Kim Possible MAX: Volume 1, the Red Witch
Title: Chapter 3, The Downfall of the Bratchenko Bratva
Summary: Kim finishes her mission in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Kim's handlers in the U.S. government
Disclaimer: I own nothing and don't claim to own anything.
Warnings: Includes violence & gore, profanity, references to things like sex & drugs, and what some may consider intense scenes. Viewer discretion is advised.
Patriot44: With this chapter, we complete the story of Antonin Bratchenko and his son Kirill, which served as the opening act to this story. We also transition into the main story involving Shego.
…
Chapter 3 – The Downfall of the Bratchenko Bratva
HARDCASTLE Black Site
Cecil Fairbanks V stood on the shoulders of giants.
His great-great grandfather Cecil Fairbanks I was a greatly respected lawyer and businessman who served as union spymaster during the American Civil War. Afterwards he played an instrumental role in the creation of the United States Department of Justice in 1870.
His great grandfather Cecil Fairbanks II followed in his father's as a businessman and lawyer. He also worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency and was well known for helping maintain the rule of law in the American West.
His grandfather Cecil Fairbanks III did many things. After spending his younger years as a prosecutor, he was hired by the Justice Department to help oversee anti-organized crime operations in the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1936, he was appointed by President Roosevelt to lead HARDCASTLE, a small government agency that served as the clandestine wing of the Justice Department. His leadership helped transform HARDCASTLE and made the organization what it is today.
His father Cecil Fairbanks IV turned down law school and instead worked as police officer in the years leading up to World War II. In 1942, he went to work with Cecil III at HARDCASTLE. Initially offered a job that involved him sitting behind a desk, he instead qualified as a field agent and successfully completed many missions, amassing a reputation as one of HARDCASTLE's best. He was killed in 1959 by members of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party.
It was now 2016 and Cecil Fairbanks V was the leader of HARDCASTLE. Everyone at Justice thought he got the job because his name was Cecil Fairbanks. The same name as the man who helped found the Justice Department, the same name as the man who led HARDCASTLE through the Great Depression and World War II, the same name as the legendary HARDCASTLE agent who was killed in the line of duty.
He was referred to behind his back as the "George W. Bush" of the Justice Department
But it wasn't true; Cecil had worked hard all his life to get to where he was. He was not some rich idiot with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was a diligent and dedicated public servant, a product of his experiences growing up.
As a small child, the murder of his father by the American Nazi Party had a profound effect on him. It was the day his innocence died at the tragic age of two years old. The rest of his childhood took him through the 1960s and early 1970s; the events that occurred during this period shaped him.
The assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy struck him hard. He felt the pain of the family, friends, and admirers of these three men, because he remembered the pain of losing his father.
There were the chaos and social divisions caused by the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the counterculture revolution. Regardless of what his opinions on each of these phenomena were, he realized the effects they were having on American society and felt incredibly troubled by it.
The Presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon shook his faith in the power of government. The endless controversy that surrounded them and the way they left office in disgrace made Cecil feel as if America's best days were behind it. Gone it seemed, where the titans of World War II and the New Deal coalition. All that was left was a pathetic cadre of inept and dishonorable politicians.
And then there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which to this very day he considers to be the worst two weeks of his life. He had got it into his head that nuclear annihilation was just around the corner and that he would never live to see adulthood. A child of six without a father, he cried himself to sleep, praying to God that he would be let into heaven with his family and friends. When the crisis ended and he found himself still alive, he felt euphoria so intense that he ran towards a river near his family home and went swimming with his clothes on.
By the time Cecil turned 18 in April of 1975, he had grown into a mature and cautious young man. The world's problems had weighed much more heavily on him than they had other children, the pain and anxiety he went through had allowed him to develop intellectually and emotionally at an accelerated pace.
He was not an unhappy person, he enjoyed his life. But he saw the world for his broken place and he wanted to do something about it. Looking back at the all the men who shared his name and how they made their country and the world a better place, he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
Seven years at Harvard where he received his Juris Doctor. Ten years with the Justice Department where he did much good. After establishing himself he finally joined HARDCASTLE at the age of 35, quickly gaining entry to the inner circle of the group's leadership.
At the turn of the century he was made the leader of HARDCASTLE. In the sixteen years since then, he made some of the greatest accomplishments of his career, transforming HARDCASTLE from the shadowy arm of the Justice Department into America's most elite ultra-covert intelligence agency.
Under his leadership, HARDCASTLE had gone up against some of the worst people the world had to offer: organized crime, terrorists, hostile regimes, and madmen of every kind. It was a tremendous responsibility, but Cecil had the best people the United States and many other countries had to offer. Especially Kim Possible…
Kim was the best HARDCASTLE had. They had been keeping tabs on her ever since she appeared on the radar in the early 2000s. As her reputation grew and her achievements became more impressive, HARDCASTLE started reaching out to her. They would use her for various missions during her time in High School and College.
After Kim graduated with a B.S. in Criminology in 2010, she and her fiancée Ron Stoppable were initiated into HARDCASTLE. Kim's presence in the organization bought them a lot of clout. When dealing with dubious established authorities, Cecil or one of his staff would mention the name Kim Possible and that had the effect of making most people much more accommodating.
Kim and Ron did not exclusively belong to HARDCASTLE. While the bulk of their missions came from them, they officially had an arm's length relationship and reserved the right to go wherever they were needed. The two would often utilize HARDCASTLE resources for these off-the-reservation missions, but considering everything Kim and Ron had given to HARDCASTLE; it was deemed acceptable.
Cecil was lucky to have Kim Possible, and Ron Stoppable too. He made a point to never forget this.
Currently Cecil sat behind a desk in his office at the black site. He was looking over a classified memo and had a calculating look on his face.
He was interrupted by a knock on the door.
"Enter"
The door opened to reveal Henry Mason, Cecil's chief of staff. Mason was ex-Navy Seal who worked as a mercenary before being recruited into HARDCASTLE. He was a highly gritty and cynical character who lacked congeniality and took a ruthless zeal in eliminating people. If Cecil had to classify Mason, it would have to be "the opposite of a white knight."
"Where the hell have you been?" Cecil asked without looking up.
"I had something to take care of" Mason said wearily. "Our asset in Turkey is gone."
This got Cecil to look at Mason "Which one?"
"Peter"
Peter wasn't the man's name, but Cecil immediately understood who was being talked about.
"My friends in Cairo told me about it. He was playing both sides of the fence, with the Russians that is."
This surprised Cecil "Peter?"
"Measures we're taken."
Cecil didn't have to ask what that meant "Is that what you came in here to tell me?" he asked mildly.
"Actually it's not. You asked where the hell I'd been so I just answered."
Cecil set down the briefing he had been reading and crossed his legs "Well then, what can I do for you Henry?"
"I wanted to know where you're golden girl is."
Cecil smiled at Mason's nickname for Kim Possible. "She's in Los Angeles. I assigned her the Bratchenko op."
"Right, I forgot, Antonin Bratchenko. Remind me again why he was put on the hit list?"
"Because he was doing business with the North Korean government" Cecil explained "Selling them American technology on the black market. The President and I both agreed that we couldn't have a North Korean-friendly crime boss in Los Angeles and decided he needed to be eliminated."
"When is she expected to finish her mission?"
"Wade told me she'd be killing Bratchenko soon…Why?"
Mason handed his boss the tablet he'd been holding "We've just received a call from Betty Director at the Global Justice Task Force. She specifically asked for this to be shown to Kim Possible."
The tablet displayed a security camera photo of Shelia Goehr AKA: Shego at London Heathrow Airport.
"Oh yes, I think she would want to see this."
Los Angeles
Rooftop of Conley Place, across the street from Green Grove Memorial Park
Kim was smiling. Kirill Bratchenko's funeral was to be held late this morning.
Kirill's father and Russian Mob Boss Antonin Bratchenko was going to be there, so was Timur Volsky, so was Alexander Nikulin, and so were over a dozen men who made up the upper echelon of the Bratchenko Bratva.
This was why Kim was smiling, her plan was working perfectly.
Phase One was to kill Kirill Bratchenko.
Phase Two was to kill Antonin Bratchenko and his top men at Kirill's funeral.
Kim was positioned on a rooftop overlooking Green Grove Memorial Park. The cemetery was a rectangular shape, with a street aligned along each side of the rectangle.
The building Kim was perched on was located to the northwest of the cemetery. The southeast corner of the building and the northwest corner of the cemetery were separated by a four-way intersection.
Kim's position at the southeast corner of the building gave her a perfect view of the spot where Kirill was to be buried.
Hitting a funeral was in poor taste; Kim made a point to not do it that often.
But she couldn't deny that it was a very simple and effective strategy: Kill a well-known and respected bad guy, find out when and where their funeral is, and kill all the other bad guys who show up.
It had yet to fail her; so she used it when it seemed appropriate. This was one of those times.
It wasn't just Bratchenko and his men she would be getting rid of. Many gangsters that were affiliated with the Bratchenko Bratva were attending the funeral to pay their respect.
Among them was the underboss of the Armenian Mafia in Los Angeles, evidently his boss didn't want to go.
There was also a delegation of Russian Mafia representatives. They flew in from Vladivostok on a private plane.
And then there were various gang leaders associated with the Bratchenko bratva, hoping to fill the vacancy left by the annihilation of Kirill's crew.
None of them were part of Kim's mission, but she was going to kill as many of them as she could along with her primary targets. Kim had seen first-hand what kind of evils the forces of organized crime were capable of. It was for this reason that whenever she had the opportunity to kill the maximum number of gangsters, she took it.
There were also women and children at the funeral. Kim wasn't naïve; she knew she wouldn't just be killing cardboard cutout bad guys. She would be killing husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, uncles, and nephews.
It broke her heart that their loved ones would have to see it, but it was not entirely her fault.
These men had chosen to live their lives as mobsters, lives that they knew could potentially result with a violent death. They too possessed fault for the suffering of their families.
Five minutes before the funeral was supposed to start, Kim prepared her weapon. For this she was going to be using a Heckler and Koch PSG-1 with a special 20-round magazine and a state of the art silencer.
The silencer on the PSG-1 muffled the sound of the shot to the point where it was no louder than a nail gun.
The people at the funeral would not hear a thing. Men would just start falling over, creating chaos and confusion and making Kim's targets easier to strike.
If she had gone in loud, most of the mobsters would've just broke and ran at the sound of the first shot. And she would've had too many moving targets to hit.
Kim had been doing this long enough to know what worked and what didn't work.
At 11:00, a caravan of black vehicles that included a funeral hearse drove through the cemetery and stopped near the site where Kirill was to be buried.
The funeral goers left exited the vehicles and made their way to the site, Kim looked through her scope to see Antonin Bratchenko, Timur Volsky, Alexander Nikulin and three others coming out of a black SUV. Sliding her scope to the left, she observed six pallbearers taking Kirill's coffin from the hearse and carrying it towards the gravesite.
As the funeral party gathered around the site and the ceremony began. Kim began the process of deciding who her first targets would be.
Antonin Bratchenko would be her first, she noticed him standing with his daughters and Kirill's sisters Anya and Natasha. While the two sisters looked close to tears, Antonin stood still as a statue, his mouth a hard line as he stared into space with an unfriendly look in his eyes.
Alexander Nikulin stood next to the Bratchenkos, his wife and young son with him. He had one hand on his wife's shoulder and the other hand on his son's head. He had a reputation as a complete psycho and needed to be put down right after Antonin Bratchenko.
Timur Volsky had come to the funeral without any family members, his ex-wife hated him and their children worked legitimate jobs, determined not to become their father. He was instead accompanied by two bodyguards he never went anywhere without. Volsky and his guard dogs would die next.
Standing near Bratchenko, Nikulin and Volsky were four people Kim didn't know the names of: A tweedy and rumpled looking man who stared at the ground with his hand together, a short and fat woman that appeared to be there with the tweedy looking man, a tall man with jet black hair and cold blue eyes, and a goon-like man wearing a gray coat.
After Kim had arrived in Los Angeles, she had looked through an album of photos of members and associates of the Bratchenko Bratva and memorized as many of them as she could.
She recognized the tweedy looking man and the goon in the gray coat from the photographs, which mean they were criminals and would be killed.
She didn't recognize the tall black-haired, blue-eyed man or the fat woman, which mean they would be left alive.
Standing by themselves and whispering to each other were five foreign looking men in Armani suits. No doubt the delegation from Vladivostok, which mean they were important members of the Russian Mafia.
And then there was the Armenian underboss Hovhannes Sakobyan standing with his driver and bodyguard Mekhitar Krikorian.
After that, it got difficult. She was able to identify seven high-ranking lieutenants in Bratchenko's organization and four gang leaders.
Kim had enough targets, if she was going to get them all, she needed to start shooting.
The red-headed vigilante looked through the scope of the PSG-1 and brought Antonin Bratchenko into her crosshairs. Holding her breath, she took aim at his upper torso and pulled the trigger.
Antonin Bratchenko fell neatly, it appeared that he fainted and many people rushed to his aide.
Not wasting any time, Kim swung her rifle to Alexander Nikulin's head and put a bullet into his head.
Moving down the line, Kim locked onto the tweedy looking man and shot him in the throat.
The fat goon in the gray coat was the next person she locked onto, drilling a hole into his right breast.
It was this point that people realized something was going on and started moving around and raising their voices.
A man who Kim recognized at one of Bratchenko's lieutenants was looking around with a confused expression on his face. She shot him in the torso and was stunned when he didn't go down.
Instead, Bratchenko's lieutenant stumbled slightly, put his hand over his wound, immediately realized what was going on and shouted "I've been shot!"
Annoyed, Kim shot him again in the throat. Miraculously, the lieutenant remained standing for four more seconds, violently spewing blood from his mouth before collapsing.
The lieutenant's declaration of being shot and his graphic death had escalated the situation.
The entire funeral party was now fully aware that people were being killed and reacted by running around and screaming.
Kim noticed many of the mobsters attempting to escape the kill zone and decided to discourage it.
One of the men from Vladivostok was hightailing it across the cemetery, only for Kim to put an end to his escape by shooting him in the leg.
Two mobsters that Kim recognized from the photos she looked at were making a beeline for the hearse. One of them was shot in the lower back before he could make it that far, the second one was shot through the head when he took too long to open the door to the hearse.
Five other mobsters that had tried running away were gunned down by Kim, the last one being some idiot struggling to climb over the cemetery wall.
With eight attempts to run ending in death, most of the people at the funeral began taking cover and trying to make themselves as small as possible.
One mobster hiding behind a tombstone had the mistake of peeking his head out, resulting in Kim blowing off the top of his head.
Another one of Bratchenko's lieutenants was prone on the ground while he frantically dialed someone on his cell phone. Kim shot him through the torso before he could complete the call.
A gang-leader was using a screaming woman as a human shield, exposing only part of his head. Taking great care not to hit the innocent woman, Kim aimed for the gang leader's head and found out what was on his mind.
At this point, the highest-ranking member of Bratchenko's organization still alive was Timur Volsky. His bodyguards had thrown him to the ground and drawn their handguns. They were looking desperately around for the shooter and firing their guns in the general direction of where the bullets seemed to be coming from.
Kim shot the first bodyguard in the forehead, blowing out the back of his skull.
The second bodyguard turned to see the first bodyguard fall to the ground; this exposed his back to Kim and invited her to fire a shot that went right threw his heart.
After sniping four more mobsters, Timur Volsky began to stand up, covered in the blood of his bodyguards, and began to look around with a passive expression on his face.
Curious, Kim stopped shooting and watched him to see what he would do.
Green Gove Memorial Park
As the blood of his men Chelomeyev and Ulichov began to form a puddle around him, Timur Volsky carefully stood up and began to observe the situation
The first sight that greeted Timur was his friend and boss Antonin Bratchenko lying on the ground and staring up at the sky with a lifeless expression. His daughters Anya and Natasha cried hysterically as they knelt down at his side, they were aware of the killing going on around them but didn't dare look at it.
The second sight for Timur was the nearly headless corpse of Alexander Nikulin. His wife Valentina had assumed the fetal position and was covering her and Alexander's son Pantely with her body. She did not dare lose him too.
The rest of the cemetery was like this. The corpses of men he called friends and business associate strewn all over the places, the terrified screams and crying of family members as they cowered in fear.
And then there were his surviving comrades; hiding behind tombstones and chairs, trying not to be shot, shouting for Timur to stop standing around and hide with them.
Timur wasn't afraid to die, but he wasn't in any great hurry to do so either.
Under normal circumstances, he would be taking cover with the others and trying to preserve himself. But the sudden onslaught of violence that had rained down upon the funeral in the last thirty seconds had jarred him so much that he felt strangely numb.
Before Timur could do anything or at the very least process the idea of doing anything, he noticed the reflection of the sun on a nearby rooftop.
Understanding almost immediately what the reflection was, he wiped the blood from his face, took out his glasses and put them on for a better look.
He was able to make out a sniper on the corner of the roof.
Conley Place
As Kim watched Timur Volsky through the scope of her rifle, she was surprised to see Timur Volsky suddenly looked directly at her.
Before she could raise an eyebrow in surprise, Timur began shouting and pointing at the building Kim was on top of. This led her to quickly put an end to him with a bullet in his stomach.
But it was too late, the damage was done, Timur had alerted the mobsters at the funeral to Kim's location. The remaining mobsters still alive all began running for the cemetery exist nearest to the building she was located on.
Kim began shooting into the crowd of mobsters, trying to kill as many of them as she could, but there was too many of them and they were on the offensive now.
By the time the angry mob had got to the cemetery exit and spilled onto the street below the building, she had reduced their numbers by six.
Kim was just about to resume firing when a barrage of handgun fire flew up from the street to greet her. She ducked and swore to herself. Sniping was best done when your position was unknown. The enemy now knew where she was and we're coming for her. This necessitated a change in tactics to make sure the job was finished.
Setting down the PSG-1, Kim reached into her weapons bag and pulled out the same M4 Assault Rifle she had used to eliminate Kirill Bratchenko's crew and Billy Narvaez's Sureños.
Down below, she heard the mobsters noisily making their way up the building's stairs.
Kim gripped the M4 with both hands, turned to face the building directly north of her building, started running and jumped across the alley separating the two buildings. She landed with a role and quickly recovered, taking a cover behind an exhaust vent and watching for activity on the rooftop of the south building.
A quarter of a minute later, the rooftop door to the south building burst opened and ten mobsters poured out, all of them wielding handguns. The two men leading them were the Armenian underboss Hovhannes Sakobyan and his lackey Mekhitar.
"What the fuck? Where'd he go?" Sakobyan shouted.
"Boss look" Mekhitar said, pointing at the PSG-1 Kim had left on the rooftop. "He left his gun…"
One of the Russians laughed loudly "Stupid fucking coward, he now has no gun!"
Eager to prove that A; she was a woman and B; she did have a gun. Kim took aim at the mobsters from the north rooftop and began to open fire.
The mobsters screamed in shock and terror as they were easily dispatched with one prolonged burst of fire. Anyone who tried to shoot Kim was cut down before they could even aim their gun. Once all ten were down, three more poured onto the rooftop only to be obliterated by what was left in the clip.
A few of them weren't quite dead, having been fortunate enough to be tagged with only two or three bullets. Although some wouldn't call them fortunate as they writhed on the ground in pain.
One of the injured was the Sakobyan, who lay on the ground and stared at the sky as blood poured out from his left rib cage.
"Mekhitar! Help me!" he called out pathetically, not knowing his aide-de-camp was among the dead.
"Mekhitar can't help you" Kim called out, as he pulled the pin to a grenade "But I will."
"What? Who said that?" Sakobyan shouted "Is somebody there?" He was unaware that the female voice he heard belonged to the very same person who had shot him.
Before the Armenian underboss could figure out what was going on, a grenade landed on the south rooftop, just a few feet away from him.
The moment Hovhannes Sakobyan saw the grenade, he realized his death was imminent and chose to go out like a man "Fuck you! F-"
He was cut short by the blast of the grenade. All who had been left alive on the rooftop were now dead.
Kim waited for more mobsters to run onto the roof, but none came.
It appeared that she was all out of mobsters to kill. The approach of sirens in the distance told her it was time to go, she had done enough damage. The Bratchenko bratva was done for.
Kim jumped back onto the southern roof to put the M4 back in her weapon bag and retrieve the PSG-1.
With her right-hand carrying the bag and the sniper rifle slung over her shoulder, Kim calmly and briskly left the rooftop through the same door the mobsters had poured out of.
Safe house, Crenshaw District
A few hours after the hit at Green Grove Memorial park, Kim was back at her safe house in the Crenshaw District.
Presently, she lounged in the bath while holding a glass of merlot. The opened bottle sat on the bathroom floor. Her Kimmunicator sat on the side of the tub and played "It Was a Good Day" by Ice Cube. Sometimes Kim liked to unwind with music after completing a mission.
The wine had cost her $70 bucks. HARDCASTLE provided her with a large amount of spending money when she was on a mission, but she knew that it was a mix of tax payer and black budget money and didn't like to waste it. So she had paid for the wine using money taken from a heroin trafficker she killed a few weeks ago.
Even when in the tub, Kim was prepared for someone to attack the safe house. Sitting on the floor next to the tub were a Smith & Wesson Model 500 and an Ingram Mac-10. She had also put wall mines on the front and back doors. There was no such thing as being too thorough.
Halfway through her second glass, Ice Cube's song suddenly stopped and her Kimmunicator began to ring. She answered it, but didn't pick it up.
"Kim?" Wade's voice asked from the Kimmunicator "Where are you?"
"I'm in the bathtub Wade. So you're looking at the ceiling of the bathroom right now."
"Oh…" he said in a rather embarrassed tone. "So…" he prompted, eager to change the subject "What happened with Bratchenko?"
Kim raised her glass triumphantly as she declared "He's dead, and so are forty of his closest and not-so-closest colleagues." After taking a drink she continued "You can tell Cecil that there's nobody left alive in the organization that has the competence to deal with the North Koreans."
"So seeing as you've completed your mission, are you ready come back in to HARDCASTLE?"
"Is something else going on?"
"Actually yes…and you were asked for specifically."
This piqued Kim's interest "Why? What's going on?"
There was a short silence.
"Wade?"
"It's Shego…She's been spotted."
Kim immediately set her wine glass down, stood up in the tub and pulled her towel from the rack "I'm on my way."
…
I have now reached 10,000 words and I intend to write much more. I have every intention of continuing with this and I hope you guys will review.