The Russian Heist by Robb White
Release date: June 14, 2019
Subgenre: Heist
About The Russian Heist:
When the plot to steal government money from an airport succeeds, the amateur thieves become expendable to the real criminal among them, a Russian superkiller.
A Russian mobster stumbles onto a plot to rob a county airport where
millions in small denominations sit shrink-wrapped on pallets waiting
for military transport planes to deliver the money to the Middle East.
The mastermind of the heist is the “inside man,” a disgruntled
armored-car guard named Smith and his slattern of a wife. Even more
astounding to Dimitri Byko, a hardened criminal and psychopathic killer,
is that other members of this misfit gang include the pair’s son, a
juvenile delinquent, and worst of all, Macbride, an obese, alcoholic
professor. When this unlikely band of thieves pulls off the robbery,
Byko’s regard for his partners in crime is short-lived. But what he is
unprepared for is the woman assigned to hunt him down. Special Agent
Annie Cheng has wide experience with the ruthless mafiya of Brighton Beach.
Excerpt:
He looked at his watch again. No Aleksei. He was never this late.
No answer at any of his cell numbers. The three customers made a
fluid isosceles triangle as they moved about. His uncanny spatial
imagination was a predator’s gift. Once while waiting for his
father to sleep off a drunk in Odessa, he had wandered into a
waterfront bar and watched some sailors playing pool. He picked up
a cue stick and cleaned the place out. Some convicts watching the
action beat and kicked him and took his money when he tried to
leave. Although he was big for his age, he had not yet reached his
full size and those were rough men. The only time in his life he could say he experienced a feeling of
melancholy he was sitting on a bench in Gorky Park when an old man
took the other end. Dimitri figured him for a pervert, debated
whether he ought to let the old man touch him and decided he would
demand Deutschemarks or dollars—rubles had fallen so far in the
last days of Gorbachev it wasn’t worth more than the paper to wipe
your ass. The man ignored him and studied his book. When he noticed
he was being watched, he smiled and handed the boy his book on
chess moves. Dimitri followed the arrows depicting moves by a man
named Spassky and marveled at the beauty of their attack. The old man laughed. “You cannot understand,” he said. “Those are
grandmaster level. You would have to see eight, ten moves in
advance and keep them all in your head.” Dimitri burned with wrath. He knew he could understand what he saw
in those diagrams. He thought they were clear to anyone, even this
old fool. He did not study in the commune. No one had to tell Dimi
Byko that education was not for his kind, all that Marxist rubbish
about the sons of labor be damned. In those days he had guile but
not much patience. He thought of sticking the old man in the throat
with the potato knife he carried in his boot. Instead, he thanked
him and returned his book. His father would kill him if he
attracted attention. It was Aleksei, so glib of tongue, who had
convinced him to flee the commune, join him in Moscow. Despite the
enmity between Russians and Ukrainians, he and Aleksei ran with the
Ljubertsy gang, preying on drunks and extorting from vendors and
prostitutes from the workers’ tenements. They spent every night
prowling the subway station for any kind of action—once hijacking a
truck between the Vnoekovo airport and the Keninsky Prospekt. He
punched Aleksei on the jaw for spending both their shares and
fractured a metacarpal. Later, watching the doctor wrap his hand,
Aleksei was impressed: “You don’t feel pain, cousin.” Dimitri knew he was different in
that way too. He flipped the open-closed sign and hustled the
customers out the door.
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About Robb White:
Robb White lives in Northeastern Ohio. He has published several
crime, noir, and hardboiled novels and published crime, horror, and
mainstream stories in various magazines and anthologies. He’s been
nominated for a Derringer. “Inside Man,” a crime story, was
selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2019. His new hardboiled series features private-eye Raimo Jarvi Northtown Eclipse (Fahrenheit Press, 2018). Murder, Mayhem and More cited When You Run with Wolves as a finalist for its Top Ten Crime Books of 2018.
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