A/N: Here's the obligatory (not really) reference to the ownership of Chuck.
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"Why would a bunch of guys planning to blow something up have prisoners?" asked Chuck.
No one had any answers for him. Eventually, Sarah said, "We'll have to wait until they get here to figure that out. Casey, can you see the back of the building?"
"Yeah, I've got that covered from here. There's a back door," he replied.
"Brown, what can you see?" she asked.
"Nothing. Where I'm parked I'm blocked by that gray building to the left."
"Ok, Brown. You leave the car there and come to us. No sense in having you sit there alone doing nothing."
"Ok, Sarah. On my way," he said.
"That leaves Casey by himself," said Yuri. "I'll go sit with him. If something happens, he won't be alone. Besides, I can smoke in the car with him." Yuri smiled a little as he said it.
"Ok. Be safe, Yuri," said Chuck.
Yuri squeezed Chuck's forearm and said, "You too, Chuck, Sarah."
Brown joined them and Yuri moved to Casey's car, adjusting the passenger seat to slide it all the way back. No sooner had he seated himself, than he took out his gunmetal cigarette case and golden lighter and lit a cigarette.
Keeping an eye out for activity at the back door of the garage, he exhaled a plume of smoke and said, "So, Casey, tell me. How'd you get into this line of work?"
"I was military. Special operations. It was an easy move sideways. How about you?"
Yuri took another deep drag of his acrid cigarette and said, "Not quite so direct, I'm afraid. I grew up in Moscow. Both of my grandfathers died in the Great War. My mother is a survivor of the Siege of Leningrad. She was a little girl, but the hunger didn't make any allowances for that. She still gets a special stipend from the Russian government. The Siege killed more civilians than the bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and both atomic bombs over Japan all combined. My father was an officer in the Soviet Navy. Submarines. When the time came and I was drafted into the Soviet Army, I left willingly. Enthusiastically even. I made it into Spetsnaz. The Soviet Army's special forces..."
"I know what they are. Tough unit. Tough bunch of guys," said Casey with respect.
"Yeah. We were. I served with them in Afghanistan, hunting the same muj that your men are hunting today. Of course, in those days, you were supplying them with weapons and Stinger missiles."
"Different time, Yuri," said Casey.
"Oh, I know that. I'm not bitter," said Yuri, waving with his cigarette. "I was there for several years. I thought I was doing good work. At least at first. But like your army experienced in Vietnam, the political decisions back home defeated us more than the enemy on the battlefield. While I was there, my country was falling apart. Gorbachev decided to open it up. Elections. Free speech. Free press. It all spun out of control. Three years after we left Afghanistan and shortly after I was thrown out of the Army, 1991, my country ceased to exist. Think about that for a second, Casey. Every man in my family had worn the uniform proudly. Every single one. And the country...dissolves. The whole country. The country I had lived in my whole life. It's gone. How crazy is that? Sure, I had been an ethnic Russian, but I was a citizen of the Soviet Union. Until I wasn't. Men I had fought beside. They suddenly were in a different army. Citizens of a different country. So many of us were just ...I don't know...adrift, I guess.
"And here I was back in Moscow. The economy had collapsed. There was no experience with capitalism. The only people who knew anything about buying and selling were the criminals. But that only makes sense, right? When business is outlawed, as it was in the Soviet Union, only criminals will do business. And there were no systems in place to govern anything like that. The police were just another armed gang for hire. The courts and judges were for sale to the highest bidder. I don't begrudge those people that. They weren't being paid by the state and they had to feed their families. In the Soviet Union you learned to cheat the system from birth, it was the only way. It became engrained in us.
"I started working for a debt collector. He had legal training. If you wanted him to collect your debt for you, you had to bring him all the paperwork showing that the debt was truly owed and you had made an effort to collect without force. He turned more customers away than he took. He was doing a job the courts were supposed to do, but weren't. If the debt was not legitimate, in his eyes, he was nothing but a thief. My partner and I would go and talk to the debtor. Explain the situation. It was only when that didn't work that we would resort to force. My boss was an honorable man. I liked him. He was murdered one night by a mob chief who wanted to take over that business."
Casey was listening, fascinated.
"I killed that mob chief. Just seemed like a nice gesture to make on behalf of my old boss. It was like the wild west in your old movies. No law but the gun. We had a drunk for a President. It was complete anarchy. If you wanted to buy a business, say. You could negotiate with someone who wanted to sell a business. Today, in the West maybe, you show up with lawyers. Then, in Moscow, you showed up with a half dozen men with AK's. So, did the seller. That was just how business operated. The murder rate was ridiculous. Only South Africa had a higher murder rate. The only marketable skill I had was the use of force, so that was how I came to make a living. The most successful of those criminals became today's oligarchs. They took control of the natural resources and the arms industries, the two categories of Russia's most important exports. That's how Volkoff rose to the top, with Frost at his side throughout."
"But not just him. Federov, getting married next week. All of them. They climbed out of the mayhem of the 90's to be the top. They are hard, paranoid, dangerous people. Killing means absolutely nothing to them."
"How did you end up with Volkoff?" asked Casey.
"It was soon after I got out of prison."
"You were in prison?" asked Casey.
"Yeah."
"For what?" asked Casey.
"I don't know," responded Yuri.
"What do you mean, you don't know? How could you not know?"
"They picked me up one day. Nine months later, they released me."
"Why?"
"I don't know. They never told me."
"Wait a second," said Casey. "You mean they picked you up and you never knew why and then they released you and to this day, you still don't know why?"
"That's right," said Yuri. Casey grunted, astonished. "And I don't want to know. So, Volkoff. If this were the corporate world, I would say I came into his employ in a corporate acquisition. I was working for a growing mob led by an ex-colonel. He was making good inroads in the illegal arms trade. Selling crates of AK's. He wanted to expand his customer base to Africa, so he approached Volkoff with the idea of doing a joint venture. Volkoff seemed to have good contacts overseas. Volkoff liked what he saw, so he had Frost kill the man and Volkoff took over the colonel's business. I came along with it. A bit at a time, I have climbed the ranks within the Volkoff organization over the years. I'm now one of his top men. Selling death and destruction around the world." Yuri's voice sounded bitter.
"Doesn't sound like you have a lot of job satisfaction, Yuri," said Casey.
Yuri shrugged. "That's overrated anyway, my friend. I'm not leaving Moscow. I need to stay for my mother and she's certainly not going anywhere. So long as I'm there, I'll work for Volkoff. I can't very well quit. What am I going to do? Go to law school? Open a flower shop? Frost would hunt me down and kill me if I tried to leave Volkoff. God knows what she would do to me if she learned that I was on your payroll. I'll stay." He shrugged again. "The story comes out the way it is written, Casey. The things I've done in my life...well, let's just say..."
In their ears Sarah said, "Guys, Selenica's men are starting to arrive. I'm feeding the audio from the bug in his phone through the net. Yuri, we'll need you to translate."
"Right, go ahead," said Yuri. He continued, "Greetings. Questioning what's up...Selenica is putting them off...only wants to explain once...wait for everyone to arrive...ok, quiet now. Wherever Selenica is, he's not with the other men. I can't make out the conversations in the background..."
"Ok," said Sarah. "We'll leave the link open in case."
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They didn't have a plan yet. At the moment, they were still in the phase of gathering intelligence. When they knew enough about Selenica's intentions, they could form a plan to stymie what he and his friends had in mind. They had managed to put all the members of Selenica's cabal in one place and listen in on their discussion. So far, so good.
By ones and twos men arrived at the garage, but Selenica still balked at briefing them until everyone was there. The last one to arrive was the man bringing the four prisoners. A small van pulled up the front of the garage and backed up to the door. As they watched four men were unloaded and quickly hustled inside. The men wore black hoods and had their hands bound behind them.
Once the whole collection of men had assembled, Selenica began his briefing of his men, with Yuri translating for the benefit of his team.
"Greetings...thanks for dropping everything and coming...we have a problem...I have reason to believe that a team of Russian FSB agents might be on to this plan, or at least on to him...all talking at once...ok, he's explaining about the woman BND agent and the attack on him last night...no talk of dropping the plan...he's proposing to move up the date of ...relocation...more talking at once...not ready...the plan to get the prisoners across the border to Serbia is not ready...they can't be moved yet...oh, shit, kill the prisoners here and get new ones in Serbia...talking at once...where to pick up new Serbs...political Serbs...urgent to move them...can't...kill them here...talking at once...they are coming to an agreement...kill the Serb prisoners and pick up new ones on the other side of the border...pack up the rest of the gear and drive the mixer...that's the word, mixer...down tomorrow...Ok, they are starting to pack up to move south...pull the van inside...they'll kill the prisoners on their way out, leave the bodies here...Shit."
"Ok...shit," Sarah said, "We don't know what they have planned, but we aren't going to sit here and let them murder four people. We have to go in."
Next to her in the front of the van, Chuck grimaced, but nodded. Brown, sitting behind her, said, "Yes." Yuri and Casey, in their ears, agreed.
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Selenica was proud of his men. No panic. No recriminations. No thought of abandoning the strike. Just calm agreement to relocate early to the empty warehouse to their south. These were good men. Solid men. All veterans of the fight against the Serbs and all totally dedicated to the dream of a Greater Albania. Prepared to leave their families and homes on a moment's notice. He watched them packing the materials they would need.
Given that the FSB could interrupt them at any time, he was glad that the men had all come armed. In addition to the bomb making materials, they had their weapons to be loaded as well. He, to his embarrassment, had not been carrying his own pistol, and made a point to remedy that deficiency. He walked past the prisoners, now bound at the ankles and lying squirming and hooded on the hard concrete floor of the garage's office, and into the storage room behind the office. Squatting down behind some boxes, he opened the case containing his favorite weapon, an UZI submachine gun. He heard footsteps in the office as a couple of his men checked the prisoners.
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Yuri and Casey silently entered the garage by the back door, adjacent to the office, grateful that the hinges were well oiled. The garage smelled strongly of manure...no, fertilizer. That made sense to both men, as fertilizer, with ammonium nitrate, mixed with a fuel like diesel can make a potent explosive and is relatively easy to obtain. 'Well,' thought Casey, 'at least they now knew the composition of the bomb that Selenica is planning.'
Selenica's men were to one side of the garage, packing large bags of fertilizer into the back of the van. Next to the van, hidden from the outside behind a large door, was a somewhat rundown cement mixer. Ok, that made sense too, the mixer Selenica had been talking about. Fill it with fertilizer and fuel and mix the slurry. It would become a massive truck bomb with the right detonator. All of the men wore weapons, or had them easily to hand. Why they had not posted sentries was a mystery. Putting Yuri's opinion of the KLA aside, these were not top notch soldiers by any means. None of the men had noticed Casey and Yuri enter the building.
In their heads, both Casey and Yuri had done a quick count of the men they could see. One was missing. Selenica himself. Casey looked at Yuri, held up one finger and shrugged, to show he didn't know where one of them was. Yuri had reached the same conclusion himself, and nodded in agreement.
Casey and Yuri were wearing tactical vests and carried multiple weapons each, including the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. It was their hope that they could make it in and out of the building without being detected by Selenica and the crew loading the van. Free the prisoners and spirit them out of the building to safety, then form a plan to disrupt the bombing itself.
While Casey kept his eyes on the men, Yuri stuck his head around the corner to look in the office. He saw the four prisoners bound on the floor, but no one else. He tapped Casey on the shoulder and jerked his head towards the office. Casey nodded and, never taking his eyes off Selenica's men, backed towards the open door to the office.
Trusting Casey to have his back, Yuri swept his eyes over the small office area. He saw the open door to the storage room at the back wall and looked inside. Boxes and cartoons, but no people. No Selenica.
He approached the prisoners. Yuri put his weapon on the floor and took out an odd looking knife with a cylindrical handle and blade cover. He took the cover off the sharp blade and knelt down next to one of the bound men to free the man's feet. As he did so, Selenica walked into the room from the seemingly empty storage room. Seeing Yuri and immediately recognizing him from Agent Erhard's photo, he raised his UZI submachine gun to point at Yuri and said, "Hani mut, rusisht." [Eat shit, Russian – in Albanian] Yuri responded, "Potselui mou zhopy, Selenica." [Kiss my ass, Selenica -in Russian] At the same time, Yuri pointed the knife at Selenica and pushed a button on the handle. The spring-loaded blade shot from the handle and flew across the room to bury itself its entire length in Selenica's throat. His eyes bugged out in surprise and one hand went to his impaled throat. Instinctively, he pulled the blade free. It was followed by a gush of blood that poured over his shirt and down his chest. He gurgled wetly and began to collapse, but as he did, his finger tightened on the trigger and the submachine gun in his hand stuttered out a burst of fire. Yuri, without conscious thought, moved to cover the body of the prone man at his feet with his own. The burst ended harmlessly on the concrete floor, but the damage was done.
Casey said, "We're blown, Walker. You and Brown come in heavy. Chuck, do it."
A number of noises happened almost simultaneously. The alarmed shouts of the six men in the garage bay. The sounds of breaking glass as Chuck pitched two flashbang grenades through the window of the building. The crash as Brown broke open the door to the garage with a single well-placed kick above of the door handle.
The flashbangs detonated and Selenica's men spun to face the door as Brown and Sarah came through, also armed with the MP5 with the collapsible stocks extended. One of the men reached into a box and pulled a fragmentation grenade from a pile of them. He pulled the pin and threw it at Sarah and Brown. Brown reacted instantly. He shifted his grip on the weapon in his hand and, using the side of the gun's body, batted the grenade in midair back at Selenica's men. Immediately, he felt Sarah's hand on the back of his vest pulling him off balance and back out through the open door to the garage. He and Sarah fell in a heap outside the building and didn't see the result of his grenade return.
The six men had been gathered together to load the van. The grenade flew at them and came down in the midst of the group before it exploded at roughly chest height. The men were ripped apart by the shrapnel and flung away from the blast.
Casey and Yuri, who had ducked back into the office for protection, left the office and made their way over to the downed men without delay. Brown and Sarah were coming in through the door and also approaching them. It didn't take long to determine that the men were all dead.
In the silence, that followed, Chuck came to the open doorway. Sarah looked to him and said, "Don't come in here, Chuck. You don't want to see this."
He looked at her face and decided he didn't want to see it. He backed out without delay.
Brown was looking at the wreckage of the six men. From the expression on his face Sarah thought she knew what might come next. She took his arm and said firmly, "Do not puke here. It will leave your DNA for the Hungarians to find."
Brown, still looking at the remnants of the grenade's explosion, swallowed thickly and nodded his head. Sarah said, "You did really good here. Really good. You saved my life. Maybe all of our lives. I'm going to tell Graham personally." Brown smiled weakly. "This was your Red Test, huh?" Brown nodded. "Ok. You'll get through it, Tim. Both Casey and I have. You will too. Go outside and keep an eye on Chuck, please."
"Ok, Sarah," he said and left the garage gratefully.
Casey, Yuri and Sarah gathered near the trucks. She looked closely at the bodies.
"Ok," said Sarah, "Where's Selenica?"
"Dead in the office," said Yuri.
"With the four prisoners. They're unharmed, but still restrained," said Casey. "I think we should trank them and cut them lose. When they wake up they can call the Hungarian cops and we'll be long gone."
Yuri nodded and Sarah said, "OK. We can collect any papers or hard drives or anything else we can find. Be able to tell Langley what these assholes were up to."
Yuri said, "I'll get Chuck's trank gun and tell the prisoners what we are about to do. There was a computer in the office and papers on the desk. I'll get Chuck to help me with that stuff."
"Thanks, Yuri. Take him in the back door, huh? No need for him to see this," she gestured at the floor. Yuri grunted an affirmative response. "Casey," she continued, "how about you and I start collecting pocket trash from the bodies?"
"Good," he said, bending to the task.
Fifteen minutes later they were in the three cars and headed away from the garage and the carnage there. They had left the doors closed and lights off, except for the light in the office. Chuck was driving the minivan, as Sarah had elected to go with Brown in his car.
Chuck blew out a long breath. "Well, that didn't turn out the way I'd figured it would. Hell of a way for this operation to end. Killing them all..." There was unhappy resignation in his voice.
Yuri said, "Chuck, you know as well as I do, man plans and God laughs. You wanted to stop a collection of violent terrorists without hurting anyone. I admire that, seriously, I do. But you've got to remember that part of the decision making here was theirs. In the military we used to say that no plan survives the first encounter with the enemy. The enemy has a say in how the events turn out. It was their decision to kill four men in cold blood. It was then our decision to stop them from doing that. Maybe if they weren't going to kill their prisoners, tonight would have ended up differently. Maybe we could have arranged for them to be stopped at the border with Serbia and wrapped up their plan that way. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. But none of that happened. They made a decision and they ended up dead and their prisoners ended up alive and going home to their families. And God knows how many lives we saved in Serbia from whatever bombing these assholes had in mind. We did good, Chuck. We did good."
"Thanks, Yuri. I know you are right. It's ...just that the violence in this life always gives me pause."
"I understand, but...there's violence, my friend and then there's violence." Yuri was silent for a while and then said, "Thank you, Chuck."
"Thank me? For what?"
"Chuck, I did good today. I did something good. I stopped some bad guys from killing innocent civilians. I...I don't find myself in a position to ...to do good, very often. Well, really not at all since I got out of the Army. I … I kind of like it. I feel good about it. And it's because of you...you and your team. If left to my own, I'd have caught him outside the bar and snapped his neck. You stopped me. And because you did, we stopped the whole bomb plot. Saved many lives. Thank you, Chuck. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do this again, but...well, for now at least...thank you."
"You're a good man, Yuri," said Chuck, giving his arm a squeeze.
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A/N2: Although I took some liberties to fit within the confines of this AU, I have closely based Yuri's backstory and description of Moscow in those days on the life of a good friend of mine who emigrated from Russia to America in the 90's to get away from the life he was leading in Moscow. I think that his description of that place at that time was pretty remarkable.
A/N3: There are any number of sites where you can learn the details of how to make the kind of bomb that Selenica and his men had in mind. It was used by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, for example. You will not read those details here, though. Much as I enjoy describing technical stuff, I have decided not to explicate that particular bit of knowledge. There's enough mayhem in the real world as it is.
A/N4: The Spetsnaz ballistic knife is real. It's also probably illegal where you live.
A/N5: Don't forget to head on over to the Facebook page for Chuck fanfiction. A bunch of us hang out there and talk about our favorite fanfiction. We tease David a lot. So, if you are interested in teasing him that's the place to be.