[b]Gyumri, Armenia[/b]

	The Gyumri policemen crowded around a table covered with memos, manifests, photographs, and pertinent pieces of evidence. Two military policemen from the Gyumri base talked quietly with each other. A rack of weapons, tagged with evidence stickers, stood next to the table as Tigran quietly inspected one of the rifles that Private Marovian had hidden in his room. The metal receiver of the rifle bore, at the base near the rear sight, a serial number and the location of manufacture. All four of the rifles’ identifying information matched with the service carbines that went missing in Marovian’s truck. A military interrogation of Private Marovian had been conducted on-base by military police officers, and which had led to the location of another arms cache underneath a Russian restaurant in the eastern ghettos. The truck, too, was found by a hiker in Lake Arpi. Thirty kilometers north of the city, it had appeared that Private Marovian drove the truck to the edge of a dirt firebreak. In a move that somewhat impressed Tigran, the young arms dealer then put the truck in neutral and pointed it down a hill, jumping out before it started rolling too fast.

	The military police presented their investigations to the Gyumri department: Marovian was cooperative with the investigation thus far, but Karlovian had fled to the north and slipped across the Georgian border upon hearing about the recent murders. He was terrified, and rightly so, that a police investigation would be coming towards him. A military investigator had been sent north to check with Border Service posts and see if he had emigrated across the border through a checkpoint, especially since the Karlovian family automobile was reported stolen a few days prior. That, however, was no longer Chief Tigran’s problem. The weapons found in the Russian restaurant were part of the stolen arms, and the location was suspiciously close to the residences of several suspected Mafiya lieutenants. It was determined that the lieutenants were trying to incentivize teens and unemployed young adults with money to start hitting Armenian establishments with these weapons, furthering tensions in the city. What the Mafiya sought to gain by inciting race riots was still unclear, but the police were beginning crackdowns on any and all gang activity to try and start building an information network from apprehended suspects.

	After the conclusion of the military investigation, one of the MPs turned to Tigran: “Chief Korkarian, we’ve wrapped up all we can for you. The rest of the weapons fall into our jurisdiction, so we are focusing on finding those arms caches. Unfortunately, aside from that, we can’t help you with the Russians. That’s for the Gyumri boys, since you started the case.”

	Tigran nodded, shaking the man’s hand. “I understand. Thank you, Corporal,” he said, eyeing the black chevrons on the soldier’s collar. “The weapons are still a big part of it, and we’ll help you once we uncover more of this. Marovian had a ‘sell-list’ that we sent to Sergeant Kavalian. Nothing like any sort of official ledger, he was a little bit sloppy on that, but it was addresses and names.”

	The MP smirked, crossing his arms. “We’re excited to kick down some doors. Beats grabbing drunks who are too wasted to fight back well.”

	Tigran just nodded solemnly, keeping his thoughts to himself. He knew all about cocky young cops taking risks and going straight for the action. They were like soldiers, almost, and every time they learned the same lesson: policing, especially nowadays, was nasty and sometimes brutal. The first time they see a real victim of heavy assault, murder, or rape, they reevaluate their thoughts on door-kicking and shooting bad guys. It broke some people, jaded others, but nobody ever really was the same. Nothing could be said to them before then, so Tigran thanked the Corporal and escorted him to the jeep waiting outside. He and his partner threw on their taraz soft covers, waved, and jumped in their vehicle to roar off down the road. Tigran sighed and turned to Alex, who was beside him. “Fucking kids,” he muttered. “I hope they don’t crash.” His partner nodded, shrugged, and put his hands in his pockets. They both went back to their desks to handle administrative work.

	A few minutes of form-filing had passed before the telephone on Tigran’s desk rang. The patrol chief put his pen down, reached for it, and picked it up to hear his dispatcher in the telephone room: “Chief, two patrols are requested for a vehicle fire in Yerkatgtsi Norvan east of the rail depot at the Axayan-Garegin intersection. Looks like a sedan on fire in an intersection, possibly arson. Firefighters are heading on scene now.”

	“Alright, I’ll be there,” Tigran answered, before hanging up the phone. He grabbed his blue policeman’s jacket that was draped off the back of his chair and his duty belt from the coat rack. He busted out through the door, to find Alex smoking a cigarette next to the coffee table. “We’re going to East Gyumri,” he said. “Grab your things, I’ll pull the car out.”

	Alex simply nodded, moving towards his desk to grab whatever gear he needed to put on. Tigran, meanwhile, dipped out through the side exit of the police office and withdrew his key ring from the pocket of his pants. Getting through several fence doors, he lightly jogged over to his patrol vehicle: trusty number seventeen, complete with scratches on its bumper from pushing cars off the road and a buffed-out scattering of shotgun pellets on the trunk. Tigran and Alex took care of it, however, and kept it freshly painted after anything happened to it. He swung open the doors to the motor pool, hopped in the driver’s seat, and whipped it out to the front of the office where the second patrolmen were already waiting. Tigran honked his horn at Alex on the curb, who shook the hand of the second car’s passenger and jogged over to get in. “Ready, chief?”

	The pair took off, carefully swinging around the corner before heading towards the main through-street of the city. Gyumri was one of Armenia’s largest cities but also one of its oldest. The streets were crowded and winding, having evolved from pedestrian alleys to avenues traversed by horses to automobile roads. One road, Haghtanaki Avenue, flanked the long and narrow Victory Park through a north-south slice of the city: it provided the quickest way to get from one end to another and had been widened for buses, trucks, and the increasingly numerous cars owned by Armenians. Despite this, police response time in the Russian-dominated ghettos in the east often suffered as the patrols struggled to quickly get through. While major infrastructure improvements had been constructed in local areas by provincial governments, a grand national highway system was still being debated in Parliament. The police still had to take constrained city roads to get from one neighborhood to another. It was thirty minutes of driving through traffic, sometimes requiring a siren to move dawdling drivers out of the way, before Tigran and Alex spotted the plume of smoke rising from an intersection.

	Yerkatgtsi Norvan had developed a reputation as the bad part of town. Part of that stemmed from the Russians, but it was also just a neighborhood occupied almost exclusively by the working class. Due to its proximity to the train tracks and warehouses of Gyumri, many people worked industry. It was dirty, loud, and smelled of burnt coal constantly. City officials preferred to spend their sanitation budgets elsewhere, providing only the bare minimum of services to apartments here. Russian graffiti covered the bare concrete public housing blocks, shoes dangled from electrical wires, trash blew down empty alleys, and passerby stared at the police. Tigran and Alex stopped their car a safe distance away from the central intersection of the neighborhood and cautiously dismounted. Alex put his hand to his pistol belt, feeling for the wooden handle of his revolver as both of them fanned out to opposite ends of the street. There were no more onlookers, nobody coming to see what was happening. Just the crackling of a fire as the gasoline from the car burned. Tigran eyed the windows of the drab apartment blocks, barely noticing a long object appearing at the top floor of a seven-story building.

	“Gun!” he shouted, diving to cover by a streetlight as a shot rang out. His ageing body hit the ground with a thud as a rifle round shattered the window of the police car. Alex tried to return fire with his handgun, putting three wildly inaccurate downrange before kneeling down next to a bus stop. “It’s an ambush!” Tigran repeated, just as a group of people appeared from behind a fence. There were four, armed with shotguns and one with a carbine. Alex swore and ducked down again: one of them leveled their piece and fired off a spray of pellets towards the police. Tigran rolled past the streetlight and got into cover in an entranceway beside him as another volley of shots ripped across the street. He struggled for the revolver in his leather holster, pointing it down the street to shoot off a round. He was now separated from his partner, on opposite ends of the street, outnumbered and outgunned.

	In the distance, someone called out in Russian. “[i]Politsiya! Politsiya! Von tam![/i]” The four gangsters fanned out into the road, exchanging more shots with the Armenian police. A carbine round smashed into the concrete by Tigran, blowing chunks of it down onto the sidewalk and hitting the old man with a concussive thud. He stuck his arm out of cover and returned shots before drawing it back in to reload shells from his cartridge belt. He had personally never seen a use for revolver speedloaders like the younger cops, but now could see where they would be handy. The gangsters moved into cover, just as Alex looked back to Tigran from his position.

	“I’m gonna go for the shotgun!” he yelled across the street. “Cover me!”

	Tigran nodded, got up onto a knee behind the cover of his concrete alcove, and scanned the road with his pistol. Alex stood up, took a deep breath, and started sprinting to the police car. The Russian sniper in the apartment block tried to zero in on the cop, but he was too slow or poorly trained to get a good lock on: a shot went high, shattering a window further down the street. Alex dove into cover by the trunk of the car and fumbled for the latch. It popped open with ease, and he reached for the wood-stocked shotgun strapped into the trunk’s floor. Cursing as he loaded its magazine with shells and racking it, Tigran’s partner kneeled back down and leaned towards the side of his cover. “Come out, fuckers!” he shouted. He followed up in some of the only Russian words he knew: “[i]Syuka blyad![/i]”

	A gangster, sufficiently enraged by this, emerged from hiding behind a street corner and leveled his shotgun against the police car. He shot off two rounds in rapid succession, before Alex returned fire with an expertly-aimed slug to the chest. Armenian cops had two types of shells in their cars: buckshot, for closer breaching actions, and solid slug shells for longer-ranged street fights. The Russian was hit center of mass with a 12 gauge slug, his torso exploding in a shower of blood as he was thrown to the ground screaming. Alex racked the shotgun, ejecting a shell onto the concrete, and took aim as the gangster’s friend ran to the middle of the street to retrieve the wounded man. Alex shot again, this one shattering the gangster’s leg and almost tearing it off. The man dropped his carbine as he fell face-first into the concrete. He tried crawling for it, inching towards the piece as Tigran followed up with a second slug that blew his shoulder away. Two dead Russians lay in pools of blood in the street, which was enough to convince the other two to drop their guns and sprint away.

	The Russians ran down through the road, dipping behind into an alleyway. The Armenians, unsure if they could still pursue with the sniper aimed squarely at them still, cursed them and fired off a few ineffective return shots. All these did were harmlessly impact into the concrete. Now, it was just them and the burning car: the sniper watched them closely. Tigran and Alex turned to each other, shaking their heads. The chief slumped back into his alcove, holstering his revolver, running a hand through his grey hair. The firefight had taken all of fifteen harrowing minutes, but he had no idea where the other patrol was. They were supposed to flank around to the other side of the intersection but they hadn’t been around during the fight. Yerkatgtsi Norvan was notorious for being confusing and dense, leaving Tigran wondering if they had just gotten lost or were in trouble of their own. With no way to contact them, he wouldn’t know until much later. The pair waited in their cover for another few minutes, unsure if they should chance the sniper.

	Tigran, ultimately, decided to regroup with Alex. He steadied himself, nodded at his partner, and took off at as fast of a jog as he could manage while praying that he wouldn’t be shot in the side. He remembered from his military service that it took a trained sniper four seconds to zero in on a moving target. It was obvious that the gangster wasn’t trained, nor was he any good at his job, but Tigran counted in his head as he rushed to the car. There was no return fire, just silence. He ducked down to behind the trunk with Alex: “I think he’s gone,” he said breathlessly.

	“Yeah, probably dropped his shit and ran when I blew his friends apart,” Alex remarked, lighting a cigarette out of his trusty steel case. He offered one to the chief, who declined by waving his hand in front of his face and tried again to catch his breath.

	“It was an ambush, goddammit,” Tigran scowled. “I haven’t seen this shit before. Fuck them. Fuck them all. This is the shittiest, most cowardly fucking thing you can do. They’re not men, they’re fucking pussies.”

	The chief paused again, taking a deep breath to calm down. He couldn’t let his emotions control him like that. They still had to get home. Alex exhaled, leaning his shotgun against the car before standing up out of his squat. With a look to the former sniper’s nest and another drag on the cigarette, he heard a car moving behind them. The cops turned around to see their lost partner, driving slowly towards them. The car stopped, and a bewildered junior patrolman hopped out of the driver’s seat, apologizing profusely. “Chief! Shit, I’m sorry, we took a wrong turn a while back and got lost in this damn neighborhood.”

	“Are you a fucking retard? Do we need to institutionalize you with all the other fucking retard babies who got dropped on their heads by alcoholic piece of shit mothers?” Alex shouted, straightening his belt as he walked angrily towards the patrolman. “Who gets lost for twenty fucking minutes in this town? It’s not even that big!”

	“Sir! Wha-“ the patrolman began, before noticing the bodies ahead of them. Alex continued his march to the driver, closing in and extending his fingers into a knife that he waved in the face of the new hire. Before any explanation could be offered, Alex turned his knife-hand towards the boyish face of the patrolman and slapped him with an echoing smack. The cop stumbled, but regained his composure.

	“We were ambushed, for God sake! Fucking ambushed! It was a fucking trap!”

	“Alex!” Tigran called out from the patrol car as he inspected the damage. “Calm down and help me change this tire. And you! Officer… I forget your name.”

	“Hovnanian, sir,” the patrolman uttered. “Officer Hovnanian.”
	“Get the evidence. There are four guns in the street and we suspect one in that apartment over there,” Tigran ordered. “Recover them and head home. There’s no emergency here, just an ambush. We’ll let the locals deal with the wreck.”

	Alex trudged over to Tigran, fuming. The chief had taken a jack and tire iron from the trunk and was busy rolling the spare tire over to the front-left, which had been riddled with buckshot. Small divots pockmarked the hood and side of the car, shredding the rubber tire. Luckily, it was just the one: they didn’t have to cannibalize any spare tired from the other cruiser. “Keep your shit in check, Alex,” warned Tigran as he kneeled down to place the jack under the car’s sturdy frame. “I know it’s frustrating. You saw my response.”

	“He’s an idiot,” Alex replied as Tigran jacked up the car. “I wanted to punch him right in his little gut.”

	“Show some restraint, next time. We’re professionals. We have laws in this society, we have rules. Everything is going to hell in this city, but we’re stopping it. Does law and order mean nothing to you? Why are you a cop?”

	Alex sighed, taking the tire iron from his chief. He loosened the bolts on the wheel, snatching them up and lining them in a neat row as he worked. In the background, the junior patrolman walked through the bodies, picking up guns and slinging them over his shoulder while his partner smoked a cigarette and scanned the potential avenues of approach with his shotgun. Tigran stood back as Alex lifted the wheel off and handed it over. “I don’t like getting shot at,” grumbled Alex.

	“If you did, I’d be sending you over to the psychological ward at the hospital,” joked Tigran. “Could you put the tire back on for me? I’m too old and frail.”

	The tire was replaced as Hovnanian and his partner emerged from the apartment block. An elderly woman had led them up the stairs to the sniper’s nest, explaining that she had seen a man jump from the second story of the staircase out onto an awning and run away. It had been one of her tenants, renting out the room for only a week. His partner clutched a Mosin Nagant rifle awkwardly in one hand, shotgun in the other. The pair returned to Tigran and Alex: “Sir, we got the weapons. Four in the street and one in that apartment. Was that everything?”

	“Yeah, you got it. Thanks, kid,” Tigran answered as he threw them in the back seat, closing the door. “That should be it… Nobody’s hurt, we’re all fine.”

	Alex looked back to the still-burning car in the intersection. “So we’re not extinguishing it?”

	“It’ll burn out,” Tigran said with a shrug. “Now let’s get out of here.”

	The police mounted up in their cars, backing away from the intersection. Rattled but not discouraged, they turned and drove off back to headquarters. The weapons in the back appeared to be part of Private Moravian’s stash still, leading them to think that the gangsters were starting to get more aggressive. With the evidence turned in and the reports beginning to be written by Hovnanian, Tigran and Alex sat together with the case file. Carefully annotating the events of the day, the case thickened still. More weapons, more gangsters, more violence. The military were closing in on Karlovian and the Gyumri police were still hitting suspected sites in the ghettos. Gyumri had turned into a time-bomb, one that the police hoped to diffuse before it escalated into the worst violence the country had seen yet. But for now, the day was over and the police were changing shifts. Tigran and Alex were heading home, done with another day at the office.