Moscow Machination (7 page)

This was
bad on many levels. A clean sniper hit, would have sent the Russian government
after the poachers. But this was bad. First of all the tiger was inside Chinese
territory and Hu was quite sure there was some tracking chip on the tiger. To
anyone analyzing the tracking data in Moscow, the way the tiger had charged the
international border would imply that it had been provoked from the Chinese
side. Without bullet wounds, they could assume the tiger had been poisoned.
Ughh.

“Huuu what
do we doooo?” the Premier was freaking out.

Hu’s rice
bred brain furiously churned through the permutations. They could abandon and
run but that was leaving things up in the air. Shit could fall anywhere. He
didn’t like it. Perhaps the tiger was faking it.

Hu fired
his salvo, “Team Leader, send one of the snipers to go check its pulse. It
could be faking it. The striped bastards are known for their shenanigans.”

“Ughh, ok.
Sniper 3 approach tiger slowly and prod him with your gun.”

“No gun
you moron. I don’t want tiger blood on my land. Sniper 3, I order you to leave your
gun behind.”

“Sir we
came here to kill the tiger,” protested the Team Leader.

“Not
anymore. Not inside our border.”

“Sir we
can shoot it now and then drag it over the border. Problem solved,” offered Sniper
6.

“Are you a
fucking idiot? It’s going to need four or five of you guys to lift that thing. Then
we need to worry about foot prints, drag marks, the next train and maybe even a
passing Russian satellite… Or worse an American satellite.”

“Yes sir.
Sniper 3, abandon gun… wait, in fact leave all your weapons behind. Knives, nunchucks
everything.”

Sniper 3
wasn’t comfortable with the turn of events. “Team Leader, am I supposed to go
and give it a mouth to mouth..?” he said sarcastically before taking off.

“Ah. Thinking
on your feet... if necessary, yes. But use your water bottle first. Just, just
splash the tiger’s face…”

“Ya good
thinking Team Leader. Sniper 3… splash the water gently,” added Hu Gong.

Hu Gong
wasn’t done thinking yet. He quickly went down the stairs and grabbed the Tower
keeper, who could have easily passed for a troll and shook him, “Do you have a dog?
A guard dog?”

“No sir. I
ate it for lunch a couple of weeks ago. It’s hard to get supplies around here,”
replied the stoic Troll.

“I
understand. You got any other animals? Bet you stock up.”

The Troll
thought for a while before answering. “I got a black tomcat… found him at a
junkyard up in Hunchun.”

“Excellent.
Take him out to that black jeep, my team leader will take him. Fast.”

“Yes Sir.”

Sniper 3 was
having a hard time resuscitating Zoya despite his elite skills. Water, kicking,
tail pulling, dragging, rib tickling, cooing in its ear, nothing worked.
Despite clear orders to go mouth-to-mouth, he had refrained. But then nobody
held it against him.

In the
end, Sniper 3 was able to make out a heartbeat.

“So Sniper
3 whats the status?” checked in Hu Gong.

“Still
alive, but barely breathing.”

“Well, you
better pray to a god that you don’t believe in,” replied Hu, as he finalized
his super sophisticated plan with the Team Leader.

As Hu and
Premier Xiannian watched, the Tower Troll carried the struggling tomcat to the
Team Leader’s black jeep. Soon they heard the Team Leader cursing out his
mother in law. That there was one feisty little cat.

“Sir, I
request we take the Tower Troll with us. The cat’s a demon.”

“Ya,
whatever. Hurry the fuck up. Remember to take some lubricant. Oil, Vaseline
anything… water might not do it.”

“Yes Sir.”

The seven
snipers, the team leader and the Troll stood nervously around the dormant tiger.
The Team Leader knelt and checked Zoya’s tracking collar. It was loose. The
tiger was emaciated due to starvation. Thus the Chinese snipers were able to remove
the collar, without any oils or lubes.

Next, the Troll
held the tomcat down as Sniper 1 reduced the size of the tiger’s collar. He
reduced it to fit the tom cat’s torso. The damage and resistance caused by the kitty
in comparison to the tiger was poetic.

After
securing the collar onto the tomcat, the Troll and Sniper 1 hurried to the
border and hurled the cat, over the
Trans-Siberian
railway tracks...
into Russia.

The cat,
obviously landed on its feet and snarled back at the Chinese men. It had had
enough with the People and the Republic and their persecution of its kin. Catty
rumors swirled that the tomcat’s cousins had gone down as brunch at a Beijing
bistro.

The cat
said, “Adios mofos” as in “Meooow meow”, flipped off the men with its paw and walked
away into Russia. It hoped to find a grandmotherly babushka and live happily
ever after.

Federal Space Agency, Moscow

It was
midnight in Moscow. It was always midnight in Moscow when things went sour. The
Tiger Division was being monitored by a Yuri. They were currently monitoring
four tigers - the females Zhenya, Zoya and the males Alexi and Arkady. Alexi, Zhenya
and Arkady had been set free on the Amur, while Zoya had been sent to Primorsky
Krai in the Far East.

Initially
Alexi, Arkady and Zhenya had spent a lot of time together, exploring the taiga
and having threesomes. But after the initial fun, they gone their separate ways...
in search of meaning of life, as tigers obviously preferred solitude and deep
thinking, unlike the partying idiot lions. The trio were now more than 100
miles apart, surviving and growing, as evidenced from their tracking data and the
occasional sighting.

But Zoya,
poor Zoya, the shyest of the ambush had lost the Russian roulette and had ended
up in the cut off Primorsky Krai. With nothing to game, she had been surviving
on rotten fish, dogs and other less tigery options.

Yuri
noticed the alert. He analyzed the tracking data and found that after briefly venturing
into China, Zoya had returned fifteen minutes later. She hadn’t gone too far. And
she seemed fine now.

Yuri
suddenly remembered something. There was another way to verify Zoya’s
whereabouts.
They had placed a second tracker on the tigers
. This one
though wasn’t in the collar.

Yuri ran
the trace again, this time on the second tracker and to his horror, discovered
that Zoya’s was still inside China. In fact, it lay motionless at the bottom of
the Fangchun Observational Tower.

Yuri
picked up his red phone and dialed 1800-TIGER-RUSS.

Fangchun Observational Tower,
Tri-border region, China

The
Chinese snipers under Hu Gong’s directives had driven the 4x4 jeep into the
terrain and picked up the snoozing tiger. After injecting Zoya with some
military grade opium from their sniping kits, they had hauled the sleeping tiger
onto the jeep and driven back to the Fangchun Observational Tower.

Instead of
dealing with the tiger in public, the Tower Troll had taken them to the parking
garage under the Tower.

“Sir,
whats our next move?” The Team Leader addressed Hu Gong impatiently.

“Yes, Hu,
whats next?” pressed the Premier.

Hu Gong
looked around. He was THE MAN right now. His men, his premier, the Troll were all
helpless without his firm guiding hand.

“The way I
see it, we have two options… one, we complete our mission. As in we kill the
tiger, take a few selfies, maybe even teriyaki it and then FedEx it all to Moscow.
That should send a message to that woman.”

Hu paused
for effect before continuing his convoluted theory.

“Or, if
you think that killing a sleeping tiger is not our style… we could just say the
tiger charged over the border and tried to attack Chinese tourists in the Tower…
So we hit it with an opium gun… that will hold water. The Russkies might not
believe it… but they will still get the message.”

The
premier cleared his throat, “Let’s stick to the first idea. We lost a dozen
fine ladies on that train. If I can hit Moscow I would. Let’s fucking hit the
tiger.”

Everyone
nodded in agreement. Hu Gong shrugged and nodded at the Team Leader. The Team
Leader released the safety on his pistol.

Tri-border Region, Far East
Asia

The
tri-border region in Asia’s eastern armpit involved three countries. There was
Russia on the east, China’s sliver of land in the middle and then there was
this other cool and super laidback nation that people rarely talked about.

The best
intelligence agency in the tri-border region belonged to this really laid back
country. The best agency had been observing the antics of the Chinese for some
time now. A week ago, one of their patriotic peasants had mentioned something about
some odd Chinese activity near the Fangchun Tower. Being the best, no-bs
intelligence agency in the region, they had immediately it checked out.

The best operatives
of this best intelligence agency soon realized that the Chinese were scouting
Zoya the tiger. They seemed to be interested in the Russian tiger’s movements
and schedules. Whatever. The Chinese weren’t that dumb. Surely they weren’t
thinking of harming THAT Presidential tiger. Or were they?

The best
intelligence agency, had then reported this Chinese cat obsession, up their
chain of command. Any other intelligence agency in the world would have been
like ‘duh… Chinese and cats go together like noodles and chopsticks’. But this
wasn’t any other outfit… this was the best in the region. Being the best, they
had a superb ‘chain’ and an excellent ‘of command’. The best intelligence
agency acted swiftly by inserting its best special ops team into the Tri-border
region.

Dong Ki
Moon, bellowed into his collar mic, “Alpha Team, go, go. They are already
moving Zoya into that parking garage.”

“Yes,
captain.”

The best
intelligence agency neither belonged to China nor Russia.
It belonged to North
Korea.

Dong Ki
Moon, watched his forward unit breach the China – North Korea Border. His six
men, all equipped with the best equipment from DARPA and the best guns from
Germany reached their destination, completely undetected in under 90 seconds.

Dong Ki
Moon was the second best Special Forces Captain on His Leader’s Elite Force,
the NKSOF. The best guy, another Dong Ki Moon, was on His Leader’s security
detail. It annoyed Dong Ki that people often mixed up their names. Yep, that
sort of shit was quite common within Pyongyang’s beltway. In fact, at his own Korean
barbecue, over eighteen Il-Sungs had shown up in place of his brother in law.

“Captain
Dong, this is Alpha 1.”

“Alpha 1. Do
you see the tigress?”

“Negative.
But we can hear Hu Gong quite clearly.”

“And?”

“Captain,
I think they have decided to kill Zoya.”

“Alright.
Hit them… Hit them hard.”

“Is there
any other way …?”

Meanwhile
in the garage, Hu Gong nodded at his Team Leader. The sniper aimed the pistol at
Zoya’s head.

As he
curled his index finger around the trigger, the garage door blasted inwards, lifting
Sniper 1, Sniper 6 and the Troll off their feet. Caught by surprise, the
Chinese sniper team or whatever was left, began shooting haphazardly through
the door.

The North
Koreans quickly lobbed in a couple of stun grenades. After the second one, they
crept low and shot out all human legs. They had no intention of becoming the
accidental tiger killers. The mobs of Pyongyang were quite different from a
twitter mob.

It was all
over in 22 seconds. “Captain, we have secured Zoya. Afraid we might have taken out
the Chinese Premier’s ankle.”

Dong Ki
Moon replied, “Good. As long as he doesn’t die, we are golden. I’m coming in
with the vet.”

Captain Dong
Ki Moon and the smoking hot vet, Song-Yu parked their Hummer just outside the
Fangchun Tower’s underground garage.

“After
you,” bowed Dong Ki, allowing the vet to walk in front of him. Magical thirteen
seconds.

At the
entrance Alpha 1, welcomed Dong Ki and the vet as the rest of the team sifted
through the aftermath.

Dong Ki
motioned the vet to go take a look at the tiger. “Check the heart first. Run
some IVs and give it a Snickers if necessary. We need that thing alive.” He
then returned to the rest of the scene.

The entire
Chinese sniper team was dead. Good. The Troll was hit, but he would live. He
was just a civilian who had accidentally stepped into an
Idiots Anonymous
meeting. The Premier’s ankle was shattered. He wasn’t going to walk normally
again. That left Intelligence Chief Hu Gong.

Despite
breathing, Hu Gong was pretty much done. He had stopped a hollow point with his
right lung. He looked up at Dong Ki Moon.

“…Why?”
gurgled Hu Gong.

Dong Ki
Moon decided to grant the man’s last wish, “Didn’t you get the FSB memo?”

“Memo… which
one?”

“The one
titled ‘Our Tiger Has Two Chips’. Sweet Buddha! What kind of intelligence chief
are you man?”

“What?”

“The
tiger… Zoya, had two tracking chips on her.”

“…Two?” Hu
was sun setting.

“According
to our circular, you were also cc’d.”

“Why…?”

“Poachers.
Standard stuff man.”

“Oh fuck
Hu,” groaned the Premier from another end of the parking lot.

“Yeah, so
the second one was attached to Zoya’s heart. Powered by electrical impulses
from her heart. Haha. Ya pretty cool stuff. Our Great Benevolent Leader
actually wants the same thing for him.”

“Oh…”

“Ya, so this
chip is also connected to a missile system. If someone killed Zoya or her heart
stopped unnaturally, a missile would liquidate everything in the kill
coordinates.”

“Sir, I
think a couple of rare Kobe steaks should get the tiger back on her feet,”
interjected the vet.

“What the
fuck you moron? Didn’t you get this circular?” cried the Premier.

“Worst
part is, it’s a conventional missile only if her heart stops within Russian
territory….”

Dong Ki
continued, “…so if Zoya’s heart were to stop somewhere outside Russian
territory, say for example, here at the Fangchun Tower in the Jinlin province
of China, you get nuked… the Russians have kept that a secret.”

Gong’s
last words were, “....circular… dated… April 1
^st
… thought F…S...B…
joke… no… no….”

To ease
the pain until his posse showed up, Dong Ki Moon ordered the simmering vet to
administer some animal grade opiate to the Chinese Premier. The dreamy Premier Xiannian
waved good bye, as the North Koreans along with the sleeping tiger vacated the
scene.

Federal Space Agency, Moscow

Yuri
called up the 1800-TIGER-RUSS painted on his desk and informed the situation to
an SVR guy.

“…so what
I am saying is that our tigress Zoya might be in grave danger…don’t you get
it…?

The SVR
guy while concerned, sounded nonchalant as he was put Yuri on hold, “Yuri, hang
on a second. I’m getting another call…”

Sasha the
SVR dude got a call from someone way up on the SVR org chart. Then Sasha got
another call from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sasha listened to
both calls intently.

Five
minutes later he called back Yuri and informed him that all was well and he
should stop worrying about Zoya for the time being. Things had been taken care
of.

“But…”

“Just keep
an eye on Arkady’s bowel movements.”