Axis Files: Operation Badger - Chapter 2

The radiant glow of the flashlight neared Sean’s hiding spot. The circular light bobbed and swayed past the door.

Sean felt his heartbeat quicken slightly. A strange mix of nervous energy and excitement pulsed through his veins. He waited until the man’s right arm appeared through the crack. Then Sean pounced.

He kicked open the door just as the patrol guard reached out his left hand to pry the door open and check inside. Apparently, his assignment was intended to check the abandoned buildings in case of threats. Had he been more cautious, he might have lived a few more seconds. Maybe.

Sean surged forward with the knife, driving the tip of it through the man’s throat and up into his skull. The guard gyrated for several seconds, blank eyes staring up into the dark, stormy sky. Then his body went heavy, and Sean withdrew the blood-stained blade and allowed the guard to collapse into a puddle on the concrete.

Initially, Sean was annoyed at the guard’s presence, but at the sight of the man’s radio wire stretching from his ear to a shoulder microphone, his tune changed. He stood over the body for a second as he plucked the radio from the dead man and wiped it off before inserting it into his right ear. Once the mic was attached to a patch of velcro on his jacket, he picked up the flashlight the guard had dropped, and continued on the man’s assumed path, walking casually past the front of the abandoned mill until he reached the far corner.

There, Sean swept the flashlight around as he figured a patrol guard would do, checking the stacks of pallets and faded, rusted shipping containers.

“Come in, patrol 3. What’s your status?” The Russian voice crackled in Sean’s ear and he winced at how loud the dead guard kept the volume. He reached up and switched it down slightly so it wouldn’t be so piercing, then waited. Sean understood enough Russian to know what the commander on the radio said, but what he didn’t know was whether or not the guard he’d killed was patrol 3.

He received his answer within seconds.

“I repeat, patrol 3, what is your status? What are you doing over there?”

Sean pressed a button on the microphone on his shoulder. “All clear. Sweeping back around now,” he replied in gruff Russian. He’d learned that when impersonating someone, always use a voice that matched the body type. The man he’d killed had a black beard and multiple tattoos on his neck and hands. He was thick, but muscular, which lent to a deeper, tougher sounding voice.

“Confirmed,” the coordinator said.

Relieved, Sean turned and strolled across a gravel loading area. From a distance, his ruse would work. He was a wolf walking among sheep. But when he got close enough for them to see that he wasn’t the guard they believed him to be, then all hell would break loose.

He slowed his pace near a stack of pallets and metal scrap, then stopped. Shining the light to his right, he looped it around to make it look as though he’d heard or seeing something suspicious. The act was one he’d seen from patrols before, both ally and enemy. It bought him precious seconds to look over the loading yard and reassess his approach. There was still no sign of Pushnaya. That came as no surprise. The man wouldn’t be out here in the rain, but he was here. Somewhere. Sean knew that much. The Russian boss would be in a building, and if he had to guess, it would be the one in the far corner of the property.

The warehouse looked much like the rest of the derelict buildings on site, with one glaring exception. While the windows and doors of most of the structures were dark, having long given up any source of power, dim lights glowed from within several windows at the top of the corner warehouse.

In its heyday, the third story room must have been a supervisor or managerial office. Sean knew that now, it had to be the covert nerve center for Vladimir Pushnaya’s black market arms dealings.

That realization hit Sean in a couple of ways. The first was irritation. He’d reconnoitered the area multiple times, both from a distance and with satellite images. Not once had he seen anyone coming from or going to the warehouse. The second realization was that now he had a much bigger problem.

If Pushnaya was personally overseeing the shipment of weapons to their contacts in the Blood Moon organization from warehouse where the guns had been stored, Sean could execute his original plan of taking out the henchmen first, then eliminate the head of the snake.

In traditional warfare, the opposite strategy usually worked best. Kill the head and the body dies. While that might work in this scenario, Sean wasn’t sure. If he went for the shipment and destroyed the guns, he’d prevent them from being delivered to a known terrorist organization and cripple their plans for mayhem across any number of targets throughout the civilized world.

On the other hand, if Sean went straight for Pushnaya, the alarm could be sounded and the bulk of the weapons already loaded onto the trucks would escape. With no way to track them, the trucks would disappear and Sean would be responsible—potentially—for the deaths of many innocent people.

He cursed his luck, but reverted back to his training.

If he could track down Pushnaya, he could do it again. While making a move on the weapons trucks would give the Russian boss time to escape, it would momentarily save lives, and keep guns out of the hands of evil men. It would also put a dent in Pushnaya’s finances, as a deal like this would certainly be worth a small fortune.

Terrorists paid well for arms and munitions. Often funded by oil money, they were happy to overpay for weapons, sometimes double what the items were worth. Having a connection with the ability to produce those kinds of products was difficult to forge, though it was getting easier in certain parts of the world.

Sean wondered how many people like Pushnaya had to be eliminated before the well ran dry for this kind of operation, but he already knew the answer. There would always be another to take the place of someone like the Russian arms dealer. Wherever there was money to be made, legitimate or otherwise, someone would step in with gleaming dollar signs in their eyes to take the reins.

With that in mind, Sean knew what he had to do. If another Pushnaya could pop up tomorrow, at least the new guy would have a shallower product pool to dip into for export.

Sean lowered the flashlight, pointing it randomly to his right before killing it. He cast his eyes across the loading area where the forklifts and men hurriedly placed crates on trucks. Sean knew he was running out of time. The decision had been made. Now the question was line of attack.

Use a diversion with some of the explosives in his pack? Or go in guns blazing? Sean considered both options before he made his decision.