Ben had only a cup of coffee in front of him. He generally didn’t eat much before a battle. And a battle was coming that day. That was for sure.
‘Finished?’ he said, draining the last of the bitter dregs. ‘Then let’s go shopping.’
‘Boy, you’re so much fun to be with.’
It took an hour of scouring the city before they found what Ben was looking for. The backstreet army surplus, camping equipment and sporting goods store was run by a little old man with a Fu Manchu beard and a shopkeeper’s apron, who never stopped smiling the entire time. Ben was wondering if a stroke had frozen his face in a permanent grin.
The store had everything Ben needed. He built a pile of goods on the counter as the old man went on grinning, now maybe for another reason. Two pairs of zoomable field binoculars; a pair of walkie-talkie radios with a kilometre range; a coil of strong, thin rope; a sheet of plastic waterproof tarp; two identical heavy-duty survival knives with blackened carbon steel blades, pretty faithful copies of the US military M9 bayonet right down to the lug on the scabbard to enable the weapon to double as a scissor-action wire cutter.
Madison was watching Ben as though wondering what they needed so much kit for. He held up one of the knives and asked her, ‘Do you know how to use one of these?’
Madison frowned at the weapon. ‘Uh, is the pointy end the part you stick into the other guy?’
‘Good enough.’
Ben was about to settle up with the old man when he noticed the item hanging on the wall at the far side of the store, and asked to see it. The old man happily took it down to show him. The crossbow’s stock was made of glass fibre painted in gaudy camo colours, and up close the weapon looked cheap and flimsy. ‘Let me show you something else,’ the old man said. Still grinning, he vanished into the back shop to return a moment later holding another crossbow. This one was a very different proposition. Black and businesslike, with a carbon fibre stock, scope, onboard quiver and a carrying sling like a rifle’s.
‘An Excalibur hunting crossbow, made in Canada,’ the old man said proudly. ‘Expensive. But for the buyer who appreciates real quality, what is expense?’
Ben would sooner have been able to purchase a firearm, but this was Europe, not America. Firearms required permits; bows didn’t. ‘I’d need the right kind of bolts,’ he said. ‘Hunting tips.’
‘May I ask what kind of game you have in mind?’
‘Wolves. Big nasty ones. Lots of them.’
The old man reached under the counter and came up with a box full of aluminium crossbow bolts. Their bladed tips were so razor sharp that you could shave with them. He explained to Ben that from this bow, these bolts would launch at four hundred feet per second. Half the speed of a pistol bullet. Nothing on earth could outrun them. Not even the biggest, baddest wolf.
‘How much for everything?’ Ben asked.
‘I like wolves,’ Madison said as they were leaving the store. ‘I hate the idea of skewering one with an arrow.’
‘I feel the same way,’ Ben said.
By mid-morning they were setting off in the stolen Range Rover, using Ben’s smartphone as a sat nav to guide them the ninety-plus kilometres to Zarko Kožul’s private residence. Madison’s thick black mane of gypsy ringlets was tied back under the black baseball cap. Her combat hairstyle. Her eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator shades. She had gone very quiet, sitting motionless by Ben’s side, emanating a brooding energy that told him she was mentally preparing for whatever they might find when they got there. He left her to it, and drove in silence with just his dwindling supply of Gauloises and his own thoughts to occupy him.
As far as he could, he’d worked out his strategy. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that they would find Dragan Vuković at Kožul’s private residence. If his suspicions proved right, Ben intended to capture Kožul and force him into luring Dragan out to meet him with the offer of a cushy full-time position in his gang. No wannabe gangster would refuse such an opportunity. Dragan would be dead before he’d even realised he’d walked into a trap.
That was, if things went to plan. Assuming they could get past the guards. Assuming a lot of things.
As midday approached, the city was a distant memory and the terrain had grown forested and mountainous. Kožul’s use of a chopper to commute back and forth to his Belgrade base meant that he could choose to live in the middle of nowhere, and that was exactly what he had done. The satellite led Ben onto a succession of ever-smaller, rougher roads, not a farm or homestead in sight for kilometre after kilometre. When the metalled road ran out altogether and became a steep, rock-strewn track, he shifted the Range Rover’s four-wheel drive into low range and locked the axle differential to help the transmission scramble over the rough ground. If you were going to steal a car, make it one appropriate to the conditions. The Range Rover bounced and lurched on, kilometre after kilometre, higher and deeper into the craggy mountains where majestic white-tailed eagles soared and circled far overhead.
Eventually, the 4×4 could go no further. If the terrain didn’t kill it, the hot, complaining engine would. Ben pulled up and shut it down. ‘We walk from here.’
Madison nodded. Her mental preparation was over. She was ready.
Ben jumped out of the cab, opened up the tailgate and hefted out the big holdall he’d bought from the old man in Belgrade to carry his gear. Silence hung over the mountains, just the whistle of the cold wind through the pines and the distant shrill cry of a bird of prey. By his reckoning they were still about six kilometres from Kožul’s place.
He shouldered the bag and nodded to himself.
He was ready, too.
They hiked onwards, speaking little. Madison had removed her jacket and carried it slung over her shoulder. She moved with agility and ease over the heavy terrain. Ben felt confident that he could trust her capabilities, if things got nasty. Which he was confident they would. He sensed she was thinking the same thoughts, about him, about what was coming, about potential outcomes. The banter between them was gone, just as Ben had experienced a thousand times before between military comrades when a fight is imminent and the mind clears itself for more serious considerations.
Sometimes the rocky track took them through wide open terrain, where Ben kept glancing up and around in paranoia that Kožul might have spotters posted on the higher ground to watch for approaching danger. There were none. Other times, the path of the track was swallowed up by a thicket of gnarly trees and overhanging branches, and Ben could feel the presence and cautious eyes of the creatures that lived there, watching unseen from the deep cover of the forest. Serbia was home to brown bears as well as wolves.
Ben felt a sense of kinship with the wild things. His quarrel was with a far more dangerous species. Predator against predator. And he was the most dangerous of all.
The track left the forest behind and followed the curve of a sweeping rocky ridge that teetered high above the wooded valley below. Ben no longer had to check the GPS coordinates. He was one with this place. As he made his way towards the vertiginous edge of the ridge, he looked down and saw that he’d calculated their bearings perfectly.
There, two hundred feet below them, nestling at the end of a private road that cut through the trees, lay the remote private residence of Zarko Kožul.
Chapter 50
Ben had seen criminal kingpin mansions as grandiose and magnificent as regal palaces, but one glance at the distant group of buildings told him Kožul’s home wouldn’t be joining that list. He took a pair of binoculars from the kit bag and settled himself behind a large rock to observe the place more closely. It was more like a paramilitary compound than a country estate, roughly three acres in size and oval in shape. Judging by the halo of thick green woodland that densely surrounded it, the whole area had been levelled out of what had once been forest. The approach road carved through the trees and led up to a set of tall iron mesh gates inset into the high-security fence that encircled the compound. Once inside th
e gates, the road snaked towards a collection of buildings that occupied a rough semicircle across the rearmost half of the fenced area.
The largest of the buildings was the house itself. It was a rambling single-storey hacienda-style affair with a lot of big windows. Aside from the expanses of glass and the terracottatiled roof, every inch of the house was painted bright red. Red walls, red doors and window frames. A fancy red mosaic-pattern patio area stretched out to the rear, with a covered pool. The terrace at the front of the house was enclosed behind a low wall, also painted red.
Madison had grabbed the second pair of binocs and positioned herself a few metres away from Ben among the rocks. ‘Looks like hell,’ she said. ‘The man has taste, make no mistake.’
Ben scanned back across the compound. Moving clockwise from the house he traced the semicircle of other buildings, lingering for a moment on each one to study it. Nearest to the red house was a whitewashed block building with a flat roof and square windows facing in the direction of the gates. It could have been anything from a storage facility to an accommodation block for Kožul’s men. He guessed Kožul must keep a number of personnel on full-time duty here at the compound, maybe alternating them in shifts with the men who guarded the Rakia.
A little distance from the whitewashed building stood a large sheet-metal hangar that was very likely to be for Kožul’s helicopter. The hangar’s steel roller doors were closed, making it impossible to tell whether the chopper was inside or not. A smaller building adjoined the hangar, block-built like the other but windowless, unpainted and rough-hewn with a rusty corrugated roof. Maybe a workshop or generator room, Ben thought, judging by the aluminium electrical mast sticking upwards from its side wall with wires stretching to each of the buildings and the house.
Nearest to their side of the fence was an elongated carport, open front and back, under which sheltered a variety of utility vehicles and big-wheeled offroaders. Those might belong to the men, Ben thought, or else maybe were Kožul’s own little fleet.
Madison was still watching the house. She said from behind her binocs, ‘I can’t see a living soul down there.’
‘Nor me.’
She lowered the glasses and glanced anxiously across at Ben. ‘What do we do if the sonofabitch isn’t home?’
‘Then we hang around until he is.’
‘Could be days.’
‘I’m sure you’ve been on stakeout plenty of times before now,’ he said. ‘There are worse places.’
‘Sure are. This is like a picnic next to the bayous of Louisiana. Or the wilderness of northern Minnesota. Shot my first man there, after stalking him for four days straight, no food, no sleep. He was holed up in a cabin with a thirty-ought-six hunting rifle and all I had was my Kimber.’
‘Who fired first, him or you?’
‘I’ve been shot at plenty of times. If you’re thinking I’m liable to go all hysterical when the shit starts hitting the fan, think again.’
‘That’s good to know.’
She paused a beat, then asked, ‘What was your first time?’
‘First time doing what?’
‘Killing a man.’
He thought about it. ‘I don’t remember.’
Madison humphed, put the binocs back up to her eyes and resumed watching, now scanning away from the house and sweeping her field of vision carefully back and forth. Ben looked up at the sky. A bank of dark rainclouds was moving in from the east, pushed by the cold mountain wind that was whistling around their ears. He crouched lower behind his rock and used the sheltered space to light a cigarette. He offered the pack to Madison. She waved it away and went on watching.
A moment later she stiffened and said, ‘Wait, I see something. Six o’clock from the western edge of the fence, in the woods.’
Ben shifted position and snatched up his binoculars. The view in his lenses blurred as he swivelled across to pinpoint what she’d seen. Then he spotted them. ‘Got it. Good call.’
The figures of two guards were slowly ambling among the dense thicket of spruce and beech trees that enclosed the compound. Ben zoomed in as close as he could without losing focus. They were big guys in keeping with Kožul’s evident recruitment policy, both in their thirties. One had a beard and the other had long hair, which made them look like irregular militia troops in their surplus-store combat fatigues and black woollen beanie hats. Both were armed with what looked to Ben like full-size M16 battle rifles. Out here in the wilderness there was no need for compact urban-style weaponry, just as keeping up with the latest Belgrade dress fashions didn’t matter quite so much. The bearded guy was holding his gun diagonally across his chest and the longhaired one had his slung pointing downwards behind his left shoulder. Casual carry positions, the body language of for-hire soldiers with not much to do and little interest in their duties but following orders nonetheless. They were talking. Longhair turned towards his comrade, who rocked backwards on his feet as if he was laughing at a joke.
‘That’s something, at least,’ Madison said in a hopeful tone. ‘If the guards are on patrol, must be they’ve got something to guard, right? Means Kožul might be home.’
‘Or they might be guarding something else. For all we know, they’ve got forty tons of heroin or Saddam’s missing WMDs stashed in that big building down there.’
‘My gut tells me he’s home,’ Madison said firmly. Her eyes had narrowed to fierce slits and her jaw was set. ‘He’s home, all right. Probably had a late night and is tucked up all nice and warm in his little bed. Which would make this the ideal time to hit the sonofabitch.’
Ben didn’t want to approach the compound until the time was right. The time wouldn’t be right until he knew for sure Kožul was at home, because to spring an attack on an empty house would be disastrous. They had to wait for visual confirmation. Ideally for Madison, Kožul would magically signal his presence by appearing at the window waving the Bach manuscript in his hand and yelling, ‘Yoo-hoo, come and get it.’ Ideally for Ben, when Kožul showed his face Dragan Vuković would be standing there next to him, with a big target stuck to his chest. For both to happen at once seemed unlikely, but stranger things had happened.
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘We keep waiting and watching for now.’
They kept waiting and watching. Time ticked slowly by. The two guards continued their endless meandering circuit of the perimeter. Ninety minutes later, they were joined by another pair who emerged from the block building. Ben watched as the four men stood around for a few moments, visible in a clearing among the trees, talking and sharing cigarettes. Then they split back up into twos and resumed their patrol of the woods outside the fence. The doubling the guard had to mean something, but Ben didn’t know what.
Still no movement from the red house.
Ben unzipped the crossbow from the bag and used his waiting time to familiarise himself with how it worked. The prod was so powerful that the bow couldn’t be drawn back into the firing position without a special rope cocking aid. The weapon might be super-effective and quieter than any silenced firearm, but the trade-off was that it would be as slow to reload as an antique musket. Ben cocked it, fitted one of the hunting-tipped bolts into position and six more into the onboard quiver, ready for action. Being shot with a bullet wasn’t a nice prospect at the best of times, but the idea of an aluminium shaft driving a razor-sharp arrowhead through your body at four hundred feet per second was ghoulish enough to make even Ben shudder.
They waited. The sky darkened steadily as the rainclouds closed ominously in, ready to dump a million gallons of rain over the landscape at any moment. The guards kept circling. Madison’s body was tense and her face was tight and pale as she constantly scanned the compound through her binoculars.
‘This is taking too damn long,’ she muttered.
‘Look on the bright side,’ Ben said. ‘No guard dogs, at least none I’ve seen or heard yet.’
‘Maybe Kožul’s allergic.’
‘Bad for him, good for us.’
&n
bsp; Two hours and sixteen minutes into their stakeout, the first heavy splat of a raindrop hit the rock next to Ben. Within the next minute, the sky opened up and delivered its promised downpour. Ben unrolled the waterproof tarp from the bag, crawled over to Madison’s position and the two of them huddled together under their makeshift bivouac shelter as the rain drummed hard on the plastic sheet and ran down in rivulets to pool in the hollows around them. Up close like this, Ben could feel the tension coming off Madison like heat ripples.
Two hours and forty-two minutes in, the rain stopped and the sun crept out from the clouds, painting the landscape in vivid colour as though the deluge had washed off a layer of dust. Three minutes after that, something else happened.
‘You see them?’ Madison said in a voice husky with anticipation.
‘I see them.’
Chapter 51
The procession of vehicles was visible to the naked eye from a long way off. The sunlight peeking freshly out from the dissipating rainclouds glinted off glass and paintwork as they coiled their way closer along the approach road to the compound. Through his binoculars Ben counted eight of them, black, boxy, top-of-the-line SUVs with tinted glass. Moving single-file like a military convoy. Fat all-terrain tyres throwing up dirty spray from the puddles left by the rain. Headlights blazing like a twenty-one-gun salute, even in the renewed brightness of the afternoon.
‘Hello,’ Madison said. ‘We most definitely have company.’
‘Quite a bit of it.’
‘Bring it on,’ she replied. ‘I’m dying of boredom here.’
Ben lost sight of the convoy as it reached the ring of trees. He anticipated the moment the lead vehicle would reappear close to the compound perimeter, and regained visual contact. The convoy slowed to a halt at the closed gates. Either they were dead on time for a prearranged rendezvous or someone had radioed ahead to say they were incoming, because the guards seemed to be alerted to the imminent arrival. The woods patrols converged towards the gates while four more armed men emerged from the block building and came running to greet the new arrivals.
The Bach Manuscript Page 28