The Visitor (11 page)

“I see. He comes from Gurkha. Please tell me about them.”

“Gurkha is not a place, but a soldier. The Gurkhas come from Nepal. They are not just soldiers, but soldiers for hire. They have been hired by the British since 1815. They are also hired by the Indians, as was Lachhiman. They have been hired by a number of other countries as well. Until India gained its independence from England in 1947, the award given for bravery was the English award of the Victoria Cross. More Victoria Cross medals were given to the Gurkhas than any other group of people. They can still get a Victoria Cross if they were actually serving in the British Army, but if hired by India, the medal is the Param Vir Chakra, or PVC, and if from Pakistan, the Nishan-i-Haider. Now, Lachhiman enjoys the title of PVC. It’s quite an honor.”

He paused to see if Tak was absorbing this. Hearing no questions, he continued. “His efforts inspired his platoon to capture a vital strategic hilltop. Nearly dead from injuries, in the freezing snow and thin air, he refused to die. When his platoon finally took the hill, he was taken ‘to hospital.’ He spent over three months ‘in hospital’ and was awarded the medal Param Vir Chakra. His commander thought his injuries too severe to have him return to active combat, and I was lucky enough to hire him. He is fierce and will not back down.”

“Why do you use such a formidable warrior just to drive your car?”

“He is not just my driver, but also my bodyguard.”

“Oh, I see. You need a soldier to protect you. What sort of weapons does he have?”

“He carries only his kukri, a long, curved knife, and a smaller blade. He is very good with them, and there is no prohibition against taking knives across borders, contrasted with guns. So it works out very conveniently for him to drive for me in countries where I do not have a local bodyguard with a weapons permit.”

“Convenient,” she responded.

The grand Roll Royce came over a hill. There were fields of rye, oats, and potatoes on either side of the road in the beautiful Polish countryside. No other cars were in sight. As they came around a curve, two stopped cars were ahead, apparently in an accident, blocking the road. The occupants, a total of eight men, were outside the vehicles, looking, pointing, and talking as though they were in disagreement as to who or what was the cause.

“Problem ahead,” Lachhiman warned.

Baron leaned forward to evaluate. One of the cars was cross-ways in the road, pointing to the left, the other apparently having hit it in the rear, resting with its front bumper touching the left rear of the other car, blocking any car from passing. The shoulder of the road on either side was narrow and then dropped off six feet at that spot, such that no car could go around.

“What do you make of it?” Baron asked.

Lachhiman slowed the Rolls Royce down to a crawl. “We can’t go around.”

Tak looked at the men and recognized some of them as the men who sat at the table next to her at breakfast. “Baron, four of those eight men sat next to me during breakfast at the hotel.”

Baron sized them up with their disheveled clothes and concluded they could not afford to stay at the Forum Hotel. This meant that they were Russian gangsters, involved in a carjacking. They would take the car back to Russia where a stolen, expensive car could be sold in an instant. There were no reciprocal agreements between countries to recover a stolen car from the corrupt Russian government. But there was danger to him and his passengers, as they would all be witnesses.

“Lachhiman, get ready. They want the car and may kill us!”

Lachhiman stopped the car and tried to put it into reverse but, before he could, most of the men stormed the Rolls Royce, pointing Russian pistols at the three of them through the car’s windows.

“
Get
out
car
now
!” one of them yelled, pointing his Russian pistol, correctly assuming that they spoke English as the men had heard English spoken earlier by the driver and the baron at the hotel.

Baron spoke softly and quickly to Tak. “They’re Russian bandits. They intend to steal the car, take it to Russia, and rob us of our valuables. Be very careful. They may decide to kill us to leave no witnesses.”

Without moving his head or looking down, Baron lifted one of the armrests of the luxury rear seats in the Rolls Royce, which had a hidden compartment with a hinged top covered in leather that pivoted to one side. When closed, it was completely unnoticeable. Open, it exposed a 9 millimeter semi-automatic pistol. He slipped the equalizer into his suit jacket’s outside pocket.

They were ushered out of the car at gunpoint. Tak put her satchel strap over her shoulder as she exited. The three captives were then held at bay outside the car with guns trained on them. The Russians became excited at their spoils, as their usual bounty was a late-model Mercedes. This super car could sell for several hundred thousand euros to one of the Russian billionaires or a Russian drug dealer, as it was very rare, eye-catching, and handsome.

The bandits gazed in delight at their bounty, with one getting in the front and another in the back, behaving like children with a new Christmas toy. Filled with exuberance, all but two went to look at the prize, leaving just the two to guard their victims at gunpoint.

Jokes were made about having such a car themselves and how it would bring girls and recognition if they had such a trophy back home. To the Russians, the three victims posed no apparent threat. Lachhiman looked like a harmless, third-world chauffeur; the baron like a wealthy industrialist, with his flashy clothes and car; and the young girl possibly his niece, since she carrying her satchel over her shoulder like a school bag, as opposed to a designer handbag.

Finally the Russians decided that everything was under control, and they walked away from the Rolls Royce, except for one, who remained behind the wheel. He was the one who was to be the driver back to Russia and was familiarizing himself with the controls. The others came over to where their three captives were standing and began to talk.

One of them said to his comrades, in Russian, “This beauty will be extremely easy to spot once it is reported stolen, unlike an ordinary black Mercedes sedan that we normally score. If we turn these people loose, they will report what happened, and the Polish police will be alerted to stop this easily seen car before we get it across the border out of Poland. We should kill them and then we can get across the border.”

“I agree,” one of the others said. “Let’s shoot them here and leave them in the ditch.”

The most senior, Pyotr, disagreed. “Murder is a completely different crime than auto theft. I don’t like the idea of killing them.”

“Pyotr, this will not be the first time we have killed,” another said. “Think how much this car will bring us back home. We can sell it for a fortune. If we don’t kill them, they will report the theft and the border guards will be looking for the car. I say we kill them.”

Another, one holding his Russian Stechkin pistol on the victims, came to Tak and took her satchel off her shoulder. He sat the bag on the ground and began looking through it. “What have we here?” He pulled out the black outfit and high heeled shoes she had bought. “Evening wear,” he said, laughing and holding up the dress and the black high-heeled shoes. “She must be the fat one’s girlfriend, not his niece.”

The rest of them laughed after they saw the evening outfit. Then the man found Tak’s stack of Euros Baron got her for her gold in the bottom and held it up.

“Look! She has a fortune! She must be the fat one’s wife or whore!” Holding it up, he turned and flashed it, to let all of them see the bounty. His big smile showed his bad teeth. “We’re already rich!”

The laughing subsided, and then the first one that had said the captives should die, said, “Let’s shoot them.” He looked around at the group. It was clear that they had no particular leader and a consensus was needed.

“I agree,” the one with Tak’s money said. “Let’s do it before someone comes along.”

This time no one else objected, not even Pyotr.

By now, as there was no apparent threat to the Russians, all but two of the six who had pistols had put them away. Two of them went to the money to see how much there was. It was a moment when only two guns were trained on them, and the last chance to react. Unbeknownst to them, Baron understood Russian and was alerted to their evil intent.

He nodded to Lachhiman, who leaped like a jungle cat. In his practiced move, he pulled his razor sharp, long kukri down from its blade-up position where it was held in a special knife holster under his tunic. He brought it down in a blindingly fast swinging motion then added his other hand to the handle while still swinging it, to maximize the force. He swung it up and around then brought it down with tremendous force right over the arm just below the elbow of the man holding his gun on Baron and Tak. In his bravery, he chose to save his employer before himself. In the move, he stepped forward to strike and to one side of the gunman who was pointing his gun at him.

The arm, just below the elbow of the Russian holding his gun on Baron and Tak, came off quickly and neatly. The hand, still holding the gun, fell to the ground. His swing was not slowed by the contact with the Russian arm, and he brought it up once again, adding a twist to it by turning his body, holding the kukri out to add velocity. He swung it around at a blinding speed until it found its next target, the neck of the Russian holding his gun on the spot where Lachhiman had been standing an instant before. The force of the swing, with his arms extended, was so much that the kukri went right through the neck of the Russian, and his head literally rolled off his shoulders and fell to the ground ten feet away. The headless Russian got a round off with his pistol before his head left him, but it went harmlessly through the spot where Lachhiman had been standing a second earlier. An eerie sight, the body of the headless man did not fall to the ground immediately, but instead remained erect as blood squirted out of his neck.

Baron pulled out his weapon, shot one of the Russians twice in the face, then shot another twice in the chest, dispatching them both. As Baron fired, another Russian was taking his pistol out of his pants pocket. Lachhiman moved to him, bringing his kukri up and then down. Landing on the man mid-shoulder, it buried itself several inches deep into his body, severing the clavicle of his gun arm. The Russian’s useless arm dropped the pistol, and he fell to his knees.

Another, who had put his pistol in his suit-jacket’s side pocket reached for it, but hesitated when he saw the carnage. So he let it stay inside the pocket and surrendered, hoping to live. He, unfortunately, had never met up with a Gurkha like Lachhiman, who did not take prisoners. Lachhiman slit his throat deeply, dispatching him.

A Russian, who had no weapon showing, leaped to pick up a fallen pistol off the ground and quickly moved behind Baron. He stuck the pistol to the side of Baron’s head. “Drop gun!”

Lachhiman froze to prevent his employer from being shot. Baron did not drop his pistol, knowing the Russian meant to murder him, so there was no point in dropping his weapon. There was one other Russian left, the apparently unarmed man that was in the car behind the wheel and who was now getting out.

Tak decided that she needed to act or die. She lifted the lapis colored device off her wrist computer and pointed it at carjacker behind Baron, who was holding his gun at the back of Baron’s head, and commanded it in her own language. A section on it lit up, and a thin, blue, laser targeting beam targeted the Russian, reflecting off his midsection. She rotated it up until the beam shown on the side of the carjacker’s head. As she pushed on it, the beam widened to cover his head. Another push caused it to make a “snap” sound, and an extremely bright, powerful blue laser emitted from it and engulfed the carjacker’s head, toasting it instantly. Ashes fell on Baron’s shoulder, depositing themselves rudely on his suit.

Lachhiman watched this, as though he saw ray guns every day, and nonchalantly walked toward the Rolls Royce where the remaining Russian was getting out. On the way, he walked by the Russian with a deep cut through his shoulder and who was on his knees groaning loudly in pain. As Lachhiman passed, he swung his kukri, using only one hand, so that it cut right through that groaning Russian’s throat, finishing him as though cutting an undesirable weed.

Lachhiman was then at the Russian coming out of the Rolls Royce. The Russian appeared as if he wanted to surrender and raised both arms and hands, yielding. But Lachhiman was in no mood for that and, with both hands on the kukri handle, he ran it into the man’s stomach, then twisted it once, and removed it. When the man fell and kneeled over in pain, Lachhiman brought the kukri down over the back of his neck, cutting the spinal cord as neatly as though by guillotine.