Takedown

Source

When Loshchilov recognized Kargin and Obrecht as the men outside, he muttered, "Yebat'.¹"

He hissed at Koltsov, "We need those two alive for now."

Koltsov signaled that he understood and continued to advance.

Inside there was confusion when the lights went out. In the dining room the battery operated emergency lanterns came on, but the room was mostly in shadow. In the kitchen itself, Borisovna had disabled all of the emergency lighting. Savelievna had been near the caterer when the lights died, she quickly rendered him unconscious, he'd be out for a few hours.

They'd been told to spare the caterer, he was an honest businessman as far as Loshchilov had been able to ascertain. But the two waiters, petty thugs, were killed outright.

Borisovna had superb night vision, her nickname in training had been "cat," she had disabled one of the thugs as soon as the lights died. She heard the other one breathing loudly and muttering "What the hell?" in German. She went to the sound of his voice, and in an instant he was down.

Savelievna whispered from the pantry, in German, "What happened, Lara?" Using Borisovna's code name.

Borisovna answered in Russian, "We're clear."

Kargin took a blow to the head, Obrecht a sharp blow to the stomach. Both men dropped to their knees where they were quickly knocked out then bound with zip ties. Loshchilov gagged both of them with rags he'd brought along for the occasion. He began to drag Kargin towards the deeper shadows, Koltsov was dragging Obrecht.

Then he heard something in his earpiece which stopped him dead in his tracks.

"Slava, they have a roving security team, two men, they're coming to the house. The Frenchman summoned them."

Loshchilov hissed, "Cover."

Boltsov joined him in the shadows.

Rafael de Lima looked out the window, his wine glass was nearly empty and in the emergency lighting he couldn't really see anything. But he did see movement outside.

"There are two men out there, they have guns!" de Lima was on the edge of panic.

Pierre Mallet shushed him, "That's our roving security team, I told them to investigate why the lights went out and get the generator started."

Savelievna had heard that, so she warned Loshchilov. She held up a hand to stop Borisovna, who had been about to arm a flash-bang grenade and toss it into the dining room. She stopped and waited.

Loshchilov and Koltsov had slung their submachine guns and both had their suppressed pistols at the ready. They heard two men chatting idly, in German, as they approached the house.

"That rock fall probably took out an electrical pole, don't know why the generator didn't start."

"I told you those fat cats inside were too cheap to pay for the maintenance contract on the damned thing. Spend 25,000 Euro on a generator and refuse the 500 Euro a year maintenance deal? Cheap bastards I tell ..."

"Halt! Wer ist da?"

Both men down, two bullets in their chests, and as Loshchilov and Koltsov walked past them, each received a further bullet in the head.

Loshchilov keyed his mic, "Clear, do it."

After dragging the two dead guards out of sight, they finished dragging their two captives into the brush near the back door. They then circled back to the front, as they went, they heard two loud bangs followed by screaming. Fortunately there were no gunshots, so Savelievna and Borisovna had the dining room under control.

Kargin slowly regained consciousness, he realized that he was tied to a chair and had a hood over his head. He heard movement around him, various voices speaking in German, he had the impression there were two men and two women.

The hood was jerked from his head, he closed his eyes as a blinding light was directed at his face.

"I need two things from you, Herr Kargin, your passcodes to your Swiss and Russian accounts. The second thing is your silence, we will let you live if you can keep this to yourself."

The man had spoken in English, a rough city accent, maybe Birmingham, maybe even further north. But the man was definitely a Brit, Kargin reasoned.

"So, you would leave me a pauper? Alive, but destitute? I don't think so."

He nearly lost consciousness when he was slapped from behind, his head nearly bouncing off his chest. His ears were now ringing and he saw stars dancing in his vision.

"Very well, Wolf, take this one outside and cut him."

Kargin wet his pants, "Wait, wait, I suppose I could make my fortune again, I'm young, I have contacts."

"That's the spirit," the "Englishman" said.

They freed his right hand and held a computer tablet in front of him. He recognized the log on screen for his main Swiss account. He was shocked that they knew the account number, he wondered how that was possible.

Little did he know that a team of U.S. Navy SEALs was in Zürich, they had first kidnapped, then convinced three bankers that their lives were worth far more than the money they were holding for an international criminal conspiracy. The bankers also learned that the Presidents of Russia, France, and the United States had contacted the President of the Swiss Federation to notify him that cooperation with those three countries had to be preferable to the scandal which would follow if it was revealed that the Swiss were laundering money for an international criminal network.

After getting the account numbers of Kargin, Obrecht, de Lima, Mallet, Baum, Tahara, Klerk, and Haghighi, the bankers had been told to go home. Before they left the leader of the team which had taken them showed them a video on his cellphone. It showed a guided bomb flying through the upstairs window of a noted terrorist leader from some years back. The resulting explosion had been devastating.

The team leader pointed at the door and said, in Austrian accented German, "We know where you live. Remember that, always."

After the bankers had left, Jason Howard looked at Avram Stein, "Damn, Avi, you scared me! Now let's get outta Dodge, we got a plane to catch!"

Loshchilov looked around the room, then turned to Koltsov, "Go get the truck. We'll load these bodies up and take them to the rendezvous."

Koltsov nodded, "What will they do with them?"

"There's a rather deep lake not too far from here, the bodies will be weighted and dropped by helicopter. The Bodensee, it's on the way home."

With the exception of the caterer and the commandos, everyone else at Obrecht's little hideaway was dead. Kargin, Obrecht, de Lima, Mallet, Baum, Tahara, Klerk, and Haghighi had died quickly. As much as Loshchilov had wanted to make the cabal members suffer, it would be a waste of time. A single shot to the back of the neck had done for them all.

Their little mission had resulted in over 750 million Euro being transferred out of Switzerland and to various foreign banks, mostly in the U.S., France, and Russia. Some 300 million Euro had been turned over to the Swiss Confederation, in consideration of them keeping quiet over the incident at the chateau owned by Obrecht.

As the big MIL MI-26 lifted off, Loshchilov was handed a headset, which he donned.

"Well done, Slava."

"Thank you, Maksim Vladimirovich. I serve the Rodina."

"Hurry home, there is trouble brewing on our southern borders. I need my warriors close at hand."

"We're on our way, Gospodin Prezident Ryzhov. The trash has been taken out and we're all a little tired of this game."

"Understood, Slava. Come home, we'll talk."

 

¹ Roughly, "f**k" (Russian - Ебать)