Operator - 01 (14 page)

I scan the yard and assess my options, knowing I have only seconds before I’m face to face with my assailant. The V-8 engine of the Crown Vic roars and I hear a loud squeal as the driver lays down some rubber. The footfalls on the sidewalk tell me that a single person has exited the vehicle. I hear him vault the hedge and sprint towards the rear of the house. I can make it over the six-foot slatted wooden fence separating the Victorian from the house behind it, but only just barely. There’s a decent chance I’ll give my pursuer a clean shot if I do. Even if I make it, the Crown Victoria will have time to get around the block to Birch Street before I can cross over, hemming me in between the car and my pursuer on foot. If I start threading my way from backyard to backyard on Birch, I’ll be caught between the runner and the car and they’ll flush me out just like dogs beating the bushes for a fox.

I see another option: it’s riskier but it gives me two ways to get clear. I take three strides forward and launch myself onto the top of a sturdy-looking doghouse. It’s the route I would take to vault the fence, but instead I turn to the right. With two light steps on the roof of the doghouse, I jump to the top bar of a child’s swing set, which sits at a ninety-degree angle to both the doghouse and the Victorian. I pivot again and take three long strides along the top bar of the swing set like a high wire artist, then jump, hitting the lower roof of the Victorian over the garage with my hands, and haul myself quickly up. I barely have time to spin around and flatten myself on the roof before my pursuer comes around the corner of the house. It may be a fool’s move, but most things we chase keep fleeing until they escape or are caught. The hunter’s instinct is always to assume the prey is moving away from him unless it is directly in his sights. I’m wearing a waterproof nylon shell over an insulated base layer, which are both as black as my coal-dark hair, so I have a chance of blending into the asphalt tiles of the roof.

The man stops and I get a look at him. He’s about my height – six feet plus or minus an inch – and slender. I can see a fringe of fine brown hair peeking from beneath a knit black seaman’s cap. He’s sporting a navy pea coat and black boots with a Vibram lug sole under dark, wide wale corduroy trousers. He’s carrying a Fabrique National P90, a vicious little bullpup-style machine pistol that holds 50 rounds in the magazine and can penetrate level II body armor. It has a Gem Tech silencer, making it a military-spec weapon. This is not the gun that sent me over the hedge, which tells me I’m being hunted by at least three men – the driver of the Crown Vic, the original shooter and this man. He scans the yard, looking speculatively at the tall wooden fence to the rear and as he turns his head I catch a glimpse of a tattoo on his neck. The sinuous bodies of two intertwined snakes creep up his nape. The tat is inked in black and shades of gray but comes alive as the tendons in the man’s neck make the snakes ripple. I’ve seen tattoos like it before, and it’s not good news.

The man peers narrowly at the lawn, trying to read my movements. My footprints are there, leading towards the doghouse and then disappearing. I can read his thoughts – did I vault the fence from the doghouse or do something unexpected? It’s what I’d be weighing in the same spot. After a moment of consideration, he scans the yard, pivoting slowly towards the Victorian. In a second his gaze is going to reach the roof and he’s going to spot me.

I swear inwardly and tense myself, getting ready to jump, knowing full well that I’m dead if he sees me before I move. I’m probably dead either way. It’s okay. It serves me right for sticking my nose where it never should have been, for shedding the hard-won anonymity I’ve protected so greedily. And anyway, these fatalistic thoughts comfort me just like the warm embrace of an old lover – one I haven’t known for the three and a half years since I left the Activity.

In the instant before the man spots me, I hear a bark and a vicious growl as the Rottweiler explodes from the narrow alleyway on the other side of the house. The man raises the P90 casually and I hear the stutter of the silenced bullets tearing into the dog. As the Rottweiler flies through the air, the man steps aside like a matador, and the dog hurls past him, landing dead on the sodden soil with a heavy thud. Without a second glance at the animal, the man pulls a small Motorola walkie-talkie from his pocket and speaks urgently into it. I strain to pick out the words. He’s talking too quickly and faintly to understand, but the language is unmistakably Russian. After his walkie-talkie squawks in reply, he stows the unit back in his jacket and takes off at a canter, vaulting the back fence to the yard without breaking stride.

As soon as he’s gone, I turn around and creep up the roof, peering over the crest into the front yard. As I expect, the Crown Victoria is long gone. I leap down off the roof and sprint across the front yard, hurdling the hedge back onto Ridge Road. I glance briefly downhill, but dismiss the idea. I won’t make it back to town before the Russians catch up with me. There aren’t many roads up here on the side of the hill and I don’t want any more bullets flying around in a residential area, anyway. I decide to continue up the hill on my original route. As I run, skirting fences while I listen carefully for the big Ford, I visualize the Russian who shot the Rottweiler. Those tattoos are gang symbols for the Russian mafia. I haven’t seen the exact pattern, but the style is distinctive. The snakes look like a more menacing version of the medical symbol called the Caduceus.

There’s another thought running through my mind as I ascend the ridge. The men who are trying to kill me are no run-of-the-mill gangsters. The Russian with the P90 handled the Rottweiler too smoothly for a street thug. And the gunman firing from the car was far too accurate to be a petty crook. These guys have serious military training, special operations kind of training. If I let them keep the initiative, they’ll put me down just like that dog. I increase my pace as the hill plateaus.

The gate to the Godfrey Mill is still locked as I reach it. I don’t pause to fuss with the lock but instead use it as a foothold to vault the eight-foot fence. A hundred yards of open ground crisscrossed with train tracks separate the fence from the administration building for the mill. The four-story building is flanked to the right by an enormous warehouse and to the left by a structure built on four platform levels that looks like leftover parts from an outsized Erector set. Pipelines and oddly shaped supports shoot through the four platform levels, which are rigged with scaffolding. Conveyors and chutes link the platforms to the three cylindrical towers looming behind them. The towers can be seen from almost anywhere in Conestoga, a constant reminder of the town’s dismal past. Railroad cars idle in the yard like forgotten toys in a teenager’s closet. They are piled along the multiple tracks leading to a second warehouse at the extreme left of the complex. I pass within a few yards of one of the rusted hulks as I move through the yard toward the administration building.

The railway no longer functions. It’s a dead spur on a defunct line. The railway gates to the mill are long since rusted shut and the tracks outside the property have grown over in prickly-edged grass and weeds. The mill itself doesn’t support any growing thing. A toxic mixture of calcium silicates, calcium sulfate, gypsum, clay, shale, sand, iron ore, bauxite and slag keeps all but the most tenacious weeds at bay. The grounds of the mill are strewn with clinker, the primary raw material of Portland Cement. It looks like large, irregular gravel. It requires intense concentration to navigate the yard at high speed.

As I move, I replay my visit to the mill on Saturday, when I used the abandoned structure for a parkour workout. The schematic comes to life in my mind as I visualize the jump distances, the various protrusions and structural weaknesses. A plan begins to form in my head. This complex is big enough that I can lose the Russians right now, but that’s not what I want. If I let them go without learning more they’ll still have the initiative. Veronica woke just as I was leaving the motel room for my run. I still don’t know what she knows, or how she’s connected to these Russians. I’ve spent some time pondering the improbability of my Russian-speaking high school girlfriend randomly living next to a houseful of Russian thugs and prostitutes in Conestoga. I don’t for one second believe Mel would have been part of anything sordid, but it’s just too much of a coincidence. I need to talk to Veronica, but first I need to know more about these Russians who look like gangsters and act like soldiers. I need to identify at least one of them. I’ve left tracks in the dust on the road up to the mill, so I know they’ll find me soon enough.

A sturdy steel door built to withstand the hammering fists of union protestors bars entry to the administration building, but I know from my last visit that it is unlocked. On the inside, I push the door shut and slide a rusty deadbolt home. It’s not secure, but I’m counting on it to slow the Russians down for a few seconds. A thin fracture runs through the smooth cement floor of the large, open room. Only one desk, a Steelcase relic from the 1950s, remains in what was once the payroll area. An enormous, ancient IBM Selectric typewriter sits on the desk, patiently waiting for a typist. There are stacks of dusty office supplies and half-packed boxes, as if the job of closing down the mill was abandoned in midstream.

I take a quick look out the window to confirm that the Russians haven’t found the mill yet, and then search the desk and the assorted boxes. I find a dozen staplers and a full set of desk accessories reproduced in cement. A two-level cement in-box with louvered sides sits delicately next to a blotter of thin cement. The cement blotter has a paper pad festooned with coffee rings still resting on it alongside a cement pencil cup and a cement letter opener that can’t have seen much use. The cement ashtray is a gem – it is so heavy that it is impossible to imagine anyone tipping it into a wastebasket. That gives me an idea. A plan takes shape in my mind. I rifle through the boxes and find a big ball of sturdy twine.

By the time the Russians pull up in the Crown Victoria, I’m on the third deck of the platform structure next to the administration building, concealed behind a metal conveyor and pressing myself flat against the cold concrete. I’ve survived the fifteen-foot leap from a window on the side of the top floor of the administration building without losing the end of the twine, which is now completely unrolled. I made a similar jump on my last trip to the mill. That time was easier, though, because it didn’t involve diving through a window at flank speed with a loop of twine tied to my belt. Fortunately, the mill platform is six feet below the window I exited and has a loading dock for a crane on the third deck that left me a comfortable space to roll and absorb the impact of the fall.

As the Crown Victoria pulls up to the mill gate I feel the lack of a good pair of binoculars. At a distance, I can still pick out some details. The driver is skinny and exits the vehicle awkwardly – I can tell from his movements that he’s not in the same league with the Russian who killed the Rottweiler. That man exits the rear passenger side seat and checks his weapon professionally. A barrel-chested, blond-headed Russian in a warm-up suit gets out from behind the driver. He’s carrying an MP5 with his index finger extended, lying flat across the trigger guard and in spite of his size, he moves like a big cat. Another professional – he’s probably the one in charge. The fourth man looks like a turnip in a hotdog bun. He’s fat, awkward and his white down jacket looks like it’s been picked off the discount rack of a ski shop in July. Like the skinny driver, this man carries an AK-47 and doesn’t look like he knows one end from the other. So there are two professionals with two amateurs; better odds than I expected.

As I watch, the dog-killer examines the lock on the front gate and, stepping to one side, puts a bullet from the P90 through it, then pulls it open and tosses it away. He unravels the chain and swings the gate open. The four men advance into the mill yard, the skinny Russian obviously having trouble with the clinker. As they draw to within a dozen feet of the administration building, they’re finally within earshot. I keep myself dead still. The human eye is not particularly a fine instrument compared to those of most predators, but we’re good at spotting movement, even more so as we age. That blond Russian looks to be in his forties and I’d bet a paycheck that he’d spot a flea buzzing at a hundred yards.

“Don’t let him slip out, Misha,” the blond leader says to Dog-killer in Russian. Misha nods and drops back twenty yards, already scanning the perimeter. It’s a smart move. The P90 is not very accurate at a distance, but the blond man has clearly put his best man where he can try to keep me from escaping.

The leader now turns to the fat man, pulling roughly on the lapels of his wool coat. “Get behind that mill on the other side and radio me if you see anything. Don’t just watch the fucking building in front of you; remember to look left and right. Call me if you see anything move, even a fucking jackrabbit, right?” I can’t place the accent, although he’s certainly not a Muscovite. The fat man nods dumbly. “If that fucker gets by you, I’ll eat your lard ass on a sandwich,” the blond man says, tapping the fat Russian between the eyes with his index finger for emphasis. “Is your fucking radio on?” the leader rasps, exasperated as the thick man pulls a Motorola walkie-talkie from a pocket and fumbles with the dials. The blond man grabs it from him, quickly finding the right knob and twisting it. The Motorola gives a chirp and its red display lights up. Then I see the blond man flashing the channel by hand sign to Misha who adjusts his radio quickly and without taking his eyes off the complex.
Spetznaz, that’s who you guys are
, I think, although it’s not saying much. The word translates to something like “commando” and there are different Spetznaz units attached to all of the services in the armed forces as well as to the secret police in Russia.

“And take your goddamn finger off the trigger unless you’re going to fire – I don’t want to be pulling lead out of my ass today.” The fat man hustles around the building, looking furtively up at the looming structures to his left and right, nearly making eye contact with me in the process. Misha moves slowly backwards, trying to get the entire site into his field of vision. The leader turns to the skinny Russian in the wool coat. “You’re with me,” he growls.