by A P Bateman
Romanovitch sneered at the Albanian as he stared vacantly at his brother’s body. He threw the soiled napkin on the ground and poured two glasses of vodka. He slid one across the table towards Yosef, then picked up his own glass, cradling it as he spoke, “T’Briki has insulted me greatly by sending his number two and three in command. The limp-dicked inbred peasant should have been here to tell me what happened. He should have compensated me without question.” Romanovitch paused. “Two cases. Small change. But it is the principle. You taunt me with such behaviour. The little dog has yapped harmlessly all this time, it has even humped my leg…” He smiled. “But now it has bitten the hand that feeds. And for that, it has been taught a valuable lesson…” He raised his glass and stared coldly at the Albanian. “Toast with me, Yosef. Here ends the lesson. Na Zdorovie!”
Vasyli’s eyes were on the body, and he ignored the fact that no vodka had been poured for him, and that no toast was being made with him. What was Romanovitch saying to him? He was sweating, his heart racing. Could Romanovitch know he had helped himself to funds? He vowed right then and there to replace it as soon as he got back to St. Petersburg. To his right, the girls still frolicked in the pool, oblivious to the killing of a man a mere twenty metres from them. Vasyli no longer thought about the brunette. The fact that as the chief enforcer for Romanovitch he had been oblivious of the man’s plans, and that the six bodyguards had known all along what would go down, filled the man with dread, and he realised that the killing of the Albanian number two had been as much for his benefit as the poor man’s brother.
Yosef raised his glass and knocked back the vodka. He was shaking and had turned pale as he placed the glass back down on the table.
Romanovitch smiled. “Good! Business as usual,” he said. He clicked his fingers at the nearest bodyguard and said, “Dimitri, please escort Yosef out.” He paused, looking at the Albanian as he stood unsteadily. “I will make arrangements for your brother’s return.”
Yosef tentatively followed the bodyguard, flanked by two more. Vasyli stiffened in his chair as the three bodyguards remained, acting on their earlier instructions. He was unarmed, as all Ivan Romanovitch’s guests were, and had a foreboding feeling in his gut as he glanced down at the body on the ground.
Romanovitch stood up suddenly, and Vasyli flinched. “Dimitri!” he shouted, waiting for the head guard to turn around. “See that Yosef receives a crate of the vodka. It’s the least we can do!” He chuckled to himself and turned to Vasyli, looking at him seriously. “Now, that is how to show the little dogs who’s boss. I don’t expect to have to give visual aids to my enforcer, as well as my underlings.”
“No, boss. You will not have to again.”
Romanovitch nodded. “The Albanians did this,” he said. “They snatched my men and made Igor Yahontov the scapegoat. Let me ask you, would Igor do such a thing to me?”
“Never,” he said. “Nobody would betray you,” he added, as much for his own benefit as to emphasise Yahontov’s loyalty.
“Then the Albanians are playing a dangerous game. Maybe they made a move and have seen the error of their ways. Or perhaps they plan more like this. They would be fools if they did.” He paused. “How much of my chemicals and aluminium filings do they have in reserve?”
“About enough for one hundred million euros production.”
“That nets us sixty million euros.” He shook his head. “So, they get forty million, and then what, we shut down their supply? No, it’s too short sighted.”
“Perhaps they have another supplier?” Vasyli ventured. “Or perhaps they will try to renegotiate the split.”
“They would be fools to try that again.”
“Then they must have another supplier.”
Romanovitch leaned closer to him and said coldly, “Then I suggest you find out, before I have somebody remove your eyes, your balls, your hands and your feet and leave you on a Bulgarian street to beg for stale bread.” He paused, poured himself another vodka, then topped it up with the chilled champagne. He did not pour a drink for Vasyli, and he looked at him as he sipped it slowly. “It should not have come to this today. See that we are not left playing catch up again.”
7
One week later
Kosovo
The building was an old schoolhouse and it had stood deserted and dilapidated since it had been the scene of ethnic cleansing slaughter in 1998. On that terrible day, three teachers and forty seven children under the age of eleven had been executed by forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – consisting of soldiers of Serbia and Montenegro – because of the area’s affiliation to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and alliance of Albanian and Kosovan forces. T’Briki had purchased the building from the Kosovan government and renovated extensively. There was talk in the area of it being made into a shrine, but T’Briki had turned it into a private residence and eight years after its purchase he had sold it to a business with a company registration in Liechtenstein. The company in question was one of his own, but the trail ended at a shell company with its home banking facilities in Switzerland.
T’Briki and the Albanian Brotherhood of Kontroll used it as a secondary headquarters and its existence was a closely guarded secret known by only a key few. His inner core. Set in the hills, and now enclosed by forest after the area had been lain to waste and deserted after the ransacking and pillaging by Kosovan forces, the old schoolhouse was isolated and private. Overlooked only by a wooded peak some two kilometres distant.
T’Briki poured red wine into five glasses and they drank in silence. It was a fine wine, and one of the bottles which had been in the cellar of an old chateau he owned on the Albania-Greece border. When they had finished their glasses, the gang boss said, “To fallen comrades…” The four men in front of him murmured their agreement. T’Briki poured more wine, finishing the bottle, then said, “And to settling scores…” The men drank down the wine, as was tradition, in one go. “My condolences, Yosef…”
Yosef nodded solemnly. His brother’s body had been sent back for burial, but in typical behaviour befitting this wing of the Russian mafia, Romanovitch had sent the body back in six separate wooden vodka crates. Along with another crate of the vodka he had briefly enjoyed on the terrace near the pool. There had been a card attached bearing Ivan Romanovitch’s compliments.
“I want him dead,” Yosef said quietly.
T’Briki nodded. “And you shall have your vengeance, my friend.” He paused, looking at the other men in turn. “But we need to keep the status-quo, need Romanovitch to think we have toed the line, and that we dare not over-step our boundaries again.”
“And what will we be doing meanwhile, to avenge my brother’s death?” Yosef asked. “We went there under your orders,” he stated flatly. “My brother is dead because Romanovitch was insulted by your absence. Disrespected that you would send us, and not go yourself. He killed my brother because he outranked me, and I was spared my life to return and give you his message. How glad you must be, that you did not dare to go…”
T’Briki stood up, staring coldly at the man who showed so much insubordination and so little respect. The wooded peak was visible through the bay windows behind him, as was the setting sun, and he was framed momentarily in a golden hue, which made him look eerily powerful. Andreas Galanis, a large Kosovan of Greek descendance stood up, his hand reaching for the skinning knife he always wore on his belt. He was known as The Shepherd, because that is what he did for most of his life before joining the brotherhood. He would often kill, skin and butcher goats for feasts when the brotherhood met at his farm on the Albania-Kosovo border. T’Briki glanced at The Shepherd and shook his head. The big man sheathed the blade and sat back down. Loyalty affirmed.
Yosef rose steadily to his feet and looked at his boss. He dipped his head and said, “I am sorry. I did not mean to disrespect you. I am still grieving…”
The Albanian never got to finish his sentence. The bullet punched a neat hole in the glass behind T’Briki’s he
ad, struck his cranium through the occipital and exited through the man’s throat. Yosef was struck in his left shoulder by the same bullet and spun like a top, the misshapen bullet slowing in velocity and hitting him like a brick at two-hundred miles per hour. As he fell, he caught sight of the brotherhood boss slumped on the floor, eyes open but still and bleeding out of the entry and exit wounds at an alarming rate on the hard, wooden parquet. Above the chaos that ensued, he heard a distant rumble across the valley as the sound of the gunshot caught up with the bullet.
The Shepherd was crouched beneath the table and had bizarrely drawn his knife for protection. Yosef belly crawled to him and groaned as he rolled onto his back to assess the damage. Galanis sheathed his blade a second time and looked to the man who had been so rapidly promoted. Galanis was several rungs down the ladder and had only been present at today’s meeting because he was the brotherhood’s number one killer.
“We need to get to the rear of the building,” said Galanis. “To the vehicles…”
“It may be an ambush,” Yosef replied breathlessly. “There could be others waiting!”
Galanis took out his two-way radio. “Security! Shot fired! Report!”
There was a short pause, then a bemused reply came back, “Nothing to report here, we thought it was somebody hunting on the hill.”
“Well, he’s just successfully hunted the boss! Get the hell out there and find him! The shot came from the peak!”
Galanis reached for a napkin on top of the table and folded it, handing it to Yosef to press against his shoulder. “He’ll never get there in time, you can hear it in his voice.” He knew it would take the guard an hour to trek the two-thousand metres of forest and incline to the peak. Whoever had made the shot would be heading the other way for sure. He ducked further under the table and said, “Let’s get out of here.” He caught hold of Yosef’s arm and dragged him closer. Mere seconds ago, he had drawn his knife to show his support to his boss, and now he was helping that same threat across the floor and out of the line of fire. He was a cog in a machine. He had survived by being loyal, and that had not changed. A week previously, Yosef had been number three. Now he was the boss of the Albanian Brotherhood of Kontroll.
Yosef looked at the man, then smiled and took hold of his hand. As he struggled and crawled, his shoulder on fire from the bullet wound, he vowed vengeance on Romanovitch and the Russian scum working for him. He would avenge his brother. And he would need the killing skills of The Shepherd. The man who killed and skinned and butchered the goats for their feasts.
8
Rashid had watched the scene unfold in his scope. It had been a highly testing yet satisfying shot. Two thousand, two hundred metres with a .338 Lapua magnum, in this case the Russian-made Kalashnikov VSV-338 sniper rifle.
The evening sun had created taxing thermals across the ravine, but watching the nesting ravens soar, and using a laser thermometer to read the temperatures throughout the valley, Rashid had been able to make the necessary adjustments. Even so, he had over compensated, planning to hit T’Briki between the shoulder blades and sever the man’s spine, and in doing so, miss the man standing in front of him. After compensating for the recoil, Rashid had seen the man with the wounded shoulder make it under the table and disappear from view. According to their contact, the man was known as Yosef and would now be made number one in the brotherhood. Rashid only hoped that Yosef would recover from his injuries and assume the title.
Rashid continued to scan the room through the window, then sighted the crosshairs of the scope over the other windows checking for a counter-sniper. He scanned the sides of the building and could see the flash of motor vehicles through the foliage. He assumed they were retreating, but in the event that they were heading for the peak, he had no more than twenty-minutes to get clear. He rolled over onto his back and made the weapon safe, then slipped it into the gun slip and wiped the Russian stamped bullet case and left it on the flattened ground where he had lain. He rolled onto his front and belly crawled into the cover until he was twenty feet deep in the brush and out of sight of any potential sniper.
They had netted just over four and a half million euros from their two heists and that gave them some serious operating capital. Rashid could hear the whump of the rotors and roar of the jet engine of the helicopter. He was now running through the last of the brush and soon reached the path that took him around the peak and onto the grassy and stony plateau beyond. Flymo had responded to his text and taken off from the field where he had been waiting five miles away.
Rashid’s heart was pounding with the adrenalin and effort of the run in the warm evening air. He could see the Bell Jet Ranger banking hard half a mile ahead of him. Flymo was seriously dropping in altitude, too. When he righted the aircraft, he brought the nose up sharply, the tail rotor slicing at the grass below him, and the helicopter stopped dead in a hover two hundred metres away. As the nose balanced, the craft hung in the air with its skids less than a metre off the ground. Rashid slowed to a jog, ducked his head, and leapt through the open door. Goldie took the rifle from him and shifted over leaving Rashid to close the door behind him.
Flymo took off in a reverse lift, dipped the nose and banked to the right. Both Rashid and Goldie in the rear and Mac, who occupied the front seat, made a noise between a cheer and a grunt, having been treated to the most sensational, adrenalin-fuelled display of expertise that felt like the most extreme theme park ride imaginable. Within a minute, they were behind the next peak and out of view from any of the brotherhood, with the third job, and second phase of the operation under their belts.
9
Three weeks later
St. Petersburg, Russia
The warehouse was situated on the west quay of The Big Port of St. Petersburg, which meant that Romanovitch could both import and export through the Baltic Sea, or by train north, east and south. On occasion, he would run freight via ship up the Gulf of Bothnia and overland it through Sweden and Norway to various seaports – anything to prevent forming a pattern or routine – but once the freight left by the Baltic Sea and entered the vast shipping routes of the North Sea, the world was his oyster.
They were making a waterborne assault, so Goldie was leading this one. As a former sergeant in the SBS he was in his element, and although the SAS train using the same craft and techniques – often alongside the SBS – Goldie had a wealth of experience and had been at the helm of various boats for hundreds of hours and in all sea conditions. As a former Army Air Corps pilot, Flymo brought nothing more to the party than goodwill, and was given the role of eyes and ears. From a van they had purchased and then kitted out with monitors, receivers and recording devices, Flymo monitored the many wireless cameras that the team had covertly planted over the past three nights from a few miles to the south. Using a rubber inflatable boat with a silent electrically powered outboard, the three men had swept through the moored boats under the cover of darkness and into the port from the southern side. The cameras and audio equipment had given them the chance to draw-up an in-depth plan from the safety of their rented farmhouse, while knowing exactly how many hostile forces, not to mention innocent personnel were in the vicinity when they carried out the raid.
Goldie, Philosopher and Mac eased the rubber boat into the slick, black water on the shingle beach. The water was cold, their wetsuits letting water in between their boots and the ankles of the wetsuit legs, which would soon warm between their skin and the neoprene of the wetsuit. Each man had a diving knife strapped to their ankles, with tactical belt rigs and holsters made from hard plastic and webbing around their waists. They each carried a well-greased Sig P225 9mm pistol in their holsters with two spare magazines. 9mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 carbines were strapped to their chests along with spare magazines and pouches containing the tools they would require. They also wore wetsuit hoods and PNVG’s or night vision goggles on their heads, which they would snap down in place when they needed them. Philosopher carried the homemade charges, while Mac carri
ed an extensive first aid kit upon his back and Goldie carried a waterproofed tablet with a 3D diagram of the warehouse using data collated from plans, photographs and digital imaging they had taken during the week. The tablet could also bring up single image footage of the cameras they had installed. From his position across the bay, Flymo had communications to them all and could survey every camera on the bank of monitors in front of him.
Rashid watched the warehouse through the thermal imaging optics attached to the top of his scope. Below, the scope was infrared and x 8 magnification. The weapon below that was a Steyr HS .50 calibre rifle. The weapon was loaded and made ready and five brass shells were lined up in a neat row on their sides on the insulated groundsheet Rashid was resting on, two hundred and sixty-five feet above the ground on the platform of a crane, a full one-thousand metres from the working side of the warehouse. In front of him, the lights of the port created some flaring in the lens, but the black waters of the Baltic corrected it quickly. Behind him, the city lights of St. Petersburg burned fiercely, a hub of restaurants, nightclubs, and hotels.
“Control to God. Penguins are on route.”
“God to Control. Have that.” Rashid smiled as he replied to Flymo, surveying the scene like God from the heavens with a lightning bolt at his fingertips.
Rashid watched the small inflatable reappear from behind some boats and pull close to the quay. He traversed the scope across the quay. There was movement in the shadows, and he dialled back the magnification, which in turn dialled up the intensity of the passive infrared. A single guard relieving himself beside some wheelie bins.
“God to Penguins. X-ray fifty metres in, eighty metres east of your position. Armed with a long.” Rashid lifted his eye from the scope and moved the rifle’s muzzle a full metre to his right. He sighted on the main gates where port authority security manned the gates with AK-74 assault rifles slung over their shoulders, talked and smoked with Russian soldiers on the other side of the barriers. Despite being early summer, the night air was cold, and the guards walked small circles, stamping their feet, and patting their own arms. Only a month before the port would have been frozen with icebreakers piloting the ships to their moorings and docks through the ice.
