apparatus within the apparatus; the world that allows the park to exist.
Gabriel Fuller has been doing prep, and it’s almost complete. Gabriel Fuller has set eight charges, loaded a cache with the equipment he’ll need when it all goes down. He’s done this because it’s what the Uzbek told him to do. He’s done this because, when it all goes down, he’ll be on the inside, he’ll be running the show on the ground.
Gabriel Fuller is ready in mind, if not in heart.
Gabriel Fuller is not Gabriel Fuller’s real name.
He still doesn’t know who he works for, even after all this time, even after nearly seven years.
That was a different life ago, and a far different world from one where places like WilsonVille could even be imagined. At that time, his world was what he had been able to make of it, mostly through cunning and to a lesser extent through strength, and it had been those two traits that had brought him, before he was Gabriel Fuller and still called Matias, to the Uzbek’s attention.
They’d met at a party Matias was throwing for his crew, back in Odessa. He and his boys had brought over half a ton of raw heroin from Afghanistan the previous week, and already most of it had made its way to Moscow. Even after the bribes, the cuts, all the hands that had reached out for their share, it had been a dynamic haul, and there was reason to celebrate. Normally, Matias ran a tight ship, but this time he’d let loose the reins for one night, thrown the party himself. There was booze and cigarettes, some pot, and a lot of girls, all of them pretty and most of them young.
The Uzbek’s appearance came as a surprise; he was uninvited but not unknown. Matias had seen him a handful of times before, had heard some stories, had asked some discreet questions. The stories were broad-stroke myth, about how the Uzbek had done this thing or that thing, like how he’d cut the balls off some UN guy and fed them to him, or how he’d taken the ringleader of a gang moving black market gasoline and made him drink a gallon of the stuff, then cut him open and thrown a match. The stories backed the answers to Matias’s questions, even if the stories weren’t true; in no uncertain terms, the Uzbek was Not to Be Fucked With. Connected, he’d been told, and Matias had said something about the big players in Russia, gotten a head shake in return. Not just Moscow, no, bigger than that. Connected, you understand?
Matias didn’t, couldn’t conceive of something bigger than the power in Moscow, but he got the message, and he passed the word: his boys, they stayed the fuck out of the Uzbek’s way, out of the Uzbek’s business. Twice already, Matias had killed jobs that could’ve been lucrative, just to stay on the safe side.
So Matias’s first thought on seeing the Uzbek walk through the door in his tailored suit and his long hair and those wire-rim round-frame glasses with the tinted lenses was pretty much, Oh, fuck me running, we cut into his score. And his second thought was to wonder how quickly he could get out of the country, and how much of his money he might be able to take with him. If the Uzbek was as connected as all that, then killing him wasn’t going to help; killing him would only make things worse, and would mean Matias would be that much longer for the dying. Although he had done some dark things in his short life already, he didn’t fancy being turned into a flambé.
It was Vladimir, the biggest of his boys and not the nicest by a long shot, who came to him.
“This guy, he says he wants to talk to you.”
Matias hadn’t taken his eyes from the Uzbek since the man had arrived, watching where he stood perfectly still just inside the door to the condo, letting the pretty girls and tough boys party around him. The Uzbek watching Matias the same way Matias was watching him.
“He say what about?”
“No. He’s that guy, the one you told us—”
“I fucking know who he is.” Matias ran fingers through
Gabriel Fuller has been doing prep, and it’s almost complete. Gabriel Fuller has set eight charges, loaded a cache with the equipment he’ll need when it all goes down. He’s done this because it’s what the Uzbek told him to do. He’s done this because, when it all goes down, he’ll be on the inside, he’ll be running the show on the ground.
Gabriel Fuller is ready in mind, if not in heart.
Gabriel Fuller is not Gabriel Fuller’s real name.
He still doesn’t know who he works for, even after all this time, even after nearly seven years.
That was a different life ago, and a far different world from one where places like WilsonVille could even be imagined. At that time, his world was what he had been able to make of it, mostly through cunning and to a lesser extent through strength, and it had been those two traits that had brought him, before he was Gabriel Fuller and still called Matias, to the Uzbek’s attention.
They’d met at a party Matias was throwing for his crew, back in Odessa. He and his boys had brought over half a ton of raw heroin from Afghanistan the previous week, and already most of it had made its way to Moscow. Even after the bribes, the cuts, all the hands that had reached out for their share, it had been a dynamic haul, and there was reason to celebrate. Normally, Matias ran a tight ship, but this time he’d let loose the reins for one night, thrown the party himself. There was booze and cigarettes, some pot, and a lot of girls, all of them pretty and most of them young.
The Uzbek’s appearance came as a surprise; he was uninvited but not unknown. Matias had seen him a handful of times before, had heard some stories, had asked some discreet questions. The stories were broad-stroke myth, about how the Uzbek had done this thing or that thing, like how he’d cut the balls off some UN guy and fed them to him, or how he’d taken the ringleader of a gang moving black market gasoline and made him drink a gallon of the stuff, then cut him open and thrown a match. The stories backed the answers to Matias’s questions, even if the stories weren’t true; in no uncertain terms, the Uzbek was Not to Be Fucked With. Connected, he’d been told, and Matias had said something about the big players in Russia, gotten a head shake in return. Not just Moscow, no, bigger than that. Connected, you understand?
Matias didn’t, couldn’t conceive of something bigger than the power in Moscow, but he got the message, and he passed the word: his boys, they stayed the fuck out of the Uzbek’s way, out of the Uzbek’s business. Twice already, Matias had killed jobs that could’ve been lucrative, just to stay on the safe side.
So Matias’s first thought on seeing the Uzbek walk through the door in his tailored suit and his long hair and those wire-rim round-frame glasses with the tinted lenses was pretty much, Oh, fuck me running, we cut into his score. And his second thought was to wonder how quickly he could get out of the country, and how much of his money he might be able to take with him. If the Uzbek was as connected as all that, then killing him wasn’t going to help; killing him would only make things worse, and would mean Matias would be that much longer for the dying. Although he had done some dark things in his short life already, he didn’t fancy being turned into a flambé.
It was Vladimir, the biggest of his boys and not the nicest by a long shot, who came to him.
“This guy, he says he wants to talk to you.”
Matias hadn’t taken his eyes from the Uzbek since the man had arrived, watching where he stood perfectly still just inside the door to the condo, letting the pretty girls and tough boys party around him. The Uzbek watching Matias the same way Matias was watching him.
“He say what about?”
“No. He’s that guy, the one you told us—”
“I fucking know who he is.” Matias ran fingers through
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