16. Ruslan #2
“How’s that possible?” I ask. Goddamnit, I can’t let him escape.
Pavel keeps his hand to his earpiece. His face has tightened in the last three seconds. “He went behind the shed.”
“He was already near the shed.”
“Yes, but there’s a blind side. Malik says he crossed behind it and didn’t come out.”
Stepan looks toward the kindergarten fence. “Then there’s another exit.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Pavel says.
I look at the painted wall, the garden area beyond it, the small playhouse, the warm windows full of families.
Pavel listens again, then says, “Malik is moving closer.”
“No,” I say.
Pavel repeats quickly, “Do not move closer.”
Stepan already has his hand near his weapon. “If Lenkov has a tunnel, a gap in the fence, anything behind that shed, he can leave with the cases before we see him.”
“He can’t carry six cases alone,” I say.
“No,” Stepan says. “But he can open the way for whoever is waiting.”
That’s the part that bothers me.
The van by the service gate is too obvious now. It has no plates, two men nearby, exactly the kind of bait my people would watch first. Lenkov is nervous, yes, but he’s not stupid enough to plan a move with only one visible escape.
Pavel’s voice drops. “Andrei says parents are starting to come out.”
I look toward the main entrance.
The program is ending. Families begin spilling into the evening in small, noisy clusters.
Children with paper crowns. Parents carrying bags, paper cards, half-eaten cupcakes.
A little boy runs ahead until his father catches him by the hood of his jacket.
A woman laughs near the gate while trying to hold three coats and a plate wrapped in foil.
My phone sits heavy in my pocket. The photo is still in my head. Two girls. Hands linked. One all glitter and daring, the other serious enough to judge the world and find it badly organized.
Somewhere in that crowd is the woman from the number.
I don’t know her face.
That makes the whole scene worse.
“Where is the watcher by the van?” I ask.
Pavel listens. “Still smoking. Malik says he looks calm.”
“Too calm,” Stepan says.
“Yes,” I say.
A calm man beside a van with no plates while his partner vanishes behind a shed is not waiting for stolen cases. He is waiting for us to look at him.
I open the car door.
Stepan catches my sleeve. “Ruslan.”
“We move now.”
“Families are outside.”
“That’s why we move now.”
He understands after half a second. If this is bait, it will not wait for the street to clear politely. If Lenkov has slipped away behind the shed, he’s either running or setting the next piece in motion.
Both are problems.
I step out into the cold. Pavel gets out on the other side, still speaking into his earpiece. Stepan follows me, close enough to stop me if he has to, far enough that he can draw if he needs to.
I look once toward the main entrance. Parents are loading children into cars. The teachers stand by the door, smiling, waving, tired. Nothing about it looks dangerous unless you know where to look.
Then the white van’s rear lights blink once.
Not on.
Just a flash. A signal.
“Stepan,” I say.
“I saw.”
Pavel says, “Malik lost the second man.”
I stop. “The smoker?”
Pavel’s face is pale now. “Yes.”
“How?”
“He ducked behind the van. Malik shifted for angle and—”
The first shot cracks through the evening.
For a fraction of a second, no one understands what they heard.
Then the second shot comes, and the world breaks open.
A window near the back of the kindergarten shatters.
Someone screams from the front entrance.
Parents drop bags, grab children, run without direction because panic never chooses the best path first. A car alarm starts wailing.
Paper crowns scatter across the pavement as a group of children is shoved behind a parked minivan by a teacher who moves faster than most trained men I know.
“Down!” Stepan shouts.
I move toward the gate.
Not away. Toward it. Because the shots are coming from the service side, and the children are at the front, and if the men behind this want chaos, the fastest way to make them pay for it is to get between them and the crowd.
Another shot hits the brick pillar near the entrance, sending chips of stone into the air.
Pavel fires once toward the service lane.
I catch movement near the back fence. A man in a dark jacket. Not Lenkov. Too tall.
Then a muzzle flash from the mechanic’s shed.
My mind catches up. Fuck it. We were expected tonight. It was a fucking setup.
“Left!” I shout.
Stepan turns and fires toward the shed.
The crowd at the front is still moving, screaming, stumbling over dropped bags and children’s artwork. I catch movement from the corner of my eye, but I’m distracted by the children. More specifically, I’m distracted by the little girls I saw in the picture. Are they here?
The shot comes from the mechanic’s shed.
I see the flash first. Then my leg gives out.
There is a strange half second where my body understands before I do. My right foot slips, my knee folds, and the pavement comes up too fast. I catch the side of the car with one hand, but my grip slides off the wet metal.
Pain opens through my thigh, hot and deep.
I hit the ground hard.
For a moment, all I hear is noise without really registering it. Screaming from the front of the kindergarten. Car doors slamming. Someone shouting a child’s name again and again. The sharp crack of another shot somewhere behind me. Tires screeching from the service lane.
I press my hand to my leg. Blood warms my palm immediately.
Not fatal.
Bad, but not fatal.
That is the first useful thought.
The second is that I am alone.
Not fully alone. My men are here. Somewhere. But the first shot scattered the line. The crowd pushed between us.
Pavel’s voice comes through the chaos from too far away, cut off by gunfire and people running. “Rus—”
Then nothing.
I turn my head, trying to find Stepan. A car blocks my view. A mother drags a child behind it, crouched low, both of them crying. A teacher waves families toward the entrance with both arms, her voice breaking as she keeps shouting, “Inside, inside, please get inside.”
I try to stand. My leg refuses. Pain tears upward, and I drop back against the pavement, teeth clenched hard enough that my jaw aches.
The white van flashes past the gap between two parked cars and disappears down the service lane. For half a second, I think of the cases.
Then another shot hits the car near my shoulder, and glass breaks above me.
I roll clumsily, dragging the wounded leg, and get behind the rear tire. My breath comes rough now. Too rough. I press harder above the wound and look toward the shed.
The shooter is gone.
No. Not gone.
Moving.
I catch a shape slipping behind the dark side of the mechanic’s shed, calm and fast, weapon low. He’s not firing at the families. He’s not firing wild. He doesn’t look panicked.
He came for one thing.
Me.
I reach for my gun.
It’s not there.
The fall must have knocked it loose, or someone kicked it away in the rush. I look once, quickly, and see it lying near the edge of the lane, too far to reach without exposing myself.
Another wave of people runs between me and the gate. Small shoes. Paper crowns. A dropped cardigan. A phone ringing somewhere on the ground. Everything is too loud.
I try to pull myself farther behind the car, but my leg drags uselessly, leaving a dark smear on the pavement. The movement makes the edges of my vision flicker.
“Stepan,” I mutter.
No answer.
Only shouting.
Only the van getting farther away.
Only the shooter somewhere out of sight.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and for one absurd second, I think of the picture. Two little girls in a classroom, one smiling, one trying not to. The woman from the number asking me to delete it.
Then pain snaps me back.
I grip the edge of the tire and try once more to push myself up. My leg buckles before I get halfway. The world dips. I end up on one elbow, breathing hard, blood pooling warm beneath my knee, the painted fence swimming in and out of focus beyond the cars.
Children are still crying.
The van is gone.
My men are out of sight.
And as my vision blurs at the edges, one thought settles heavily through the pain.
I have been betrayed.