Ruthless (Out of the Box Book 3) Read online

  Ruthless

  Out of the Box, Book 3

  Robert J. Crane

  Ruthless

  Out of the Box #3

  Robert J. Crane

  Copyright © 2015 Midian Press

  1st Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected]

  Author’s Note: With the exception of the prologue, this book takes place about nine months after the events of Limitless: Out of the Box #1 and almost three years after In the Wind: Out of the Box #2.

  Prologue

  Fifteen Miles Outside Omsukchan

  Magadan Oblast, Russia

  The revolution was, in fact, televised, though it was a mercifully short affair. Matfey Krupin had watched it all from the front lines, in Red Square, when the army came marching in to support the people against the tinpot dictator that had held an iron grip on the presidency for more years than a youth like Matfey could even remember. The fires of revolution had burned, brighter and less violent than the one a century earlier, and more justly as well. Matfey had cheered when the word had come through the cold and frigid crowd that the president had fled Russia for good, and the exultations of the populace, the wild enthusiasm for a new and genuine democracy, had carried them through the three months since.

  Three months of hard work for Matfey and his colleagues.

  Now he was standing here, in the freezing cold outside Omsukchan, this godforsaken corner of the Far Eastern Federal District, in a place everyone outside of Russia would just call Siberia, and looking at a mountain. The mountain stared back, implacable. The roar of the army truck’s diesel motor behind him was the only sound in the air as Matfey stood, staring, waiting for his escort to finish his piss break.

  “Froze before it even hit the ground,” Boris Pasternack called to Matfey, drawing him out of his moment’s quiet thought. There were trees lining the road around them, though calling it a road might have been generous. Matfey had been raised in Moscow; to him this had the look of nothing more than a gravel track covered over with some snow. Tire marks were the only indication that it had seen steady use; a most curious thing to see this far out on the frontier, especially when the records indicated that the facility at the end of this road had been closed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

  Secrets and lies, Matfey thought, these are the tools of the trade for the liar-in-chief, his name for the previous administration’s head.

  “Come on,” Boris said again, trudging toward him over the fresh snow. “It’s up here.” Pasternack wore the standard army hat, his colonel’s rank evident by three stars on his coat and hat. The coat looked somewhat warm, Matfey reflected, but not nearly as much as the coat he had brought. God knew how many hours they had spent on trains to get to this corner of the federation, but they had all been miserably cold.

  Now, he stared at the mountain. Almost there.

  “I haven’t asked you yet about your organization’s name,” Boris said, stepping up into the cab. The heat was roaring, and only a little of the chill followed them into the cab. Matfey hurried up into the tall vehicle and shut the door behind him, rubbing his gloved hands together while glancing at Boris. The army man’s cheeks were scratchy, newly grown beard coming into its own now.

  “What about it?” Matfey asked, still rubbing his fingers together. They had the ache upon them, down to the bones. Matfey had felt it before, on the coldest days in Moscow. Somehow it felt even worse in this place, this inhospitable hell.

  Boris shifted the truck into drive, and the vehicle began to rumble. Matfey fumbled for his seatbelt, numb fingers finding the old lap belt. The truck had been waiting for them in Omsukchan when they had arrived, the local garrison ostensibly glad to part with it for someone of Boris’s rank. They had kept their distance, though, Matfey had noticed. Possibly resentful of the change in rank accorded a supporter of the revolution like Colonel Pasternack, Matfey thought. Possibly.

  “It is a strange name for an organization such as yours, is it not?” Boris asked, shrugging as though it were nothing but a minor conversation point. “‘Limited People’?”

  Matfey smiled. Of course, Colonel Pasternack, glorious hero of the revolution, would not have heard of it. He was a tool of the previous state, after all, and possibly even a tool of the one before that. “It’s a quote,” Matfey said, pulling off his gloves and forcing his chilled fingers up against the hot, blowing air coming out of the ventilation system, “from Solzhenitsyn. ‘Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.’” Matfey clenched his fingers together experimentally. Even the two minutes spent out in the snow while waiting for Colonel Pasternack to finish his business had been foolish; he should have waited in the warm cab, but he hadn’t been able to resist a chance to stretch his legs and look at the sky.

  It was a privilege long denied to the people he was about to see, after all.

  Boris just shrugged, again, aimless, as though the quote held no more significance for him than a line of English from a brainless Hollywood movie. “If you say so,” Boris said. Matfey wondered if the colonel was being deliberately dense in an attempt to avoid discussion of the quote’s significance to their present mission, or if he truly was that uncaring. Matfey landed on the latter after only a moment’s consideration; he had been traveling with the colonel for many days now, and was well versed in the man’s lack of concern for apparent cruelties.

  “Up there,” Boris said, and Matfey followed his pointing finger to see a tunnel entrance carved into the mountain. Two soldiers waited there, a guardhouse with its ineffectual wooden barrier barely suggesting an impediment. They opened the gate without even stopping the truck, already informed of its imminent arrival.

  Matfey watched the guards with a little contempt; trained dogs, that was all these men were. Cruel and not particularly bright, enforcers of an order long gone. These men were a ruble a dozen, expendable and pointless in the new order. Their day was done; they simply did not know it yet. Or perhaps they did, and simply did their jobs from force of habit.

  The truck rumbled into the darkened tunnel, the lights casting shadows on the wall as they passed. Boris held his silence as they entered a massive cave, a hollowed-out middle of the mountain. Darkness was not the word; floodlights lit the space, a conical rock chamber big enough to house a small stadium. Here, Boris parked the truck, in a row with two others. Snow from the outside world lay fallen in piles where it had dropped from under the chassis of the transports.

  Matfey was the first out; Boris took his sweet time. The colonel seemed less than impressed with the installation, Matfey thought, as though he had been to places like this before. It was an impressive feat of engineering, Matfey supposed, though ultimately useless now that its primary purpose was about to be undone.

  Finally.

  A man with the bars and stars of a lieutenant colonel hurried up, seemingly out of the nowhere of the darkness. Matfey took his place next to Boris, respecting the traditions of the military ground upon which he stood, though those traditions were about to be rendered pointless.

  “Colonel,” the lieutenant colonel said, saluting. Pasternack returned the gesture, and Matfey wondered if these idiots ever grew tired of constantly paying homage to one another, kissing each other’s corpulent asses. “We have been expecting you.” His brass nameplate read “Markovi
c,” and he was in his forties, hair slightly greying at the temples.

  “This is my colleague, Matfey Krupin of Limited People,” Pasternack said.

  Markovic didn’t get the reference, either; Matfey could tell by the expression on the Lieutenant Colonel’s face. It was the furrowed brow of deep concentration, of a man searching his memory for a hint. “That sounds … a little familiar … I suppose.”

  It should sound damned familiar, Matfey didn’t say, taking a few deliberate steps past the lieutenant colonel to stare into the darkness of the old mine. It was doubtful that the lieutenant colonel would forget the name when he was serving a long prison term thanks to Limited People’s efforts. “We’re a longstanding organization,” Matfey said instead, preferring to speak subtly rather than send Markovic running for the hills like the war criminal he surely was, “but we’ve only come to prominence with the election of the new administration.”

  Markovic nodded his head, as though the idiot comprehended anything. “You’re here for the tour, then?”

  Matfey smiled, feeling a cold, smug superiority. “Of course. As Colonel Pasternack said when he called, this place is something of a … vanished site. We’re here to … put it back on the map.”

  Markovic’s expression turned dark, and he shook his head slightly. His movement looked more like a nervous twitch than a deliberate gesture. “That is not a good idea.”

  Colonel Pasternack’s sharp intake of breath was audible and surprisingly cautious given the circumstances, Matfey thought. “Lieutenant Colonel Markovic,” Boris said gently, “this comes from the highest authority.”

  Markovic’s shoulders tensed, and when he spoke it was in a cautious whisper. “Do you know what we have here, Colonel?” Matfey felt his cheeks burn with the indignity; it was as though he were not even here.

  “You have the last of the damned gulags operating here,” Matfey snapped, bringing the Lieutenant Colonel’s head around in an instant. “You have the distinction of operating an unauthorized prison that is in violation of basic human rights.” He stepped closer, getting right in Markovic’s face. He could smell the vodka coming out of the man’s pores. “Do you know what sort of penalty that carries under the new government?”

  Markovic paled visibly, and a bead of sweat dripped down his temple. “We only have four prisoners,” Markovic said, and looked to Colonel Pasternack as if there was some support to be had there.

  “Take us to them,” Boris said, more gently than Matfey judged necessary.

  Markovic snapped off a crisp nod, and turned on his heel in military precision. Boris followed, and Matfey kept his pace even with Colonel Pasternack. “You need not be so accommodating,” Matfey said in a hiss of a whisper to Boris.

  “You needn’t be such a prick,” Boris replied. “We are in his mountain, surrounded by his men, and at his mercy.” Pasternack’s eyes were focused, and they carried a hint of menace. “Don’t be an ass, and you’ll get what you want.”

  “I’ll get what I mean to however I want,” Matfey said hotly. As though these army dicks had the balls to disobey their own chain of command? Orders were all they had, after all.

  They followed Lieutenant Colonel Markovic to a set of elevators, steel girders surrounding metal cages at each of the four corners. With a rattle, Markovic unlocked the one on the right, nodding at something above. Matfey looked up to see a booth with more guards. One of them nodded down at the lieutenant colonel and something buzzed; the heavy clink of a metal lock disengaging filled the air.

  “Can’t be too careful,” Markovic said as he slid open the cage and undid the first button of his uniform dress shirt. He fumbled with awkward hands, probably still feeling the hard drink, Matfey thought, and came up with a key. He slipped it into a lock on the elevator console, pressed a button, and the elevator buzzed before moving.

  The three of them stood in awkward silence, Boris and Markovic exchanging uncomfortable looks.

  “How long have your prisoners been here?” Matfey asked.

  “Since 1982,” Markovic said.

  Matfey blinked at him. “Have they been outside in that time?”

  Markovic frowned. “Of course not.”

  Matfey could feel the anger, the righteousness burn within him. The prison system of the tinpot tyrant’s Russia had been a totalitarian thing, but this was draconian even by his standards. “Are they fed regularly?”

  “One meal per day, at varying times,” Markovic said. He looked uncomfortable, probably as a result of Matfey’s furious expression at this admission, and elaborated: “They were not to be given so much as a detail of the outside world, and no predictable routine was to be established.”

  Matfey made a scoffing noise and looked at Boris, whose discomfort was apparent at this admission. “You are going to release these prisoners immediately, do you understand?”

  Markovic’s eyes were wide enough to accommodate the bottom of a vodka bottle each. “Release … them? Do you have any idea who they are? What they are?”

  “I know they were imprisoned by the old Soviet Union,” Matfey snapped back, “and that you are upholding illegal sentences and carrying out practices that violate their basic human rights.”

  Markovic’s face filled with quiet umbrage, lips in a tight line. “I was merely carrying out my orders.”

  “I’m certain the war crimes tribunal will not have heard that one before,” Matfey said with the satisfaction of a man about to watch a heinous leech get scraped off his skin. Markovic’s face grew even paler as the elevator rattled to a stop.

  “Cooperate, Lieutenant Colonel,” Pasternack said quietly, clearly attempting to talk the man down from the ledge Matfey had just pushed him onto, “my young colleague here is a bit … overenthusiastic in his pursuits. He speaks out his ass.”

  Markovic’s paleness dimmed only slightly, and the uncertainty was obvious on his face. “I will do what you ask, Colonel.”

  They stepped out into a smaller chamber, a mining tunnel somewhere ahead, cored out of the mountain’s hard rock. Lighting was strung all throughout, and the smell was of dirt and must. Matfey waited for Markovic to take the lead, but the man was not moving, his hands shaking mightily.

  “Lieutenant Colonel,” Boris said, voice low and supportive, “do you need a moment to compose yourself?”

  “I need more than a moment to do what you’re asking me to do,” Markovic said, his head low, staring at a set of jailer’s keys in his hand. “I have watched over this prison for over a decade.” He looked sideways, from Pasternack to Matfey. “I have been dealing with these prisoners … for longer than that. I ask you again … do you have any idea what you are dealing with here?”

  “We are dealing with a legacy of lies some three decades deep and growing,” Matfey said.

  “You are dealing with the most dangerous prisoners in what was once the Soviet Union,” Markovic said in a hushed whisper. “They were locked up for a reason.”

  “Yes,” Matfey said, nodding, “because they were subjects of a tyrannical regime that is now some twenty years gone. They’ve been imprisoned past the point when all the other political prisoners were set free.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Really, Lieutenant Colonel, I would think you’d be eager to rectify this wrong of yours.”

  Markovic swallowed heavily. “The only thing I could do to rectify this wrong would be to drop the mountain down on them and pave over it with concrete.”

  Even Colonel Pasternack seemed to think he’d gone too far. “Times have changed, Lieutenant Colonel,” Boris said. “You have your orders, and I have them on paper if you require them. All prisoners are to be set free. Do you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” Markovic said, and started shuffling down the tunnel once more. “But I can only assume that along with our location being missing from the map, the description of these prisoners must also be lost to time.”

  Boris grunted in acknowledgment of that. Matfey merely kept his peace; this Lieutenant Colonel
was a disturbing sort of fatalist.

  The chamber widened ahead, and dark, cool air filtered out. They stepped into the center of it and Matfey nearly gasped. The lighting was slightly better in here, but only slightly. “This is …” his eyes took it all in, his outrage spilled out of his heart like vodka slopped into a glass too short for it, “this is … it’s criminal!”

  “They are criminal,” Lieutenant Colonel Markovic said with a shake of his head, lips pursed in utter disapproval. “This is merely what we have had to do to contain them.”

  “You are a despicable sort of cur,” Matfey said, poking a finger at the Lieutenant Colonel, “a dog of the lowest kind, to treat prisoners in this manner—”

  “I do what I’m told,” Markovic said with a surprising amount of calm. “I do what is necessary.”

  “This seems … excessive,” Pasternack said in a quiet voice, eyes looking over the cave.

  Matfey’s mouth was open in quiet fury. Two bodies were strung to his left and right, bound to the wall by metal restraints of thickest steel, wrapped around the chests of the two men. Their arms were missing from mid-humerus, a slow drip of fresh blood from the recently severed appendages falling to the ground far below. “When did you do this to them?” he asked, when he recovered his power of speech.

  “We do it to them every day,” Markovic replied. “Every single day, we remove them before they can grow back.”

  “Barbaric!” Matfey felt the word rush out. His eyes slid across the darkened chamber to the opposite end, where a female figure hung, arms in the air, naked in the middle of a spider web of chains that bound her from each arm and leg, that wound around her waist in thick segments, attached by more thick bands of dark metal. “What have you done to her?” Pale skin and pale eyes looked up from beneath dirty, ragged hair to find his eyes. There was a fierce intelligence there, and he felt immediate pity for her state.

  “She is strong enough to break down the door to a prison cell,” Markovic said, voice thin and frail as he attempted to explain. “When she was placed here, she was bound in more chains than she could defeat and suspended where she could not—”