Page 3 of Rogue

“They’re early.”

The sleek black Sikorsky S-76C helicopter sat on the helipad at the end of the pier as we drove along the vast dry dock. The rotors were still and unmoving, the engine probably well on its way to freezing its bloody arse in the cold New York winter.

“Or we’re late,” Turk suggested.

“Fashionably so,” I agreed grimly, my mouth set into a thin line.

It would have been bad manners to suggest anything else on such an occasion.

Turk shot me a look, but didn’t bother with a rebuke as the Maserati Quattroporte came to a stop. Not waiting for the driver to kill the engine, he got out and slammed the door behind him. I followed quickly, stepping out into a cold gust of night wind that howled in my ears and made my eyes burn as I fell into line behind him.

Behind us, I heard two more car doors open and slam shut in the wind as Turk’s driver, Joey Willisono and his mate Cassio Sforza, made up our rear. They would be our only back up tonight.

That had been the terms of the meeting. Just Turk, myself, and two guards. That was all. It sounded like a shit idea to me, but then what part of this plan hadn’t?

Even the locale was a shit choice.

Buildings and warehouses surrounded us with windows on every level, clear overlapping fields of fire, no natural cover or alternative escape routes. Neutral ground my arse. A couple of snipers could cut us to swiss cheese. They couldn’t have picked a better spot for an ambush.

We were walking into a goddamn kill box.

I suppose I should have just been grateful they hadn’t made us come here with just our dicks in our hands. If it did all go to shit, at least we had a chance of shooting our way back to the car.

For what it was worth, I glanced right and left as we walked, eyes peeled, searching the overlooking windows, ready to act at the first hint of movement. That was my job, to watch his back. It was only on a shiver of instinct I glanced back the way we came, and felt my blood turn to ice in my veins.

“Where’s Joey and Cassio?” I hissed at Turk, leaning in close so we couldn’t be overheard.

“Sick,” he answered simply, not looking back or offering anything more.

Sick? I chewed on the explanation incredulously, but knew better than to press him. “So you called in Lucca and Anthony?”

“Don’t worry about it, they’re good,” his voice crackled with undisguised irritation and he picked up the pace, lengthening the gap between us. I knew I should have pressed it, but I let him go. I was his head of security. If there was a problem with his guard detail, it was my problem, my responsibility, and my fuck up. I should have checked before getting in the car, but they’d pulled up and everything had happened so fast, I got in without thinking.

Now it was too late.

I’d fucked up. Nothing to do now but roll with it and hope it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the arse.

I glanced back again. Lucca Zaboni and Anthony Clamenza. Yeah, not exactly my first choice of reserves.

Actually, they’d never have even made the list.

Cassio and Joey knew their jobs. I could trust them to keep their heads down and just focus on getting Turk in the car. Lucca and Anthony however…

Don’t get me wrong, they were good. Good big lads. Proper Sicilian soldiers. Aggressive and hard, good street fighters, just the sort you’d want for intimidating store owners or putting the frighteners to witnesses. They were also as thick as two short planks and greener than grass. They could follow orders well enough but had all the initiative of a rock and took to thinking like a duck to a dog track. If it did all go to hell tonight, they were as likely to spray the street with lead as they were to hit their marks.

On the helipad, the doors to the Sikorsky slid open and a set of steps unfolded smoothly into place. On either side, two heavies jumped down into a flanking position. The typical Russian greeting. They were all muscle, leather, and biker tattoos. Both had hard looks. One was near bald, with a face like a constipated bulldog who’d mistaken a rope of barbed wire for its chew toy. The other had short, cropped, bleached blonde hair and looked like a bull that had just had some good news from a butcher’s tenderiser.

Yet they weren’t the ones making my fingers twitch.

That was the old bastard between them, making his way down the small flight of steps and across the helipad towards us.

Their boss. The Pakhan. Alexi Lebedinsky. An exiled oligarch and arguably the most powerful man in New York, perhaps the country.

And the man who had ordered my family’s murder.

We stopped just short of halfway, at the foot of a rusty old platform that bridged the gap between the dock and the helipad, just ten metres between us and them. Ten metres between me and the revenge I had so longed for.

My fingers were twitching so badly I might have looked like I was having a stroke. Trying to force down the urge, I clenched my fist and shoved it in my pocket.

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