Chapter 20

Chief of Police Jack Sinderson frowned at the folder lying on his desk. It contained a routine background check on one Alexandr Novákov, a recent immigrant from the Czech Republic who had been referred to the school by an employment agency in New York City. He hadn’t thought about it before, but now he wondered how an employment agency in New York City had been aware that Slippery Rock needed a janitor for their high school.

Jack remembered the man, now, and remembered doing the background check that was in the folder. Alexandr, being such a recent immigrant, didn’t have much of a background to check. The normal process was to run the name and social security number through NCIC to see if there was any criminal history. Other police departments might be queried, depending on where the person of interest had lived, but Jack hadn’t been able to do that, since Alexandr hadn’t lived anywhere else in the US.

Something else surfaced in Jack’s memory as he looked at the photograph of Alexandr in the file. A woman had been with him and done all the talking when Jack initiated the background check folder he was reviewing. She had spoken to the man in what sounded like Russian. The only thing Alexandr had said to Jack was: “No English. I try learn.” Jack hadn’t thought about where the woman with him had come from. She wasn’t from the school. He knew everybody there. She had said she was with the employment agency that had found Alexandr this job.

Now, he wondered why anyone would travel all the way from New York City just to place a custodian.

What was making Jack frown, however, was that the report he’d gotten back from NCIC concerning the fingerprints simply listed them as “Not on file.” He hadn’t thought about it, back then, but now he wondered. Weren’t fingerprints required to get a visa? Surely this man had a work visa if he wasn’t a US Citizen. The Department of Homeland Security was paranoid these days. Didn’t they screen these people? How, then could his fingerprints not be on file?

Jack thought about Cindy’s hypothesis that the man was in witness protection. He didn’t know much about that other than what he’d seen in movies and he knew how skewed movies got things when it came to law enforcement.

He got on the computer and searched for witness protection and the US Marshal Service.

What he learned there gave him pause. Marshal policy was not to notify local law enforcement of a witness’s criminal background or placement in a community unless there was a clear danger to the community.

There was a contact number.

He picked up his phone and dialed.

Trudy Bonnewitz picked up her phone to hear Don Buckminster’s voice. “I’ve got a guy on the line and I think you should talk to him.”

Trudy felt a mild sense of dread. As supervisor of the WITSEC Law Enforcement Liaison section, most calls she got from law enforcement officials around the United States were complaints about what kind of trouble some protected witness was causing in his or her jurisdiction. She had to smooth things over because moving a witness was both costly and a pain in the ass. Sometimes she was able to pass the buck to the handler, but she tried not to do that unless the issue couldn’t be resolved at her level. She always notified the handler of the complaint, so they’d know what their witness was up to, but her marching orders were to solve the problem herself, if at all possible.

“Trudy Bonnewitz” she said, firmly, as she heard the click that meant the call had been transferred. “How can I help you?”

“This is Jack Sinderson. I’m the chief of police in Slippery Rock, Minnesota. I need to find out if you folks have a witness in my town.”

“We don’t normally do that, Chief Sinderson,” said Trudy. “The fewer people who know, the safer the witness is. Is there some problem there?”

“I don’t actually know,” said Jack. “I’ve got this guy here, a recent immigrant from the Czech Republic, and he’s working in the high school. I did a background check on him ... you know ... standard policy kind of thing ... and his prints came back as not on file. That doesn’t make sense to me because Homeland Security gets prints from people like that. At least I think they do. And when his came back not on file I thought maybe he was one of your people, or something.”

While he had talked Trudy had tapped keys on her keyboard. The screen showed nothing for a location called Slippery Rock, in Minnesota or anywhere else.

“I can tell you we don’t have a witness in Slippery Rock,” she said.

“Okay. Thanks. It was just an idea. The guy is making some of the teachers nervous. He doesn’t seem to know much about doing his job, an all he is, is a janitor.”

“Who hired him?” asked Trudy. She wasn’t actually interested, but talking to this guy was better than talking to a complainer.

“He came from an employment agency in New York City. How they knew we needed a janitor and why they thought some guy who only speaks Russian would make a good one is beyond me.”

The word “Russian” zapped into Trudy’s brain and she became very alert.

“Did you say he speaks only Russian? And he’s a Czech?”

“Well, it sounds like Russian, but I guess it could be Czech. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t know how to be a janitor. Nobody can talk to him to teach him how. It’s probably nothing. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Wait!” snapped Trudy. One hundred percent of all employees of the Marshal Service knew about the manhunt for Vladimir Boruskiev. She hadn’t gone to the funerals herself, because she hadn’t known any of the marshals who were killed, but she took it just as personally as the deputies in the field did that Boruskiev was responsible for their deaths, as well as trying to kill someone under the protection of the USMS.

This might be a false lead, but she couldn’t ignore it.

“Would you stay on the line, please? I need to transfer you to someone else in the agency. He might be interested in your Russian man, I mean Czech.”

“Why? I thought you said you don’t have anybody in Slippery Rock.”

“We don’t, but there is a nation-wide manhunt for a Russian criminal who is trying to hide somewhere. How big is Slippery Rock?”

“Twenty-five thousand,” said Jack.

“Can you wait? I need to put you on hold while I call somebody.”

“Okay,” said Jack.

It took Trudy five minutes to determine that the people who should talk to this chief of police were in the Eastern Metro Fugitive Task Force. They covered Minnesota. Her call was routed directly to Monica Baldridge, who was the deputy in charge of the Eastern Metro office. Monica didn’t know Trudy, but when she heard the word “Russian” it affected her the same way it had affected Trudy.

Thirty seconds later, she was talking to the chief of police in Slippery Rock.

“Do not attempt to apprehend this man by yourself, Chief,” said Monica harshly. “I’ll have a team on my way to Slippery Rock within ten minutes. They’ll be there in two hours. Just stand down and wait for us. Our people will be able to identify him if he’s the man we’re looking for.”

Jack had described Alexandr, but what made hope bloom in her chest was the New York City connection. It made sense. Small town. Canadian border only a hop, skip and a jump away. Boruskiev would cool his heels sweeping floors until he thought the heat was off and then slip across the border. He’d probably use the Alexandr Novákov identity to do that. It wasn’t a confirmed sighting ... but was for sure worth checking into.

“I can’t just let some dangerous guy walk around in the high school,” said Jack.

“That’s my point, Chief. As long as he doesn’t think he’s in any danger, he’s not going to make waves.”

Had she left it there, things might have progressed differently. But Monica wanted to make a firm impression on this local lawman.

“Don’t approach him. He is dangerous ... more dangerous than you could imagine. If he gets hinky, he might take hostages. When we get there we’ll set it up so we don’t approach him until he’s alone, well away from the school, and nobody will get hurt. I have to go. Things need to happen quickly. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

She didn’t give him time to comment. From his perspective, she just flat hung up on him.

He sat back in his chair. They were interested. Very interested. They were coming right now! He couldn’t help but imagine a scene in which SWAT vehicles were loaded up with helmeted men in black uniforms, chests armored, carrying automatic weapons. He knew that such raids didn’t play out like they did on TV or in the movies, but still, the thought of men carrying guns that could spray dozens of bullets every second was troubling.

What was so interesting about this guy? Why did they want him so badly?

Once again, Chief Sinderson pulled up his Google page.

Jack got on the radio and called in both of his active patrols. He was pretty sure he knew why the US Marshal’s Service was so hot to get a team to Slippery Rock. The descriptions various bloggers had put up on the internet concerning the gun battle in New York City had made the little hairs on the back of his neck spring to full tension. That had led to stories about Vladimir Boruskiev, and the crimes he had been convicted of, as well as the lurid details of his prison break. Some of those stories had come with photographs that made it clear in Jack’s mind that this madman had come to his little town to hide. Alexandr Novákov had cut his hair short and dyed it, as well, but the facial features were too close to be just coincidence.

In any case, if it was Boruskiev, he wasn’t about to let the monster stay loose one second longer than it would take him and his men to get to the school and take him into custody. There was no way he was waiting for hours for the marshals to get there when some leak in the system might alert Boruskiev that they were coming and allow him to do something terrible in Slippery Rock.

All he told his patrols was that they were needed at the office. Nor did he alert his office staff as to what was about to take place. Jack had never even drawn his gun while he was a cop, but he knew the value of playing things close to the vest and planning the confrontations that inevitably take place between law enforcement and the citizens it is sworn to serve.

Brady Green arrived first and sauntered into Jack’s office. He was mister average in every discernible way. He was about five-eight and looked thick, rather than paunchy. Jack encouraged him to get enough physical activity by working out with him whenever they had a chance. He and Brady kept each other in shape. Whether in civilian dress or uniform, Brady looked placid and unthreatening. His brown hair and brown eyes were easy to flit one’s eyes past if he were in a crowd. He was very good at talking to excited people and calming them down.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Let’s wait for Jeremy,” said Jack. “Where’s your vest?”

“My ballistic vest?” Brady’s eyebrows rose. “In the trunk, where I always keep it,” he said.

Jeremy Yellowfeather pushed through the door just then. Jeremy was obviously Native American, though he had never made reference to his tribal ancestry, at least not as far as Jack knew. His straight, black hair was tied back in a ponytail, as usual. His high cheekbones always looked a little sunburned. Aside from his physical form, his black, beady eyes seemed to stare straight into a person’s soul. Nobody messed with Jeremy, not even the drunks. Of course a lot of that was because he was built like a tank. At six-four he weighed in at two-seventy and it was all muscle. He’d made it clear when he applied for his job that his plan was to get some experience at the local level in police work, and then try to get a job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “Some experience” apparently meant more than six years, because that’s how long he’d been on the force.

“Where’s your ballistic vest?” Jack asked him without preamble.

“In my squad car,” said Jeremy. “Don’t worry, I’m taking good care of it.” His reference was to the fact that his vest had to be specially made, due to his size and dimensions.

“We’re going to go bring a man in,” said Jack. “If I’m right, he’s a very bad man. The US Marshals are on their way here to get him but I don’t want to wait. He got a job at the high school and if he’s who I think he is, I don’t want him in that building any longer than it takes us to get him out of it.”

“Who do you think he is?” asked Brady.

“I think his real name is Vladimir Boruskiev,” said Jack.

“Holy fuck!” said Brady, his voice low.

“You’ve heard of him?”

“Hasn’t everybody? He’s number one on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

“How come I never heard of him before this?” asked Jack, feeling a little ill.

“Because you made it my responsibility to keep the wanted board up to date, but you never look at it,” said Brady.

“You mean we have a picture of Vladimir Boruskiev in the fucking police station?” Jack clenched his fist.

“Be right back,” said Brady and he trotted out of the room.

He was back with a poster in his hand, which he handed to his boss. It was the same as one of the photographs Jack had seen online.

“I feel stupid,” said Jack.

“You said he works at the high school?” Jeremy’s interest was expected. Like Jack, he was engaged to a teacher. All four of them went out for dinner once a month. There was even some talk between them of having a double wedding.

“Janitor,” said Jack, tersely. “Hired a month ago. We did a background check on him, but I’m beginning to think everything in it is either forged or fiction.”

“Let me see that, please,” said Jeremy, reaching for the poster. He was invariably polite, whether it was with a citizen or someone he knew quite well. “I saw this man on the news,” he said.

“He is ... or was ... the head of the Russian Mafia in New York City. He was involved in the white slavery trade and tried to kill the star witness and prosecutor in the case. Four US Marshals were killed. When he was convicted, his cronies broke him out of prison and more people were killed. They’ve been looking for him ever since, and I have this terrible feeling that he came here to hide.”

“Yeah. I remember now. I was with Charlene when it was on the news. She made me promise not to ever move to New York City.” Jeremy grinned. “So. Let’s go get him.”

“This isn’t your average drunk driver,” said Jack. “This guy would hurt people and walk away smiling. We know he’s probably at work, which means he’s in the school. We don’t know if he’s armed or not.”

“Poster says he is,” said Jeremy. “Also says we can kill the son of a bitch if we want to.”

“Yeah, Jeremy. Let’s just go into the high school with guns blazing and hope it’s the guy in that poster ... and hope that nobody else catches a stray bullet. I just fucking love that idea, Jeremy.”

“Okay,” said Jeremy, shrugging. “So we take him alive. What’s the plan?”

The plan was for Jack and Brady to put on civilian clothes so they wouldn’t stand out in the hallways. Their vests would be worn under loose shirts. Jeremy would be in uniform and would, ostensibly, be there to see Charlene about something. Some years past it was decided that the school was too small. The voters, however, were not interested in ponying up for a new building, so two modules were added to make room. They were really just prefab buildings, hardly more than fancy mobile homes on a permanent foundation, but the hallway between the main building and the modules had no external exits in it. Brady would drop a cup of soda on the floor in the middle of the hallway and the janitor would be called to mop it up. While thus engaged, Jack and Brady would approach him from one direction, while Jeremy sealed off the other. With luck, he could be cuffed and removed from the school without anyone even knowing it happened.

It wasn’t a half bad plan, as plans go. There were only a few problems.

One was that Vladimir Boruskiev had an instinct about cops, and always went armed. He carried a Makarov pistol on him at all times, and in his cleaning cart, which he pushed around almost everywhere, he had stashed a Heckler & Koch MP5KA1 submachine gun, chambered in 9mm parabellum. He also had two M67 hand grenades, stolen from the U.S. Army at some time in the past by members of his organization. Thankfully, the grenades would not be discovered until after the incident, tucked into inside pockets of the canvas sides of his cart.

Another kink in the plan was when Jack tried to get Alice Hornsby, in the office, to call the janitor and tell him about the mess in the hallway. He didn’t tell her what was going on.

“I’ll go get him,” she said.

“No, just call him,” said Jack, as he envisioned Boruskiev crushing Alice to his front as a shield, with a gun against her head.

“That’s not how it works,” she said. “He doesn’t understand much English, so we have to take him to something like that and point it out.”

“That’s not what I want,” said Jack.

“Why not? What’s going on?” asked Alice, curiously.

“I need to take him into custody, and I don’t want you there when it happens,” said Jack. He raised a hand to ward off what would be her inevitable questions. “I can’t explain it right now. How can we do this?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes filled with curiosity. “Maybe I should get Mister Vail.”

“No,” said Jack, a little too urgently. Chris Vail was the principal, and Jack didn’t want to deal with him, either. Vail would dig in his heels and demand answers. Jack was quite sure Vail would freak out and the whole thing would blow up in their faces.

“I’ll have Brady go get him and point it out.”

“Brady’s here too? What the hell is going on, Jack?” Alice was starting to get scared.

“I just need to take him into custody with as little fanfare as possible,” said Jack, trying to soothe her concerns. “Whenever we do something like this we don’t want civilians involved. I’m sure you understand why. I just wanted it to seem as normal as possible when he is called to clean up that spill.”

“Well, it won’t be very normal for Brady to go get him,” said Alice. “We don’t have uniformed security in the school, Jack. You know that. Come to think of it, why aren’t you in uniform?”

“Neither of us is,” said Jack. “Like I said, we want to make this as quiet as possible.”

“I’m going to go get Mister Vail, Jack. You’re scaring me.”

“Please don’t do that, Alice,” groaned Jack. “This is no big deal, but Chris will make it into one. I just want to get this guy out of the school while class is in session. Please? Work with me, here, Alice.”

“If I don’t tell him you’re in the building officially, I could lose my job, Jack.” She looked unhappy, and kept looking toward the principal’s office.

“You won’t lose your job. In fact, I’m deputizing you as of this moment. You are to tell no one that we’re here, or what we’re doing. That will protect you from anything Chris wants to throw at you. And if you do tell someone - anyone - and it causes a panic, Alice, I’m going to hold you responsible. Are we clear, here?”

“You can’t do this,” she snapped.

“I can and I am,” he growled. “Now, let me do my job and remove this guy from the school. It will all come out in the wash. You’ll be fine. He’ll just think Brady is a teacher or father or something.”

“No he won’t,” she said, firmly. “He’s been here long enough to know everybody who works in this school. What has he done, Jack? Why are you doing this?”

Jack was up against a wall. He knew Alice pretty well, but only because she and her husband were in the same bowling league with him. Other than that they didn’t socialize. He made a decision.

“I’m doing this because if I don’t, then in about an hour and a half a dozen US Marshals are going to descend on this school with automatic weapons to get this guy, okay? And I don’t want that. I want to take him by surprise and get him in cuffs. We’re going to do that while he’s cleaning up a mess we made in the hallway to the modules, where nobody else will be around. We can’t evacuate the school, because he’ll disappear in the wind. Or maybe take somebody hostage or something. I just need him to be sent to clean up a mess, Alice. How hard can that be?”

“I’m going to get fired,” she moaned. “I know I am. US Marshals? Guns? Jack!”

Jack looked at his watch.

“We only have ten minutes, Alice, before the halls are full of kids.”

“Shit! You fucker!” she hissed. He’d never heard a harsh word escape her lips prior to this, but he had other things on his mind. Then she did something then that would make Jack respect her for the rest of his life. It would also give her a story to tell for the rest of her life. “I have to go. It’s the only way. Quick. What do I do?”

He didn’t want her involved, but the longer he and his men were in the school, the more time Boruskiev had to make them, and the more danger there was.

“Just get him into that hallway and point out the mess,” said Jack. “Then go into the module. Jeremy is in there and he’ll get you out of the way.”

The improvised plan went pretty well, except for the fact that Alice couldn’t stand the pressure. She did well, going to the janitor’s closet, where the janitor always stayed unless he was actually called on for something, and motioning for him to come with her. She even remembered to point to the mop, and said, “Spill. You come. Okay?”

She hurried a bit too much, but it was later thought Boruskiev didn’t read anything into that other than the fact that classes were about to let out for the mad rush to new ones. What probably tipped him off was when, after she pointed to the spill in the hallway, she ran toward the module. By the time Jeremy shoved her to one side and came out the door she’d just gone in, and Jack and Brady sealed off the other end of the hallway, Boruskiev already had his pistol in his hand.

He shot Jeremy first, and then, probably sensing other cops would be there, turned and fired wildly at the other two men. As they ducked, instinctively, he reached and came up with the MP5, ripping off most of a thirty round magazine. Brady was hit twice as he turned sideways, the bullets hitting him in one arm and his side, and Jack took a round in his thigh.

While Boruskiev was thus engaged, Jeremy stood up from having been knocked down by a 9mm bullet his vest stopped, and calmly shot Boruskiev in the back seven times. When asked, later, why he fired so many rounds, Jeremy, who had served one tour in the Army as an artilleryman, shrugged and repeated the catch-phrase of the artillery. “In the artillery they tell you to keep shooting until the target either changes shape or catches on fire. So I kept shooting until he changed shape. He was standing up when I started, and lying down when I stopped.” Later, when arm chair quarterbacks suggested he’d put his own people at risk, because if he’d missed he might have hit them, he calmly pointed out that all seven rounds were recovered from Boruskiev’s body.

It was a mess, of course. Principal Vail had what they initially thought was a heart attack, but turned out to be only hysterical palpitations. The town fathers were furious, but couldn’t come up with any valid reason to take action. The bullets Boruskiev sprayed so copiously, and which missed Jack and Brady, slammed into what had been the exterior brick wall of the main building, something Jack had taken into account. Neither he nor Brady had gotten off a shot. His wound was a through and through injury that would heal within a month. Brady’s injuries required surgery, but he was never considered to be in danger.

Then there was the fact that, as Jack had warned about, a contingent of US Marshals rode into town armed to the teeth. They weren’t happy either, until they had a chance to reflect that Boruskiev was, in fact, finally no longer a problem. The Deputy in Charge visited Jack in the hospital, where his wound was being sterilized, and chastised him for ignoring instructions to wait for them. Jack just said, “This is my town, and I wasn’t going to let that son of a bitch do anything before you guys got here.”

The raid team had other fish to fry and were replaced by members of the joint task force that would confirm and document the death of Vladimir Boruskiev so that the case file could finally be closed. The school was closed for a week while the crime scene technicians processed the scene, to the delight of the students. Jack got heat for that, too, until it came out that the janitor had hand grenades in his cart. The thought of one of them “going off somehow” cooled the jets of those who complained that Jack had gone cowboy.

What actually smoothed things over permanently, though, was the fact that Slippery Rock got its fifteen minutes of fame on national television, covered by all three channels on the nightly news. The influx of “tourists” started with the press, and was then followed by curiosity seekers who wanted to see the place where a small town police force had taken out the man on the FBI’s most wanted list. An editorial in the local paper, some months later, reckoned that the incident had brought more than five million dollars into the coffers of various businesses in town. There was even some talk to erecting a plaque in the park downtown, and an effort to get that put on the registry of historical places.

Jack and Jeremy were heroes in the public eye.

Their fiancées, however, were not impressed.

It was 1:48 PM Central Standard Time in Minnesota when Jeremy Yellowfeather shot Vladimir Boruskiev. That made it 10:48 AM in Alaska, which makes it seem odd that nobody in the lodge learned about events until two in the afternoon, when somebody at the marshal service thought to ask, “Hey, has anybody called Alaska?”

When the sat phone started beeping, it happened to be sitting on the table beside Ronnie, who had just come off watch with Bernard and was eating a bowl of soup.

“That’s new,” she commented, as the phone chirped repeatedly.

“You gonna answer it?” asked Bernard.

“It’s never rung before,” said Ronnie, reaching for the phone.

“That’s the sat phone,” yelled Dick, who was upstairs in Jody’s room. She was packing up to fly back to Anchorage and he was trying to get her to delay that for another day. “Somebody answer it!” he said, coming out of the room.

Ronnie tried to figure out which button to push, and Bernard took it from her. He punched a button and, using a phrase his father had liked to use when answering the family phone, said, “You have reached the party to whom you are speaking. How may I help you?”

Dick was halfway down the stairs by the time Bernie said, “No shit? That’s fucking fantastic!“

“What’s going on?” asked Dick.

“Boruskiev’s dead. Killed in a gun battle with some local cops in somewhere called Slippery Rock,” said Bernie, grinning from ear to ear.

Jody, who had come to the door of her room to listen, let out a rebel yell that brought Jessica and Lenny out of their room with guns in hand. Both were naked. They’d been sleeping after their morning watch.

“Clear!” yelled Ronnie, a grin on her face. “Where’s your spare mag, Deputy Snow? Deputy Thomas? I don’t see any spare mags.” The grin on her face was what let them relax.

“What happened?” asked Jessica, looking around.

Bernie repeated what he’d been told while Dick took the phone from him.

“Deputy Hooker,” he said. “Fill me in.”

He listened for a few seconds and then glared at Bernie.

“I’ll talk to him about that. Now, fill me in.”

A minute went by as he listened intently. He looked at his watch.

“Any particular reason why this information took so long to get to us?” he asked. Almost immediately he held the phone away from his ear. “Okay, okay. Don’t get excited. We’ll wrap things up. Our landlord happens to be here, so we can make our own plans to get back to Anchorage. I’ll call you when we have the details on that. I’d like to have travel arrangements made to get us back home from there, okay?”

He listened for another thirty seconds and pushed the button to disconnect.

“Where’s Lacey?” he asked.

“She and Bob are at the firing range,” said Ronnie. “She wants to shoot a moose and he’s going over things with her one more time.”

“No moose hunting!” said Dick. “We’re getting the fuck out of here and back to civilization.”

“Well thanks a lot,” drawled Jody, who had come downstairs while Dick talked.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Dick. “I want to see you back in New York, okay?”

“I don’t live in New York,” she said, gently.

“Shit,” he said, under his breath. “We’ll talk about that later, okay?”

“Am I to understand that the lease on my lodge is being terminated?” she asked.

“You are. There is no more danger to Lacey that anybody knows of. Boruskiev went underground as a janitor in a high school, of all places. I don’t know all the details, but somebody figured it out and they went to get him at the school. There was a gun battle and Boruskiev bought the farm.”