Ivan had no interest in putting on a show of changing his attitude for Hughie. He turned to the window and let the view do the talking.
The rest of the flight stayed quiet.
Only when the wheels hit the ground did that dead air break, and it broke because the welcome committee rolled out of the dark. Four black sedans and a white truck that looked like it was built to move cash stopped on the empty stretch in front of Butcher and the others.
The white truck's door shoved open. A man in black dropped down fully armed, face covered, papers in hand. He went to Butcher first and checked them one by one. Then his head came up and found Ivan.
"You're not on the list. I need to confirm who you are before you leave."
He pulled a pager, spoke into it. "Targets are on the ground in Russia, safe. One extra, not on the list. I can't confirm him yet."
The pager went down. Both hands on the gun. He stood in front of them like a post.
"Until I hear from above, you stay here. Sorry."
Hughie shot Butcher a look that was not subtle.
God, what are you standing there for? Call Nina. This one gets unhappy, and nobody walks off this strip tonight.
I bloody know that, Butcher's face said back.
He already had the phone out. Nina picked up.
"We've got a problem. They're holding us. Tell your people to let us through."
A pause. Then, flatter: "Yeah. Extra body."
Another pause. Butcher's mouth tightened. "Relax. He isn't Vought, and nobody's holding a gun to our heads. Dangerous? Your boys keep us here much longer, they'll find out what dangerous looks like. You might have to fly out for the funerals."
The line went dead. Busy tone. Butcher stared at the phone.
"Fuck. She hung up on me."
Ivan smiled, mild as milk. "The way you tell it, I sound like some kind of butcher myself."
He would have been easier to live with if he had not smiled. Hughie's chest did a stupid little jump anyway. Scary!
Less than a minute later the phone rang in Butcher's hand. He thumbed it open and Nina came through already raw.
"You took the mysterious man to Russia? What the hell are you trying to start, World War Three?"
In certain rooms, who killed Stormfront was not a secret at all. The same man had now put Stormfront and the White Witch in the ground, and in those rooms that put him in the same column as Homelander.
Everyone at that level understood the comparison. Homelander was a nuclear weapon that could fly. To a lot of government people, that made him worse than the bomb.
Nina did not want to finish the thought. If the mysterious man slipped and tore the head off some Russian official, the problem stopped being hers and became the planet's.
A dying camel is still bigger than a horse. Russia had inherited the Soviet stockpile, and there were still warheads sitting in holes in the ground.
If her plane was the match that lit a third world war, the species would spit on her grave until the sun burned out.
"Easy," Butcher said, because her voice was climbing and somebody had to put a hand on it. "We've got it."
"Fine. I'm done. Don't call me again. Find some other poor bastard."
She slammed it shut, stood there until the heat in her chest dropped a notch, then picked the phone back up off the table where she had thrown it.
On the strip, the man in black listened to his pager and dipped his head like the person on the other end could see it.
"Understood."
He looked at them again.
"Sir. Here are the keys for the cars we set aside. And one more thing..."
The man in black produced a card and offered it to Ivan with both hands almost. "Our organization's card. You need something, you call. We can do anything for you."
Ivan took it and glanced down, not making a ceremony of it. "We can go now?"
The card was metal, black all the way through. A phone number. Nothing else.
"Of course." The man stepped aside and opened the path.
"Drive."
Ivan tossed Butcher the keys, pulled the passenger door, and sat.
Butcher put his foot down. "Where to?"
"The smuggler first. It will not take long." Ivan rolled one shoulder, like he was loosening up for work.
"Oligarch, if you want the local word," Butcher said. "Russia likes that title. Same animal either way."
On the road Ivan's attention snagged on the walls. Graffiti ran both sides. One piece had Queen Maeve gnawing raw meat, human pieces scattered around her boots.
The rest of the work was no kinder. Somebody here was putting their back into dragging superheroes through the dirt. Maybe in their heads the capes were why the country lost.
Supes did not last in Russia. They lived like witches in the Middle Ages. Get caught, and they burned you standing.
"Hell for supes," Butcher said, taking in the street like a man smelling home cooking. "Heaven for the rest of us. First time here and I already like the weather."
Half an hour later, he stopped in front of a fat, expensive villa.
"Want Kimiko on this?" He asked it like he meant it and did not.
Ivan looked at him. "Are you joking?"
He shoved the door open and walked to the front entrance.
Hughie watched him get smaller and finally let the air out of his chest. Butcher dropped the glass partition.
Hughie, MM, and Frenchie all leaned forward and stared after Ivan like they were watching a fuse burn.
A guard at the door put a hand up and stopped him.
He looked Ivan up and down, decided he did not know the face, and put the bored voice on. "No walk-ins. Not unless you've got…"
Ivan did not let him finish.
The right arm came up in a clean arc, air screaming off it, and the open hand took the guard across the face.
The head left the neck and hit a stone pillar hard enough to turn into a wet smear of blood and broken bone.
From the car, it looked like Ivan had barely moved. The man in front of him simply did not have a head anymore.
"Holy shit." Hughie's mouth hung open. He could not pull his eyes off the body still standing there, pumping nothing onto the steps.
What came next was worse.
Ivan took one step forward, and the things came out of his back.
Thorned tentacles, ugly as hell, punched toward the front of the house.
Bang!
The reinforced glass door might as well have been paper. A hard bang, and the limbs, black and barbed like bone, tore both doors off the frame.
___
[]~(￣▽￣)~*
Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69