Danger Woman by Frederick Ramsay

surveillance. He told Sanderson what he’d done. She threw her arms around him and kissed him.
    It would be another hour before, disheveled and grinning like a pair of teenagers, they drove out of the park. They would have been content, except that Modise’s phone chirped. Without looking at the caller ID, he knew that something had gone wrong.

Chapter Sixteen
    Seven men sat around the room, their shirts open and sweat dripping down their backs. They waited. A fan hummed and helped move the air around a bit. Adjusting the air conditioning was on Leo’s punch list. He would deal with it later. At the moment his problem, well not his precisely, but the problem he chose to share with Yuri, had to take precedence. Finally he looked at his watch and shook his head.
    â€œI don’t know what happened to Modise, but I guess we start without him.”
    â€œCall him and ask him where he is and when he expects to be here,” Yuri said. He cracked open more beers and passed them around.
    â€œWho’s Modise?” one of the newcomers asked.
    â€œThe local cop who’s running the show.”
    â€œWhere’s Harry?” another asked.
    Yuri did a quick head count. The man identified as Harry had slipped out to the washroom, but that had been twenty minutes ago. “I don’t know. Maybe he fell in.”
    The men smiled at the old joke and turned their attention to Leo. He shrugged and pulled a whiteboard from the wall and uncapped a marker.
    â€œOkay, here’s how it is supposed to go. Yuri, here, is the top guy in this Bratva organization. You all are his gang. Is it gang, Yuri? What the hell do you call Bratva guys? Never mind. The real Russian baddie is this guy Lenka.” He scribbled on the board. “He has it in his head that he wants to take over this hotel and apply muscle on the other Chobe River resorts. That would be these places especially.” The marker squeaked as he listed in order the main hotels on the river. “If he does so, the government will have a huge problem. They have made it a priority to provide high-end tourism in the area and if these or any other thugs worm their way in, it will be a hard sell. People like Lenka are okay with rich tourists, but they also like volume. More money and a quicker return.” Leo snapped the marker’s cap back on. “The government, on the other hand, has a thing about crime in this country. They don’t like it in any way shape or form.”
    â€œYou’re telling me they have no crime in this country? I don’t believe it.”
    â€œI never said they didn’t have it. What I meant was, they are really serious about keeping a lid on it and imported criminals is something they simply won’t accept. Unfortunately, they tell us that Lenka has no outstanding warrants here or anywhere else, so they are stuck for the time being. Yuri, however, has a few old ones from his bad-boy days in Russia. The government, the cops intend to toss him out of the country unless he works with them to bring Lenka down. They didn’t have much of a plan and it was pretty clear that if he did as they wished, he wouldn’t make it past Wednesday. So, that’s where you six come in. We persuaded the local cops to let Yuri run a sting. Instead of working for Lenka and ratting him out—that’s the plan that guaranteed he wouldn’t make it out alive—we convinced them to let him compete with Lenka. If the Russkie thought he had competition, say another Bratvagroup, we figured, he could be drawn into crossing a line or doing something rash sooner rather than later. It’s not enough to simply run him out of the area. See, Lenka could duck across the border into Zimbabwe and, as far as the locals are concerned, disappear. They want him gone for good.”
    The door slammed open, bounced against the wall so violently that it nearly knocked the man standing in it off his feet. Harry had returned.