Dmitry's Redemption: Book One (The Medlov Men 7)

by Latrivia Welch

  “Fuck you!” she screamed, gun jolting in her embrace. “You can’t have him! I won’t let you!” It wasn’t possible that the sniper could hear her, but she shouted her declaration anyway, just in case his scope found its way to her body.

  Anatoly was too focused on the threat to see her at first. He also returned fire, screaming as he unleashed the fury of his weapon…until he saw a female figure out of the corner of his eye.

  “What the fuck, Royal!” Anatoly screamed, disarmed by her presence. Taking his eye off the tree across the street, he ran full speed toward her and snatched her by her waist.

  “Let go of me!” Royal tried to pull away from him, but his iron embrace kept her in place. She could feel his chest pressed to her back, his hot face pressed against her cheek.

  “You can’t be here, right now!” Anatoly yelled at her as he snatched her behind a large van while the rest of the guards kept firing. Quickly, looking around the van, he saw the team had pushed the sniper back.

  “He shot my husband!”

  “I know!” Anatoly screamed back, still holding her.

  Bullets hailed toward Bandi, preventing him from completing his job. It was time to decide. Either stay and die or leave and regroup. Quickly discarding the weapon and scaling down the tree, he headed into the thicket toward the direction of a service road about a half-mile west of him where a motorcycle was waiting.

  Jumping from the last branch, his booted feet hit the ground as he rolled. As he stood up, he got on his earpiece.

  “The target was only wounded,” he reported. “Repeat, Dmitry Medlov is still alive!” With that, he broke out in a sprint, certain that the small army was headed his way.

  Hearing heavy, stumbling footfalls approaching, Anatoly aimed his weapon in anticipation of an attack until he saw his father. Holding his chest, covered in blood, with his Glock in his hand, Dmitry’s wild eyes met his wife. He released a sigh of relief when he saw that she had not been shot. “What were you thinking?” he asked, near fainting.

  “Dmitry!” Royal yelled, going to him. “I thought you were…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  Dmitry’s eyes slowly batted, dragging to the ground. “That’s no reason for you to try to kill yourself.” He hugged her tight, despite the pain and kissed her cheek. With a hand full of her hair in his gun hand, he nuzzled the side of her face. “I love you, but if you ever do that again, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  “You mean the next time we get into a gunfight?” she asked sarcastically. Looking at his wound, she looked back at Anatoly. “We have to hurry and get him to a hospital.”

  “No, we can’t go to a hospital,” Dmitry countered. “Everyone has to get out of here now.”

  One of the bulletproof SUVs pulled up beside them and the doors swung open. Dmitry looked over at his son with an unspoken command. As the guards opened the door, Anatoly swiftly moved Royal in the back of the SUV. “Quick now,” he urged her.

  Scooting to the far side, Royal reached her hand out for Dmitry. “Let me help you in,” she said, fingers extended toward Dmitry.

  With a look of loss in his red eyes, Dmitry shook his head. His voice croaked. “Get her to safety. Code Red.” He slammed the door before she could react, and the guard hit the locks to prevent her from getting out.

  “No!” Royal screamed, rushing to try to open the door. She pounded her open hands against the tinted windows. “What’s a Code Red? Where are you taking me? Let me out!” She felt like she was going to hyperventilate. “Dmitry!”

  Burning rubber, the SUV pulled out into the street with Royal screaming from the backseat as Dmitry collapsed in the parking lot with the guards still returning fire.

  “Woah, I got you.” Anatoly ran to his father and waved the last SUV toward him. Holding his father up, he and Marat helped him inside of the SUV. “You know where to take him. Now, get him there safely. We are in a Code Red,” Anatoly said to the guard before slamming the door behind his father. Quickly, the SUV sped off, leaving Anatoly to clean up the mess.

  The sirens were close now. It would be only seconds before the police arrived on the scene. Anatoly turned to Marat and wiped his face of the blood from his father’s wounds. “I need you to go back inside that fucking place and find the surveillance room. Get the tapes, the CD or whatever. If it’s run remotely, torch the room. I don’t want anything less than an eyewitness to talk to the cops. We can handle them later. But video will fuck us.”

  “Where are you going?” Marat asked, automatic weapon tactically slung across his chest. The guards ran back toward them to report.

  “I’m going after that motherfucker,” Anatoly said as Marat gave him his last clips. He turned to his other men. “You run him back?”

  The men nodded in confirmation, panting for breath. “He’s on foot. We’ve got two guards chasing him.”

  “Get on your earpiece. Tell them I’m on the way,” Anatoly ordered, on fire inside and ready to exact vengeance on whomever had done this to his family.

  Marat passed Anatoly his own earpiece. “I’ll see you,” he said confidently.

  Without another word, Anatoly darted across the street into the thicket of trees with the muzzle of his weapon pointed forward. He moved at full speed, conserving no energy. Tearing through the bushes and high grass, he disappeared.

  The spy pretending to be nurse Georgia had watched most of the exchange out in the parking lot from behind a partition wall in the lobby. To her surprise, she had also watched Dmitry Medlov, the one man in this fiasco who was supposed to be dead, rise up from a pool of his own blood and head toward the fight.

  “Damn it! Why can’t anyone around here just do their job?” she screamed aloud as she darted down the hallway toward Sanaa’s room where she was certain Dr. Owen was still cowering.

  Even if the sniper couldn’t do his job, she damn sure knew how to do hers. Busting through the door, she found Dr. Owen and two staffers kneeling behind the dead woman’s bed.

  The two women kept their heads down until they saw Dr. Owen relax his shoulders as he rose above the bed. “Thank God, it’s you,” he said, blowing a breath out. “Are we safe to go?” he asked, as the other women finally stood.

  The spy closed the door behind her. “Is everyone alright?” she asked, voice betraying her cold-hearted intention.

  The older white nurse on Dr. Owen’s right side, put her hand over her heart. “My God. I think so,” she said, tears flooding her face. “Please tell me the police are on the way.”

  The spy nodded. “They are on the way.” She walked over to Sanaa and looked down at the corpse. “It’s done then.”

  Dr. Owen frowned. Did she want to blow their cover? He tried to reframe the conversation. “Yes, Ms. Baptiste has passed on.”

  “Is it safe to leave the room?” the other nurse, a small Asian woman in teddy bear scrubs asked.

  “No,” the spy answered. Pulling her weapon from her purse quickly, she pointed the weapon. “One last thing to do first.”

  “Wait!” Dr. Owen screamed as a bullet lodged into his forehead. He died with a surprised look on his face as if no one had ever told him that eventually blood had to be paid with blood. Alas, he would never get to spend the money Popov paid him, never get to another hard on and never get an opportunity to kill a poor, unsuspecting patient.

  The world would be better off without him.

  The other two women were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The silencer muffled the sounds of the bullets, but not their last, confused screams. With tight, swift movements, the spy dispatched all three people without even blinking. When it was done, she felt nothing but urgency to get out of this place and return to her life.

  Erik Popov might very well kill the sniper who botched his job, but there was no way he was going to kill her for incompetence.

  Where are the fucking guards around this place? Marat thought to himself as he sprinted toward the security room past crouching scared bystanders. Arriving at the
wooden door marked SECURITY, he grabbed the knob and jiggled it, but the door was locked. Stepping back, he lifted his foot and kicked the door off its hinges. Half-expecting a security guard to shoot at him upon making entry, he was surprised instead to find an older man in a polyester brown uniform in his late fifties, gray-haired and obesely overweight, slumped over the security desk with a bullet in the back of his head – execution style. The poor bastard never had a chance.

  Someone was being very thorough. He scanned the system and saw someone had also beaten him to getting the discs. Each of the readers were empty. Shit. He needed to secure that evidence. In the wrong hands, it could end up being used for blackmail. Still, he had to make sure there were no backups. Taking the black folder marked surveillance from the shelf above the desk, he tucked it under his arm. Whoever had been here missed one important piece – the cleanup. That was what happened when one had to work in a rush – it was impossible not to make a mistake, which was why there was only one way to ever be certain.

  Grabbing a gallon bottle of generic bleach from the corner where the emergency kits were, he poured the chemicals over the computers and security system, then pulled his lighter out of his pocket and flicked the fire. Wiping his fingerprints off the lighter with his shirt, he dropped it to the floor. However, as he headed back out of the room, he overheard what sounded like cops and radios down the hall toward the lobby entryway.

  Double fuck!

  He ducked back in the room as the fire roiled up to the ceiling and snatched the center’s floor plan encased in an acrylic covering off the wall. Reading it carefully, he looked back out to see the hall was clear. He had to make a run for the back door and get out of sight before he was apprehended, plus the fumes were starting to choke him.

  Within seconds, the fire alarm sounded, and the sprinklers activated, sending sheets of water through the spigot.

  Avoiding eye contact with his head ducked as people ran past him toward the front entrance, Marat headed toward the back door according to the floor plan. Quietly opening it and sneaking out, he inhaled fresh air and scanned the cars in the back-parking lot. That’s when he spotted her. “You fucking suka,” Marat hissed. Anatoly had told everyone he thought she was wrong, and while Marat couldn’t say for sure, there was no reason to risk it for a second time.

  The spy was fumbling with her keys, anxious to get out of sight before the police or anyone else could ID her. She had boosted the keys off the dead Asian nurse in Sanaa’s room and found the only Honda Accord from the 1990s among the sea of employee vehicles. Trying to find the right key to get into the door, she was about to just bust the window open when the lock clicked. “Finally!”

  She was concentrating too hard to hear Marat as he approached from behind. Getting the door open, she mumbled under her breath and looked up to see Marat with his gun pointed toward her head. Turning slowly with her hands up in the air, her mouth parted. “Please don’t shoot!” she said, managing to summon tears. “I know I shouldn’t have just left, but I was afraid.” The conviction in her voice almost impressed her.

  “Oh, you are good,” Marat said, pulling the trigger. The bullet was quiet, just as quiet as hers had been with the doctor and his nurses, probably because they were using the same brand of weapon. Catching her before she could hit the ground, Marat opened the trunk and threw her body inside, then jumped in the driver’s seat and sped out of the back-parking lot.

  The two young guards who had been assigned to Dmitry’s office doors at the mansion, Gideon and Luka, had also taken the lead on chasing the sniper through the woods. With their weapons Safari slung over their backs and their HK45 Tactical handguns loaded and ready, they moved in tandem through the thick brush following the trail the sniper left behind.

  “Be advised, Red Prince is headed toward you. One needs to fall back to escort. The other continues to pursue. Over,” a voice in the earpiece said ending transmission. They had to be careful on the radio now, unsure if their position might be compromised or worse, the police might track them down.

  Gideon slowed without another word while Luka pressed forward. They had been together since back in Russia when they were doing black bag ops together for the Spetsnaz. So, they knew each other’s weaknesses and strengths. Luka had always been better with long distance running, where Gideon had always been better in the water.

  “Copy.” Gideon’s breathing slowed as he turned around and looked toward the way they had just come.

  They had only traveled about 350 yards from the road; Anatoly would be approaching shortly. Running a hand over his face, he wiped cobwebs and dirt from his ear and cheek and knocked off straggling branches that stuck to him as they fought through the thick undergrowth. He could feel his white dress shirt drenched with sweat. It stuck to his body, revealing the concrete slabs of toned muscled beneath. Pulling off his tailored black suit jacket issued to him when he started working for the Medlov family, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as he heard Anatoly moving in his direction.

  With a sharp, shrieking whistle, he caught his boss’s attention. Anatoly didn’t slow down. Instead, Gideon dropped his suit jacket and trotted into a full run, leading his boss in the direction Luka had continued just a few minutes before.

  “I have him in view,” Luka whispered over the earpiece. When you get to the large oak tree with the twisted limbs, you’re 150 feet behind me.”

  Gideon scowled. There were a hundred fucking oak trees out here. Was he really supposed to find the one Luka was talking about or could he be more specific.

  As if telepathic, Luka got back on the ear pieces. “You can’t miss the tree. Just keep moving southwest.”

  Before Luka could finish his sentence, Gideon and Anatoly came across a towering, almost unnatural oak tree with twisted limbs that seemed to climb up into the afternoon sky.

  Dropping to one knee and extending his arms, Luka pointed his HK47, waiting for the perfect shot, but the target jumped in and out of view as he fought to get through the most tangled part of the brush.

  Bandi knew he was getting closer to his pickup point for the motorcycle. He could hear cars traveling on the road. Moving as fast as he could, he kept looking back behind him, sure that he was being followed. But by how many, he could not tell. With his gun out, he used it to both knock limbs and branches out of his way and to point behind him toward the thousands of sounds taunting him. Grasshoppers, crickets, birds all chirped as the clouds started to cover the sun for an afternoon shower. A rumble of thunder grumbled in the distance.

  “Fuck this place,” Bandi said, as he jumped over a large tree that had fallen. As his foot touched the crunch ground on the side, he heard the shot.

  Luka knew he only had one chance, so he made it count. Even as a wasp landing on his shoulder and stung him, he ignored the pain and followed through. The result was half-rewarding.

  “Arghh!” Bandi looked down at his side and realized he had been grazed. Returning fire wildly as he continued running toward the road, he ran as fast as he could.

  “Behind you,” Gideon warned Luka as he and Anatoly sprinted past him.

  Standing up, Luka followed. “I hit him.”

  “Is he down?” Gideon asked as Anatoly moved in front of him with powerful strides.

  “No,” Luka answered, left eye twitched. “I grazed him,” he said, Russian accent unable to mask his irritation.

  When Bandi finally got to the road, he saw the black bike awaiting him under a tree, but evidently, he wasn’t the only person who had found it. Two local homeless men were about to knock back the kick stand and walk it down the road for a quick pawn until Bandi came barreling out of the thicket with his gun pointed.

  “Get the fuck away!” he yelled, shooting the man closest to the bike while the other ran as fast as his feet could take him. Jumping on the bike, Bandi inserted the key and burned rubber down the road.

  Hearing gunshots, Anatoly came out of the brush with his gun pointed. But it was too late. Bandi was alre
ady headed down the street.

  “Son of bitch!” Anatoly screamed. Tucking his gun behind his back into the waistband of his jeans, he stepped out into the road as a Red BMW Roadster approached with a white man in his late forties blasting classic rock with the roof down.

  The first thing the man saw was a homeless black man crumpled over on the curb. He only assumed the young white man trying to flag him down had been attacked. Slowing down, he pulled up beside Anatoly and snatched off his shades. “What that boy do to you?” the guy asked in a deep Southern accent. “He try to rob you or something?”

  Anatoly looked over his shoulder at the homeless man and then turned back to the stranger, who proudly wore a red Make America Great Again baseball hat to match his vehicle. “I don’t know him,” Anatoly shrugged. “Why would you think he attacked me? I don’t look like I can handle myself or something?”

  Instantly, he picked up on the young man’s Russian accent, but his blind racism prevented him until now from seeing the tattoos that covered Anatoly’s arms, fingers and neck. Leary, he changed his tone slightly. “Well, what you doing out in the middle of the damn road for?”

  Anatoly didn’t have time for this. Pulling his gun out, he pointed it at the man and cocked it. “I’m robbing you, dumb shit. Don’t put your foot on that fucking accelerator and don’t go for that little piece you probably got under your seat,” he warned. “Today, I’ll make America great by putting this bullet in your eye.”

  The man threw his hands up. Anatoly was right. He had a snub nose under the seat, but it was just for show. Hell, he had never even fired it. He only bought the damn thing to impress the ladies. “Alright, alright. There’s no need for that. We’re all friends here.”

  “I’m not your fucking friend. Now, get out,” Anatoly growled.

  As the man stepped out as commanded, hands still up in the air, he backed away from the weapon while Anatoly jumped into the car. “Can I at least have my damn phone, so I can call someone to come and pick me up?” he called out.