Chapter 31 Pyotr
Pyotr
Two minutes.
I crouch behind the cargo container fifty meters from the warehouse’s east entrance and wedge my earpiece deeper into my ear canal.
Six men are stacked behind me in pairs. Another four hold the south side under Eduard’s command.
Marat’s team has the loading dock on the north.
We’ve got more on our team than I expected, which I take as a good omen.
On Bogdan’s end, there are sixteen men, three entry points, and one target I intend to drag out by his throat.
“All teams, radio check,” Boris prompts through comms.
Eduard responds first. “South team, in position.”
Marat follows. “North team, standing by. Loading dock is shut. One guard visible through the gap.”
“East team ready,” I confirm.
I glance over my shoulder at the armored SUV parked a hundred meters behind our position.
Daria is inside with the engine running and a phone in her hand.
She knows the plan. When Boris gives the word, she calls Bogdan and keeps him talking, keeps him looking at his phone instead of what’s coming, which buys us the thirty seconds we need to breach all three entry points at once.
“Sixty seconds,” Boris announces, still not entirely on board, judging by his tone. “Daria, stand by on the call.”
Her voice comes through the earpiece, steady and clear. “Ready.”
I draw my Makarov and rack the slide. The man beside me, a stocky veteran named Grisha, mirrors the movement with his own sidearm. We’ve worked together before. He brings no talking or panic. Just a man who does his job and does it well.
“All right, Daria. Make the call.”
Three seconds pass. Five. Seven.
“He’s not answering,” she says.
My stomach drops.
“Try again,” Boris orders.
Another pause.
“No answer. It went to voicemail.”
Boris and I lock eyes across the gap between containers. Daria told us that Bogdan always answers when she calls. He picks up because he can’t resist the chance to twist the knife. The only reason he wouldn’t answer is if he already knows what’s coming.
“We breach now,” I announce. “He’s been tipped off.”
Boris doesn’t argue. “All teams, go. Go, go, go.”
I round the container at a dead sprint. The east entrance is a rusted steel door with a padlock the size of my fist. Grisha hits it with the bolt cutters, and the lock drops. My boot sends the door inward, and I sweep right while he sweeps left.
The first room is a narrow corridor lined with wooden crates stacked to the ceiling. Fluorescent tubes dangle from the metal rafters overhead. I move fast with my weapon up, checking corners and doorways as Boris feeds updates through the earpiece.
“South team breaching now. Two hostiles in the ground-floor office.”
Gunfire erupts from that direction, three controlled bursts, then silence.
“South clear. Two down.”
I push through the corridor and shoulder open the door at the far end. It spills into the warehouse’s main floor, a cavernous space cluttered with shipping containers, forklifts, and long rows of industrial shelving.
Two men are scrambling behind a forklift thirty meters ahead. One has an AK slung across his chest; the other is fumbling with a radio.
“East team, contact. Two hostiles, center floor,” I report.
The one with the AK spots me first. He swings the barrel in my direction, and I drop behind a steel support column as a burst of automatic fire chews into the metal above my head.
Sparks rain down, and concrete dust kicks up in a line across the floor where the rounds punch through.
Grisha returns fire from behind a pallet of crates, pinning the shooter while I reposition.
I count the rounds. The AK fires in short, panicked bursts. He’s scared and burning through his magazine without discipline. Twenty rounds gone in five seconds, maybe six.
I move the moment the firing stops. Three steps to the left, and I have a clear line on the forklift. Bogdan’s shooter is crouched behind the rear wheel, swapping magazines with shaking hands. I put two rounds into his shoulder, and he screams. His weapon clatters across the concrete.
His partner drops the radio and raises his hands.
“Down!” I bark. “On your face. Hands behind your head.”
He complies. Grisha zip-ties him in seconds and shoves a knee into his back.
“East floor, two neutralized,” I report. “One wounded, one surrendered.”
“Copy,” Boris replies. “North team is inside. Marat reports four hostiles in the loading area. Heavy resistance at the office block upstairs.”
I leave Grisha with the prisoners and advance toward the staircase on the far wall. Everything above us belongs to me.
The metal steps ring under my boots as I take them two at a time. Upstairs, a long hallway leads to a series of offices with frosted glass windows. One is shattered, and spent casings litter the floor outside the door. Somebody fired in a hurry and didn’t stick around to finish the job.
Marat’s voice punches through comms. “Loading dock secure. Three in custody, one ran toward the upper level. Headed your way, Pyotr.”
I flatten my back to the wall and wait.
Footsteps, fast and clumsy. A man rounds the corner ten meters ahead.
He sees me and raises a pistol, but his hands are trembling so badly that the first shot buries itself in the ceiling from the recoil.
I close the distance in four strides, grab his wrist, twist, and strip the weapon from his grip.
One palm strike to the sternum puts him on the floor, and I pin him with my boot across his chest.
“Stay down.”
He wheezes and nods.
I kick his pistol down the hallway and continue toward the offices. The second door on the left is closed, and the handle doesn’t budge when I test it.
“Boris, I’m at the upstairs offices. One door locked. Could be our target.”
“Stand by. Eduard is coming up behind you.”
Eduard appears at the top of the stairs thirty seconds later with two of his men. We stack on either side of the door, and he counts down on his fingers. Three. Two. One.
He kicks the door open, and we flood in.
Empty.
Documents cover every inch of the desk. A laptop sits open, an ashtray is overflowing with cigarette butts, and a half-finished glass of something amber sits beside it. The chair is pushed back at an angle, and a coat hanger beside it is empty.
Bogdan is nowhere in sight.
I eye the room and spot it behind the desk, partially hidden by a filing cabinet. A service hatch in the floor sits wide open. The smell of damp concrete and rust drifts up from the darkness.
“He’s gone.” I slam my palm against the desk. “He’s got a service tunnel under the floor. The bastard’s out.”
Boris’ response is too calm. “I’ve got a runner on the east perimeter. Black coat, male, moving north on foot with two others. They exited through a drainage access point behind the building.”
The unanswered phone call, the empty office, the hatch already open… Bogdan didn’t run when he heard us breach. He was already gone.
I sprint back down the hallway, vault the staircase railing, and drop to the ground floor. Pain jolts up through my ankles, but I push through it and hit the east door at a full run.
The predawn sky is gunmetal gray. Fifty meters ahead, three figures are climbing into a dark sedan parked on the service road. One of them is Bogdan. I’d know that hunched, cowardly silhouette anywhere.
I raise my Makarov and fire twice. The first round punches through the sedan’s rear quarter panel. Glass erupts from the back window as the second round connects. But the car is already moving, its tires screeching against wet asphalt as it fishtails onto the main road and accelerates north.
I lower the weapon and watch the taillights disappear.
“Target is mobile,” I report through gritted teeth. “Black sedan, heading north. Three occupants.”
“Acknowledged,” Boris replies. “I’m pulling up the traffic cameras now. Tony, are you tracking?”
Tony’s voice joins the channel from wherever he’s monitoring. “Already on it. I’ve got the plate. Give me five minutes.”
I stand in the empty service road with my gun at my side and slushy rain spotting the concrete around me.
My pulse is pounding, and everything in me is screaming to get in a car and follow.
But a chase through the streets of St. Petersburg at five in the morning serves no one. Bogdan has a damn good head start.
He saw us pull up; that’s why he didn’t answer Daria’s call. He must have cameras in the neighborhood.
The thought burns through me as I holster the Makarov and walk back inside.
Boris meets me on the warehouse floor. Blood streaks the concrete near the south entrance, and two of Eduard’s men are hauling a zip-tied prisoner toward the loading dock. His face tells me everything I need to know.
“We got eight of his people,” Boris announces. “Six in custody, two wounded. Eduard’s team found a safe full of financial records in the south office, plus three laptops and a filing cabinet stuffed with shipping manifests. Tony says it’s enough to dismantle the laundering network.”
“But we don’t have him.”
Boris hooks his thumbs into his vest and studies my face. “It’s not a loss, Pyotr. We gutted his operation. Every lieutenant, document, and account. He’s running with two men and whatever cash he grabbed on the way out. No infrastructure or protection. His uncle already cut him loose.”
I know Boris is right. Bogdan’s network is destroyed. The evidence we seized will bury anyone who ever worked with him, and the eight men in zip-ties downstairs will talk. They always do.
But Bogdan is still breathing, free, and capable of picking up a phone and calling Daria just to hear her gasp.
Daria.
She’s standing beside the vehicle with her phone still in one hand, staring at the warehouse. One of Boris’ men is three feet away. He probably tried to keep her inside.
The plan she argued for, and the confrontation she steeled herself to have, was gone before it started. Not because she failed, but because Bogdan is a coward surrounded by cowards.
I cross the service road in long strides and stop in front of her. Rain is freckling her jacket.
“What did you get?” she asks.
“Everything but him. His men, his records, and his network. Boris says it’s enough to destroy every operation Bogdan ever built.”
She stares past me at the warehouse where armed men are escorting prisoners into waiting vehicles. Then, her eyes come back to mine, and they’re filled with terror and tears.
Behind us, Boris barks orders at his men. Engines turn over. Radios squawk with updates from Tony’s surveillance feeds. The operation is pivoting from assault to pursuit, and every second counts.
But I give her this moment. Ten seconds of stillness in a parking lot that smells like rain and gunpowder.
Boris is right about one thing. A cornered predator is the most dangerous kind. Bogdan lost everything tonight. The only weapon he has left is the one he’s always been best at using.
Fear.
And he’s going to aim it straight at her.