The Red Menace #1

  BETTER DEAD?

  The Menace ducked from cover and fired a single shot.

  The bullet caught Zhadanov in the shoulder, the Tommy gun sprang from fat hands and the Russian Mobster tumbled back and disappeared between bed and armoire. The gun bounced across the unmade bed and fell to floor with a clatter and suddenly the entire Vegas mansion was smothered in unnatural silence.

  The Menace glanced back and saw Olga peeking around the doorframe, long blond hair spilling down one bare shoulder. In his head he heard a sonorous voice repeat a warning for the hundredth time: “Never trust a red, Patrick.”

  But the voice in his head was wrong. Olga Cherblonya had been vitally important in finishing off Zhadanov. In this one case, Russian interests had aligned with those of America. And what was possible now was possible again in the future.

  Zhadanov stirred. The Menace heard a grunt and the soft rustling of silk.

  “On your feet, Zhadanov!” the Menace snapped as he crept over to the bed. “I count to five and I don’t see both hands, I’m blowing the floor out from under you.”

  Red and Buried

  The Red Menace #1

  Jim Mullaney

  James Mullaney Books

  Copyright / Credits

  “THE RED MENACE” TM & © James Mullaney. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover by Mark Maddox, maddoxplanet.com

  Editor: Donna Courtois

  Formatting / Production: Rich Harvey

  James Mullaney Books, June 2011

  Available in paperback from Bold Venture Press

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior express written consent of the publisher and the copyright holder.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Red and Buried

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Aftermath

  Epilogue

  A Note from Jim

  About the author

  Other Books by James Mullaney

  For Ma

  Red and Buried

  Prologue

  October 1958

  Colonel Ivan Strankov peered suspiciously at the contents of the sealed glass container and frowned.

  There were plants in the tank. Or, rather, there appeared to be the dead remnants of what had once been plants. The stems of the dead husks were curled and oozing white pus, the leaves were shriveled and brown.

  The adjacent tank on the laboratory table seemed placed there purely for contrast. This second tank was crammed with plants in flourishing bloom; dark and healthy green. Both containers were labeled with Cyrillic letters and carefully numbered with some sort of diabolically convoluted code that even Colonel Strankov, with his cunning mind and top Soviet security clearance, could not crack.

  “What is all this?” Strankov demanded.

  Dr. Oleg Plassko was fussing around a table in the center of the room and had barely taken notice of Strankov’s presence.

  “An experiment, comrade colonel,” Plassko said, a hint of distracted frustration in his voice. “A failure for now, I am afraid. But we persevere. We persevere.”

  Plassko was an odd figure. Thick glasses like the bottoms of Coca-Cola bottles were jammed far back on an upturned, pig-like nose, comically enlarging his already huge, unblinking green eyes and giving the scientist the appearance of a perpetually startled owl. He was barely north of five feet tall but his arms were long and his feet large, as if some malevolent god had pushed down and compressed his torso. Although only fifty-two, Plassko was nearly bald, and the wild fringe of remaining yellow hair brushed the collar of his white coat as he hustled around the lab.

  Strankov gave a low growl and returned to his observations.

  The colonel did not want to be there, but only those who knew him very well would have detected his annoyance. A grunt, a scowl, a growl. Small tics, barely noticeable. Strankov was used to hiding his displeasure. In the Soviet Union, one did not rise as quickly as had he, and at such a young age, by advertising one’s thoughts and emotions. It was not for nothing that Ivan Strankov was a decorated Soviet Army colonel at the age of twenty-six, as well as the youngest recipient of the Order of Lenin and the powerful director of the secret espionage agency known as Motherland.

  Where Colonel Ivan Strankov walked, KGB officers fell silent in fear.

  There were more glass tanks piled in the corner of the room. These looked as if they had been hastily cleaned and discarded. Strankov wondered if they had contained more plants. He supposed he should read more of what Plassko was up to down here in the Motherland offices at Lubyanka Square. One member of the Politburo was briefly interested in the odd little man’s work a few years back and even though that party official had since died Oleg Plassko still had no difficulty finding funding. The unwieldy beast of government could not be stopped once set in motion.

  Unlike Plassko, Strankov considered himself a man of action. He had not much interest in beakers and test tubes and glass tanks filled with rotting, pus-filled plants.

  “Very good, very good,” Plassko muttered. An irritating habit; the scientist often repeated his own words.

  There were three other scientists in the room. They had helped Plassko clear off a black-topped central table. Everything in the room had been shoved to one side. Plassko took out several jars of dark material from a refrigerator in the corner of the room and set them to one side. He clapped his hands and looked around, biting his lower lip in concentration. “I believe that we are ready. Yes, we are ready, comrade colonel.”

  Wordlessly, Strankov marched to the door. He waved one gloved hand into the hallway and a moment later a half-dozen men were hustling into the room.

  The first four young soldiers were carting a large wooden box like a funeral bier. The box was six feet long but narrow, and fit easily through the lab’s double doors.

  “Very good, very good. Over here,” Plassko said, gesturing toward the table.

  “Mind the gas line. Right there, son, by your foot. Fine, fine. Good. Excellent.”

  With great reverence the large crate was set on the table in the middle of the room. At a nod from Strankov, the two soldiers who had trailed the others into the room hustled forward and, using crowbars, pried off the lid. The clean silver nails shrieked in pain and once the lid was clear it was leaned against a wall. The soldiers returned and made quick work of the wooden sides. When the box was stripped away, the young soldiers backed away from the object that had been contained within.

  The corpse was lighter than the box in which it had been transported.

  The body had been preserved for over thirty years. The eyes were closed in permanent slumber. The thick mustache seemed thin close up and was painted black, as was the hair that rimmed the bald pate. A goatee clung to the chin, which was pressed against the starched white collar and necktie.

  “Comrade Vladimir Ilich,” Plassko wheezed reverently.

  If it were a church, the men around the room would have blessed themselves.

  Lenin’s mouth was stitched tight, as if to stifle more bloody commands which in life had flowed so freely from between the lips of one of history’s great monsters.

  Strankov’s spine was nearly always at a perfect rigid right angle from the floor. The colonel spent his life at attention. Even as he bent to look at the desiccated corpse, the creases in his Red Army uniform remained perfectly rigid lines.

  “What is wrong with his skin?” Strankov asked.

  Lenin’s pale skin was like wax that had dried in the desert sun. It seemed to pucker in places, pulling up from the bone. The dry flesh all around cheeks and broad forehead was crisscrossed with a fine lattice of cracks. Some of those cracks, especially over cheekbones and at the bridge of the nose, had widened into fissures.

  “Our great friend and comrade has been dead for thirty-four years, Comrade Strankov,” Plassko replied, hustling over to grab one of the glass jars from the counter. “That would take a toll on even the best of us. Even Comrade Vladimir Ilich.”

  Plassko unscrewed the lid on the jar. If he noticed the stench that immediately flooded the lab, the scientist did not react to it. Three of the soldiers who had been so fascinated by the body of the original Soviet leader retreated to a safe distance.

  “Worse than women,” Strankov grunted at the trio. “Get out, ladies.” The three shamed men did as they were commanded, leaving the other three young soldiers in the room as they shut the double doors behind them.


  The other scientists knew what was coming and had braced themselves for the odor, yet one had to excuse himself, then the others until only Strankov, Plassko, and the trio of stronger-stomached soldiers remained.

  Plassko remained oblivious to the odor. He stuck his hand in the jar and brought out a mittful of foul-smelling brown paste which he smeared on Lenin’s bald head.

  “Fool,“ Strankov hissed. “You should have tested it first on a leg or arm. This is not only your life you…are…dealing…”

  But even as he spoke, his words slowed to a shocked whisper before finally dying in his throat.

  As Strankov watched in awed silence, Lenin seemed to come back to life.

  The gaps in the skin on the Soviet leader’s scalp slowly sealed back into smooth flesh. The brown goo gleamed as it was absorbed before completely vanishing. The raised areas in the skin became flat once more and the single patch of forehead on which Plassko had smeared the strange substance quickly took on the healthy pink tone of living flesh. One of the three young soldiers gasped.

  “Remarkable, is it not?” Plassko said. He tipped his head, clearly pleased with the result. “I discovered this on an expedition to Peru. Jungle natives use it to preserve their elders. I saw bodies hundreds of years old that looked freshly dead. Amazing.” He dabbed some of the brown gunk to Lenin’s cheek and the dead flesh soaked it up greedily, turning pink beneath the scientist’s smearing fingers. “Of course, the decadent American cosmetics companies would give their eye teeth for its secret if they saw it in use, but that is not how it works, you see. Does nothing to living tissue. Only restores necrotic flesh. Mortuaries. The dead. Only use for this.”

  He had finished touching up most of Lenin’s face. The scalp beneath the hair would be trickier as would be the wrinkled neck. As for the rest of the treatment, they would have to strip the body, careful not to damage it in the process. But for the moment, the face of the late Soviet dictator was the evil mask he had worn in life.

  The three remaining soldiers had crept forward in wonder, peering over Colonel Strankov’s shoulders. Plassko smiled at his handiwork and sighed contentedly. He glanced at his Russian Army audience. To Strankov he said, “Go on. Feel.”

  Strankov was irritated that the scientist had read his expression so easily, especially in front of three subordinates. Still, curiosity got the better of him and he reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to Lenin’s brow. He was surprised that the skin was cold. It looked so lifelike, yet there was not the warmth or softness of living tissue. The dead skin was hard to the touch. When he removed his hand, there were not the usual white imprints left from retreating fingers.

  For a moment, the icy façade of the feared Colonel Ivan Strankov fell once more and he allowed a look of surprise to cross his face. “It feels like plastic.”

  “Yes, yes. True, true,” Plassko said. “It does not revive the flesh, lamentably. It merely restores the appearance of living flesh. What a world this would be if we could actually return Comrade Vladimir Ilich to the living, eh?”

  It was meant as a rhetorical question, so all were startled when a voice behind Strankov replied, “Well, I imagine he’d pick up right where he left off. You know, murder, savagery, filling the Kremlin swimming pool with blood and entrails. The usual commie summer vacation highlight reel.”

  The words were spoken in English. An American accent. And the voice. Strankov knew that voice. Unbridled rage instantly stampeded across his face as the colonel wheeled around.

  A close-up flash of red; blinding. Strankov should have anticipated it. But here in Moscow, in a basement laboratory in one of the Soviet Union’s most guarded buildings, the false illusion of safety had made him reckless.

  The soldiers around him were startled as well, stepping back from the figure in red. One grabbed for his sidearm and another followed suit. Strankov opened his mouth to shout to the men waiting just outside the door in the corridor.

  “Gua—”

  The mass of shapeless red took the form of a man in a cloak, and from the rustling fabric shot a single hand, fingers extended. The sharp blow struck Strankov hard below the Adam’s apple and the colonel fell back gasping against the table, grasping at his throat. His heel snagged the table’s fat base and he tumbled hard on his backside to the concrete floor. On the table, the corpse of Lenin shuddered.

  Strankov grabbed for his sidearm. At least he thought he did. He was certain his arm had moved — with all his will he had commanded his right hand to grab his gun — yet, like the phantom pain felt by an amputee, the movement was illusory. The gun remained buttoned tight in its holster and both of his hands remained locked around his own throat.

  And he knew in that moment that there was a light scratch somewhere on his neck where the figure across the room had brushed a single finger of one red gauntlet.

  It was a paralytic. Mild. Strankov had been dosed with it on two past occasions and both times he had shaken off the effects in about two hours. However, those other two times he had been abroad, once in New York and the other in London. Neither time had Strankov mentioned the paralyzing agent in his reports. What good would it do other than to damage Strankov’s reputation in the eyes of his superiors? But here was his domain, which he was supposed to keep secure at all times. Here there were witnesses. Here in Moscow Strankov knew he would not be able to use clever spin and blatant omissions to weasel his way out of terrible repercussions. This would be his doom.

  Across the room, the figure in red was now a figure in black. Strankov knew it was only a trick of light. Up close, the cloak and mask were brilliant red, but at a distance of only a few feet the red faded to a deep midnight black. At night, the black material offered perfect concealment and made the man virtually undetectable.

  Ultimately the cape and mask were irrelevant. A useful parlor trick to be sure, but the danger was not the cloak he wore but the man himself: The Red Menace.

  Strankov knew that his men didn’t have a chance. Paralyzed on the floor, the colonel could only watch helplessly as the drama played out before him.

  His three men danced around the figure in black.

  One soldier aimed a gun. The Red Menace snatched the soldier’s wrist and yanked the Russian towards him. The soldier lurched, the gun discharged and the bullet sank into the chest of the second Red Army man.

  Screaming in fear at the discharging weapon, Dr. Plassko dived for safety beneath a coat rack next to the remains of Lenin’s packing crate.

  A split-second after the gun fired, the Red Menace plucked it from the startled soldier’s hand and with a smooth, vicious sideways motion brought the gun butt down on the temple of the third soldier. The soldier had not time to remove his own gun from his holster. The blow struck hard and the unconscious man fell nearly in unison with the dying man with the sucking chest wound.

  It was over in seconds. The first soldier stood alone in the midst of his fallen comrades, a thunderstruck look on a face that had yet to shed the baby fat of his recent childhood. And then the Red Menace was standing before him.

  “Say goodnight, Gracie.”

  Strankov did not see the blow that sent the final man into oblivion. There was a sudden horrid crack of bone and the soldier was falling.

  When the Red Menace swept past the coat rack, from somewhere beneath came a gasp of fear from Dr. Plassko. Hidden hands reached out and Plassko grasped desperately at his own ankles, drawing his cheap shoes deeper beneath the pile of hanging greatcoats.

  “What’s up, doc?” the Red Menace said, stomping his foot as he passed Plassko.

  The coat rack squealed a tiny little squeal of fresh fear.

  Shouts from the hallway. A surge of stampeding boots.

  The black cape and mask turned red once more, that old trick of distorting light that Strankov knew only too well, and the Red Menace was looming over the Russian colonel. Then he was squatting; then nose to nose with the Russian.

  The American wore the same infuriating, idiot smile on his face as always, and Strankov forced all his will into his fingers. If only he could reach his gun he would have blasted the smug smile off the American’s face. But though his molars squeaked and beads of sweat broke out across his forehead, his arms remained stuck fast, grasping tightly at his own injured throat.