#newlit

Pavel’s hand gripped the 9 millimeter Berretta strapped to his right hip. “I’m okay; I still have a full magazine in here. Ten shots and I only need one.” Pavel kept patting himself randomly for the rest of his gear. “Two combat knives, and canteen. Not much but it will have to do.” Pavel looked out the window again trying to catch his breath.

For the briefest of moments Pavel thought he was safe. That maybe he lost him. Maybe he was too fast for this guy to catch him. Even his right hand relaxed a little bit from the grip of his gun. Then he heard it. Whistling, someone was whistling. “No!” Panicking Pavel looked for an exit from the abandoned classroom. There was none. The only exit was the door that Pavel had practically broken down and the window. Considering that he was five stories above the ground, the window wasn’t a good option either. “Stay calm. Do the math. There is only one of him and you have ten friends in your weapon. You only need one of them to land.” The whistling grew louder. “Okay just get behind some desks and get ready.” Pavel drew his gun, clicked off the safety and squatted behind a desk on its side that only had three legs remaining.

He waited. He waited until the whistling grew even louder. “Aim for the head, you need a head shot, no hesitation. You hesitate and you’re dead Pavel!” The whistle started to echo it got so loud. “He’s there right on the other side of the door. You got him, he has to come through the door and you got him right in your sights.”  Pavel slowed his breathing down like he was trained to do. Like he had done dozens of times before he killed someone. The whistling stopped. There was just the smallest moment of silence just before the door was kicked so hard it flew off the hinges. Pavel fired. He saw the bullet hit what was left of the door frame. “What? I had him right in my sights!” Pavel fired again. Missed. He fired again. Missed. Panic struck in. Pavel fired the rest of his bullets in a rage until the familiar click that meant his weapon was empty. The only thing left of the door frame was the ten fresh bullet holes that had just been put in and of course the man that was there to kill him.

He was just under six feet tall but seemed to loom over everything due to the black cowboy hat that he wore on the top of his head. He had a thick black beard and dark beady eyes. He was dressed in combat fatigues like Pavel only his were clearly new and the flag on the right shoulder wasn’t Ukrainian like Pavel’s. It was a green square with a genie lamp in the middle of it. He wore a bullet proof vest that had a small radio patched into the top right corner of it. “Dog Whistle, you copy?” crackled the radio.

“Yeah I’m here” he said with a deep southern twang.

“Did you find the target?”

“Yeah he’s here. I’m going to see if he’s got any information. I’ll report back in a few.”

Pavel knew just enough English to understand the key points; this guy’s code name was Dog Whistle and that he was a target.

“Hey! You with the trigger finger!” Dog Whistle said while pointing at Pavel. “Who are you working for?”

Pavel didn’t answer. He wanted to get out of there and he wanted to get out of there fast.  “Go now! Before it’s too late” In one sweeping motion Pavel flipped open the combat knives, one in each hand, and jumped over the desk.

“Sit” Whispered Dog Whistle as he snapped his fingers.

A massive pain shot through Pavel that started at his ears but spread through his whole body. It was like the hiss from a microphone being too close to a speaker was inside his head. Pavel fell to the floor writhing in pain with his hands clapped over his ears. He could feel his lungs exhaling for a scream but he couldn’t hear it. A few seconds later the noise suddenly stopped. Pavel’s hands were shaking and his ears were ringing. “What…What was that?” Pavel thought to himself.

“I’m sorry that was rude of me. I didn’t even bother to find out if you spoke English. Well do you?”

Pavel was amazed that he could still hear anything after the noise but his hearing didn’t seem to be affected at all. His hands were still shaking and he didn’t want to try standing just yet but he heard Dog Whistles question perfectly. “Da, Yes I speak little English.” Pavel was able to mutter in thick Ukrainian-like English.

“Good. Then I’ll speak in little sentences then.” He said as if talking to a child. “What is your name?”

“Pavel Denisovich. What is yours? I doubt it actually Dog Whistle.”

“Look at you Pebble. Regular Rosetta Stone aren’t we. My name is Justin. Dog Whistle is just a code name I picked out.”

Pavel gave a confused look from the floor. The shaking in his hands had stopped but he still didn’t want to trust his legs with standing yet. “Keep him talking. Buy yourself time…”

“What are you though? What did you do to me? More important, how did you take out my entire unit? By yourself?!” Pavel asked.

Justin grinned. “You don’t know who we are? Do you?”

Pavel shook his head.

“Well Pebble I guess we’re a lot like your little group. We’ve been trained, like you. We’ve fought, like you. We’ve lost a few, like you all have. But we’re different in a lot of ways. We’re not loyal to any country except the one that’s paying us. We’ve got better looking uniforms” He gestured up and down, showing off the uniform. ”and the biggest difference Pebble is that every member, every single one, of our army is psychic.” He paused to let Pavel translate. “We do mostly protection but sometimes we do have to get our hands dirty. Like when your government hired us to take you out before you got them.”  

Pavel just sat there looking dumbfounded in disbelief and confusion. Justin put on a big grin and took out a cigarette out of his sleeve pocket, lit it, and took a long drag. “And yes that includes me as well. I’m psychic Pebble.  Do you know what that means? Psychic”

Pavel did know but he was just now getting the feeling back in his legs and needed more time to recover. “No, what it mean?”

“It means that I’m in your head Pebble. Take a good look at me. You see any weapons?” Justin didn’t wait for Pavel to answer. “You don’t because I don’t need them. I got the deadliest weapon of all right up here.” He tapped his forehead.  “See I got what you might call a condition. All it takes is the tiniest sound. That’s all Pebble that’s all I need to cause serious harm, pain, and sometimes even death.” Justin took another long drag.

Pavel was actually confused at this point. “But how you can do that?”

“Honestly, don’t have a clue. I’m sure the egg heads back at base have some explanation for it. All I know is that when your brain hears something I can make it about a thousand times louder in your skull. That’s what I did when you decided to go all Rambo on me with those Appalachian toothpicks.” He pointed to the combat knives that were on the floor.

“But how come I missed?” Pavel pointed to the splintered door frame.

“Oh that! Neat trick I developed, see every time you took a shot I took the noise from your gun and threw it from your brain back to your inner ear. Throw’s you off balance every time.”

Justin finished his cigarette and stomped out the butt on the dust ridden floor.

“Ok brass tacks time. Who hired you to try and kill the prime minister?”

Pavel didn’t answer he looked around for a way out. His legs were still practically noodles at this point.

“Now Pebble I sure would hate to have snap my fingers again.” His demeanor went from almost cheerful to serious. “Now who hired you?” Pavel began to sweat heavily again. He could feel panic rising in his throat.

“Last chance Pebble.” Justin bent down to Pavel’s face with his hands in a snapping position. Pavel’s gaze shifted looking for a way out. Something, anything, anything at all to get out of the room but nothing came. He was trapped.

“Ok have it your way” Justin raised his hands ready to snap again.

“No! Wait! OK I’ll tell you.” “There’s a good boy. Now who hired you?”

“General Socolovsky hired us.” Pavel said while looking down at the ground. He just gave up the man who hired him and his team.

            There are plenty of rules that come with being a gun for hire; always clean your weapon, get half payment up front and the other half after the job is done, lay low after a job for at least three months. But the most important, the most cardinal of all rules for mercenaries is to never, ever, reveal who hired you because not only are the people loyal to the target looking for you but now so is the person who hired you. That is why Pavel couldn’t look up from the floor. He might as well have signed his own death certificate.

“There now that wasn’t so bad now was it? Hmm an internal coup. I would have never picked him to have the plums for something like that. You’ve been a big help Pebble.” With that Justin turned around and started to walk out the door splintered door frame.

“Wait. You’re not going to kill me?” asked Pavel.

“Nope. No need to at this point. You’re wounded and besides your own government will kill you soon enough if you don’t get out of the country. There’s no sport in killing you now.”

“He’s right. There’s nowhere in the entire Ukraine I could hide. They would eventually find me. Unless…unless I get lucky. He doesn’t know that I can walk now. Feebly but still I can walk. He hasn’t radioed it in yet either. Nobody knows I gave up the general.” Pavel’s mind was racing faster and faster. “Be fast. Fastest you’ve ever been. Pick up the knife and stick him right at the base of the skull. No chance to blow out my ears again.”

Justin was almost at the doorframe with his back turned. As silently as he could Pavel picked up a fallen knife on the floor and stood on his wobbly legs. “Three steps. That’s all I need to close the gap and end this.” thought Pavel.  “Now before he turns around!”

One…

Two…

Thr…

Before Pavel could even raise the knife past his waist, Pavel heard the last sound he would ever hear; the snapping of Justin’s fingers.

The shear amount of pain was staggering. Like before Pavel collapsed to the floor. Only this time it was worse, much worse. Writhing in pain Pavel smashed his fingers in his ears to try and stop the noise but to no avail. This time it didn’t stop it got louder and louder. He couldn’t stand it! His eyes rolled into the back of his head and eventually started seizing there on the floor. After a minute or two he stopped moving altogether with foam coming out of his mouth and a look of sheer anguish on his face.