Collateral (Tier One #6)

Gavriil was completing a perimeter scan of the Bondar estate with his binoculars when his earbud crackled to life.

“Specter One, Odin,” said his field operations coordinator.

“One—Go.”

“Burst traffic from Delta suggests an attack is underway at Boxcar.”

It took a moment for the report to sink in, but when it did Gavriil’s heart rate spiked and his mouth twisted into a fuck me grin. Delta was the radio tag for the safe house, code-named Boxcar, that Skorapporsky and Ultra had relocated to in an industrial park by the river. Odin maintained surveillance devices at the location that operated by short bursts of large data dumps; the devices defeated routine electronic sweeps by remaining dormant the vast majority of the time.

Damn . . . I should have anticipated this contingency and ordered round-the-clock surveillance of Skorapporsky.

“How old is the data dump, Odin?” Gavriil asked.

“Real time. The device was programmed to transmit only under certain sound parameters that would indicate an attack. I’m sending video uplink now.”

Gavriil rose from the chair, slung his Beretta 501, and pulled a tablet from his backpack. On-screen, an alert icon flashed, indicating incoming data. He entered his six-digit code and the screen came alive with a series of static images: what looked like a four-man squad of special operators massacring the Ultra members. He paused on an image of Skorapporsky being cuffed.

“Specter Two, One—the Americans just hit the Ultra safe house and grabbed Skorapporsky. Mission abort, meet me at the vehicle.”

“Check,” came the reply from the Zeta sniper.

Gavriil slung the backpack onto both shoulders and moved deliberately to the door, stepping over the dead woman’s legs.

“Two is clear and headed to the vehicle,” said Ruben.

“Three minutes,” Gavriil said.

He circled around the back of the house and stepped on the towel he had positioned beside a kitchen window. He tipped on his toes and smashed the glass inward with an elbow, grateful he had placed the blood for the police already, planning for the need for a rapid exfil.

He backed off the towel, careful not to leave any footprints, picked it up and stuffed it into his pack as he ran. He leapt a short wrought iron fence in a single, fluid movement and entered the garage through a cracked-open side door. Inside, he found Ruben already sitting in the driver’s seat of the BMW 750i.

Gavriil slipped into the passenger’s seat and pressed the button to raise the garage door and open the gate at the end of the driveway simultaneously.

“Take Lavrska south to E95 and we can jump onto Naberezhne Road north,” he said as Ruben accelerated out of the garage and down the brick driveway. He pulled his Fort-224 assault rifle and a Fort-17 pistol from his bag, extending the folded stock on the rifle and checking the magazine and the rounds chambered in both.

“Check,” his fellow agent said, a hint of annoyance in his voice at what he doubtless considered an unnecessary direction. They were both Zetas, after all.

But there is only one Prime, Gavriil thought, then couldn’t help but laugh at the situation.

“What’s so funny?” Ruben said with a humorless glance.

“This job is like a video game. You complete all these impossible levels, and just when you think you’re going to defeat the boss monster, he does something you don’t expect and fucks you.”

“Are you talking about the Americans?”

“Of course. I thought they would go for Bondar, but they went after Skorapporsky instead. Good job, Ember. You got me. But the game is not finished, my friends.”

“What are you talking about? They’ll be gone by the time we get there,” Ruben said, shaking his head.

“Maybe, maybe not. They don’t know we’re coming. And also, they have to get away. As soon as they exfil, they’ll let their guard down. And that’s when we hit them.”

Ruben nodded. “Punch and counterpunch.”

“That’s right. Let’s hit them hard,” Gavriil said and pulled an encrypted satellite phone from the backpack and pressed the second number in his Favorites. The phone chirped only twice.

“Da?” the male voice answered.

“I need your help, comrade,” he said in Russian.

“Where?” the mercenary answered.

“How quickly can you get half your team to the warehouse location I briefed you on and the other half to the Metro Bridge?”

“Five minutes,” the man said. “What are your instructions?”

Gavriil quickly explained what he believed was happening. “Kill everyone, including Skorapporsky. If you miss the Americans, I need the other team at Metro Bridge to intercept.”

“How do you know they go that way?”

“Educated guess.”

“Da. It will be done.”

Gavriil slipped the phone into his coat pocket as Ruben maneuvered smoothly onto Naberezhne Road. He pulled extra magazines from his bag and shoved them into the pockets built into the tactical cargo pants he wore. Then he pulled a quadcopter drone the size of a paperback book from his pack and powered it on.

“Odin, One,” he said to his coordinator. “I want to put up a microdrone when we’re on station. It’s powered on, you should be able to sync.”

“Understood . . . linking now.”

The drone’s four ducted propellers whirred individually, then pulsed collectively, causing the little drone to bobble in his hands. “Synchronization complete. Standing by for launch.”

The roads were deserted, so they easily managed eighty-five kilometers en route. As they crossed the Dnieper, a boat sped past underneath the bridge. Something about it screamed for his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing of interest beyond that the boat was traveling faster than the posted no-wake speed limit. He refocused his attention on the potential gun battle ahead. Ruben slowed as they neared the warehouse, and Gavriil rolled down his window. He grabbed the lightweight drone with his right hand and held it out the window.

“Ready to launch drone,” he said.

A heartbeat later, the quadcopter’s rotors buzzed to life and it shot out of his grip skyward.

“I have good eyes,” Odin reported.

Gavriil’s phone chirped with a text message as Ruben navigated into the warehouse lot and parked behind a black Cadillac Escalade that Gavriil recognized as belonging to his contracted killers.

The message read: Shooters gone, but you need to see this.

“They’re already gone,” he informed Ruben, “but I want to take a look.”

Ruben nodded and they both hopped out of the big Bimmer. His contracted Vory shooters had switched on the warehouse’s overhead halogen lights. Even as he approached the open front door, Gavriil could see that the carnage inside was breathtaking. The four hired killers were standing in a lake of blood, a half-dozen bodies sprawled about.

“Here,” the lead mercenary, Novitsky, called, waving them over.

One of Novitsky’s men squatted beside a gurgling Ukrainian. “He says it was soldiers. They killed everyone but took someone named Skorapporsky.”

Gavriil raised his Fort-224 and fired, blowing apart the head of the wounded Ultra fighter and spattering blood onto the gangster’s shirt and pants. The tattooed thug leapt to his feet and pulled his pistol.

“What the fuck, asshole?” the man seethed in Russian, but stopped raising his weapon when his eyes focused on the muzzle of Gavriil’s Fort pointing at his chest.

“Novitsky, is your second team in position south of the Metro Bridge?”

“Yes, they called in position a few seconds ago. All clear.”

The Americans were on that boat, he suddenly realized, and a fresh adrenaline dump energized him. We still have time!

“Odin, One—do you have eyes on the complex?” Gavriil said into his mike.

“Da,” came the reply.

“If you zoom out, do you see a boat heading upriver, north of the bridge?”

“Hold . . . da, I have it,” Odin reported. “It’s docking. I count five—no, make that six—persons on the boat. And there are two black Chevrolet SUVs waiting.”

“Check,” Gavriil said and turned to Novitsky. “We can still catch them. Send your men north. Look for a convoy of two black Chevrolet SUVs. Kill them all—whatever it takes. Use heavy firepower, and I will clean up any political mess.”

Novitsky didn’t move. “How much?”

“Five million Euros in your account by morning.”

“Ten,” the gangster-for-hire said.

“Fine, but tell them to hurry. You guys follow us.”

“It will be done,” Novitsky said and made the call.

And with that, Gavriil sprinted out of the warehouse, Ruben beside him and the squad of hired guns in tow.