by WOOD TOM
At the far side of the lawn lay a swimming pool and beyond that the mansion itself, which was large but not huge: six bedrooms and just under four thousand square feet on its main level, according to the plans. The garage was big enough for four sedans. The odd light was on inside so Victor crouched within the tree line and used his binoculars to get a better look. He stayed watching until a woman passed an upstairs window. The dossier had stated the dacha would be cleaned and prepared at some point before Kasakov’s arrival. He stayed watching for another half-hour but saw no one else.
He then used the binoculars to check the security cameras were where they were supposed to be. There were two where he expected to find them, each one positioned beneath the overhang of the roof so they had overlapping fields of view that covered the back of the house, patio, swimming pool and part of the lawn. They were small, high-tech, and would provide anyone watching the monitors with a clear picture.
Rain started to fall again. Victor continued through the undergrowth, moving west towards the shed. Inside was probably grounds-keeping equipment and not much else, but there was no need to confirm that either way. The door was set facing the lawn, out of sight of the dacha. He circled back east through the trees and around the lawn to where the guesthouse was located. It was a two-storey detached cottage, close to the swimming pool and big enough to comfortably house a family of three in a nice suburban neighbourhood. The rain started back up.
Victor approached the rear of the cottage, emerging from the cover of the woods at the point with the least amount of open ground. He hurried across the twenty-foot-wide corner of lawn and paused with his back to the exterior wall. Listened.
There may have been no cameras here, but the cottage had its own alarm system. He peered through a few windows. Nothing of note. He circled the dacha through the woods surrounding it. There was about thirty feet of open space from the edge of the woods to the wall occupied by flower gardens. It was the same on the opposite side. At the front of the house there was a big driveway and lawn and then more woods.
Victor found a small car, most likely the housekeeper’s, on the driveway. The front door of the dacha opened and the woman he’d seen pass the window appeared. She was young, not far over twenty, petite, wearing a big padded coat, her shoulders hunched up. The coat had no hood but she held a folded newspaper above her head as a shield against the rain. She rushed over to her car, leaving the mansion’s front door open behind her. Victor watched as she smoked a cigarette and drank what he guessed was coffee from a thermos.
She wasn’t facing the dacha and Victor knew he could easily sneak inside without her noticing, but not without taking off his muddy boots first, and there wasn’t time for that. There was little point in exploring the house as Victor had no intention of getting up close and personal for this one. He knew from Bucharest how alert Kasakov’s guards were.
The housekeeper smoked her cigarette right up to the filter and tipped the dregs of her coffee on to the drive, before hurrying back inside.
Victor stayed crouched for another hour until she finally left for the day. He watched her drive away, before making his way to the rear of the dacha.
Staying clear of the security cameras and their fields of view, Victor stepped out on to the lawn and got as close to the dacha as he dared. He turned and looked back towards the hill. The branches and leaves of the few trees on the lawn obscured his vision. He looked back to where the back door was located. Again, he looked at the hill, judging the angle.
The tree took seconds to climb after a short jump and pull up. Victor removed his knife from a pocket and opened it. He used the serrated part of the blade to saw through a thin branch. It fell to the lawn. He did the same with several others. Then again, up a second tree, then a third. When he was done, there were over a dozen thin branches scattered across the grass. Victor collected them up and dumped them individually throughout the woods. He returned to the first tree and climbed it. Squatting to achieve the right angle, he peered down to his left and saw the mansion’s back door. He then took out his binoculars and looked right and up, through the tunnels of gaps he’d created in the foliage of the trees until he located his metal water bottle sitting on the protruding highpoint halfway up the hill. He cleared a couple of thin branches to improve his field of view and descended the tree. From the ground, the trees looked no different from before he’d tampered with them.
With his preparations complete, Victor headed back into the woods at the rear of the grounds. He followed his original trail back towards the wall. The paths he had made through the undergrowth were obvious to him but would be invisible by the time Kasakov and his bodyguards arrived. Until then no one would be around to notice them.
Someone noticed.
CHAPTER 49
Izolda Kasakov awoke from a nightmare with her heart thumping and her throat dry. She reached across to the other side of the bed to touch her husband and feel the safety of his presence, but instead found only empty bedclothes. She switched on a lamp and squinted against the light. She put her wrist to her forehead. It was damp with sweat.
‘Vladimir?’
There was no response, no sound from the adjoining bathroom. She checked the time. They had gone to bed two hours before and she had been asleep soon after. The cool pillow next to hers told her Vladimir had been gone for a while. It wasn’t like her husband to have trouble sleeping. He was a big bear of a man who slept easily and noisily. For the first few years of their marriage Izolda had used earplugs to block out his snoring. Now, she was so used to the loud, rhythmic sound that she sometimes couldn’t sleep without him next to her.
Given his recent behaviour, Izolda wasn’t wholly surprised he was having trouble sleeping. Something was going on. Something he wasn’t telling her about. He had not been his usual jovial self for several weeks now, and seemed always moody, self-absorbed and quick to anger. She had asked what was wrong but he kept assuring her it was nothing. She guessed it was about work, but didn’t pry further, just as Vladimir kept his distance from Izolda’s private life. They both had dark secrets the other didn’t want to hear.
Her pulse finally slowed down to a normal beat. She couldn’t remember the nightmare, only the fear it had evoked. Maybe the stress between her and Vladimir was doing more damage than she thought. Or perhaps it was the new guilt she carried. Either way she was unlikely to get back to sleep just yet.
Izolda slipped on her dressing gown and ventured out on to the landing. She loved Sochi, which was fortunate as it was one of the few vacation destinations that Vladimir was able to travel to without risk. The mansion was a large, lavish building, but nothing compared to the home she shared with Vladimir outside of Moscow. That house was huge beyond need or luxury. They had an entire wing that housed the full-time maid, chef, butler, driver, groundskeeper and bodyguards. The rest of the Moscow dacha was shared by just herself and Vladimir. She didn’t know how many rooms there were and sometimes weeks could go by without her using some of them. Those bedrooms she and Vladimir had once designated as nurseries, she hadn’t ventured into for years.
Izolda switched on lights as she went. She may have been a grown woman but she was on edge from the nightmare and being in an isolated dacha didn’t help keep her imagination in check. Her slippers muffled her footsteps on the red oak flooring.
Faint light emanating from the study told her where she would find Vladimir. He looked up when she entered. He was sitting behind his desk, dressed in silk pyjamas, and facing the open door. Some men looked better as they aged; though Vladimir was perhaps not one of them, the grey in his hair did lend him a certain dignified presence, and the lines in his face added character to his somewhat blunt features. But he was still as strong and powerful as he had ever been.
It was the computer monitor that provided the light. Vladimir clicked the mouse and removed his earbuds.
‘Izzy,’ he said. ‘I thought you were fast asleep.’
She leaned against the doorframe. ‘
I had a nightmare.’
‘My poor baby.’ He looked so concerned. ‘What was it about?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Isn’t that the best way?’
She shrugged. ‘What are you doing up at this time of night?’
An expression passed over Vladimir’s face that was both happy and sad at the same time. ‘Just work, my love. Just work.’
‘Can’t that wait until morning? We’re on vacation, aren’t we?’
‘It’s not urgent,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t get to sleep and thought I might as well make use of my insomnia. I hope I didn’t wake you when I got out of bed.’
Izolda shook her head. ‘No, no. I didn’t realise you weren’t there until the nightmare woke me. How long have you been up?’
‘Not long.’
‘Oh, I thought—’
Vladimir smiled and said, ‘You looked so cute when I left. You were snoring.’
‘I was not.’
‘You were.’
‘I don’t snore.’ She smiled, shyly. ‘I’m a lady.’
‘A very beautiful lady.’
She couldn’t help but smile wider. ‘I can’t sleep if you’re not there. Come back to bed, please.’
‘Give me five minutes to finish up and I’ll be in. How does that sound, my love?’
Kasakov watched Izolda turn and leave. He didn’t like lying to his wife, but sometimes it was unavoidable. He was not working. Burliuk and Eltsina were running the business in his absence and he’d left instructions he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Burliuk had been opposed to Kasakov taking a vacation when they were in the middle of trying to repair the damage done by the many attacks the network had suffered in the past few weeks, but Kasakov had gone regardless. He didn’t have the patience to deal with scared employees and North Koreans who were furious their order had been delayed, and even angrier to learn they would only receive eighteen fighter jets instead of the promised twenty. That mark to Kasakov’s reputation would take a lot of work to repair.
He hadn’t lied about his inability to sleep. However, it wasn’t his business that kept him awake, nor was it his nephew’s death; with Illarion avenged, he was finally at peace on that score. No, it was his wife who occupied Kasakov’s thoughts. Her reluctance to concede to his advances had not gone unnoticed, nor had the increased frequency of shopping trips and salon visits and lunches with friends.
Her footsteps were too quiet for Kasakov to hear, so he waited a couple of minutes to make sure she wasn’t going to suddenly reappear before reinserting his earbuds. He settled into his chair and clicked the mouse to continue the video. The recording had been made using a sophisticated camera, as Kasakov had requested, and both the picture quality and sound were excellent, even if the camerawork could have been better. Had it occurred to him beforehand he would have hired a professional cinematographer to handle the shoot. However, given the video’s content, such an individual would probably have been impossible to find.
Kasakov had watched an hour of footage already and there was another two hours to go. He would check on Izolda shortly to make sure she was asleep. If she wasn’t, he would climb into bed with her and wait until she was snoring again before returning to the video. This was the second time Kasakov had viewed it, and like any good movie he was able to appreciate it even more on a repeat viewing.
He blinked away tears and closed his eyes to picture Illarion’s face while through the earbuds flowed the exquisite screams of Ariff and his family.
CHAPTER 50
It had rained all week. Victor lay in the undergrowth that covered the outcrop. With the limited viewpoint over the back of the dacha, he hadn’t seen the arms dealer arrive, but had become aware of Kasakov’s guards patrolling the property. Soon afterwards, Victor glimpsed the Ukrainian as he passed one of the visible window on the second floor, but he didn’t loiter long enough for Victor to put the binoculars down and shoot accurately. Victor hadn’t expected to complete the contract with such a shot, but that was why he’d trimmed the trees that screened the house.
A very beautiful woman accompanied Kasakov, who from the dossier Victor knew to be his wife, Izolda. She was tall and slim, carrying herself with the confidence of a runway model. There were no other guests. Victor counted five bodyguards in total, just as he’d been told there would be. They slept in the guesthouse in shifts, so there were always at least three awake and ready. As in Minsk, they weren’t particularly big, but spec ops and intelligence guys usually weren’t. Each had the gait and manner of a serious operator, and the dossier stated that Kasakov had a penchant for hiring ex-Spetsnaz soldiers. Victor’s last run-in with the Spetsnaz was not something he was eager to repeat.
He lay in a shallow between two trees on the highpoint. With binoculars, he continuously watched the rear of the dacha. The branches he’d cleared provided a small corridor of space through the otherwise overlapping foliage of the three trees. The line of sight was far from ideal, but he could see the back entrance and a thin sliver of ground outside of it. A limited view, but enough to put a bullet into Kasakov should he use the door.
Victor had prepared the ground by removing stones and branches from where he would be lying and landscaping the soil flat. He knew he could be in the same spot for several days and every annoying lump and bump on the first day would be agony by the fifth. Any distraction had the potential to throw a shot and he wanted to squeeze the trigger just once and be gone.
Birds chirped above his head. They were used to his presence now, not scaring even when he was forced to move. A waterproof sheet stretched across the two trees formed a makeshift shelter. It only partially covered him, due to where he needed to lie, but it kept some of the rain off and allowed him to keep his weapons and equipment dry.
The CIA-supplied rifle Victor planned to kill Kasakov with was a Dakota T-76 Longbow chambered for .338 calibre Lapua Magnum ammunition. Victor wanted to be able to kill Kasakov from as far away as possible and, short of using a huge .50 calibre, a .338 offered the best range and power. The .338 Lapua Magnum was designed to penetrate five layers of military body armour at one thousand metres and have enough force left for a one-shot kill. Victor knew from painful experience the round’s effectiveness against supposedly bulletproof glass.
As well as generating over five thousand pounds of muzzle energy, the Longbow was extremely accurate. The manufacturers even guaranteed .5 minutes of arc at fifteen hundred metres. It was an impressive claim but Victor would be shooting from half that. As long as he did his part, the Longbow would deliver.
He wouldn’t be using a suppressor, to guarantee accuracy and killing ability, and a .338 made a lot of noise. The back door was seven hundred and twenty yards away so the sound of the shot would reach the dacha a little under two seconds after the bullet left the barrel. He could potentially get another two shots off before the noise reached the area, but Victor favoured doing things right the first time.
The Longbow came with a matte black finish that he’d sprayed with green and brown paint. He was dressed in the same green Gore-Tex clothes as he’d worn for his reconnaissance of the dacha’s grounds. They hadn’t been washed and Victor hadn’t bathed. He didn’t want the smell of soap and shampoo to alert the local wildlife and give him away if Kasakov’s bodyguards were extra diligent and patrolled outside of the mansion’s grounds.
A nearby rucksack contained rations and other equipment. In the pockets of his tactical harness were full magazines, a torch, waterproof matches, binoculars, compass, GPS reader and a combat knife. He had a bottle and plastic bags to serve as a toilet. There was no way of knowing when Kasakov might appear within Victor’s limited target area and he couldn’t afford to move in case the call of nature coincided with that moment.
Should things go wrong, either with the kill or the extraction, Victor had two other guns to assist him. Strapped to his right thigh was a tactical holster containing the Heckler & Koch MK23. Near to the rucksack was an MP7
A1 with a forty-round box magazine. The MK23 was a fine handgun, designed to meet the requirements of US Special Operations forces. It fired the .45 ACP cartridge and had a twelve-round capacity. The gun was very accurate, considered match grade, capable of two-inch groups at fifty yards. The .45 ACP also struck with substantial stopping power but was naturally subsonic and almost silent when shot from a suppressor.
The MP7, also made by Heckler & Koch, fell somewhere between a sub-machine gun and an assault rifle, and had the designation of a personal defence weapon. In Victor’s opinion such a designation was an awkward one. There was nothing defensive about the gun. The MP7 was all about offence. Lightweight at 4.19 pounds, and just over twenty-three inches in length with the stock collapsed, the gun was effective beyond four hundred yards. It was chambered for the high velocity 4.6 × 30 mm round, which dismissed lead and brass in favour of a hardened steel penetrator, making it better suited for use against targets in body armour than the traditional pistol-calibre ammunition used in regular sub-machine guns.
Kasakov’s men had worn body armour in Bucharest and if Victor had to tangle with them he didn’t want his bullets lodging in their vests. Using a suppressor would have been pointless with the high-velocity ammunition and using subsonic rounds would have countered the benefits of using the MP7 in the first place.
So far, Kasakov hadn’t stepped outside the back door, which wasn’t surprising as it had rained continuously since the Ukrainian’s arrival. Lying in wait for hour after hour was boring, but Victor did not let his concentration lapse. With his restricted line of sight, he needed to stay focused at all times. The second after Kasakov fell he would be fleeing north-easterly through the trees, hiking two miles around the hillside to where his getaway vehicle was hidden off road, beneath a net covered with leaves, branches and earth.
