by Mike Ryan
“Because I know how that puny little mind of yours operates.”
“Well, that just shows how little you actually know me.”
“So what were you gonna ask then?”
“Uhh, that maybe I could be of some help…”
“No, you can’t go!” Cole interrupted. “See, I knew what you were up to. You’re not that slick.”
Turner walked over to Parker and put his arms around her waist, resting his hands on the small of her back as he softly kissed her on the lips.
“Maybe we can continue where we left off when I get back?” Parker asked, a wide smile resting on her face.
“You know it. Wait, so you are coming back, then?”
“Does this answer your question?” she asked, passionately kissing him.
“Uhh, I guess it does,” Turner happily replied. “Just make sure you’re safe and come back.”
“I will,” she said, the two of them kissing once more.
“There I go getting sick again,” Cole quipped.
Chapter 4
Parker and Cole arrived at the Toronto Pearson International Airport the following morning. The airport is the largest and busiest airport in Canada. Toronto is the largest and most populated city in Canada, as well as the capital of Ontario. It’s also the fourth largest city in North Amercia, only behind Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles. It had the reputation of being one of the safest cities in North America, with homicide and robbery rates amongst the lowest on the continent. Those rates have been rising, however, with most of it attributed to the rise of the Yevenko organization stabilizing its roots in the area. Though traditionally among the lowest in North America, the homicide and robbery statistics had more than doubled in the previous two years.
Once Parker and Cole checked into their hotel room, they immediately started digging into the information on Joey Marchenko more closely. Marchenko was the reputed boss of the Yevenko organization in the Toronto area. In his late twenties, Marchenko, a full Russian native, fully embraced the American lifestyle and discarded his given name of Anatoly in favor of Joey. Hot headed, and with a quick temper, he usually resorted to violence in order to get what he wanted. He liked fast cars and loose women. His weekends usually were spent at various hot spots in the area, most notably night clubs, bars, and strip clubs. Though he was known to be the leader of the Toronto gang, his whereabouts had remain secretive until recently. A Canadian official had gotten word through an informant, a former member of the gang who’d recently been exiled, about Marchenko’s location. He conducted his business through an auto garage business, though his name wasn’t on the business license. Though they did do some legitimate business, it was mostly just a front for the Yevenko family. There were a few offices on the second floor of the garage, which was where Marchenko, and his top aides hung out.
The targets for Parker and Cole were Marchenko, along with the rest of his leadership group, which was thought to consist of four other individuals. The others were Anton Loktionov, Artur Konnikov, Boris Golov, and Viktor Yemelin. It was believed that these were the brains behind the Toronto operation. Get rid of those five and the organization would collapse, or at least severely incapacitated. Unlike many criminal enterprises, there was no clear pecking order after the main leadership group in case they were arrested or killed to keep the team going. Yevenko was distrustful by nature, and all leadership positions were personally appointed by him, and him alone. Unless he already knew them, or met them, nobody was authorized to promote underlings to a higher position. All orders came from him, or with his approval, and orchestrated from Russia. Yevenko would dictate what he wanted each group to concentrate on. How those orders were carried out was left to the groups in charge of the different branches of his organization. They used whoever they deemed fit for the assignment.
Occasionally, Yevenko would travel to the different branches to visit their operations and see for himself what was going on. Every couple of months, he’d go on tour, going from one country to another, until he was done visiting the different groups. If he felt someone was not acting in the best interests of his organization, he set them straight. If someone appeared to be going into business for themselves, or was cheating him, he’d have them killed on the spot. That happened very infrequently though. Since he only appointed people he knew and trusted to positions of power, most were very loyal to him and did as he instructed.
After a few hours of familiarizing themselves with all the information at their disposal, Parker and Cole drove out to the garage that Marchenko and his aides were supposed to be found. Not to their surprise, the garage wasn’t located in a prime real estate location. It was located in an industrial complex, off of a main road, with a few trucking businesses nearby. Cole drove their rental car, his trademark black van, to one of the nearby business down the street and parked. They were careful not to get too close in fear of being spotted, just in case Marchenko had men watching the premises. It had a clear view of the garage so they could see anyone coming or going. They prepared themselves to be there the rest of the day and night.
“So I guess you and Turner’s back together, huh?” Cole asked, looking at the garage through his binoculars.
“I don’t know,” she sheepishly replied.
“You don’t know? You just about put a hole through my hotel wall you two were going at it so hard.”
Parker laughed, “yeah, I guess we were, huh?”
“Missed him that much, did you?”
“I did miss him. Not that I ever wanted to admit it.”
“Well, not that I’m likely to ever admit this again, but I’m happy for you. I hope it lasts this time. For your sake,” Cole told her.
Parker smiled at him. “Aww, see, you’re a big softy. You’re not as tough as you like to appear.”
Cole cleared his throat and dropped the subject, afraid of damaging his tough reputation any further.
“Think we’ll pull all this off smoothly?” Parker wondered.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t we?”
“I don’t mean just us specifically. I mean the entire operation.”
“Oh. I dunno. It’s a lot of moving pieces,” Cole replied. “Let’s make sure we concentrate on our end of it. If everyone does their part, you don’t want to be the one team that dropped the ball.”
“I know.”
“Kind of disappointed though,” Cole said.
“Why?”
“Was kind of hoping we’d draw the Yevenko assignment ourselves. I’d love to be the one to take out that commie bastard.”
“I don’t think he’s a commie just because he’s from Russia,” Parker stated.
“Yeah, well, I’d still love to be the one to take him out.”
“Well, never know, maybe you’ll still get that chance.”
They sat there for the rest of the day, right up until eight o’clock. Several of the garage workers, still in their shop uniforms, began leaving. There were still a few more cars in the lot that were off to the side and didn’t appear to be customer cars. Parker and Cole figured to wait a while longer, just to see if Marchenko and his friends were still inside. They hadn’t seen them since they’d been there, though that wasn’t real surprising to them. They figured the men would stay out of sight as much as possible. They periodically looked at the pictures of the men they were looking for, just as a reminder in case they showed up. Two hours later, they finally got their first bite of action. Cole looked over at Parker, who was beginning to fall asleep. He tapped her on the arm to wake her up.
“Hey, hey, hey…looks like we got something,” Cole said.
“What’s up?” Parker asked, batting her eyes and quickly waking up.
“Looks like that’s somebody,” Cole said, looking through the binoculars, then at the pictures of the men.
He passed the picture over to Parker, looking through her own set of binoculars. She looked at the picture, then back at the man getting into a car.
“Looks like Golov,�
� she said.
“Yeah. Wait. Here’s two more,” Cole replied, eagerly watching two more men come out of the garage.
“Loktionov and Yemelin.”
They watched as the three men, all in separate cars, drive away. They waited another hour in case the final two members of the operation stayed a little later than the others. Once ten o’clock rolled around, they decided to call it a night.
“Well, looks like we’re done for tonight,” Cole said. “I don’t think Marchenko and Konnikov are here tonight.”
“Sure doesn’t seem that way, does it?”
“Let’s head back to the hotel and get some rest. Get back at it again tomorrow.”
Parker agreed, both of them sensing that there was nothing left to see there. They drove back to the hotel and checked in with Burnett before turning in for the night. They informed her that they saw three of the members, but not the top boss. They still had another day of surveillance before dropping the hammer on the gang the day after.
The next morning, the agents got up bright and early, waking up around six. They wanted to get an early start to the day and make sure they made it back to their surveillance spot before the garage opened. They wanted to see if Marchenko arrived at the garage in the morning and left before the others.
“I suppose it’ll be a dream to get all five in the same spot at the same time,” Cole stated.
“I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”
“Usually aren’t.”
The first couple people that arrived at the garage seemed to be men who worked there, wearing garage uniforms. They got there around 7:30. A couple more hours of watching and waiting didn’t bear much fruit. Nothing interesting happened, no unusual characters, and no signs of the men they were waiting for. That changed around ten. They hit pay dirt. A white sports car had just pulled into the garage lot.
“Hey. Hey, that’s him,” Cole said, noticing Marchenko get out of the car.
“Looks pretty chummy with everyone,” Parker responded, seeing Marchenko ham it up with some of the workers.
“Yeah, everyone wants to get in good with the top dog.”
“Does it strike you as funny how Yevenko runs this thing?” Parker asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, five guys on top, then nobody underneath.”
“Ahh, he wants to keep a tight leash on everything.”
“Yeah, but if this group busts up, then he’s out of business,” she explained.
“I think he looks at it like he doesn’t have a lot tied up in this if things start to go bad. He’s got guys he trusts, guys he knows won’t turn on him. If something happens, they can pick up and move to a new city relatively quickly. I think he prefers small and nimble rather than large and cumbersome,” Cole replied.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“It’s apparently been working for him. He’s built up a business, and a reputation, for close to eight years now.”
About an hour after Marchenko arrived at the garage, the other member of the group they hadn’t seen yet, also swung by. Artur Konnikov, also sporting a fancy car, was well dressed, almost seeming like a normal business executive.
“Now there’s a guy who thinks of himself as something other than what he really is,” Cole said.
“Isn’t that true of most guys?” Parker kidded.
“Good point. Probably so.”
It was just Marchenko and Konnikov for a few hours, neither of whom showed themselves again, leading Parker and Cole to assume that Konnikov was the right hand man. Otherwise, the others would’ve been there already also. Around two o’clock, the other three started rolling in, separately, all within a few minutes of each other. It looked like they were bringing lunch for everybody.
“How you wanna play this?” Cole asked.
“We’re gonna have to get them going in or coming out,” Parker responded. “We don’t know the layout in there and it’ll be tough barging our way in and shooting up the place. Plus, we don’t know if those garage workers are armed or not. We’ve got five targets, but there are six or seven workers there. That could make it twelve on two if they’re with them.”
“Tough odds. The other problem is, so far, they haven’t been together. If we nail a couple of them, the others might get scared off.”
“How bout a nice explosion when all of them are in the building?” she wondered.
“That’s an idea. What about the workers though?”
“Let’s see if Burnett can find the dirt on them, whether they’re clean or part of this. If they’re innocent, we’ll have to find another way. If they’re part of the organization, then they’re part of the problem.”
Cole smiled and nodded. “I like the way you think.”
They immediately contacted Burnett to see if she could get the rundown on the auto clinic workers to see if they had criminal records. She told them she’d try to get the information to them in a couple of hours. Until then, they went over different scenarios in how to eliminate their targets.
“Let’s operate under the assumption that we don’t blow the building up. I mean, we are in Canada, that sort of thing doesn’t happen every day here,” Cole stated.
“Unless it happens naturally as part of a fire.”
“How you gonna keep them in there though? Lock all the doors?”
“So you’re not liking the idea?” Parker asked.
“I like it. I’m just not sure we can do it here.”
“We could follow a couple of them home.”
“There’s only two of us. Can’t follow everybody. I have a feeling this job might call for some of your womanly ways,” Cole insinuated.
“Why does it always have to resort to that? Why am I always the one having to flaunt my body around to a bunch of meatheads?”
Cole looked at her strangely, not sure if she actually needed an answer, though he gave her one anyway. “How much time you got?” he joked.
“No, seriously, why is it always me that has to do this sort of thing?”
“One, you’re attractive. Two, you have a better figure than me,” Cole told her, getting a laugh from her. “Three, men are pigs. They let their guard down when a beautiful woman’s around. Four, you have a better pair of legs than me. Not to mention another pair of…nevermind.”
Parker sighed, knowing he was right. But it was one of the parts of the job she was tired of. “No. I know. It has to be me.”
“I mean, if you wanna sit this one out, I’ll see what I can do. Maybe one of them swings both ways or something.”
Flashing a fake smile, “no, it’s OK. I’ll do it,” she told him.
“Well, as long as you really want to. I’m think it’ll be better getting them on the way out instead of the way in. What do you think?”
“I suppose so.”
They continued their surveillance the rest of the night, the same as the previous day. Marchenko and Konnikov left around five, leaving the other three alone. After the top two left, while Parker and Cole were still waiting on the other three, Burnett got back to them with the information they wanted. There were twelve workers on the auto clinic payroll. Seven of them had criminal records. The other five did not. However, she couldn’t definitely say whether or not they were on Yevenko’s payroll either. That pretty much clinched their Parker and Cole’s plans to take their targets out as they were leaving the garage. Even though they figured the five without criminal records in all likelihood knew what was going on, and probably were contributors to the gang, they didn’t want to take the chance of taking out innocent people. They kept on watching the garage for a few more hours, staying until ten o’clock again. The other three members of Marchenko’s crew stayed until nine, just as they did the night before.
Once they were done the stakeout, Parker and Cole went back to their hotel to finish preparing for the next day. They planned on renting another car in the morning, one that Parker would use to lure her victims. The following day, Cole took the van and
went to the surveillance spot himself, letting Parker swing by a little bit later. Cole wanted to make sure their targets were keeping to the same routine. They were, as Marchenko and Konnikov arrived at the same time as they did the day before. Parker wouldn’t need to arrive and do her bit until the afternoon. While she was getting ready, her phone rang. She quickly got to it, assuming it was Cole for some reason.
She was pleasantly surprised to see it was Turner. “Hey, you.”
“Hey gorgeous,” Turner greeted.
“Is everything OK?”
“Yeah. Everything’s good. I just wanted to make sure you were OK. I haven’t heard from you since the night you got there.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve just been busy here with everything, getting things squared up,” Parker said.
“No, it’s fine. I just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”
“Nothing that being home wouldn’t cure.”
“You sound tired,” Turner noticed.
“Just tired of some of the things I have to do.”
“Well, you’ll be done today right?”
“Assuming everything goes according to plan,” she replied.
“Just come home safe, OK? I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
Once she hung up, Parker immediately left the hotel to go to the surveillance spot. Upon getting there, she parked next to Cole’s van, making sure nothing new came up. Cole peeked into the car to catch a glimpse of Parker’s clothes.
“Got your hooker outfit on?” Cole joked, laughing.
“You find this amusing, don’t you?”
“Maybe just a little.”
“Short shorts and a tight, revealing shirt. Does that work for you?” Parker snidely asked.
“Doesn’t matter if it works for me. As long as it works for Marchenko. And according to the reports of his womanizing ways…it should do just fine.”
They waited a couple more hours, until four o’clock. There was no movement from any of the Yevenko organization members yet. Parker decided it was time for her to get into position, just in case any of them left early. She drove out of the parking lot and down the street, parking it in the entrance of an abandoned trucking business. There was a gate that prevented her from going further, but it wasn’t necessary, as the spot she was in should do the trick. Half an hour later, Marchenko came out of the garage, thirty minutes sooner than he did yesterday.