The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(94)

Sokalov deflected the praise. “I do not wish—”

Petrov cut him off. “And you and you alone will suffer the Kremlin’s wrath and castigation if you fail.”





50


Irkutsk Meatpacking Plant

Irkutsk, Russia

Alexander Zhomov found the Irkutsk Meatpacking Plant in an industrial area of the city, across the Ushakovka River. A U-shaped building, it had loading bays perpendicular to the water and a butcher shop accessed from the street that sold fresh meat to the public. Zhomov dismissed the butcher shop as a likely holding place of Charles Jenkins and Maria Kulikova and focused on the two building wings. A quick surveillance revealed the black car into which Charles Jenkins had been forced, which was now parked outside a bay door alongside the car that had taken Kulikova away from the train station.

Zhomov sat in his car and studied a 3D exterior layout of the building he accessed from his laptop. To the east of the slaughterhouse was a mall. To the west, a vacant lot with grazing cattle and sheep. A stockyard. The stockyard included electrical towers with lines extending to the building. On the back side of the building facing the stockyard were two-story high windows, some boarded over. At the end of the building was a metal staircase ascending to second-story doors. Neither was an option. He would be too exposed.

Zhomov had called Sokalov and asked for the interior layout of the building so he could determine the best location to have maximum and efficient firing power. He would have no trouble quickly killing six men, which was the number he counted at the Irkutsk train terminal—the two who got out of the car, the driver, and Mily Karlov, plus the two with Kulikova. If Yekaterina had come to face the man who killed her son—and that seemed likely given her temperament and because the men had not flown Jenkins back to Moscow—Zhomov would kill her also and cut off the head of the most powerful crime family in Moscow, with no waiting successor.

But first things first.

Zhomov studied the interior of the slaughterhouse while watching the exterior happenings. Even from a distance he could smell the stockyard and the slaughterhouse—the odor of manure, blood, and chemicals.

He observed men in blood-splattered white coats, hairnets, safety goggles, and white hard hats entering and exiting the loading bays to have a smoke and was glad for the diversion the men would provide. The second key was to look like he belonged. That’s where the layout came in. The stockyard led to the lairage, where cattle and sheep rested after transportation. He knew you did not want to kill a highly stressed animal. The hormones ruined the meat. From the lairage a corridor led to various rooms where the animals were stunned, killed, hung on hooks, eviscerated, and bled. Workers skinned their hides and dissected their carcasses. Their heads and hooves were sent by conveyor belts to specific rooms, and the hanging carcasses were transported to a room where the meat could be inspected. From there the conveyor-belt hooks transported the hanging carcasses into the long slaughter hall and, after slaughter, to the chilling and deboning rooms, and ultimately to cold storage.

Zhomov found what he was looking for just off the utility block. Male changing rooms with lockers and disinfecting stations. He would need to move with a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging.

With the layout memorized, Zhomov concluded there was no good place to lie in wait and snipe the men. He also could not think of a way to easily get his rifle into the building, even if he disassembled it and reassembled it once inside. He decided instead to rely on his Makarov pistol, which was deadly accurate and held a magazine of twelve bullets. He could bring additional magazines in a backpack, though he didn’t anticipate having to use them.

Zhomov drove to the building and parked in what appeared to be the employee parking lot. He grabbed a backpack from the back seat of the car, tugged a cap low on his head, and walked toward the employee entrance. He was counting on there being no security presence. Who, after all, would want to walk into a slaughterhouse if not required to do so? If there was security, he would state that he was newly hired and looking for the office to complete his paperwork.

He pushed through a swinging door and continued down a corridor. No security. A few men dressed in white coats, hard hats, and safety goggles moved about the floor. What appeared to be a skeleton crew. Zhomov found his way to the employee locker room. He moved from locker to locker, finding most, but not all, padlocked. Odd. He moved toward the showers and found what he was looking for—spent coats, face shields, and goggles, presumably discarded from an earlier shift. He quickly put them on and found a hard hat above a row of lockers. In a bathroom stall he removed the pistol, chambered a round, put a second magazine in the pocket of his jacket, straightened his protective goggles, and walked out.

Just being in the slaughterhouse gave him the thrill of the kill.

Zhomov continued down an empty corridor toward the entrance to the slaughter hall. The corridor was also surprisingly devoid of employees. It gave Zhomov pause, but he dismissed it when, through a thick glass panel in a swinging door, he saw a black SUV inside the slaughter hall. To its side, Charles Jenkins hung by his wrists from one of the meat hooks alongside slabs of beef on a conveyor belt. Jenkins did not look good, his face a bloody pulp, a puddle of blood and sweat beneath him. The Velikayas would indeed kill him, if they had not already done so. Zhomov saw three men near Jenkins. Standing among them, Yekaterina Velikaya and her bodyguard.

He would kill her first.

Zhomov removed the pistol from beneath the white coat, stepped toward the door, and pushed it inward. “Like father, like daughter,” he said.