A couple of bright specks showed through the trees, lights from windows.
To his left, also somewhere below, he heard a low voice. Two voices. He guessed that they were thirty or forty yards away.
He looked in that direction and saw only darkness.
He rolled back the left sleeve of the wet suit, exposing the balisong. He pulled the tape away carefully, to keep from making a sound.
He opened the knife, swinging out the split sides of the handle and fastening them.
Holding it lightly in his right hand, he moved toward the sound of the voices.
At first Yuri Malkin stayed at his post while he watched the storm roll in from the east. It was shaping up to be a spectacular show, the first excitement on the island since he popped the two brownies and sank their skinny little boat. Fortune hadn’t brought any more curious locals, and the prig Lazovic prohibited any diversions with the female guests in the blockhouse—as if it mattered! After midnight, on a shit pile of rock in the middle of the ocean, Yuri had to take his entertainment where he could find it.
And he had the best seat in the house. He was under the thatched roof of the guard shelter that sat at the topmost point on the island, near the edge of the cliff. The spot had been chosen because it gave a clear view across miles of sea to the west. But the view to the east was nearly as good. He could stand in the shelter and see over the tops of the trees, across to where the bank of clouds was tumbling and roiling, lit up from behind by the lightning, booming and flashing like a distant cannonade.
At first he divided his attention, looking away from the oncoming storm to briefly scan the sea with the night-vision binoculars in the shelter. But as the storm got closer, he gave that up—apart from the two fishermen, he had never seen a craft approach within five miles of the island—and turned his back on the dark expanse of water to fully take in the storm. The thunderhead was growing, and it seemed to be headed straight for the island. Hell, straight for his guard shelter. The wind was picking up, the palm tops shaking. A blue-white bolt sizzled down from the leaden cloud and danced for a second on the ocean.
Great shit!
Then Yuri realized what was happening. He had the best seat in the house because he was standing on the highest point for at least twenty miles around.
He grabbed the Dragunov and started down the slope. To the left, down through the trees, was another shelter. Most times it was empty. But tonight, with the reinforcements, it was occupied by his sometime pal Kostya Gorsky. Yuri tramped down the hill and found Kostya’s AK pointed at him as he came out of the trees.
“Goddamn, it’s you,” Kostya said.
“Who else would be coming down the hill?”
“You shouldn’t be walking around,” Kostya said as he lowered the rifle. “The Manila boys have everybody nervous. You could get shot. What are you doing here?”
“Fucking Andropov tried to turn me into a lightning rod,” Yuri said, and they both laughed.
Rain began to fall, fat drops that smacked hard into the earth. Yuri and Kostya stood in the shelter and watched as the storm crashed in over the island. They smoked a couple of Kostya’s cigarettes. While the rain fell in sheets, they talked about the Manila assholes, and how shitty the food was these last few days before the monthly boat, and how they both wanted to rotate into the Manila crew so that they could live in luxury and diddle whores anytime they wanted.
They turned to watch the helicopter as it hurtled over the brow of the hill from the west, plunging through the storm, descending. They watched as the Gator ground up the hill, carrying the client to his appointment.
They started talking about football, soccer, the Russian Cup tournament. Football was the one topic that divided them. Yuri was from Moscow and had been a Dynamo fan all his life. Kostya, from St. Petersburg, was disgustingly loyal to his hometown Zenit club. As usual, the jibes were good-natured at first and then turned edgy. They were arguing when Yuri realized that the storm had passed and the rain had ended.
Kostya stood and announced that he had to take a crap. “Create a steaming likeness of Moscow Dynamo” was how he put it. He walked