Quaranteam: Ruins United Ch. 03

Ruins United is a part of the Quaranteam universe created by CorruptingPower, written with his expressed permission. If you have not read the original or spinoffs by BreakTheBar, AgathonWrites, BronanTheLibrarian, OtterlyMindblowing, SilverRyden, RonanJWilkerson, BirchesLoveBooks,The_Licentious_Laureate or DisquietCertitude I would highly recommend you do that, not just to better understand the developments but also because those are really good and lots of fun.

I also want to express my gratitude to the QT writing group and especially The_Licentious_Laureate for their immeasurable help with proofreading and editing.

xoxo,
Cy~

============

Nov 24th, 2020.

"Please, tell me you have good news."

Dan sighed and swiveled in his chair, turning to the women. Rina was sitting on the couch with a worried and pained expression on her face, watching every page and window he opened, her arms draped around Tash's shoulders. Redhead, sickly pale in stark contrast to her hair, was watching the portable tester in her hands with a look of shock and horror on her face. The thing was blinking its red LED.

"I don't. Not yet anyway," he glanced at the screen over his shoulder. "I even pinged my old RAMP and Hydra contacts, everybody tells the same story - narcs raided every cache and warehouse, but the vaccine was the only thing they took. The city is empty, not a single dose for sale right now."

He looked at the tester in Tash's hands.

"How did that ebanuy tester miss it four days ago?" He turned to Rina.

"I... I don't know," she threw her hands up, defeated. "It's too late to try both of them to see if one is broken... or it's just not sensitive enough to low virion count."

"Figures," he growled. "Ebanye feds couldn't get even the simplest shit right."

"What are we going to do..." Tash whispered, not looking up from the device in her hands.

He slid off the chair and dropped onto his knees in front of her.

"Hey, girl, look at me, look at me," he took her face in his hands. "First thing - we are not going to panic, okay?"

She raised her eyes to look at him and gave him a weak nod, trying to put on a brave smile. He fished the phone from his pocket and thumbed through the gallery, finding the screenshot Tony sent him, then brought the screen to Rina's face.

"What does that tell you?"

The brunette focused her eyes on the screen and frowned.

"That's Kaluga-17 chat, where did you get this?" She exclaimed.

"Not important right now," he shook his head. "Can you read the code? What does it say?"

"Um... Sputnik Q, batch of ten thousand doses, to be shipped on November 24th, flight arrival at KRR2 at 9pm. Wait..." She raised her eyes to the ceiling, doing calculations. "That's today!"

She looked into his eyes, the dawn of realization and deepening worry in hers.

"Dan, that's an FSB operation! You can't just walk in and demand to give you a dose!"

"Mhm," he nodded. "It's going to be a bit more complicated than that."

Tash coughed, and Rina squeezed her embrace tighter.

"Rin, please, don't..." The redhead wheezed. "It's hard to breathe as it is..."

"Okay," Dan stood up, commanding voice kicking in. "Rina, get her into bed, make her as comfortable as possible. See the first aid cabinet in the kitchen, maybe you'll find meds that will help her to get through today."

"What are you going to do?" Rina asked, her voice giving a slight hysterical note.

"I'm getting her vaccinated today no matter what."

"I feel like nobody's giving a shit about my opinion here," Tash croaked. "It doesn't make sense if you go and get yourself killed, then the two of us just die no matter what..."

She raised her eyes to look up at him and met the calm gaze of his steel blue eyes.

"Nobody's dying today, Tash - not you, not me, not Rina. Everything is going to be okay."

Rina gasped as Dan leaned into Tash and placed a soft kiss on her lips. Tash's eyes went wide in horror and she unsuccessfully tried to push him away. He broke the kiss on his own terms and straightened up, looking into the redhead's eyes.

"Be not afraid."

He thumbed at his phone again and opened the crew's chat.

"WAR COUNCIL," he sent.

-//-

Dan parked the Escalade in front of the dormitory, right next to Sonic's electric blue Lancer Evo X, most likely race-tuned all the way up to 11, and the Bulls' Volkswagen van with the local football club insignia on the side. Looks like everyone's already here.

"Boys," he said, walking into Partizan's office.

Partizan himself was sitting on the couch, Sonic stood by the window, Ivan and Max were setting up what looked like a touch-screen table. All four turned to him, not saying a word, stony expressions on their faces.

"Why so tense?" Dan asked, tilting his head to the side.

"You tell us," Max shrugged. "Last time you called the council, we ended up fighting OMON. Barely carried our feet away*."

[*Barely made it out alive]

Dan sighed, adjusting his double-layered mask setup.

"I have to come clean, fellas. Three days ago my highschool sweetheart came back, and brought her vaccinated friend with her. We didn't have a second dose and my girl... she started showing symptoms this morning. She... won't see tomorrow if I don't help her."

He suddenly felt extremely tired and sat in the nearby chair.

"There is a vaccine though. Or rather, there will be - a shipment arrives tonight. It's controlled by feds, so I can't ask you to join me - this is by far the most dangerous shit we've ever attempted."

The boys remained silent, looking at him with undecipherable expressions on their faces. Then Partizan chuckled.

"Fellas, would you look at this putz," he mockingly drawled with a perfect Odessite accent. "He's about to go out there and become a hero all by himself."

The crew exploded with laughter.

"My brother from another mother," Ivan grinned. "After all the blood we spilled together, did you really think we'd let you do this alone?"

"If I'm honest, we were hoping for something exciting," Max guffawed. "Don't worry, your girl is getting vaccinated today!"

Sonic just shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Sasha?" Dan looked at him.

"What?" The blue-haired mechanic shrugged. "It was inevitable - all of you stepping into yet another govno together. All I can do is make sure you're adequately prepared this time."

"Meeeediiiic!" The twins gave their best impression of Team Fortress 2 emote and broke into yet another fit of laughter.

"Come on," Partizan patted the space on the couch beside him. "Tell us interesting things! Who's your source?"

Dan moved from his chair to the couch.

"Your new recruit, who was supposed to arrive yesterday."

"Moskal, you mean?" Partizan grabbed the walkie from his belt. "Anyone in Casa Kubana sees Tony, tell him to get his ass into my office," he barked into the device.

"There you go, it's working now," Ivan raised from the touch-screen table and kicked back in his chair. "You can't play games on it, so it's kinda useless to us, but it's perfect for crew management. I'll show you the software we're using later."

"Thanks, this one is a royal podgon*," Partizan nodded, then grinned. "Now this place feels like a war room!"

[*Gift, slang]

The door opened, letting Tony in.

"You called, chief?" He looked everyone over, then his eyes stopped on Dan. "Oh... hey, Smith."

"Take a seat, kid," Partizan nodded to the chair. "We're hitting the feds tonight, based on your info."

"I'm coming with you," Tony did not hesitate.

All five of them turned to look at him, and he visibly braced himself for the inspection.

"He's good," Partizan said after a pause. "A kickboxer, but he'll learn. So, what do you know, Tony?"

The young man pulled his chair closer to the table.

"Okay, so... The shipment is bound to arrive at 9pm tonight at KRR2 airfield. Ten thousand doses," he skimmed through the chat on his phone. "The info seems to be good still, because nobody has been kicked off chat. Looks like they don't suspect a leak."

"Where's KRR2?" Sonic frowned, coming closer.

"That's an unofficial designation for the military airfield at the flight academy, barely 3km from here," Partizan tapped the screen. "Does this thing have a map?"

He opened the community map of the city in the browser.

"Yeah, here it is," he pointed at the screen. "Look, entering the perimeter would be insane, I don't know how many people are still there, but a dozen guys with AKs - and we're fucked."

"Hitting the transport then," Max interjected. "We can hit a moving one, but there will be precious cargo. Just need to decide where and how to stop it."

"There are two roads, one through the flight academy, the other goes to the backstreets of Leninsky," Partizan traced the map with his finger.

Sonic hovered over the map.

"I just drove past the academy," he said. "It's closed, no one is manning the gates but huge concrete blocks. They won't go that way."

"Backstreets then," Dan leaned forward. "We'd have to stop the convoy before this fork," he pointed out.

"Not necessarily. They can't turn right at that fork," Partizan shook his head. "Road works started in March and never finished, the entire block is just a huge canyon filled with water and dirt right now. And a bunch of machinery scattered around, bulldozers, graders, shit like that."

"We can use that to block the road, my crew knows how to operate those," Sonic beamed.

"What are those?" Dan pointed at the row of gray rectangles along the road.

"New apartment complex, finished, but half-empty," Partizan offered.

"Wait... that's what, 300... 350 meters from the airfield hangars? Who even gave permission to build it?"

Partizan shrugged.

"You know how this works better than me. But this is a good vantage point, we set recon here up high, give them decent optics. And down below is a perfect place to stop the transport - train tracks on one side, concrete barriers on the other. If we box them here, they won't have anywhere to run."

Dan leaned back on the couch and looked the crew over.

"Fellas, are we really doing this?"

Suddenly, all eyes were on him. Partizan patted him on the knee.

"Don't piss yourself, chief. There never was a better time to fuck their ebanaya system. Besides," he looked everyone over. "If we pull this off, we can pull off anything. And if you..." he pointed with his finger at Dan's chest. "...die, we all are fucked, Dan."

"You don't know that," Dan frowned.

"Yeah, we do," the twins said in unison.

"You see, Dan," Max offered. "We can be smart, call it street-smart or whatever, but none of us ever came close to your smarts, to your levels of the sixth sense for the right direction. Gut feeling? Hunch? Blind luck? I don't give a shit at this point, because we've been following your course for years and got to this point alive."

Everybody nodded in agreement, except Tony, who had been listening to the entire conversation with a somewhat overwhelmed expression clearly written on his face.

"Are we done with the sappy part? Good. What are we doing, commander Smith?" Partizan asked.

"Fucked if I know," Dan shrugged and gave Partizan a lopsided grin. "I'm the strategist, you're the tactician."

"Oookay," the guerrilla leaned to the map. "Listen up, boys, here's the plan..."

-//-

Turgenev Park was a row of three brown-gray apartment towers, a perfect example of modern Russian architecture - boring and uninventive. A huge parking lot, hugging the buildings from all sides, and a tiny strip of uncovered land with sparse bushes and half a dozen poplars hardly constituted a park.

Hiding the Escalade in the bushes behind some garages to not attract attention to their group, Dan threw his demon mask into the glovebox, then he, Partizan and Tony left the car. Partizan adjusted the tiny bluetooth headset on his ear.

"Nest, come in."

"Right tower, top floor, second door from the left," they heard.

Sonic supplied the crew with a bag of headsets, among other things, and Dan set everybody up with Teamspeak through his own server - private, secure and encrypted. Public frequencies don't need to hear us.

They crossed the parking lot and headed inside the building, code lock on the front door conveniently disabled. Despite only a quarter of the apartments having been sold in this tower, the lights were on, as well as the central heating.

"Thank gods, one elevator is working," Partizan punched the button. "No fun climbing to 18th."

Despite the building being relatively new, the elevator was already in bad shape - deep scratches on the linoleum flooring, most likely left by whoever was transporting building materials, graffiti tags on the walls, one of the mirrors broken, as well as half of the lights. Dan punched the button with "18" on it, doors closed with high-pitched whine and squeaking, and the metal monstrosity started to climb.

Four identical doors - cheap cardboard type installed by the builders - in the hallway on the top floor meant the entire floor wasn't sold yet. Partizan pulled the second door and walked in.

"Any problems getting in, boys?"

"Nah, the locks are cheap Chinese shit," they heard the voice from the kitchen, then it echoed in their headsets. "Don't touch the lights."

The tiny one-bedroom apartment hardly looked bigger without any furniture, especially after Falcon and Hawk - the best urban recon team Partizan had, proven by multiple airsoft campaigns - brought their equipment in. Dan looked around the apartment - multiple cameras lined up in front of the windows, watching the airfield as well as the road below, each operator in a foldable chair with a laptop in their hands.

"Oh, hey, Smith," the operator raised his hand in greeting. "Barely recognized you without the samurai mask."

"The worst kind of camouflage, half of the city knows it," Dan chuckled into his N95, then stepped to the window and looked out, surveying the airfield. "What do we know?"

"Not much. The place looks empty, we detected no movement since we set up here, but the lights are on. The convoy hasn't shown up yet," Hawk reported. Or was it Falcon? Wrapped in identical urban camouflage fatigues and masks, Dan couldn't tell them apart.

"I'm tempted to let a bird out, but the chances are we'll get detected," said the other one. "I've brought a Mavic just in case."

"We're rolling," Sonic chimed over Teamspeak. "ETA 20."

"Don't park in the direct view of the towers. There are some old garages right at the last turn from the dirt road, you'll see the Escalade there," Dan directed.

"Got it."

"Keep rollin', rollin', rollin', come on," the twins sang in a hushed whisper in the background.

Dan left the channel and tapped Rina's number. She picked up after two tones.

"Dan, thank God!"

"How is she, Rin?"

"Getting worse, she's coughing non-stop and has trouble breathing. Fell asleep just now. Do you have news?"

"We're setting up. I will not stick around, driving home as soon as I have it."

There was a pause, and he heard her sniffling.

"Dan... I want... no, I need you to know... I won't be able to live with myself if she dies..."

"I know, girl. Me neither. Just... hang in there, okay?"

"Don't take too long, please... she has no more than ten hours left, twelve if we're lucky."

"I'll be home much sooner, promise. Love you both."

He disconnected the call. Shit. Way to drop that bomb, Dan, perfect timing. He rejoined the channel, then went to sit on the floor in the bedroom, leaning against the wall. Partizan and Tony sat across from him.

Twilight descended hours ago, it was now completely dark outside, save for very rare streetlights down below and airfield runway lights in the distance. The room was lit by a single laptop screen. Partizan rummaged around his backpack, pulling out several rolls of paper and a thermos.

"Brought some grub," he threw one package to Dan and passed the other to Tony. "Girls made shawarma and coffee."

Dan dug into the food, mutely. He chewed automatically, without feeling the taste, or hunger which should've been apparent by now, occasionally sipping hot coffee from a paper cup, looking at the wall with unseeing eyes. Ten thousand doses. Enough to get the entire crew vaxxed and there will probably be at least nine thousand left. What do we do with those? What a weird number...

"Smith, come in," Partizan tapped his foot with his. "What's on your mind?"

Dan shrugged.

"Ten thousand doses, man. It doesn't add up."

"Yeah, I thought about that too. I mean, how many people are still around the city? By your estimate it should be no less than three hundred thousand."

"Closer to four hundred actually. No less than two million survivors in the entire region at this point. This shipment is a drop in the ocean, population-wise. But if it's meant solely to vaxx the local fed force, that's at least three times too big, what are they going to do with the rest?"

"They black market it," Tony offered. "They are doing that in Moscow. A hundred grand for a dose."

"Wow," Partizan's eyebrows flew up. "That means it would be half a lyam down here."

"Unsurprising," Dan melancholically chewed through the last piece of food and washed it down with coffee. "Their ebanye mansions and fancy cars won't pay for themselves."

"Got movement on the street," Falcon announced. "Let me get some zoom on them."

Dan and Partizan quickly shifted behind his back, looking at the laptop screen. The convoy was speeding through the dead street.

"Front car is a UAZ Patriot, followed by... what's this... it looks like a Mercedes Sprinter, passenger type," Partizan squinted. "Sonic, you hear that? Are we going to have problems with locks?"

"Are you kidding? Of course not."

They waited for cars to pass the apartment complex.

"Only two cars? Pretty careless, I'd say," Partizan hummed, grabbed the binoculars and moved to the window to track the convoy down to the airfield. "They don't expect us. But after tonight, they will."

"After tonight, we won't need this tactic anymore," Dan argued. "First, we'll have the vaccine. Second, Moscow won't send another shipment. Or it will be delivered by a tank army."

"True. Hey, look, they're approaching the hangar."

Dan looked at the screen again. Falcon zoomed on the hangar, and through the noise of night vision lenses he suddenly saw the airfield come alive. Partizan grunted.

"Fuck, the place is crawling with them!"

There was a lot of movement. Infantrymen armed with AKs poured out of the hangar and took the convoy in their sights. An army officer stepped forward from behind their backs, and the passenger door of the SUV opened, letting out a man in a mask and a black coat. Following the show of IDs and papers, the officer saluted the visitor and dismissed the guards. The fed got back into the car. Movement ceased.

"Now we wait..." Partizan whispered, as if afraid they were going to hear him out in the airfield.

"How much time from that hangar to here?" Dan asked.

"Three minutes, if the engine is running. Even if we make enough noise, we'll have a chance to s'ebatsya* before the reinforcement arrives. If we're quick enough."

[*Get the fuck out]

"Everybody in position down here," Max announced. "And it's about to rain."