21. Nikolai
NIKOLAI
I was sleeping peacefully when my phone rang, jerking me out of Kira's arms where she had finally settled against my chest. I swiped to answer and Vlad's voice barked over the line.
"We got 'em, Boss. Markin's shipment is here… And you're gonna love this. It's packed full of cocaine."
I peeled myself out from under the comforter and found my slacks and shirt in the darkness, not answering him until I stood in the hallway with the phone pinched between my ear and my shoulder, sliding my pants on. "Does the manifest show where it's going?"
"No but we got the origination. Looks like it's Cartel drugs."
"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t do anything until I'm there.
" I hung up and pulled the door shut quietly, then paused for a second.
If I left her unguarded, would she run? But she had access to my phone the whole time I was off getting Anya to help her with her sour stomach and she never attempted to call for help.
I had to risk this and trust that she finally knew she belonged with me.
I moved silently through the house, finding my car keys and my gun, then slipped out.
The shipping yard was chaos when I pulled up.
Vlad had two of our dock guys standing guard near a container on the eastern end of the yard that had been separated from the rest and moved behind a row of empties where it couldn't be seen from the main road.
Gregg was there too, leaning against the container with his arms folded, and when he saw me walking across the gravel he pushed off the container and straightened, looking more alive than I'd seen him in weeks.
"Tell me what we've got," I grumbled. I didn't like being dragged from my sleep in the middle of the night, but if it meant bringing my worst enemy down, then it was worth it.
"Manifest says machine parts out of Guatemala but the weight was off by six hundred kilos, so our guys pulled it for inspection like you ordered.
" Gregg and I paced toward the door of the container and rounded the front to see Yakov and Vlad there.
"When they popped the seal and moved the front crates, it took about thirty seconds to find it. "
Vlad had the container doors open, staring into them with glassy, fatigued eyes.
The front half was packed with legitimate wooden crates stamped with Spanish labels and customs markings, all of it looking exactly like the industrial equipment the paperwork described.
But behind the first two rows, stacked floor to ceiling, were wrapped white bricks, tightly sealed in plastic, packed into black duffel bags that had been wedged into every available inch of space behind the decoy cargo.
One of them had spilled open during transport, and a few bricks lay scattered on top of the parts.
"Blow, Boss," Vlad said. "A lot of it. We estimate two hundred kilos from what we can see, and there's easily space for double that in there."
I whistled through my teeth as I stepped into the container and pulled one of the duffels forward and unzipped it.
The bricks were uniform, professionally pressed, with a small stamp on each one that looked like a playing card.
"You're not wrong… The Salazar Cartel sent this shit…
And we're sitting on fifty million at least if you're right about there being almost eight hundred kilos.
" I turned, locking eyes with Vlad. "Whose name is on the manifest? " I asked.
It was obvious to me that this was the shipment from a big player, and I knew very few families who thought they could move this much nose candy, and I was one of them. After he took my shipment off the road, he owed me. Maybe not this much, but how was he going to stop me?
"Vostok Trading LLC…" Gregg nodded at the black duffels. "But this came from Rizone Pharmaceuticals."
"A known player for the Cartel." I sighed, staring at the mess.
Fucking with Cartel drugs wouldn't end well for us, but Salazar would never know who took his drugs, especially if we sicked him on Markin as the fall guy.
And I knew just how to do that without getting caught.
That was assuming Salazar hadn't been paid yet.
I zipped the duffel, dropped it back onto the pile, and stepped out of the container. Yakov watched me with stoic eyes, waiting for orders, but Gregg was antsy. As green as he was in shit like this, and after having been shot while fighting these bastards, he wanted revenge.
"I say we call the fucking cops," he said. He was too young and eager. He thought it was that simple, but I'd been around in this business long enough to wince at how stupid that sounded. "We let them take Markin down. He goes to prison and this whole war is over."
"And then what?" I glowered at him and he blinked.
"You think the Cartel who shipped this isn't gonna get wrapped up in the shit?
" I stalked toward him, knowing he had to be taught properly.
"Salazar's fingers are all over that and the DEA would shred every container on this dock.
We'd have our own shipments seized in a raid.”
The kid dropped his head, cheeks blazing with anger as I tore into him.
"If we turn this in, every criminal organization in this city finds out we narked.
The Cartels come after us first. Then every crew that's ever moved product through this port pulls their business because they can't trust us to keep our mouths shut.
We'd be finished inside a month. Not from Markin. From everyone else."
"Yeah," Gregg mumbled, sulking because I put him in his place. "But what do we do with it, then?"
"This much blow?" I shook my head and almost laughed. "Markin's on the fucking hook… No way he paid the Cartel that much money already. When this goes missing, he'll know who took it and he'll be the one hunted down when he can't pay them back."
"They're going to come looking for it," Yakov said.
"Let 'em. By the time Markin figures out where it went, it'll be locked down somewhere he can't reach." I took a step back and stared into the dark container as Vlad pulled out his phone.
A shipment this big dwarfed what he stole from me. There was still a chance Salazar would come looking, but if we played our cards right, the only thing that would happen would be us taking over Markin's deal with the Cartel and Markin going belly up.
Vlad got a truck lined up while I helped the men unload the rest of the bags from the container. It took us thirty minutes, and by the time we had the final bag of what appeared to be well in excess of the estimated four hundred kilos, I was drenched in sweat.
The truck backed into place, along with a decoy truck to be driven by Gregg, and we started the process again, lifting bag after heavy bag of plastic-wrapped powder into the truck. By two in the morning, the shipment was secured and we pulled the door of the truck shut.
"Get on the road and tell me when this is secured.
We'll store it in the hangar for tonight and parse it out in smaller moves over the next week.
By next Monday, that shit will be hitting the stores and we'll be raking in the cash.
" I ran a hand through my sweat-damp hair and Vlad jerked his chin up, gesturing for Gregg to follow him.
"Go get some sleep, Boss," he said, taking the truck keys in hand, moving to the driver's door.
Yakov stood next to me while two trucks took off, the decoy going toward the western exit while the shipment moved east. And I stood for a moment watching north over the river while my mind stewed about how this would go down when Markin rocked up hoping to find his drugs. But I didn't have to wait long.
"Uh, Boss?" Yakov nudged my shoulder, and I spun around to see a black SUV roll in through the western gate. The lights were off and it moved slowly. Whoever drove had a hand spotlight, shining it at crate after crate.
"It's gotta be Markin," I snarked, shaking my head.
We had to get out of here. "Let's go," I growled, already moving toward the car.
But the men in the SUV spotted us almost immediately.
One of the rear doors flew open and a guy leaned out with a rifle, muzzle flashing before the first shots cracked across the dockyard.
Bullets pinged off the metal crates behind me, sending sparks flying into the dark.
“Run!” I yelled, shoving Yakov hard toward the car we’d left near the warehouse. He didn’t need to be told twice. We sprinted across the pavement hard while more gunfire ripped the night apart. I heard the SUV’s engine roar as it accelerated straight at us, tires screeching.
Yakov reached the sedan first, yanking the driver’s door open and diving in.
I slid across the hood, slamming my shoulder into the passenger door as another burst of shots shattered the rear window.
Glass exploded inward, raining down on the seats as I yanked my own door shut just as Yakov cranked the key and the engine snarled to life.
“Floor it!” I barked, ducking as a round punched through the trunk.
The sedan lurched forward, rear end fishtailing on the loose gravel that dusted the pavement before the tires bit and we shot toward the eastern gate.
The SUV swung around in a tight arc, its headlights finally snapping on and pinning us like rabbits.
More shots hammered out—three, four, five in quick succession.
One clipped the side mirror, ripping it clean off, and another lodged in the passenger side rear quarter panel.
"Fuck," I grumbled, pulling my weapon. "It's gotta be Markin's men. They were coming to get the shipment and we got it first."
"We should pull them away from the shipment route. We can't have them following the truck." Yakov wasn't wrong. He blasted through the open gate doing sixty, and the chain-link fence rattled as we tore it from the hinges.
Then he wrenched the wheel left onto the service road that ran alongside the river, heading deeper into the industrial stretch of Brooklyn.
The SUV stayed glued to our tail, maybe thirty yards back, its driver pushing hard.
I twisted in my seat, Glock already in my hand, and fired three shots out the shattered rear window, but the shots went wild.
Still, they forced the SUV to swerve, buying us a couple of extra seconds.
“Faster, they’re right on us!”
“I’m going as fast as this piece of shit will go!
” he snapped back, knuckles white on the wheel.
The road blurred past as he weaved between parked cars as the road narrowed, potholes jarring the car hard enough to bounce me round the seat.
And another gunshot from behind buried itself in the dashboard between us, making Yakov swerve.
"Hold it steady or I can't get a good shot!" I braced myself, firing back, and I knew I hit the radiator. But it didn't slow them down one bit. The bastards seemed to speed up.
Blue and red lights suddenly flooded the mirrors as two NYPD cruisers screamed out from a side street half a block ahead. They must have been patrolling the area or responding to the initial shots and one of them cut across our path, trying to box us in.
Yakov swore in Russian and jerked the wheel right, hopping the curb onto a wider avenue that fed toward the expressway.
The sedan bounced violently, bottoming out with a scrape of metal on concrete and throwing me into the ceiling.
Yakov had wisely buckled in, but it knocked me hard enough that I saw stars for a moment, and after all of that, the SUV didn’t slow.
It rammed straight into the side of the first police car, metal screeching as both vehicles spun. The second cruiser tried to pursue us but got caught in the mess, its lights flashing wildly as it fishtailed and slid sideways into the wreckage.
"Shit, did you see that?" I blurted, almost laughing as I watched steam pouring from the SUV and the cop car doors opening while we sailed away into the night.
“Take the next exit,” I said over the roar of wind whipping through the broken windows.
Then I turned and sat down properly, using my jacket sleeve to wipe the sweat off my forehead.
The shipment had gotten away clean, so even if they got this license plate, they had nothing.
My cars were secure, and no one could track us back to my house.
Yakov pulled onto the freeway where the road noise was so loud we'd never hear each other, and I sat back in the seat letting the chilly night air whipping around me cool me off.
We zipped down the freeway a few miles until he pulled off at an exit, slowing for a red light at the end of the exit ramp.
"You good?" he asked with a stupid grin on his face, and I rolled my eyes at him while smirking.
"Thought they had us for a second," I said and sucked in a deep breath. "You think Markin's men saw those trucks leave?"
A cop rolled through the intersection going perpendicular to us, and both of us held our breath for a second, praying the cops didn't see our busted up window and start the chase over again, but they kept going without stopping.
"Does it matter?" Yakov asked. "They're busted. They’re gonna get hauled in by those cops and they'll be locked up long enough that by the time they get to even talk to Markin, the drugs will be hidden, maybe parsed out."
He laughed and it was infectious. I had to laugh too.
One of the greatest heists I'd ever pulled off and God, what a thrill.
When the light turned green, he eased through the intersection and chose a back street rather than a main thoroughfare, which was wise given how obvious it was that we'd been shot at, and I sat back and closed my eyes, feeling the adrenaline fading.
"Take me home to my beautiful wife, Yakov… I need sleep."
"Yes, sir," he said, still with a hint of mirth in his tone.
I'd sleep better for the next few hours than I had in months.
Markin would come crawling and when he did, I'd have his daughter and his drugs.