Frozen Conflict (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 4)
Page 8
“Everybody just play it cool,” he said. “Make sure all the weapons are put away where they’re not obvious.” He swept the map off the table and into his duffel. No reason to let the local fuzz get any ideas that they were planning something, even if it was just a cruise through the countryside.
He doubted that they’d buy that, given the looks of the men crowded into the house.
The lead cop, a beefy-looking guy who didn’t appear to miss any meals, or snacks, stepped up to the door and beat on it with his gloved fist. He called something out in Romanian.
Javakhishvili started toward the door, but Santelli held him back with an outstretched hand. “Hold on,” he said quietly. “If we want these guys to think we’re innocent tourists, we should probably have an obvious American answer the door.” Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, he stepped to the door himself. “What?” he demanded. “I sound like I just stepped out of Boston. They ain’t gonna mistake me for no Russian spy.”
The door shuddered under the Moldovan cop’s fist again, and then Santelli pulled it open. “What’s the problem, officer?” he demanded. If anything, his Bostonian accent had gotten even more pronounced, which was saying something.
Evidently, the Moldovan cop had not been expecting a short, thickset Italian from the old neighborhood to answer the door. He blinked in surprise and said something in Romanian.
Santelli shrugged. “You speak English?” he asked slowly, raising his voice. Brannigan had to stifle the sudden urge to laugh. He hadn’t known that Santelli was quite that good at playing the Ugly American stereotype.
The cop shook his head, then turned and yelled at the one hanging out by the cars. That guy didn’t look thrilled, but came reluctantly in through the gate and walked up to the door.
“You are Americans?” he asked in halting, accented English.
“Yeah, sure,” Santelli said, motioning toward the men behind him. A couple of the cops’ eyes got wide as they saw Curtis leaning against the wall behind Santelli. Apparently, there weren’t too many black people in Chisinau.
Most of the African refugees must head west, to the richer countries.
“What are you doing here?” the cop asked. It took a while to get it out; he seemed to be searching for each word as he spoke. Clearly, his English was rusty.
“Staying in a hostel, pal,” Santelli said. “What does it look like?”
Again, it took a few moments for the cop to parse that out, and he spoke rapidly with the other three policemen in Romanian. The fat one frowned and said something terse.
“Why do you think this is hostel?” the cop who could barely speak English asked.
“Uh, because that’s what it is, isn’t it?” Santelli said. “Why else would we be staying here?”
“This house is not hostel,” the cop said slowly. “This house belongs to man with many…suspicious connections. We have been watching him for some time.”
“What kind of suspicious connections?” Santelli asked. Just out of sight of the cops, Hancock was shaking with silent laughter. Brannigan shot him a glance and he spread his hands helplessly. Brannigan knew why he was laughing, though. None of them had ever seen Sergeant Major Santelli play credulous tourist before, and watching him ham it up for apparently clueless Moldovan cops was hysterical.
It would have been even funnier if they weren’t facing long prison terms in Eastern Europe, if not a bullet in the head, if he screwed it up.
The fat cop said something rapidly, and the younger guy struggled to translate. “He is believed to be involved in weapons smuggling to Donbass, in Ukraine,” he said. “When he had many guests, it was thought that maybe he was bringing in mercenaries.”
You have no idea, buddy.
“Mercenaries?” Santelli asked, his eyes wide. Hancock and Curtis looked like they were about to choke. “Buddy, we’re just hikers. Just some friends who decided to come see your country.” He jerked a thumb at Wade, who was keeping his face carefully impassive. “Johann over there said that our money would go pretty far here, and none of us are rich, so…” he spread his hands. “We don’t know anything about weapons, or mercenaries, or…what did you call it? Don Bass?”
The cops were looking at each other while the younger guy translated. The fat cop didn’t look like he was quite buying it, but Santelli was doing a pretty convincing job of coming across as a clueless Westerner. The fat cop looked past him into the house and said something.
“Can we come look around?” the younger cop asked. The fat one was already stepping toward the doorway. It wasn’t really a request.
“Sure, we got nothing to hide,” Santelli said, stepping aside. And in fact, they didn’t, not really. They were supposed to get all of that from Gorev.
The four cops poked around the house for about half an hour. Hancock had strategically placed an envelope full of euros on the kitchen table. They all saw the fat cop pick it up and slip it into his jacket, but no one reacted.
Finally, the police left without another word. Bianco reported that both cars had disappeared to the north a few minutes later.
“Well, that tears it,” Brannigan said. “We’ve got until dark. Then we break out of here and go to Plan B.”
Chapter 7
By midafternoon, there was still no sign that Gorev was returning. No more visitors had come to the safehouse, and the lookout in the loft, which had switched to Jenkins after Bianco had come down, still hadn’t seen any overt surveillance, either. Though it had to be admitted that the visibility from the loft was limited, both because of where the window was, the height of the outer wall, and the trees on the street.
Javakhishvili approached Brannigan in the kitchen, as the afternoon got darker and it started to snow again. “Let me go out and look around,” he said. “If I can’t find Gorev, maybe I can hear or see something useful, get a better feel for the lay of the land and the atmospherics. I might even be able to get us some more resources.”
Brannigan glanced down at him. “I’m not that sure I want to risk our doc on a solo recon,” he said.
“Except I’m not just the doc on this mission,” Javakhishvili said with a crooked smile. “I’m also the terp, the cultural subject matter expert, and the spy. Which are all roles I’ve filled before.” He shrugged. “I might not speak Romanian, but there are still going to be plenty of Ukrainians and Russians around here, and I can pass for one of them easily enough. I might also have some ideas as to where to look to start sniffing out some of the underworld elements, too.”
Brannigan eyed him. “Why does that not surprise me?” he said.
Javakhishvili just grinned wider. “Because I’m the shady Slav on the team?” he said. “I should get a tracksuit and squat on the porch instead of sitting in a chair.”
Brannigan thought about it for a moment. It did make sense. And if Smits and Turner vouched for this guy, then he was a good dude. That was a certainty in Brannigan’s mind; he knew both men and knew that they wouldn’t speak up for a shitbag. On the other hand, he really didn’t know Javakhishvili, and didn’t know how far he might push things. He certainly seemed to have a wild streak.
It wasn’t that he was worried about Javakhishvili selling them out or blowing their already paper-thin cover. He was more worried that he’d get a little reckless and disappear into one of the lakes around Chisinau, with a helpful boat chain around his ankles.
But they weren’t out there because they were averse to taking risks. He nodded. “Make sure you’re back here by 2200,” he said. “We’re going to have to move around then.”
Javakhishvili checked his watch. “Should be plenty of time,” he said. He shuffled through their money duffel, and pulled out a good-sized handful of mixed euros, lei, and rubles. “This should do it,” he said. He grinned. “I’ll try to bring some back.”
Then he was out the door. He cracked open the gate just far enough to peer out both ways, then he was gone, into the thickening snowfall on the street.
***
“What exactly are you doing here, Ignatiev?” Beksryostnov asked, leaning back in his chair with a creak. He was getting old, would never see promotion to Generàl-Mayòr, hated Transnistria and the Kremlin politics that had landed him a peacekeeping command in the miserable shithole that still missed the Soviet Union, and as a result, he’d long since stopped giving a damn about his physical fitness or his appearance. His camouflage uniform was rumpled, his cap was shoved in his cargo pocket, his thinning hair was out of regs, and he hadn’t shaved in two days. He was also at least thirty kilos overweight. His eyes were bleary, as much from the vodka in his desk drawer as from the harsh cigarette smoke still curling from the butt lying amid a dozen of its comrades in the ashtray on his desktop.
Ignatiev, by contrast, was lean and hard, his hatchet-face almost skeletal, his hair buzzed down to his scalp. His dark eyes showed just enough of an epicanthic fold to suggest some Tartar ancestry, which only made Beksryostnov instinctively dislike him even more. Worse, he might even be a Khazakh.
“My men and I are here as ‘volunteers,’” Ignatiev said, lending just enough stress to the word, “volunteers” to indicate exactly what he meant. Beksryostnov suppressed a grimace. He didn’t need an explanation.
Ignatiev and his men were what some of the Westerners had been calling “Little Green Men” since the ‘60s. They might even be Spetsnaz. He knew—or suspected—that most of the “volunteers” in Crimea had been regular Army, but Transnistria was far enough away, and a delicate enough situation, given the continuing meltdown of Ukrainian-Russian relations over Crimea and Donbass, that he suspected that the Kremlin’s pet provocateurs were going to be the more highly-trained, trusted special operations troops.
“What is your rank, Ignatiev?” he asked heavily, reaching for the pack of Ziganovs on his desk. His lighter was a cheap butane junker that usually took about four tries to get a flame.
The dark-eyed “volunteer” kept his face stony. “I am here only as a civilian volunteer, Polkovnik,” he said.
“Cut the shit, Ignatiev,” Beksryostnov snapped, as he lit the cigarette, dragging a cloud of noxious smoke into his lungs. “I don’t give a damn about your cover. You wouldn’t have reported to me if you were just some Wagner International mercenary. So answer my questions, tell me who sent you so that I know how far I can afford to ignore you, and then get out.”
Ignatiev’s facial expression didn’t change a whit. Sure of himself, isn’t he? He smiled a creepy little half-smile, and reached into his shirt pocket.
He drew out a folded sheet of paper and stepped forward to place it on Beksryostnov’s desk, before returning to parade rest two paces in front, his dark eyes still fixed on the Polkovnik instead of the wall behind him. It was a calculated bit of cockiness, Beksryostnov was sure.
Eyeing the man with distaste, Beksryostnov leaned forward and picked up the paper. Flipping it open, he found a short, typed letter.
Polkovnik Beksryostnov,
Mayòr Ignatiev is in the PMR on a mission vital to the security of the Russian Federation. I trust that you will lend him all the support he requests.
Signed,
Generàl-Polkovnik Yuri Kolomikov, GRU
Beksryostnov looked up at Ignatiev, the pieces falling into place. Not that it had been all that hard to figure out in the first place. Ignatiev and his men were there to stir things up in the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, either simply as a warning to Chisinau, or even to facilitate the deployment of more Russian troops to the breakaway republic, putting another, even more formidable force on the Ukrainians’ western flank. It could be either; Beksryostnov didn’t know, and suspected that Ignatiev didn’t know the whole plan, either. He had his orders, and judging by the looks of the man, he’d probably enjoy carrying them out.
Either way, it means the same thing to me. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to retire. Otherwise, they’ll shuffle me off to some even less-glamorous post to finish out my rotting career.
“Very well, Ignatiev,” he said, careful not to address the man by his rank. If Kolomikov was his patron, he was definitely Spetsnaz. He waved his cigarette expansively. “My resources are at your disposal. What there is of them.”
***
Mayòr Emil Ignatiev walked out of the house that the Russian peacekeepers in Ribnitza had commandeered as their headquarters, a faint sneer on his face. He’d seen Beksryostnov’s type before, and they disgusted him. He’d given his life to the Russian Federation, and to see men of that rank simply letting themselves go to seed pissed him off. They were too lazy to do their jobs well enough to advance, so they let themselves go, ignoring their responsibilities while they drowned in their own bitterness. Because of course it was all someone else’s fault that they were stuck where they were, not theirs.
Ignatiev did not consider it a contradiction that he thought that way about officers like Beksryostnov while at the same time believing, with his whole heart and soul, that Russia was on the brink of being brought to her knees by sinister, decadent Western powers intent on crushing her, rather than through a combination of corruption and the aftereffects of over seventy years of Communist rule.
His father had fought in Afghanistan, and while Ignatiev had been too young to do so, he’d been blooded in Chechnya, Dagestan, and most recently, Syria. He’d been killing black-asses while Beksryostnov had been sitting on his fat ass, bitching about how unfair the world was.
Kapitàn Kolzak Lopatin was waiting for him. Lopatin’s first name meant “slippery,” and he fit it. His hair was long for a soldier, and slicked back against his head like a helmet. His face always looked a little greasy.
He was also suspected of at least four murders, all of which he’d gotten away with. The man was a sneak, a thief, and a rabid killer. He was also one of the men Ignatiev trusted the most. Because he might be a nasty, vicious dog of a man, but he was Ignatiev’s dog. He’d steal anything not nailed down that caught his fancy, unless it belonged to someone in his unit. He had a weird sense of honor that way.
“Well?” Lopatin asked as he fell in beside Ignatiev. He was also dressed in the same plain green fatigues, with long underwear underneath and a thick field jacket on. Lopatin didn’t like the cold much, and with the storm front moving in, it was going to get cold.
“He’ll do what he’s ordered,” Ignatiev said. “Though I think his support will be limited to materiel and keeping out of our way as much as possible.” He spat. “That one doesn’t want to rock the boat.”
Lopatin nodded. “Do you think…” he began slyly.
“No,” Ignatiev said, cutting him off. “We don’t touch him unless we get orders to. If the mission accomplishes what it’s supposed to, he’ll be obsolete in a matter of months, anyway.” He took a deep breath of the chill air. “Any news about the fight that happened on the river the other day?”
Lopatin shook his head. “It sounds like criminal elements, that’s all,” he said. “The target was an arms dealer. He’s holed up in his dacha now, and hasn’t stuck his head out since.”
“Keep an eye on it,” Ignatiev said. “Any violence could be useful.” Lopatin nodded, grinning a little.
Together, the two Spetsnaz “volunteers” headed for their camp. There were preparations to make.
***
“Herc” Javakhishvili was no stranger to being “out in the cold.” He’d made his way through half the Third World, it felt like, in just the last ten years, and usually without a lot of support. The missions he’d been a medic for had usually consisted of just a priest, a couple of lay missionaries, and him. There usually weren’t any weapons, and no backstop if they ran afoul of the locals, or the jihadis, in several of the African countries he’d f
requented. Most of his PMC work, in between missionary trips, had been nearly as ad-hoc, protecting commercial companies with whatever broken-down, rusty, barely-functional rifles and pistols they could get. And if they’d gotten in real trouble, they’d have been on their own then, too. He hadn’t known any of the companies he’d contracted for to be particularly solicitous for their security personnel.
And a few of the other little PMC adventures he’d been on had been even shadier than that. Those had been more like this one, except that the personnel were usually of a less professional caliber than Brannigan’s crew.
He had to admit, as he trudged through the snow and the dark, that it felt good to be working with pros again. Being with the Blackhearts was almost like his Fleet Marine Force Corpsman days. Only this was promising to be a lot more exciting.
The snow was falling steadily but not hard. He wished he’d grabbed a coat with a hood; his hair was wet from the snow, and he was starting to shiver a little. But he’d been colder, and he didn’t mind it that much.
He’d also been in enough dangerous places that he didn’t let the discomfort lead him to “turtle,” turning inward as he huddled down in his coat to try to get warm. He kept looking around, watching everything without rubbernecking, cataloging every door, every window, every vehicle, and every person out on the street as his eyes swept past them.
Which was why he didn’t miss the running car sitting on the side of the street a block from the safehouse. Or the second one another block in the other direction.
Or the van that was turning down the street toward him.
He was maybe fifty yards from the gate. He looked around carefully, even as he kept his pace even and steady. Let them see him start to stutter-step, or speed up, and they might know that he saw them, or was up to no good. Herc had been around the block enough times to know that sometimes the only way to infiltrate is to simply act like you belong there and you don’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Eventually, the surveillance dismisses you as harmless.