by Jet MacLeod
She dropped the radio. She was done toying with them. It was time for business. She put the knife and the tomahawk away on her belt. She hunkered down behind the body, using it as a shield and drew her pistol. She waited until they were so close, but far enough h away that the other two guards and Ivan couldn’t make out her position.
Tap tap, tap tap, tap tap. All three dropped. She smiled, knowing that the double tap wasn’t necessary, but it was worth it. She stepped out into the middle of the corridor. She looked straight at Ivan. Tap. The guard to the left went down. Tap tap. The guard to his right fell. She changed the mag, but didn’t shoot Ivan.
No, shooting him would be too easy. She wanted him to pay. She wanted him to feel the pain that he had caused her by taking Angie in the first place. She pulled the Kabar and stalked him in the dark. She was two feet in front of him and she could feel the fear and see it in his eyes.
“Do pobachennya, Ivan,” she told him as she pulled him into a modified choke hold.
She felt his weight drop into hers and she bore it. She put her lips right by his right ear. Her Kabar was right by the left. She felt him try to struggle, but she had him so off balance he had no way of breaking the hold.
“Yuliya zavzhdy krashche, nizh vy. Rozkazhitʹ yiy pryvit dlya mene. Udachy v peklo,” she told him as she sliced across his neck.
She had so much blood on her hands. His was nothing new. She didn’t feel anything. She was on a mission and that was to get Angie. That was all that mattered. The how and why wasn’t important. Saving Angie was the only thing on her mind at that moment. She would process all of this later…far, far away from here.
She let him hit the floor with a thump. She wasn’t trying to hide her location anymore. Just then, the power came back on. She pulled the NVGs up and onto her forehead quickly before the renewed light could blind her.
She reached out for the door knob to the office. She knew that Angie and Rudakov were just on the other side. She traded her Kabar for her pistol right before she burst through the door.
She scanned the room in a millisecond and took stock of what was before her. She surprised them all by busting in the way she did. Angie was still tied to the chair in the middle of the room. Rudakov was hovering beside her with some sort of pistol in his hand. The two new guards that must have come up from the first floor through another door to the office were a surprise, but they were quickly subdued with quick shots to the head.
She heard Angie gasp at the quick efficiency in which she dispatched them, but she didn’t have time to process the fact that Angie could now see all the blood that she had accumulated from killing the other guards on her way to her. Rudakov did. It was a split a second. She smiled at Angie, who returned it with a worrisome look on her face, as she turned to take aim on Rudakov.
Tap tap. She was still looking into Angie’s eyes when they widen as she fell to her knees just inside the door way. She looked down at the two holes in her front. Rudakov had shot her.
Chapter 31
Angie leaned back into the chair. She wasn’t happy that Rudakov had joined Ivan, but she really didn’t have any say in the matter. She also knew that they knew that Del was coming. She just wished that she had some sort of confirmation that Del was okay.
She pulled at the rope around her hands and arms. She was still trying to get free. She needed to be ready to go as soon as Del showed. She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. She was done with them and with being a captive. She would obey anything that Del told her to do, now and more fully. She’d realized what she had really gotten herself into and that it was really deep.
“Do try and stay calm, Miss March. I fear that you are worried too much about your body guard. Don’t be. She’ll be dead before she ever gets to you. I have too many men for her to deal with and they have all been given orders to shoot her on sight. As soon as she is dead, I’ll release you. I have no quarrel with you. But, I will be nice. I will send you back to the FBI to be guarded. Wouldn’t want the cartels to find you now, would we?” Ivan asked her tormenting her.
She glared at the man. He was vile. He just wanted his revenge on Del, but she still didn’t know why it was so damn important. She kept staring at the man. Ivan wanted to avenge the deaths of his uncle and his cousin, Yulia, but what was Rudakov’s motivation?
“You are thinking about something?” he questioned.
“I am.”
“Would you like to know something?”
“Why does Rudakov want her dead?”
“He wants to send a message to anyone that opposes him. Del has made quite a name for herself, especially after she killed my uncle and Yulia. Rudakov picked up where they left off. It seems that his family has just been waiting for this opportunity. He has agreed to let me run things in the Ukraine. This is something that we both want.”
“He will destroy you and take what he wants, Ivan. He isn’t going to let you have the Ukraine. He will eventually kill you and take over your parts of the syndicate. He can’t be trusted. Surely you must know that? He has turned on his own country. What is to stop him from turning on you because you are just a pawn to him?” she asked him.
He looked at her strangely. It was obvious in that moment that he’d never thought of that. He trusted Rudakov completely and she had just told him that it would be his undoing.
“I’ve seen men like him in my line of work. They use people like you, Ivan. He will get what he wants and then he will dispose of you…permanently. He will no longer have need of you. Why do you think that he got you to kidnap me? He knew that Del would follow you. If you die, it wouldn’t stop his progression in the syndicate or his businesses. It would actually help him out. Don’t you see that? You are just a pawn, like you’ve always been, like you were with Yulia. He is just using you to do his dirty work,” she stated.
“You don’t get to say her name!” he spat.
She watched him. There was something dangerous in his eyes, something that wasn’t there before. He seemed to be contemplating what she was saying and trying to make reason with it. It looked like it was painful for him. He was losing his grip and she knew she was going to keep pushing to see how far he would actually crack before he did something, anything.
“YURI!” he shouted into a radio.
“Da,” came the reply.
She quit listening. It didn’t matter. They were speaking Russian or Ukrainian, neither of which she spoke. She wasn’t going to understand anything.
She kept pulling on the ropes. They were burning into her wrists, cutting her skin, but she didn’t care. She needed to get free. She needed them to be looser. She needed to be able to leave as soon as Del showed up to get her. She didn’t put it passed them to try to kill her once they knew that Del was on the premises.
She watched as he paced in the office. He was muttering under his breath. She didn’t want push him too far too fast. She needed to keep her wits about her and him. She needed to push him only when he was about to crack. It would give him something to focus on.
“Don’t worry, Miss March. I am not going to let anyone else hurt you. I promised that I would deliver you to the local authorities when this is over and I mean to keep that promise. You will be very alive and well when I do that,” he told her like it was the most logical conclusion to the extremely fucked up situation that they found themselves in at the moment.
“Do you honestly think that Rudakov is going to let you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t he? He really has no use for you. You are nothing more than bait,” he told her.
“Exactly, I am bait and bait doesn’t usually live past its usefulness. I am also someone that can identify him. I’ve worked with him in the past in a more professional manner than this. I know that he is involved with all of this. He isn’t going to let me go that easily, Ivan. I am a liability for him,” she explained.
“He will not hurt you. I promise you that. I will deal with you personally,” he assured her with his thick acce
nt, like he actually believed that he could protect her from Rudakov on his own.
She realized that in that instance she was doomed. If Del didn’t get to her first, she would die in this warehouse. She struggled more, but made sure to make it look like she wasn’t. She didn’t need to bring undo attention to herself. She needed to remain calm and collected. She needed to keep thinking that Del was on her way for her. She needed to just believe and believe in the powers and mind of Delia Montgomery.
“He is working on the case that has me in witness protection, Ivan. He knows where I am and what I did to get put in it. If he doesn’t kill me, he is going to hand me over to the drug cartels that I was trying to prosecute. My life was forfeit as soon as you kidnapped me. He couldn’t make it look like he did it. He needs plausible deniability. You give him that. He’s played you.”
He crossed the room and got right in her face. She could see his eyes burning into her. He harshly whispered something to her in Ukrainian. She swore that she heard the work ‘Suka’ again. She was beginning to believe that it wasn’t a compliment.
“What does ‘Suka’ mean?” she asked him.
“How do you say...I think you say...ah, yes, Bitch,” he hissed in the end.
“You think that I am a ‘suka’?” she inquired.
She was just trying to keep him talking, keep him focused on her. It was survival technique and she knew it. But, as long as he had his attention on her, he wasn’t that worried about what was going on outside the office door.
“You are not a Suka. You are just a whore, but you’re her whore. She is the Suka!” he spat at her, back in her face with that same wild look in his eyes.
She nodded. He was still angry and at what she wasn’t really sure. She wanted to know. He stared down into her clear blue eyes with wonder for a minute. He then crossed the room and went back to the desk. He turned up the small walkie-talkie radio. He absentmindedly was listening to the chatter between his men and the men that Rudakov sent to him. She couldn’t make out what they were saying because it was all in Russian, she believed. He sat down in the chair behind the old metal desk.
“Why are you so angry with Delia?”
“She killed my uncle and Yulia.”
“But, she didn’t kill Yulia.”
“SHE DID!!!”
He was upon her quickly. His eyes were wild. His fury was palpable.
“But, she didn’t. She did kill your uncle, but she never touched Yulia. She didn’t pull the trigger. She couldn’t kill her because she cared for Yulia. That is why she let Yulia shoot her and almost kill her back then,” Angie told him.
She didn’t care that she was betraying Del’s trust in that moment. She knew that Ivan was going to die. It would either be by Rudakov’s hands or Del’s. Either way, he would take whatever secrets that Angie shared with him to his grave. He was a dead man walking and he didn’t even know it. At that point, she didn’t really care anymore. She just wanted to live to see another day.
She used words. They used weapons. It was going to be an interesting fight, but one that she was going to give him, no matter what. She was going to do it for Delia.
“You aren’t allowed to say her name,” he stated quietly, almost at a whisper as he backed away.
“Who: Yulia?”
“DA!!! She died because of that Suka and now she is going to pay. I will make sure of it.”
“But, she didn’t kill Yulia. She killed your uncle. Yes, I’ll give you that, but Yulia tried to kill her. I believe it was something like thirty bullets from an AK47. Del didn’t kill her. Del begged her for forgiveness for killing your uncle, her father. She never even fought back.”
“LlES!!!”
“Why do you think that it took you so long to find her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why do you think that it took you so long to find her after all that?”
“Because she was no longer in the Ukraine, I had to track her. I lost her in Europe, but Rudakov found her for me. He gave her to me. I will kill her for killing Yulia.”
It was then that Angie begun to wonder if Ivan’s relationship with Yulia was that of familial nature or something more. He was acting like a man possessed, not a grieving family member. She watched him and his body language, waiting for something to betray him. She knew what to look for because she’d seen it too many times in the courtroom.
“She didn’t kill Yulia though, Ivan. The people that were trying to get Delia out of the Ukraine are the ones that killed Yulia. They are the ones that you should be blaming. They did it to protect Del, because Del wasn’t protecting herself. She was in mourning, too.”
“I don’t believe you,” he told her with a quick conviction. “Everything that you are telling me is lies. Yulia wouldn’t have used an AK47 on her. She would have used an AK74 or something bigger. It is all lies. I don’t want to hear your lies.”
“I am not lying to you. Don’t believe me, fine. Ask Rudakov when he gets here.”
“He isn’t coming here.”
“That is what you think. He can’t leave something this large up to chance. He has to make sure that the situation is under control. He doesn’t trust you, Ivan. Why do you think that he has been calling you so much since we got here? He is keeping tabs on you. He is making sure that you aren’t going to screw this up. That includes dealing with me. He is going to kill me or hand me over to the cartels. He really doesn’t have option concerning me. I am a liability. You know it. I know it. He knows it,” she told him.
“Are you giving up already?” Ivan asked her.
“No, I am just a realist. I believe in logic and evidence. I know what he is capable of and could to do to me. But, I also have to believe that she is coming for me and she is going to save me. I have to keep hope,” Angie told him.
“Hope is a foolish notion, Miss March.”
“Only when you lose it does it become foolish, Ivan. For those who have hope can make anything happen. Those who have hope still have the belief that tomorrow will be a better day, but I am also a realist. I know that I have to want it to be a better day and I have to make it a better day for it to actually be a better day. And, I believe that tomorrow will be a better day.”
She pulled at the ropes, again. They were actually loosening. She could almost get her left hand out of the ties. Once she was free, she knew that she needed to get into the office and as far away from Ivan as she could. She looked around the room, again, looking for a place to hide. She smiled as she thought of plan. Her smile faltered as soon as Rudakov walked in.
Rudakov came into the office and made his way over to the desk. The look of surprise on Ivan’s face didn’t go unnoticed by Angie, but she was smart enough not to say anything. She held her tongue and watched their interactions trying to find a way to exploit them both. Rudakov gave her a look of disdain and disinterest, and said nothing as he sat behind the desk that Ivan had been using. He was making it clear to anyone that entered the room who was in charge of the situation.
“How have you been Angie?” he asked her nonchalantly.
“Better,” she replied.
“I hope that you weren’t injured in your travels into our little operation.”
“Depends on what you consider an injury, Alexander. Or, should I call you Alexi? I am at little bit of a loss as to what your real name is now that I know you are involved.”
“Angie, does it really matter?”
“I guess not. But, I was just wondering what name you would like on your tombstone. You have to know by now that Delia is coming for me. She will kill you all. I hope you realize that,” Angie said.
“She will try, but she won’t succeed. I have some of the best ‘thieves’ here with me. She won’t get through them. There are several traps that have already been installed in the warehouse. One of them is actually in the office above us, Angie. She won’t know that. Even if she gets in the warehouse, she won’t be able to find you. She doesn’t know that I am involv
ed. I will be able to get you and myself out of here before she figures out what is really going on here.”
“I think you are overestimating your abilities.”
“You are a smart woman, Angela, but Delia is not. She is a programed killer. How you have survived this long under her care is amazing in and of itself. I am not worried about her. She will not be able to get to you as soon as she needs to, and if by some chance she does manage to get in the building, she will never find you,” Rudakov answered. “She might have been good in her earlier years, but she has outlived her usefulness. Why do you think that they gave her you to deal with? She can’t hack it in the real world. You are a test. She’s failed. She will be retired…permanently.”
“They will kill her?”
“If I don’t first, yes. She can’t be trusted to be alone in the ‘real’ world. She has been subversive for so long that I doubt she can function with the rest of polite society. We would actually be doing her a favor. Don’t you agree, Ivan?” he asked like it was perfectly logical.
“I just want her dead,” Ivan deadpanned.
“She handles society just fine. She has dealt with every situation that has been thrown at her while being my body guard with a singular reverence for life and stability. I have no qualms with her being in the so called ‘real world.’ She functions just fine,” Angie argued.
“Oh, my God. Angie. Really? Tell me you are joking. You’ve fallen for the woman, haven’t you?”
“That really isn’t any of your concern now is it, Rudakov. All you are worried about is taking over the syndicate. How do you know that the FBI isn’t already on you? Do you really think that you are better than they are? Someone else besides me must know what you are about, Rudakov. You won’t win.”
“That is where you are wrong, my dear, Miss March. No one knows my real name and no one knows what I am really up to with the syndicate. I have been smart enough to cover my tracks. If they even try to figure anything out, they won’t be looking for me. They will be looking for a ghost.”
