Chapter Nine: The Bunker
“The old man doesn’t trust anyone anymore,” Marcus relayed. “He moves every night. Different safe house, different security team. But he has a weakness.”
“What weakness?”
“His daughter. Elena. She doesn’t know about the business. Lives in the suburbs. Thinks her father is in import-export.”
Arya looked at Leon.
“We don’t use civilians.”
“I know.” Leon’s jaw tightened. “But we can watch her. See who visits. See where Konstantin goes when he thinks no one is watching.”
Sergei Volkov was easier.
The money man had grown complacent after years of being protected by his ledgers. He thought no one would touch the man who knew where all the bodies were buried.
He was wrong.
Leon’s team took him at 7:00 a.m., just as he was leaving for his morning run.
Sergei didn’t fight. He didn’t run.
He looked at the men surrounding him and said, “Tell Martinez I want to make a deal.”
“No deals,” Leon said when Marcus relayed the message. “But tell him if he gives us Konstantin, I’ll make sure his wife and kids are protected.”
Sergei gave up everything within an hour.
Konstantin Kravik’s security protocols. His communication encryption. The names of every dirty cop, every paid-off politician, every compromised official in the organization’s pocket.
Arya compiled it all into a single file.
“This is everything,” she said, looking at the screen. “This is the kill shot.”
“Not yet.” Leon stood behind her, reading over her shoulder. “We need to verify. One wrong piece of information, and Konstantin disappears. We might not get another chance.”
“We don’t have time for verification. He knows we’re coming. Every hour we wait, he gets further away.”
Leon was quiet for a long moment.
Then he made a decision.
“Track his daughter. See if he contacts her. If he does, we follow. Let him lead us to wherever he thinks is safe.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we hit every location Sergei gave us. Simultaneously. Before sunrise tomorrow.”
The surveillance on Elena Kravik paid off that night.
At 11:00 p.m., a black SUV with tinted windows pulled into her driveway.
It stayed for exactly fourteen minutes.
Then it left, heading east.
Leon’s team followed at a distance.
The SUV led them through the city, onto the highway, past the suburbs, and into rural countryside.
Forty-five minutes later, it pulled into a gated property surrounded by woods.
The gate had armed guards.
The property had thermal cameras.
And the main house had been fortified like a military compound.
“He’s been planning this for months,” Arya said, studying the satellite imagery. “This isn’t a safe house. This is a bunker.”
“Can we breach it?”
“Not directly. But we don’t need to.” She zoomed in on the property’s perimeter. “Every bunker has a weakness. You just have to find it.”
They found it at 3:00 a.m.
A drainage culvert that ran under the eastern fence. Too small for a man, but large enough for fiber-optic cameras and listening devices.
Marcus’s team inserted the equipment by 5:00 a.m.
By 7:00 a.m., they had Konstantin Kravik’s voice on tape.
By 9:00 a.m., they had confirmation that he had ordered the hit on Sophia personally
