in my position would have done.. I turned to a life of crime and in that life I would find only more lessons on suffering, endless pain and betrayal would await my every decision..

What a waste I would become.. I would give my youth to my government, serve sentences in Siberia as a result and pass the trials of Bratva initiation to survive, collecting ink reminders on the backs of my hands, placed there by the needles of other inmates.. All to end up here.. Acorss enemy lines in a country that would rather I go back to where I came from.. America..

I hate this place.. It is not so much the people who I despise, but their idiotic notions and ignorant nationalism.. Freedom, Humanitarianism and Heroism..

They tell themselves they they are the good guys, the saviours of the world, but they are not..

These beliefs they hold with hands on their hearts and flying flags are nothing more than bullshit..

They are not free, I do not see them as heroes and there is no honor in war.. This is reality.. There is only pain and suffering and the ever crushing capitalist greed that consumes them alive.. Money is the root of all evil in this world and while they tell themselves stories and play fantasy to the role of saviours, I have bore witness to their corruption and been labelled with slander to corroborate their lies..

Even here, in this supposed land of opportunity, they look down on me as though I am nothing, a villain in their midst.. How stupid I had been to believe in anything.. How naive I was to think a man like me could be something more than cannon fodder for the fighting of others.. I am but a pawn in this life and I have come to accept my place.. To know it.

There is nothing left for me now..

I am good for only one thing, my existence reduced to a single purpose.

To reap.

I am a harbinger of death..

A grim collector of blood and bone..

A killer..

So that is what I will do.. I will wait.. And I will kill..