Francis could make either sex drool, and that was Vince’s private joke when they were among coeds, “Drool, fools!” Francis was six-foot-one, without an ounce of fat. His white-blond hair was cut in the same style he had adopted as a sophomore at Christian Brothers Academy in New Jersey. He adored Vince with all his heart, and Vince worshiped him.

They came for Francis, of course.

He had been scouted, and purchased.

Chapter 62

Chapter 62

THE THREE BURLY MEN were dressed in loose jeans, work boots, and dark windbreakers. They were hoodlums. In Russian they were called baklany or bandity. Scary demons wherever you met up with them, monsters from Moscow let loose in America by the Wolf.

They parked a black Pontiac Grand Prix on the street, then climbed the hill to the main campus at Holy Cross.

One of them was short of breath and complained in Russian about the steepness of the hill.

“Quiet, asshole,” said group leader Maxin, who liked to call himself a personal friend of the Wolf’s, though of course he wasn’t. No pakhan had real friends, but especially not the Wolf. He had only enemies and almost never met those who worked for him. Even in Russia, he had been known as an invisible or mystery man. Here in the U.S., virtually no one knew him by sight.

The three thugs watched the college students on the blanket as they held hands, then kissed and fondled.

“Kiss like girls,” said one of the Russian men with a nasty laugh.

“Not like any girls I ever kiss.”

The three of them laughed and shook their heads in disgust. Then the hulking leader of the team strode forward, moving very fast given his weight and size. He silently pointed at Francis, and the two other men pulled the boy away from Vince.

“Hey, what the hell is this?” Francis started to yell. He was stopped by a wide strip of electrical tape pressed over his mouth, cutting off all sound.

“Now you can scream,” said one of the smirking hoods. “Scream like a girl. But nobody hears you anymore.”

They worked together quickly. While one thug wrapped more black tape around Francis’s ankles, the other bound his wrists tightly behind his back. Then he was stuffed inside a large duffel bag, the sort used to carry athletic equipment such as baseball bats or basketballs.

The leader, meanwhile, took out a thin, very sharp stiletto knife. He slit the heavyset boy’s throat, just as he used to kill pigs and goats back in his home country. Vince hadn’t been purchased, and he had seen the abduction team. Unlike the Couple, these men would never play their own little games, or betray the Wolf, or disappoint him. There would be no more mistakes. The Wolf had been explicit on that, clear in a dangerous way that only he could be.