| "Sleeping With the Bugs" | ||
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Outside Petrenko's Dacha June 9, 2008, 2114 hours He watched as Maksim made his way slowly around the outside of the building, carefully inspecting the surrounding area for anything suspicious, anything that might indicate that danger was lurking in the woods. He obviously couldn't see anything because he continued with his walk, slow and careful, just as he had been trained all those years ago. It was funny how he could look at Maksim and see himself in years to come. It was also comforting because Maksim was proof that you could survive this job, could live to be called granddad by your teammates. Stop wandering, he told himself. That was the only danger with this type of surveillance: without much stimulus the monotony could provoke the imagination to `create' threats. Nikolai knew he had a vivid imagination, so the danger was all the more likely. Occasionally he would drift off into a fantasy, such as him and Yelena lying on a beach at night watching the sunset as the water lapped gently at their feet� damn, he was doing it again. Focus. He narrowed his eyes behind the sleek NVG's he'd found in his equipment. He really had to find out where this stuff was being made; he knew the RGZS had a purpose-built facility, called The Hole, tasked solely with creating technical wonders, it was just a matter of finding the location and going down there for a little play. Some of the things he had received over the past few weeks had been quite breathtaking, such as the pistol that fired compressed air. That was a marvel, and though he hadn't used it on that particular mission he knew it would come in handy sooner or later. "Want me to tuck you in?" he heard Nelli say over the communication unit. "No thanks sweetness, I'm going to be staying up late tonight. Thanks for the offer though." He smiled; the team was really a team now. No, more like a family. "I could read you a bedtime story�" He chuckled. "Maybe another time." The comm. clicked off and he was once again alone in his thoughts. Looking up he saw the stars shining brightly in the night sky, an immense and complicated collection of light points that danced out an aerial ballet each time daylight departed. It was beautiful to watch, and as he did so a veil of serenity covered him. He let the moment last for a few heartbeats, then shook it off. There was work to do. He moved his eyes over the area around the Dacha, again searching for elements that were not meant to be there, but this time he also mapped out the terrain and began working out fire-lanes, drawback positions, areas to booby trap� This was his battlefield; the Dacha was his headquarters and he was in charge of its defense. The enemy was unknown at this point, but that was how it usually was in these situations. He knew it was extremely unlikely that anyone would attack his team; there was no evidence to suggest otherwise. It would be a nice simple mission. In fact, he didn't expect to have to fire a single bullet. Once again his mind started wondering. This time he thought about the two missions his team had carried out. The first had been the aborted hijacking; they still hadn't found out why the aircraft was targeted, despite considerable effort. Sometimes there were just no answers to the questions they asked, and that was something they hadn't been prepared for. He had wondered at the time why they had been ordered to eliminate all of the terrorists instead of keeping some alive but since then he had realized the reasons behind it; an aircraft was one of the least ideal places to have a shootout, and anything other than pure concentration on taking out the objective would have put the hostages' lives in danger. Polyakov had made the right choice. The other mission at the Russian-owned nightclub in America had proven to be a lot more interesting. He hadn't realized that the RGZS would use its fire teams in such a way; as far as he was concerned they were there to kill terrorists when they appeared. It made sense though, he thought, to use their abilities to the full. He was adept at covert surveillance and monitoring, long and short-range reconnaissance, tailing a vehicle, and planting bugs, as he had proven the day before when he had infiltrated Petrenko's Dacha and bugged the place. What he hadn't been trained at was working in such close quarters with a target, actually working with them for a time. It had taken some getting used to, and when he had finally gotten the hang of it and had waited for the signal to take out Alexei Pavelevich Konstantin the fucking Americans had come in and done the job instead! That had pissed him off. And not only that, but they were meant to be CIA, yet they didn't behave that way. Had he not met Trouble then his anger may have simmered for longer. Well, the anger not connected to his demons at least. Trouble. A mental image of her appeared. He focused on her eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul, the saying went, and he thought it had basis in fact. There was a lot you could tell from someone's eyes, and the night Konstantin had departed the Earth he had been able to look into those eyes in between killing guards and what he had seen had intrigued him. He could remember that those eyes had almost made him forget about his demons, a feat of no small magnitude. There was just something about her, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He couldn't shake the feeling that they were of a kind, as if nature had created them from the same mixture. It was a scary thought. And then there had been the others with Trouble on that night, or at least the woman they were carrying away. He was sure that their paths would cross again, almost wanting it to happen just so he could find out who the fuck she was. He had tailed her in Russia, then met her in Club Samovar in America where she had been Konstantin's girlfriend, and then he had seen her taken away unconscious by Trouble and her friend. Konstantin had been killed, but she had been spared. Why? That question had bugged him for ages. There were connections but he didn't know what they were. If only he could find out then things would be much clearer. Yeah right, he thought. Things were never clear at his level; there were probably major events happening that he would only find out about through luck. Too many times events were multi-stranded. He shook his head to clear the thoughts from his mind. Once again his eyes searched over the terrain, and once again all seemed well. Little did he realize that the greatest danger was something so audacious he would never have been able to plan for it. The communications `sequin' vibrated in his ear: he had a call coming in. Return |
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