“Tony,” he groaned through chattering teeth. He was trying to smile, “I’m so cold. And I am meant to kill you.”
“How?” I said.
Tony smiled, his eyes rolling in his skull. He pointed a bloody finger at the rucksack by his feet and kicked it over. I saw the mobile telephone taped to a creamy-grey block of plastic explosive. “It’s live” he giggled, “I can’t set it off with my hands like this, but it’s on a timer anyway. Run if you can.”
“IED” said Andy coolly, “that’s about half a kilo of PE4.” He plugged his M6 into the side of the wild man’s head and pulled the trigger twice. He crouched down and looked at the device, “it’s dialling in. Fucking move.”
We retreated, out of the room and dashing around the corner. We made it halfway towards the landing when it exploded, the blast evaporating the brick wall as if it were made of cardboard. An invisible force, like a giant’s fist, punched me into a window, heavy drapes curling around me like a Venus flytrap.
The air was full of hot, sharp debris as I tumbled out into the night. I landed on a flat-roof, in the snow. I tasted blood in my mouth as I coughed up smoke, dust and what felt like my guts. Thankful for my body armour and helmet I looked down at my shredded trousers, legs covered in scratches and cuts. I took a mouthful of fresh snow to clean out the inside of my rank-tasting mouth.
I shook my head and looked down, over the grounds of Croll House. Fires were burning, chemical-smelling smoke drifting into the night. The gunfire was more sporadic now.
And from the tree line came more dark shapes, men with weapons shuffling through the snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
I readied my AK and took aim at the figures moving slowly towards us, like an army of animated scarecrows. I fired aimed shots, two men collapsing as my fire found it’s mark. Incoming tracer spat from the tree line, forcing me to keep my head down. My radio had taken a thumb-sized piece of shrapnel and was broken. I felt like I was breathing blood.
Below me white fires crackled and flared, dirty smoke curling up the walls of Croll House.
“Cal” called Andy from the ragged hole in the wall where the window had been, “you OK?” He aimed his M6 and opened fire.
“Yeah” I lied, “where’s Alisa?”
“She’s unconscious - she was thrown into the wall. I need to get her to Carl.”
“Are you OK?” I said.
“I think you took most of that blast for me, you fat bastard.”
“Cover me. I’m going to come back in.” I crawled towards the window, disentangling myself from the curtains.
Andy helped me back into the corridor. Alisa was slumped on her side, in the recovery position.
“Concussion” said Andy, “we can’t leave her here.”
We carried her downstairs, ducking when a bullet came too close. We made for the hall, gunfire close and to our left.
“Carl?” I hollered.
Dmitri poked his head around the corner, his face shiny with sweat and blood. “I think Carl’s dead.”
“Dudko?” I said, shaking my head.
“The Devil looks after his own,” said Dudko, striding into the hall and festooned with weapons and ammunition. He was reloading a rifle and grinning, “I must have taken at least five of those dirty bastards.”
“We barricaded the corridor leading to the office” panted Dmitri, “but after they shot Carl they threw fire bombs. They’ve retreated for now, but we can’t get to Sergei.”
“The doors are all fireproof, right?” said Andy.
“Sure” said Dmitri, “but they can get to him from the other side of the house, I guess. If we go down that corridor we’re exposed to more incendiaries. The bastards are waiting in the snow for us to try and get down there.”
Alisa stirred, a trickle of blood rolling from her nose. “Where’s Belov?”
“He’s in the panic room, at the centre of the house. He’s fine” I said, “for now.”
“Hey” said Dmitri, “my phone is ringing.” He pulled the handset from a pocket on his body armour. “It’s Pieter.” The big Russian stabbed the speakerphone button so we could all hear.
“Dmitri” said Van Basten’s voice, tinny and faint, “give us Sergei then you can all leave. He’s the only one we want. There’s been too much death tonight.”
“Fuck you, you ungrateful piece of shit” bawled Dmitri, “I’m coming for you. I’m gonna pull your head out through your arsehole.”
“So, you’re on my side now?” smiled Ruslan Dudko, “maybe I get to finish this job after all.”
“You don’t understand, Dmitri” said Van Basten, his voice quiet but steady, “he’s not the man you think he is. He is a betrayer.”
“Pieter, its Cal Winter” I said into the phone, “what are you talking about?”
“Ah, the hired help” he scoffed, “I doubt it matters to you. I would simply ask that Dmitri meets with me and hears me out. Belov isn’t the man Dmitri thinks he serves.”
“Tell Fyodor Volk we know he’s out there” snapped Alisa, “we’re coming for him. Did you know he works for Russia too, Van Basten? That he’s FSB?”
“Fyodor has worked for many people” said Van Basten, “but not now. Come for him and you will die, like the others before you. This is his message to you, Colonel Turov.”
“Tell him I’m flattered” said the SVR officer, “I’ll bear it in mind when I’ve got him by the balls.”
“You’ve made your choice” said Van Basten lightly, “necessity brings him here, not pleasure.” He ended the call.
“Don’t tell me” I said to Turov, “Dante?”
“Canto XII, right?” said Ruslan Dudko.
I swung around to face the FSB officer, voice sharp “how do you know that?”
“Hey, calm down” he said, “anybody who went to the FSB Psych Warfare School at Makhachkala would have known it – the Commandant was Russia’s biggest Dante freak. Every fucking lecture and every meal he’d read quotes – he said it was the ultimate treatise on treachery, that we should all learn it’s lessons.”
Makhachkala, the FSB special warfare school where Fyodor Volk graduated as the star recruit.
“What did you study there?” said Turov.
“Apart from Dante?” he laughed, “I was a student on the special military services course, Covert Overseas Action Programme. Twelve months of my life I’ll never get back. The Commandant could kiss my hairy arse.”
“That’s one mystery solved,” said Turov.
I issued orders: “Alisa, Dudko and Dmitri stay here and run defence. Andy and me will go around the outside of the house and get Sergei. We RV back here. Questions?”
“What’s your phone number?” said Dudko to Alisa Turov.
“I’ll tell you when hell freezes over” she sneered at him, checking her stubby black SMG.
“I wouldn’t speak too soon sweetheart” chuckled Dmitri, “it’s snowing even harder out there now, it’s worse than home.” From along the corridor came more noise: banging and crashing and shouting.
I left the Russians readying weapons and bickering. Andy picked up fresh ammunition and joined me at the front door. It was dark at the front of the house, with no fires. We followed the building line back towards Sir Evan’s office, which was at the narrowest part of the mansion house, in the middle of the complex. The snow was knee deep, the powder sucking at my boots. Frozen moisture pierced every exposed part of my clothing. I saw movement in the trees flanking the drive. I lay down, AK ready.
Andy, behind me, mirrored my movement. His weapon barked. “One down” he said, “get ready to move.”
It took us five minutes to wade through the snow. The window to the office was made of armour plated glass, the anti-blast blinds lowered. I knocked on the window with my balled fist. “It’s Winter,” I yelled.
“There’s no time Cal, let me blow the fucker.” Andy pulled a strip of PE4 plastic explosive from a pouch, moulding it like kid’s modelling clay into strips. He
ran them along the window frame and stuck a detonator cap into the end.
“Leg it!” he grinned.
We waded through the snow and threw ourselves to the ground. The explosion was muffled, absorbed by the heavy brickwork and armoured glass. But the window was beginning to hang crazily out of its frame, designed only for protection from small arms. Using our rifle butts we smashed at the window until it slid out, twisted and fractured from the explosion.
“Sergei, its Cal” I yelled as we smashed at the blinds.
There was no reply from the darkened room.
I hopped up onto the windowsill and aimed my torch inside. The room was wrecked, dotted with smashed furniture. Melissa’s body lay by the smouldering fireplace, bullet wounds running across her chest, hair was bloodied and singed. She looked like a broken doll.
Andy covered me as I dropped down into the shattered room. “Sergei?” I called softly.
“Here” came a quiet voice from the corner of the room, by an upturned desk, “please.”
I pulled the desk to one side.
Sergei, face bloodied, was rolled into a ball. A rifle lay next to him. He smelt of smoke, blood and booze, his trousers stained where he’d soiled himself. “I’ve been a bad person” he mumbled, “a real bastard in my time, but I swear I don’t deserve this.”
“What happened?” I said softly, pulling his arm free.
Andy prowled into the room and checked the doorway. He signalled that it was clear and checked Melissa’s body. He shook his head.
“They broke down the door with sledgehammers and rifle butts” said Sergei, squinting as I switched on a table lamp. “I opened fire and hid behind the desk. Evan fired too, but he hit Melissa I think.”
“Stay there” I said, stepping carefully towards the doorway. The corridor was pockmarked with bullet holes, the bodies of Volk’s followers littering the place. The British bodyguard, Carl, was sprawled near the doorway riddled with bullets, head bashed in.
Sergei stumbled towards me, “Carl saved our lives. When they came and took Evan he appeared and shot many of them. They gave up looking for me and retreated, his attack was so determined.”
“We thought he died earlier” I said, pointing at Carl’s body.
Andy shrugged, “fog of war.”
“They’ve got Sir Evan?” I said as Andy checked the bodies.
Sergei nodded as he shook his bruised head, “yes, I think they thought it was me, in the darkness. It was very confusing.”
Andy had found a powder fire extinguisher and was putting out small blazes. “Cal, they’ve gone.” That’s how battles end, not with trumpets and flags and victory, but with the slow realisation that the enemy fire has stopped, that you’re alive.
And that’s good enough.
I grabbed Sergei’s arm and pulled him unsteadily to his feet, the big man suddenly small, “Andy, get on the radio and call Dmitri’s team forward.”
Moments later we were all in the office. We covered Melissa’s body with a curtain. Sergei, Dudko and Dmitri shook hands and drank vodka from chipped crystal glasses.
“Ah, the FSB bastard” grunted Sergei, “fuck you and your cock-sucking masters.”
“Belov? You traitorous fucking parasite” said Ruslan Dudko, slapping Sergei on the back, “if you were my mark you’d be roasting in hell by now.”
“Who cares?” said Dmitri, “we are Russians in a strange land. That’s all that matters. Fucking hell, with those savages outside I know what the Romans must have felt like.”
I sat down and took my helmet off. Andy passed me a bottle of water, which I sipped then splashed on my face to wash off the smoke and blood, some of which was my own.
“This is incredible” said Sergei, “who were those madmen?”
“Volk has manipulated them” said Turov matter-of-factly, “they do his bidding.”
The Oligarch’s eyes widened as he poured another drink with trembling hands, “surely this is nonsense.”
Alisa looked out of the window and shrugged. Snow gusted through the ragged hole in the brickwork, where we’d blown out the armoured glass. “Really? Tell that to the followers of Aum Shinrikyo who attacked the Tokyo subway with Sarin gas because their leader ordered them to. Seventy-four members of the Branch Davidian at Waco burned to death rather than abandon David Koresh. Charles Manson persuaded people to murder for a crazy ideology he based on the lyrics of a Beatles song.”
“I take your point” said Sergei, “I suppose.”
“He is like Rasputin” said Dudko glumly, “but we will need more than pistols and poisoned cake to kill this one I think.”
I pulled my jacket around me and zipped it up as far as it would go. I fastened my helmet and bombed-up a fresh magazine for my Kalashnikov. “Let’s go” I said.
“Where?” said Dmitri, poking the embers of the fire.
“Counter-attack” I grunted, “at their camp, when they least expect it. I’m not leaving Evan Sands at the mercy of those maniacs.”
“I’m with you” said Alisa, “we find Volk and Van Basten and end this.”
“Roger” nodded Andy, a grim smile on his face, “but I’m out of grenades and plastic explosive. Lots of ammo, though.”
Dudko stepped forward, the powerfully-built FSB commando picking up abandoned weapons and slinging them across his back. “We have laid down supplies in the woods. There’s an RPG, light machinegun and explosives out there.”
“Dmitri” I said, “you are Sergei’s bodyguard. Stay with him, find somewhere safe and wait.”
“Thank you” said Sergei, “but what about the police?”
“Look at this weather. There’ll be no police for hours” I said, “but there’s no way we can clean this one up. My organisation will come up with a plan to divert the blame.” I wished I was as confident as I sounded. Harry had got me out of scrapes before, but nothing like this. And I’d be flying out to the decompression facility. Tidying this shit up was work for politicians, spooks and lawyers, not shooters.
“Come on Sergei Nikolayevich” said Dmitri, shouldering his rifle. “We will find somewhere safe.” He led the shambling Belov out of the room, the Oligarch hugging a bottle of vodka like a comfort blanket.
“Let’s do this thing” said Dudko, “and please tell me I’m allowed to kill that bastard Van Basten and complete my mission.”
“Not unless I get to him first,” I said.
We strode through the shattered house. As they left, the savage followers of Fyodor Volk had left their mark: crazy graffiti, human shit, carnage and corpses. Lots of corpses. Spent cartridges and glass crunched under my booted feet as the cold wind whipped through broken windows. We stepped into the garden, weapons ready.
“Can you think of a good Dante quote for this, sweetheart?” said Dudko to Alisa.
“Not right now, but I remember a bumper sticker I saw in Texas once. Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out.”
“Now you’re speaking my language, sister” laughed the big FSB man, as we fanned out in an extended line and advanced into the woods.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
When we neared the tree line, I called a halt. The others took cover, weapons covering all arcs. My phone gently buzzed in my pocket.
It was Harry. He wasn’t pleased about a demolished country house and thirty dead bodies, but then again who would be? “This is going to have to go down as some sort of full-moon lunacy by these New-Age traveller types,” he grumbled.
“I’m sure the tabloids will buy into it by the time you’ve cast some of your dirty magic over the situation” I said, “domestic terrorism is all the rage since the men with beards went quiet.” I peered out into the woods, the black shapes of the trees broken up by drifts of dirty snow. Boot prints marked the ground where our attackers had been, along with blood trails and the occasional abandoned weapon.
“You sound like shit,” observed Harry.
“I’ve been stabbed, blown up and haven’t slept for thirty-six hours” I sa
id, “apart from that everything is peachy.”
“Personal problem, Winter. So Van Basten’s on the other side?”
“Looks like it. What do you want me to do about him?”
I could hear Harry sipping a drink. “As long as that FSB file is located and Belov lives, then what happens to Van Basten is neither here nor there. He’s also a witness. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. Stay in touch. Do the job, get Belov to wire the funds upon completion then make your way to the RV. You’re off for a very long holiday.”
“Roger,” I said, almost grateful that the Handler sounded like he had a grip of things.
Dudko led us to his hide, some hundred metres into the tree line. His kit was stuffed into a shallow, snow-topped hole, a kitbag containing grenades, explosives and an RPG launcher. The commando also pulled out a light machinegun, a compact RPK74M. He loaded it and slung it across his chest.
We left the hide and crept forward into the woods. We went off the footpath but patrolled parallel to it, Andy on point. We all wore NVGs, four goggle-eyed snowmen crunching through the icy forest. It took us a paranoid hour of creeping about to make the clearing where the New Age traveller camp was meant to be. Above us the night was slowly turning from black to blue as dawn drew closer.
Andy stopped, dropped to his knee and made the signal for us to halt. I saw him looking through the optics on his rifle. I joined him and crouched in the snow. I could make out dark shapes that slowly merged into tents, knackered-out vehicles and caravans. In the distance I could make out a dim light. I pulled up my NVGs and looked through the superior thermal imager on Andy’s rifle. There were no other heat sources I could see.
I crept forward, sticking to the tree line. There was no noise except for the wind and trees creaking under their covering of snow. Ahead of me was a black-painted removal van converted into a mobile home. White graffiti was daubed along the side, crude cartoons of skeletons and ghosts and anti-Capitalist slogans. From a side door in the vehicle I saw a thin slice of yellow light. I whispered into my throat mic, “Andy, cover the removal van. I’m going forward.”
The Ninth Circle Page 21