KILLER IN BLACK a gripping action-packed thriller (Johnny Silver Thriller Book 2)

by PAUL BENNETT

  KILLER IN BLACK

  A gripping action-packed thriller

  PAUL BENNETT

  Johnny Silver Thriller 2

  Revised edition 2020

  Joffe Books, London

  © Paul Bennett

  First published in Great Britain 2013

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Paul Bennett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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  CONTENTS

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ALSO BY PAUL BENNETT

  A SELECTION OF BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  EPIGRAPH

  But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

  Raymond Chandler

  PROLOGUE

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  The town of Gdentsa, Serbian-Bosnian border – 1995

  Our orders were to hold the bridge until it could be blown, thereby cutting off the advance guard of the enemy troops. Shouldn’t be difficult. Horatius had defended the bridge at Rome against a whole army. And we were five. Mercenaries all. Bull, the Jamaican; Pieter, the South African; Red, the half-Comanche Texan, and Stanislav, the Pole. And in charge of this merry band? Me, Johnny Silver. Not so much the black sheep of the mighty Silver merchant-banking family, but the lone white sheep among a flock of black.

  Our advantage over the enemy was that the five of us were all highly trained – Israeli army for me, Bull in Britain, and their respective national forces for the others. The Serbians, who were advancing rapidly, were mostly irregulars, as were the oppressed Muslims we were being paid by.

  The bridge was around 200 feet long with two pairs of pillars each side of a central arch. Below, a river flowed swiftly after the first rains of the autumn. We were stretched out flat at the hump of the bridge so that we could see the enemy and couldn’t be seen by them. Behind us a small party of the local militia were attaching explosive charges to each of the pillars. The air was cool and in it hung that eerie quiet that always seems to fall before battle commences. We checked our assault rifles for the third time – anything to make the waiting easier.

  We were armed with the old-fashioned Russian Kalashnikov AK-47s, heavy to carry about and notorious for jamming at awkward moments – which was all the time when you’re in a fight. I would have preferred my favourite Uzi – shorter, lighter and with a bigger 40-bullet magazine – but they were scarce in these parts. The Kalashnikovs had a theoretical range of 300 metres, but you had to be aiming at a barn before you could be confident of a direct hit at that distance.

  And how did we get in this position? The call had come out from the Bosnian Muslims that they needed all the help they could get to prevent genocide by the Serbs, and we had nothing better to do. Plus we were broke. But it seemed a good cause and that always makes fighting easier.

  Red, with his inherited Comanche eyesight, was the first of us to notice the advance. The enemy was approaching in a line of five files, just narrow enough to fit on the bridge without breaking step and reforming. I gave the order and we opened fire, aiming at legs rather than bodies since we didn’t have to kill, just had to stop their progress. The first file went down. An order was shouted and the second file stepped over the first and marched on. The third file followed and then the next. Seemed like the enemy thought its troops were expendable in the larger scheme of things. Time to get moving.

  I looked back and saw the final preparations being made to blow the explosive charges.

  ‘Couple more volleys,’ I shouted. ‘Then we get out as quickly as possible.’

  We opened fire, still aiming low and produced a slow-down of the column. But they still came on.

  ‘OK, let’s go,’ I shouted.

  But the words were lost in the thundering explosion. The ill-disciplined troops had panicked and blown the bridge. Behind us the two pairs of pillars collapsed, taking the road over the bridge with them. Our exit was cut off. There was only one route out.

  ‘Time to swim for it, lads,’ I called above the noise of the collapsing brickwork.

  Red looked at me anxiously. ‘I can’t swim,’ he said.

  ‘This is a hell of a time to tell me,’ I said. ‘I thought everyone could swim nowadays.’

  ‘What reason would a Comanche brave have to swim? We live on the plains.’

  ‘Hell,’ I said. ‘Well, can’t be a better time to learn. Dump the rifles and let’s go. Bull, you go first and wait for Red. Stan, Pieter, you next. I’ll follow Red down.’

  ‘But …’ Red started to say, his courage about to fail him.

  I grabbed him by the collar of his uniform and swung him round and down through the gap caused by the first pillar collapsing. I jumped an instant after.

  I went under and propelled myself up. The water was cold and we wouldn’t be able to survive for long: hypothermia would set in within fifteen minutes or so. There was a strong current trying to carry us downstream. And where was Red?

  ‘Johnny,’ Bull called.

  Bull had his arm around Red’s chin and was trying to keep him afloat. Red was struggling. He’d take Bull down with him if he didn’t stop.

  I swam across, the weight of the sodden uniform slowing me down. Red was thrashing about, fighting Bull’s effort to keep him up.

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologized in advance to Red. ‘But one day you’ll thank me for this.’

  There was little I could do but choose my spot. I threw a right hook and hit him hard above the left ear. If he’d been standing upright he would have staggered. In the water his head just lolled back and he went limp. Mission accomplished.

  I put a hand under his right armpit and Bull did the same to his left. We moved slowly through the water, heading for the south bank of the river. Then the bullets started raining down. This wasn’t going to work. They would gun us down before we could reach the shore. Bull looked at me, reading my mind. We turned Red around and let the current take us, speeding our progress with the best strokes we could manage under the circumstances. Somehow we made it out of range, and a bend
in the river put us as close to the shore as we were ever going to get. Then we struck out again. Exhausted, we dragged ourselves up a muddy bank and lay there panting.

  We had made it.

  And the moral of the story? Despite appearances, know who your friends are and who are your enemies.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The island of St Jude, Caribbean. The present day

  ‘We need to talk, Johnny,’ Anna said, the furrow of a frown marring the fine bone-structure of her face. ‘We need to talk now.’

  This had all the signs of bad news. Her hands were on her hips for a start.

  ‘Is it about Red?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you want me to go?’

  ‘He came to your aid when you called. You cannot let him down.’ Anna was from Chechnya and despite having good English she wasn’t into idioms and came across as a tad formal at times. ‘To not answer his call would be without honour and I know that honour means a great deal to you.’

  ‘It’s the mercenary code. Support your buddies, even unto death. I couldn’t desert him and live with myself. Couldn’t look at my face in the mirror.’ I paused and returned her frown. ‘If it’s not about Red, then what is it, Anna?’

  I racked my brains for a reason she might be worried or unhappy. As far as I was concerned life couldn’t have been better. Here I was, living the easy life, running a bar on the beach of an idyllic island where the sun shone the whole year round and the sea was a vivid blue. And I had Anna by my side. She was three months pregnant with our first child and blooming. Her hazel eyes sparkled. Her long dark hair had been bleached by the sun to blonde streaks and she looked a million dollars with long, tanned legs in cut-off shorts and stomach still taut in a crop top.

  ‘It’s the gun,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Anything particular about it?’

  ‘The fact that you’ve still got it. Every time I go behind the bar I can see it there, taped on the underside. You don’t need it any more. Get rid of it, please, Johnny.’

  ‘There’s no harm in it. It helps me feel safe and that I can protect you if needs be.’

  ‘Who would want to do us harm? The Russians are not hunting you any more – they’re not even alive any more – you saw to that. Since the shoot out in Amsterdam, the only threat to us has been removed.’

  She was right. I knew that. We were safe here. The Russians had been defeated in a gunfight orchestrated by me between them and their American mafia counterparts. There was no one looking for us now. St Jude wasn’t a hideaway any longer, it was a home. It was just that I would feel naked without the gun. Stupid, I know. But through all my days as a mercenary, and before that in the Israeli army, I had always had some sort of weapon – usually more than one: my favourite Uzi and a Browning Hi-Power handgun.

  ‘What if I keep it in the house?’

  ‘Johnny!’

  ‘OK. OK. I’ll get rid of it.’ If ever the need arose, there was always Bull’s shotgun.

  Bull kept a boat on the dock opposite the bar and ran fishing trips for the tourists. He had a shotgun hidden away in the engine compartment. Old habits die hard.

  I took two cold beers from the fridge and wandered across to the boat where he was swabbing the decks in advance of a party arriving from the hotel. Normally, the first reaction of his trippers was a stunned silence. Bull was six foot six with a shaved head and muscles that rippled on his ebony body.

  And he walked with a limp where the Russians had hamstrung him in Angola.

  My memento of the botched mission to Angola was a star-shaped collection of scars where six bullets had ripped out the muscles in my left shoulder. We made a fine pair. Each morning we would swim half a mile up the shore and jog back to the bar for a cold beer – he outpaced me on the swim, where my arm power let me down, then I caught up on the jog, where it was his turn to struggle.

  ‘Take a break,’ I said, handing him a beer.

  He held the bottle against his forehead and then took a swig.

  ‘I wondered how long it would be,’ he said.

  ‘How long what would be?’

  ‘Before Anna got to you.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Mai Ling had a word with you,’ I guessed.

  He nodded. ‘United front and pick us off one by one.’

  ‘Good strategy,’ I said.

  ‘Too good for us,’ he said, breaking into a deep laugh that resonated off the polished wood of the deck.

  ‘Deadlier than the male,’ I said.

  ‘Good job we never met any female mercenaries,’ he said. ‘We’d be stretched out in our graves by now, staring up at tombstones.’

  ‘Reckon so,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe they’re jittery, too,’ he added.

  ‘Wouldn’t blame them. We don’t know yet what we’re getting into. Red was pretty vague on the phone, like he thought the line might be tapped. But then again he always did have a vivid imagination.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Bull said, shaking his head, ‘let’s just pray he’s not going to drive us anywhere.’

  Red’s style of driving was to have either the brake or the accelerator pressed right down to the floor. He thought he was the best driver in the world. We knew he was the worst. Still, so far he hadn’t managed to kill us.

  A thought struck me.

  ‘What did you do with the shotgun?’

  Bull smiled. ‘I buried it in the garden in a waterproof bag.’

  I smiled back. ‘Maybe they’re not so smart after all.’

  ‘What did you do with the gun?’ Anna said. ‘Didn’t bury it, like Bull?’

  ‘Would I do that?’

  ‘Just the sort of sneaky thing you would do.’

  I sighed. ‘All right, I’ll dig it up and throw it in the sea. When I get back. If you should need it while I’m away, it’s to the right of the fridge in the bar.’

  I was packing clothes in a bergan, a kind of supersized rucksack with a multitude of outside pockets capable of taking several magazines of bullets. Anna was folding the clothes in neat bundles and passing them to me. I stuffed them in, filling all the gaps.

  ‘This is going to be the first time we have been apart since we moved here,’ I said. ‘Four months of living and working together, although you can hardly call the beach bar work. I shall miss you.

  She moved closer and put her arms around me. She kissed me long and lingering.

  ‘Let’s leave the rest of the packing till the morning,’ she said.

  I woke early and lay on the bed with Anna cradled in my arms, her head on my chest. I stared through the window of the long narrow cabin that was our home until we managed to build something bigger and better, and watched the bloom of red expand in the sky as the sun rose. I never tired of this spectacle. I wondered what the rising sun looked like in Texas – could anything be as beautiful as this? Maybe we all thought that our own sunrise was the best in world. Home is where the heart is.

  I eased myself from underneath Anna, put on some shorts and a T-shirt and went out to sit on the jetty, where Bull was making his boat safe while we were away.

  ‘Any second thoughts?’ he said.

  ‘About Red, no. About me, yes.’

  ‘Don’t go all cryptic on me. You know I’m just a simple soul.’

  ‘Wherever we were fighting in the past I only had myself to think about. Now I have Anna. I don’t know what effect that will have on my actions. I’d hate to think I might put any of you at risk because I felt the need to pull away from danger – playing it safe because of my other responsibilities.’

  ‘Comforting thought,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I replied. Maybe it would have been better to keep my doubts to myself rather than risk them becoming contagious. ‘Hell,’ I said. ‘We function on instinct a lot of the time, that instinct won’t change. It’s never simply just been about self-preservation. Loyalty to each other – to the group of us – has been a big factor. That wo
n’t change.’

  ‘Good to hear it,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of that when you’re guarding my back. We’ve got a long journey in front of us. I hope you’re not going to be philosophical all the way.’

  ‘Just had to get it out of my system.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been here before, remember?’

  Bull had a beautiful wife, Mai Ling, and a son aged three years, Michael, whose heart transplant had been funded by our last operation in Amsterdam. They hadn’t affected his actions in the heat of battle, so why should Anna affect mine?

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘One last swim before we hit the plains that Red is always going on about.’

  ‘No swimming there,’ he said.

  ‘But what will we find to do instead?’

  ‘Cause a whole lot of trouble for someone, I expect.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Our journey started with catching the hotel’s shuttle launch to Barbados. We stuck out like sore thumbs among the guests finishing their holidays, clad in their brightly coloured clothes, laughing and chattering, high on the endorphin surge produced by a great holiday. It wasn’t just our clothes and solemn demeanour that made us stand out. My father, Gus, had said that there was something about our eyes, Bull and me. Something cold and calculating. Something that said not to mess with us because the consequences could be fatal. It was as if we had become different people from the moment we had left the island. We were no longer the laid-back guys who ran a beach bar and fishing trips; our systems were now moving to the alert like boxers with their weight on their toes ready to strike. And our bergans were out of place among the designer luggage. Our clothes – chinos, boots and T-shirts with cutaway sleeves – were functional rather than frivolous.

  The second leg was a flight to Dallas Fort Worth where the other business class travellers avoided our gaze – after the Russian episode we had more than enough money to afford the luxuries of life. Even the flight attendant wouldn’t look us in the eye.