From Filth & Mud (15 page)

The boy yelled back at him, “Smile sexy!”

“
You gay!
” was all that Vladimir could muster in his broken English.

The boy feigned horror and reeled back bringing his delicate hand to his mouth. “
Moi
? No!” he cried, beamed a smile from ear to ear, and blew the rancorous Russian a big kiss.

Vladimir broke out in a deluge of curses. Yevgeny punched him in the arm to get his attention. The light had turned green and as Vladimir was about to move forward, the boy in the Beetle accelerated out in front of them and cut them off, nearly causing an accident on the crowded street. The boy stuck his hand out of the window and flipped them the bird before peeling away to the thumping rhythms of the Katy Perry tune that clattered from his speakers.

Yevgeny radioed back to the van. “We’ve lost them. Any sign of them?”

“Nyet,” came the terse reply.

“Alright head back to the piers and see if we can find them there. They can’t get on that ship.”

Yevgeny turned to his subordinate who was still fuming. Vladimir was not the tolerant type—most FSB agents weren’t. He’d taken the comical, sexually suggestive exchange personally. He would certainly now spend the rest of the day assuring the other team members that he was not in fact gay. Yevgeny had his doubts about a man who protested too much.

“This is why America is in decline. They’ve gone soft with their homosexual lifestyle. Their men aren’t men and their women are all fat lesbians!” Vladimir was apparently still sore about being turned down by several ladies the night before. American women were not charmed by his brutish advances, so of course they were not interested in men
.

Yevgeny shook his head preparing for the neo-conservative, pro-Kremlin sermon that customarily followed any western cultural display that made Vladimir uncomfortable. The truth was that it was this kind of thinking that was causing Russia’s culture collapse and brain drain. Yevgeny remembered the days before the FSB, when he was a young, impressionable KGB operative. They were blaming Western Capitalist propaganda, and of course the Jews back then for all of the Soviet problems, and now Russia’s faults were put on the gays. A damn shame really, gays were always so artsy and colorful. Moscow just wasn’t the same these days. Everything had become increasingly drab and depressing, as if that were actually possible. The dance clubs just seemed less festive with men less likely to take to the dance floor because of the very real fear of being labeled gay. In this respect they were sadly becoming more American. Yes, Russia was indeed losing its soul.

- - - - - - -

After a few minutes of idling in a Northeastern University surface lot, Odin pulled alongside in a small, hybrid yellow-cab and Jacob and Katerina jumped in; Katerina hugged her bag against her chest.

“Get us to that pier ASAP! Something tells me these guys might be on their way there,” Jacob instructed Odin, who looked as if he’d been shoehorned into the driver’s seat.

“Tanner reports that there’s no sign of them at the pier. We’re clear to move.”

Jacob nodded and the hybrid cab sped off with a surprising squeal. Within minutes, they were at the Castle Island shipping port. There was no sign of their pursuers, but only for a moment, before Tim ended their calm. 

“I found our tail. They’ve met up with a van carrying four other guys. I can see inside the van and I see some AK rifles in there; new stuff, 74s with some optics on them. They’ve got comm equipment too. These guys look like they’re pros. They’re about three clicks down the road from the pier.”

“Stay on ‘em and keep me posted.” Jacob’s mind was quickly cycling through all of their options, trying to think of every scenario that did not result in them being in a firefight on a bright, sunshiny, Boston morning.

“Okay will do,” Tim replied. “Wait, they’re
Oscar Mike
now, looks like they’re coming to you.”

There wasn’t much time. Their pursuers were closing in on them. Jacob’s adrenaline was surging, something that he had always been able to control, but now he was having difficulty abating its effects. “Roger. We’ll get our VIP and package aboard, and setup our security as fast as we can. You stay with them and provide overwatch when you arrive.”

“Roger,” Tim replied and immediately began to hunt for perfect ambush points.

Jacob was confident in Tim’s sniping abilities. Tim had not only bested his boot-camp shooting record, but he’d also graduated first in his class at the Marine Corps Scout Sniper School. The quiet hybrid whirred to a stop in front of Pier 17 where the
Anastasia
was docked. Jacob and Katerina dismounted and jogged down the pier.

“You guys better step on it. We’ve got company,” Doug warned as he sighted in behind his M4. He had joined Odin at the pier’s entrance. Both men took cover behind the engine blocks and wheel wells of their vehicles.

About a mile down the shipyard, two vehicles emerged from behind a row of shipping containers: a white van and a dark BMW. The two vehicles paused momentarily before accelerating toward them. Jacob grabbed Katerina’s arm and pulled her along at a sprint toward the
Anastasia
. “Hold them off!” he yelled, as he nearly took Katerina off of her feet.

“Are we cleared to fire?” Doug’s voice rang nervously in his ears.

“Only, if they fire first! If they do, light them up. Be goddamned careful with your fire. This is a busy dock.” Jacob couldn’t believe that he had just ordered his team to take part in a firefight in Boston in broad daylight.
What the fuck was he doing? Who was Katerina and what the fuck was she carrying? Who were those guys?
He fought those questions off and forced himself to concentrate as they reached the bottom of the
Anastasia’s
gangway. Katerina was winded and unshod.

The two vehicles closed within five hundred meters of Doug and Odin, who stood, taking what little cover they could. Tim was no doubt within the range of his pet M40-A5 sniper rifle and was ready to drop all of the Tangos in quick succession. Jacob reached the top of the gangway with a distressed Katerina, and handed her and her package off to Tanner, who greeted them anxiously. Tanner handed him a rifle. Jacob looked through its three power magnification reflex-scope to get a closer look at the vehicles. The two vehicles came to a sudden stop at around three hundred meters in front of Doug and Odin. The doors opened up almost before they came to a full rest. Six men dismounted. The four who had jumped out of the van were heavily armed with Kalashnikovs while the two in the sedan were holding pistols.

“Steady! Everyone steady! No one is cleared hot! Everyone copy?” Jacob growled to his team.

“Roger,” was the unanimous reply.

Jacob had been in many of these tense standoffs during his tours in Iraq, mostly with local militiamen who were looking to carve out their own section of a godforsaken city. The last thing that anyone needed was for someone to get an itchy trigger-finger and unwittingly unleash a firefight. He just hoped that their pursuers would also share his thinking. The two groups of killers stared at each other, unblinking, each waiting for the other to show the slightest inclination of aggression. Mercifully, there was none. After what seemed like an exasperating eternity, the man that had emerged from the passenger’s side of the sedan motioned to the rest. The men piled back into their vehicles and sped away down the pier toward the dock entrance.

“Jesus Christ! What the fuck was that?!” Doug shouted.

“Easy money,” Tim responded jokingly.

Jacob wouldn’t admit it, but he was shaken. He turned to the still disheveled Katerina, “Well you’re safely aboard and this is where we leave you. So you still have no clue who those guys were?” There was no reply. “Well, bon voyage.” Jacob shook his head and followed Tanner down the gangway to the pier below. Katerina walked along the side of the vessel where she was met by a couple of the ship’s security personnel. His team’s mission was complete, that’s all that he should have cared about, but he had so many questions. John had assured him that he’d only be doing the low-level escort jobs, nothing dangerous, but this had been anything but safe. He was pretty sure that this would be his first and last assignment.

Jacob and his team loaded into their two armored SUVs and drove as planned toward a small, secure airstrip located about an hour south in Plymouth where one of XPS’ small, private jets awaited them. They made the journey, taking great care to ensure that they were not being followed. Though they had not spotted a tail, Jacob was pretty sure that they were under surveillance. The way that their pursuers operated, their movements, their weapons, their obvious command hierarchy, assured him that these men were most likely ex-military contractors much like themselves. Tim had heard the driver speak with a heavy, Eastern European accent, possibly Russian. Jacob agreed. It only made sense since their client was Russian and they were most likely escorting jewelry of questionable provenance.

They arrived at the airstrip and boarded the jet. Its engines spooled up as he climbed on the bottom step. The team had bounded up the idling jet’s stairs as Jacob glanced around the tarmac one final time. He felt eyes staring at him from afar. The door had no sooner shut behind him when the pilot disengaged the brakes and max-throttled the little jet. The aluminum alloy and titanium airframe lurched for an instant before being catapulted down the short runway. Jacob held on to the headrest of the nearest seat, steadying himself against the unrelenting force of the sudden acceleration. The nimble jet was a thousand feet off of the ground before he reached his seat and buckled in. He needed a drink. Luckily the on-board bar was fully stocked, though it wouldn’t be for too long.

- - - - - - -

“What the hell was that John?” Jacob glared at his friend, righteously indignant. “I swear to God if you knew…you asshole!”

“Relax man, I didn’t know, honestly. I wouldn’t do that to you. You know that. We didn’t have good intel on this job. That’s all. The client paid a premium for the job. It was short notice and it looked like a cake-walk.” John seemed sincere.

“That was no cake-walk. I mean I almost ordered a firefight in
Boston
.”

“Well we’re all glad that you didn’t. That kind of shit would have brought down a hell of a lot of heat on us. Not to mention, we’d all be hunted down by every law enforcement unit in New England.” John tried to wave off Jacob’s concern.

“So what the hell was that about? Who were those guys and what the fuck was Katerina transporting?” Jacob knew the company policy, but there were things that Marines did not hide from each other, especially when it involved operational security.

John shook his head, “No, don’t pull that shit on me. You know I can’t say. This is the private world not the Corps. We don’t get to play us versus higher-ups here. That kind of shit will cost you a very good paying job, and I am not about to risk
my extremely
good paying job, running my mouth.”

“So I’m supposed to believe that these guys, as heavily armed as they were, and as trained as they were, were after some fucking jewelry?”

John begged him to calm down. He was obviously uncomfortable with Jacob’s pressing questions. “Not just some jewelry. Uncut, extremely rare, conflict diamonds that our client has expertise in acquiring, cutting, polishing, and inconspicuously distributing to the finest diamond merchants in New York, London, Paris, and Moscow. Our client just happens to be the purveyor of some of the finest pieces of carbon worn by some of the finest pieces of shit on the planet, and there is lots of goddamn money in that.” John had said all that he was going to say on the matter, before storming off to the operations center.

Jacob followed closely behind, unsatisfied at his friend’s refusal to hear him out. “Well John, if this is the kind of job I’d be working on, then cash me out right now.”

John whirled around mid-stride, “Suit yourself, but I’ll have you know that you earned yourself a little bonus directly from the client, Ms. Minakova.” John reached into his cargo-pants’ pocket and pulled out a plain envelope that he handed to Jacob. Inside sat a wad of one hundred dollar bills, bound together by a bank band, with a ten thousand dollar bank denomination on it. The envelope also held an additional item. The delicate, rouge Cartier suede satchel was light in his hand. He looked at John who shrugged unknowingly, “Damned if I know, but we do get gifts like this from our clients every now and then, some nicer than others, of course.”