Free Conspiracy in Kiev by Noel Hynd

seat, Chuck on the far end, Susan in the middle, their new friend on the end. The cabbie pulled away from the curb.
    Chuck eyed the hack license that the driver displayed on the dashboard. More bad vibes: The name was Italian but the face was something more Eastern. Still, one saw just about everything these days in the capitals of Western Europe.
    Maybe Chuck was growing too paranoid. Maybe he had spent too much time in the back alleys and out of the sunlight for his government. Maybe he was too old for this sort of thing. Sometimes he didn’t even recall what name or identity he was using.
    From that point, the ride was over in a few seconds.
    It was past 3:15 a.m. The streets that were busy by day were deserted now. On the wet asphalt of the via Piemonte, the driver suddenly took a sharp turn down a narrow dark side street. Chuck saw that there was a larger car a quarter of the way down the street, blocking passage. The cabbie pulled up hard and brought the taxi to an unsteady jolting halt.
    Then in the fraction of a second before anything happened, Chuck knew that he was a dead man and Susan wouldn’t fare much better. Another car screeched up behind them. Chuck heard car doors open and slam shut. At the same time, his lateral vision caught the movement of a fourth man emerging from between two parked cars to the side.
    Chuck started yelling. Loud, accusatory, and profane.
    Chuck and Susan felt the weight of their own cab change as both the driver and the woman, knowing what was happening, bolted and fled, leaving their doors open.
    Susan’s voice, high and anguished, “What the—?”
    Chuck’s voice followed close, frenzied. “It’s a trap!” he screamed.
    With one hand, Chuck worked his door handle. It was locked.
    His other hand groped for a gun, the one that he had chosen not to carry that night because so many of the clubs did searches. In his peripheral vision, he saw two men swiftly approaching the car. Dressed in black, they pulled down their ski masks, stealthy and efficient as a pair of urban panthers.
    In his last moments, Chuck noticed that one of the men had an obvious nervous tic under the ski mask. And he recognized their weapons, Sig Sauer P226s. But he didn’t have time to think about any of it. All he could think about was how the enemy had known that somehow he was unarmed that night. Then, in a final realization, that came together in his mind also. The woman they had met in the club. She had fixed their execution via her cell phone.
    The gunmen lifted their weapons. Silencers.
    In a final reflex for life, Chuck smashed his huge body against the car door to his side. It didn’t budge. He swung an elbow and shattered the window. The glass tore into his sleeve and slashed his arm as the rest of the window poured to the asphalt. He groped wildly for the outer door handle and worked it.
    No luck. The cab was a high tech roach motel. The door wasn’t going anywhere and neither was Chuck.
    The gunmen raised their weapons. Chuck and Susan raised their arms to protect themselves. They heard little past the first shots as their bodies exploded in searing pain.
    The first volley of bullets tore into their arms.
    Their screams and their blood filled the night. The next volley of shots ripped into their heads and necks. The rear door lock finally gave way when bullets tore apart the locking mechanism.
    Chuck’s body fell face down onto the street, his legs remaining in the taxi. Susan’s body remained huddled against Chuck’s but convulsed with each of a half dozen hits from the assassins’ weapons. Their bodies were still moving slightly when one of the gunmen stepped forward and pumped two final bullets into each of their heads.
    Then, working swiftly, the assassins dragged their bodies from the taxi to the van behind them. They loaded the corpses into the truck. As the gunmen disappeared into the night, one of the follow-up crew threw a gallon of gasoline on the stolen taxi. Then he threw a