Saving Anya (15 page)

Gabriel sat looking at the name and address now in awe. Dmitry not only knew who the man was but where he was and was sending a small army to do what whole countries couldn’t do in the past.

It hit Gabriel while he sat quietly on the plane that he was doing the world a great service by taking the man out, whether he received recognition for it or not. And suddenly, being able to see things from that vantage point made his conscience ease a bit.

He looked over at his cousin, however, who seemed to be somewhere else altogether. Squinting, he reached over and hit Anatoly on the knee. “Dude, what’s up?” Gabriel asked, adjusting the gun holster under his arm.

Anatoly looked up from his clasped hands. “Everyone keeps asking me that. The next person who does, I swear I’m going to fucking punch them.”

“
Sensitive subject?”

“
You could say that.” Anatoly kept his thoughts to himself about Renee, refusing to let her be an issue when he needed to focus. “You ready to do this?”

Gabriel raised both brows and turned up his lip. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“
Have you ever killed anyone?”

Gabriel smirked. “No.”

“
I was just fucking with you at the house. I didn’t know that you’ve never really plugged anyone. Shit.” Anatoly cleared his throat and leaned towards him. His eyes were icy and full of contempt. “Don’t empty your clip in the first guy you shoot. It’s understandable to want to do when you pop your cherry, but you have to resist the temptation. It’s too dangerous. Just...double tap him and move on. I normally make it as quick and painless as possible for the women.” He instantly thought of his ex-lover Victoria’s execution in his father’s vineyard. The memory still haunted him even though the bitch had it coming. “Definitely want to avoid looking them in the eye, if you can help it. No kids, whether they see your face or not. The shock tends to make them less viable witnesses. Don’t kill the colonel until we can interrogate him. Everyone else is expendable. Just dim them and move on.”

Gabriel felt butterflies erupt in his stomach.
Dim them
. He couldn’t think of a more removed term for murder. “You’re pretty good at this, huh?” he asked after Anatoly’s express tutorial in proper assassination etiquette.

“
The best,” Anatoly said, sitting back in his chair. “When it comes down to it, it’s either you or them. Who’s it’s going to be will be up to you. You want to go home to Briggy, you better be ready to shoot.”

Gabriel nodded. “Chew on that,” he said nonchalantly. He hoped that his nervousness didn’t show, but the reality of what he was about to do had him chomping at the bit. Sweat pooled below his collar and his hands were now clammy and shaky. His pulse raced and his stomach turned over and over. It was like a countdown to a nervous breakdown for him.

All the while in his mind, Gabriel asked himself how had his father done this for so many years with so much ease. The guy had to have been a sociopath. But what made him so much different? It was extremely ironic to him. He had done everything in his power to be more than the man, yet here he was, doing exactly what his father had done for the same people his father had done it for.

Life could be cruel.

***

The debonair and overtly chauvinistic Agent Zach Langston waltzed into one the war rooms of Langely’s CIA compound in dark jeans, a white t-shirt and a black wool coat turned up at the collar, carrying a brown leather satchel over his shoulder and a cell phone in his hand.

His dirty blonde crew cut was still damp from a shower earlier in the night and his well-tanned skin was still flushed from a marathon sex session that left him smelling like Chanel perfume and the champagne that he had used for a non-conventional but very effective lubricant.

Awakened from his slumber with two beautiful Ms. World contestants exactly forty-two minutes ago, Langston got the call, grabbed his go-bag and sped over right away from his hotel room in his black Lotus Spider sports car.

Waiting on him was his team, a group of three young ambitious junior agents, who had been under his tutelage for over two years, and group of communications specialists who had been working the situation since they were first notified.

The entire room went rigid as soon as the cocky thirties-something agent waltzed in with a lollipop in his mouth. Throwing his gear on the table, he looked up at the twin flat screen monitors and snapped his finger for coffee.

“
Black. No sugar. No cream,” he ordered, placing both of his palms flat on the table. “Updates?”

Agent Moore snapped to attention adjusting his glasses while he typed quickly into the computer to pull up the latest communications. Moore had been sitting at the computer for over eight hours and was in dire need of a break, but this was the CIA and at the present asking for a break was like asking for a raise in the middle of a Congressional hearing.

A recent black and white composite of Anya being escorted by Davyd to school came up on the largest screen. Another followed with her and Royal at the boutique a few weeks before. Finally one of Anya and Dmitry came up from her last trip to London.

Moore cleared his throat and began with updates. “Dmitry Medlov’s only daughter, Anya Aleski Medlov, has been missing for 30 hours and 15 minutes. She was last seen outside Prague, Czech Republic just a few miles from her home with her bodyguards being escorted to her day school. Abducted by unknowns, she was flown out of the country minutes after she was taken. Since then, Medlov has locked down his chateau and activated special ops and paramilitary forces. He’s scrambling all signals outside of the chateau and has set up communications inside using former Russian special agents. His nephew and the newest bad boy to join the crew, Gabriel Medlov, formerly of the DEA under special agent-in-charge, Lee, and Czar Anatoly Medlov both arrived in Prague hours ago with their significant others. No confirmed leads on the abductors, but we are compiling a list of viable suspects. Wire taps have been placed on over 100 people from over 23 organizations in over 18 countries. And just as a side note, it appears that Renee, Anatoly’s girlfriend is pregnant. Two months along exactly.”

Langston’s grayish blue eyes scanned the monitor. Pulling the candy out of his mouth, he frowned. “I don’t really give a fuck about the new additions. What I want to know is does
he
have a list?” he asked of Moore.

“
Austrian intelligence sent over the contact information for ex-colonel Kalensko’s location two hours ago to Medlov, sir.”

“
Old Upheil, huh? Figures. The info was sent in exchange for?” Langston asked, taking a mug from a young redhead, who also passed him a top-secret file for him to review on
the Medlov situation
. He looked down at it and flipped it open.

“
Nothing was discussed in exchange for the information so far,” Moore answered. “It appears that they sent it as a gift. More than likely it is due to the fact that Medlov currently has over $2.5 billion in Austrian banks alone.”

“
Well, that will definitely do it. Looks like Upheil is going to finally take that dirt nap he’s needed. More power to the fuckers.” Biting his thin bottom lip, Langston thought for a moment then tapped the table. “Give me a revised file on the Krysykstonia situation; get me a list of viable abductors with the means
and the balls
to pull this up off. They’re going to be clandestine special ops types with some form of a long money trail behind them, and get me on a jet ASAP headed to Prague in the next hour. I need to talk to Medlov before he finds his kid. Let’s see if we can kill two birds with one stone.” Sucking his perfectly white teeth, he closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Let me clarify. I need a list of the
most viable abductors
…top three, people. Don’t screw it up. And pull up the phone taps on all of his council members. Start with Khalid Sidorov. I’m sure that Medlov doesn’t know that his late son, Vladimir, is still alive. And if I were betting my
dick
on the matter, then I’d say he was good for this.”

The redhead cut her eyes in the corner at him for his statement. Langston looked over and smirked at her. His lingering glare indicating that they knew each other on an intimate level.

“
Yes, sir,” Moore answered, turning back to his computer.

Langston took a sip of his scaling hot coffee and headed back out of the door for his office to change clothes and shave before his departure. “Let’s overthrow a dictatorship by getting this man’s daughter back, boys and girls. By the way, no one leaves this compound until I get what I want.”

Chapter 14

The short flight from Prague, Czech Republic to Vienna, Austria on Dmitry’s personal Gulfstream V was quicker than flying from Memphis, TN to Atlanta, GA. Still it amazed Gabriel how much jet setting was required with his new profession. Sure as an undercover agent he had traveled a great deal, but Dmitry took it to a new level.

Going from one country to the next, regardless of how far apart they were was just like traveling state to state for the Medlov’s. And no matter where they went, everyone of importance who could make things happen for them knew Dmitry.

He barely had time to wrap his head around what they were about to do before they had landed on a private airstrip outside of Vienna and were being carted off
again
by a group of Dmitry’s men on site.

They all looked at him and whispered to one another, obviously amazed at his physical resemblance to his father, Ivan. And he was certain that they wondered,
if not worried
, that he was like him in other ways.

Over the last year, he had gotten used to the common reaction to his looks and in a way enjoyed it. Before when he was on the other side of the law as an agent, no one recognized him and said anything good about his resemblance to his father. In fact, they almost pitied him for what most people considered good looks. Evidently, his father had been such a bastard until he had single handled branded sociopathic bad-asses as seven-foot tall brunettes with blue eyes. However with his family, his seven-feet of height, heavy muscle, dark inky mane and startling green mossy eyes were just another signature of being a Medlov. It was understood and regarded with pride instead of consternation.

But just like when he was an agent, here much was expected of him. He had to carry himself a certain way, be guarded and always serious. As the nephew to Dmitry Medlov and the cousin to Anatoly, his down-to-earth demeanor had to take a backseat to being a certifiable badass when in public.

And just like any other crime syndicate
and even though he was family
, he knew that he was about to undergo induction to the Vor through murder.

He had never done murder before.

Never.

Sure he had shot a few guys, but he had always used his training to just injure them, not kill them. Before he had needed to keep them alive to take them to trial, to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

Now, he was judge and jury.

Now, he was a man no different from the men whom he had investigated and locked up.

In the silence of his thoughts, he tried to carefully construct his line of questioning for Kalensko, remembering his training from the DEA to extract as most useful Intel as possible before the men whom he was currently in the company of began their own line of questioning/torture on the high-asset target.

He simply couldn’t believe what a little money could do. In short – move mountains.

Simply because of Dmitry’s lengthy history with the Austrians and his money in their banks, when Dmitry had called a few friends at the Vienna Interpol SAC office to get information regarding his daughter, they had sent him all the material that he needed on Upheil Kalensko.

Just like that
, the Austrians had given the former colonel up to a known crime lord and turned their heads for what they knew would be certain and brutal retaliation on their own turf.

At the end of the day, money talked in all countries, and Dmitry’s money was far longer than Kalensko’s - making him one of the world’s most fluent linguists.

Plus for many, it was easier to ignore or
at least
rationalize Dmitry’s gritty line of business in
weapons
trafficking versus Kalensko’s
human
trafficking gig. Either way, Dmitry was favored in the situation and as such received sensitive Intel that even certain government entities couldn’t get, especially U.S. entities.

Now, they were here not even two hours after the kidnappers call making a house visit on a man who had eluded not only his own countrymen and their courts but also a hundred others.

The designated safe house was in the City Center district not far from Dmitry’s favorite five-star hotel when he visited, the Ambassador. Because Dmitry came to the city often for business, he always had a team nearby ready to dispatch, which had proven to be quite convenient for the current situation. It cut down on the time of trying to secure trustworthy and qualified people for the hit and minimalized the already ramping costs for the campaign.