Me
It was my worst nightmare. And when the wi-fi went down, Chase made me go hiking.
The food was okay, and the rum had been the saving grace, but the broadband? Ugh. Havana had the worst speeds on the planet, and the mobile internet was no better. I’d looked into the possibility of changing that, running a connectivity project the way Astela had in Nepal, in Haiti, in Botswana, but foreign investment in Cuba was still heavily restricted.
All was quiet at the Minsk house. Dusk was falling—like, actual dusk, not our Dusk, who was pretty sure-footed—and if the three men inside stuck to their pattern, they’d head out for dinner around eight p.m., right after a bunch of assorted ladies showed up. We were ninety percent sure the women were escorts. A black car dropped them off, then picked them up in the early hours once the men were done. One of yesterday’s group had looked bruised, according to Sin.
Nolan
Hiking isn’t that bad.
Me
Yeah, it is. I got dive-bombed by a zillion bugs, and I ached all over the next day.
“Nothing stirring,” Storm said. “I’ll take a look through the windows.”
The drone dipped low, and for the second time in recent history, I was forced to watch a man giving himself a handjob. Seriously, what was wrong with drapes? Did men have no shame?
“That’s some small dick energy right there,” Storm said, zooming in. “Is that Raban or Barys?”
“I can’t tell from the genitals,” I said through gritted teeth.
She refocused on his face. “Ah, it’s Raban.”
Raban Kalyuzhny, twenty-eight years old, son of a beautician and a professional wrestler, built like a tank and about as photogenic as one. Small dick energy was right—either that, or his hands were abnormally large.
“Ugh. Sometimes I hate this job.”
“Relax, it could be worse.”
“How? How could it be worse?”
Five minutes later, I got my answer. We watched in horrified fascination as Jez and Dusk tried to wrangle a naked Raban out of the bathroom. There might have been two of them, but he was hella slippery, and he kept wriggling out of their grip like a giant, demented worm, yelling the whole time. Finally, Dusk stun-gunned him in the balls, and then he shut up.
“Holy Toledo, this is better than Netflix.” Storm had put the drone into a hover while she wiped tears from her eyes. “Sometimes I love this job.”
Sin and Spider had duct-taped Kazik and Barys from shoulder to ankle and propped them up on the couch in the living room. Jez dragged Raban down to join them, his head bump-bump-bumping on the stairs as they went. Dusk took a seat on a back-to-front dining chair, her hands resting casually on the carved wood as she studied the three men.
“Good evening, boys. Sorry about the burn marks; we’d hoped to avoid that.”
Barys began yelling, and I grimaced. “Is that Russian or Belarusian?”
“Russian,” Storm said. She wasn’t fluent like Spider, but she spoke enough to get by. I knew a few sentences, but I mostly used translation apps when I needed them. Why would I want to learn Russian? Apart from pelmeni and caviar, the food there was shit. I spoke French, Italian, and Spanish fluently because those were my favourite cuisines, and I was learning Japanese. But none of that helped me tonight.
Spider kicked Barys in the shin and snapped back at him in her first language.
“Govori po-angliyski! Ya znayu, ty mozhesh’.”
“I think she just told him to speak English,” Storm murmured.
Whether the instruction was for my benefit or to keep him off balance, I wasn’t sure, but I was pleased when he began dropping F-bombs like a teenage rapper. This time, it was Jez’s turn with the stun gun.
“Anyone else want to try me?” she asked.
Raban shook his head, and Kazik glowered as I switched view to Spider’s bodycam.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
