Meanwhile, after scrubbing the Mercedes and dealing with the body, Anthony finally returned to his small house in Mill Neck.
He flipped on the lights. Helen bounded over, her tail wagging happily, before trotting back to her cozy crate in the corner.
Anthony grabbed a cold beer from the refrigerator and stood in the shadows beside his living room window, gazing out at the quiet, pitch-black street.
He wasn't particularly worried about Ms. Perkins assassinating John tonight.
After all, the legendary sniper Marcus would be watching over the Continental from a nearby rooftop, acting as John's guardian angel.
Anthony opened the heavy travel bag he had carried out of John's house, extracting the captured Glock 17s. He carefully inspected the action on each pistol.
He moved methodically through his small house, stashing the weapons in various hidden, easily accessible locations—under the sofa cushion, behind the refrigerator, taped beneath the bathroom sink. He ensured that no matter where he stood in the house, he was never more than a two-second reach from a loaded firearm.
Having just finished securing his perimeter, his Compensatory Perception suddenly spiked, sending a subtle, prickling warning down his spine.
He killed the living room lights and eased back to the window. Peering through a sliver in the blinds, he spotted two silhouettes standing beneath the heavy shade of the oak trees on the east and west sides of his street.
One of them appeared to be holding a pair of compact binoculars, pointed directly at Anthony's front door.
"Stalkers," Anthony sneered softly. "Winston, is that you keeping tabs on me? Or did Viggo send some scouts?"
He drew the curtains completely shut and screwed the suppressor onto his Walther P99.
Anthony pulled out his burner phone and opened a secure messaging app.
Nick. I've got two tails outside my house. About fifty meters apart. Whoever they are, take them out.
After sending the encrypted message, he popped the tab on his beer, took a long pull, and waited in the dark.
Ten minutes later, the quiet street was disrupted by the low rumble of engines. Two unmarked sedans turned the corner without their headlights on. One stopped thirty meters up the street; the other coasted to a halt directly between the two hidden watchers.
Four men piled out of the vehicles in total silence, moving with terrifying, practiced efficiency. They drew suppressed pistols, cornering the two voyeurs before they could even reach for their radios.
The two watchers were disarmed, struck hard in the temple, and dragged into the back of the sedans without a single gunshot being fired.
The cars accelerated down the street and vanished into the night.
A few minutes later, Anthony felt a familiar, subtle vibration pulse through his mind.
He opened his system interface.
Two new attribute points had been added to his pool.
Anthony raised an eyebrow in the dark. Interesting. He didn't have to pull the trigger himself. As long as he orchestrated the kill, the system credited him with the experience.
His phone vibrated. A reply from Nick.
Lieutenant. Trash collected and disposed of.
Anthony set the phone down and glanced at the wall clock. It was just past 9:00 PM.
"Winnie... what are you doing right now?" he murmured.
He considered calling the billionaire heiress, but quickly dismissed the thought.
John Wick's "murder schedule" was far too packed for Anthony to be distracted by romance.
Tomorrow, John was going to assault the Little Russia church and burn Viggo's subterranean vault to the ground to cripple his syndicate.
Thinking of the massive secret stash of hard currency and blackmail material, Anthony pondered for a moment, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face.
"Sorry, John. But I'll be taking that cash."
Anthony knew from his meta-knowledge that the church vault was Viggo's primary black-money reserve. It contained millions of dollars in untraceable cash, gold bullion, and invaluable leverage.
It would be a profound, unforgivable waste to let John simply incinerate it.
Anthony intended to pocket that fortune before the Boogeyman arrived with his incendiary grenades.
He picked up his phone and dialed a heavily encrypted number.
"Hello?" A deep, gravelly, instantly alert voice answered on the first ring.
"Bald Eagle calling Polar Bear. I've got a new op. I need you and the three old bastards. Target: St. Michael's Church in Little Russia. Wheels up ASAP."
Anthony spoke with a light, confident laugh.
He knew that infiltrating a Bratva stronghold alone would be highly risky. He was lethal, but he was still far from John Wick's mythical tier of one-man-army capabilities, especially for a complex night-raid requiring simultaneous breaches.
To guarantee success and secure the heavy bags of cash, he needed his old fireteam.
Since he wasn't destined to be a lone-wolf force of nature like John, he would play to his actual strengths: squad-level tactical superiority.
A low chuckle came through the receiver. "Lieutenant, I literally just walked through my front door."
Anthony coughed. "Yeah, well, I just thought of this."
"The target is Viggo Tarasov's private vault," Anthony said bluntly. "Technically, my dear old dad's property."
This time, the silence on the other end of the line stretched for several seconds.
Nick, codenamed Polar Bear, spoke again, a hint of genuine disbelief coloring his tone. "Lieutenant, are you absolutely sure you want to kick the hornet's nest while Viggo is already on a warpath?"
"Don't worry about Viggo. He's going to be way too preoccupied to deal with me," Anthony assured him. "If we don't take this money tonight, someone else is going to burn it tomorrow. And that's just bad economics."
"Oh, and Nick? Bring heavy duffel bags. The big ones."
After serving six brutal years in the military, Anthony's total compensation—overseas hazard pay, domestic salary, and a lump-sum discharge severance—amounted to a pathetic $380,000.
For a Force Recon warrant officer, it was an insulting sum.
Nick laughed, a dark, rumbling sound. "Since you've already made up your mind, Boss, we're on our way to pick you up."
9:45 PM. A narrow alleyway behind St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Church.
An inconspicuous, matte-black utility van coasted to a stop deep in the shadows, its engine purring silently.
Inside the cramped rear cabin, Anthony tapped a stylus against a glowing digital blueprint on a ruggedized tablet.
"Six armed guards on the ground floor, rotating twenty-four-hour shifts. One dedicated guard in the basement vault," Anthony briefed his team. "No internal camera feeds—Viggo doesn't want a digital paper trail of his blackmail drops. But they do use localized motion sensors in the main corridors and the altar sanctuary. If tripped, they ping directly to Viggo's central security hub."
"Radar, you're staying in the van. You handle the motion sensors," Anthony continued, assigning sectors of fire. "Mike, you and I take the west entrance. Nick and Tom, you breach the east. Radar, what's your timeline?"
"Five minutes," Radar replied without looking up, his fingers flying across a customized cyberdeck. "I'm already injecting the spoofing loop. It'll feed their hub a continuous 'all-clear' loop shortly."
"The entire kinetic operation must be completed in seven minutes," Anthony ordered, his voice dropping to a harsh, command cadence. "Remember our ROE. No survivors. Leave no witnesses to describe our tactics."
He tapped the face of his tactical watch. "Sync up. Check gear."
Anthony drew his Walther P99, verifying the seating of his suppressor.
To his right sat Nick—a lean, wire-taut Latino man with a faded shrapnel scar cutting across his right cheek. A former 75th Ranger Regiment warrant officer, he was the squad's CQB and breaching specialist.
Anthony slid open the van door and stepped out into the freezing rain, followed by the two remaining heavy hitters.
Mike, a former Marine Force Recon operator, was a savant with any weapon platform, functioning as the squad's designated marksman and overwatch.
Tom was a towering, heavily muscled mountain of a man. A ten-year veteran of Delta Force, he specialized in extreme close-quarters elimination and had thirty-seven successful hostage rescue operations under his belt in Afghanistan.
These were the ghosts Anthony had bled with in the sandbox.
A few minutes later, Radar tapped the screen of his tablet.
"System spoofed. Alarms are blind, and localized comms inside the church are jammed. You're a go."
"Execute," Anthony whispered into his throat mic.
Four black-clad figures detached from the shadows of the alley, moving like phantoms as they dispersed to their breach points.
At the east entrance, a Bratva guard was leaning against the heavy wooden door, yawning widely, completely oblivious to his impending death.
Anthony ghosted up behind him. His left hand clamped violently over the man's mouth, while his right hand drove a tactical combat knife cleanly across the guard's carotid artery.
The man slumped into Anthony's arms without a sound. Mike caught the dead weight, dragging the bleeding corpse into the bushes before stacking up behind Anthony at the door.
The interior of the church was cavernous, dark, and eerily quiet, illuminated only by the flickering glow of hundreds of votive candles near the altar.
Through the comms, Anthony heard two soft thwips. Nick and Tom had already secured the eastern corridor.
The priest's private rectory was situated directly adjacent to the heavy steel door leading to the basement vault.
"Priest is in the rectory," Anthony whispered. "Nick, Tom, secure the altar and clear the pews."
Anthony and Mike moved silently across the nave, stacking up outside the rectory door.
Mike covered the hallway with his suppressed rifle. Anthony eased the wooden door open.
Inside the modest bedroom, an elderly Russian Orthodox priest was fast asleep, his chest rising and falling rhythmically, completely ignorant of the wolves in his sanctuary.
Anthony glided to the edge of the bed. He reached out and clamped his gloved hand firmly over the priest's mouth, jolting the old man awake.
"Quiet, Father," Anthony whispered in fluent Russian. He pressed the cold, steel suppressor of his Walther directly against the priest's cheekbone. "I need your full cooperation to open the vault."
The priest's eyes went wide with terror, but he was a hardened man of the Bratva underworld. He forced himself to calm down, glaring up at the intruder.
"My friend," the priest rasped against Anthony's glove. "Do you have any idea whose holy ground you are standing on?"
Anthony widened his eyes in mock surprise. "Isn't this Viggo Tarasov's territory? Oh, no. Did I rob the wrong church?"
The priest stared at him, genuine horror dawning as he realized the intruder wasn't ignorant; he was fearless. "If you know whose money this is..."
Pfft!
A suppressed gunshot coughed in the quiet room.
A 9mm hollow-point punched directly through the priest's left shoulder. The old man's face contorted in horrific agony, but Anthony's hand crushed his scream into a muffled, wet gurgle.
"Dear Father, please don't waste our limited time with empty threats," Anthony said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Just do exactly as I say, open the vault, and I'll even come back tomorrow for confession."
Anthony leaned closer, smiling beneath his tactical mask.
"Tell me, Father... do you think the Lord will forgive me?"