Page 45 of Devil's Retribution

I went over to look. There was a small device strapped to his chest, a black square of plastic and metal with a single, small red LED pulsing rhythmically. “What the hell is this?”

Tolya levered himself out of his chair and came over to look. He frowned. “Looks like a heart monitor.”

I turned my head and spoke to one of my men. “Get Doc in here now, he can finish playing coroner after this.”

The man nodded and stepped out. I turned back to the device, which featured two wires snaking down into the captive’s pants. “Who the hell sent you here to cause trouble in my club?” I demanded.

He grinned with blood edging his teeth, my punch had made him bite his tongue. “Pashol nahui,” he spat. I slapped him across the face before the insult was done. He winced, blood at the corner of his mouth now. “You’ll talk soon enough,” I informed him.

Tolya frowned, eyes tracing the wires. He checked the man’s pants pockets, but there was nothing. He checked the cuffs of his pants and saw the wires snaked into his shoes. “This is odd.”

He started taking one of the shoes off. “Wait!” I snapped, and he froze.

I walked over and checked. The wire went straight into the shoe—which, I saw, had unusually thick soles.

My eyes narrowed, and then widened in understanding as horror flooded through me. “Doc—”

An explosion shook the room, sending scalpels and instruments clattering to the floor and making us stagger. The door rattled in its frame, one of the lightbulbs shattered and sent sparks raining down. The lights flickered, I heard another heavy boom and clatter outside, and my ears started ringing.

As the dust settled, Tolya and I looked at each other and rushed for the door.

The hallway was a disaster. The exam room Doc had been using was blown open, there were cracks in the concrete walls and the door bowed outward and had been blown off its hinges. The odor of blood and motor oil filled the air.

Doc lay on the hallway floor on his back, with the man I’d sent for him underneath, knocked out, arms still loosely around him. It looked like he’d gotten injured dragging him out of the room.

For a moment, I thought the turtlish older man was dead. But then he blinked his eyes open, and gingerly adjusted his cracked glasses on his nose. He looked up at me and I saw that his ears were bleeding.

A quick glance into the shattered room told an ugly story, every surface was painted with blood and body parts. The man had been reduced to scraps of meat and cloth. His wristwatch had been driven into the wall a few inches.

“A bomb in his shoe, tied to his heartbeat I think, or perhaps a pressure sensor.” I turned back to Doc, Tolya was checking him over while the poor man sat up gingerly. The man who had saved him was just starting to stir.

“What happened?” I demanded of Doc, who just stared at me in a daze.

“His eardrums are busted.” Tolya leaned down to check the other guy, who groaned and fluttered his eyes open. “You still with us, brother?”

“Ugh,” the poor man grunted. He brushed his hand over the back of his head, and it came back bloody. “Here. Is this my blood?”

“No way of telling right now. But you got a whack on the head. You’ll need to be checked over. Good job saving Doc. What’s your name?”

“Mischa.”

I nodded, offering my hand as Tolya helped Doc up. Mischa took it gingerly, and I pulled him to his feet. “Good job,” I told him. “I’ll call in Doc’s assistant to have a look at you. Meanwhile, go upstairs, get cleaned up.” I summoned the second man out, he was pale, and went paler when he saw the contents of the exam room. “Help Mischa get upstairs and watch him. If he looks like he’s going to faint I want you on the radio at once. Keep him awake at all costs.”

Once they had headed for the stairs, I turned to Tolya and Doc. Doc was bleeding in a few places, but it didn’t look serious. “Call Bela in, let him know his superior is in a bad way. And then help Doc clean up and keep an eye on him. I’ll deal with the asshole who is still alive.”

I stalked back into the interrogation room, the Kazakh grinned up at me and started snickering. “Bet you weren’t expecting that, were you, mudak? Kill me or make my heart beat too fast and boom! I’ll take you out with me.”

“Is that so?” A literal dead man’s switch. Send two doomed idiots in on a suicide mission wired up like this, with a kilo of C-4 in their shoes. Make them start shit out in public in my club—and the moment they die, they go off. How the fuck was I supposed to interrogate this bastard when he was strapped up like this?

He was tittering to himself as he stared at me mockingly. “So do your fucking worst,” he spat. “Tamper with it or do anything to me, and boom!”

“Is that so?” We would have to see what my explosives expert said. Meanwhile, I had another tool that would do well enough to start loosening the bastard’s tongue. “Well, thanks for telling me.”

I turned to walk back out of the room. He shifted in his bonds. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Leaving you here. I’ll have some men come by and seal the door. It’ll be a few days before you die of dehydration, and by then any explosion will be completely contained. It’s clear there’s not enough explosive to do serious structural damage to my club.”

“Wait—” he called in a panic as I walked out. “Wait!”