didn’t see it coming. It struck him on the bridge of his nose, and he roared in pain. Blood trickled from his eyes and gushed from his nostrils.
He staggered, and I lunged, knocking him to the floor, driving a knee into his stomach, my right fist aiming for his larynx, but he’d twisted his body so that I ended up delivering a powerhouse uppercut to the side of his jaw.
He dropped the weapon.
I landed on top of him, pinioned him to the floor with my right knee and my left hand. His blood was sticky on my fist. But he had unexpected reserves of strength, like an afterburner. As if the pain only provoked and enraged him and fueled him. As if he enjoyed the violence.
He levered his torso up off the floor and slammed a fist at my left ear. I turned my head but he still managed to cuff me hard just behind the ear. I swung for his face, but then something large and steel came at me and I whipped my head to one side though not quite in time, and I realized he’d retrieved his weapon.
Holding the Desert Eagle by its long barrel, he swung the butt against my temple, like a five-pound steel blackjack.
My head exploded.
For a second I saw only bright fireworks. I tasted coppery blood. My hands grabbed the air and I careened to one side and he was on top of me and cracked the butt of the gun on the center of my forehead.
I was woozy and out of breath. His face loomed over me. His eyes were an unnerving amber, like a wolf’s.
“Do you believe there is light at end of tunnel when you die?” he asked. His voice was higher pitched than I remembered from the videos and had the grit of sandpaper.
I didn’t reply. It was a rhetorical question anyway.
He flipped the gun around, then ground the barrel into the skin of my forehead, one-handed, twisting it back and forth as if putting out a cigarette.
“Go ahead,” I panted. “Pull the trigger.”
His face showed no reaction. As if he hadn’t heard me.
I stared into his eyes. “Come on, are you weak?”
His pupils seemed to flash.
“Pull the trigger!” I said.
I saw the hesitation in his face. Annoyance. He was debating what to do next.
I knew then he had no more rounds left. And that he knew it too. He’d ejected the magazine but hadn’t had the chance to pop in a new one.
Blood from his nostrils seeped over his beaver teeth, dripping steadily onto my face. He grimaced, and with his left hand he pulled something from his boot.
A flash of steel: a five-inch blade, a black handle. A round steel button at the hilt. He whipped it at my face and its blade sliced my ear. It felt cold and then hot and extremely painful, and I swung at him with my right fist, but the tip of the blade was now under my left eye.
At the base of my eyeball, actually. Slicing into the delicate skin. He shoved the handle and the point of the blade pierced the tissue.
I wanted to close my eyes but I kept them open, staring at him defiantly.
“Do you know what this is?” he said.
My KGB friend had told me about the Wasp knife.
“Dusya,” I said.
A microsecond pause. His mother’s name seemed to jolt him.
“I spoke to her. Do you know what she said?”
He blinked, his eyes narrowed a bit, and his nostrils flared.
That second or so was enough.
I scissored my left leg over his right, behind his knee, pulling him toward me while I shoved my right knee into his abdomen. Two opposing forces twisted him around as I grabbed his left hand at the wrist.
In an instant I’d flipped him over onto the ground.
Jamming my right elbow into his right ear, I tucked my head in so it was protected by my right shoulder. My right knee trapped his leg. He pummeled me with his right fist, clipped the top of my head a few times, but I was guarding all the sensitive areas. I gripped his left wrist, pushing against his fingers, which were wrapped around the knife handle. I kept pushing at them, trying to break his grip and strip the knife from his hand.
But I had underestimated Zhukov’s endurance, his almost inhuman strength. As we grappled over the knife, he jammed his knee into my groin, sending shock waves of dull nauseating pain deep into my