Following is the opening chapter of a new work, The White Dragons, a suspense/thriller about international intrigue and betrayal. Below the excerpt you'll see the preliminary cover art I've done for this.
"The black ZIL threw
up a rooster tail of dust as it sped along the winding dirt track that passed
for a road.
The sun was a semi-circle of dull orange,
handing in a dead gray sky behind the jagged peaks of the mountains to the west,
casting elongated purple shadows over the bleak and desolate landscape.
There were few trees; a few stunted
saplings, gnarled and twisted by the wind, hunched over the parched earth like
ancient gnomes, their roots penetrating deep into the earth in search of the
rare underground pool of water. Here and there, small flockss of sheep that had
spent the day grazing on the rough grass that was scattered about the dry
ground were being driven back to the cabins made of blackened logs, to be
lodged in pens attached to them, pens made of the same misshapen logs. The rest
of the livestock, one or two skinny cows, maybe a pig or two, and some
chickens, ducks, and rabbits, would already be in the back room of the little
four-room hut which they shared with the farmer’s family. The family, except
for the farmer and perhaps his oldest sons, would already be huddled in the
central room, around the clay oven for warmth, for even in early May, the night
air was cold.
The three men in the ZIL, though, paid no
attention to any of this. The driver kept his eyes on the road ahead, ready to
brake should a flock of sheep suddenly appear. Seated in the back, two men sat,
each on his own side, back against the door, speaking quietly.
“Are you sure this is a wise thing to do,
Vasily?” the younger of the two, a clean-shaven man in his mid-twenties,
wearing a gray suit and a white shirt that was open at the collar.
His companion was in his late forties. He
had a high forehead, with his hairline somewhere near to crown of his skull,
jet black hair combed straight back and down. Piercing brown eyes sat on either
side of a thin nose that hung like a hawk’s beak over thin lips set in a neatly
trimmed moustache and pointed goatee. Vasily Shermov looked like Vladimir Ilyich
Lenin, and was proud of the resemblance, even taking to wearing dark suits like
the Russian Communist leader. He laughed, harsh and guttural, spraying spittle
across the seat.
“There is nothing to worry about, Pyotr,”
he said. “My cousin, Dmitri, will
certainly approve of what I’m doing.”
“And, if he does not approve?”
The question hung in the air like a
threat. Shermov didn’t need to answer; both he and his young assistant, Pyotr
Ksolvi, knew the answer to that question; they would simply be made to
disappear, to vanish from the face of the earth as if they’d never existed.
Shermov’s cousin, Dmitri Kovasc, was the First Secretary and head of the
Central Committee of the Dagastan Soviet, and concurrently, head of the dreaded
Dagastani Secret Service. He’d been merely the chief intelligence officer for
ten years until he’d engineered the overthrow and murder of the former First
Secretary and assumed that position as well.
Dmitri, Shermov knew, did not tolerate
opposition or failure, and he had only one response to either; a response that
was final and fatal.
Dagastan, a small landlocked country
straddling the Arctic Circle in the near west of the USSR, surrounded by
Russia, with the Cherskiy Range to the east and the Indigirka River to the far
west, it was little more than a dot on the Russian map, about the size of the
American state of New Hampshire, with a population of slightly over one
million. Its people were mainly nomadic herdsmen and hunters, scratching out a
living from undernourished flocks of sheep or from trapping animals for fur in
the remaining forests at the foot of the mountains.
The main ethnic group, the Kazbektuni, for
whom the country’s capital, Kazbektun, was named, was a result of intermarriage
of Rus, the light-skinned invaders from Scandinavia, and Khan, the descendants
of the Mongol invaders from the east. Although they accounted for sixty percent
of the population, they were among the poorest of the poor, mostly subsistence
farmers, herdsmen, or trappers. In the entire governing structure of Dagastan,
a bloated bureaucracy of over one thousand officials, there were only two
Kazbektuni, both low level functionaries. The country’s ruling Central
Committee had one Kazbektuni, an elderly man who spent most meetings with his
head back, sound asleep. Among the menials; drivers, janitors, and other
laborers, the Kazbektuni were vastly in the majority. The ZIL’s driver was
Kazbektuni. While he understood the Russian his two passengers were speaking,
his preference was to speak his native Dagastani.
The Khan ethnic group made up ten percent
of Dagastan, and remained mostly on the vast desolate steppe, herding sheep and
living in conical tents made of sheepskin, after the manner of their Mongol
ancestors. Aggressive and militaristic, they held ten positions in the Central
Committee’s membership of one hundred. Short of leg, and barrel chested, they
had the broad foreheads, slanted eyes, and flat noses of the Mongols. They were
excellent horsemen, and it was said that one Khan soldier was worth fifty other
Dagastani. Over time, the Khan had come to speak Russian, but with a thick
accent.
The remaining thirty percent of the
population was Rus, the descendants of Norse invaders who hadn’t stopped in
Russia, but had pushed on toward the west. They tended to light skins, brown or
blond hair, high foreheads, and superior airs. Rus held all leadership
positions that counted, including control of the intelligence, army, and
police. The country’s central bank was in the hands of a Rus, and most of its
preferred customers were Rus.
Vasily Shermov and Pyotr Ksolvi were Rus,
and had grown up speaking only Russian. Shermov knew a few words, but his young
companion knew not one. Vasily was an official of the economic planning
committee, and he’d come across information that would, he felt certain, change
the future of Dagastan.
He hadn’t taken news of his discovery to
his superior or to his cousin, wanting to verify it first, and then ensure that
things were arranged in a way that ensured the future prosperity of all of
Dagastan’s people. If he could get everything lined up properly, he felt sure
his cousin would forgive his breech of protocol.
The sudden deceleration of the ZIL, and a
muttered curse in Dagastani from the front seat, startled both men.
“What is it, Leonid?” Shermov demanded.
“Flock of sheep in the road,” the driver
said in horribly-accented Russian.
“Well, drive around them, fool. We must
make our schedule.”
“Sorry, sir; is not good idea. The ground
off the road can be tricky. We might get stuck. The flock will pass soon.”
“Well, it better,” Shermov said, and
settled back, turning his attention to his companion.
He didn’t see, therefore, the driver,
Leonid, reach over and flick the light switch quickly, blinking the headlights.
Nor did he see the four shadowy figures dressed entirely in black that emerged
from behind the flock, menacing looking AK-47s held across their chests. They
wore balaclava masks pulled down over their faces.
Two moved to the left and two to the
right, stopping at the passenger windows. Pyotr Ksolvi was the first to see
them, and his eyes opened with fright. Noticing his young companion’s
expression, Vasily looked up, and his mouth dropped open. “What the bloody
hell?” he said, and turned toward the front.
Before he could complete the turn, the
four men, aiming downward to avoid hitting their companions, released a deadly
stream of bullets shattered the windows of the ZIL and tore into the soft flesh
of the two men, tossing them around the seat like limp puppets. Blood spattered
the car interior.
It happened so quickly, neither man had
had time for more than the beginning of a scream of terror before silent
darkness descended. The two corpses lay entwined like two lovers, their facial
features unrecognizable after being ripped and shredded by the force of the
projectiles.
A pale of gray smoke hung over the car and
the smell of cordite was thick. The driver reached for the door handle. One of
the men on his side put his hand on the door, jamming it shut.
“I’m sorry, Leonid,” he said, his voice
muffled by the mask. “But, we must make this look like it was an act of terror,
and there must be no way of it being linked to us.” He spoke in Dagastani.
Leonid’s mouth dropped open. “But, I was
promised – -“
His words were cut off by the staccato
drum beat of the man’s AK-47, which tore through the driver’s window, showering
him with shards of grass milliseconds before his chest was torn apart by the
projectiles. He was thrown back against the far door, his face frozen in an
expression of disbelief.
The taller of the black-clad men took a
dirty, oil-stained gray bricklike shape from his pocket and, walking around to
the rear of the ZIL, stuffed it into the space between the exhaust pipe and the
gas tank. He then inserted a short fuse, and using a battered lighter, lit.
“Let us get out of here,” he said. “The
fuse is good for two minutes.”
The others ran toward the front of the
car, shooting and yelling at the sheep to move them. Some of the animals
ignored the noise and continued to graze on the rough grass. The four men ran
flat out until they were about two hundred meters from the hulking shape of the
ZIL. The sky had darkened considerably, but was suddenly lightened by the
orange fireball of the ZIL being tossed into the air as the block of C-4
explosive detonated and the fumes from the gas tank ignited. The noise of the
initial explosion was loud, but the explosion of the gas tank was deafening.
The car was quickly engulfed in flames, spreading an orange glow in a circle
expanding out several yards. Black smoke billowed upwards. Along with the smell
of burning petrol, there was the sweet smell of roasting flesh.
The sheep that had not been killed by the
concussion, or roasted in the ensuing fire, fled across the dusty ground,
bleating in panic and kicking up a cloud of dust as they stampeded toward the
safety of the hills. The four men stood in silence, gazing at their handiwork.
After a few minutes, the tall man spun on his heels and started walking toward
the hills. The others followed.
The incident wasn’t known of or reported
in Dagastan’s capital city of Kazbektun for two days, and only after two Khan
tribesmen had come upon the still smoldering wreckage. Outside Dagastan, it
didn’t even rate a small space in any international media.
But, in a short span of time, it would
have international impact."
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| Preliminary artwork for the cover of "The White Dragons" |
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