Chapter 19 – They Stick It to Stirg
That afternoon at the gun range Gwen took Helstof and Richard aside. She looked at both of them and said, “Richard, this is not a joke. This is a dangerous man, and we don’t know much about him. Our intuitions tell us to attack, and that is what we are going to do. She turned to Helstof with a very serious look. “You two talk about this now. If you decide that Richard comes, then he comes committed. And, you are responsible for him. We all will look out for him, but you are responsible.”
Later that day the other team members moved into the June’s house, including Peter and Pater even though they were not going on the assault. Helstof decided Richard would not go. Four Russians and the Junes would. Four women and two men, with Jinny acting as armorer. He issued a handgun to each person, and a backup to Roger, Gwen, and himself. Roger borrowed a thirty foot cruiser from a friend, and asked if it was insured. The guy said yes, and didn’t ask any questions. This was an in and out operation that didn’t need much equipment. They needed their guns, some nerve, and that was it. Oh, yeah, the women needed bikinis.
Forty-eight hours later, after three more sessions at the gun range, it was mission time. They boarded the boat at the Charleston marina at 3pm. Two hours before they left the house Jinny had suggested he conduct an equipment inspection. They all looked at him and asked, “What equipment?”
He said, “Well, guns and ammo.” They all pulled their pieces, removed the mags and checked the loads, and showed no rounds in the chamber. Then he said, “Towels, sunglasses, sunscreen.” They looked at him without laughing. Well, Pater laughed. Jinny said, “I need to inspect that the bikinis will be an effective decoy.” The four women froze his ass with icy stares, and Helstof told Guignard that she could come and live with her on Kiawah whenever she felt the need.
Roger pointed the boat out into the Ashley River and headed down to the tip of the peninsula. Their travel time to Stirg’s dock was ten minutes. This was it. The four women stripped down to their bikinis and put on baseball caps. Hair was let loose. A bottle of rum, plastic glasses, and a container of fruit juice came out of the carry-on bag, and were put on the deck table in plain sight. Each woman took a slug of rum, did a mouth swishy, and spit it on the side of the boat. Skin received a coat of tanning oil that glistened in the sun, which they carefully wiped from their hands. Guignard took the small plastic bottle from her carry-on that held four ounces of her blood, carefully drawn by Gwen an hour earlier in the June kitchen. Each woman wore sneakers and had a large towel at hand. Earlier, also in the June kitchen, the ends of the towels had been folded over and sewn on two sides to form a pocket. Now, on the boat, each woman stuck her gun in the pocket.
These preparations took five minutes, with Roger and Jinny looking the women over, checking details. This was Jinny’s tactical plan, and they were executing it. Roger smiled at his wife, and Jinny smiled at his girlfriend, and Helstof and Slevov smiled at each other. Everyone had just the right amount of nervous energy jilting their bodies and minds. Action time. Roger and Jinny went below into the cabin. Gwen took over the boat controls just as they reached the tip of the peninsula and started the turn towards the Cooper River. Stirg’s dock was three minutes away. Each woman took another swig of rum and spit it on the side of the boat that would come in contact with the dock.
As the boat cleared The Battery promenade they saw Stirg’s dock, and there was no one on it. The big house sat over the water half way back the 100 yard length of the dock. Slev sat on the cushioned bench with Guignard and Helstof. Slev took the small plastic container from Guignard, and opened it. She looked at Gwen, who nodded. Slev carefully took hold of Guignard’s head with her left hand and tilted it to one side. With the other hand she poured an ounce of blood into Guignard’s hair, just above her ear, and smeared it around. She gave Guignard a quick kiss. Then she poured another ounce of blood just above her ear so it ran down the side of Guignard’s head and neck. They watched the dock approach; contact was in a minute and a half. Slev put the mouth of the bottle against her hand and splashed a little blood there. At thirty seconds to contact she poured the remaining ounce of blood onto her towel that held her gun in one end, and smeared it around. Guignard leaned back against the side of the boat, and Slev and Helstof held her.
Gwen yelled to them, “Hold on,” and deliberately brought the boat into the dock for a hard, banging landing. She cut the engine, hopped to the bow, and threw a line around a cleat. Holding her towel, she grabbed the stern line and tied that off on another cleat. As she looked up she saw a man come out of the house and start running down the fifty yards of dock towards them. He was dressed in black creased Bermuda shorts, a white golf shirt, and black sneakers without socks. He had a gun on his right hip.
Gwen went to Guignard and touched her head, getting blood on her hand. The man came to the end of the dock and yelled, “This is a private dock. You can’t dock here.” Gwen threw her towel over her shoulder and waved her bloody hand towards the man. “She’s hurt, she’s bleeding, and she needs help.”
Helstof stood up and turned towards the man. “She hit her head on the table. We have to get her to a hospital. Please.”
The man hesitated, looking at the three other women and Guignard. The amount of blood was convincing, dripping down her neck and matting in her hair. Slevov pretended to put pressure on the side of her head with the bloody towel. The man took in the entire scene of bikinis, the rum bottle, and the smell of alcohol. Gwen didn’t wait for him to say anything. She took hold of Guignard and pulled her up from the bench and to the side of the boat. Slev helped, while Helstof got out of the boat and onto the dock, holding her towel. This convinced the man, who reached out to Gwen, and then took hold of Guignard under her shoulders. Gwen said, “Do you have a cell phone?” The man reached into his pocket and pulled one out. Gwen grabbed it in a bloody hand, opened it, and pretended to dial 911. She motioned to the man to help Guignard down the dock towards the house. Gwen went ahead of the small group and faked the call: there’s been an accident, we need help, blood, please hurry. She waited five seconds and turned to group walking down the dock. “Where are we? What’s the address?”
The man gave her the street address, which Gwen repeated into the phone. Then, “Please hurry, she’s bleeding, she’s bleeding.” She dropped the blood covered phone on the dock and turned to the group, walking backwards and guiding them towards the house. The man saw the blood on the phone, and left it where it was.
Slevov pressed one end of her towel on Guignard’s head, but clutched at the man with her other hand. He looked down and saw red on the front of his white shirt. The group reached the door of the house, which Gwen opened. The man entered first, Slevov and Guignard second, Gwen third, and Helstof fourth. They were in a large sunroom containing a full set of wicker furniture and a large bar. There were three sofas and a half dozen chairs. The double-glass windows were floor to ceiling, through which you could see James Island, the entire harbor, and in the distance, the flags of Fort Sumter.
Slev led Guignard to one of the beige colored sofas, and they flopped down. The man screamed, “Not on the upholstery, are you crazy? Get up.” Behind the man’s back Gwen deliberately knocked a lamp off a table. Crash. He turned around and looked stricken. Or, more stricken. “What happened?” he said.
Helstof said, “How do we meet the ambulance, where?”
The man looked from one woman to another, and then a man entered the sunroom. “Nev, what’s happening?”
Nev said, “These women were on a boat, and one fell and hit her head. She’s bleeding badly. I let them dock. We called 911.”
The second man smelled the rum, the body oil, and the sweat. He looked at the four women in bikinis and sneakers, the bleeding woman, and the blood on the front of Nev’s shirt. He saw the broken lamp on the floor. Before saying anything he looked carefully at Gwe
n. She stood looking at him, feet apart, blood on her left hand, holding the towel. Her right hand was free and easy. Stirg looked her up and down, hesitating in two places. He smiled and said, “Nev, what do we really have here? Give me your gun, and go out front and watch for the ambulance.”
Gwen let this happen, the thespian in her wanting some drama. She thought it would do Stirg some good to feel a little drama, like she had felt the night Glissy came into her house. Stirg took the gun and Nev walked out of the sunroom. Stirg moved over to Guignard and looked closely at the blood on her head and neck, stared at Slev, who had her towel around her neck, and glanced at Helstof. Then he went to the bar, sat down on a stool, and let his legs swing free, a couple of inches above the floor. The gun rested on his lap. He looked at the women, then at the floor, then at the door leading to the rest of the house, then back at the gun. He said, “I hope she’s not hurt too bad.” After he said this he put the gun on top of the bar, and went back to swinging his legs.
The four women held their towels and their tongues, not say anything, which Stirg thought was odd. Four babes in bikinis, drinking out on a boat. Wouldn’t one of them be worried about their friend, enough to talk? Babes liked to talk, especially when they’ve been drinking. Especially when something stressful was happening, like bloody hands, blood on someone’s head. But these four weren’t talking, they were looking at him. He got up from the stool and walked towards Guignard. “Maybe I better have a look at her before the ambulance comes.”
Gwen wiped the sweat from her right hand and the blood from her left hand, then reached into the pocket of her towel and pulled her Glock. She racked the slide, let her gun hand hang towards the floor, and looked at Stirg. “Maybe you should sit down,” she said. “We have things to talk about.” She looked at Helstof and motioned towards the door. Helstof pulled her gun, dropped the towel on the floor, and went after Nev. Gwen said to Slev and Guignard, “Clean up, then get the other two.” The women went behind the bar and washed up in the sink. Slev got most of the blood off Guignard, but decided she couldn’t promise Nev they wouldn’t get any on his upholstery. They both got out their guns, and Guignard went out the door towards the dock.
When Jinny and Roger entered the sunroom, Nev and Stirg were sitting on bar stools, Slev having collected Nev’s gun from the counter. Nev, the Israeli bodyguard, looked dejected and a little mean. Jinny walked up to them and said, in Russian, “Where can I get some good Jewish food in Charleston? Everybody here does nouveau southern food, with some influence from here or there, or some ethnic twist, and I like that. But I don’t know of any real Jewish food. Is there any?” Jinny had his gun in his hand, and he made sure Nev couldn’t make a play for it. “Maybe you can cook some for us, eh? Gwen, you gonna kill them today? If not, maybe they can cook for us later.”
Everyone looked at Jinny the joker, not really laughing, but maybe smiling a little inside. Jinny had imagination and cool.
Roger asked, “Did you check the whole house?”
Helstof nodded.
Gwen looked at Stirg, “Where would you like to talk?”
He said, “If you girls wash again, get all the blood off, we can go into the living room.”
Slev said in Russian, “Girls, and asshole? Maybe we wash the blood off us and shoot you through the hands, let some blood flow out on the furniture in there, eh? Maybe we redecorate a little, change the color scheme, and add some vibrancy to the room.”
Jinny smiled at this. Go Slev.
Gwenny June Page 18
