"Take me with ye, Aleksi."
"No."
"Aleksi—"
"No, Fin. Not this one. You stay here."
"And do what? Sit in a fucking suite above a garage in the middle of nowhere Ohio while ye go and—"
"I'll call Gregori to come and get you." I was also going to tell Gregori to make sure he didn't leave the apartment because I knew Fin, but I wasn't going to tell him that.
"I can help. Ye know I can help. I'm the one who can—"
I caught his face in both hands. "You've already lost a finger because of me, Fin. You think I'm going to risk your life? You think I'm ever going to risk any part of you ever again?" I shook my head. "I can't, Fin. I can't. If I take you, I'll be so focused on keeping you safe, I won't be able to do my damn job. And I need to do my damn job."
His throat worked as he swallowed his protests. "Aye, then. All right."
I kissed him hard, once on the lips and once on the forehead, and then I let him go and went for my keys.
Nikita had given mesix men, and four of them were children.
I walked the line in the bay where we'd staged, behind the freight depot, and looked at what I had to work with. The first two were Dmitri's, which meant they were fine. The next was a kid named Dev who couldn't keep his hands off his weapon. He kept checking it like it might wander off on its own. Twenty-three, maybe, with a girl's name inked fresh on the side of his neck, the skin still shiny. The one after that had his vest on wrong. I fixed it without a word, and he thanked me like I'd done him a kindness instead of kept him from bleeding out through a gap he'd left open over his own liver. His name was Tomas, and he had a laugh on him. All the way out to the cars he kept the young ones loose, and I let him. The next one was so young I doubted his face had ever seen a razor.
And the one beside him…
I stopped in front of him. "You're a cleaner," I said.
"EJ,” he said with a big, awkward smile. “EJ Renko. Yeah. That’s me.”
I glanced around. “Are you lost or what?”
“Nikita said all hands." He shrugged. "I can shoot."
"How many men have you killed?"
He swallowed and shifted. “I can hit a tin can at a hundred yards.”
Jesus fucking Christ. He’d never even shot at a live target.
I looked down the line of them, six men, four children, and thought about Dario Kastelani, whose plane was about to touch down on the private airstrip outside of Winchester. The fucker had left Fin handcuffed to a radiator to die. He’d ordered the execution of a dozen innocent women, and probably countless more that I didn’t know about. He was an ice-cold bastard who’d paint the floor with their blood and not lose a minute of sleep over it.
And Nikita sent me boys who shot at tin cans.
I sucked in a deep breath and shoved my hands into my coat pockets. “All right, listen up, you bastards. Here’s the plan. Our target is Dario Kastelani. Italian. His plane is landing in Winchester in forty minutes and we’re going to be there to give him a nice lead filled welcome back to fucking Ohio, boys. You do this right, we all walk away to get laid and paid. You fuck it up…” I stopped pacing. “Then Nikita executes your last will and testament as filed.”
The kid next to EJ raised his hand like this were math class.
“Put your fucking hand down,” I snapped.
He lowered it slowly.
“Now,” I said, going back to pacing, “There’s only one way to do this right, and that’s my way. So, you do as I say, and we’re good. There’s one road in and one out of the airstrip he’s using, which makes our job fucking easy. We’re going to take two cars, post up on the other side of the exit from the airstrip so we’renot on federal fucking ground when we start shooting. Last thing this org needs is a fucking RICO case because one of you green boys was standing on the wrong side of a property line. So mind your fuckin’ feet, ladies.”
I stopped in front of EJ and tried to imagine what he’d look like as a corpse with a hole in his skull. I found that doing that with my men before an op helped me keep that from happening.
“He lands, they load him and the case into a car, and we let the car come up the road. We don't touch the field. We don't touch the plane. We let them load him like good little boys, and we take the car at the first bend, where it slows. Dmitri’s team will be in car two. You’ll nose in from the front and stop them dead. My team comes up from behind and blocks the retreat. I want all of you sons of bitches out of the car and firing from cover as soon as that speedometer hits zero. Everybody except the fucking driver. Dmitri, you stay behind the fucking wheel and go down so you don’t take a round. I need you there to drive us out.”
Dmitri nodded. “You got it, boss.”
