Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

Again I hear the familiar clank of the peephole, the scrape of bolts, and then the heavy door of the shop swings open before me.

“Well, well!” says Sledgehammer, looking me over with an attentive eye, “I see you’ve spruced yourself up. And you’ve got a new piece. That’s a beauty!”

“It’s not the only one,” I answer with the same cheerful tone.

I pull the Sig Sauer out of my belt and place it in the basket.

I look up at the guard. Oh, balls! I forgot to do one more important thing – unload my guns. I take the pistol in my hands again, pull out the magazine, and pull back the bolt. The bullet flies off somewhere into the depths of the shop. I put the gun back in the basket along with the magazine, and then do the same with the shotgun. This goes a little better for me. At the very least, the shells don’t go flying off anywhere. Once I’m rid of my guns, I open my backpack and show its contents to the guard. He nods, and I enter the shop.

“Not bad,” says the shopkeeper, examining the goods I’m offering for sale. “So, what do you want for them?”

“Soup and tinned meat. And I could do with some bullets for that pistol over there.”

“What sort of gun’s that, then?”

“It’s a Sig Sauer,” answers Sledgehammer from the door. “That gun’s the shit, too. Wouldn’t mind one myself. Where did you get it from?”

“There was this guy who liked throwing grenades around. Then he threw one the wrong way, and I ended up with his pistol.”

The guard chuckles.

Our negotiations finished fairly quickly, and the results were more than satisfying. Or, at least, I’d been counting on much less. I head back to the door, ready to pick up my guns.

“Have you got a minute?” asks Sledgehammer.

“I’ve got nowhere to be.”

“You haven’t forgotten my offer, have you?”

“Course not. Already working on it.”

“With any success?”

“Well, those thugs who were shaking down lone shoppers round here have got something else to keep them busy. Their boss – Kiryukha, if you know him – copped it. So now they’re choosing a new one. True, there’s no guarantee he’ll survive any longer, but that’ll depend on how smart he is. At any rate, they won’t be round here today,

“Good work,” says Sledgehammer, nodding. “I’m a man of my word, so come and see us when the job’s done.”

I step outside and pressing my back to the door I hurriedly shove the shells back into the magazine of my shotgun. I reload the pistol, too, and stick it back in its place. I’ve fixed up a special extra pocket inside my waistcoat using a sleeve ripped off a coat. Sure, I’m no expert at sewing combat gear. It looks clumsy and crude, but at least the pistol isn’t sticking out of my belt and jabbing me when I walk.

When I’ve gone fifty meters, I turn a corner, then sharply come back round it. Three men are coming towards me from the nearest building. One of them I recognize, and I’ve no desire to meet them whatsoever.

I glance cautiously around the corner. Paying no attention to the world around them, the trio are marching purposefully towards an already very familiar entryway. “I don’t mean to be a lout, but what the fuck’s that all about?” Those lines come from a poem by Leonid Filatov, if I remember correctly. At any rate, nothing more fitting comes to mind right now. One has to assume that this is the new leader on his way to our meeting. Which makes it quite reasonable to ask why he’s got company. Was someone hard of hearing? Or does he think he’s immune to bullets or something? Either way, I’ve got bad news for him.

“What are you on about, mate?” whines the voice in my head. “Think you’re the Terminator now, do you? Well then, I’ve got some big news for you, too. You still can’t shoot for shit!”

That’s true enough – I’m no sharpshooter. So, we’ll have to do this differently. I keep myself hidden behind the wall and carefully watch what the trio are up to. They approach the building and split up. One of them heads into the entryway, while the other two sit down on the steps and look around. A few minutes pass, and then the guy who went inside comes back. He takes a seat on the steps, and one of the two who was keeping lookout now opens the front door.

So, that guy was doing a little reconnaissance. No doubt he took a look up the staircase, ran up and back down again, and tried the doors. Not finding anyone, he came back to report. Which probably means that the guy who’s just gone inside is the new boss, while the guys now sitting on the steps are his bodyguards. Technically, you can’t fault them. I said he should come alone, and he’s gone into the building all by himself. I never said the others couldn’t sit around outside. Clever, aren’t they?

But then we’re not complete idiots either. The bandits have one major advantage on their side – there’s no way of walking into the entryway without going through them. Walking in. But did anybody ever say there was only one way of getting into the building? As it happens, I’ve got another access route. Once again, I circle the building and approach the fire escape. Just why are people so lazy, eh? I bet they’ve seen this ladder more than once, and I bet they’ve even worked out where it leads to. Would it really have been so hard to get one of the bandits to sit at the corner of the building? Then they’d be able to see the entryway and the fire escape at the same time. Laziness can take years off your life sometimes. Sometimes it can add them on, too, of course. But that’s certainly not the case if you’re a bandit, and certainly not in the current situation.

I climb carefully up the slippery rungs of the ladder. It rained not so long ago, and they’ve still not dried. Now I’m on the roof. I cross to the already familiar balcony. Clearly someone’s been poking around in the flat. Everything’s upside down. You’d assume the bandits took special care with their search the last time – knocked all the doors to pieces and went through every flat.

I step to the flat door and stop. Across the door frame is stretched a thin gray thread. A tripwire again? I crouch down and look carefully towards the corner. Where would the bandits get a grenade from anyway? The thread just holds an ordinary fork against the door frame. If I step forward, I’ll snap the thread, and the fork will fall from over a metre onto the stone floor. That’s something you’d have to be stone deaf not to hear.

It’s an interesting little trick. It means the bandits have someone with reasonably quick wits. From the look of it, the jerry-rigged alarm system I found earlier was also his work. Fair play to him. There may well be other surprises further down the staircase. Which is why I have to move cautiously and keep a close eye beneath my feet. And elsewhere, too. Good Lord, it seems like walking around in my socks is going to be a habit of mine soon. How many times have I already gone down a staircase this way?

I sling my shotgun behind my back and take out my pistol. In the circumstances, its main advantage – the comparative quiet of a shot – may be of vital importance. Deep in my heart, I hope the new boss hasn’t come here to fight. Surely the last effort to prove how tough they were cost them too much?

One flight down, then another. I can already hear the bandits’ boss muttering something to himself right there in that very flat. And why not? There’s no reason for him to think he has to be silent. The only entry from the roof goes into the staircase next door, this staircase has been thoroughly checked by his bodyguard, and just in case they have their makeshift early-warning system. So, there he is, happily humming away to himself. Anybody approaching the building will undoubtedly be noticed by his guards. The ground-floor windows have grates on them, so there’s no way of getting in there. I lie down on the landing between the ground floor and the first floor, and get the front door in my sights. Now we wait. Sooner or later, the bandit’s patience will run out, and he’ll head for the exit. That’s when I’ll catch him. Let’s hope neither of his bodyguards decides to bother him before that.