Chapter 33 Pyotr
Pyotr
Dmitri picks up on the second ring, which tells me he’s been waiting.
“Tony traced the call,” I began right away. “Cell tower northwest of Vyborg. Bogdan’s headed for the Finnish border.”
“How far out?”
“Based on the tower ping, maybe forty minutes from the crossing. Could be an hour if he’s sticking to back roads. I’m willing to bet he knows we have cameras, plates, and every surveillance tool Tony can throw at a moving vehicle.”
Dmitri is quiet for three seconds. I count them because I know this man, and three seconds of silence from Dmitri Kozlov means he’s running the math on every outcome before he opens his mouth.
“Federal warrants?” he asks.
“Tony got the paperwork to the attorney two hours ago. Fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. But processing takes time, and the border doesn’t care about pending warrants.
If Bogdan crosses into Finland before those warrants hit the system, extradition becomes a diplomatic headache that could drag on for months.
” I press my knuckles against the counter. “Years, even.”
“He knows that.”
“Of course, he does. It’s the only play he has left. Finland is his exit ramp, and he’s speeding toward it right now.”
Boris is standing across the kitchen with his arms folded, listening to my half of the conversation. We’ve already discussed this, and the nod he gives me when I glance over confirms he still agrees.
“What are you proposing?” Dmitri asks, though I suspect he already knows the answer.
“We intercept before the border. I take Boris and a team northwest, and Tony feeds us coordinates in real time while he tracks Bogdan’s phone. We cut him off somewhere between Vyborg and the crossing, on one of those rural stretches where there’s no traffic and no witnesses.”
Another, longer pause. I hear the creak of leather, probably Dmitri settling deeper into his chair at the compound.
“What that means for us is a narrow window, when nobody is riding to Bogdan’s rescue, and nobody will ask uncomfortable questions about what happens to him.
But that window closes the second Bogdan sets foot on Finnish soil.
After that, he becomes an international incident, and international incidents invite the kind of attention I cannot afford right now. ”
“Then let me move,” I say. “Every minute we spend on this call is a minute he’s closer to that crossing.”
“How many men do you need?”
“Boris has four here in the city. Eduard and Marat can meet us on the road with three more. All of us against a cornered man who watched his empire collapse twelve hours ago and has nothing left to lose. The last time I underestimated Bogdan, he stalked Daria and Kira to the train station and scared her half to death. I won’t make that mistake twice. ”
The mention of the train does what I intend it to do. It proved that his obsession overrides self-preservation.
Dmitri lets out a slow breath. “What about Daria?”
My gaze drifts down the hallway toward the bedroom. Floorboards groan under her feet as she paces back and forth. That phone call with Bogdan did something to her. I could tell the second it happened.
“I’ll leave one of Boris’ guys posted at the apartment door.”
“Pyotr.” His voice drops half a register. “I’m not going to give you a specific instruction that someone could read back to me in a courtroom. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
I understand perfectly. Dmitri has built his empire by never leaving fingerprints.
The man doesn’t order killings or authorize violence.
Instead, he creates conditions where the people who work for him know what needs to happen and take responsibility for making it happen.
It’s the reason he’s never spent a night in a cell despite running one of the largest Bratva families in western Russia.
“I understand,” I say.
“Good. Then handle this however you see fit. Bring me a result, not a problem. And Pyotr? Do it before he reaches that border.”
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone and meet Boris’ eyes across the kitchen. He’s already moving toward the laptop where Tony’s tracking feed blinks on the screen.
“Green?” Boris asks.
“As green as Dmitri ever gets. He wants it done before the crossing. No specifics, no written instructions, no trail.”
Boris grunts. “That’s his way of saying put Bogdan in the ground without actually saying it.”
“That’s what it is. Can you get Eduard and Marat rolling?”
“Already texted them while you were on the phone. Eduard is twenty minutes from the M10 on-ramp. Marat is closer. They’ll caravan south of Vyborg and wait for our coordinates.” Boris pulls his vest from the back of a chair and shrugs into it. “I need to grab gear from the car.”
He’s out the door before I answer.
“Tony,” I call toward the laptop.
“Still here.” His voice comes through the speaker. “Bogdan’s phone is pinging every four minutes. He’s on the A181 heading northwest at roughly ninety kilometers an hour. Sticking just under the speed limit, which is smart. A speeding ticket and a traffic stop are the last things he wants.”
“Can you project where he’ll be in six hours?”
“Assuming he stays on this route without stopping, he reaches the Torfyanovka crossing sometime between four and five this afternoon. But here’s what matters.
” Keys click on his end, rapid and rhythmic.
“There’s a stretch between Vyborg and the border.
About thirty kilometers of forest with minimal development.
A handful of logging roads, one gas station, and a whole lot of nothing.
That’s your best ground if you’re going to box him in.
We’ll send a chopper to get you most of the way there, and we’ll have a car waiting so you can close in. ”
“Send the map to Boris’ phone.”
“Sent. I’m also monitoring police scanners along the A181 corridor. If Bogdan gets pulled over or changes direction, you’ll know the second I do.”
“Good. Stay on that feed and don’t lose him.”
“I won’t.”
The laptop gets closed halfway before I head for the bedroom to grab my bag.
My duffel is still packed from the warehouse operation, but I unzip it on the bed and recheck every item.
Two handguns, five loaded magazines, a field med kit, a box of zip-ties, a change of clothes, and a hunting knife I’ve carried since my first year in the service.
Counting the rounds twice is a habit because counting them once is how men end up dead.
My Makarov goes into my waistband. I tuck the backup piece into the duffel’s side pocket, its grip facing up for a fast draw, then test the zipper three times to make sure it doesn’t stick.
I’m loading the last magazine when the floorboard behind me groans.
Daria is standing in the doorway with her coat zipped to the collar and the boots she bought two weeks ago on her feet. The overnight bag from the hall closet hangs from one shoulder. Dry eyes and a set chin. I’ve learned that look means she’s made up her mind about something I won’t like.
“No,” I declare before she opens her mouth.
“I’m not asking permission, Pyotr.”
“This isn’t the warehouse. There’s no armored SUV with bulletproof glass, no perimeter team, and no extraction plan. You are not coming.”
“I know what this is.”
“Then you know why you need to stay here.”
She pulls the bag from her shoulder and lets it thump against the hardwood. “I just told that man I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. If I sit in this apartment and wait for someone else to finish what I started, every word I said on that phone becomes a lie.”
“It’ll keep you alive. That’s what matters.”
“I need to be there when it ends. Not to fight or get in the way. I need to watch it happen, because if I hear about it secondhand from a phone call, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if it was real.”
Every tactical instinct I own tells me to refuse. To plant her on the couch, station a guard at the front door, and head north without looking back. Dmitri told me to keep her here. Boris would say the same thing. Any rational person would.
But Daria isn’t asking to be protected. She’s asking to be present for the end of the thing that has been tearing her apart for six years, and telling her no feels like one more man making decisions about her life without her consent.
I stare at her for a long time. She doesn’t blink or fidget or add another word to the argument because she knows the case is already made.
I hold her stare for one more second, then bend down, grab her bag, and swing it over my shoulder next to mine.
“Boris is going to lose his mind,” I mutter as I brush past her into the hall.
“Boris lost his mind when you let me ride along the first time,” she calls after me. “He survived then. He’ll survive now.”
From the kitchen, Boris’ voice carries down the corridor. “I can hear both of you. And no, I won’t survive. For the record, this is a terrible idea, and I want that documented somewhere.”
“Noted,” I reply without slowing down.
“Noted and ignored,” Daria adds.
Boris snorts. “We leave in forty-five minutes.”
I set the bags by the front door and turn back to Daria.
She’s standing in the hallway with her hands at her sides, and for half a second, every version of her I’ve known overlaps.
First, the woman who flinched when I raised my voice during our first week together.
Then, the one who sat in an armored car and dialed her abuser’s number with steady hands.
And finally, the woman who screamed every word she’d swallowed for six years into a phone and then hurled it across the kitchen.
“Forty-five minutes,” I tell her. “Make your calls. Talk to Kira. Tell her you love her.”
Something fractures behind her eyes, but she nods once and reaches for her phone.
I watch her dial, then pull the bedroom door shut to give her privacy.
From the kitchen, Boris is rattling off rendezvous coordinates to Eduard, and Tony’s tracking feed is pulsing on the laptop screen. Bogdan Lebedev is running north at eighty-seven kilometers an hour, and we are forty-five minutes behind him.
That gap is going to close.