Chapter 31
ARTUR
The first blast removes the east gate behind us.
Heat punches across my back as the steel frame folds into the service lane, throwing sparks beneath the warehouse awning while a delivery truck rocks on its suspension.
The pressure drives me against a concrete barrier and empties my lungs, leaving the right side of my chest burning where old scars meet fresh impact.
Gunfire begins before the debris stops moving.
Rounds strike the truck body in hard metallic bursts, tearing holes along the route Ivan’s map identified as the safest approach. My right ear carries only a high note after the explosion, but the left catches Boris’s forward observer shouting from beyond the wall.
“Cover west. Move in pairs.”
Eight Dymov men entered the perimeter with me, Niko taking the rear position near the ruined gate. Beside the truck where the blast threw them lie two others. One is moving while blood spreads around the second man’s head.
The warehouse doors stand open ahead, revealing an empty floor under hanging work lights, but no weapons crates wait inside. Strips of packing material cling to the concrete where the genuine shipment rested, and explosive wire runs through the expected Dymov approach like a signature.
Fresh tire marks cross the floor toward a loading door on the north side, proving heavy vehicles departed recently. The convoy report was genuine as well, but it moved early because someone wanted our decision compressed into the minutes between watching weapons leave and losing them on the road.
Ivan knew I’d refuse a blind assault, but he also knew I’d permit a narrow perimeter entry to confirm the shipment, especially after he placed Katie’s safe house within the possible route. The trap has been shaped around my restraint as carefully as it was shaped around fear.
The manifest was real, the weapons are gone, and everything left behind was arranged for us.
I fire toward the muzzle flare above the western office, forcing the shooter away from the window before signaling the nearest pair toward a drainage wall. We can’t retreat through the east gate, and the exposed service lane offers no cover beyond the truck already taking rounds.
“South maintenance exit,” I tell Anton. “Check it without crossing the doorway.”
He moves low along the barrier with another guard behind him; there is no heroic run through open fire. We gain ground by keeping concrete between our bodies and the elevated shooters, advancing only when return fire makes them retreat.
Niko reaches me after dragging the surviving man from beside the truck. Dust covers his hair as it did after the casino blast, though blood now darkens one sleeve where metal opened the skin.
“Rear observer sent a withdrawal code,” he says. “It arrived after the gate blew.”
Someone warned us.
I think of Katie immediately because she asked for twenty-four hours without giving me a reason, then returned to her phone whenever she believed I couldn’t hear. Whatever she was trying to prove has become urgent enough for Boris to interrupt a blackout.
“Can the observer see the south wall?” I ask.
“Negative. Smoke covers the relay.”
“Then he waits. No transmission until we clear the perimeter.”
Niko nods before looking toward the open warehouse. “The young guy is dead.”
Denis joined six months ago, two weeks after Niko. I remember signing the household rotation without learning that his mother still washed his uniforms whenever he visited her apartment.
“We take him when the lane closes,” I say.
The next burst comes from the roofline, and concrete spits beside my hand while Anton reaches the south exit, tests the handle from cover, then signals that the door is wired.
Pasha knows our route because someone gave him Ivan’s recommendation. He also knows our withdrawal procedures and closed the secondary exit before we arrived.
The south door carried ordinary warehouse rust except around the new wiring, which means the explosive was installed after the weapons departed.
Shooters chose positions covering the east barrier and the drainage channel, but the channel received fewer rounds until we entered it.
They expected us to choose the service lane first, exactly as Ivan advised.
The evidence continues pointing toward him while memory resists, returning me to the casino where Ivan pulled me beneath steel before bleeding beside me and speaking Misha’s name.
He warned that someone inside the family had chosen Katie as the price of my mistakes, and if he built both attacks, he used one rescue to make the second trap believable.
I look toward Niko. “Drainage channel along the west wall. Where does it end?”
“Street culvert beyond the fence.”
“Width?”
“Enough for one man without gear.”
We still need body armor with shooters holding the elevation, but we can abandon our packs. The channel offers poor cover for sixty feet before deepening near the fence: dangerous, but not suicidal.
“Anton takes the wounded first,” I say. “Two men suppress the roof. Niko holds the rear with me.”
We move when our fire darkens the western office. Anton lowers the injured guard into the channel, followed by two men carrying only rifles and medical supplies. The shooters adjust after the first pair reaches the deeper section, sending rounds into the concrete lip as sparks cut through smoke.
Denis’s body lies beside the truck while Pavel holds the barrier nearest him, firing toward the roof whenever a muzzle flash appears. Pavel can’t recover the younger man without crossing twelve feet of open lane, so he waits for the suppression signal with one hand stretched toward Denis’s boot.
The gesture lasts only a second, but it tells me they trained together, rode in the same vehicle, perhaps argued over whose mother packed the better food during overnight assignments. Men become intimate through danger without acquiring language for it.
A second device explodes beneath the delivery truck.
The fuel tank ruptures without igniting, pouring diesel across the lane as the truck body lifts before crashing onto one side; metal tears through the barrier. A fragment strikes my ribs, folding me over the wall while pain spreads through my right side in a bright sheet.
Air refuses to enter for two breaths; I taste blood where my teeth catch my tongue, then force one shallow breath through the pressure before pushing upright.
Niko grabs my vest. “Can you move?”
“Yes.”
“Your definition remains unreliable.”
The line belongs in Dally’s rather than a killing ground.
At the mansion, he once burned Katie’s toast because he believed the commercial machine required a certification nobody had given him.
She ate the unburned half, returned the black edge to his plate, and finally made him smile by calling the exchange remedial training.
Katie will ask whether he survived.
“Get into the channel,” I tell him.
“Rear position.”
“That was an order.”
“You assigned it to both of us.” His expression remains solemn beneath the dust. “I have one correct interpretation.”
Despite the pain in my ribs, I nearly laugh.
Movement appears on the distant catwalk inside the warehouse.
Igor steps beneath one of the hanging work lights, turning the scarred side of his face toward the open door so I can’t mistake him for another shooter. The old orbital injury pulls one eye slightly lower. He lifts his rifle with deliberate slowness, wanting recognition before the shot.
I drag Niko down as the round strikes the barrier.
Igor fires again, driving fragments across my cheek before I return two shots toward the catwalk rail; one hits steel beside his hand. The other breaks the light above him, forcing his body backward into darkness.
Pursuing him would require crossing the empty warehouse floor beneath shooters positioned for that decision. I keep my rifle trained on the catwalk until he loses every clear angle, then signal the remaining men toward the drainage channel.
“Move.”
Niko goes last ahead of me, lowering himself over the concrete edge as Anton’s group reaches the deeper section. I turn toward Denis and the second body beside the truck. Pavel died when the second device threw metal through his throat.
Leaving them violates every promise men believe when they enter my service, but staying gives Pasha two more bodies.
I attach a location beacon beneath the barrier, marking where recovery must begin, then step toward the channel.
The catwalk rifle fires once.
Niko jerks against the concrete edge.
For a moment he remains upright with both hands gripping the channel wall, his expression more surprised than hurt. Blood appears across the front of his vest where the round entered above the upper plate, then his knees strike the concrete.
The shot entered where neck meets shoulder, crossing vessels no field dressing can close. I know this before reaching him, yet knowledge can’t stop my hands from searching beneath the collar or pressing into blood that feels hot against the cold runoff.
I catch his shoulder before he falls backward.
The weight drags both of us into the shallow channel. Water blackened by industrial runoff soaks my trousers while I press a hand beneath his collar, searching for the wound. Blood surges between my fingers with each weakening beat.
“Stay with me.”
His eyes find mine, though the right one can’t hold focus. “Mrs. Dymova will blame the syrup.”
The breath carrying the words doesn’t return.
His eyes remain open toward the broken warehouse lights. I close them with fingers that leave blood across one cheek, then retrieve his radio before it slips into the runoff.
“Niko.” Anton’s voice reaches us from the deeper section.
I can’t answer the question inside the name, so I secure Niko’s weapon across his chest, keeping his hands clear of the sling because he would have objected to being transported carelessly.