The Russian Takedown: Chapter 6

There was no mis­tak­ing Janic.  I had been giv­en numer­ous pic­tures of the man, and his appear­ance was suf­fi­cient­ly unique that it would be near­ly impos­si­ble to mis­take him.  He was an unusu­al­ly tall man, six and a half feet, and was reput­ed to weigh well over three hun­dred pounds.  His hair was uni­form­ly gray and was cut with mut­ton chops extend­ing down each side of his face, a face severe­ly pock-marked with rem­nants from a child­hood dis­ease.  At his height, he stood well above all those in his entourage, a fact that would make my job that much eas­i­er as I zeroed in on his emerg­ing head from one of the vehicles.

No soon­er had Janic stood erect when my fin­ger tight­ened on the trig­ger, and a met­al-clad bul­let sped toward the tar­get.  As I con­tin­ued to watch through the tele­scop­ic sight, I saw the entry wound appear just slight­ly to the left of his ster­num as the bul­let tore through his jack­et and shirt and exit­ed his back, strik­ing the walk sev­er­al feet behind him.  The impact of the bul­let par­tial­ly lift­ed him off his feet, and he sprawled back­ward, his arms flail­ing out­ward almost as if he were prepar­ing to make snow angels.

I tar­ried just long enough to notice his hench­men ready­ing their weapons, most­ly sub-machine guns, look­ing fran­ti­cal­ly about for the source of my fir­ing.  A cou­ple of them knelt around the fall­en Janic, try­ing to shield him and check­ing to see if he was alive.  When the two stood up, look­ing about with their com­rades, I knew that Janic had gone to meet his ances­tors.  Had he been alive, they would have stayed kneel­ing with him or tried to drag him to safety.

In the remain­ing con­fus­ing sec­onds, I dis­mount­ed my rifle from the tri­pod, putting it on safe­ty and quick­ly placed it in its case, prepar­ing to close the side door of the van and get the hell out of Dodge.

With the tri­pod col­lapsed and lying on the floor of the van, I reached for­ward to slide the door closed.  Just as it start­ed to move for­ward, a hand clasped the lead­ing edge, hold­ing it from closing!

In my aston­ish­ment, I released my hold on the door han­dle, allow­ing the strange hand to push to door back to its open posi­tion, as a camo-clad fig­ure appeared with a Soviet Markarov pis­tol in his hand.

Despite the short dis­tance between us, his hasty shot was off as he moved side­ways into the door open­ing and I threw myself in the oppo­site direc­tion, kick­ing the tri­pod toward him.  Though my three-legged mis­sile was­n’t about to do much dam­age to him, it dis­tract­ed him just long enough for me to get my Sig from its com­bat hol­ster and get off a shot that grazed his left cheek, caus­ing him to swiv­el in that direc­tion.  I launched myself through the door onto him and drove him back against the para­pet wall of the park­ing structure.

As the top of the wall caught him in the small of his back, he exhaled a grunt and fell to the con­crete, los­ing his gun in the process.  He lay there dazed as I approached, my fin­ger tight­en­ing on the trig­ger of the Sig, ready to admin­is­ter the coup de grâce.

I sup­pose I’ll nev­er fig­ure out why, but I did­n’t shoot Krislov at that moment.  Maybe it was because he was help­less and no imme­di­ate threat; maybe it was just because I could­n’t jus­ti­fy killing some­one who had already lost the battle.

Regardless, I picked up his Makarov, pulled the side van door closed, got in, and drove off, leav­ing him motion­less where he had fallen.

I did­n’t know at the time that the fel­low who had almost shot me was Krislov; I only learned it lat­er when Armin and I were in con­tact after the oper­a­tion was com­plete and Armin’s charges were safe­ly out of the coun­try.  England’s MI‑6 had been mon­i­tor­ing Krislov and his group for years and had got­ten an image of him from the embassy secu­ri­ty cam­eras when he showed up as part of a demon­stra­tion out­side the facil­i­ty where he was foment­ing the riot­ing that was threat­en­ing to storm the build­ing.   Fortunately, the crowd lost most of its nerve when Armin’s boys — very vis­i­bly — were seen load­ing their rifles and charg­ing their machine guns.  However, some shots were exchanged briefly.  One of Armin’s men was killed by a head­shot, anoth­er was wound­ed in his left side, and Armin him­self took a round across his cheek that nipped his ear and left him with a trun­cat­ed lobe.  And Armin always felt that Krislov had fired the shot that got him.

Yes, Armin was right.  The two of us def­i­nite­ly had a score to settle.

I was aroused from my rever­ie by the insis­tent voice of Armin over the phone.

“Michael.  Michael.  Are you there?”

“Huh?  Oh, yeah.  Sorry, Armin.  Lost in thought for a moment.  Well, what can you tell me about your plans?”

“Not much right now.  And not over the phone, ol’ boy.  Let’s get togeth­er as soon as pos­si­ble, and I’ll paint the whole pic­ture.  Probably best if I come to you.  That way, once you’ve got the whole plan, you’ll be able to deter­mine what you need to bring to the show.”

“That’s fine, Armin,” I replied.

In his usu­al British insou­ciance, he was mak­ing the whole project sound like an out­ing in the coun­try with a game of horseshoes. 

“When can I expect you?”

“I’ll be there in three days.”

 “Okay.  You know how to get to the place.  Although you’ll be see­ing the new house for the first time.”

“Looking for­ward to it, ol’ boy,” he said gai­ly and, in his usu­al way, rang off with­out so much as a fare-thee-well.

Damn, I thought, am I ever going to get to retire to a peace­ful life in the country?