Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

“Are you leaving already?”

He turns around, but his hand doesn’t go for his gun.

“Good afternoon!”

“Greetings!”

“I had a feeling it was you I was going to find here. When the Awl told me that you’d turned up, and showed off his present, it occurred to me that I’d have the pleasure of seeing you here.”

So, it turns out the bandit’s boss can be diplomatic when it’s required of him.

“You were right there. It’d be daft to hide now your people have seen me. And more than that, I’ve been assigned to this area.”

“You mean it was you at all the previous meetings?”

I adopt a confused look.

“I’m afraid I don’t even know how many there were. Our roles are clearly defined. I’m just a liaison, and that’s all.”

The boss looks with interest at my assault rifle.

“Are all your liaisons armed like that?”

“We don’t like too much noise.”

He nods appreciatively and gets down to business. Yesterday, a group of soldiers appeared at one of their checkpoints. Judging by their uniforms, they weren’t from the army or any other Russian service. There was no shooting. The bandits showed a fair amount of good sense, and limited themselves to warnings. Appreciating this, the senior soldier asked them to tell their boss that their gang needed to make themselves scarce within the next two days. They could choose themselves where to go. If they didn’t get moving, then the soldiers would be happy to give them a push in the right direction. True, after that there might not be anyone left to move anywhere. The soldiers’ translator spelled it all out quite clearly.

“Your representative said before that we shouldn’t fight with them, and we’ve tried to keep our word on that. But what are we going to do about this announcement yesterday?”

“Unfortunately, they don’t always agree amongst themselves. Did their commander give his name?”

“No. They said they’d be back at the same place in two days’ time.”

“Which way did they go? Can anyone show me?”

“That we can. After all, we know our own town a lot better than they do. One of my men followed them. They’ve taken over an office building in a factory not so far from here. Some of my boys recognized them, too. They’ve been seen around the neighbourhood before. They were guarding something, and they used to visit the shopkeeper one in a while.”

“What provoked this sudden visit? Did you manage to bother them somehow?”

Here the boss hesitates. There it is! Presumably, one of his thugs, drunk on his newfound power, shot his mouth off at the wrong moment. It’s a shame. They’ve fucked up, and now I have to sort out the problem. Wouldn’t it be easier just to pack up and get the hell out of here? Sadly, not any longer. I can’t move all the stuff I’ve collected quickly and I’ve got no idea where exactly I’d be taking it. I’m up to my ears in this business, and there’s no chance of getting out of it in the same shape I got into it. I can’t see any way out.

Before setting out on any journey, it’s always worth getting thoroughly prepared and checking all your equipment. Considering all the circumstances surrounding my expedition, I decide to leave my shotgun at home. As I’m hoping to get by without any shooting, it’s better not to take such a loud and powerful gun.

When it comes to shooting with my pistol, I know what I’m doing. Shortly after his makeover is a different matter, and it seems like a good idea to check. With this in mind, I head for the attic of a building with an old-fashioned gable roof. There’s a chance that shots in the attic won’t attract too much attention. It’s a long building, around a hundred metres, and the attic runs the length of it. I’ll be able to find my range, as Ivan used to say. Placing an empty box on one of the beams, I walk about fifty metres back and set the gun to single fire. The bolt makes a greasy squelch as it pushes the round into the barrel. I get myself comfortable on the floor and turn on the laser target finder. I press a button on the sight, bring it to my eye, and take aim. The dot in the sight and the red point of the target finder don’t quite align. That’s probably the way it should be, as Pavel did say the gun was sighted at one hundred metres, and the distance here is far less than that. That must be why the beam of the target finder is a little off. Still, the box is big, and even if I’m aiming a little high or a little low, I’ll still hit it. Holding my breath, I pull the trigger. From what I can remember, experienced marksmen always hold their breath before firing. Why they do it, I’ve no idea, but I guess I should follow their example.

The sound the shot makes is surprising. Obviously, the assault rifle is louder than the pistol, and there’s no way of suppressing the noise completely. Nonetheless, it sounds more like a loud crack than a booming explosion. It’s definitely better than before. To my ears, it’s a very unfamiliar sound, so I’m hoping that the enemy won’t be able to work out where it’s coming from quickly. I go to look at the box.

I hit it! Not in the very centre, of course, but the bullet did still go into the box. If a person had been standing here, I’d have certainly done them some damage. Feeling more cheerful, I go back and this time fire a dozen rounds at once into the box. The bullets are scattered “like a bull’s piss”, as our head of security would say. It’s alright for him, he’s a good shot. Me – not so much. No matter how many rounds I fired off with Shorty when Ivan and I were running, I doubt that any of them got closer than half a metre to the target. Now, I hope, things will be very different. At the very least, the modified assault rifle sits much better in my hands and jumps around a lot less when I’m firing.

Returning to my basement, I remember that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check my pistol, too. Rooting around in my stuff, I pull out that box of bullets with the blue tips. Should I give them a try? Surely one shot won’t ruin the pistol. For my test, I choose a few thick directories that are standing in a row on the head of accounting’s desk. I’m not a fan of accountants… A shot with an ordinary bullet goes straight through two directories. Flicking through the pages, I find the bullet. It’s crushed and lying sideways. Fine, now let’s try a blue-tip bullet. This time the shot sounds sharper. It’s hard to say if it was louder or not, but the sound was definitely different. There was also a difference in the effect of the bullet on the directories. It had penetrated almost as far, but the hole it made was a whole lot bigger. And the bullet itself looked like a badly-made pancake. The cavity inside the final directory was extraordinary. These bullets are going to do a lot more damage than the standard rounds. Picturing the kind of hole that bullet would have made in an opponent’s leg, I simply shake my head. It’s a shame I’ve got so few of them. Still, I reload the whole magazine with them.

At the same time, I fill up the assault rifle magazine. This time, my backpack’s almost completely empty. The bandages and other necessities are now stored in one of the pockets of my webbing. I have two magazines, and I put the spare in a special pocket on my chest. There’s no spare magazine for the pistol.

I jump up and down on the spot. If the movies are to be believed, you should always do this before moving out. If you’ve put something in the wrong place, you should be able to hear it clank. Most of the pockets on my webbing are empty, though, and there’s nothing that could clank in my backpack. True, you can hear the armour plates shifting in their pockets, but it’s hardly a clank.

My plan was exceptionally straightforward. By using those very same cable ducts, I was going to travel underground to the factory office building. The ducts ran straight to the building, with one interesting difference – access to them was not through a manhole cover, as it was elsewhere, but through a door that led straight into the basement of the building. I’ll go in, quietly have a look at what’s going on, and act accordingly. One option, of course, is to shoot off a few rounds and start a panic. While they’re working out what happened, time will tick away, and they probably won’t make it to the bandits’ checkpoint at the appointed hour. If I actually wound one of them, they’ll also have all the fuss and bother of treating them. My task is just to delay their attack.