Nadya’s Nights: Road to Vengeance
Night One: A Hard Night’s Work
Chapter Three: The Killing Ensues
by Indy McDaniel
Copyright © 2009 Indy McDaniel
A jingle came from Nadya’s pocket. She’d been waiting in the pub for what seemed like hours. Checking the clock on the wall, she saw it had only been about ninety minutes. She pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open before placing it against her ear. “Nadya.”
“Love of my life,” Lonestar’s voice responded. “Mistress of my dreams. Goddess of all things bloody gorgeous.”
“I swear to fuck, Lonestar,” Nadya snarled. “If you’re attempting to butter me up in an attempt to avoid my causing you pain if you haven’t found me the information I want, it’s not going to work.”
“No, no…” Lonestar said quickly. “It’s not that at all. I’ve found the information you’re looking for.”
“Good,” Nadya took a sip of her beer. “Spit it out.”
Lonestar hesitated.
“Hello?” Nadya asked, growing impatient.
“You should probably leave this one alone,” Lonestar told her, fear in his voice.
“Fuck that,” Nadya shot back. “Give me the information or I’ll go find someone who will. There are plenty of shit-heels willing to sell people out for a buck.”
“This bitch has major security around her,” Lonestar said. “Word is, she’s a pretty major Summoner.”
“Who’s she affiliated with?”
“No one, as far as I can tell,” Lonestar replied. “Everyone says she’s solo. But there’s supposedly some company looking to hire her.”
Nadya lit up a smoke and took a long drag. “So what the fuck did she kill Wolfgang’s crew for?”
“Shite, Nadya,” Lonestar said, exasperated. “I don’t know. Maybe it was some kind of test. Maybe she was just having a boring day and decided to cause some mayhem.”
“Address.”
“Her place is crawling with hoods,” Lonestar said, making another attempt at discouraging her.
“Yea, soon to be dead fucking hoods,” Nadya shot back. “Just like you’re soon to be a dead fucking informant if you don’t start spitting out an address in the next ten goddamn seconds.”
There was another pause. Then Nadya heard him sigh. “Alright… But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
* * * *
The bus stopped a few blocks away from the address Nadya was looking for and she got off. The front door would be too well guarded. She didn’t even have to scout the place out to know that. She walked casually by the place, not making any noticeable sign that she was even looking in the direction of the guarded safe house. It was in the middle of two other similar brick houses. All of them were three stories tall and had probably been shops with living quarters upstairs at one point.
Now the two on either side looked deserted and only the center building had activity. They were trying to be discrete, but the fact that the power was on in the building made it obvious it was occupied and Nadya spotted silhouettes of guards passing by the windows. Her eyes briefly glanced upwards to the rooftop. It was dark but she couldn’t see any movement. They might not be expecting an attack from above.
Despite the heavy firepower surrounding the woman, Nadya had actually lucked out. This wasn’t the bitch’s private home. For some reason, she’d taken up lodging in the vacated building for the night. Lonestar seemed to think it might have something to do with her potential hiring by whatever company was looking to add a professional summoner to their ranks.
Nadya didn’t much care one way or another for the reasons behind the change of venue, she was just grateful for it. She kept walking, circling around to the back to see what the situation looked like there.
Two guards at the back door.
She moved out of their line of sight then went about preparing.
Nadya reached down and grabbed some dirt from the ground, smearing it over her face then tugged the hair ties out and let her hair fall messily around her face. She reached down into herself and took hold of the briefest buzz she’d acquired from the ale she’d gotten to drink and amplified the feeling to give herself a drunken shuffle. She ruffled her clothing and reached up to her shirt and tore the neck of it slightly, revealing half of one of her breasts.
Adding some dirty smudges to her revealed pale skin, Nadya then started towards the back door. She made a point to pass by the guards and when they moved to detain her, she stumbled right into one of them, starting a coughing fit.
The effect of her small stature and drunken hobo look was immediate. Instead of telling her to take a hike, they were asking if they could help. It took some effort for Nadya not to smirk. Instead, she coughed harder, doubling over so she could shove her fingers down her throat without them seeing. The result of her movements they did see. Just like she wanted them to.
She retched and vomited liquid bile all over the ground, almost onto the guard she was leaning against. He quickly moved as far out of the way without letting go of her, trying to hold the small girl up, repeatedly asking if she was alright.
Nadya nodded slightly. “Just want… home…” she muttered, motioning towards one of the vacant buildings beside the guarded one.
And like that, they were guiding her to the building she wanted access to. They opened the door for her and lead her inside. Luckily for Nadya, the place was already inhabited by a few bums and there were several other makeshift beds lying about that were currently unoccupied. She motioned to one of the dirtier ones and the men lead her over, gently setting her down.
Nadya fell into the filthy pile of old clothes and torn bed sheets and curled herself up into a ball. “Thanks…” she muttered softly to the men, who were looking around the building with mixed sympathy and disgust. They nodded to her then turned and quickly headed towards the open door they’d come through.
As they left, she heard one of the guards tell the other, “Poor kid…”
Upon hearing it, she could no longer hide the smirk wanting to burst free from her. She lay in the heap of tattered fabric, seemingly unconscious, until the two guards exited the building, closing the door behind them.
As soon as the door clicked shut, Nadya shot upwards, sitting straight. The drunken, homeless act was gone, and now she had some killing to do. She got to her feet and made for a staircase leading up.
* * * *
Reaching the top floor, Nadya searched for some sort of rooftop access and came up empty. So instead, she made her way over to one of the windows facing away from the building her target was in. Sliding the window open, she pushed herself halfway out, resting her butt against the windowsill and looked upwards.
The edge of the rooftop was in reach, but barely. Reaching upwards, she hooked her fingers along the rough edge of the roof and pulled herself the rest of the way out the window, letting her legs dangle below her. As she did, the window slammed shut again. Nadya looked down at the window, giving it an accusing glare. “Fuck your mother…” she muttered softly at it.
She stayed perfectly still – a hard task with her entire body weight being held by her fingers – and glanced around to make sure no one came to see what the sound was.
After nearly a minute of nothing more than the usual night sounds and an increasing pressure in her fingers, she began to pull herself upwards, trying to push the toes of her boots against the wall as best she could to help herself upwards. She gasped, her breath catching in her throat, stuck from her heart trying to leap clean out of her mouth as she felt one of the bricks she was pulling against come loose.
For a terrifying moment, one of her hands slid free from the edge and she was dangling in midair by about an inch and a half of the fingers on one hand. Her fingers strained painfully and she winced, her eyes darting to the hard, brick ground underneath her. A three-story drop onto that would at best cripple her. The two guards at the rear entrance of the building would probably find her and wonder what a homeless girl was doing trying to climb onto the roof of a building. If she were lucky, they’d figure she’d tried to commit suicide.
If she wasn’t…
Nadya didn’t want to think about any of that. She shoved the morbid thoughts away and forced her heart back to its rightful place, taking a long breath to calm herself and raised her hand upwards again, placing it on a different brick and giving it a testing tug.
It was firm.
Clenching her teeth, she pulled against gravity and her imminent demise and managed to lift her elbows up onto the ledge. From there, it became a bit easier. She rested for a moment then lifted one of her legs upwards to hook onto the edge of the rooftop. From there, she pushed herself upwards and flipped her body around, rolling onto the rooftop. Once she was safely away from the edge, she took a few moments to regulate her breathing and calm her screaming nerves.
If there was one thing she absolutely hated, it was heights.
And she wasn’t through with them yet. She still had to make the leap to the next building. She shuddered at the thought and let herself lie on the rooftop for another minute, steeling herself. Then she sat up, let out a final long breath of air and looked over to the adjacent rooftop to make sure no one was guarding it.
No movement, no silhouettes, nothing.
Nadya stood and approached the other building. Glancing down off the edge of the building, she saw much the same thing as she did when she was dangling from the rooftop on the other side.
A three-story drop to the hard ground.
She also noticed a single guard leaning against the building she was after, smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t looking upwards and she hoped he wouldn’t. Even if he did happen to glance up when she made her leap, he probably wouldn’t see much more then a black shadow passing through an equally black sky. Some briefly obscured stars would be all he would notice, probably not enough to raise any alarm.
Nadya backed away from the edge and turned her attention to the rooftop on the other side. The jump wasn’t impossible, but it would be tricky. The two buildings were the same height, which meant she’d have to totally clear the distance or not at all. She wouldn’t be able to scramble up the side this time, not with the guard just below. The distance looked to be about just over five feet.
A stretch, for sure.
She looked back across the length of the rooftop she was on; it was about thirty feet. At least she could get a good running start first. Taking a final look at her destination, Nadya turned and strolled back across the rooftop to the furthest edge, then spun back around.
Narrowing her eyes and setting herself to start running, she made a few controlled breaths then took off, her boots clomping down on the hard surface of the roof. The edge grew closer and closer at an almost alarming speed. Before she knew it, she was at the end of the roof and she planted her foot down hard, launching herself into the air and propelling herself forward towards the other rooftop, holding her breath.
For an eternity, it seemed, Nadya was airborne. The rooftop she was attempting to reach grew closer and closer. For a terrifying moment, she thought she wouldn’t make it, but she kept traveling farther. She extended one of her legs outwards, joy filling her as she saw she’d place it down on the roof.
She neglected to notice where her other leg was though, and as her extended foot hit the roof, her other caught against the edge and she tripped. Nadya stumbled forward, surprised by the sudden halting of her momentum. She raised her arms up in front of her to keep from bashing her face into the rooftop. Her air was knocked from her as she slammed down and she skidded forward a few feet, scraping the arms and elbows of her jacket a bit.
As she came to a stop, she paused again, letting her breathing return to normal once more. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around the vacant rooftop, glancing behind her to where she’d launched from and feeling a smirk grow on her face. The hard part was over. Killing people was easy compared to jumping across buildings as far as she was concerned. Part of her realized that should bother her. A larger part didn’t give a shit.
Now she only had to get from the rooftop into the building.
Heading over to the far edge of the roof, Nadya lowered her body flat and glanced over the side. No guard here. She spotted a darkened window that looked promising and had to commit herself to another gravity-defying stunt to check to see if the coast was totally clear within.
Pushing herself further over the edge, she bent her body forward to move against the wall. She felt her blood rushing to her head and quickly lowered herself further to peak through the window. It was dark inside, but she saw enough to confirm the room was empty. She reached down and grasped the window with her hands, pulling up on it. She let out a sigh of relief as the window slid upwards easily. If it had been locked, things would’ve become a bit more complicated.
Making sure it wasn’t going to slam down like the previous window, Nadya pushed herself back up the length of the wall. She turned around, lowering her feet over first this time. She found the window ledge with her toes and got her legs inside the room before stretching the rest of her body further down until she was sitting on the windowsill. Moving all the way into the dark room, she turned and slid the window closed again.
Drawing the gun from her waistband, she stepped softly towards the only door leading out of the small room, noticing light coming in from under the door. She paused in front of it and held her breath, listening for any sounds on the other side.
Hearing nothing, Nadya reached down with her free hand for the doorknob. She rested her fingers on the cold metal knob for a moment, listening some more, then turned and pulled, letting light spill into the dark room.
On the other side was a long hallway with doors on either side. At the end of the hall, directly across from where she was, a staircase went downwards. The room she was in was at the corner of the hall and the hall turned into an L-shape moving further into the building.
No one was in the hall in front of her. She crouched low and briefly stuck her head out, looking down the shorter hallway running past the door.
No one there either.
She figured they’d either left the third floor totally unguarded, or they were patrolling the building and she’d lucked out at the timing of her entrance. Not bothering to wait around to see which it was, Nadya exited the room and pulled the door closed behind her.
It was a sure bet that there’d at least be a guard on the stairway. The question was whether she should clear the third floor first or just assume it was empty. Assumptions got people killed, and since she was the most likely person to suffer that fate, she decided to run a quick check of the top floor. She started down the smaller hall first, listening at each door before opening it quickly and sweeping her gun along the interior.
There were four rooms along the hall and each one was empty. She turned and started towards the lengthier hall leading towards the stairs.
The Russian assassin was standing outside the first door into the long hall, listening for sounds of occupancy, when instead she heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs towards her.
Shit.
They were patrolling the building.
She backed up and hid around the corner, pressing her back against the wall and quietly sliding the gun back into her waistband. No sense drawing attention to herself if she didn’t have to. Then she waited, listening to the footsteps as they reached the top of the stairs. There was a brief pause and Nadya thought maybe the patrolling guard would just take a single look down the hall and continue back downstairs. The footsteps started again, growing closer to her position.
No such luck.
She waited where she was, staying completely silent, listening as the steps grew ever closer. She’d have to time her attack perfectly. Too soon, and the guard would be too far away for her to silence him before raising the alarm, or just simply shooting her. Too late and the guard would have a chance of seeing her around the corner and the same thing would happen. The footsteps seemed to grow unbelievably loud in her ears but she continued to wait.
She noticed a brief pause in the steps and figured he was about to round the corner. Nadya spun around and came face to face with the surprised guard, almost knocking her head into his chin.
The timing was perfect.
Nadya reached up and clamped one hand over his gaping mouth to prevent him from calling for help. Using that hand for leverage, she spun her lithe body around the larger man, getting her out of the line of fire of the rifle he was carrying.
It also put her in the perfect position to conclude her attack.
Wrapping her other hand around the man’s chin, she twisted hard and felt a snapping from his neck. The man turned into a lifeless, limp form almost instantly. She lowered him to the ground as softly as she could, a difficult task due to his greater weight.
Once he was down, Nadya went around the body and grabbed him by the arms, dragging the corpse over to the small room she’d entered through. Opening the door, she pulled the body all the way in, then stripped him of his weapon and extra ammunition. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and slid the two extra banana clips into her jacket pocket, then closed the door to the room again and started back down the hall towards the stairs. The guard’s arrival had done two things for her – three if she included the weapon she’d stripped him of.
It confirmed the top floor was empty, and it meant she’d have to finish her mission at a much faster pace. The guard would be missed before too long, so she didn’t have as much time to sneak around now.
Palming the handgun again, Nadya stopped at the top of the stairs, putting her ears to good use once more. There was no noticeable sound, but by holding her air inside she could hear the breathing of another person just below. Maybe halfway down the stairs.
She swung around onto the stairway, aiming the gun ahead of her. The movement was smooth and silent. The stair guard was facing away from her; content in the knowledge that his comrade was making sure the third floor was void of any Russian girls with a hankering to do some murdering.
Bad luck for the guy guarding the stairs…
Nadya started down the steps towards the guard, intending to do to him what she’d done to his buddy on the third floor; snap his neck and drag him up into one of the third floor rooms.
The plan went to hell when her foot came down on a step that had warped over the years. The creak wasn’t all that loud… but in Nadya’s ears it was the equivalent of a bomb going off.
Just without the pretty flames.
Nadya cringed and watched the guard start to turn towards her, his face going from calmness – apparently expecting to find his buddy coming back down to announce the third floor clear of any insurgents – to surprise.
With no other options, Nadya tilted the gun back and slammed the handle and her palm into the man’s nose at a slightly upwards tilt, smashing the bone and sending shards of it spearing into his brain.
The man’s eyes went wide and blood gushed from the shattered nose. Before she could even attempt to grab hold of him and lower him softly, he was falling backwards. His heavy body hit the stairs and slammed down the hard wood, falling in only a way that a dead man could. He landed at the bottom of the stairs on the second floor in a heap and the alarmed voices Nadya heard from below were more then enough to tell her that her cover had been totally blown.
“Cock… Sucker…” she muttered.
Thrusting the pistol back into her waistband, letting loose with a further torrent of colorful Russian curse words, and pulling the rifle – an AK-47, which gave her at least some small comfort – from her back, she leapt down the rest of the stairs – about ten or so – and planted her feet down on either side of the dead man. Nadya raised the rifle to her shoulder and pointed it down the second floor hallway where six more guards – five men and one woman – were standing, getting their own weapons ready.
The suddenness of the attack seemed to have caught them all unawares and she took advantage of it by squeezing the trigger on the rifle and unleashing a hail of bullets down the hallway. Screams filled the hall as she almost literally cut the guards in two with the spray of hot lead. Blood splattered against the wall as guards were knocked back.
The kick of the rifle in full automatic mode made the thing buck in her slender arms and fucked her aim right to hell. What she’d intended to be a series of gutshots quickly stitched up their chests and higher. Nadya watched the female guard catch a round in the cheek and saw her brains spray out the back of her head.
The last few rounds went far too high, going straight over the remaining guards’ heads and plunging into the ceiling, one smashing a light fixture and dumping the hall into semi-darkness. Then the rifle clicked empty in Nadya’s hands and the remaining guards, there were three of them, had shaken off their surprise and had their guns at the ready.
With no other options, Nadya leapt out of the hall and down the stairway in front of her leading to the first floor. No doubt, there’d be more armed guards down there but they might not be expecting a pissed off Russian girl to come bounding down the steps.
She ejected the magazine from the AK-47 as she went down the stairs in a curled ball, somersaulting down the hard wooden steps. She felt a number of hard knocks against her body that she knew would result in painful bruises if she lived long enough for them to form. Hitting the bottom of the stairway, she launched herself to her feet and quickly surveyed the bottom floor.
More guards, as suspected.
Instead of trying to reload the rifle, she cocked it back and hurled it with all her might at the closest guard, who was raising a double-barrel shotgun at her. The butt of the rifle smashed into the man’s face and Nadya saw blood and a few teeth go flying. The man fell back, firing his shotgun into the ceiling.
Four more men were behind him – although not quite as ready for her – and she charged them. Caught off guard by her bold charge, they scrambled to unsafety their weapons and bring them down on the young girl. By the time they managed, it was too late.
Nadya was all over them.
Grabbing the barrel of one man’s rifle, she shoved it out of the way just as he pulled the trigger and instead of blowing the Russian girl’s guts out he blasted his comrade in the groin. He let out an agonized howl of pain and dropped his gun, falling to the ground, clutching his destroyed crotch.
Nadya brought her elbow back and smashed it into the man she was tangled with, crushing his windpipe. He, too, fell to the ground; only he was clutching at his throat, trying to breathe and finding it impossible. Nadya kept moving, barely slowing, advancing on the remaining two men. One had a pair of pistols and the other another shotgun. The man with the pistols raised both of them at her and started firing franticly.
Nadya felt a searing pain skin across her arm as she charged, not bothering to survey the damage at this point. One of the man’s pistols jammed and it caused him to stop firing completely, trying to fix his one useless weapon.
The second man – with the shotgun – was leveling the barrel on Nadya, ready to pump her face full of pellets. Knowing she wouldn’t reach him before he fired, the girl threw herself flat to the floor a moment before the man pulled the trigger. The shot went clear over her, destroying a particularly ugly painting hanging on the wall behind where she had been a moment before.
The man’s expression of shock never had a chance to leave his face. As she’d dropped, Nadya pulled her pistol free once more and aimed quickly, pulling the trigger and putting a bullet through the man’s throat. Blood gushed down the front of him and he stumbled backwards, falling against a wall and sliding down, dead before he hit the floor.
The final guard finally managed to unjam his pistol and grinned triumphantly. In his struggle, he hadn’t noticed the brief exchange Nadya and his comrade had just had. Growing confused when he no longer saw the girl in the hallway, he looked to the side and saw the dead shotgunner at his side. He heard a low, feminine whistle below him and looked down, staring into the barrel of Nadya’s gun.
The Russian girl was lying on her back and had a cold smirk on her face as she pulled the trigger twice more, putting two rounds through the man’s chest and sending him stumbling backwards and falling to the ground. Nadya sat up, noticing her pistol was now empty.
Tossing it to the side, she quickly stood and grabbed the shotgun from the dead man with the hole in his throat, pumping it to eject the spent shell. She heard something clamoring down the stairs and turned, raising the shotgun, readying herself for the remaining guards.
Instead, her eyes widened as she saw a grenade bouncing down the steps. It reached the bottom, bounced off the front door and began to roll in her direction.
Thinking fast, she saw a door to her left and opened it, diving into a small broom closet. She didn’t know if it would be enough protection, but she didn’t have time to find something better.
The grenade blew.
