Chapter One
HELSINKI, FINLAND
Monday, December 6, 1999
The Russians were serious players. If things didn't go as planned, Sergei said,
I'd be lucky to be shot dead in the hotel lobby. If they captured me, I'd be
taken to a remote bit of wasteland and have my stomach slit open. They'd pull my
intestines out and leave me to watch them squirm around on my chest like a
bucket of freshly caught eels for the thirty minutes it would take me to die.
These things happen, he had explained, when you mess with the main men in ROC
(Russian Organized Crime). But I didn't have a choice; I desperately needed the
cash.
"What's it called again, Sergei?" I mimed the disembowelment.
Eyes staring straight ahead, he gave a brief, somber smile and muttered,
"Viking's revenge."
It was just before seven P.M. and it had already been dark for three and a ha ... read full excerpt from Firewall ebook