by Chad Huskins
Beside him, Erik started huffing. He hadn’t known Ogorodnikov very well, either, but he’d known him more than most and it was evident by his upper lip, which was curled into a snarl. Semyon knew that Erik’s family, the Dolgorukovs, were connected to the Ogorodnikov lineage by several marriages down through the centuries. Theirs was an old affiliation, one of close business and family ties, and no matter how much a stranger one was to the other, a Dolgorukov would always avenge an Ogorodnikov. “Is that you, American?” Erik shouted in English.
“Quiet,” ordered Semyon in a low voice, still backing away and never taking his eyes off the windows.
“Stay calm, Erik,” said Timofei, at his side. Always the quiet one, always the one to calculate and weigh his options.
“Is that you, Pelletier?! That’s right! We know your name, motherfucker!”
“Quiet, Erik!” With one hand he aimed his Makarov at the door, and with his other hand he fished in his pocket for his phone, all while backing away from the house.
A few things happened in quick succession. Erik hissed a curse. Yulian honked his horn, presumably having seen the dead body and wanting them to return quickly. Then, the radio going on inside was silenced, and someone hollered from the inside, in awkward Russian, “We only came man Zakhar and don’t want killing you. No more kill after Zakhar. We are knowing you don’t never like Zakhar anyway. No more kill after Zakhar. You leave. We leave. No more kill. This is deal?”
Semyon had just opened his mouth to try and persuade the man inside to come out and talk with them, but before he could attempt this ploy, before he could even utter a syllable, an Uzi crackled and spat at the windows on the right side of the house, spraying and shattering glass. The echoes of the automatic weapon carried far and wide.
“Erik!” he cried. “Stop!”
But Erik did not hear. He kept letting out short, semi-controlled bursts from the submachine gun. Timofei ran over to him, grabbed him by his shoulder, and spun him around. “Stop this—” A bullet tore through Timofei’s head, snapping it back, and he fell back onto the snow, dead.
Semyon didn’t hesitate. He ducked and ran in a crouch for cover. “Back to the van!” he hollered. Erik turned and ran, firing blindly behind him. Another shot rang out, zipping through the air and missing Semyon by inches, sending up a spray of snow in his face. Then another shot rang out, this one smacking into the SUV ahead of them. And another shot, this one into the tire, flattening it. Just as Semyon and Erik made it to the other side of the SUV, Yulian was diving out of the driver’s seat, his own Makarov at the ready. Another shot rang out, and Semyon heard Erik let out a cry. Erik spun, hit the ground, and crawled the rest of the way for cover behind the SUV’s rear tire. “Are you hit?” Semyon called.
Erik clutched his arm, which was now gushing blood. Yulian, so big and massive and awkward, ran to his cousin. “How bad is it?”
To this, Erik simply shouted, “I’m going to fucking kill you, American dog!”
Panting out clouds of steam, Semyon peeked around the front of the SUV, saw Timofei’s dead body lying there in reddening snow.
“I’m going to fucking kill youuuuuuuuuu!”
“Yes, Erik. We are. But right now, you need to remain calm and focused.”
“Don’t you tell me to stay calm! He shot me in the fucking—”
“You laid down fire first—”
“He killed my cousin! He’s been killing our people for months—”
“And he’ll continue doing so as long as we keep walking into his traps,” Semyon tried explaining, peeking once more around the front of the SUV. The front of the lodge now had a few shattered windows and trails of bullet holes across the pinewood exterior. There was no movement besides the wind-driven snow, curling and forming occasional funnels over Timofei’s body.
Semyon knew the stories. He knew what had happened in Derbent and understood what sort of mind it took to pull something like that off. A careful man. A thoughtful man. A complete and total deviant, but a thoughtful deviant. It wasn’t until the very moment that Ogorodnikov’s body had been flung out on the porch that Semyon had fully understood the threat was real. Months of hearing about these stories of what had happened to some of his people in Derbent, mostly business associates, had made him suspect that most of it was inflated, exaggeration, with very few grains of truth to be found.
But their people in Interpol had been right. He had crossed the Atlantic and moved into Derbent as a would-be thief looking for work. If the stories were true, he’d quickly infiltrated and ingratiated himself to others. Semyon was sure that his people were all too eager to accept a talented out-of-towner for low-level schemes—if captured, Pelletier would know next to nothing about the operations at the top level, and would probably be extradited for other crimes in the U.S.
And then he turned on them. For what? Interpol believed he had been associated with the Rainbow Room, that offensive offshoot of the vory v zakone, but Semyon happened to know better. He’d known Dmitry Ankundinov, kept up with him, as well as the rest of his siblings and those he’d been working with in and around Atlanta (even though he hadn’t liked what rumors he’d been hearing about what Dmitry was really up to), and he had never once heard them mention Spencer Pelletier as being on their payroll.
Which means he wasn’t. So what was he, then?
“I want him alive if possible,” said Semyon.
“Alive?” said both Erik and Yulian incredulously, almost in unison.
They hadn’t discussed it on the drive over, but now that they were facing the truth of this devil, Semyon wanted it made perfectly clear. “If it is him, then he should be made to pay.” He looked at Erik. “Don’t you want him to pay? Slowly?” Erik winced as Yulian applied pressure and tied off the wound with a strip of his shirt. Then, Erik nodded. “Then we wait for the others, and we surround him. He’s all alone out here with nowhere to go.”
“But we can’t stay out here forever,” Yulian said. “He may call the police.”
Erik shook his head. “He’d be arrested for murder as soon as they showed up.”
Semyon shrugged. “Still, Yulian may be right. If he feels outmatched, he may very soon choose prison over facing us. Wouldn’t you?” He peeked around the front of the SUV again. All was as silent as the grave, and Timofei, one of Semyon’s aunt’s adopted sons, still lay dead thirty feet away. He looked at the lodge. “Yulian’s right, we cannot wait too long.”
They went silent for a moment. Then, the sound of another engine approaching. “It’s the others. Yulian, call Abram and warn them. Tell them Timofei’s dead. No use in them finding out when they drive up and see him lying sprawled there. And tell them to park behind us, so that he doesn’t shoot their tires out, too.”
“Right.”
When the second SUV showed up, Spencer smiled. It came roaring in quickly and slid to a halt beside the first van. “Here comes backup,” he said, mostly to himself. The little girl wasn’t listening. After helping him slide Zakhar over to the door, she’d retreated to the other side of the living room and huddled with the boy in her arms. The boy was still quivering, still not having uttered a word since she spoke with him briefly in the basement.
Spencer had told Kaley to watch the back door for anyone trying to sneak in, and she had nodded silently. Then, when the gunfire erupted and tore the windows and walls apart, she’d run screaming over to the stairs and bolted straight up them.
It was almost laughable. Somebody gave her the ability to tear people and worlds apart with her mind, but they didn’t give her the courage not to run from a little fireworks. He shook his head ruefully. Shame, really.
The second SUV had parked on the other side of the first one. He could make out a few doors opening and people piling out, but couldn’t get an accurate count. Guessing maybe four? If so, that put them at seven. Peeking over the now shattered kitchen window, Spencer could see shadows and feet moving underneath the SUV, and an ushanka-covered head bobbing up for a beat
before bobbing back down.
It gave Spencer an idea. He moved over to the staircase, keeping in a low crouch. Then, he called up, “Hey, little girl, can ya hear me up there?” No answer. “It’s really, really important. ‘Do you want to live?’ kind of important.” Spencer kept an eye on the front door. After a few seconds, Kaley peeked her head around the top of the stairs. The boy was no longer in her arms, but by her side, hugging her waist and looking down at Spencer in wide-eyed terror. “I need you to do something.”
“What?” she said, mistrustfully. She was shivering as if she was standing outside in all tha cold. The fear had hold of her.
“Take that pistol I gave ya an’ fire a shot out one o’ those windows up there.”
Kaley shook her head. “I-I can’t—”
“I’m not askin’ ya to kill anybody, just fire a shot at one o’ those vans out there. Got it?”
“What, like, a warning shot?”
“Yeah, there ya go. A warnin’ shot. Fire off one or two shots, so they know where it came from. I need you to do it now, as in the next thirty seconds. I don’t care how bad ya miss, just fire.” She stared at him a moment, then disappeared around the corner.
Spencer darted back over to the kitchen, his feet crunching glass. He peeked out the window, then dipped back below and moved over to the front door and glanced through the curtains. He waited. So far, nothing, just silence. C’mon, little girl, c’mon.
While he waited impatiently, Spencer wondered if any of these fellows were from Derbent. He’d left quite a few alive—impossible to kill them all before he’d had to dip out—and he knew that some of them frequently traveled to Moscow and Chelyabinsk on business errands for the families.
As the most ancient city in all of Russia, Derbent had been scenic and filled with the usual grand architecture that the Russians were known for. And, like all gorgeous places on earth, tourists came in great droves, and therefore attracted organized crime looking to scam, cheat, and otherwise abuse those tourists. Those places weren’t always so obvious to the newcomer, but for Spencer they drew him in like a moth to flame. There was a glamour to it all, and he absorbed it, melded with it, became it. He had no real mastery of the Russian language, but had used what he knew of it to his advantage. The fellows in Derbent had liked to give him shit for his rough Russian, so he’d played it up, and used it as something to engender trust in them.
More than hating me for killing their cousins, they hate me for duping them, for betraying their trust.
Broken trust was the number one insult to any organized family. If they ever got their hands on someone that broke that trust…
Spencer suffered no illusions about what was waiting on him if these men got their hands on him. They didn’t want him dead, they wanted him alive. And what he’d done to Andrei Ankundinov would most likely pale in comparison to what these men would do. They had secret facilities, warehouses that no Customs officer ever inspected, where they could take him to be alone. They could keep him for days, weeks, months, years, even decades if they so chose. They had the tools and the talent to do it.
“But you gotta catch me first,” he said out loud, tittering. Spencer ejected the clip from the Glock, checked the rounds inside. Eight shots left. He’d save one for himself. Or…
“Huh,” he said, his mind racing over to the little girl upstairs. “Now there’s a thought.” Just as the idea was forming, and he was weighing its potential, a gunshot rang out from upstairs. Then a second one. Then a third. And a fourth. I said one or two, not three, and certainly not four. “Little bitch,” he muttered. Still, it got the job done. He glanced outside and saw the specks of snow shooting up off the ground. Only one bullet seemed to hit the first SUV, cracking a window.
Now Spencer went to the kitchen window and fired out at the SUVs, too. Just two shots, because he didn’t have many to spare. He heard some shouting going on out there, arguments about what to do, presumably. In a crouch, he hustled back over to the front door and glanced out the curtain. It was getting darker outside. He looked down at Zakhar’s dead body, and the body of the one he’d already taken out lying there in the snow. He smiled.
This was the fun part, the part he would stand in line for if they sold tickets for it.
Because the windows were all broken, snow was starting to collect on the windowsill inside and around the kitchen table and chairs. Some of the flakes landed in Zakhar’s brains and blood, the white on red looking quite lovely before the flakes melted and disappeared. From outside, Spencer could hear even their idle chatter, though it was only snatches of dialogue obscured by the cold, howling wind.
That’s right, comrades, he thought. There’s at least two of us.
Semyon and the others were huddled tightly between their two vehicles. He now had to reassess this. He looked at Abram, who’d shown up with the others, and who had a mask of rage on his face. Timofei had just started dating his sister, and they had talked about marriage happening in the spring. Timofei lay dead in the snow, and it was all Semyon could do to keep Abram from rushing the lodge. “I thought you said it was just one!” Abram all but shouted at him.
“I never said that,” Semyon said calmly. He peeked over the hood again, up at the window on the second floor, which was still open, and presumably where the first shots had rung out before someone had fired from a first-floor window. It was too quick of succession to have been the same person. That meant there was at least two in there. “When we first walked up to the door, someone did shout ‘We only came for Zakhar.’ He said we. I assumed it was a bluff.”
“These bastards aren’t bluffing! They just killed my sister’s fiancé—”
“If you don’t calm down, then we will all lose our heads, and we will have lost our advantage.”
“What advantage? Our numbers? How do we know there’s not more of them in there than out here?”
“Look around you, Abram. Do you see any other cars besides ours?” he said. “There’s Zakhar’s own Subaru in the shed, nothing else. They may have come here with him, or hiked from someplace else. Whichever way it went, there can’t be that many of them, not just to assassinate one man. Pelletier had no other close friends in Derbent, he could not have found all that many in Chelyabinsk in just two months’ time.”
“You don’t know anything from where you’re sitting—”
“I know a madman is trapped inside there and may call the police at any moment if it means getting clear of retribution from the families.” Semyon glanced over the hood again, saw nothing. Besides being riddled with bullet holes, the lodge was innocent and unassuming. The wind came on stronger, and the snowfall suddenly became heavier. He looked at Abram and his three cousins: tall and skinny Boris, large and bullish Anton, scarred and intense Kirill. All four of these men were from the Yelizarov family, which had close ties to the Ankundinovs, the family that Spencer Pelletier had offended most, and the family that would have a final say in his fate if they captured him tonight.
“I say we just storm the fucking house!” Erik hissed, pulling away from Yulian now and checking the magazine in his Uzi. The others mostly ignored him, kept looking at Semyon for some leadership. Like most Russian men at the age of eighteen, Semyon presented himself for compulsory military service, but unlike most, he’d stayed in service until retirement. Semyon had been in various training programs, including training with American SWAT teams and German GSG-9, the elite counter-terrorism force. The families had found great use for him throughout the years.
Semyon looked up at the sky. Another thirty minutes of daylight, no more. “We have to move soon, or else we’ll have to leave. The longer we stay, the closer our man in there gets to calling the police or someone else for help, and we can’t just sit out here and freeze all night, not with this storm coming in.”
Abram looked at his cousins, none of whom moved. They weren’t even shivering in the cold. They might’ve been chiseled out of ice. Finally, Abram looked back at Semyon and said, “What do
you have in mind?”
Semyon laid it out for them.
Trembling and close to tears, Kaley came bounding down the stairs with the Colt held in both hands, almost like she was holding a filled diaper that was about to spill its contents onto her. Clenching it in both fists and squeezing her eyes shut, she’d fired wildly out the window. She’d told the boy to find someplace to hide, but he hadn’t left her side. Until she began firing. Then he bolted for one of a set of twin beds, and was still hiding there as far as she knew.
Spencer heard her coming down the stairs, and ran over to her in a crouch, waving for her to keep her head down. “I-I-I did it.”
“I know,” he said, reaching out and snatching the Colt from her hands. “Not bad. It’s got them keepin’ their heads down, which is fine for now—”
“S-Spencer?” she said, staring vacantly at her empty hands, where the pistol had been taken away. “Wh-why don’t we, like, call somebody? Like…l-like 9-1-1 or something? Doesn’t Russia have their own k-kind of—”
“If we call an emergency service, I’ll be goin’ to prison, little girl.”
“It’s better than w-w-waiting on these guys to come in here. They’re not g-going to wait f-f-forever.”
“You’re right, and they’re not just gonna forget me if I get put in the pen. They’ve got people on the inside that can get to me in my sleep. No room to maneuver in prison.” He tucked the Colt in the back of his pants. “Besides, I made a promise, remember? I ain’t ever goin’ back to prison. Not ever. I’ll eat shit and die first.”
“But what about us?”
“What about y—”
“They’re moving!” she gasped. A tingle had just shot through her every bone. People were moving along her spider web; nasty little people, with minds of meddle, kind of like Spencer’s. “I can feel them! Spencer, they’re coming!”
