15. Damir #2
Men move crates beneath harsh lights. Forklifts hum. The air smells of oil, cold metal, river damp, and cigarette smoke despite the fact that I have told them twice not to smoke near inventory. Someone will be punished for that later.
Tonight’s shipment matters.
Not because of the weapons themselves, though those are valuable enough, but because of the route. The Antonov-Sokolov alliance was meant to secure passage along this line within the month. Yesterday ended that possibility.
Now everyone will test the seams.
I step from the car and button my coat.
Nikolai meets us near the side entrance. “Boss.”
“What is late?”
“Two trucks.”
“Reason?”
“Driver says traffic police held them near the ring road.”
“At three in the morning?”
Nikolai’s mouth tightens. “Exactly.”
Mikhail looks at me. I feel the night change.
“Inside,” I say loudly, leaving no place for disobedience. “Now.”
We enter through the side door.
The first shot comes before it closes behind us. It hits the wall near Nikolai’s head, spraying brick dust across his shoulder.
For half a second, the warehouse freezes.
Then the windows explode. Gunfire tears through the building from the upper catwalk and the loading bay at once. Men shout. Crates splinter. One forklift jerks sideways and crashes into a stack of pallets. The overhead lights flicker as bullets chew through metal and glass.
We’ve been ambushed.
Mikhail grabs my arm, pulling me behind a concrete pillar as another burst of fire cuts across the space where I stood.
“Antonov?” he shouts over the noise.
“Too sloppy,” I say, drawing my gun. “Sokolov.”
Nikolai returns fire from behind a stack of crates, calm as ever, dropping one man near the upper railing. My men scatter into position, disciplined but caught by the first strike. We were expected. Not completely, or I would be dead already, but enough.
The late trucks were bait.
Dmitri, then. Drugged or not, humiliated men give orders from sickbeds if pride hurts worse than bullets.
A round strikes the pillar near my face. Concrete chips cut my cheek.
I smile.
Finally. Something simple.
Across the warehouse, a man in a dark coat moves along the catwalk, signaling with two fingers. Not Sokolov. Not one of Dmitri’s regular captains.
Mercenary.
Interesting.
“Mikhail,” I say.
“I see him.”
“Take the left.”
“You?”
“I am going up.”
“Damir—”
I’m already moving.
The wanting from the shower is gone now, burned clean by gunfire and cold purpose. This is a language I have spoken longer than desire. Angles. Cover. Breath. Trigger. Movement. The world narrows into bodies, bullets, and decisions that can’t be reconsidered after they are made.
I shoot one man through the throat near the stairs. Another through the knee before he can turn his rifle toward Lev. The warehouse fills with smoke and shouting.
Somewhere above, the mercenary captain sees me coming.
Mikhail swears behind me, but I don’t stop.
The metal stairs rattle under my weight as I take them two at a time, the railing cold against my wounded palm when I grab it to turn the corner.
Pain flashes up my arm, bright and clean, but there’s no time to care.
A man leans over the catwalk above me with a pistol, his mouth open in a shout I can’t hear over the roar of gunfire below.
I shoot first.
He drops hard against the railing, his weapon clattering through the bars and spinning across the concrete floor beneath us. One of my men kicks it away before a wounded attacker can reach for it.
The warehouse below becomes a shifting map of bodies and muzzle flashes.
Nikolai is behind the second forklift, using the engine block for cover while he fires in short, efficient bursts toward the loading bay.
Lev has dragged Anton behind a stack of crates and is pressing him down with one hand while returning fire with the other.
Mikhail moves left the way I told him to, low and fast, disappearing behind a row of metal shelving.
My eyes lift to the office windows overlooking the warehouse floor.
The glass is already shattered. Inside that office are route books, delivery codes, payment ledgers, names that don’t exist on official paper, and enough information to start three private wars if the wrong hands take it.
“Office,” I shout.
Nikolai hears me. So does the man on the catwalk.
The mercenary captain turns. He’s older than the others, maybe mid-forties, dark beard, close-cropped hair, no panic in him at all. He raises his weapon with both hands, not hurried, not sloppy.
I throw myself behind a steel support beam as the shot cracks past my shoulder.
I fire around the beam twice. He ducks back, and the bullets spark against the railing where his chest had been half a second earlier.
He’s fast. Not young-fast. Professional-fast. The kind of fast men learn from surviving long enough to know exactly how little time exists between mistake and death.
Below, someone screams.
One of mine.
I glance down and see a guard collapse near the loading dock, blood splashing across the gray floor beneath him. Another Volodin man drags him back by the collar while bullets chew through the crate in front of them.
The attackers press harder.
Too hard. Too focused.
They are not here to scare me. They are here for something.
The captain moves again. I catch the flicker of him between two stacks of pallets on the upper level and go after him, keeping low, gun up. He fires once, misses because I shift right instead of left, then disappears into the narrow passage between the catwalk and the old storage rooms.
I follow. The noise changes in the passage, the gunfire below becoming muffled by corrugated walls and old insulation. The air up here is hotter, smelling of dust, oil, and cordite. My shoes strike the grated floor with careful, quiet steps now.
A shadow moves beyond the open storage door. I stop before crossing the threshold.
I can hear someone breathing behind the door. He is waiting at the wrong angle, too eager, convinced I will step into his sight line because most men do.
I shoot through the thin wall beside the door.
After his body hits the floor inside with a dull sound, I enter. Empty shelves. Broken chair. A small desk covered in dust. The dead attacker lies near a stack of old tarps, one hand still clutching a knife he did not have time to use.
I turn his wrist with my shoe.
No tattoo. No family mark. No Sokolov crest.
Nothing.
I frown. Who are these men?
My phone vibrates once in my pocket.
Not a call. A message.
Mikhail: Back office breached. Two inside.
I’m already moving.
The captain appears at the far end of the passage, exactly where I expected him and faster than I prefer. He has changed weapons. Short rifle now. Black. Unmarked. Expensive.
He fires. I slam into the wall as rounds cut through the metal near my ribs, sparks jumping in the narrow space. One grazes my coat, tugging fabric but missing flesh. The sound is deafening in the corridor.
I return fire as I move.
Not at him. At the overhead light.
Glass bursts above him. Darkness drops over the passage in fragments. He shifts instinctively, adjusting to the sudden change.
He’s distracted for half a second, but that’s enough for me. I close the distance before he can reset his aim.
He swings the rifle toward me. I catch the barrel with my left hand, ignoring the pain in my palm, and drive my right fist into his throat.
He grunts, staggers back, but doesn’t drop.
He’s too experienced for that. His knee comes up toward my ribs; I twist, take it against my hip instead of my stomach, and slam him into the railing. The metal groans.
Below us, gunfire erupts again near the office.
The captain reaches for the blade at his belt. I grab his wrist. For one second, we strain against each other, close enough that I can see the pale scar running from his ear into his beard. His eyes are flat, not afraid or angry.
He’s not here for revenge.
He’s here for a job.
“Who hired you?” I ask.
He smiles through his teeth. Wrong answer.
I headbutt him. His nose breaks with a wet crack. Blood runs over his mouth. He tries to bring the blade up anyway, so I twist his wrist until the knife drops through the railing and falls to the floor below.
Then I hook my hand into the front of his vest and slam him against the rail again. This time, the old metal gives. For a moment, his weight hangs backward over open air, one boot scraping uselessly on the grated floor.
His first real flicker of fear appears.
There. Finally.
“Name,” I say.
His lips move. Gunfire below swallows the word.
I pull him forward just enough that he thinks I may let him live. “Again.”
His eyes cut past my shoulder.
That saves my life.
I drop as a bullet tears through the space where my head was.
The captain uses the moment to wrench free and throw himself sideways. I roll behind a stack of metal drums as another attacker fires from the far end of the passage. This one is young, nervous now, his rifle kicking too high.
I shoot him in the chest, and he falls backward through the open door behind him. When I turn again, the captain is gone. A trail of blood leads toward the back stairs. I go after it.
Mikhail’s voice comes over the comm in my ear, rough with exertion. “Office secure. One dead, one breathing.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing. We stopped them at the cabinets.”
“Check the safe.”
A pause.
Then, “Safe intact.”
“Then why breach the office?”
“I’m asking the one breathing.”
A scream follows faintly through the comm.
I reach the back stairs in time to see the captain limp down toward the loading bay. He moves well even injured, one hand pressed to his ribs, blood marking the railing where he touches it.
He fires twice over his shoulder without looking.
One shot misses wide. The other hits my arm, not too deep, but a hot slice across the outside of my bicep, enough to make my grip tighten around the gun.
I keep moving.