Alpha Contracts

by Chris Kennedy

  He put on a pair of the ear muffs, handed a pair to Borte and Chagan, and went through the interior door. Inside was a small room to help with soundproofing. Once they were in the room with the door shut, Chagan opened the other door, and they entered the range.

  The gym had been walled off into a smaller area about 50 feet wide and 100 feet long, with 10 shooter’s rests at the end closest to them. About 25 feet downrange, targets were hung from a number of movable wooden posts, and five students were firing pistols at the silhouettes of armed men while an adult supervised. Borte’s eyes widened—it was Jochi.

  “How is it going?” Altan asked as he walked over to his lieutenant.

  “Good,” Jochi replied. “We have several students in this class who are natural shots. I will be recommending that several come with us to Georgia, as well as on our contract.”

  “So this is where you’ve been sneaking off to,” Borte said.

  “I try to get here once a week,” Jochi said, nodding. “I’m one of the few who has military training, so I like to help out here and teach the kids the right way to hold and shoot their weapons. If they learn to do it right from the start, it means I have fewer things to correct once they get to us.”

  Altan moved to stand behind one of the boys on the range. The boy looked familiar…and then it came to him. It was the boy Borte had beaten up on their first trip to the school. The boy turned around and jumped when he saw Altan and Borte.

  Setting his pistol on the shooter’s rest, he bowed toward Altan. “Good afternoon, Father,” he said.

  “Good afternoon,” Altan replied. “You seem to have had a change of attitude since the last time I saw you.”

  “I thought I understood the way of the world,” the boy said, “but I was wrong. Since you took over the school and adopted us, I see that I now have opportunities available that I didn’t have before, and I am trying to make something of myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Very much so.”

  “He wants to be a merc and go to the stars,” Jochi said. “Most of the young boys do. Before you came here, they had nothing to look forward to in life. You’ve given them the most precious gift there is—hope.”

  Altan turned back to the boy and smiled. “Well, boy,” he said. “Can you shoot?”

  “Yes, Father.” The boy turned back to the bench, ejected the empty magazine, and slapped in a new one. He allowed the slide to slam shut and focused on the target.

  “Easy,” Jochi said. “Just like you’ve practiced. Don’t think about anyone else being here—focus on the target.”

  The boy nodded once and took a deep breath, allowing it to come out slowly. He focused on the target, slow-fired five rounds, then set the pistol back on the rest.

  “Well done,” Altan said. All five rounds were in the black at the center of the target. “I’ll look forward to taking you out on the next mission, if you’re ready. Keep working and practicing.”

  “Yes, Father,” the boy replied with a smile almost from ear to ear. “I will.”

  Altan looked at his watch then up at Borte. “That will have to conclude our tour here—we’ve got several things to do before you leave for Georgia.”

  * * * * *

  The Golden Horde - 5

  “That one,” Borte said, looking at a Russian soldier standing at the bar. The trip to Georgia had gone smoothly; Jochi had greased all of the appropriate palms ahead of time, and their identification cards had been given the smallest of cursory glances when they passed through border checkpoints. As poorly as most conscripts were paid in central Asia, a little money went a long way. For the senior noncommissioned officers at the guard posts, a little bit of product went even further. As the Golden Horde trucks traveled toward Georgia, they left a string of parties in their wake. They had also probably made a few new customers, too, which never hurt.

  Arriving in Gudauta, Georgia, they had found a bar just off the Tblisi-Senaki-Leselidze Highway in between Bombora Military Airport and the town of Gudauta. It was late afternoon when they had made it into town, and Borte, Jochi, and Tuya Enkh had taken a table in the back of the bar, where it was darkest, to nurse a couple of drinks and wait. It hadn’t taken long before Russian soldiers had started dropping in for drinks on their way home from the base. Although they entered in ones and twos, they had generally formed into groups, and Borte had started to worry they wouldn’t be able to find a target in the time they had available.

  But then the young conscript private had walked into the bar. He hadn’t looked to see if friends were around; he had walked straight to the bar, his eyes laser-focused on the cheap vodka bottle behind the bartender. He was there for one reason. He wasn’t looking for friends; he was looking to get drunk.

  Perfect.

  “I think that one will do nicely,” Borte said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Tuya smiled at her brother. “Nothing could be easier,” she said. “Watch and learn.”

  She walked over to the door and slipped out quietly, counted to 20, and then re-entered the bar, allowing the door to slam behind her. Walking up to the bar, she sniffed loudly and asked for the same vodka the soldier had picked. The private said something to her, and when she turned to look at him, Borte could see a tear running down her face.

  Borte couldn’t hear the conversation—they both kept their voices low—but after a couple more rounds, his sister seemed happier, and the soldier only had eyes for her. If she’d asked the private to buy her a car, he probably would have tried. She wasn’t interested in a car, though, and after a few minutes, she nodded to the door with a raised eyebrow. Borte was pretty sure the man could have won a 10-meter dash, as quickly as he raced to the door.

  Tuya danced lightly across the floor, smiling at the private as she followed him, the top two buttons of her blouse undone. As she went out the door, she casually flashed a middle finger at her older brother.

  Borte flipped a 50-lari bill onto the table to cover his tab, then the two men followed Tuya and her mark into the parking lot.

  * * *

  “Is there anything else you want to tell us?” Borte asked.

  The Russian soldier looked from face to face, finally settling on Tuya Enkh’s face with an imploring look. Borte smiled his predator’s smile—he could tell the soldier was wondering where he’d gone wrong. He’d taken Tuya to a nearby motel and had gone into the bathroom to relieve himself. When he came out, he found two men waiting for him with pistols. They had tied him to the bed and questioned him at gun point. He was pretty sure the Enkhs were Chechnyans, and that he was going to die.

  “That’s all I know,” the conscript finally forced out. A tear rolled down his cheek.

  Borte nodded once and said, “Thank you for your assistance.” He turned to Yisu. “Go ahead.”

  Yisu stepped forward with a needle and a strip of rubber tubing.

  “Wha—, what are you doing?” the conscript asked as Yisu wrapped the tubing around his upper arm and pulled it tight.

  “Do not worry,” Yisu said. “I am just going to give you something so you sleep long enough for us to get away.”

  “Really?” the Russian asked, hope in his eyes.

  “Absolutely.” Yisu inserted the needle into the conscript’s arm and pushed the plunger. He stood up and nodded to Borte, who had put on the Russian’s uniform and was just hooking the last fastener.

  “Let’s go,” Borte said, turning away from the soldier as he began to thrash. He looked back at Yisu as he reached the door. “Is there any reason to stay and watch?”

  “None,” Yisu replied, holding up the man’s wallet. “I gave him enough to kill three people, plus it was laced with strychnine. It will look like a good time gone bad, and then the whore fled when he overdosed.”

  “Well done.” Borte opened the door, and the group left. The soldier had already gone still.

  * * *

  “Interrogating the soldier was worth the time it took,” Jochi not
ed as the patrol went past in front of them. “My contact didn’t know about this patrol.”

  “Either that or he was trying to get us to run into them,” Yisu replied.

  Jochi thought about why his contact might have wanted that to occur. He didn’t like the implications. “I think I will have to have a conversation with him, once this is all over.” He waited until the patrol had gone around the next turn. “Okay, follow me.” He led the way to the tree line, where they could see the first guard tower. It looked just the way it had on the imagery he had found on the internet.

  Located at the north end of Bombora Military Airport, the munitions depot of the 10th Independent Peacekeeping Airborne Regiment was protected by a five-sided berm that ran all the way around the ammo dump, and it had five guard towers spread around the perimeter. The berm was about ten feet high and there was about 600 feet in between each of the guard towers. Although the primary focus was defense against seaborne incursion from the Black Sea, which lay on the southwestern edge of the base, two of the towers protected against attack from the landward side and would have to be taken out so the trucks could drive into the depot.

  Jochi turned to Borte. “No pressure, but you’re on.”

  Borte nodded and pulled the brim of the Russian uniform hat down over his eyes, then he stepped out into the light of the well-lit ammo dump. Keeping his head down, he fiddled with the closure of his pants as if coming back from urinating in the forest and went directly to the closest guard toward.

  “It’ll work. It’ll work. It’ll work,” one of the younger members said from the back of the group in a whisper, mirroring everyone else’s thoughts. If it didn’t, they were in a world of shit—they were in a foreign country and on a foreign government’s base. Jochi smiled at the irony; at least he wasn’t the one wearing the Russian uniform; that made Borte a spy, and he could be shot for that…not that the Russians wouldn’t shoot the rest of them, too, if they were seen. Or worse. He suppressed a shudder.

  Two quick flashes from the guard tower and then a wave a few seconds later. Borte had killed the guard in the tower with his suppressed pistol. Jochi waved the rest of his force forward, and he sprinted toward the berm that surrounded the dump. There was a cleared area that was supposed to be for a minefield, but the Russian conscript had informed them the mines had been deactivated about a year previously; the forest was full of big game, and the deer had been setting them off periodically.

  The first guard tower was the hardest; with one neutralized, the men could make it into the depot area and approach the others from the interior of the base, which would—theoretically—raise fewer suspicions. Two of the men peeled off to take down other towers, and Borte would take out a fourth. They didn’t need to hit the fifth tower to the south as it was too far away from where they would be to see what they were doing.

  Jochi led the other seven men to the administration building and sprinted to the back of it. The key to the assault was to neutralize the admin section first, in case the attack on one of the towers didn’t go as planned. He peeked around the corner. Three men were walking toward the front door.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, ducking back. “The patrol is returning.”

  “Should we attack them?” Yisu whispered. “We don’t have time to waste, do we?”

  “No, we don’t,” Jochi answered, “however, they are not only armed, they’re wearing their armored combat vests. We don’t have the ability to take them out for sure unless we can get close…very close. We need to give them time to get into the building and take off the armor.”

  Jochi leaned around the corner and then moved along the south side of the building, waving the rest of the strike group up. He leaned around the next corner and watched as the three men walked into the building.

  A rifle fired to the north.

  “Fuck!” Jochi exclaimed under his breath. One of the towers must have gotten a shot off. They would have to hurry. “Follow me!” he ordered, running to the front of the building.

  He was halfway to the front door when it burst open, and the three men raced out of it, turning to the north. Sensing motion behind them, they swung around and Jochi shot the leader in the face from four feet away. The bullet went through an eye, and the soldier fell backward. The second soldier was lifting his rifle when Jochi shot him, hitting him in the forehead, just below the brim of his helmet.

  Jochi turned to the third soldier, but saw his rifle was almost in line with him; the Russian would beat him to the shot. As the rifle was nestling into the soldier’s shoulder, his head snapped back as Yisu shot him in the temple from the side.

  Jochi released the breath he’d been holding. That had been close. “Hurry,” he said racing to the front door. He threw it open and entered a ten-foot-square anteroom, with a small guard station at the back of it. A Russian sat behind a glass window.

  His eyes widened as Jochi burst into the anteroom, and he grabbed a microphone off the desk in front of him. He was just raising it to his lips when Jochi shot him through the glass.

  “Good thing that wasn’t bulletproof,” Yisu said, running past him.

  “Yeah,” Jochi agreed. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. If the glass had been bulletproof, the Russian would have been raising the alarm by that point. A voice came from the guard station; someone was calling in.

  “Jasur, quickly!” he exclaimed to their only Russian-speaker. “Get the radio!”

  One of the men ran forward to the window as the rest of the strike group spread though the building. Reaching through the small hole at the bottom of the glass, he picked up the microphone the Russian had dropped and spoke to someone over the link, laughing during several of the exchanges.

  After a couple of exchanges, he turned away from the window. “We’re all set,” he said. “It was the base security personnel calling. I told them that one of the guards had ‘accidentally’ shot a deer that wandered out of the forest. They didn’t believe it was an accident, and they asked for part of it, saying it would be better than what was in the mess hall. I finally had to admit that we killed a deer, and they could come over tomorrow once we had dressed it and get a portion for themselves.”

  “Great,” Jochi said. He turned to the only woman on the strike force as the men began returning from searching the admin building. One of the recent graduates from Sister Mary Margaret’s, the girl was noted as being a fast runner. “Odval, run and get the trucks.”

  * * * * *

  The Golden Horde - 6

  Six members of the strike force were waiting at the short tunnel down to the underground armaments bunker when Borte arrived. A dark stain covered the upper part of his right arm.

  “Are you okay?” Yisu asked. “What happened?”

  “I thought the soldier was dead,” Borte replied. “Next time, I will make sure. He only winged me; I will be all right.” He had stopped the bleeding, but his arm hurt like hell.

  One of the recently-graduated 16-year-old boys came running up from the direction of the admin building holding a key, which he gave to Borte. “Here,” Borte said, handing it to Yisu. “You can do this better with two arms.”

  Yisu stuck the key in the lock and turned it, then drew his pistol. “It was already unlocked,” he said. Lights illuminated the door as one of the trucks turned onto the ramp above them, and he waved at it to get the driver to turn off the lights so they wouldn’t be highlighted.

  “Be ready,” Yisu said. The rest of their group drew their weapons, then Yisu pulled open the massive blast door. It creaked loudly on rusted hinges as it opened. The lights were on inside.

  “Quietly,” Yisu whispered as he led the group into the tunnel. Five men followed him, with Borte and the boy bringing up the rear. They reached the bottom of the tunnel, where branching passages went off to the left and right, while the main passage continued on. All three tunnels were stacked floor to ceiling with shelves containing various munitions. The passage to the left appeared to be mines, the passage
to the right appeared to be grenades, and the shelves on the main passage held a variety of launchers, although Yisu didn’t have time to stop and look at them. Only the main passage was lit.

  Yisu motioned for two men to check out the dark passages with the flashlights on their cell phones, and he led the rest of the men down the passageway, staying to the left side. He reached a “T” intersection, and he eased out to look down the left and then the right tunnels, before pulling back away from the intersection and creeping over to Borte.

  “What is Russian for ‘don’t move!’” he asked.

  “Stop! Ne dvigaytes!” Borte said. “I think.”

  Yisu tiptoed back to the intersection and spun into the connecting corridor to the left, pointing his pistol down the hallway. “Stop! Ne dvigaytes!” he yelled.

  Borte came around the corner and found a Russian soldier. He had both hands in the air, one of which was holding a clipboard.

  The man said something, but Borte couldn’t understand him. None of the rest of the men spoke Russian, either. “Quickly,” he said to the boy, whose name he didn’t know. “Go get Jasur.”

  * * *

  Borte had just started having the men load the truck with the mines and grenades when the boy returned with Jasur.

  “What do you need?” Jasur asked. “Jochi needs me to stay at the admin building to listen to the radio.”

  Borte nodded to the Russian soldier, then gestured at the shelves containing a variety of launchers. None of them were the venerable RPG-7 he was familiar with. “I need you to ask him if they have any of the RPG-7 launchers and grenades here. Tell him that if he helps us and answers our questions, we will give him a painless death.”

  The man seemed to wilt as Jasur translated, and all the color left his face. Jasur replied, “He says they don’t have those any more. They only have the newer RPG-32 model.”