The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

there was me thinking I was a high-profile target, how humbling.

“All clear, boss,” said a guard. “There’s nothing in the back except for crates of wine.”

Zurga smiled and walked to the back. Wine was running freely from the doors, with many of the bottles destroyed in the gunfire. “What a waste!” he groaned. “Even if it is Greek muck.”

A box near the door was on its side and seemed to have escaped the attentions of the bullets. He pulled out a bottle and lifted it up. “Merlot!” he exclaimed. “This night just keeps getting better.” The top had come loose in the fall but the wine was still good and he swigged straight from the bottle. “Bring the rest inside,” he commanded as he ambled back towards the house.

***

On the hill across the small valley, Nikita lowered the scope on the sniper rifle. There was nothing about his cold expression to suggest he felt anything at the death of Giorgos. Nothing but a single tear snaking its way down his dusty cheek.

Losing a man was not a part of the plan.

CHAPTER 10

Nikita picked up the sniper again and raised the scope to his eye. He was lying flat on the ground, obscured by the low, coarse shrubs that covered the hills hereabouts. With his dark skin and black clothing, he was totally lost in the shadows, stretched out on the hard earth. The sniper pointed out in front of him looked like an extension of his body, making him appear like a black dart waiting to pounce.

He surveyed the scene across the valley. The guards were back patrolling the grounds but were noticeably less vigilant. Two of the guards were at the body, one picking up the Jericho and placing it into his belt, while the other laughed.

Nikita gritted his teeth. They would be first.

Panning the scope around the complex, he focused his attentions on the building windows. Little could be seen other than an elderly woman in a small, ground floor bedroom, packing a bag.

In a large, upstairs bedroom he could see an outline of what he thought was Zurga. He was drinking wine straight from the bottle. Time to move, thought Nikita, as he pushed himself up, before slinging the sniper over his shoulder and making off through the underbrush at high speed, making barely a sound on the dry ground.

***

“Going somewhere?” Cato asked, ducking under the doorframe as he entered Maria’s small room.

She barely glanced up from the suitcase laid out on the bed which she was filling with her meagre possessions.

“Fifty years I serve this house, but I never see such thing as this. Josef is a bad, bad man.”

“You think you can just flee?”

“You intend to stop me?” Maria said, pausing and looking up at her colleague.

Cato smirked at her. “To the contrary, Maria.” He reached back into the corridor and pulled his own suitcase into the room with his rangy arms.

She grinned a crooked smile and snapped her suitcase shut.

“I suggest we leave now, while the fool is distracted by his wine,” said Cato, picking up Maria’s suitcase as well.

As they made their way down the corridor towards the front door, they heard the drunken calls from Josef upstairs. “Maria! Maria! Come here, you old crone!” He screeched to the house, no doubt wanting her to clean his room for the next batch of whores, or some such thing.

The pair quickened their step. Reaching the front door, Cato then pulled it open and they moved out, heading along the track towards the steel gate.

“You look like you’re leaving us,” said the guard as they got to the gate.

“We are,” said Cato, lifting his chin and attempting to leave no room for doubt.

“You see, that might be a problem,” said the guard. “If word gets out of what happened here tonight there would be a lot of problems. I prefer to make problems go away, and right now you two are a problem. I’m going to have to make you go away.” He reached for a gun at his waist.

“Please, no,” Maria sobbed. Cato moved in front of her as the guard raised the weapon. Embossed on the side of it was the word Jericho. The guard smiled as he began to squeeze the trigger.

BANG.

Cato and Maria fell to the ground. They couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and everything hurt. There was just a blinding white light.

Cato began to realise he wasn’t dead, and he heard the groaning of Maria next to him. His hearing returned and he heard a dull thud close to his feet as his sight slowly returned.

Through the smoke from the flash grenade appeared a figure cloaked in black with a gun raised in one hand and a khaki green sack in the other. Cato realised that the thud at his feet was of the guard hitting the ground; a double gunshot to the head had left him dead, still with the stupid grin on his face.

His senses returning, he saw that Maria had broken her arm; it was sticking out at a strange angle and she looked up at him, and for the first time he saw something other than irritation or apathy in her eyes. Now he saw fear.

There were two cracks in quick succession and another guard fell, another double tap to the head.

Guards were now appearing from everywhere, as the man in black holstered his gun, dropped to the ground, tossed a sniper to the ground next to him and opened the bag. In less than two seconds he was back propped up on one knee and holding an enormous gun with a long feed of bullets trailing from it.

He took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger, wreaking destruction across the entire site. Starting from one side of the vast lawn