Page 41 of Locked and Loaded

He'd called Mick after he’d left the kitchen, after Lennox had gone upstairs and closed her door. He'd heard the third door on the left click shut. He'd stood in the courtyard for a minute, listening to the silence, then walked back to the office and pulled up the security footage from the La Sultana. Hotel. Still frames of the two men in blazers. The one with black hair, the wiry one at the bar. He'd isolated their faces and sent them to Mick.

It had been two in the morning, his time, which made it early evening back at Callahan. Mick had answered on the second ring, because Mick always answered on the second ring.

"There's more than these two," Dragan had explained. "I want to know who else was in that restaurant. Pull the hotel's exterior cameras if you can. Anyone watching the exits. These two weren’t by themselves."

"You want fries with that?" came Mick’s sarcastic reply.

"I want them yesterday," Dragan had growled. But neither man meant anything by it. It was how they related to each other more often than not. A sign of friendship and understanding of who the other man really was. "Oh, and run the name Nikolai Rostov. I had a bit of a run-in with him and his girlfriend, Katya Ivanova. I want whatever background you can find. And if you think they’re likely to come back at me.”

Mick snorted. “Any other miracles you want?”

“That’s it for now,” Dragan had said, as if his ask was reasonable.

"Give me a few hours. I'll run them through everything we've got. Interpol, private databases, and anything Dani might have running in your area…the works. If these guys have ever had their picture taken, I'll find it. And I’ll find out what I can about Rostov."

Dragan had trusted him to do exactly that. Mick was good at his job. Better than good. He'd come to Callahan with a skillset that suggested a past he didn't talk about, and Dragan respected his privacy. Everyone had a past. What mattered was the present, and in the present, Mick could find a needle in a haystack made of other needles.

The screen hit one hundred percent. The file Mick sent had finally downloaded.

Dragan sat forward.

Four names appeared on the display; each paired with a photograph and details about the person. The software had pulled clear frames from the security footage, isolated the faces, and matched them against whatever databases Mick had wired into the system.

Yuri Kozlov. Russian national. Forty-two. Former GRU, discharged eight years ago under circumstances that were suspicious even by GRU standards. He'd gone private after that, sold his skills to whoever could pay. Fucking mercenary. The photo showed a man with a flat face and eyes that held nothing. He'd been the one approaching Lennox at the restaurant, the man she'd recognized from Portugal.

Dragan studied the face. Ex-military intelligence explained the way the man had moved. Economy of motion. No wasted energy. A man who'd been trained to kill and had kept practicing.

Mikhail Petrov. Also Russian. Thirty-eight. Former Spetsnaz. He'd been the wiry guy from the bar, the backup, the man positioned to cut off any escape route Kozlov might miss. His file was thinner than Kozlov's, but what was there painted a clear enough picture. Fifteen years in special forces, then a quiet departure and a new career as a private contractor.

Dragan knew what "private contractor" meant in this context. It meant he killed people for money and didn't ask questions. Another damn soldier of fortune.

The third man was different. Olavi Virtanen. Finnish. Forty-five. No military background that the databases could find, but that didn't mean anything. Some of the best operators Dragan had ever met had no official history at all. Virtanen's file was almost empty except for a single note: suspected involvement in at least three contract killings across Eastern Europe. Never charged. Never even questioned.

Then there was the fourth face. A man Dragan hadn't seen at the restaurant. Mick had pulled his image from the hotel's exterior footage, standing near a service entrance on the side street, smoking a cigarette, and watching the door like he had all the time in the world.

He was in his fifties. Silver hair. Expensive suit. He didn't look like a killer. He looked like a businessman who'd stepped outside for a smoke. But the other three, Kozlov, Petrov, Virtanen, had all checked this man on their way in. The exterior camera had caught it. A glance. A slight nod. Kozlov had stopped beside him long enough to say something that made the silver-haired man's mouth twitch. Nothing overt. Nothing noticeable unless someone like him was looking for it.

The silver-haired man was running the team. And his face wasn't in any system Mick could access. Dragan picked up his phone and dialed.

"Heard from you, I did," Mick said by way of greeting. "Good things come to those who wait."

"I've got the names. Kozlov, Petrov, Virtanen. The fourth one came up empty."

"Yeah, I saw that." The sound of a keyboard clicking came through the line and then a yawn.

“Am I keeping you up?” Dragan asked and then calculated the time difference. “Shit, sorry I forgot about the time difference.” It was the wee hours of the night in New York.

“No worries. I live to serve.” Mick sighed with exaggerated martyrdom before dropping the act. “I ran him through everything twice. No hits. No matches. Nothing. It's like he doesn't exist.”

"He exists. He's running the operation."

"Well, he's a ghost. I can keep digging, but whatever he's scrubbed, he scrubbed it deep. This isn't amateur work. Someone paid a lot of money to make this guy invisible."

Dragan had figured as much. "The other three. What's the connection?"

"That's the fun part," Mick said. "There isn't one. Not directly. Kozlov and Petrov have worked together before. I found two jobs in the last three years that used both of them. But Virtanen has no overlap with either of them. Different networks. Different employers. Different everything."

"So… Someone pulled together a team from separate networks," Dragan reasoned.