Mike
I screamed and screamed into Boris’ face, screamed until my lungs burned with the effort, screamed until my throat burned with acid, scouring my vocal cords.
Boris seemed to drink it up, enjoying the spectacle immensely.
Crash! The door flew off its hinges, barely missing Boris and flying through the open space where one of the floor-to-ceiling windows had been.
We both stared in disbelief as a cross between a crash test dummy and the Terminator leaped through the doorway, metal hands outstretched for Boris’ throat.
As a former soldier, I’d had some curiosity about my Soviet counterparts, the Spetsnaz. Highly trained, brutalized until pain was just another feeling to be dismissed, they were the bogeymen of Red Army, the best (or worst) of the best.
Boris proved equal to his calling because there was no hesitation as he met the mechanical monster, grabbing a metal arm and twisting his body to throw the thing over and across his hip. The monster flew through the air, landing near the broken windows.
All I could do was watch, dumbfounded, as Boris charged the dummy. It stood there waiting, arms stretched wide while the Russian leapt. Apparently the creature didn’t have the brains to figure the odds, because the outcome of a two-hundred-fifty-pound man taking on what I took to be a one-hundred-eighty-pound mannequin head-on seemed easy to calculate.
The soles of Boris’ size twelves impacted solidly on the dummy’s midsection, sending the thing sailing out past the broken window and into the night, where it quickly dropped out of sight.
Just as the giant Russian turned back to me, I heard the most wonderful voice in the world say, “Don’t you dare move, Boris.”