Robert Thomas - The Bear - Red Star Rising

Ivan watched as Donald placed his hand against his chest. He reached in, pulling a small object from his pocket. He looked down with a raised brow and turned the device toward Sasha. Donald motioned toward Ivan. The young lieutenant sat upright on the stool as he looked through the smoky haze. He nudged Polina with his elbow. Ivan raised his hand as if he were greeting a friend he hadn’t seen in some time from across the room. He was at the table seconds later.

“Nice to see you again, my friend,” Ivan said as he slid in next to Donald. They shook hands with smiles plastered across their faces.

“Seems we just got lucky.”

“How so?”

“The number we have been waiting for just showed up again.”

“That’s great, but how do we trace it?” Ivan watched as Donald slipped the device back into his pocket. “Unless there’s something you haven’t told us about that box yet.”

“Maybe we just get lucky.” Donald trained his eye on a group sitting across the club in a darkened corner. To the younger crowd, they seemed out of place; not that he and his group were any different. He probably looked like an old man to most of these kids. A sure sign he was losing touch with yet another generation. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number the device had shown. It rang for just two rings before someone answered.

“Hello?”

“Well I’ll be.” Donald’s eyes narrowed and he shut his phone down immediately as he stared across the room.

“What?” Sasha was quickly interested as the agent slid his phone from sight and turned away.

“I know who answered.”

“How the hell,” Ivan blurted out loudly before lowering his voice. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I just saw the guy over there answer his phone.”

“It could just be a coincidence.”

“I don’t think so, Sasha. I heard the same music. The timing was too perfect.”

“What the hell are the odds of that happening? We simply call and just happen to see the one person we wanted to answer the call, answer the call.”

“In this business, Sasha, stranger things have happened.” Donald propped his elbow up on the table and looked away. “Do you have a camera on your phone?”

“I didn’t bring a phone.”

“Damn. Here. Take a picture of Anya and me but point it across the room and try and get a picture of that table.

Sasha nodded as Donald slid to the other side of the table. They made a show of getting together as Sasha snapped several photos. As he handed it back to Donald a new crowd pushed through the door. It seemed a mix of young girls ready to hit the town hard and a group of young men who drifted immediately over to the table they were watching.

“Maybe we better get out of here,” Donald said. “We have our target.”

“But we could finish this now.”

“Not in the middle of a crowded club, Ivan. We pick our time. Let’s go.”

Ivan made his way back to the bar and sat down next to Polina as the others made a quiet exit. They finished their drinks and tossed their money on the bar. Ivan slipped his arm around Polina as they made their way to the door. They looked like a couple; nothing out of the ordinary.

Winter once again reached from its lair above the Arctic Circle and dragged its frigid claw across the heart of Russia’s largest city. The safe house was just a few miles from the club, but unlike the renaissance the district was undergoing, the housing around it was still drab and porous. What heat the furnaces generated quickly evaporated through the uninsulated walls. Ivan and Polina sat huddled together on the couch, a blanket wrapped around themselves. The others sat casually around the room trying to ward off the cold as they made plans for the final part of their mission. Plans still had to be made.

“So we know who, at least we think. But we don’t know where.”

“We might, Danil.” Donald paced as he began to reason out a solution. “We just need to verify a few things.”

“Like what?” Ivan asked as his teeth chattered away. “Like how the hell do we get heat in this place?”

“We just need to see if my hunch is right.” Donald ignored Ivan’s remark. “We need to see if our target frequents that place regularly. My guess is, if he does and his friends are there as well, that might actually be their base of operations.”

“And how the hell do we do that?”

“To put it in your words Anya, recon.”

The next three days the mission team was reduced to recon activities. They split up and visited the club and nearby buildings several times during the day and night. Pinning down the correct place would make all the difference. They didn’t want to have an open gun fight in public. For all intents and purposes, it was a ‘hit’. Ivan and Polina toured as a couple. They were the youngest of the five and seemed to fit nicely together and the outside world would view them as such. Donald sometimes went alone as did Sasha, although Anya would join them and they would arrive together. The snap of cold weather also seemed to help narrow the field of possibilities since it limited the range of most people in the city. No one wanted to venture further than they needed to. It was just too cold.

On the fourth day, the skies above Moscow brightened and a virtual heat wave of not freezing blew into the city. It was what they were looking for. They had narrowed their choice to two buildings, the upper floors of the club and a small warehouse situated behind that building separated by a narrow service alley.

“They might even use both buildings for their operation.” Danil looked around the dingy safe house, wishing his time in this god-awful place would come to an end. At least it was a bit warmer.

“That’s true, Danil,” Donald replied. “It would make sense. One for a public showing and another building for stashing whatever goods they deem profitable at the time. Typical mafia scams.”

“So now what do we do?”

“Now Sasha, we get ready to go. We get ready to take them out.”

“But we still don’t know the layouts of the two buildings other than what we’ve seen in the club.”

“True, but I’m sure in your world as in mine, you never really know all the aspects of what you’re up against. At some point, we just have to rely on ourselves to make the best decisions we can.”

“So, what do we know about this guy? Who is he?”

“His name is Boris Vetrov,” Donald replied. “I’ve been doing a little digging on him the last day or so, trying to find a few things out. He started out about ten years ago as a small-time hit man for the local mafia. He was a real bad-ass and slowly moved up the ranks. Then, a couple years ago, he made a big play. He knocked off the second in command of a certain family and was able to point the finger at someone else. He took advantage of that by killing the person he blamed. He quickly became the voice to listen to. He has power and is aggressive. He isn’t afraid of anyone or anything.”

“And that’s his downfall,” Ivan blurted out.

“Not necessarily, Ivan. Remember those other four guys sitting at the table with him? They’re his infantry, and they don’t back down. Not from the Russian police, not from other gangs. He’s sitting pretty in this section of the city. And he’s got money rolling in. That means he can bribe whoever he needs to look the other way. Although it’s changing, Russia is still a wide open place to make a buck, or lots of them.”

“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Sasha answered.

The rest of the night was spent going over various contingencies, attacks and escape plans. Once the mission was completed, they would split up and go their separate ways to leave the country. Ivan and Polina would leave as a couple, as would Sasha and Anya. Danil would trail Sasha and Anya discreetly, pretending not to be with them in any way. With passports and papers they would travel west and make their escape into Europe. And no one would ever know they were there. Tomorrow night, after the club closed, the mission was a go.