“Give me the walkie-talkie,” Veltsev said.
Dima fumbled in his pocket and handed it over.
“Easy,” Veltsev said, “nice and easy. Tell them you see me and can take me out through the window. Repeat it.”
“I can see… him through the window, I can take him out.”
“Do it.”
Dima spoke the words into the walkie-talkie, and as soon as he heard the reply—“One sec, we’re there”—Veltsev shot him right between the eyes. Shuddering as if gripped by a powerful chill, Dima collapsed onto his side and stretched out his legs. The snow under his head sank quickly and turned dark. Riveted by the sight of blood, Veltsev recalled how he’d shot Jack yesterday the same way, in the head; he spat and made a cross over his numb chest. Double Jack, who you could only distinguish from his brother by the mole over his eyebrow, was lying in front of him. Dima had been guarding Mityai yesterday. “If he twitches, whack him, don’t wait,” cooed the walkie-talkie, which had fallen into the snow. Veltsev picked it up and was about to say something but turned it off instead and dropped it by the body. Kneading his numb fingers, he stole a glance around the corner. First to appear on the path along the rear wall was Kostik, followed by Mishanya wielding his gun, and then the guy in the cashmere coat, hanging back like a coward. “Bang bang bang,” Veltsev whispered.
They dropped, one after the other, no sound, just like that, all three, like a row of dominoes. Kostik and Mishanya died before they hit the ground—the former got a bullet in the eye and the latter bcv fb’s nose was obliterated—but the thug in the coat, after he crashed forward, suddenly answered fire. Stumbling, Veltsev dropped back around the corner. He tried to count the shots, but immediately realized that was impossible. He probably wasn’t firing an ordinary silenced piece but a gun with noiseless ammo, which meant you could only distinguish a shot after the bullets had ricocheted off something. Regardless, there was no time to waste. The thug could call in reinforcements over his walkie-talkie at any second. Veltsev caught his breath, emerged from his cover again, and, moving along the wall, started shooting at the mustached man’s twitching back. He held the trigger down until he’d emptied what was left in his magazine, all eleven cartridges.
Even though his face had blossomed like an onion and was smoking like a pot, the thug nonetheless kept squeezing his gun, which had its safety engaged. Propping one elbow on the ground, he aimed up at someone in front of him. When his arm dropped, sapped, Veltsev picked the gun up delicately with two fingers.
It was a silent, six-round Vul, a special make for special agents like this. Before this Veltsev had only seen one in pictures. You couldn’t get the gun or ammo for it on the black market for any amount of money. Now, after firing, the open chamber didn’t even smell of powder. Actually, examining his trophy, Veltsev wasn’t thinking about its unique characteristics anymore but about how he no longer needed to search the dead man for documents because his identity was obvious. An agent of the special services—whether GRU or FSB was irrelevant—had just given up the ghost.
After dragging the bodies around the corner and stacking them next to Double Jack, he drove the Geländewagen on, into the rear yard, and parked it next to the Land Cruiser. The blizzard was not abating. Veltsev tried to warm himself for a couple of minutes behind the wheel. Even though he was soaked with sweat from dealing with the bodies, he was still chilled to the bone. “We’re rolling, rolling, rolling,” he intoned, holding his palms over the humming heating vents. He stared at the thug’s loaded gun in front of him.
The Uzbek’s gang showed up at Lana’s entrance like clockwork, at exactly 11:30. Three men came out of their SUV, which differed from the Land Cruiser parked out back only by its license number. Veltsev was waiting for them to go through the door, but after conferencing at the lobby threshold, the trio returned to the car. Veltsev blinked away his frost-induced tears. There was a weak crimson glow spreading behind the Land Cruiser—probably from the taillights, but broad enough that it lit up the whole section of the apartment building spread out behind the car, as well as the buildings in the rear of the courtyard, about 150 meters away.
When it became clear to him that the SUV was headed down the track blazed by the Geländewagen around the building, the Land Cruiser had already driven into the rear courtyard, rocking over the potholes. Veltsev removed his gun from its holster. “Rolling, rolling, rolling…”
After hurrying to the abandoned cars, the trio moved around them in single file, and then—obviously following Veltsev’s tracks—came upon the bodies heaped in the front garden. Veltsev, whose teeth were now chattering from the cold, leaned his shoulder into the edge of the back wall. The blizzard was seething all around, but a silence fell over the front garden such that when mustache guy’s walkie-talkie started talking in the snowdrift behind it—“Five, where’d you go? Over”—Veltsev nearly pulled the trigger. Disjointedly, reluctantly almost, the trio turned toward the sound. Seeing their vacant young faces animated by death, he shot them calmly and methodically, like targets at a shooting range. Only the gunman at the far right had time to throw up his arm before falling onto the powdered bodies. “Five, are you asleep?” he heard behind him.
Veltsev rested his hands on his straight legs as he bent over. He was struck by a chill. “I think that’s enough for today,” he muttered, glancing at the front garden. The trio’s car was parked with the engine running and its bulk lit up, and once again he caught a glimpse of a reddish glow behind the SUV, only now its source definitely wasn’t the taillights but something beyond the cemetery fence. The trees and flying snow on that side were tinted by a hazy crimson. Puzzled, he walked over to the Land Cruiser, opened the door, and looked inside. Nothing special. The same smell as in the Uzbek’s car, half sheepskin, half hash. A sticker with Arab lettering on the rearview mirror. A phone. A cigarette burn on the driver’s seat. Veltsev was about to slam the door shut, but he froze when he noticed a fresh drop of blood next to the melted hole in the seat. Stepping back, he peered down at his feet and saw something tiny break off into the snow from the Beretta’s silencer. He raised the weapon in front of him: the left side of the gun, and the tips of his right fingers as well, had obviously been dragged through blood. Frosted oily traces had caked across his coat’s lower lapel. On the upper lapel, to the side of the lower button loop, gaped a small hole. Veltsev opened his coat. The silk lining on the left side, some of his sweater below his chest, the edge of the holster that touched his shirt, and his pants down to the knees—all of it was wet and steaming with blood. The bullet had penetrated his waistband and entered his belly above his pelvis, a little lower and to the left of his navel; judging from the fact that his waist was still dry, it had landed in his abdominal cavity. “The Vul,” Veltsev whispered, and then closed his coat. “Nice and easy…”
He used the sterile wipes from the car’s first aid kit to plug the wound, but he didn’t try to treat it with iodine for fear of passing out from the pain. He chewed a few painkillers and tried to calculate how much time had passed since he’d taken the bullet; in any event he was sure to go into shock soon and wasn’t going to last long on the capsule he’d just swallowed. He thought a moment and then dialed the Kalmyk’s number.
“Hello!” Kirila shouted, turning down his loud music.
“Where are you?” Veltsev asked.
The music stopped. “Still here. Why?”
“Do you have Promedol with you?”
“As usual. Why?”
“Wait. I’ll be right there.