[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

	The rain poured heavily onto the streets of Sevan as the sun dipped below the horizon. It was nearing the end of Sevan’s rain season, but it was still raining or cloudy almost every day that month. Neon lights, commonly used just for lettering in storefronts in Yerevan or other major cities, were ubiquitously artistic in Sevan. They lit the streets in brilliant colors, and signaled all sorts of services for sale. This particular town’s claim to fame was from the tourism industry. Lake Sevan had always been a popular vacation destination for Armenians: it hosted a well-tended marina with hotels, restaurants, and various recreational activities for people and their families. Further downtown, however, the seedier side of tourism emerged. Sevan used its money to start building entertainment venues that were not as kindly-looked-upon by society. Casinos, drug dens, brothels, and anything else that anyone could want were all there. Most of it was even legal, with the city being declared an exclusion zone for vice laws as the Armenian government sought to contain it inside one area.

	Money came to the city in one of three ways: Armenians looking to have a good time, rich Persians spending holidays in town to party away from a more conservative Islamic society, and the gangs. The third was arguably the most important faction in town by the turn of the decade, and were responsible for the rapid construction of luxurious hotels, apartments, and casinos. After all, real estate and construction were the best ways to launder dirty money: money that often came from the methamphetamine trail across the border to Russia. Many of these apartments remained empty, but they still provided jobs in the form of maintenance workers, cleaners, and security guards. This kept the local government off of the Mafia’s back for the most part, having reached a mutual understanding with them: stay out of their business and they’ll make it worth it. These drugs mostly came in from Gyumri, and then headed down further south to Yerevan, Stepanakert, and Nakhchivan. About a third of the drugs in Armenia, however, were consumed in the many dens that lined the neon-lit streets.

	Hagop Malkhasyan and Mikael Kataev were both almost blackout drunk. Both of them wore white linen shirts tucked into fitted cotton pants bloused into high boots. Mikael’s sleeves were rolled up to reveal a crisscross mural of tattoos of eagles, crowns, and stars all ornately crawling up his sleeve. Revolvers in decorated leather holsters slung low across both of their pants, open-carried without care for the law. Hagop wore a dagger on his other hip, engraved with the name of his dead sister: Anahit. The pair stumbled down a set of creaky wooden steps into a red-lit basement, graffiti and art painted across the brick walls. Thick clouds of opium smoke wafted around them as Mikael led Hagop to a counter in the corner. A woman in traditional garb, seemingly bored, wordlessly placed a metal tin on the wooden counter and held out her hand. Several [i]Dram[/i] were dropped into it, and she smiled emotionlessly before hiding back behind her translucent view. The men thanked her to no reply, and made their way to a back room. Three couches surrounded a broken table atop an Armenian rug, a phonograph playing the relaxing flute tunes of folk music.

	“Are you ready?” slurred Mikael, as he quickly downed a pill from the container. Hagop nodded, and wiped sweat from his brow. He checked the silver watch that adorned his forearm: they had ten minutes. The man slumped back into his sofa and unconsciously tore at a hole in the cushion as Mikael dropped a pill in the limp palm of his other hand. This was the methamphetamine that Hagop had spent his adult life trafficking as part of the Sevan Mafiya, and he was no stranger to its effects. Usually drunk or high from something else, the Mafiya gave themselves a hit of meth when it was time to get the job done. In this case, someone had given up the location of a Mafiya money stash to the police: it was raided the next day, and Hagop’s boss was now out of several thousand [i]Dram.[/i] It was business as usual in Sevan, and what was about to happen next was by no means unprecedented. Hagop took the pill.

	It was only a minute or so before Hagop sprang back to life from his drunken stupor. Immediately, his eyes went wide and he fixated his gaze on the lightbulbs in the chandelier above him. His hands balled into fists, he felt the blood rushing through his body. Hagop swore loudly, and stood up. Mikael grabbed him, throwing him back down to the sofa. “Wait, wait, wait, wait. Get it all through you,” Mikael warned. His hand was shaking and his breathing was rapid and shallow. The Russian man’s own eyes were dilated and scanning about the room rabidly. “We’re gonna wait until Krikor gets us, we’re gonna wait.”

	The drug coursed through Hagop’s system as he, too, began hyperventilating. “I want to go, brother,” he growled through his breaths as he ground his teeth together. He hated the sound of it, and he hated the feeling, but he couldn’t control himself. Again, he wiped sweat from his brow and went back to tearing up the hole in his sofa’s cushion. It was getting bigger now: finger-size to palm-sized, and he continued to tear chunks of padding out from the dingy red couch. It was painful to wait for ten minutes. Hagop’s foot tapped incessantly against the ground, Mikael’s hand keeping a firm grip on his shoulder to keep him from moving. “Alright, alright, alright,” he muttered underneath his breath, his other hand resting on the wooden grip of his revolver. His skin itched, and he found himself rapidly scanning the room to focus on everything. Pain, troubles, and everything else washed away in a rush of euphoria over him. He was ready to go and happy to do it.

	Krikor, an older man who had been something of a manager for Hagop and Mikael, stumbled in through the door with a submachinegun. Hagop’s eyes darted to the gangster and took in every last detail: his grey, curly hair; blue, dilated eyes; and tattoos ringing his neck just above the raincoat he wore unbuttoned. “Let’s go!” he shouted, before waving back at the stairs. Hagop sprang into action, unholstering his revolver and rushing out the door behind Krikor. He barreled through a crowd of youths, still not fully in control of his motor functions, and sprinted up the stairs. Mikael followed more slowly, using the barrel of his handgun to push away one of the kids who now wanted to fight. Krikor took up the rear, eyeing the denizens of the drug hideout before closing the door on his way out. He winked at the apathetic woman at the counter before he left. The trio stumbled through the rain in an alleyway, talking about the plan. “We’re gonna go to this guy’s house and fuck him up,” Krikor repeated over and over. “We got a special fuckin’ way, too.”

	At the curb, a sedan awaited. It was painted a beige color, with a dark brown stripe running down the center of the hood that widened out to paint the cab and trunk. Typical of car designs in that era, the body was made of a shined metal of a sleek and curved design. Its short hood led to a hatchback design: another Mafiya hitman sat in the back with a machinegun poking its barrel through a rolled-down window. Hagop stumbled through into the backseat, scrambling against the cold, fake leather before sitting as upright as he could on the far side of the bench. Krikor got into the driver’s seat, quickly starting the engine with his keys. The engine sputtered to life with a cough of smoke out the rear, its yellow lights flickering in the downpour. Mikael was in the street, revolver aimed to his eyelevel and his arm extended. His shirt was wet with rain, water dripped off of his long hair. He swept the street, eyeing the distance for movement. Satisfied, he lowered himself into the vehicle and closed the door. “Let’s go.”

	The drive to the villa where the informant lived was short, but the Sevan roads were no friends to the vehicle and its occupants. As the road quality lessened outside of the city, the bumpier it got: Hagop was thrown around the back and bashed his head on the handhold above the window. Dazed for a second, he wiped his forehead to reveal blood. He shook his head and smiled at the blurry, hazy image in front of him. He didn’t feel the pain, nor was he too concerned. They took a turn off the paved road and down a muddy dirt path, splashing a puddle in the process. Some of the mud came through the open window, splattering across the Mafiya gunner and his piece. The gun was of Army issue: a belt-fed, air-cooled, medium-caliber piece with its serial numbers scratched off. A loose belt of brass hung lazily from the receiver, clacking against the metal as the hatchback bumped over potholes and other irregularities. The gunner was silent, steely, and unfazed by the rain and mud: he simply wiped it off of his weapon and out of his eyes.

	They arrived at a gated compound, typical of these villas. An ornate metal fence surrounded a squat, tan stone house. A single light was still on in the kitchen, hidden behind translucent blue curtain. Maybe he was asleep. In front of the house, a colorful garden was well-tended to: tulips, roses, sunflowers, and anything else sat nice and neatly in front of green bushes. The gunner in the back of the hatchback slowly charged the bolt on his armament, while Krikor turned around. “Go after it, Hagop,” he commanded softly.

	Hagop nodded, opened the door, and stumbled out into the street. The bright lights of the car’s headlights blinded him for a second: he shielded his eyes, drew his revolver, and advanced towards the gate of the fence. His focus now turned onto the front door of the house: a brown, carved wooden door with a bronze handle. He felt his blood pumping and his breathing intensify. His heart was thumping through his chest, either from the drugs or the adrenaline. Keeping his lips pursed, he exhaled through his nose like a bull as he pushed the gate open. It creaked loudly in the night, and Hagop began running to the door. He got there a second later, knocked loudly, and sprinted back into the darkness. As he dove into the bushes, he turned around to see a lone figure open the door.

	A bright flash of light and a long tongue of flame erupted from the window of the hatchback as the gunner squeezed his trigger. The rapid cracks of the machine gun snapped at the silence and over twenty rounds went downrange in a matter of seconds. The informant barely had enough time to flinch before the force of several mid-caliber rounds tore him in half. Blood sprayed across the steps of his house as he collapsed into his garden, guts now splattered down his hallway. His hand reached out as he fell, as if to stop the onslaught of death. The rest of the rounds impacted on the wall of his house in a horizontal spray pattern, shattering his windows and blowing out his lights. Someone, probably his wife, started screaming from inside the house. She ran to the door, dropping to her knees when she saw the body of her husband: she began wailing against the night. The gunner let loose another burst instantly, blowing her head off her shoulders and scattering fragments of brain and skull across their entrance’s rug. Hagop stood by and watched the whole ordeal, feeling relieved now that the man was dead. Unconcerned with the mess, he stumbled his way back to the car and slid inside.

	“That was good work,” Krikor said, patting Hagop on the shoulder. “We might not get the money back, but at least we sent the message across.”

	Hagop nodded and smiled. He looked back towards the bodies lying in the light of their hallway, fallen atop each other in a bloody pile. It served them right for wronging the Mafiya. Maybe others would take the hint and go home before they would up in the same place. The car’s engine revved up and the wheels kicked up mud as it sped off, back towards the city. After all, it was time to celebrate.

[b]Armenia-Georgia Border[/b]

	“Corporal Yaglian, do you have a minute?”

	“Sure, Sergeant,” answered Corporal Yaglian as he finished hanging a freshly-washed uniform on a clothesline. Usually they would hire a local woman to come in from the nearby town to do laundry, but the operations tempo had increased since the last patrol was attacked and there was simply no time anymore. The two stood outside of the brick barracks at their border outpost, just outside of the canvas covering that shaded a recreation area. Yaglian was stripped down to just his boots and trousers. He smoked a cigarette in the hot sun, while his section leader appeared in his full uniform. He wore his rank on a fedayi cap and carried his NCO dagger slung low on his web belt with his handgun and other equipment. His sleeves had been rolled up, and Yaglian could see sweat stains under his armpits and down his chest. Sergeant Ozanian had been a soldier for the better part of this decade, but had been busted back down to Sergeant following a disastrous operation in the Artsakh during the last war. His element had failed to defend its position in Khojaly and were routed.

	Ozanian’s face betrayed a man who felt guilt for what happened during the war. He was, in the grand scheme of things, only about as old as Yaglian’s father, but looked much older. Worried eyes sat in a stress-lined face, touches of grey tinging his hair and neatly-trimmed mustache. Yet he proudly maintained his posture and his uniform despite being told to step down as a Platoon Sergeant and move to the Border Service. Yaglian knew what happened in Khojaly only after a drunken confession, where Ozanian broke down and cried about the loss of his unit in the barracks: it was the only time he had ever said anything. Everything he did now was to the standard, perhaps in an attempt to atone for the last war. Now, he held a stack of papers in his hand, stamped with Border Service letterhead. He handed them to Yaglian and cleared his throat.

	“Our Lieutenants have gotten together with Captain Havanian, and we have received orders to push into Georgia.”

	He noticed Yaglian’s raised eyebrow and continued: “The people who did this to 3rd Platoon’s troops were part of the Mountain Wolf faction, an Islamic group with ties to the Azerbaijani resistance. Evidently this was found out by people far above us, and certain other people want these Mountain Wolves to know what we’re capable of.”

	“Certain other people?” asked Yaglian, tossing his cigarette into the pale-green grass.

	“If I had to speculate, Corporal, it’s the Persians. They’re occupying Azerbaijan and these people are making it difficult,” Sergeant Ozanian suggested. He shook his head, remembering the Azerbaijanis he fought years ago. Perhaps these were the same people who bombarded his garrison for days with incendiary shells. The old man still bore burns on his right leg from one of those attacks, but he had only ever shown Yaglian.

	“So we’re going hunting for Islamic militants who might be connected to the Azerbaijani rebels,” Yaglian summarized. “So we’re going east.”

	“Correct. Because our company is close to where we think these people are, we’re going in to strike back. Nothing big, but we want to make sure that they know who they’re dealing with. Nine dead soldiers can’t be ignored. The Mountain Wolf presence in this area is led primarily by a Shia warlord named Simon Batirashvili: he’s a big supporter of Shia movements in the area and the Mountain Wolves are popular in our area. Those guys who have been popping off shots at our positions are his men.”

	“And we have a plan for this?”

	“Each one of the platoons is going to hit a different encampment. Our platoon has orders to head to the town of Patara Darbazi and conduct a raid on the Mountain Wolves there. It’s mostly a supply depot for their raider parties, hidden up in the mountains.”

	Yaglian went through the copies of the battle plan that were handed to him. The town of Patara Darbazi was circled on a map and a handwritten indicator of the Mountain Wolf encampment just a few hundred meters to the east. It was a small town with just over a two dozen buildings nestled in the Georgian mountains. The team leader looked up into the distance, across the border road and chain-link fence to the mountains. The green, forested sloped ridges were occasionally interrupted by tall peaks before calming back down. Patara Darbazi was only ten kilometers from their post: it didn’t take long for foot-mounted raiders to hit border positions before slinking back behind the innumerable valleys and into the forests. A return hit on Patara Darbazi was an unusually aggressive mission for the Border Service. While it would take away a supply point for Mountain Wolf operations, it was unlikely to cause any major damage: it was really just a message. The two other platoons in Yaglian’s company would hit similarly minor targets at the same time. Captain Havanian was apparently hopeful that this would make Batirashvili’s forces back off.

	The battle plan was relatively simple: the platoon would mount up and move with their vehicles to the outskirts of town before dismounting and attacking from the west and south. The forces on the west would light up the encampment with overwhelming firepower before the southern-positioned troops would sweep through. Once the camp was cleared, the western troops would move east to clear again. Upon the destruction of the camp, they would disengage back the way they came and drive home. They would strike at dawn, moving into their positions under the cover of darkness before they had enough light to actually conduct combat operations: it also held the advantage of attacking during a change in the guard where the night shift was too tired and the morning shift was too groggy to react properly. Resistance was expected, but it was a smaller base of operations on the fringe of Batirashvili’s men’s control. More of his power was concentrated in the city of Rustavi, meaning that there were only supposed to be just shy of fifteen militiamen occupying the post at a given time.

	Most of this intelligence was released to the Border Service and subsequently passed down through the chain of command by the National Security Service: a shadowy government intelligence organization that frequently operated outside of the country. Yaglian had heard rumors of operatives and spies in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, but they were just stories he heard in bars. Evidently there was at least someone in Batirashvili’s sphere of influence, because information on the Mountain Wolves had been stapled to the map of Patara Darbazi. A photograph of the town had been copied and included in the order, with another photograph of the camp illustrating a series of former military tents set up in a neat row with a canvas covering a sizeable stash of wooden boxes. Four guard positions, one at each corner of the camp’s perimeter, were marked.

	Yaglian gave the papers back to Ozanian and nodded. “We’re going in from the south?” he asked, seeing his own section on the plan. The section leader just nodded, taking the papers and putting them back in a leather document case.

	“We go tomorrow, so get your people together and make sure the plan is distributed. Have your equipment ready to go and pack for a light raid,” ordered the Sergeant.

	“You’re not worried about this?” Yaglian asked as his section leader turned around. “We’re not the Army…”

	“The Army isn’t here, so we’re going to do it,” duly answered Ozanian. “And besides, these were our men.”

	The section leader shrugged and walked away, leaving Yaglian to himself. Still shirtless, he felt the sun wash up against him, warming him. This helped only slightly with an icy sense of dread that began to creep through him. He felt something off about Sergeant Ozanian: he was never usually this talkative with briefings. Something felt different, like he was excited to go out. He never speculated about the political leanings of groups or who wanted them in or out of a region: he just handed over the plans and told Yaglian to prepare his team. Perhaps the Mountain Wolves’ relation to the Azerbaijanis had something to do with it, and it suddenly became more personal for Sergeant Ozanian. Whatever the case was, Yaglain also felt that the reciprocal attack was not going to be the end of it. Border clashes were relatively frequent, but he had never heard of an intrusion this far into the country. Ten kilometers through the mountains was enough to raise some alarms about expanded Armenian intervention, and who knew where it would go from there. The Poti garrison was expanded under continual re-justifications: would the Border Service be on the same track?

	Corporal Yaglian dropped the news to his team, and instructed them to begin gathering their gear. The men scurried off to their own destinations while Yaglian opened the door to his steel wall locker. Hung up on a rack by its sling was his wooden carbine, which he took and tossed onto his bed alongside several curved magazines and cardboard boxes of stripper-clipped bullets. As he closed his locker door, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and paused: he examined the stubble on his face, his hooked nose, the curly hair that went in every direction, and his own green eyes that stared back at him like he was questioning himself. Yaglian squinted, frowned, and closed the door completely. He sighed: it was time to get back to work. The battle wouldn’t wait for him.

[b]Gyumri, Armenia[/b]

	A Military Policeman arrived at the office early that day with a stack of case folders. After being waved past the secretary, he arrived at the office in the back and dropped them right onto Tigran Korkarian’s desk. The patrol chief looked up at the runner, a Corporal wearing a crisp olive uniform in his shined brown leather boots, and thanked him. Sergeant Kavalian had done a quick job at putting together everything related to this weapons case, including armory numbers of all the equipment that had gone missing and what unit they were last assigned to. All in all, forty firearms had gone off the grid: ten semi-automatic carbines, ten bolt-action marksman rifles, and twenty pistol-caliber submachineguns. Each one was turned into the Gyumri Regiment’s armorer after a reservist training exercise the month prior and loaded onto transport alongside miscellaneous equipment and several hundred rounds of ammunition. The two truck drivers assigned that day were two Privates by the names of Karlovian and Marovian. Personnel records of both of these men were attached, as well as the results of the investigations into them.

	What it came down to was that both of them were unassuming conscripts, the only point of interest being that Private Marovian’s home of record was located in East Gyumri near the Russian neighborhoods. He was slotted as the primary driver for that transport, and Sergeant Kavalian’s men were working under the theory that Marovian had stolen the truck for himself. Karlovian had been a longtime friend of Marovian, according to their comrades in the barracks, and was most likely an accomplice. Where the truck went after that was never found. A clear link between Tigran’s murder case and Kavalian’s theft case could also not be found until the weapon was identified. So far, they just had ammunition shells, but that would require additional investigation based on the headstamp information. One of the Gyumri Police detectives was tracking down the cartridge’s manufacturer. This information could then be used to see if it was local or not: if it was, then they most certainly sold to Gyumri’s garrison and the ammunition store could be narrowed down based on the date. That would be cross-referenced with withdrawal logs to see if that particular shell was in a box on the stolen truck.

	This took the day while Tigran began to formulate who he would be going to. By the time the report came back in the evening stating that the ammunition was made in Hrazdan in a factory that sources the Gyumri garrison, Tigran was ready to investigate further. Alex joined him by the patrol car that had pulled by out front, loading shells into a shotgun to be kept in a trunk. They were going to Private Marovian’s mother’s apartment to see what could be found. Tigran lowered himself into the passenger seat and shut the door before reaching out the window to turn on the lightbar’s external switch while Alex started up the engine and the tired rolled over the black asphalt road. They drove through Gyumri, onto Abovyan Street. Freshly redone, Abovyan Street was lined with flourishing green trees and delicately-planted gardens. The police vehicle rushed past street food stalls, groups of children coming home from school in their uniforms, and couples walking their pets and infants. Once the turn onto Vartanants Square was made, they proceeded to turn past the city hall and its gardens and statues.

	East Gyumri was less nice than West Gyumri. Well-maintained avenue greenery gave way to bare streets. Buildings became simpler and less adorned, and bars over the windows started appearing as the police moved further into the rougher neighborhood. The paint on nationalist murals was peeling, and litter blew across the streets in the gentle evening breeze. The Marovian family lived on the second floor of an apartment off the main street, a grey concrete building with a faded flag hanging from the rooftop. The police parked in front of an out-of-service bus stop adorned with Cyrillic graffiti. In the distance, a dog barked at them from behind a chain-link fence while people stopped to look at them on the street. A gaggle of children crossed the street to the other side as soon as Tigran and Alex pulled themselves out of the patrol car and straightened their uniforms. Alex looked back at the barking dog and the children and unconsciously patted down his duty belt to feel the grip of his revolver.

	A tall, lanky, baby-faced man in his early twenties cracked open the door of the apartment when Alex knocked. He looked like he jumped slightly, and a brief look of surprise crossed his face before he quickly subdued it. He had hair that looked grown out and a few patches of stubble on his chin, and he wore black-rimmed glasses. “What do you guys want?” he asked in a slight Gyumri accent, sounding slightly shaky.

	“Is this the Marovian family?” asked Alex calmly, sizing up the man. While taller than the police officer, he seemed to shrink away from him.

	“Yeah, yes… What happened?”

	“Who are you?” bluntly asked Tigran, cocking his head to the side.

	“David,” answered the man at the door after a slight pause. Tigran and Alex looked at each other: Private Marovian’s given name was Aram. “D-Did something happen to my brother? I heard that he went missing or something?”

	Alex shook his head: “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Who else lives here? Is your mother    and father around?”

	David frowned and looked at the floor: “My mother is in the back listening to the radio… My father died in a train crash years ago.”

	Alex and Tigran were unmoved by the sob story, but offered condolences anyways. “I’m sorry to hear about that,” Alex said. “My own father was hit by a car when I was seventeen. Can you go get your mother? We have some questions about Aram.”

	David nodded, and shut the door as he went to the back. Something was off about him: he was too nervous for this. It took a few minutes, longer than both of the officers thought was comfortable, to open the door. This time, a fifty-year old woman in a plain dress stood alongside David. She told the officers to enter and take a seat on the couch. Tigran accepted, and removed his cap as he sat down on a faded, pale blue couch next to a coffee table that had one of its legs replaced. Alex declined, and stood with his arms crossed next to the sooty fireplace. David scurried off to a back room and closed the door a little too loudly. Tigran glanced over, past the dingy walls with peeling paint, and looked back at the elder Marovian. “Ma’am, I am Chief Korkarian of the Gyumri Police. The Army has asked me to look into your son’s disappearance: I’m talking to you because they don’t have the jurisdiction in off-base matters.”

	“What does a police investigation have to do with it?” the mother asked cautiously. “I was told that there was a vehicle accident.”
	
	Alex and Tigran briefly exchanged looks. Alex subtly indicated to Tigran that he should keep up the military’s story with a head nod, then turned back to scan the back room where David had disappeared to. Tigran continued: “Well we figure there must have been a reason why he didn’t turn up. Do you know of anything that had troubled him? Sometimes if someone’s mind wanders, they make mistakes.”

	Private Marovian’s mother looked taken aback. “There’s nothing wrong with my boy,” she insisted. “I didn’t invite you into my house to insult him or what he did for this country.”

	“I think Officer Korkarian would be the last person to insult service to this country,” Alex shot back, his hands balling into fists before relaxing: it was an old woman, after all. He calmed down: “What he meant was that if there was something going on at home. Maybe he had a girl who left him? Maybe he had money problems.”

	Marovian’s mother eyed Alex, keeping her hands neatly folded in her lap.

	“Financial troubles?” Tigran asked delicately. “I noticed that this isn’t… the best neighborhood.”

	“I make a livable wage,” tersely answered the woman.

	“For a family of three?”

	“Wh-“ began Private Marovian’s mother. She stopped, eyes wide, surprised at what she had said. Quickly, she tried to cover it up. “My family is fine.”

	Tigran stood up from the couch and smoothed out the wrinkles on his uniform. He understood fully well that family was integral to Armenian life, and they were often unwilling to admit their own flaws. People kept their families tight, sometimes too tight for their own good. This was one of these cases: Tigran had a bad feeling about the Marovians, and his instinct led him to believe that somehow they knew where Private Marovian was. He figured that David might offer some more insight, seeing as he appeared to be the same age as the missing soldier. But he also had some suspicions about the boy. “Can I go see David?” asked the chief.

	The mother hesitated, but knew that the question was less of a request and more of an order. She smartly bowed her head and stood up, leading Tigran to the back room. Alex followed behind at a distance, hand inching closer to his belt and revolver. They walked past rotting wooden doors and a stained spot on the wood floor from a ceiling leak, before coming to the back room. Tigran gently shooed the mother away from the door before knocking twice. There was no answer at first. For a few more seconds, he waited, then knocked again. David came to the door, looking frazzled: “Sir, I don’t know what’s going on.”

	Tigran sized up the boy: “Do you have a copy of your conscription papers anywhere, David?”

	“Conscription papers? No… I, uh, I was National Servi-“

	“National Service issues papers, too. Can I see those?” Tigran asked again, a hint of frustration in his voice.

	“I… lost them.”

	“It’s a crime to not produce your papers when asked by a police officer,” Tigran reminded him. “If you lost them, you should have reported to the Gyumri office to get replacements.”

	David’s blank face turned to a frown, and his stance became aggressive. Without further word, he looked back over his shoulder at the window behind him. It was open, to let the summer air circulate through the hot and humid room. The boy bolted towards it, and Tigran reached out futilely. David swung through the window to the outside balcony, hanging onto the edge of the window as he checked where he could land: a fabric awning over the entryway provided a damper for his fall, so he took it. Tigran ran to the window and shouted for Alex to get the car. The other police officer ran out through the door, elbowing the Marovian mother out of the way as he scrambled towards the staircase. Tigran watched as David rolled across the awning and dropped onto the sidewalk with a yelp. Evidently that wasn’t too bad of a fall, because the scrawny boy got up and took off running up the street. He was barely twenty meters away before Alex busted through the main door to the apartment building and raised his revolver from his holster.

	“Stop!” he commanded, but David kept running. Alex was having none of it: he clicked back the hammer on his revolver and leveled it above the boy’s head in an attempt to fire warning shots. The handgun barked two times, both bullets whizzing past the kid’s shoulder. David turned around in horror to watch, before stumbling over himself and falling to the ground. He tried to pick himself up, but Alex was a fast runner and was closing in. Just as David got off the ground and gained speed, Alex was already over him. A rugby tackle threw the teen down to the sidewalk, bashing his head against the concrete and splitting open a gash next to his left ear. David raised his hands to his face to defend himself as Alex pistol-whipped him into a daze. “I fucking said stop!” he repeated.

	“Alright, alright!” cried out David. “I’m stopped, I’m stopped!”

	Tigran was now out on the street with the mother in handcuffs, who was now facedown on the hood of the police cruiser and wailing. “Aram! Aram!” she shouted, before Tigran told her to be quiet.  Alex was meanwhile dragging David, whose real name was found to be Private Aram Marovian, to the vehicle while interrogating him about the weapons. Still injured, he left specks of blood on the pavement as he was thrown to the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. Onlookers gathered as Alex waved his piece around to keep them at bay, fearing a possible ambush by Marovian’s allies. Both of the officers stuffed their captures into the back of the car before switching on the siren and driving off the same way that Aram had tried to escape. The holding cell that night would be occupied by them and a few frequent drunks who were picked up on what seemed like a rotational business, except this time the new prisoners were taken away by the military at dawn.

	Inside the apartment, four rifles and a shotgun were found in the closet in Aram Marovian’s back room. A large sum of [i]dram[/i] was hidden underneath the floorboards, along with an address that appeared to be located in the industrial district by the rail station. This information was forwarded to Tigran, who sent it to Sergeant Kavalian: there would be a combined force assembled to raid the address in the coming days. The arrest of Private Marovian would start a fire that sent the rest of his contacts scurrying, but there were still problems: the rest of the weapons were not found and the location of Private Karlovian was not known. Private Marovian would be interrogated by the military police in an attempt to figure out how deep the connections went. In the meantime, the police were gearing up for a major operation: reinforcements were being called in from neighboring towns and provincial National Police units, alongside military policemen with heavier weapons. Things were calm, at least for now, but Tigran Korkarian knew that it wouldn’t last. It never did.