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A Tangled Ball of Yarn - A Dafydd Owen Story - Ep5

"Kelli, my name is Dafydd Owen. I'm working for your father. Peter called him and gave him this number to reach you."

"Oh my God.. No.. They must have found him.. No.. "

"Kelli, it's going to be OK. We're watching the bad guys right now but I need you to do some things to make sure you're safe. Can you do that for me?"

"I guess.. What do you need me to do?"

"Grab your stuff and get out of wherever you are. Shut off and ditch that phone before you leave. Put as much distance between wherever you are and yourself as you can before noon tomorrow, then get yourself a fresh burner phone and call me back on this number..." I read off the memorized number of one of our spare burners. "Either I or my partner Sarah will answer it. Nobody but us will have any way to track or fake that contact, we'll be totaly secure and can speak freely without worries. Nobody will know where you are, not me not Peter and definitely not the folks who are looking for you. Call nobody but that number I just gave you from the new phone, because you cant trust any others not to be tracking incoming calls right now. Have you got that?"

"Ditch the phone, run, call you back and nobody else on a new number from a new phone after noon tomorrow. Yes. What about Peter?"

"If they bring him to their Vegas HQ we'll see it and will get him out. If they don't we'll make them tell us where he is and make plans accordingly. Now hang up and run like Hell."

"Ok"

---

"Sarah, it's a long shot but I'm going to set up the parabolic mic. The ambient is way down, I might be able to pick up something."

"If either of us can it's you. Your hearing is way more sensetive than mine when you let the instincts enhance it."

"If anything should happen, warn me before you start taking shots. The sound of a round impacting anything solid in the focus while I'm straining to hear with the gain cranked way up would be less than pleasant."

"Ok. I'm going thermal and starting to work the windows."

As I set up the small tripod and positioned the parabolic mic to point down into the compound, I paused every few seconds to chug a five hour energy drink. By the time I'd pounded down five of them I'd swear my tail tip was vibrating. It also made my hands shaky so I had to move slowly and carefully setting everything up but it couldn't be helped. If I was going to spend any length of time in the slow motion world I experienced when I let my predator instincts take over. I burned energy at a ruinous rate in that state and coming down off it usually gave me a monster case of the shakes. I suspected that getting the shakes up here if anything started would not have a positive effect on my life expectancy. Finally everything was set up. I put the buds in my ears and let the world slow down as I cranked up the gain on the amplifier.

Slowly sweeping the mic across the compound, the three storage buildings were as silent as I'd expect them to be. Now for the smaller residence.

Well, I could not make out words. Either everyone was near the back of the building or the door was just too thick. I could, however, count voices. There were at least six to eight women in there, some crying, some speaking in tones that I thought might have been comforting. At least one of them screamed a couple of times. I could hear two distinct male voices but no others. That accounted for the two that had forced their latest four captives through the door earlier in the day. Seems the shitheads had decided to stick around and party. On to the final building. No female voices coming from this one. At least a dozen guys though. One in particular raised in anger. Beyond confirming our earlier suspicions, I wasn't getting anything useful. Inwardly, I was seething. I knew what was going on in the smaller residential building and it was taking every ounce of self-discipline not to start shooting up the place right now.

I forced myself out of my predator focus and keyed my mic to talk to Sarah.

"Bugger all on the audio apart from confirming several women and two males in one building and at least a dozen males in the other, one of whom appears to be highly pissed off."

"Same story on the thermal, except I have a slightly more explicit idea of what's going on with the women. I'm leaning towards agreeing with Grigoriy, we'd be doing the world a favor by erasing this bunch."

"Well, we came equipped to do that, didn't we? Problem is, that wouldn't tell us anything about what is happening with Pyotr."

"Primary mission is essentially complete, Dafydd. Our job was to find and retrieve Kelli and she's as safe as we can make her having burned all bridges and covered all tracks behind her for a second time. Nobody, not Pyotr, not us and not Ostrakov's crew could get a line on her or contact her until she calls us tomorrow. She'll be in our hands by sunset tomorrow."

"Unless they already had a tail on her."

"If they did it's already too late and we're left with wasting this bunch to make a point."

"Ok, Sarah, fair point. Compromise. We watch this place until we get a hint about Pyotr. If that hint says they already killed him we deprive these cocksuckers of their breathing licenses and pull out. If it says we might be able to save him, we do that, whatever it takes. Either way, if we have to wait until dawn tomorrow, we camo our gear in place and pull out to retrieve Kelli. We can always come back in revenge mode and I'm not hauling three hundred pounds of gear up that fucking cliff face twice, ok?"

"I'm only lugging half that and I couldn't agree more."

---

It was about 2am when we got our break. A big stocky wolf emerged from the main residential building and headed straight for the smaller one. I was back on the parabolic mic as fast as I could move.

"Mikhail, Andrei. Haul yourself out of the pizda and get your furry asses out here! ... No I don't fucking care. We've got Ivanov. Mikhail, you're with me going to collect him. Andrei, Oleg wants you to help set up a proper welcome for the little bastard. Move it!"

Fuck. I watched two furs move into the garage and roar outta that place in the Hummer, one walk back to the main habitat. I watched the Hummer scoot towards the position that Sarah had staked out and a germ of an idea started forming.

"Let 'em go. They are going to bring Pyotr right to us."

"What have you in mind?"

"If they come back the same way they left, the first shot is yours. If they come back closer to me I'll take it. Whoever has it puts a round into the engine block and stops the vehicle while they are still a decent distance from the compound......" I outlined my plan and over the next few minutes we discussed it and refined it, making sure that whenever that Hummer returned we each knew exactly what the other would be doing. Grigoriy was going to get his little favor.

---

It was just after 3am when Sarah let me know the vehicle was on its way back. I immediately started getting ready. I flexed my fingers in the light gloves I was wearing and pulled the cover off the gear I'd set up earlier. I crouched next to it, ready.

"On target. Taking the shot... now."

Almost simultaneously with the report of Sarah's shot reaching me, the Hummer lurched violently to the side and stopped. Time to start rattling their cages bigtime. This was our "unpleasant surprise" A Russian "Podnos" mortar and I had a duffel full of 82mm fragmentation and incendiary rounds to use up. My first target was the largest storage building. It was the structure farthest from the one building I didn't want to hit and therefore safest to try and drop my initial ranging shot on. As I suspected, that first round went a little long and burst by the far corner of the building, tearing a chunk out of the wall but probably not doing too much damage inside. Twenty seconds later I dropped my second shot through the roof. The results were much more satisfying. That was followed up by an incendiary round and within moments the contents of that building were not going to be much use to anyone.

"You got their attention, Dafydd. Ostrakov's two goons bounced out of the Hummer like they couldn't believe their eyes and they both froze when you dropped the incendiary. I got them both. Back to covering the compound now."

I was transferring my attention to the main residential building. My first shot burst a little to the right of the front door and I walked my fire steadily across the building. Drop a frag, ten seconds later drop an incendiary, adjust.

"Two furs trying to exit via the rear windows, Dafydd. I discouraged them."

I moved on, aiming now at the two undamaged corners of the building. Four more pairs of rounds and the whole building was a fiercely burning pile of rubble.

"Departure drill, Sarah. You pick up Pyotr. See you back at the Jeep."

"On my way."

I quickly lugged all the gear back to the cache in an overhang of the rock. I set a small charge in the duffel with the remaining mortar rounds, set its timer for 30 minutes and poured the remaing fuel left over in the can from which I'd refilled my bike over everything. Taking only the bag containing my rifle and scope, I ran to the rope dangling down the rock face and started to rappel. Seconds later I was kicking the bike into life and making myself scarce.

Half an hour later the horizon behind me lit up with first one and then another fiery detonation. If the original fireworks hadn't drawn attention, those would.

"Sarah, status?"

"We're twenty minutes out. I avoided the sand trap this time."

"I'm about ten minutes ahead of you. We're going to want the bikes loaded and be on the road as fast as we can."

As it happened we were already on the road before we saw the first police chopper heading out into the desert. Pyotr hadn't spoken a word since Sarah had bundled him into the Jeep. As we left the highway and headed to our apartment, he finally broke his silence.

"You're obviously on the side of the Angels, but after what I just witnessed I'm hesitant to call you the 'good guys'. Now that we're well away from there, do you have a minute to tell me what is actually going on here?"

"Kelli was worried about you."

"Kelli? Who's that?"

"While I appreciate you trying to keep her safe, I know who you are. I suspect I may know that more thoroughly than she does, Pyotr Arkadyevich." He tensed in his seat. "Please do not contemplate anything foolish. When the young lady contacts me tomorrow, I would hate to have to inform her that we successfully recovered you from Ostrakov's organization but that you were injured or worse due to your own rash actions."

"Those bastards are never going to stop hunting you, you know. You'll be looking over your shoulder all your life, just like I will."

"First, they must know who to hunt. Suppose you were Vladimir Ostrakov. A group of your people are efficiently wiped out and other than items readily available on the open market in this country all the specialized hardware used appears to be Russian military in origin. What would you think?

"I don't know. I've never been involved in that sort of thing."

"The actions we took to recover you are exactly those that Ostrakov would expect from his people offending another Russian gangster. Quite a powerful one. He will tread very carefully in any actions he takes as a result." I grinned. "Of course I'm bluffing on a pair of fives, but this is Vegas, after all."

The young bear looked at me like his eyes were going to fall out of his head and roll down his muzzle and he burst out into hysterical laughter. By the time he caught his breath we were nearly at the apartment.

"Where the hell did Kelli find you guys?"

"She didn't. Her father did. He had no clue you were even in the picture, he just wanted us to get her out of whatever trouble she was in."

"Oh.. and you're going to tell him all about me, aren't you." The bear visibly deflated and looked dejected.

"That depends on what there is to tell, doesn't it? This is where we're staying. Get inside and I'll answer as many of your questions as I can. I hope you like Italian food, Sarah is cooking tonight and she's good at it. Just dont lie to me or I fucking well will put your head on a spike in Vladimir Ostrakov's front yard."

"Kelli might object to that."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I was getting ready to ask her to marry me when all this blew up - I've even still got the ring in my pocket."

"Well you can put it on her finger tomorrow afternoon - assuming she says yes to your sorry ass."

---

So this is where we end up... a young couple gushing over planning a wedding and Sarah and I dancing at the charity ball hosted by the father of the bride-to-be. Did I mention that it was all about to go to hell? I guess I did. At the time, though, I had no idea what was coming. First hint I had of anything out of the ordinary was when I saw Frank and thanked him for the tickets...

"What do you mean, Dafydd? I didn't send tickets to your office..."

Oh shit. Somebody is calling my pair of fives.

_To be concluded... _