All Chapters of UNDER THE DON’S PROTECTION: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Luca’s POVThe Gulfstream cut through Siberian airspace like a knife through fog, engines humming low as we skirted radar shadows. Katarina’s pilot ex-Luftwaffe, her network’s ace kept us below detection, hugging the taiga’s treetops. Outside, endless white: snow-blanketed pines stretching to the horizon, broken only by frozen rivers like veins in marble. Winter gripped the land hard; temperatures plunged to -40 Celsius. We’d been in the air sixteen hours Lagos to Moscow under false flags, then a hop to Novosibirsk before the final leg north.Dante sat across from me in the cabin, stitched wound hidden under a fresh shirt, color returning to his face. Rocco paced the aisle, restless energy coiling like a spring. Katarina hunched over a laptop, fingers dancing across encrypted feeds.“The ping’s stronger now,” she said, voice tight. “Node site’s an old gulag bunker, repurposed in the ’80s. Alexei’s history here runs deep Siberia node was his first. Built in 1972, post-Stalingrad parano

Luca’s POVThe floatplane touched down on a frozen lake outside Novosibirsk just after midnight—skis hissing across ice, engines winding down to silence broken only by wind rattling the fuselage. Nadia’s body—wrapped in thermal blankets—remained in the rear hold; Katarina’s pilot would dispose of it quietly in the taiga. No ceremony. No grave. Just another ghost added to Siberia’s tally.We transferred to a waiting black Volga—armored, tinted—driven by one of Katarina’s local assets: a former Spetsnaz sergeant named Yuri, face scarred from Chechen winters, eyes never leaving the rearview. The drive to Moscow took twelve hours—snow-chains clanking, roads empty except for occasional military convoys. We slept in shifts, bodies pressed together in the back seat for warmth. Dante’s stitches held; fever stayed down. Rocco’s hand never left my thigh—silent anchor.Moscow greeted us at dawn: gray skies, exhaust plumes rising from idling trucks, the Kremlin’s red walls distant but looming. Ka

Luca’s POVThe Sklifosovsky Emergency Hospital loomed like a Soviet-era monolith against Moscow’s slate-gray sky, its white facade cracked and stained from decades of winters. Floodlights cut through the swirling snow, casting long shadows over the quarantine barriers barbed wire hastily strung, FSB vans parked in cordons, soldiers in biohazard suits patrolling the perimeter. Inside, the swarm’s first blood had been spilled: twenty-three cases ballooned to eighty in hours, fevers turning to hemorrhages, isolation wards overflowing with the dying. The contagion tension ratcheted up with every news ping on Katarina’s encrypted feed doctors collapsing mid-shift, nurses fleeing, FSB agents convulsing in their armored vehicles. The strains weren’t just waking; they were hungry, mutating faster than models predicted, jumping from Volkov markers to anyone with trace Eastern European DNA. Moscow was ground zero, and we were walking into its heart.We geared up in the Arbat apartment’s basemen

Luca’s POVThe Gulfstream descended through thick Siberian cloud cover toward Irkutsk’s small executive airstrip, wings slicing frost-laden air. Lake Baikal lay to the east frozen expanse glittering under weak winter sun, its surface cracked like old porcelain. Reports from the ground were grim: fish die offs spreading along the Angara River outflow, reindeer herds collapsing in Buryat villages, first human cases confirmed in Irkutsk hospitals fever, cough, then blood in sputum. The permafrost strain had mutated again: longer incubation, subtler onset. It no longer announced itself with violent hemorrhages; it crept silent, patient, rewriting cells one breath at a time.Katarina closed her laptop with a soft click. “We have forty-eight hours before the strain reaches critical vectors. The contaminated groundwater feeds the city’s reservoirs. If it hits the water treatment plants, Irkutsk becomes a distribution hub. From there Trans-Siberian Railway, air travel, the whole network.”Dan

Luca’s POVThe Gulfstream crossed the Urals at cruising altitude, leaving Siberia’s frozen hell behind like a bad dream. But the dream followed us feeds updating every few minutes with fresh horror. Irkutsk’s water supply now fully compromised; hospitals rationing bottled supplies while the Angara River carried blue-tinged death downstream. Baikal’s fish die-offs had spread to seals carcasses washing up on frozen shores, eyes hemorrhaged, lungs filled with nano-induced fluid. The strain wasn’t just active; it was patient incubating in wildlife, waiting for spring thaw to vector north into the Arctic food chain.Katarina stared at her screen face illuminated by red alerts. “Geneva’s the last domino. WHO archives hold the final seeded vaccine lots contaminated during Nadia’s FSB days. If those activate, the strain goes global through aid shipments. Africa. Asia. South America. No borders. No quarantine.”Dante seated beside me, hand resting on my knee spoke quietly. “We end it there. Bu