The Russian Bride

by Ed Kovacs

  “Vete pa’l carajo so cabrón!” said Angel. Go to hell!

  He then swung right as hard as he could and caught the second man in the neck. They both went down, and Angel scrambled away in a green-yellow-pink haze.

  Angel bolted to the other side of the hall, to give Buzz backup. Angel’s father had died shortly after he was born, and Buzz had become something of a father figure to him. It blew Angel’s mind that Van Wyke still lived in the large home in Kennsington, Maryland, where he’d raised his three kids. As a widower, Buzz lived alone in that house, but maintained it was full of nothing but good, happy memories, and that he’d never move. Angel had visited Buzz there often. As much as he respected him, Angel was worried about how his older friend would fare with two Russian bears.

  He spotted Buzz through the smoky air just as he slammed his luggage cart hard into one man, tumbling the Russian ass-over-teakettle. Buzz then grabbed the startled second guy’s left arm and lifted it, then punched hard with an Alpha Hornet compliance tool into the man’s armpit. The Russian thug screamed and staggered backward, disappearing in the smoke.

  Angel nodded approvingly from about ten feet away, then turned and ran in the other direction.

  * * *

  A shrill alarm added to the mayhem in the arrivals hall. Kit led Yulana as fast as he could away from the closest exit, which was jammed with panicked, screaming, choking hordes running for their lives, trying to get out … but not without all of their luggage, thank you very much.

  Kit angled for the northern exit, where fewer people usually congregated. From the corner of his eye he saw a big Asian guy moving fast for a man of his size, bearing down on him from his right side. He pegged him for being one of the county detectives, and since Kit didn’t want to fight a cop, this would come down to being a footrace, after all.

  * * *

  In football, it’s called “clipping,” and at first, Chan didn’t know what hit him, as Angel performed a perfect clip from behind. The big Chinese American detective went sprawling, and Angel rolled next to him. As Chan tried to stand, Angel grabbed his legs, babbling in Puerto Rican Spanish like a maniacal, terrified little boy.

  “Acho men! A juyir, man! Mui a la loco apretao!”

  “Settle down, sir, settle down!” said Chan, irritated. He spoke Mexican Spanish, but wasn’t sure what this person was saying; some gibberish about a madman chasing him, or something. Chan yanked himself free of Angel’s grasp and moved toward the exit, but Detective Ron Franklin, an athletic black man in his mid-thirties, sprinted past him and reached the door far ahead of Chan.

  Franklin barreled through the sliding glass doors, into the sunlight, and caught sight of Kit Bennings and Yulana Petkova getting into the side doors of a white panel van on World Way South as airport police cars with sirens blaring screeched into the drop-off lanes.

  Franklin cut through the herd as fast as possible, but throngs of terrified people blocked his path.

  “Franklin!” called Chan, emerging from the arrivals hall.

  Franklin turned back to the big detective and yelled, “They’re in the white van!” Franklin then shoved and pushed through the crowd. “Police officer, stand aside!”

  He accidentally knocked an old Asian lady down but kept moving. He finally broke into the clear, and with Chan huffing and puffing right behind him, ran up to a white van stopped in traffic. Franklin flung open the side door.

  But the van was empty, except for the driver, who, unknown to the policemen, just so happened to be a navy SEAL.

  “Where are the man and woman who got in here?!” demanded Franklin.

  “Hey, what the hell! Close my door!” said the driver. “Are you crazy?”

  Franklin noticed the van had side doors on both sides. “They went out the other side!” he said to Bobby Chan. The men ran around the van in time to see two more identical white panel vans driving away, rounding the bend toward terminal 4. Then the van they’d just looked into pulled away, too.

  Chan looked at Franklin. “You sure about this?”

  Suddenly Franklin didn’t look so sure. “Well, I…”

  Just then Chan spotted two tough-looking men in black leather coats who had jogged up. The men stopped when they saw the detectives.

  “You two!” yelled Chan, taking a step toward the men. “Police! Get your hands up!”

  As one of the Russians reached inside his jacket, Chan drew his weapon in a flash and leveled it at the men. Franklin did the same.

  “I said hands up! Kneel down! Get on your knees!” The two men reluctantly complied. “Lace your fingers behind your head.”

  Airport cops came running up. Chan flashed his ID as Franklin cuffed the Russians. A quick search found they both had concealed firearms. The airport cops called for backup, which arrived in seconds.

  “This is your jurisdiction so it’s your bust,” said Chan to the ranking airport officer, “but I’d like a word with these guys.”

  “Not a problem,” said the officer.

  Franklin examined the men’s IDs. “Yuri Rugov and Vitaly Dubinin.” Franklin looked to Chan. “So what the hell is going on?”

  “Wish I knew,” said Detective Bobby Chan.

  * * *

  Kit Bennings allowed himself a real smile, not the fake ones he’d used at the embassy party. He sat on the hard steel floor of a panel van driven by Buzz Van Wyke’s navy SEAL son, Randy.

  “You okay, Major Bennings?” asked Randy Van Wyke, who looked a lot like his dad, except Randy had hair and a short blond beard.

  “Roger that. You’re Buzz’s son, Randy?”

  “Yes, sir. Honor to meet you.”

  “Believe me, the pleasure is all mine. Thanks for your help, because those cops almost nabbed me.” Kit checked his watch. “Nothing like making an entrance. Or in this case, an exit. Right, Jen?”

  Kit turned to face First Lieutenant Jennifer Huffman, who sat across from him, next to a bewildered Yulana Petkova. “Pixie-ish” was the word—to Huffman’s great displeasure—that best described her. At age twenty-seven she stood five feet two with boots on, weighed a hundred pounds dripping wet, wore her sandy blond hair cropped short because it was easier to keep clean that way, and still bore a chip on her shoulder about not being allowed to try out for the Special Forces Qualification Course due to her gender. She was cute yet at the same time quite androgynous.

  Much more important to note, Jen Huffman was a brilliant IT specialist who always traveled with at least three laptops. She’d been both a white hat and a black hat hacker in her past and made miracles happen with a computer. Oh, and she was a germaphobe to the extent that she made Lady Macbeth’s hand washing seem tame.

  “I’m so sorry about your loss, and everything else, Kit,” said Jen, as she squeezed hand sanitizer onto her hands from a small bottle.

  “Thanks. And thanks for being here. How did you arrange it?”

  “Simple. I took leave, same as Angel. I’m yours for three weeks, if it takes that long,” said Jen, with a slight northern accent that betrayed her Minnesota upbringing.

  Jen was in the Activity for one reason and one reason only: Kit Bennings had gone to bat for her. After a stint at NSA, she’d been assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group Headquarters and Headquarters company, where her skills were not being utilized, when Kit first met her. He staked everything on convincing Col. Larry Bing to bring her aboard.

  The problem was that the army had revoked her security clearance after learning that at age fourteen she’d hacked into Bank of America and defaced some of their Web pages. The FBI had tracked her down and she was convicted of a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. Because she was a minor, her record was sealed. By age sixteen she was a contract-hacker for the FBI. At eighteen, she joined the army and got slotted right to NSA. When she left the No Such Agency, a jilted lover dropped a dime on her about her hacking arrest, and so she lost her clearance.

  Bing eventually got her clearance reinstated and she’d
been one of the Activity’s best IT people ever since. And she never forgot that Kit Bennings was the reason for it all.

  “We’ll catch up later, Jen, but would you mind taking care of our Russian guest?” Kit crawled up into the front and sat next to Randy Van Wyke.

  Jen tugged on blue latex gloves as she looked at Yulana. “Please don’t take this wrong, but I need you to strip naked.”

  * * *

  Two of the white vans turned south onto Pacific Coast Highway, drove through the tunnel under runways and taxiways, and then turned west onto Imperial Highway. The vans pulled over, and Jen bounded out with Yulana’s suitcase, purse, and other effects. She got into the other van with the items, and they sped off. The van driven by Randy, with Kit and Yulana as passengers, made a U-turn at the first intersection and drove in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  Kit returned to the back of the van and sat across from Yulana, who now wore jeans, sandals, and a pink shirt. Her jewelry was gone, all of her things were gone.

  “There were personal items in my luggage,” said Yulana.

  “Your belongings will be carefully checked. Anything we deem safe will be returned to you.”

  Yulana started to say something, then stopped.

  “Want to tell me where the tracking devices are?”

  She shrugged. “I can tell you that they gave me the suitcase.”

  “What else?”

  “A makeup compact. Just those two things.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  “That I don’t want to be here.” She looked at him sadly. “Not at all.”

  She hung her head, and Kit thought he heard soft sobs. But he tuned her out. He’d deal with her and whatever her truths were later.

  Bennings knew he’d just achieved a small victory in his war with Viktor Popov. They were in America now, not Russia, and “the Bear” had just been stung. He prayed Staci would not be hurt as a result, but he had to become proactive, to fight back. He’d been off-balance and on his heels in Moscow, reduced to taking orders not only from a Mafia don but from his minions.

  So this little business here today was a message to Popov that he was no longer in total control. And for better or worse, Kit had Yulana. Whether or not she was a bargaining chip remained to be seen. The SEALs had to get back to Coronado later that night, but with Buzz, Angel, and Jen, he had a pretty good team. And one way or another, he intended to win.

  Still, this was no time to get cocky. The action today reminded him of history, history from WWII. America was at a low point after Pearl Harbor, the fall of the Philippines, and other defeats. America needed a victory, and so an all-volunteer group of army aviators called Doolittle’s Raiders launched a dangerous, daring aerial operation to bomb Japan. Not much damage was done to the Japanese, but the attack gave Americans a much-needed morale boost, while denting Japan’s aura of invincibility. And the raid made the Japanese feel vulnerable and caused them to commit more forces to the protection of their mainland than they would have liked.

  And like the Doolittle Raid, today was just one small skirmish in an all-out war. Bennings had much to do and hoped there would be time to do it before the cell phone in his pocket would ring with a call from the Russian Mafia don who had already turned his life upside down.

  CHAPTER 15

  Viktor Popov sat at a table in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, playing chess with an elderly Russian gentleman who had been playing chess in the park—the heart and soul of Los Angeles’s Russian immigrant community—every day for twenty-two years. As the men played chess, Russian American teenage boys shouted catcalls at teenage girls who strutted through the park in groups. Old women gossiped and bragged about their grandchildren. Moms and dads brought their kids to play on the swings and slides as they sipped Cokes and ate Russian pastries.

  A lot of the folks in the park were here only because in 1974, Congress passed legislation designed primarily to force the Soviet Union to allow its Jewish citizens to emigrate. Most of them went to Israel or the United States. The Soviets didn’t like what America had done, so in a duplicitous gesture—a master stroke of maskirovka—the KGB emptied the gulags and prisons of the most undesirable criminals, crooks, and killers. The convicts had the word “Jew” stamped on their passports, whether they were Jewish or not, and the United States opened its arms to them, not knowing their true past.

  Thus, an invasion of hellish thugs, mixed in with the good folks, landed on the shores of America. And for reasons lost in the fog of time, many of those Russian immigrants gravitated to West Hollywood, when it was still a funky, loosely regulated, unincorporated part of Los Angeles County. And just as with every other location where the Russians settled, the cancer called the Russian mob soon infected the body of the community.

  Viktor Popov noshed on a take-out plate of dumplings and kebabs from Traktir on Santa Monica Boulevard and sipped homemade infused vodka in a plastic cup. He’d arrived in Southern California several hours earlier, after flying on an executive jet into Santa Monica Airport, where the city had raised landing fees in an effort to discourage pilots from actually using the historic facility. The city of Santa Monica wanted to close their airport and develop the land—similar, thought Popov, to how the city of West Hollywood wanted to develop “Little Russia,” including Plummer Park, with a new general plan. West Hollywood and Santa Monica were already two of the most overregulated, overdeveloped cities on the planet, but there’s no accounting for greed and power-grabs. And people think I’m a crook, thought Popov.

  In short order Viktor won the chess game and shook hands with his opponent, who moved to another table, smiling. A number of Popov’s bodyguards were discreetly posted around the park, and they nodded when Mikhail Travkin, wearing a conservative but expensive suit, approached from the parking lot and sat down close to his boss. With soft brown eyes, pale skin, and a receding hairline, Mikhail looked the picture of corporate success: quiet, smart, and ruthless. Only in his early thirties, he understood the digital world and how to steal from it better than most. Mikhail was Viktor’s top man in Los Angeles. And his nephew. A cautious number cruncher with an MBA as well as an engineering degree, he was the heir apparent to his volatile uncle’s empire.

  “There’s been a problem,” said Mikhail softly.

  “Okay, but first? You see the guy playing tennis without a shirt on? Black bikini shorts? Only a Russian would play tennis looking like that.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s selling drugs out of his gym bag. If he’s working for one of our friends, just gently let them know their guy shouldn’t be selling drugs in a park where young children play. Look,” said Viktor, pointing to some babushka grandmas pushing their grandkids in strollers, “there are little kids right there. But if the guy is a freelancer, make sure he never comes back.”

  Mikhail nodded solemnly.

  “Now what’s the problem?” asked Viktor.

  “Bennings had friends waiting at LAX. They created a panic with smoke bombs, and he got away with Petkova. The Feds think it’s some kind of terrorist dry run, and it’s all over the TV news.”

  “And your men?”

  “They took some hits, so their pride was hurt. And Vitaly and Yuri were arrested for carrying concealed weapons.”

  Viktor looked sharply at Mikhail.

  “They’re out on bail,” said Mikhail.

  “Not very smart carrying a gun into an airport. This isn’t Chechnya.”

  “I agree. And there was something odd. They were questioned by sheriff’s detectives from San Bernardino County.”

  Viktor took another sip of vodka.

  “The detectives were probably there for Bennings. You should have considered that possibility, Mikhail. There was no need to send an armed group to the airport.”

  Mikhail nodded slightly. “Yes, Viktor, you’re right. Shall I send Vitaly and Yuri out of town until our deceptions are complete?”

  Viktor shook his head. “No. Put the
m on stakeout duty. That’s their punishment. Their job is to be seen. Understood? I want Bennings to see them so he suspects I can find him anywhere, but they are not to make contact or to follow him.”

  “I understand, but … this brings me to my big concern: Bennings’s behavior.”

  “He’s trying to establish some control. He’s back in his own country and feeling like he can take charge.” Viktor didn’t seem particularly surprised or disturbed by Bennings’s “escape.”

  “I understand using him was always a calculated risk, but he’s dangerous,” said Mikhail. “The FBI will be investigating what happened at the airport. Bennings doesn’t mind taking a big chance. That’s reckless, and it draws too much attention toward us. Maybe we should hurt his sister some more and let him see it.”

  “No, I don’t want him to rage emotionally more than he already has. And just who ordered the sister to be beaten, anyway?”

  “She knocked Lily unconscious during the snatch. So Lily got some payback.”

  “You authorized that?”

  “Of course not. She acted on her own.”

  “Explain to Lily that I’m unhappy with what she did. Very unhappy. So she’s out of any operational role and demoted to babysitting the woman for the duration of the deceptions. And no one is to touch the Bennings girl unless I say so. Is that completely clear, Mikhail?”

  Mikhail nodded. “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Bennings doesn’t know enough to hurt us yet, and the upside to using him is very considerable. I just need to remind him how weak his position really is. Release the tape to the big shot in Washington, D.C.”

  Mikhail pulled out his tablet phone and sent a one-character message. “Secretary of the Army Fitzgerald will have the tape within minutes.”

  “I imagine that will cause quite a disturbance in Washington. Now what about Dennis?” asked Viktor.

  “He’s ready in Wyoming. The area has small earthquakes almost daily. When the right seismic activity registers, he’ll blow the charge.”