by John Ringo
“When you pull back, check with the basement team and see if they need any help,” Mike said. “If not, go reinforce Oleg.”
* * *
“Oleg! There are more coming down Dutris Street! We need help here!”
“How many?” Oleg asked, waving at the team with him and hurrying to the defense point on Dutro.
“At least twenty,” Dmitri answered. “And they are giving each other covering fire now. A car tried to get past us as well.”
Oleg turned the corner and hunkered down behind a stairway, peering over the top, then looking across the street at the defense team.
“We have them in a crossfire, now,” Oleg said as he spotted figures moving down the far side of the street. “Juris, see if you can get onto one of the upper floors and give us cover fire. Jitka, set up your SAW and get ready for fun…”
* * *
“Make enough of a mess?” Creata asked, stepping over the body in the threshod of the room and looking around. The basement office’s computers had been shredded by more than one grenade, but the safe on the far wall was impervious to fragments.
“More or less,” Yevgenii said, grinning. “A little Mouses’ nest, yes?”
“Genrich, Steppas,” Gregorii said. “Start pulling out EEI. Mouse, we don’t have much time.”
“Got it,” the girl said, hurrying over to the safe. “I’m going to be at least ten minutes,” she added as she began pulling tools out of her bag.
“Understood,” Gregorii said. “Safe room secure. Working on the safe…”
Chapter Forty-Three
“Creata’s on the safe,” Adams said, pulling off his balaclava and looking around the club. “Ten minutes. I say we get a drink. If Padrek left us any whole bottles.”
“Who’s she?” Mike asked, gesturing with his chin to a hooker being held by one of the Keldara.
“Tanya,” Sawn answered. “She’s an intel source that Vanner asked us to pick up.”
“Vanner?” Mike asked, over the radio. “We giving rides to hookers, now?”
“You talking about Tanya, Kildar?” Vanner answered. “She’s good people and we owe her; she laid in a series of IEDs that really saved Padrek’s ass. Besides, Mikhail really likes her.”
“Fine, fine, like, what-everrrr,” Mike said. “So we’re giving rides to hookers. What’s the status with Oleg?”
“Pretty bad,” Vanner admitted. “He’s got a fight on his hands on all fronts.”
“Sawn, this place secure?” Mike asked.
“Yes, sir,” the team leader answered.
“Get everybody out there supporting Oleg,” Mike said. “Keep a minimum security force back here.”
“Yes, Kildar,” Sawn said, striding away and talking to his radio.
“Creata?” Mike asked softly.
“Yes, Kildar?” Creata answered after a moment.
“How long?”
“I’m just beginning my drill, Kildar,” Creata said. “Eight to nine minutes, minimum.”
“Thank you, Mouse,” Mike replied then looked around the room. “Stay here or go help Oleg?” he asked rhetorically.
“You stay here,” Adams said, setting down his empty shot glass. “I’ll go help Oleg Oh Kildar!”
“Works. Vanner, status on the primary?”
* * *
“Kildar,” Vanner said. “Update on the situation with Katya. Still-unknown man pulled them out of the club over protests of the sugar daddy. Took them to area outside town with stated intention of killing them. Natalya recognized him as the ‘bad man,’ presumably the duplicate Grantham from Rozaje. Person explained most of the incident to Katya while gloating.”
“And Katya is… alive?” Mike asked.
“Katya managed to scratch him and his driver,” Vanner continued. “Was about to be killed, anyway, by the unknown man. The ‘sugar daddy’ prevented it. Turns out he’s MI-6.”
“Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?” Mike said. “Does he recognize the perp?”
“Negative,” Vanner said. “I’ve uploaded a good face shot to Pierson; they’re trying to run a match. He’s apparently American State Department.”
“Anything odd about this guy?” Mike asked, his brain twigging at something.
“Accent,” Vanner said, immediately. “Pure Cambridge, Boston. Hah’vah’d, you know? ‘Pah’k the cah’ ?”
“Wait,” Mike said. “Run a check against the guy who first contacted me for the senator. He was a State Department brahmin…”
“Looking at the log…” Vanner said. “Wilson Hargreave Thornton. And now Google is our friend…”
“And?” Mike asked.
“Bingo,” Vanner replied. “We now have one dead member from the Moldava Desk in the woods of Albania. Except he’s actually in the Bureau of International Development.”
“Connection to Traskel?” Mike asked curiously.
“He explained it all,” Vanner replied. “Well, most. Enough. I’m sure we’ll figure out the link, other than that they run in the same circles more or less.”
“Got it,” Mike said. “Look forward to the replay.”
“That might be all we have,” Vanner said. “I sent Mikhail after them to act as security but he was late. However, he’s got a Land Rover following him according to Predator data. So somebody else appears to be after either Wilson Whatsisname or Natalya.”
“And they’re out of the box,” Mike said, cursing under his breath. “We’ll vector a recovery team in as soon as we egress this area. Tell them to either run like hell or stand pat, up to them. But we’ll be up to get them soon.”
“How is it there?” Vanner asked. “Oleg looks like he’s getting pounded.”
“Other than that, all good,” Mike admitted just as there was a shot downstairs. “Check that. Gunfire. Out here.”
* * *
Boris waited quietly in the safety room, cursing the bastards who had wrecked his club.
As soon as the explosions started upstairs, he had raced for the secure room in the basement. But even before he reached the stairs, he could hear gunfire from the side door and knew that they were under heavy attack. Probably too heavy for even his bloated guard force.
On reaching the basement, he’d ordered the guards to hold out as long as possible and then secreted himself in the “panic room.” The room was concealed behind a set of shelves that contained some of the documents related to the wideflung network of whorehouses and street whores.
The room had been ransacked, but nobody, fortunately, noticed the carefully hidden door. After a few minutes frantic activity, the ransackers, mostly women, curiously, had left carrying almost every document and computer hard drive in the room. The exception was the woman working on the safe, and one bodyguard.
Boris would very much prefer it if whoever was attacking did not get the contents of the safe. Even if everything else was gone, he could rebuild from just what was in there, in money, drugs and especially his collection of DVDs. He wasn’t sure, but he thought most of the attackers had gone upstairs. The rest of the gangs had to be attacking them from the outside. If he could just kill these two he might be able to make it out alive.
The problem was that the little whore of a safecracker was looking right at him. She’d started up the drill while the other women were in the room, then left it to drill as she chatted with the guard. All he needed was for her to turn around for a few seconds…
* * *
Creata was bored.
The first part of the mission had been exciting and scary. Three Keldara had been injured or killed trying to get to the basement office and she felt bad about that. But waiting to enter the corridor had been the most exciting thing she had ever done, except maybe fast-roping down to the alleyway.
Then running down the corridor and setting up had been exciting. She had had to carefully, but quickly, find the precise spot to start drilling. If she was off by half a millimeter, the entry wouldn’t work. She’d carefully measured and
then started the drill. After that, though, it got boring. Boring, boring, boring.
There had been two choices of drill, a mechanical or a laser. The laser drill was slightly heavier, but it had two advantages. It could detect when there had been a burn-through, and with the fine machinery on the far side of the outer plate Creata didn’t want anything touching it but her, and it didn’t have the problem of bits breaking or binding. It was a tad less reliable otherwise, but she had been careful to pad it for the entry and it started up without problem. Now all she had to do was wait for it to bore through to the tumbler assembly.
Bore.
Now she knew why the words were the same in English. They’d talked about this part in the briefing, and the Kildar had said that she’d get bored and then laughed. So she did, chuckling at the thought.
“What?” Ivan asked, frowning.
“I just figured out why the Kildar laughed when we were talking about this part,” Creata said. She’d propped her back on the safe, waiting for the bore to finish. Looking at it wasn’t going to make it go any faster. “Any word on what’s going on upstairs?”
“All four teams are pinned down,” Ivan said, shrugging. “They’ve taken a few casualties. The only ones killed, so far, were Dimant back there on the stairs, Arkady opening the front door and Stanislav when the helicopter crashed. Oh, and the copilot of the helicopter. Bunch of wounded, though.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Creata said, shrugging.
“We know,” Ivan replied, then grinned. “Although I have overheard some comments from upstairs. But they all know the timing. They’re going to be okay.”
“I hope they can extract okay,” the girl said, biting her lip.
“The Kildar thinks…” Ivan said, just as the drill went into overrev.
“Through,” Creata shouted, turning off the drill. “Quiet, now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ivan replied, grinning. But he keyed his mike and spoke into it softly.
Creata pulled the drill out of the casing carefully, rolling it to the side, then slid a doubled optical wire into the hole. One was for vision and the other one had a light. The interior was precisely as she’d been told it would be and she looked at the tumblers for a second.
“I can see the first number…” she muttered to herself, ignoring a faint click behind her.
* * *
The guard didn’t seem to hear the faint click as the shelves unlatched from the wall and Boris held his breath as he slowly swung the door open. But, still, the guard, who was speaking softly into his radio, didn’t seem to notice anything.
The guard was wearing heavy body armor so Boris slowly raised his pistol up to the level of his eye, took a two-handed grip and shot the guard just below the base of his helmet.
* * *
Creata turned around in shock as the whole area around her was covered in bloodspatter, only to find an unknown man, one of the Albanians from his looks, standing over the body of Ivan with a smoking pistol.
“Come away from there, girl,” the man said, waving for her gently. “Come away and you won’t get hurt.”
“No,” Creata said, scurrying behind the bulk of the laser drill. “They’ll come for you, soon.”
“But you’re their safecracker,” the man said, moving around to the side to get a clear shot. “Without you, they can’t get in, can they?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Creata replied, keeping the drill between herself and the man. She had a very small body and could crouch behind it almost totally under cover. “Just go away.”
“Ah, but I very much enjoy hurting little girls like you,” the man said, stepping forward.
“You probably do,” Creata replied and turned the laser on.
The fifteen megawatt chemical laser was designed to bore through one centimeter of 440 steel per second. Human flesh had about the resistance to it that butter had to a hot knife. It was nearly out of charge, but Creata only had to play it across the man’s abdomen, 23 millimeters below his navel. The precise height that the laser had to be aligned to enter the safe.
* * *
Boris didn’t even feel the pain at first: his legs simply collapsed under him as he felt something slither down them. He hit the floor on his face but retained his grip on his pistol and tried to raise it, only to find a small and shapely boot on his wrist.
“I really didn’t want to hurt you,” Creata said, pointing her own pistol at his face. “I simply wanted to kill you. Of course, I think that the disemboweling you just got is probably starting to hurt. Let me be nicer than you and make the pain go away…”
* * *
Mike could see Ivan’s body on the floor before he even got to the door of the basement office, but the shot that rang out was a surprise.
He skidded through the door, SPR up and pointed, just as Creata was putting her pistol away. There was a body on the floor besides Ivan’s, an unknown Albanian with his legs tangled in intestines. His identity would probably forever be unknown, since he also had a bullet hole in the back of his head and his face was blown out.
“Oh, hello, Kildar,” Creata said, turning back to the safe. “Do you think you could watch my back while I finish?”
“Of course,” Mike replied, just as calmly. “I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“Oleg,” Juris called, tracking a moving figure and then stroking his trigger. The figure on the opposite roof fell, but two more dove past him and began peppering the window he’d shot through with fire. “We’ve got tangoes on the roof opposite. I have to pull out.”
“I think we pissed these guys off,” Jitka muttered over the radio.
“Their home turf,” Oleg replied, scanning the street, then consulting his map. “They’re very territorial are the Albanian clans. This is an affront to their honor. They’ll keep coming, like ants to a picnic, until we’ve killed them all or the picnic’s departed.”
“Then I suggest we fold our napkins and go,. Juris chuckled. “Could I get some cover on that?”
“Roger,” Oleg said. “Dutri’s street team, pull back by sections. Section one, move. All teams, fall back on the Club. Kildar, we are withdrawing by sections at this time. Request cover fire in and around the club.”
* * *
“Oleg, this is Kildar,” Mike whispered. “Everyone’s with you. I’ll get back to you on cover.”
“Roger, Kildar,” Oleg said as there was a scream in the background.
“Vanner,” Mike said. “Who’s out on the interdict mission and what’s the status?”
“The area’s rigged,” Vanner said. “They’re pulling back.”
“Get two of the Allouettes to them,” Mike said. “Have them provide cover fire for the withdrawal to the club. Begin moving all personnel to the evac point on the roof.”
“Will do,” Vanner replied.
* * *
“Die you Albanian motherfuckers,” Ionis muttered, stroking the trigger of his MG-240.
He’d thought flying in on the Allouettes had been scary. But that had worked out perfectly. Now, though, he and Stephan were under heavy fire, covering the retreat of one of Oleg’s teams.
“Keep the ammo coming, brother,” he muttered as Stephan clicked another hundred-round box into the linked belt that was feeding the gun.
“Keep firing, brother,” Stephan replied, grinning, just as there was a whistling sound.
Ionis caught a brief glimpse of the RPG in the air before it impacted on the wall above him.
* * *
Oleg dashed across the street, ignoring the hail of small arms fire, and scooped up the MG-240.
“Dmitri! Sveryan! Grab Ionis and Stephan and get them under cover,” the team leader roared, popping up over the stairway and hosing the far side of the street, holding the machine gun off-hand like a giant rifle. There was return fire, though, from every window it seemed and from the rooftop. He felt a round punch him in the armor and then another in the left leg.
He ignored them and kept firing, both suppressing the fire from the far side of the street and drawing it so the team could withdraw. “Vagis! Juris! Somebody feed me!”
* * *
“Kildar, this is Sawn. We’ve withdrawn on Nevsk and Agayev. I’m shifting some forces over to Dutris, though. Oleg and his team are pinned there.”
“Got it,” Mike said, quietly. “I may have some support on the way. Get everyone withdrawn as fast as possible. Mouse is almost done. I need at least a fire team here in the building to make sure we get to the withdrawal point.”
“Will do,” Sawn said. “See you in Valhalla.”
“Got it,” Creata said, leaning back and twisting the handle. The handle moved for about a third of the way and then stopped. “Damn.”
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked. If they couldn’t get the door open, the entire mission was for nothing.
“I thought I saw a fragment of metal in the tumblers,” Creata said, standing up and walking over to Ivan’s body. She calmly rolled him over and unshipped his SPR, then walked back over to the safe and hammered on the handle until it moved. “That’s got it,” she added, twisting it all the way to open and then opening the safe.
“Whoa,” Mike said, blinking his eyes. “Sawn.”
“Kildar, we’ve mostly pulled back to the club except for the group on Dutro. We have cover on their back, but they are under heavy fire.”
“Okay, I need about…” Mike looked at the contents of the safe again and then shrugged. “About ten guys down here. Some of the girls will do but I’m going to need strong backs.”
