Moskva by Christa Wick Read Free Book Online

chained door.
    There were no heroes in this building. The fire teams would be too slow to reach him. And his time to break through the door was over -- he could feel the heat of the fire on his threshold.
    A grim laugh burnt its way up his throat. He had bitched and moaned inside his head about the paper thin walls between the units. He hoped like hell he was right about their consistency.
    Flipping the bed and frame onto its side, he gained a little distance away from the wall then charged at it, his shoulder leading the way with his forearm up to guard his head. Plaster crumbled. A pipe no more round than his thumb broke at its joint, dousing him with water.
    Stumbling against the prostitute's bed, he reached to his right hoping for a window but finding only the sturdier exterior wall. Looking to his left, he knew the door out was a last option, the wood already splintering from the heat. Shoving the whore's bed against the wall he had just demolished, he flipped it, threw his arm up again and charged at the next wall between units.
    Pain sliced through his hip as another decaying pipe broke, the metal shearing and cutting through his jeans. Ignoring the wound, he turned to the room's single window, tearing down the curtain to find bars welded in place.
    He coughed, choking on mucus as the acrid smoke scraped at his throat and lungs. Reaching the door, he touched its surface then seized the knob and yanked. Smoke billowed thick into the room. In the hall, a screaming woman ran past as she exited the stairwell.
    Poking his head out, Mishka looked toward the exit. Blood froze in his veins. Kiril Lapin, one of Rodchenko's Boyevik warriors stood surrounded in a soft haze of smoke, a wet handkerchief to his face. With a gun in his hand, he waved the tenants out of the building.
    With no more than a few seconds to decide before Lapin turned around and spotted him, Mishka hurled himself at the stairwell and began to push frantically against the wave of bodies that streamed downward.
    By the time he reached the third floor landing, there was no one to push against. He took the fourth and fifth-floor stairs two steps at a time, reaching the roof out of breath and coughing up chunks of soot-filled snot.
    Wheezing, he made his way to the edge of the roof and looked down to the narrow alley below. The flames on his corner of the building were about to overtake the fourth floor, the lower floors already beginning to crumble. With the support under his feet in danger of giving way, he dashed to the opposite end and stared down again.
    Taking a deep breath, he eyeballed the distance between his rooftop and that of the building across the alley. Eight feet maybe, plus the three foot tall lip on each roof.
    Looking down into the alley, he saw more of the building in flames. It wouldn't be long before the fire leapt across the alley and everything under his feet collapsed into rubble.
    With no time to practice the distance, he went to the other side of the roof and started running. Two feet from the building's lip, he sprung upward, his long legs quickly tucking close to his ass as he went airborne over the alley.
    A month after his desperate leap, he touched down in Moscow as Rodya Kalinin -- the newest recruit in a joint task force between the FBI and its Russian counterpart to stop organized crime.
     

Chapter Eight
    Russia - present day
     
    Reaching into his medical bag, the physician nodded at Mishka's bloodstained shirt. A faint tremor ran through his hands as he snapped on a pair of blue surgical gloves.
    "That will need to come off."
    Osip dropped the sandwich Arkady had picked up while fetching the doctor onto the deli wrapper and stood. His hand dove into his pocket to retrieve a buck knife. A grin smearing his face, he opened the blade and grabbed the cuff of Mishka's sleeve.
    Careless with the knife, he began ripping upward, nicking the skin along the bicep and again at the collar.
    Mishka watched through swollen eyes as the