Previously on The Fall, Ángel Bastardo was captured and Ruslan Chepiga said his goodbyes.
Part II
July 2022
Chepiga squinted at the monitor, the footage was grainy but he could see just enough detail, he wondered if the radiation was robbing him of his eyesight. He marvelled at what would be his biggest shipment yet, perhaps his last. He pondered, should he pull this off, he would have enough money to buy his freedom and live his life in peace. In the same moment he also thought, if he pulled this off, why stop there?
Chepiga gazed longingly at the inside of his new Soviet Stealth Submarine, he would give anything to be on that Sub. He’d acquired it for $15million from a crooked former Soviet general, who had stolen it back in 1991. This one shipment would pay for the submarine three times over.
His most trusted operatives had set off from Santa Marta, Colombia, two days ago with $45million worth of product. Chepiga still had friends in Punta Alegre, Cuba and his men took refuge there overnight before setting off for the Florida Everglades. Chepiga planned to watch the final leg of the operation live, from Pripyat.
There was a flicker of excitement in Chepiga’s stomach as the submarine dived down 50metres. All was well, the submarine was performing beautifully. Suddenly Chepiga could see a flurry of activity, “we’ve been detected, they know we are here, DIVE! DIVE!” The link was suddenly lost…
August 2022
“Listen Chepiga, someone is going away for this. You cannot continue to protect that terrorist scum. You must give him up, if you do, you have our word you can continue with your Colombian operation. We do not care about a few tonnes of drugs, our citizens need a release, we care about the men that have spilt American blood. We care about Bastardo.” Chepiga sat confused, unsure how to leverage himself out of this. His interrogator was a pregnant woman, he had no point of reference or commonality with her. It was clever, the Americans were always ahead of us in ‘clean’ interrogation techniques, he thought.
Chepiga looked around the cold room, he’d been in plenty of similar rooms over his lifetime but never was he as weak as he felt now. He’d taken to mapping the night sky for the last 14 evenings through the tiny slit in his cell. He was certain he was in the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba, Guantanamo. The situation was worse than he’d feared. The Americans could hold him here indefinitely, nobody is coming to save him. They have threatened to parade him on Fox News with the Submarine covered in Soviet insignia. He was on his own. It was time to negotiate, to play any card he had left.
December 2022
Chepiga and the FBI agents were lurking in one of the shadow stairway exits of the Lusail Stadium. There were around another fifteen groups, at the exit points of Qatar’s showpiece stadium. Uruguay would not defeat Die Mannschaft in the Last 16, Bastardo was a good manager but his insistence on playing 4-1-3-2 would be his downfall; Chepiga was sure of that. The bust would be tonight at Full-Time.
There was no backing out now, Chepiga had agreed with the Americans to capture Bastardo if he ever left Uruguay, and he knew the Americans would not risk arresting Bastardo in South America. Time and again he warned his old friend, “stay away”, “don’t come to Qatar” among his many messages of warning.
Bastardo ignored them all, his over-confidence annoyed Ruslan. The Argentine had found a moral purpose in Uruguay: to care for the Venezuelan refugees that refused to leave him after Colombia. But it’s not what Chepiga originally tasked, Project Peñarol was Bastardo’s doing…he had outgrown his original purpose in Uruguay: the management of the Under 20 National Team.
The shrill of the full-time whistle faded into the still desert air, so did Chepiga’s sympathy for his friend. He had brought this upon himself. It is him or me, his final thought as he strode onto the pitch. AK-47 raised and loaded.
Chepiga had two objectives, to capture Bastardo alive and hand him over to the FBI thus…saving his own skin today. His second objective was to execute Hugo Ojeda. The youngster had become a man, rising up the ranks of Bastardo’s Underworld to sit in the Argentine’s inner circle. Chepiga knew he’d come after him if he ever lived past this evening, killing him was the only way to save his tomorrow self.
Chepiga would only fire three shots, he felt remarkably calm in these situations. Time moved so slow, slow enough to avoid Cavani’s amateurish attempts to stop him. Ruslan’s first shot found its mark, the legs of Hugo Ojeda, shattering his Femur and leaving him prone in the centre circle. Chepiga approached like a snake who had just delivered a venomous bite to rodent. He lifted the young man’s head, his long curly hair soaked in sweat. “Who are you?” growled Chepiga.
“I am Bastardo!” Spat the youngster, defiant, even now. Chepiga remembered the jungle where he first met the boy, he was now a man but he’d seen those eyes before, he was sure it was him. He raised his side arm and executed the youngster. Hugo Ojeda was history.
Making his way towards the dug out where Bastardo was re-loading, Chepiga gave the order, “Take him now!” A flash grenade wasn’t his preferred choice but the Americans were in charge now.
It hurt to see his old comrade dragged from the stadium, he wished he could go back to the Jungle, he wished his old ally had heeded his warnings. Alas, there would be no glorious “Return to La Plata” for Bastardo this time, not while the Americans had him.
Note from the Editor - Both FM Eadster and I wanted to provide a bit of background around Bastardo’s arrest. Not only does it allow Chris to flesh out his beautifully constructed character a bit more, we also get to see the moral conflict in the Bastardo-Ruslan shared Universe. Ángel Bastardo was given a second chance at the beginning of FM20, but we quickly saw him outgrow his original remit. On the one hand he grew more of a conscious over the previous 4 years of in-game time…but his lifestyle had him drawn back him into the Underworld of contraband and drug trafficking.
Kudos to Chris for the submarine backstory off the Florida Keys coastline and the murder of ‘Hugo Ojeda’. As Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish once said in Game Of Thrones: “Money buys a man’s silence for a time. A bolt in the heart buys it forever”. The only problem is, you need to make sure you get the right man…
Thanks for reading/sharing/caring,
FM Grasshopper