Nate Colt and the Black-Market Debacle
A Short Story
Pulp, Pipe, & Poetry Magazine is honored to publish two short stories authored by Nathanael Hummel and L.S. Goozdich for interested readers to get a preview of what is in store in the Fighting Heart of Man Collection.
This story was written by guest contributor, .
Enjoy,
- The Editor
I held my breath as the punch landed. I know that isn’t the right way to throw a punch, but that’s how I threw this one. The meaty thud of the big man’s face against my fist was enough to send shivers down one’s spine. But it paled compared to the crunch of his head hitting the marble half-wall on the way to the ground. I was gasping for air, but threw my body across the space and behind the half-wall just as his counterpart brought up his Mac-10 machine pistol.
The bullets and chips of marble snapped over me and into the perfectly kept flora of the garden. The Mac-10 was startlingly quiet for a machine pistol. Suppressors are remarkable things these days. I hit the ground heavily, but it was a fraction of the weight the bullets would have carried.
My hand fished around in the dewy grass and wrapped around the Beretta. The magazine was almost empty. I had taken careful count of each shot I had fired before the dead man had knocked it away. There were two rounds left in the magazine and one in the chamber. I dropped the magazine into my hand and threw it behind my head.
It clanked off a marble statue, and the silenced shots of the Mac-10 chased right after it. I breathed through the motion this time. I came up and centered the blade of the front sight, through the notch of the rear sight, directly on the man's forehead. He knew he had made a mistake. He was trying to make up for it and was swinging his gun around in a hurry. But the suppressed cough of the Beretta never gave him the chance. His head snapped back. As he fell, he squeezed the trigger of the gun, and it fired a burst into the air.
I ducked back down behind the marble half-wall. The Beretta's slide was locked back. I quickly replaced the magazine, dropping the slide onto the bullet. My hand shot to my ear piece, pushing the talk button.
“What the hell was this?” I said, in an urgent whisper. “These sons of bitches were waiting for me.”
“There's no way,” Mateo Hernandez said, his voice gravelly from the thousand miles of distance between us. Or maybe it was the cigar he was smoking in the command center.
“Mateo. I wouldn't have agreed to work for you if I knew I was walking into a damn trap.”
“Nate, the whole reason we hired you is because you're not affiliated with the Agency. There's no way in hell anyone could know you're working for us. Are you sure they’re after you because you work for the CIA or do they just not like you?”
I could have been insulted, but I wasn't.
He brought up a valid point. I've been doing this sort of thing (dangerous adventures) for a little while now, and I’ve made a lot of damn enemies along the way. As much as I didn't want to admit it, Mateo was probably right. There was almost no chance anybody knew I had contracted out to the CIA for this mission.
But there was a high chance that the multinational criminal element I was trying to help the CIA dispose of, knew who Nate Colt was.
I stood up and looked at the man lying in a heap. He was big. I don't know if it was the extra adrenaline that had allowed my punch to be a knockout, or if I had just surprised him.
I had come out in the garden to look for a way up into the office. As soon as they saw me, they had shot.
I had held them both at bay with 15 of the 18 rounds in the Beretta. Those shots had allowed me to close the distance to the big man.
He had knocked my pistol away and thrown one hell of a haymaker. Luckily, I had gone under it. Then, as I came up, I had landed the heaviest uppercut of my life.
I looked down at his body. There was a small pool of blood from where his head had crashed down on the marble.
I brought up the pistol and shot him. It could be deadly to chance him turning up at the wrong time. I holstered the gun under my midnight blue tuxedo jacket, then adjusted the bow tie, making sure it was straight. I dusted off the grass and dirt on the knees and elbows.
I grabbed the big man and pulled him out of sight behind the marble garden wall, then repeated the same process for the second body. I pulled out a 30-round stick magazine for the Mac-10 and then grabbed the pistol itself, swapping the mag out.
I made sure a round was chambered and moved through the perfectly landscaped garden.
____
Anatoly Shakolov was a very dangerous man. But also a very rich man. There were guards all throughout the grounds and the building itself.
The reason the CIA hadn't sent in their own operative was that they needed plausible deniability. Of course, every CIA agent agrees to plausible deniability when they work for the agency. But when you contract for them, you don't even have the chance to agree to it, because you don't even exist.
My brother used to work for the CIA until things went south, but he had recruited me to help with a few missions. His old friend, Mateo, had kept my resume for just such occasions.
This time, he hired me to infiltrate Anatoly's residence, break into his safe, and remove a list of black-market locations for arms trafficking. I had no disillusionment that once I turned this information over to Mateo, good old Uncle Sam was going to commandeer the arms themselves. They'd take over the sales and move them faster than the black-market could ever manage.
But that's just good business. I'd rather have the United States running guns. Even if their morals are very questionable, they have to be better morals than those of an angry Russian expat.
Oh, did I forget to mention? Anatoly Shakalov lived in Kyushu, Japan.
I had arrived in the country three days prior, and infiltrated the hotel room of one of Anatoly's party guests.
I told him he could take the $500,000 I had in my briefcase and go on a nice brief vacation if he just turned over his invitation.
He had turned it over.
But he’d sent it my way with a throwing knife attached. A quick slip to the left, two coughs of the suppressed Beretta, and my new name was Charles Cavendish.
_____
I came up to the secret entryway of the mansion. It appeared to be a wall.
If I hadn't seen one of the two goons come through earlier, I would’ve not known it was even there. I had snuck the key out of one of the dead man's pockets. I deftly inserted it into the key-hole. I turned the lock.
It was a heavy turn, and I felt weighty tumblers shifting.
I stepped back, the key still in the lock, and pulled the door open. I brought the Mac-10 up.
No one was in sight. Dim, warm lights climbed up the interior of a stairwell. They were set 15 feet apart. I pulled the door shut behind me, but left it unlocked. There was no chance I wasn't leaving myself an easy way out.
I moved up the stairs on soft feet, only the occasional creak giving me away.
I came up to a door at the landing. I pressed my ear against it.
Sharp Russian-accented English cut through the wall.
“Sir. The men reported they've seen Nate Colt on the premises.”
“What the hell is he doing here?”
They knew who I was. But how?
“Ivan Kosav will be thrilled if we're able to capture and turn him over.”
”He would be, wouldn't he?”
My jaw was hanging wide open. Kosav was an infamous war criminal who remorselessly led his own war band. He was a psychopathic, zealous, ex-Russian general. He was so religious about the archaic Soviet ways that he was booted from the Russian military.
If the Russian military gives you the boot, you know that something has gone horribly wrong with you. And that was true of Kosav. We had spent some time together in a prison, forced to fight in their infamous gladiatorial ring.
The voices pulled me back from the past. I could hear them continuing the conversation, but I pushed open the door, Mac-10 leading the way.
I saw the two men, one on either side of the desk. But I had not seen the third man. He was standing three yards to my left, in front of another door.
All three men moved in a hurry when they saw me. My finger squeezed the trigger of the gun and the burst caught the two men at the desk. Before I had fired, my left hand had snatched the Beretta, and it found the man at the door.
The bullets jumped out of the barrel, and both rounds smacked into either pectoral. His Makarov slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the floor. He fell heavily against the door and slid down. I heard a frantic voice come from the other side.
“Hey! What just happened?”
I turned the Mac-10 at the door and fired at least 5 rounds, stitching through. A second later, I heard the body clunk on the other side of the door.
I stuffed the Beretta back in the holster and shifted the Mac-10 to my left hand.
I moved to the desk and kicked the pistol further away from the corpse closest to me. I vaulted the desk and landed next to Anatoly. He was bleeding out.
“Kosav will not be happy about this.”
“Kosav hasn't been happy about anything I’ve done since I helped him break out of prison.”
Anatoly shook his head. “He's going to kill you one day, Colt.”
“I'm not too sure about that, Anatoly. Now, where the hell is your safe?”
Anatoly shook his head. “You come into my home. You kill my men. And yet, you expect me to roll over?”
“That's a good point."
I lifted the Mac-10 and fired a single shot.
I looked at my watch. I probably had two minutes left. I sprinted across the room, ripping paintings off of walls. In the third painting, I found it.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a small metal tube. I unscrewed it and removed a hypodermic needle. It was a new CIA development. I pulled on rubber gloves and removed the needle cap.
Intel had been right. It was an older safe. I could see a tiny gap between the safe door and the rest of the safe. I slipped the point of the needle into the first spot — where I thought a hinge would be — and depressed the plunger. I repeated the process 3 inches down. 15 seconds later, the door fell off. I replaced the needle in the metal tube and put it back in my pocket.
I kept the gloves on as I reached into the safe and riffled through the paperwork. My stomach churned as I saw pictures of the sex slaves that Shakalov handled. He had deserved a worse death than I'd given him.
I tossed the pictures to the ground and pulled out four manila envelopes. It was them. They held the location of four different black-market business fronts.
I pulled out my phone and took pictures of all four and immediately sent them to Mateo.
There was a big stack of $100 bills. I grabbed them and stuffed them in a pocket. It would have been a crime to leave that in the hands of Shakalov’s people.
I turned toward the secret passage. On the side of the other door, I heard angry cursing and the jiggle of the doorknob. Guns clicked and rattled. I stepped to the secret door and opened it. I was looking into the eyes of a short Japanese man.
I brought the Mac-10 around and as the muzzle came in line with him, there was the sound of metal on metal. Before I could pull the trigger, the front half of the machine pistol fell off. Something deep within me knew I was in immense danger, and that something threw me backwards.
I plopped on my rear as the air split in front of my face. The bright shine of light flickered from honed steel.
The man’s use of movement was precise, and very impressive. He stepped forward, bringing his short sword down like a lightning strike. I waited just long enough. My right foot flew out as the blade was about to impact. It caught the outside of his left hand.
The kick pushed the two-handed strike just far enough to my left that it sunk into the floor. The blade caught the inside of my right pant-leg, but missed the leg. Before he could free his sword, my left hand latched onto his left arm, and I pulled myself forward while simultaneously pulling him to me. As the distance between us closed, l rocketed forward onto a heavy right cross.
The man was too quick, and he rolled to his left just enough that the punch didn't impact him fully. If it had, it probably would have killed him. The power that resulted from both of us crashing forward, paired with a direct hit, would have been enough to fracture his skull.
Instead, it caught him in the ear. It still pushed him back into the landing of the stairwell. As he stumbled back, I scrambled to my feet.
His back was against the wall and I moved in, cocking back my right arm to finish the fight. When I stepped in, something heavy hit me in the face. I did not know what it was. I was watching the little bastard—he was completely out of position. There was no way it could have been him.
Then the same thing hit me again. I toppled back into the office and saw him bring his right foot down. The son of a bitch had kicked me. Twice.
I hit the ground and fought gravity to get to my knees. The man jumped forward and pulled the sword from the floor. He charged at me. My hand shot out, grabbing one painting from the ground.
As my hands wrapped around the heavy frame of the painting, I turned my whole body and swung for the fences.
It smashed into the oncoming blade, and the crash of wood against metal resounded across the room.
The sword flew out of his hand and spun end over end into the wall.
My swing had carried through and slammed into the man's left shoulder. He stumbled back and away. Then the door burst open.
I had already dropped the painting, and my right hand caught up the Beretta. The pistol swung past the small Japanese man and unloaded in the doorway. Three men were crammed in the frame, fighting to push through. The bullets smacked into them, dropping two.
My peripheral vision caught the small man reaching into his jacket.
I fired one last shot, dropping the last man. His machine pistol chattered into the floorboards, splintering the wood. I moved the pistol as fast as I could. It came to rest on the little man. I squeezed the trigger.
It was just in the nick of time. The man's hand stopped, and a pistol slipped out of the jacket and landed on the floor. He followed right after it, dead.
I was up and switched the nearly depleted magazine from the Beretta as I moved.
I heard more footsteps charging up the stairs. I fired three rounds through the door, forcing the footsteps to turn into dives for cover.
I leapt over the dead body of the small Japanese man. I crashed through the opening and flew down the stairwell.
I smiled, knowing the door was unlocked, awaiting my escape. I slammed into the bottom door. And I bounced off like a rubber ball. I hit the stairs hard; the Beretta slipping from my grasp. That bastard had locked the door behind him.
My hand shot into my jacket pocket. I fumbled for the key with my left and the Beretta with my right.
The key came out of my pocket. I thrust it into the lock and turned. I heard footsteps tearing through the secret doorway. I didn't look. I just brought the gun up behind me and fired at the sounds.
I heard men scuffle for cover. Then the door opened, and I dove through as a string of machine gun fire chased me out. I landed heavily on the ground and rolled out of range behind the door frame. Bullets were ripping through and tearing into the grass. I came to my feet and sprinted into the garden.
Two more guards came into sight. I snapped off a shot at each of them, sending them ducking behind marble statues.
The perimeter wall was 12 feet high.
I was sprinting toward it at full speed. Three feet away, I launched myself forward. My left foot landed halfway up the wall and pushed straight up. I knew there were shards of glass at the top, so I shot out my forearms, clad in the thick fabric of my tuxedo. I could still feel cuts slice through the material, but I swung my legs up and over the fence with only minor damage to my arms.
I landed lightly on the grass and rolled through the fall. The forest line was 20 feet away. I sprinted into the trees.
Bullets whizzed after me, and I zigzagged from tree to tree.
“Mateo! Where the hell is the extraction?” I said through gasps.
“It's two clicks south of you.”
“I don't have a damn compass. Am I headed the right way?”
There was a brief silence.
“Turn left at a 45-degree angle and you'll be where you need to be.”
I immediately adjusted my route and kicked on the afterburners, running all out.
I maintained that pace for two minutes and then slowed to a jog that I could maintain for hours. My lungs were burning, but I moved quickly through the woods. A few minutes later, I came out of the forest. There was an SUV waiting for me, engines running.
The door opened and I leaped in, Beretta still in hand. The car lurched away.
Sitting in the back to my left was a man wearing tactical gear, a balaclava, and a pair of night vision goggles.
In the front seat was another man dressed the same.
The driver turned and looked at me.
“Son of a gun,” I said. “What are you doing here, Mateo?”
“You know, even though the whole reason I hired you was to abandon you if needed, I decided I couldn't follow through.”
I looked at the two special operators.
“You brought in the cavalry for me, didn't you?”
Mateo nodded. “You're a great asset, Nate.”
“Gee,” I said. “How kind of you.”
Mateo laughed.
“To the agency. To me, you're a damn good friend.”
I could tell Mateo was itching to fully investigate the paperwork, even though he had the photos. I handed him the files. He flipped through them.
“Maybe one of these days I'll really hire you,” he said.
I laughed and pulled a pipe from my jacket.
“I'm not interested.”
The End