Rimanoa

Who's on Koza Nostra?

Aug. 20, 11:43 a.m.

Twenty people came out of the building (nineteen men in black suits, two of whom were handcuffed to another man, but already in a white suit and with a particularly fashionable, as it seemed to me, tie (this is the famous "Pegasus")) and headed towards the cars standing next to them (three Volkswagen minibuses and two Audi). After their "departure" they were joined by another big bus of "Mercedes" company (obviously, it is a special forces). That is, in total, in the first minute of liberation we could resist up to sixty flicks, including special forces, and what will happen after the arrival of reinforcements, it is difficult to imagine. The conclusion is that the Germans and their guards had not just overdone it, but had gone completely nuts.

Clearly, they were taking him for an investigative experiment. If these are not the two places where we have ambushes, the liberation of Azaronni can be thought of as a myth

— these disciplined Aryans will not give a second chance, and then our man will be sitting in a cell of a reinforced concrete building surrounded by two hundred people (try to navigate: if you start shooting, you will have to wrap your guts around your elbow). Two of our cars (both BMWs, with myself in the first one) "tailed" the convoy. I don't know Munich very well, so I can't tell you the names of the streets we drove along.

Anyway, but in twenty-five minutes the motorcade arrived at an old abandoned warehouse, used by us three years ago as a temporary storage place for the remnants of drugs transported to Western Europe. Next stops: France, Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

Fortunately it was one of the two areas where we had ambushes, namely ten snipers on the second floor (the warehouse is very high and the second floor is a side platforms on the edges of a meter and a half wide), two mined plots of land (1st — TNT at the entrance (how much only the explosives knew), 2nd — C-4 a little further away from the center on the side of the entrance), and armed to the teeth thugs, camouflaged in the corners and near the walls (the number of about 30–40 people).

Aug. 20, 12:09 p.m.

After driving through almost the entire building, the first car stopped at the far wall. The others were distributed around the main van, where the prisoner was. The bus closed the ring at the entrance.

As soon as the doors of the trailing vehicle opened, two explosions went off: one a little further away from the center, destroying two cars ("Audi" and "Volkswagen") in the blink of an eye, and the second at the gate itself, blowing the entire bus with the special forces to pieces. The most horrible shooting started on the remaining three cars….

Most of the policemen did not even have time to draw their weapons, especially those who were sitting in the car — the Audi was riddled to such an extent that two doors flew off their hinges (the front and rear doors on the left side; the point is that the "brothers" were firing their guns at the "unnecessary" Audi and Volkswagen on the left side, and the snipers on the second tier at the car where Azaronni was, so we had the opportunity to attack the enemy from both sides, and without the risk of hitting each other).

After about fifteen seconds there was silence, interrupted by a ringing voice from the distance: "It's all right, Pegasus. It's all right, Pegasus."

Aug. 20, 7:10 p.m.

I ran over to a more or less intact car and pushed the door aside. Behind it, Azaronni was in an incomprehensible state. I could not imagine how much adrenaline had been pumped into his bloodstream. Imagine: first everything explodes to hell, and then bullets whistle centimeters from his head. The white jacket turned more like red. The hands handcuffed to the two corpses, ready to bend the other way.

I fired at the chains, and the Pegasus woke up: "Holy shit, you guys! I almost shit my pants!"

"Come out quickly, the police are coming. The explosions were heard throughout the whole town.

The last words finally woke the freed man up, and he literally flew out of the Volkswagen.

August 20, 19:16

So we got lucky, we got very lucky. We had prepared only two of the dozens of possible hundreds of places where the prisoner would appear, and this was it. We prepared only two ambushes, because we simply did not have time to bring more people to Munich, besides, only near three possible places we had "dons". German policemen search unusually fast, so there is very little time to hide — it is vital to have a shelter (in which, in fact, I personally will have to hide for at least a couple of days).

The shelter next to the warehouse was located two minutes away.

"To be honest, when I heard the bloody investigator speak," Azaronni admitted, "I really thought I was unlikely to get out…"

"Here, have a beer… It'll make you feel better… — I handed Pegasus a mug of Holsten beer… You almost went crazy in that jail, didn't you?"

"Yeah got off."

I laughed out loud.

"I actually didn't feel very comfortable in an establishment like that either…"

"Have you been asked the same retarded questions too?" — By now Pegasus had emptied the mug almost to the bottom in volleys.

"Well, yeah… By the way, they didn't tell you anything about your major?" "They said, yes as much as I didn't know about myself…"

"I don't get it…"

"They even practiced chiromancy. They told me about some bumps on the palm of their hands, some other shit…"

"Really? I didn't get anything like that…" — I noticed the empty vessel in the poor man's hands and turned to Adolf Becker, the "brother" standing next to me — "Listen, eagle, bring me another drink…"

"Eagle" came out hastily.

"They didn't tell you anything else?"

"They said they'd take everyone, and even Rimanoa…"

"That's what I heard too… Did they show you any pictures or documents?" "Showed your picture and…"

"Wait. From here on out… Which one? What was on it?"

"There's some kind of hole… Two some men… Well, one was straight up lying on the counter…"

"So… Who was behind the bar? What did the bartender look like?"

"Well… He's so… Bald… I think… The picture is black and white… You can't see well…" "Maybe he was fat?"

"I guess so…"

"And the other one… Well, the one that was lying off the counter… Any special markings?"

"Personally, he had nothing, but there was a club lying next to him…" "Dubya?"

"Yes."

"Which one is it?"

"It was hard to see, and I was only shown the photo once…" "Stretch your memory. Remember the club."

"I think it was kind of chipped…" "Could she have been a chair leg?"

"Well, I guess I could have… Although… Oh, hell knows. I don't remember." "Okay, rest."

I left the room, went into another room, and tried to remember the last time I'd been in a bar. It was Prague… Yeah, well, I got an advance on a job, that damn assignment where I had to look for Bill Garrison to ask where Joseph Gutgold was, then took the subway and got into a car with Garibaldi. Okay, let's try to remember what happened at the bar….

(I note that I write the whole of the next chapter as if in parentheses).