“All teams, radio check,” Boris prompts through comms.
Eduard responds first. “South team, in position.”
Marat follows. “North team, standing by. Loading dock is shut. One guard visible through the gap.”
“East team ready,” I confirm.
I glance over my shoulder at the armored SUV parked a hundred meters behind our position. Daria is inside with the engine running and a phone in her hand. She knows the plan. When Boris gives the word, she calls Bogdan and keeps him talking, keeps him looking at his phone instead of what’s coming, which buys us the thirty seconds we need to breach all three entry points at once.
“Sixty seconds,” Boris announces, still not entirely on board, judging by his tone. “Daria, stand by on the call.”
Her voice comes through the earpiece, steady and clear. “Ready.”
I draw my Makarov and rack the slide. The man beside me, a stocky veteran named Grisha, mirrors the movement with his own sidearm. We’ve worked together before. He brings no talking or panic. Just a man who does his job and does it well.
“All right, Daria. Make the call.”
Three seconds pass. Five. Seven.
“He’s not answering,” she says.
My stomach drops.
“Try again,” Boris orders.
Another pause.
“No answer. It went to voicemail.”
Boris and I lock eyes across the gap between containers. Daria told us that Bogdan always answers when she calls. He picks up because he can’t resist the chance to twist the knife. The only reason he wouldn’t answer is if he already knows what’s coming.
“We breach now,” I announce. “He’s been tipped off.”
Boris doesn’t argue. “All teams, go. Go, go, go.”
I round the container at a dead sprint. The east entrance is a rusted steel door with a padlock the size of my fist. Grisha hits it with the bolt cutters, and the lock drops. My boot sends the door inward, and I sweep right while he sweeps left.
The first room is a narrow corridor lined with wooden crates stacked to the ceiling. Fluorescent tubes dangle from the metal rafters overhead. I move fast with my weapon up, checking corners and doorways as Boris feeds updates through the earpiece.
“South team breaching now. Two hostiles in the ground-floor office.”
Gunfire erupts from that direction, three controlled bursts, then silence.
“South clear. Two down.”
I push through the corridor and shoulder open the door at the far end. It spills into the warehouse’s main floor, a cavernous space cluttered with shipping containers, forklifts, and long rows of industrial shelving.
Two men are scrambling behind a forklift thirty meters ahead. One has an AK slung across his chest; the other is fumbling with a radio.
“East team, contact. Two hostiles, center floor,” I report.
The one with the AK spots me first. He swings the barrel in my direction, and I drop behind a steel support column as a burst of automatic fire chews into the metal above my head. Sparks raindown, and concrete dust kicks up in a line across the floor where the rounds punch through. Grisha returns fire from behind a pallet of crates, pinning the shooter while I reposition.
I count the rounds. The AK fires in short, panicked bursts. He’s scared and burning through his magazine without discipline. Twenty rounds gone in five seconds, maybe six.
I move the moment the firing stops. Three steps to the left, and I have a clear line on the forklift. Bogdan’s shooter is crouched behind the rear wheel, swapping magazines with shaking hands. I put two rounds into his shoulder, and he screams. His weapon clatters across the concrete.
His partner drops the radio and raises his hands.
