Choosers of the Slain

Chapter Thirteen

“Bravo team in position.”

Mike looked back at the van full of Keldara and nodded to Yevgenii.

“Alpha in position.”

“Target is moving. Target is unaccompanied, repeat unaccompanied.”

“Roll the op up,” Mike said quietly.

“Roll up,” Yevgenii repeated.

“Roll up confirmed,” Vanner replied. “We are out of here in one five minutes. Team Charlie is in place to recover telltales.”

“Don’t forget to pay the bill,” Mike muttered. “Don’t send that.”

“Roger,” Yevgenii replied. They were both in civilian clothes with body armor underneath. The team in the back was in full battle rig. Smegnoff was a hard worker and it was just after dawn. He’d been heading back to the café to get some paperwork done. He also apparently counted down his cash in the back room. That was where the majority of his “associates” and his main base for farming his girls and doing deals were located.

“Target is repeating, repeating. Kramor Prospect so far.”

“Get ready,” Mike said, turning his head. “It looks like us. Close up.”

“Close up,” Yevgenii said as he started the van. “Close up.”

Santos Street was two lane with cars parked along both sides. The van for Alpha team was parked in an alley halfway down the block.

“Closed up,” the following team called. “Target is turning on Santos. One, two… Go! Go! Go!”

Yevgenii threw the van into drive while hammering the accelerator. The lightly loaded van jerked out into the road in a cloud of blue smoke and immediately began disgorging fighters in full battle dress, with MP-5s and silenced SPRs pointed at the oncoming Lada.

Smegnoff was a survivor of numerous street battles and he had quick reactions. He didn’t bother to come to a full stop before throwing the Lada into reverse and hitting the accelerator. His problem was that the four year old Lada following him slammed into him from the rear and then went to full power, turning his car sideways across the street.

It was less than ten meters to the car and before he could try to drive out of the ambush the lead Keldara had smashed in his driver-side window. The second in line dropped his MP-5, drew a taser from his holster and fired it into the slaver.

In no more than seven seconds the slaver was in the back of the van, wrapped in rigger’s tape, leaving only two smoking Ladas for the police to try to explain.

“Good morning, Yuri,” Mike said pleasantly as the man’s eyes flew open from the ammonia capsule. “Did you have a good rest? I’m sure you recognize the after-effects of chloroform; you’ve used it a time or two.”

“Muh-wugfuh?” the man said through the rigger’s tape on his mouth.

“Oh, sorry,” Mike said, reaching up and ripping the tape off the man’s face.

Yuri Smegnoff was taped to a chair that was firmly bolted into the middle of the floor of an abandoned factory. It had probably been a supervisor’s chair when the factory had been in operation. Now it served Mike’s uses perfectly. He had to give Adams a bonus for scrounging up the facility on such short notice. Another note to make; they needed to do more ground work at each stop. This wasn’t the last such interrogation that they’d have to do.

“Ow! What the fuck is this? I don’t know who you are but—”

“Yuri, Yuri,” Mike said kindly. “All I am is an honest businessman trying to do a job. Now that job is for people who view you and me as no more than insects. In your case, one to be stepped upon. You’ve made some very powerful people very angry, Yuri. Now, this can go easy, or it can go hard. Let’s make it easy, shall we?” He drew out a folder and pulled out a picture, flipping it in front of the man’s face.

“Now, I know you see a lot of young women,” Mike said nicely. “But I’m really hoping, for your sake, that you recognize this one. Because if you don’t, I’m going to have to improve your memory.”

“I… I do,” Yuri said, licking his lips. “Yes, I remember her.”

“Ah, good,” Mike said. “Now, Yuri, there’s a thing about my friends here,” Mike said, gesturing at the Keldara standing behind the chair. Yuri hadn’t even noticed them and when he turned around his eyes flew open. Mike had chosen two of the larger shooters and they were both holding MP-5s at port arms and wearing full battle armor. “They’re really simple farmers from the back hills. And they’re simple people. They have a very strong code of honor. So they really don’t like lies. Not a bit. And since I’m their leader, I need to uphold that tradition. So, please, Yuri, let’s not be lying as we go on. You do remember her, yes?”

“Yes,” Yuri said, licking his lips again. “One of my catchers picked her up near the town square. She said she was Ukrainian, that she was looking for work.”

“Go on,” Mike said.

“Can I have some water?” Yuri asked, carefully. “I am very parched.”

“It’s an effect of fear,” Mike pointed out. “It comes from the adrenaline. I’m sure that many of your little girls had very dry mouths. Did you give them water, Yuri? No, I thought not. So, you picked her up near the town square. And you brought her to your townhouse?”

“Yes,” Yuri said, starting to breathe hard.

“And you settled her, there, I’d think,” Mike said, raising an eyebrow. “We’re men of the world; we know what that means. You dipped your wick and that of a couple of your guards. You beat her around and told her she belonged to you, now. All the rest of that sort of thing. Yes, Yuri?”

“Yes,” the slaver said quietly. “But this is who you look for? She had no friends!”

“We’ll get to that later,” Mike said, smiling. “So, you settled her down and then what, Yuri? She’s not walking the street for you. We’ve checked rather carefully. So, where’d she go, Yuri?”

“I did what I always do,” the slaver said with false bravado. “I sold her. I don’t remember to who.”

“Ah, Yuri, Yuri,” Mike said, reaching back and accepting a large sledge hammer from the Keldara. “Bad answer.”

“No, look, I can try…” the man said as Mike moved the hammer back and then forward into his left knee.

When the screams died down, Mike leaned forward to the man’s ear.

“Yuri, Yuri, my friend. We are friends, right? Yuri, that was a bad answer. Do you know why that was a bad answer, Yuri?”

“I need to remember…” Yuri whispered.

“It’s because we’ve had your house and coffee shop bugged for the last day and a half,” Mike replied. “You talked about how you keep careful records. You sold two girls yesterday, Ionna and Sofiya, to a man named Markov. We’ve got rather good pictures of all three of them. Sofiya is a lovely lady, isn’t she? And you got seven hundred euros for her, as I recall. And you told Markov that you kept all of your information to hand, in your PDA. So, Yuri, why didn’t you mention your PDA to me, please?”

“No names,” Yuri gasped. “No names.”

“Why, Yuri?” Mike asked, straightening up. “Because the men you sold her to are very dangerous? Yuri, I eat people like you, and the bad men you work with, for lunch. And is there something they can do to you that I’m not going to, Yuri, my friend, my buddy? So, who did you sell her to? Actually, what’s the password for your PDA? My little geek friend would very much like to know. He says he’s having trouble hacking it.”

“Hey!” Vanner said from the back of the room. “These things aren’t easy. He’s used at least a ten point encryption and you can’t just hammer them on the ground and pull out the info!”

“No, but I suppose that’s possible with you, isn’t it, Yuri?” Mike asked, smiling in his most friendly manner. “So, Yuri, password, please?”

“No names,” the man gasped again then shrieked when Mike lightly kicked his knee.

“Yuri, Yuri, I grow tired of this,” Mike said, picking up the sledge again.

“Please,” Yuri said, eyeing the heavy hammer. “Please. I can’t give you names.”

“Oh, Yuri, and you were doing so well,” Mike said, tossing the hammer onto his shoulder. “How many women have begged you, Yuri? Did the one that tried to run away beg you, Yuri? And why should I listen to your pleas when you didn’t listen to theirs? So, Yuri, count of five,” Mike continued, lifting the sledge. “And after we’ve worked through the major joints, there are always the intermediate bones…”

“Capital A, zero, One…” Yuri gasped.

“I’m in,” Vanner said a moment later. “What name did you use for her?”

“Her name was Natalya,” Yuri said. “Natalya Y I think.”

“Natalya,” Vanner muttered. “Damn there are a lot of Natalyas in here. Try Natalya S, Yuri. That was two weeks ago.”

“No, she was two or three months ago,” Yuri said. “There are pictures.”

“Sure are,” Vanner said, wonderingly. “Kildar, you need to see this.”

Mike set the hammer down and walked over to where the intel specialist was holding the PDA up.

“I’ve hotsynched it,” Vanner said, unplugging the cord. “We’ve got the whole thing. Including his list of clients and who bought what girl, etcetera. But you’ve got to see this.”

Mike picked up the PDA and looked at the picture. Then he walked back over and opened up the folder, pulling out the pic of the girl on the beach.

They were identical. And there was more than one. Most of the rest were of the same girl, without the bathing suit.

“Nice tits,” Mike said. “We’ve got what we want. Close it down and call in the clean-up team.”

“Penny for your thoughts, Mike?” Adams said.

They’d made it from Chisinau to Vatra Dornei in one day by hard travelling. The crossing at Gotesti had been guarded but they’d gotten through that by slipping the appropriate amount of klei to the guards.

Once in Romania they’d gotten on National Route 17, which would have just about been an adequate to a poorly maintained county road in a poor county in the states, and made the best time they could, ignoring the potholes to the extent they could. By just after dusk they’d made it to Saratel, short of Cluj-Napoca but not by much. However, that was the area that Pasha had reported had roadblocks so Mike decided to settle in at a small hotel that generally catered to Transylvanian tourists and move on the next day.

He set the bottle of beer on his stomach and considered the chief’s question.

“Well, I’m wondering if we weighted the body enough,” Mike admitted. “I think a couple more concrete blocks would have been a good idea.”

“He’ll stay down long enough,” Adams said, shrugging. “And it’s not like they’re going to be looking at us. He had a lot of enemies. We were barely on his radar horizon.”

“And I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to do with whatsername,” Mike admitted.

“You mean Oksana?” Adams asked. “Nice girl. She can ride on my lap the rest of the way.”

“I mean long term,” Mike replied. “The same problems apply to her that apply to all the other waifs I’ve been picking up. I need to find a boarding school in Argentina or something that will start taking them in.”

“Worry about that after the mission’s over,” Adams suggested.

“Good point,” Mike said, frowning and taking a pull off the beer. “And I’m wondering just what the fuck we’re really chasing.”

“Ah, now we get to the source of your angstiness, Great Leader,” Adams said. “You got another one of those?”

“Cooler,” Mike said. “There are three bits of information to sort. What we were told. What we know is true. And what we know about the overall situation. We were told that the girl was a dependent of a rich constituent. That is, almost certainly, a lie. If she was, when she got into that crap she would have screamed bloody murder about how they could make more money off of her from her father. And Yuri was pretty damned sure that she wasn’t an American. When he was begging for his life, he added that she didn’t even speak English, only Russian. So…”

“So, she’s not what the fine senator told you,” Adams said, belching. “We’re still going to find her, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mike said. “For one thing, there’s a rich senator who owes me one huge fucking favor for sending me on a wild goose chase when I could be fucking my harem. And for another, this has already cost like crazy. He’s in for the five mil or we’ll be committing crimes against the peace in the Continental United States. I’m wondering why we’re really here.”

“Well, we know the senator really wants to find her,” Adams pointed out.

“Do we?” Mike said. “Or are we just being diverted from something else? Is the senator, for example, running a scam with the Chechens to get us out of the valley so we can get hit while the team is gone?”

“Pretty unlikely,” Adams said, frowning. “I don’t know what they could use as payment to the senator and so we’re gone? The other five teams are still there. And Nielson’s running the store. That one doesn’t wash.”

“I’m brainstorming,” Mike pointed out. “First you come up with the ideas. Later you knock them down. Okay, that one wasn’t so great. But why? And if he does want her found, why? And why me?”

“You can find her and are imminently deniable,” Adams pointed out. “How many people could testify that they saw you and the senator together? And nobody but the two of you know what was said in the room.”

“The secret service guys saw us meet,” Mike said. “On the other hand, I don’t know they’re service. And that guy on the Moldava desk.”

“And you know he exists?” Adams asked.

“Ouch,” Mike said, grimacing. “Nope.”

“Something for Vanner to research,” the chief said. “And one more thing.”

“Go,” Mike said.

“Who besides Nielson is briefed in and not on the op?” Adams asked.

“Nobody,” Mike said, frowning. “Why? You think somebody’s going to try to clean us up? Good luck.”

“There’s always poison, but no,” Adams said. “I was wondering who could be broken free to go have a chat with your friends in Washington.”

“No one,” Mike admitted. “But good point. At this point we’re in fuck-up zone. I’ll put Sawn on it. I can spare him. We’re really running the team and he can think on his feet. Time to cover our ass.”

“Or somebody’s anyway,” Adams said. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up getting fucked somehow.”

“Or somebody will,” Mike said.