The Hijack

by Duncan Falconer

  Zhilev looked up from the photo to find the glimpse of blue water in the distance. The journey from Ostende to Istanbul had taken him six days, which he would have enjoyed more if not for his neck although the vertebrae had been less painful than expected. He had started this day early, an hour before first light, just outside the town of Bursa, south of old Constantinople across the Denizi Sea, having spent the night on the back seat of the Volvo. It was the last day of driving and he wanted plenty of time at his destination to organise the next leg of the journey.

  He had chosen to spend every second night sleeping in the car or on the ground immediately outside of it, not because he was short of funds, but as part of a self-imposed hardening process. He did not feel operationally fit yet and was determined to take advantage of the driving phase to toughen up as much as possible. He still considered himself too soft by Spetsnaz standards and felt the exposure to the damp and cold nights and rugged ground would help prepare him. Sleeping outside would also hone his senses and help him back into half-sleep, a resting mode where he remained constantly aware of every sound and movement around, a condition all Special Forces operatives had to achieve, ideally before an operation since the first night would be too late to begin developing it. But it was not always possible to create the right atmosphere in training and it usually took several days in a live operational environment with the threat of death or capture to unlock that particular sense. Judging by the way he had slept the night before, Zhilev felt he was close to getting the old form back, but he was also aware that too much exposure to the elements might weaken his immune system, which was why every second night was spent in a warm bed following a hot bath and a hearty meal.

  Zhilev pulled a map from an inside pocket, folded to show his location, and studied it. He was satisfied with the distance he had covered so far that day. The sight of the Mediterranean was a welcome one and stopping to enjoy the view for a few minutes was essential psychological therapy. It was as important to look after his mind as his body. Stress could be more debilitating than a broken limb.

  Zhilev had been to this part of Turkey before but many years ago. He liked it here where the Mediterranean lapped against the shores of Turkey, Greece and old Yugoslavia. He would spend the night in the open since he was feeling so well, and, besides, the next phase was the move into the operational area and the fewer chances he took the better. Staying in a hotel or bed and breakfast had to be regarded as a risk because it meant having to communicate with people, exposing his face and possibly providing identification such as his passport.

  Zhilev dipped the last piece of bread into the honey pot and chewed it slowly before swallowing it. To top off his meal he reached into a side pocket and pulled out a chicken leg wrapped in paper. This was the last of a dozen he had bought from a village that morning as a snack while driving. It was a large leg, barbecued in the Turkish style and seasoned with herbs. He bit down on the bone halfway along it, his powerful jaws crushing it easily, and moved it around inside his mouth to trap the knuckle between his molars and pulverised it. It seemed excessive to eat the brittle bone as well, but it was another habit he had developed in the Spetsnaz where the philosophy of wasting anything edible while in the field was heresy. He chewed thoughtfully, masticating the bone, meat and skin until it was a poultice before swallowing it. Then he put the rest of the chicken leg in his mouth and crunched on it, like a hound, chewing it thoroughly.

  A car approached from behind Zhilev’s Volvo, a white Mercedes saloon that looked old but in fair condition. Zhilev stopped chewing and lowered his heavy head out of habit, avoiding eye-to-eye contact, and looked through his straggly hair.

  Three men were in the car, two in front, one in the back, all looking at Zhilev through closed windows as they drove by.They appeared to be locals but it was impossible to say at a glance. They continued up the road at an easy speed and drove over the crest and out of sight.

  Zhilev continued chewing while he watched the spot where the car had disappeared. He wasn’t feeling paranoid but there was a scent of trouble in the air and he could clearly smell it. There was something vaguely familiar about the car that niggled him. He was sure he had seen it somewhere before. Then it came to him. That morning in the village where he stopped to buy the chicken legs; after parking the car he had taken his backpack out of the boot and carried it to the barbecue stand. The Mercedes had been parked across the square. He did not remember seeing the men, but had they been there they would have seen him buy the food, return to the car, put the pack back into the boot and drive out of the town. Anyone treating a pack with such reverence was bound to attract the attention of people whose livelihood was banditry.

  Zhilev swallowed his food, stood up, his heavy knees creaking, walked around to the boot of his car and pulled on the handle to check it was locked. There had been little danger getting the nuclear bomb through customs in England and Belgium. He had discarded the case in England and placed the block in the boot. The odds on being searched were low and no one would have taken notice of a block of wood that Zhilev would explain away as something used to hold up the car if a wheel needed changing. As for radiation-detecting devices, there was little chance of the plutonium registering on them. The radiation was minimal at best, and inside its specially designed skin it was impossible to detect. The device had not left his side since he took it out of the cache. He had slept beside it, taken it to shops and cafés with him in his backpack and even carried it with him on the ferry.

  Zhilev was about to head to the driver’s door when he stopped. The white Mercedes was returning.

  Alarm bells rang in his head and he quickly scanned around for a weapon, a piece of wood, anything he might use. In the business of survival, one did not consider coincidences. He thought about getting into his car and driving off but then decided that might not be the best tactical move available to him. They might try and block him and since the Mercedes was as strongly built as the Volvo, if they crashed, he risked injury or having to stop. Worse still, if they got to him before he could get out of his car he would be at a great disadvantage. He needed the freedom to make the first move. Taking the upper hand whenever possible was the prudent course of action, and that often meant starting the fight.

  Zhilev stepped back behind his car and picked up a large rock. The Mercedes slowed as it approached. Zhilev kept the rock out of sight.

  The three men stared straight at him as their car drew level and stopped on the other side of the road. The driver leaned out of his open window and said something that Zhilev did not understand and chose not to respond to.The one in the back, sitting forward in his seat, said something just for the other two to hear. The driver attempted to communicate with Zhilev once again, this time using hand gestures which looked like he was asking for directions. Zhilev remained like a statue, his sullen eyes reading theirs, waiting for the sign that would launch him into attack. He felt no fear, and was even beginning to wish they would climb out. He knew what he was going to do and unless they had guns, he felt confident. He’d had many fights during his military career, and because of his size, and being Spetsnaz, he was often a target for more than one man at a time. Fighting was a pastime in the Russian military and he’d never lost, even the day in Sevastopol when five sailors attacked him in the street when he was not expecting it. His success was partly because he never got drunk, and partly because he went for maximum damage with every blow and was prepared to wait for or create the opportunity. His problem was that he sometimes lost control, and on that day, because they had jumped him, he did not stop even after three of them had been laid unconscious and the other two were begging for mercy. He continued to stamp on and kick them, and when he walked away one had permanent brain damage, one a broken neck and the other three a dozen major bones broken between them.

  The rear door of the Mercedes opened and a foot touched the ground. This was the moment Zhilev was waiting for and the furthest he was prepared to let things develop beyond what till t
hen could possibly still have been innocent.

  The door opened fully and the man’s other foot came out. Zhilev gauged his moment. He noticed the man was concealing something and, as he leaned out of the car to stand, Zhilev planted a foot forward like a javelin thrower, cocked the rock behind his head, and, with all the might he could muster, launched it. The rock left his hand as if released by a catapult and flew across the road with such speed none of the Turks had time to react. The rear passenger began to turn away as the rock hit the top edge of the door, bounced off and struck him in the jaw. He rolled back on to the rear seat and the driver pushed the accelerator to the floor and the Mercedes screeched away, the man’s feet dragging along the road. At the same time the front passenger leaned across the driver and fired a single bullet from a revolver, which struck Zhilev’s car a metre from him.

  Zhilev picked up another rock as he considered his options but there were not any that did not call for him leaving his car, which he was loath to do. He could grab his bag and run but that would put him in the position of the hunted and he felt he was in the strongest position by his car. Besides, that would mean leaving behind the rest of his equipment without which he could not complete the operation as planned.

  The Mercedes drove to where the road dropped out of sight, turned sharply, and headed back towards Zhilev.

  Zhilev gauged the oncoming car, weighed the rock in his hand and decided on a more unpredictable tactic.

  He stepped on to the rear bumper of his Volvo, on to the boot and then up on to the roof. Legs apart, he faced the oncoming Mercedes as it bore down on him. The passenger leaned out of his window with the gun in both hands and aimed with one eye shut while trying to hold it steady. It was plain the man had little experience with a pistol. He fired. Zhilev felt the bullet pass but held his ground, the rock raised behind his head. As the car came into range and before the man could squeeze off another shot, Zhilev hurled it through the windshield and into the driver’s face. The vehicle careened out of control and Zhilev watched with horror as the Mercedes lurched towards his Volvo. He jumped the instant of contact, landed on the boot, and, as the Mercedes bounced away, swerved across the road and smashed into a pile of rocks, Zhilev hit the tarmac, falling heavily on to his hands and knees. He got to his feet, moving towards the Mercedes quicker than his legs could get under him; he fell down and ran on all fours a few paces, before getting to his feet to run forward.

  The front passenger door opened on the other side of the car and the man with the gun climbed out groggily, stepping backwards, the revolver dangling heavily in his hand. As Zhilev got up speed, the man started to raise the gun. Zhilev jumped on to the bonnet, more athletically than seemed possible for him, pushed his feet forward and slammed them into the Turk’s chest as the revolver went off wide. Zhilev followed through and landed hard on to the man’s chest with his knees, knocking the wind out of him. Then he held his head, picked up a rock and brought it down with such force on the man’s forehead, he split it. Despite the awful injury the man still struggled, purely a survival reaction as there was no fight left in him. Zhilev raised the rock once more and smashed open what he had already cracked.

  Zhilev’s eyes immediately searched inside the car for the other occupants.

  The driver was lying across the seats, unconscious, his head gashed open, the rock sitting in his lap like a pet, but the back seat was empty and the far door open.

  Movement caught his peripheral vision and he looked towards his own car. Shock flooded his heart. The boot was swinging on its sprung hinge, popped open by the impact with the Mercedes, and the Turk was running down the road.

  Zhilev dropped the bloody rock, pushed away from the Mercedes and loped across the road to look in his boot in the vain hope the backpack with the log inside was there, but it was not. He broke into a run.

  The Turk glanced over his shoulder to see the big man coming after him and suddenly he was no longer sure this was such a good idea. It quickly became obvious that running along the road was not going to lose the man who might be slower, but the Turk was weighed down with the backpack. To the right the landscape was rocks and harsh vegetation requiring even more effort and probably a broken ankle to cross.To the left the ground dropped steeply to a line of pine trees, which appealed to the Turk. He left the road, dropped over the lip and immediately picked up speed down the slope as gravity aided his forward momentum.

  Zhilev left the road at the same time on a converging path, like a large, old cat, determination etched into every thrust of his powerful legs. He was running as if at the head of a charge of fierce warriors, the pedigree in his genes ten thousand years old, driven on by an unshakable force, focused, unswerving and unforgiving.

  As the Turk swept into the wood, smashing his way through branches with little care for his eyes, a glance over his shoulder at the beast bursting through the trees just rows away confirmed his suspicion that this was indeed a very bad day.

  The heavy backpack dropped from his hands as its priority withered, and as it bounced on the ground the log flew out ahead of him.The Turk found himself following it because they were both taking the natural line down the steep hill. For a second, part of the Turk’s mind wondered why he had stolen a log, and why there was a maniac chasing him for it. Then something gripped the back of his neck brutally from behind and the various factions of his consciousness joined in a single screaming thought. But Zhilev did not pull him back. As the two men continued at top speed down the hill, his fingers wrapped themselves tightly on either side of the Turk’s neck and squeezed, not to strangle but to control. If the Turk thought the next move was to be brought down, he was wrong. A shove pushed him slightly faster to match the speed of his pursuer. Then came a thrust to the side, a subtle change in direction at first, followed by a more aggressive push off course, and, for an instant before his head struck, the Turk saw the tree that was to kill him. There was a series of loud cracks, the sounds of his nose, jaw and forehead breaking, an instant of pain and then it went dark for ever.

  Zhilev continued down the hill, releasing the body as it slammed against the tree, his eyes locked on to the log as it bounced ahead of him. It was unlikely the device would explode because of the safety features built into it, but as Zhilev watched it take the pounding he wondered how reliable those features were.

  Zhilev was several trees behind the log when it burst out of the bottom of the plantation, rolled across a patch of open ground, hit a wickered fence and came to a stop. Zhilev put the brakes on and slipped on to his backside, skidding the last few feet to end up alongside his atom bomb.

  He put a hand on it, fearing it might fly off again as he fell back to gulp the air. He could not remember the last time he had run so fast and so far, probably on his Spetsnaz selection course a thousand years ago. He rolled over on to his side, his face in the grass, gasping heavily, mucus and saliva dribbling from his mouth, then pushed himself up on to his knees. A bolt of pain shot through his neck to punish him further but he used it to mask the hurt of the exhaustion and forced himself to get up.

  The sound of a goat bleating focused his mind. Goats were domestic and that meant humans could be close by. He looked around and saw several of the small, rugged animals the other side of the wicker fence munching calmly while looking at him.

  A scan further afield revealed an old man outside a simple, run-down hut, and, like his goats, he was slowly munching something as he watched Zhilev.

  Zhilev looked back up the hill to see if the Turkish bandit was visible. He could just make out the man upright behind the tree on which he was impaled, but the wood was too dense from the old man’s perspective to see that far.

  Zhilev picked the log out of the damaged wicker fence and glanced at the old man who was no doubt its owner. Zhilev pulled on the fence in an effort to put it back into place but when he let go of it, the section collapsed completely. He glanced at the old man again who had not moved. Zhilev chose to ignore him and the fence and headed ba
ck up the hill and into the wood.

  A few minutes later, he emerged from the plantation carrying the backpack, the log inside, and climbed back on to the road.The cars had not moved and he walked at a brisk pace towards them, focusing on the open boot of his Volvo, praying the contents were untouched.The Turk with the smashed skull was still lying on the roadside beside the Mercedes. As Zhilev closed on his car he could see the top of a large bag and breathed a sigh of relief. The Mercedes driver was still lying on the front seat, unconscious. It was fair to assume no other car had been by, or, if one had, it had kept going.

  Zhilev inspected the damage to his car. The back wheel was buckled and unusable. Changing the wheel would not be a cure. The Mercedes was also inoperable, not that he would have used it anyway.

  There was no choice but to walk, a decision he accepted without a second thought.

  He took his walking boots from the car, sat on the bumper and pulled them on, stowing his shoes in the backpack.

  He pulled his pack on to his back, hoisted the large, heavy bag out of the boot, looped an arm through the carrying straps and hung it from his shoulder. It felt comfortable enough to walk with and he lowered it back down on to the road along with the backpack. He looked at the mess of cars and bodies. If he was going to ensure his security he would have to clean up before leaving.