Chapter 17 Xander
XANDER
The factory squats in the industrial district's belly, a concrete carcass that stopped breathing years ago.
Broken windows stare down at us through the December night, and the wind carries the scent of rust and decay.
The Sokolovs chose their hiding spot well, tucked between a cemetery of defunct machinery and a rail yard where freight trains haven't run since the Soviet collapse.
Igor crouches beside me, his breath forming clouds in the bitter air.
"Twelve guards on rotation. Two at the main entrance, four more walking the perimeter. The rest are inside with the merchandise."
I study the building through night-vision binoculars.
The weapons cache sits three stories up, according to our intelligence.
Crates of Kalashnikovs, RPGs, and enough ammunition to supply a small war.
The Sokolovs have been stockpiling for months, preparing for a confrontation they know is coming.
"Ivan, take your team around the east side. Wait for my signal."
I lower the binoculars and turn to the eight men spread behind me in the shadows.
"No survivors. We torch everything and disappear before the fire department arrives."
After a few grunts of acknowledgement, Ivan's team moves through the darkness, their footsteps muffled by years of training.
I lead the main assault, stepping over broken glass and twisted metal as we approach the factory's entrance.
The first guard dies before he knows we're there.
Igor's blade finds his throat, and the man crumples against the concrete wall.
His partner turns at the sound, mouth opening to shout a warning that never comes.
My suppressed Makarov puts two rounds center mass, and he drops beside his comrade.
We flow through the entrance, as fluidly as water through a funnel.
We work as a team and it's what makes us good at what we do.
The factory's interior is a maze of rusted machinery and collapsed walkways.
Overhead, voices float down toward us past the rickety scaffolding and a haze of cheap fluorescent lighting.
The stairwell reeks of piss and body odor.
I take the steps two at a time, my team following in tight formation.
Three floors up, voices drift through the darkness—Russian obscenities mixed with laughter.
They have no clue what's coming for them, though they should.
I've picked off their men one by one for the past six weeks and with two left to deadline, I'm ready to close the ranks and finish this.
"Movement on the third floor," Ivan's voice crackles through my earpiece.
"Six tangos visible through the east windows."
I reach the third-floor landing and pause.
The warehouse space opens before us, filled with wooden crates and metal shelving units.
Bare bulbs hang from exposed wiring, creating pools of yellow light that leave most of the floor in shadow.
The guards cluster around a card table, their weapons leaning against nearby crates.
I count them again—six men, all armed, all about to die.
The firefight erupts as my team flows through the doorway, muzzle flashes illuminating the warehouse in strobing white light.
The guards scramble for their guns, but we've already claimed the advantage.
Automatic weapon fire tears through the air, bullets sparking off metal beams and splintering wooden crates.
One guard makes it to his rifle, spinning to bring the barrel around.
But Igor's burst catches him in the chest, the impact sending him backward into a stack of ammunition boxes.
Another tries to run for the windows, but Ivan puts him down with three rounds to the spine.
The last guard finds cover behind a concrete pillar, his pistol barking repeatedly as he tries to hold us back.
I circle wide, using the maze of machinery to approach from his blind side.
When I step out, he's still firing at shadows, his back exposed.
The Makarov's report is nothing but a whisper.
The bullet takes him in the base of the skull, and he pitches forward onto the concrete floor where his blood pools in a dark crimson kidney shape under him.
Silence descends, broken only by the ringing in my ears and the shuffle of my men's boots as they sweep for anymore hostiles.
We have maybe forty minutes before the fire department arrives, fifteen before someone calls the police.
We're not going to get away with this if we stand around talking, and there's no time to get a cleaner in here.
"Set the charges," I order, stepping over bodies as I survey the weapons cache.
The crates contain exactly what our intelligence promised.
Kalashnikov rifles packed in cosmoline, rocket-propelled grenades nestled in foam padding, cases of ammunition that represent months of preparation.
The Sokolovs invested heavily in this arsenal, believing it would give them the edge in our coming war.
They were wrong.
Ivan plants plastique charges on the support beams while Igor wires the ammunition crates.
The explosives will bring down half the building, ensuring nothing survives the blast.
I watch the work, feeling detached from what we're about to do, checking my watch as the seconds tick away.
Movement catches my eye—a shadow shifting behind an overturned table.
One of the guards is still breathing, his chest rising and falling in shallow gasps.
Blood pools beneath his head, and his eyes track my movement as I approach.
"Please," he whispers in Russian, the word barely audible.
"I have children."
I study his face—young, maybe twenty-five, with pale skin and frightened eyes.
A wedding ring catches the overhead light, and I notice a wallet photo tucked into his vest pocket.
The image shows a woman holding two small children, their faces bright with innocence.
The Makarov feels heavy in my hand.
This man chose his allegiance when he joined the Sokolovs.
He knew the risks, understood the cost of opposing us.
His children will grow up fatherless because their father picked the losing side.
"Your boss should've thought of that," I tell him.
The pistol's report echoes through the warehouse.
The guard's head snaps back, and his eyes lose focus.
Blood spreads across the concrete, mixing with the dust and debris that covers the floor.
His life is over quickly rather than suffering and smoke inhalation.
"Charges set," Ivan reports.
"We have three minutes to clear the building."
We descend the stairwell quickly, boots pounding against metal steps that groan under our weight as the digital timers count down toward zero.
The night air hits my face as we burst through the factory's entrance.
Our vehicles wait in the shadows beyond the perimeter fence, engines running and drivers ready to disappear into Moscow's labyrinthine streets.
I climb into the passenger seat of the lead car, and we accelerate away from the building before I've even gotten my door shut.
The explosion tears through the night at exactly 0412 hours.
The blast wave rattles windows three blocks away, and orange flames leap skyward as the factory's upper floors collapse in on themselves.
Secondary detonations follow as ammunition cooks off, sending tracer rounds streaking through the darkness.
Black smoke rises over the district, visible for miles against the pre-dawn sky.
By the time the fire trucks arrive, the building will be little more than twisted metal and concrete rubble.
The Sokolov weapons cache has been reduced to ash and glowing metal, and the FSB will have a field day with it.
We drive through empty streets, past apartment blocks where lights flicker on behind curtains as residents wake to investigate the distant rumble.
Moscow swallows us into its embrace, eight ghosts vanishing into the urban maze that spawned us.
The Sokolov Brotherhood is weaker tonight, their war chest reduced to radioactive debris.
But weakness and death are different currencies, and the Pakhan accepts only one form of payment.
Eventually we regroup at my safehouse and my men return to their normal schedules, some of them going home to sleep.
And I head toward my check in with Leonid. I'm running twenty minutes late, but with good news, that there are so few men left I can taste it.
Though I'm not foolish enough to think this meeting will go smoothly.
I park outside the building and take the private elevator to his office.
He sits behind his desk, looking like he walked straight out of a magazine with a cup of coffee in his hand, no doubt dosed with his favorite bourbon.
"The factory?" he grunts as I approach his desk. Before we even set this strike I informed him of my plan.
With only two locations left and the challenge of sniffing out Arkady, I need all the help I can get.
"Gone, sir. Twelve guards have been eliminated, weapons cache destroyed. We left nothing salvageable."
"And survivors?" he asks, calmly picking up his coffee mug and sipping from it.
He doesn't ask me to sit, so I stay standing until he gestures at the chair opposite him.
"None," I tell him sitting down.
The chair creaks under me uneasily, as if it understands the tension between us.
I refuse to take blame for Sokolov's men moving in on our territory through my shipping lanes, but Leonid has delivered the ultimatum and I have to follow through. There’s no other choice for me.
Leonid reaches for a decanter on the shelf behind his desk and pours a glass of bourbon.
I can take this as my celebratory drink from him, but without verbal affirmation of my success thus far, I know he's still waiting for the job to be finished.
We've all but decimated the Brotherhood.
It'll take a decade for them to recover, but if we don't take Arkady out, they will recover.
We can't have that.
"The Sokolovs have other caches," he says, sliding one glass across the desk.
"Smaller operations, but still dangerous… And Sokolov himself still lives."
I accept the bourbon but don't drink yet.
It feels premature to celebrate when I look at the creases on the boss's forehead and know he's not satisfied yet.
"How many men are left?" he asks, noting that I haven't taken a drink yet.
His eyes track up to my face where he waits for his answer.
"Intelligence suggests twenty active soldiers, maybe thirty counting the walking wounded from our previous encounters. Arkady Sokolov still breathes, but his son Yaroslav has been eliminated."
Sokolov is being careful staying out of harm's way.
We were supposed to nail him tonight, but our information was bad, or maybe he moved before we got eyes on the warehouse.
Either way, he's still in the wind and that's one ghost that will be hard to track down.
"The deadline remains unchanged," the Pakhan continues.
"New Year's Eve, Mr. Morin. If any Sokolov blood flows into the new year, yours will follow before the calendar turns."
The deadline sits on my chest, feeling like an elephant I can't move.
I'm being tried and convicted before an audience of one for a crime I did not commit and a punishment that is unjust.
But I nod and take the bourbon, downing it in one gulp.
"They'll go underground after tonight," I say.
"The factory will make them paranoid, careful. Hunting them will take time."
"Time is a luxury you don't have." Leonid isn't budging.
He's damn serious and if I push him I'll regret it.
"Flush them out. Make them desperate enough to make mistakes."
I understand what he's wanting me to do.
Terror tactics.
Psychological warfare so intense they'll turn desperate for their own lives and make foolish choices.
The Sokolovs will either come out fighting or die hiding in whatever holes they've carved out of Moscow's underground.
I set the glass on his desk.
The alcohol still burns down my throat, but the fire is nothing compared to the cold calculation spreading through my thoughts.
War has its own logic, its own moral framework that exists outside civilian understanding.
A good soldier compartmentalizes the evil away into little black boxes in their mind, justifying bloodshed as a necessary evil in order to obtain the objective in question.
This war is no different than wars fought for freedom and justice, or in defense of human rights.
I have no governing authority other than my Pakhan, no God to serve besides obedience to his command.
And I've been given orders.
The Sokolovs declared this war when they moved against our territory.
They sucked me into it by moving through my established place of authority.
And they have already learned the sting of punishment that awaits them.
Now I just have to sniff them out and make sure they understand what they did was wrong, and the punishment for such wretched acts is death.
"Sixteen days," the Pakhan repeats as I stand to leave.
"Sixteen days," I confirm.
The elevator descends through the building's heart, carrying me back toward Moscow's streets where as many as thirty more men wait to die.
My war against the Sokolov Brotherhood has claimed another victory, but winning a battle does not necessarily win the war.
Until the last enemy draws his final breath, my own life hangs in the balance.
The hunt continues.