24. Rashid
RASHID
The truck rattles over a pothole and my shoulder slams the side panel, reminding me why I stopped doing fieldwork.
Devid sits across from me in the dark, checking his weapon for the third time while Mikhail and Igor flank the rear doors with their rifles across their knees.
Four more men line the walls between supply crates.
This better fucking work.
Devid's plan to ambush the Gusevs on the last shipment didn't work.
They never even moved on the truck. Either they got intel that we were planning a blitz or they got lazy, but we're trying again, hoping to get someone who can get us the information we want.
Our goal is to take at least one of them alive—if they attack us like they have been.
"How much longer?" I ask Devid, grumbling. This is uncomfortable, and I'm impatient. The longer I wait, the more I just want to kill them all.
He checks his watch. "Ten minutes to the checkpoint. Maybe less if they're running early."
"They'll be early," Mikhail says from the back. "Gusev's crews always move ahead of schedule so they can set up before the truck arrives."
I chamber a round and settle against the wall.
Oleg's intel put them right here on this stretch of road at this time of night, and if he's wrong about this, then the deal I offered him in that basement is worth less than the paper I didn't bother writing it on.
But something in my gut tells me he's not wrong.
The old man was too desperate to lie about the one thing keeping him alive.
The truck slows, and the brakes whine as we roll to a stop. Two voices carry from outside, speaking Russian with a clipped cadence. The inspection team at this check point sounds official, but there's no way to know if they're border patrol or Gusev plants.
"Papers," one of them says to our driver. "What are you hauling?" Their voices are muffled, but not so much that I can't make out what they're saying.
"Textiles," our driver says, playing it exactly as rehearsed. "Same run as last Tuesday." He grumbles a little too, feigning annoyance, and I brace myself for this to turn ugly fast. My heart is slamming against my ribs with adrenaline, gearing up to fight.
A flashlight beam cuts through the gap at the bottom of the rear doors and sweeps left to right. I hold my breath as Devid raises a fist and every man in the truck goes still.
When the latch clicks I lift my chin, then my weapon. The right door swings open and a man with a Gusev tattoo on his neck leans in with his flashlight, scanning the crates. He shines his light on the cargo, but then his beam catches the barrel of Mikhail's rifle about two feet from his face.
"Do not move," Mikhail says in a dark tone. Every muscle in my body is poised to strike. I'm just waiting for the first round to be fired. All I needed to see was the tattoo and I was convinced.
The man goes for his radio, but Mikhail grabs him by the front of his jacket and hauls him into the truck so fast his feet leave the ground. Igor's already out the back and on the second man before he can shout, driving him face-first into the gravel and pinning his arm behind his back.
"How many more?" I ask Devid as I jump down from the truck.
"Staging teams report two vehicles ahead, one behind. Eight men total including these two."
"Move on them now."
Devid signals, and our teams emerge from the tree line on both sides of the road.
Headlights flare from the Gusev vehicles as the drivers realize something's wrong, and then the night splits open.
Gunfire cracks through the cold air, and I hear glass shatter in the lead vehicle as our men close in from the flanks.
One of Gusev's crew stumbles out of the passenger side firing blindly into the darkness, and Devid drops him with a single shot to the thigh that sends him spinning into the ditch.
"Take the second car," I tell Igor over the radio. "Alive if you can."
The second vehicle tries to reverse, but one of our teams has already blocked the road behind it. The driver guns the engine and slams into the blockade, and after that the whole road goes to hell.
Gunfire erupts from everywhere at once. I can't tell who's shooting at who for the first few seconds because the muzzle flashes blur together and the sound swallows everything.
I fire into the lead vehicle and hear glass explode and someone screaming, and I fire again.
A body falls out of the driver side door and crumples on the asphalt.
"Get around the second car!" I shout at Devid, but I don't know if he hears me, because another burst rips through the air and something punches through the panel next to my head.
I dart left, shooting a man coming around the hood before he can raise his weapon.
He drops to the ground in my path, and I step over him.
My hands feel disconnected from my body and my pulse roars in my ears, but none of this feels real until a round grazes my shoulder.
The burn cuts through the adrenaline and reminds me that I can still die out here.
"Rashid, get down!" Devid yells from somewhere behind me. I drop just as a burst of fire tears through the space where my chest was a second ago. I roll behind the engine block and come up shooting, putting rounds through the passenger window until the gun on the other side goes quiet.
"Is that all of them?" I shout.
"Two more on the south side!" Igor calls back. I hear scuffling and then two quick shots, and then nothing.
The silence comes all at once like we've killed them all.
My ears ring and my lungs burn hard, and the road looks like a warzone.
Gusev's men are scattered across the asphalt, some of them groaning, most of them still.
Our guys move through the wreckage securing weapons and zip-tying anyone who can still move.
We won't have long until the real border security gets here.
I press my palm against the graze on my shoulder and lean on the hood of the wrecked car. Oleg's intel was perfect, every detail. The old man delivered exactly what he promised, which is more than I believed would be true.
"Bring me one of them," I tell Mikhail, nodding toward the truck. "The one with the tattoo."
Mikhail drags the man out by his collar and drops him onto his knees on the gravel in front of me. Blood runs from a cut above his eye where his face hit the truck floor, and his hands twist against the zip ties behind his back. He looks up at me glaring, and I know he won't be easy to break.
"Where do I find Gusev?" I ask him, but the man turns his cheek and says nothing. "I'm going to ask you one more time and then I'm going to let Devid ask you, and Devid doesn't ask with words." I crouch down in front of him. "Where is Gusev right now?"
"I don't know where he is right now. He moves around. He doesn't tell us where he sleeps." The bleeding from this man's forehead is the least of his worries. If he doesn't start talking he's going to have a bullet in his skull.
"Then tell me how to reach him. Who does he talk to? Who carries his orders?" I'm already impatient. I want the man who's fucked with me dead.
The man hesitates and I nod at Devid, who steps forward and drives his boot into the man's ribs. He doubles over, gasping, and I wait for him to straighten up before I ask again.
"His lieutenant handles the crews," the man says through clenched teeth. "A man called Petrov. He runs the checkpoints and reports directly to Gusev. That's all I know about the chain."
"And where does Petrov operate from?" I'm getting nowhere. This is pointless. If Gusev is this closed off that his own men don't know how to get to him, how am I supposed to?
"He moves too. But he meets with the crews at a garage on the south end of Ligovsky before every run. That's where we got our orders tonight."
"We have Oleg Rostov," I tell him, watching his face for a reaction.
He spits on the ground near my shoe. "Then you're keeping a dead man. Gusev will kill Rostov and his daughter and her little brat kid. The whole family's marked. Gusev gave the order himself and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
Something cold locks into place behind my ribs.
I release his chin and stand up. He has no idea who Aleksandr's father is.
None of them do. They think they're threatening a drunk's daughter and her child, and he has no concept of what he just told me.
And I don't care for men talking to me like this about my family.
"Thank you for the information," I tell him, pulling my sidearm to put a round through his forehead. The sound booms through my entire body and he drops sideways onto the gravel.
Devid stares at me. "What did you just do?" He thinks I want intel, but I don't want it bad enough to let scum speak that way about my family.
"No one threatens my family," I say, holstering the weapon. "Get the others to the warehouse for questioning. Whatever it takes to get them talking." I picture many of these men with a few less fingers by the time my guys are done.
I walk away, satisfied that after tonight Gusev will be very aware that I'm fighting back. And hopefully the men we've taken alive will produce fruit.
The house is dark when I walk in except for the lamp in the nursery.
I go straight there without stopping to take off my coat and push the door open to find Emory standing by the crib, tucking a blanket around Lex as his eyes flutter closed.
She looks up at me and her expression shifts from soft to alarmed.
"Rashid, you have blood on your shirt."
"I know. It was a rough night." I don't care for the tone she uses, but I can't take out my anger on her. I have to let this night go and try to be present in this moment with her. I need her.
"Get out of this room." She positions herself between me and the crib, one hand behind her on the rail. "I don't care what happened tonight. You do not bring that into his room."
"He's asleep, Emory."
"Get out." Her voice cuts right through me. "He's two and a half years old and he doesn't need to see his father covered in blood. Whatever you did tonight stays outside this door."
I look past her at Aleksandr, who's turned onto his side with his fist curled under his chin. His breathing is slow and even; he has no idea what went on out there, or even what blood is. She's being ridiculous.
"Come away from the crib," I tell her quietly. "He's settled. Let him sleep."
She glowers at me, but she listens and follows me into the hallway. Her head drops and she sighs hard. "This is why I didn't want him around you. I don't want him raised in this world. It's dangerous."
I ignore her comment and reach for her hand, folding my fingers between hers. "Shower with me," I say.
She blinks and scrunches her nose at me. "What are you talking about?"
"I need to wash this night off and I don't want to be alone right now." I lean closer, pressing my mouth against her forehead and letting it rest there. Nothing would feel better to me than to have her right now. I just killed for her, and she doesn't even know it. "Come with me."
"Rashid, I can't just?—"
I tilt her chin up and kiss her with hunger in it so she understands what I want, but she pulls back.
"I can't do this," she says, stepping away from me.
"Why not?"
The warmth from the other night is gone and she's cold, but there's a look of disappointment in her eyes that pains me.
Coming home soaked in blood isn't something new to me.
Whether it's mine or someone else's, it happens more often than not.
This is the life I live, and she has to understand that.
"I'm going to bed. Don't go into that room until you've showered and changed. Do you understand me?" Her tone is starting to resemble my mother’s, and I’m not sure I like it.
"You're being unreasonable," I growl, but she keeps walking and doesn't look back. When she gets to my room she shuts the door behind her, and that's that.
Is she insane? She expects me to tiptoe around her now? And for what? That boy is going to take over my empire when he's old enough.
Fuck's sake.
I want this woman more than ever, and she's going to make it impossible to prove myself. There will be hurdles to navigate and hoops to jump through. And my gut tells me this is only the beginning.
I think I screwed up by not showering before seeing her, and I think she's going to make my life miserable for a while now.