MIRONOFF WATCHED THE helicopter land from the path behind the warehouse. He had noticed the flashing lights of police cars on the river and immediately turned and ran to the back of the building.
From there, he watched police arrive and the stand-off between his men and the police begin. It was Broussard, the man he’d left in charge of the warehouse who then got him to dash to the path Tana used to help the women escape earlier.
Just before ducking into the trees, Mironoff heard the helicopter. He stopped to see who was in it. When he saw a tall man with his left arm in a sling and Sandy Basko jump out of it, he cursed and spat.
This meant the end of everything. The agreements he had to provide workers for hotels and industrial plants throughout the middle of America, for strip clubs from New York to Los Angeles, for overseas oil fields and brothels near military bases, were now nothing but broken promises. Some of them promises to people who wouldn’t take kindly to Mironoff’s broken assurances.
To watch the barge burn was bad; to have his warehouse, the place where he collected and sorted women, girls, and even some men desperate for work, shut down was a disaster.
He had more than sixty people inside the warehouse readied to distribute; sixty placements already paid for but which Mironoff would not be able to deliver.
He slowly stepped backward on the path, into the still black darkness of the trees, in a daze. He turned and went to the body of one of his men lying on the path. Broussard was removing things from the body, identification, ammunition, a knife, and the money in the dead man’s pockets.
Broussard stood.
“Boss, I got a small boat over on the water. We gotta go.”
Mironoff stood looking down at the dead man. “I am as dead as this man, now,” in a low, cold voice.
“Let’s go.” Broussard pulled on Mironoff’s arm, tugging him off the path and towards the river.
Mironoff tensed and yanked his arm from Broussard’s grasp.
“We got to go now, Boss.”
“I will find and kill Basko and that woman, that fucking woman.”
They turned and began jogging through the brush towards the river, Mironoff mumbling under his breath as they ran.
“I will hunt police man. I will hunt woman. I will kill them and find new location. This is big country. Lots of empty warehouses. Lots of people to sell and people to sell to.”
Broussard noted Mironoff’s speech had reverted to a mix of accents, some Russian, some a kind of Middle Eastern dialect. He’d heard this before when Mironoff was extremely angry or distressed, like when the girl had called someone from the warehouse just after he’d finished the work preparing it. It was in his coldest, most accented English then that Mironoff told Broussard to “keel bitch.”
Broussard grew nervous listening to the rambling curses and threats coming from Mironoff.
The ground soon turned mushy, with water grasses growing in a marshy area. Broussard quickly found the small boat he’d tied up in the marsh to use when he could. He had been supervising the warehouse operation, which once running smoothly, left him some time for boating on the river.
They jumped into the boat, and Broussard turned to take them upriver. Mironoff sat in a seat placed on the front of the boat, arms crossed and a scowling face frozen in anger. They traveled more than 30 minutes without speaking, only the humming of the boat’s little outboard motor filling the dawn’s air.
“Broussard, we go to White Sands.”
“Sure thing, Boss.” Broussard wasn’t certain how he would get them to White Sands, but he had been thinking of their escape. He planned to land upriver and thought he could then steal a vehicle and drive Mironoff somewhere to get away.
He had friends on the Gulf who could take them to Mexico, or even Venezuela; other friends further north could take him to Washington or Oregon, where they could hide out in the mountain forests while they planned their next move.
Instead, it looked like they will travel back to White Sands while Mironoff plotted.
Broussard guided the boat a few more miles upriver, almost as far as Escambia, before pulling nearer to the shore to look for suitable landing spots. They spotted a newer house on the river that appeared to be someone’s weekend get-away lodge. After getting off the boat and pushing it away to float downstream, Broussard walked down the road looking for a car to steal. About a mile away, he found an old blue Ford sedan.
They pulled into White Sands before 8 a.m., and the town was just waking up. Mironoff guided Broussard to a 22-story condominium building on the beach, then told him to get rid of the car in some safe place.
While Broussard was disposing of the Ford, Mironoff went to the condo he’d purchased on the 20th floor in the name of a limited liability company he organized. The LLC ownership hid his involvement, and he had never told anyone about it. Basko knew nothing of his real business, Mironoff thought.
Mironoff figured this would give them some safety while he worked on his plan for revenge.
Inside, he poured a large tumbler of vodka and stepped onto the balcony. A chilling breeze blew in off the Gulf, but Mironoff didn’t mind. The vodka warmed him and fueled his thinking.
He used an address in Perdido on his contract with BODE, so anyone looking for him would focus investigations there. He could use Broussard as his eyes and ears, and find out how he could get rid of Basko, the woman, and the cop.
He didn’t know who the woman he’d seen in Pascagoula, the one who had disrupted everything, was, nor did he know how to find her. He figured she was police or FBI or something like that, but which agency she worked for he couldn’t be sure. And he didn’t care. She wouldn’t be the first federal agent to die after interfering in his plans.
When Broussard returned three hours later, Mironoff was ready with his plan.