by Chris Ryan
‘Where’s the nuke now?’
‘Hidden at Alexei’s dacha. In a village called Zukotka, to the south of Moscow.’
‘What’s the deal with security?’
‘Minimal. Two or three guards. Token resistance.’
Bald made a face. ‘I thought all those mobsters have big fuck-off BG teams.’
‘Not Alexei. That piece of shit thinks he’s untouchable,’ Gabulov replied with a sneer. ‘He knows no one would dare make an attempt on the life of the president’s brother.’
‘How long have we got?’ asked Porter. ‘Until the attack?’
‘Not long,’ Gabulov replied. ‘We think the attack is going to happen soon. Before daybreak.’
‘Based on what?’
‘My people have been watching Alexei since we found out he was the traitor. He left for the dacha a short while ago. We think he’s gone there to make his final preparations before the attack.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Alexei doesn’t use that house in the summer. He spends his weekdays in his penthouse in the city, with his mistress. Some dancer at the Bolshoi Ballet. Suddenly leaving for the dacha late at night, alone, is strange behaviour.’
‘If your brother is already at his country pad, he might launch the attack at any moment,’ Bald pointed out.
‘It won’t happen. Not just yet.’
‘How’d you know?’
‘Alexei is sending his family and friends away. Out of the country, to Colombia. To protect them. They’re booked in on flights to Bogotá. He won’t launch the attack until they’re airborne.’
‘What time’s their flight?’
‘Five o’clock, tomorrow morning. We think Alexei will launch the attack any time after that. That’s why you’ve got to leave immediately. This is the only chance we have to stop him.’
Porter said, ‘How is he going to deliver the bomb?’
‘We don’t know. We’re still trying to figure that out. Our best guess is a truck or van, parked in the basement.’
Bald shook his head. ‘Those type of nukes are on a short timer. Whoever activates that package will never make it a mile out of the blast radius before it goes off. It’s a suicide mission.’
‘Alexei wouldn’t kill himself. He’s a schemer, not a martyr.’
‘He must have some other way of delivering the bomb,’ Porter said. ‘There’s no way you could set that timer and leg it out of the city in time to escape the blast, that’s for sure.’
Gabulov said, ‘Whatever his plan is, you’ve got to stop him. If you fail, five thousand deaths would be just the start. Every Chechen would rise up against us. I’d be forced to react. My brother and the hardliners would get their wish. They’d drag us into a long and costly war on our border. Many thousands more would perish.’
‘What happens once we get the nuke?’
‘You’ll return it to my men. Once we have the bomb, I’ll give the word for the prisoner to be released. He’ll be dropped outside the British embassy twenty-four hours from now.’
‘If the job isn’t done?’
‘Then, your friend will be killed.’
There was a glow in the president’s eyes that suggested a limitless capacity for inflicting pain. Porter had seen that look only once before, seventeen years ago, on the face of a child soldier in the remote jungle of Sierra Leone. There were some people you just never wanted to cross. Viktor Gabulov was clearly one of them.
The president straightened up. ‘You’ll leave at once. Tarasov will brief you on the rest of the details.’
‘What about your brother?’ Porter asked. ‘What do you want us to do with him?’
‘We might have to rough him up,’ Bald suggested. ‘Find out where he’s hiding that nuke on his dacha.’
‘Torture him if you have to,’ Gabulov replied coldly. ‘But bring him back to me alive. I want to look that treacherous fuck in the eye. Then he’s going to find out the meaning of pain.’
FORTY-FOUR
The president handed the floor to Tarasov. The three-hundred-and-fifty-pound man-mountain with the drooping facial muscles and the gold-capped dentures. He took over the meeting while Gabulov and his heavies filed out of the room, disappearing back down the hallway. Rat Face ducked out of the games room as well, returning several moments later clutching a rolled-up map which he unfurled on top of the pool table. Bald and Porter found themselves looking at a detailed layout of Alexei Gabulov’s dacha.
Tarasov struggled to mask his disappointment as he pointed out security features, points of entry, cameras. Maybe the lieutenant is pissed off that he’s not going with us on the op, Porter considered. Or maybe he’d just prefer to be torturing the shit out of us. On reflection, he decided the latter was the more likely explanation.
Bald frowned at the map and said, ‘What kind of guns are his guards packing?’
‘AK-47s,’ Tarasov replied in his thick Russian accent. ‘All three of them. Nothing else. They aren’t expecting trouble.’
Porter said, ‘If we’re gonna do this, we’ll need some weapons of our own. We can’t go in there empty-handed.’
‘No problem. We give you back your guns when you leave. The Yarygins. Okay?’
Bald pulled a face. Tarasov noticed it too and slanted his tiny black eyes towards him. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Aye,’ Bald said, ‘there is. We’re going up against heavies kitted out with assault rifles. We’re gonna need more firepower than a couple of fucking pistols.’
‘Is not possible. Boss Man says you only use guns you brought with you. Same deal with car. You are two Englishmen on your own, we don’t know you.’
‘Scottish,’ Bald growled. ‘I’m Scottish.’
Tarasov shrugged.
Porter thought, No Russian fingerprints. Nothing that could be traced back to President Gabulov or his men. The only way to prevent a civil war. Completely deniable. Like the countless ops they’d done for Six over the years.
Except this time, we’re working for the enemy.
‘This is bollocks,’ Bald went on. ‘We didn’t sign up for this.’
‘You have problem, take it up with Boss Man,’ Tarasov replied, sounding like the world’s most threatening customer service representative. ‘He won’t change his mind. This is how it’s going down. You accept, or you can go feed the fishes.’
Porter took one look at the stone-cold look on the lieutenant’s face and knew there was no point arguing their case. ‘What’s the area around the place like?’ he asked.
‘Zukotka is rich village. All big businessmen have country dacha there. Lots of private security. You make big noise, someone will call police. Make this job quick. Get in, then get out again. No fucking about.’
Porter said, ‘What about the nuke? Where do we take it?’
Tarasov reached down to his jeans pocket, dug out a burner and handed it over. A flip-phone handset, manufactured by a Chinese company Porter had never heard of, pre-dating the burners they’d been given in London by maybe a decade. The kind of handset only ever used by taxi drivers on the subcontinent.
‘You find the nuke, you call the number on this phone. We give you address. You take the bomb, bring to the location. Hand over to us. Then you go home, to your shit country.’
Bald said, ‘What about Street?’
‘Your friend will wait here. We’ll keep him company.’
‘Not gonna work. You bring him to the RV. We’ll make the swap.’
Tarasov shook his head. ‘Boss Man gave us instructions. We don’t let him go until we have the bomb and the brother. Then we make the call and release him.’
‘Fine. But you’d better not lay another fucking finger on him until he’s free.’
The Russian smiled pleasantly.
‘How long will it take us to get there?’ Porter asked.
Tarasov rubbed his jaw with one of his huge hands. His fingers were gnarled and laced with scars. ‘Three hours. Maybe less, if you drive like madman.’
Porter
checked the time on his G-Shock. 0114 hours. If they left straightaway, they would hit the village at around four-thirty in the morning. According to what the president had told them, Alexei Gabulov was already en route to the dacha, but he wouldn’t set off with the nuke until his loved ones were safely in the air and on their way to Colombia. Their flight departed at five o’clock in the morning.
That doesn’t leave us a lot of time.
Tarasov reached into his jacket and pulled out a photograph from his breast pocket. ‘You’ll need this,’ he said as he handed the snap to Porter.
Porter studied the picture. It had been taken some years ago, judging by the dated clothes and the bleached colours. The photo showed Gabulov and his brother on a hunting trip. They were kneeling beside a slain bear, smiling for the cameras as they celebrated their kill. Three other figures posed behind them, but their faces had been pixelated beyond recognition. Viktor Gabulov was kneeling to the left of the bear. Alexei was on the right, his face circled with marker pen. He looked shorter and fatter than the future president, with a bushy beard, bright blue eyes and thin, arched eyebrows. In the snap he wore a woodsman’s cap and a camo-pattern hunting jacket.
Porter tucked the photo into his jeans pocket.
‘One more thing,’ Tarasov said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Message from the Boss Man. You try to warn your friends at the embassy, we kill the prisoner. You try to escape, he dies. We find you too. Cut you up real bad. Cut off your noses. Then your ears, toes, fingers. Dicks. We send you to your families, bit by bit.’
The threat hung heavy in the games room, like hanging fruit. Tarasov still wore the same dull, flat expression on his face. A guy like that, thought Porter, he would do anything his boss told him too, no questions asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We got it.’
They wrapped up the briefing. Then Rat Face was called back into the games room. He swept in carrying the two MP-443 Yarygin pistols he’d taken from them at the boathouse, one in each hand. Tarasov handed over the fake documents belonging to Bald and Porter. Passports, wallets, cards. Porter felt like a convict being released from prison, collecting his valuables from the duty guard.
The wad of roubles had mysteriously disappeared. Which wasn’t wholly surprising. The employee benefits of the average Russian henchman weren’t great, Porter suspected. The pension plan was probably whatever you could get hold of and stash under your bed.
The two operators tucked away their documents and grabbed their pistols. Porter tucked the flip-phone in his trouser pocket and folded up the map. He cast a final longing look at the spirits behind the bar. More than twenty-four hours had passed since he’d slipped up at the safe house. Now he was in grave danger of getting the shakes – and causing the mission to fail.
He shut out the voice. Followed Tarasov and Bald out of the games room.
They left the mansion through the front door this time. Which looked a lot like the rooms at the back of the house, only with more gold leafing and bigger chandeliers. The G-wagon was waiting for them in the front drive. One of the twins had taken their keys and brought the vehicle round. Like a valet service, minus the friendly smile and the tip. The twin tossed Bald the keys and gave him a fuck-you smile. Porter swung round to the boot, flipped it open and took out the handheld GPS from the gym bag. Then he jumped into the front passenger seat.
At 0121 hours, they drove out through the front gate.
‘This is a bad fucking move,’ Bald muttered as he steered the G-wagon back down the approach road. ‘Working for that mob.’
‘We don’t have any choice, Jock. You heard what Gabulov said. They would have killed us unless we agreed to the job.’
‘They might do anyway.’
‘They can’t. Gabulov needs us.’
‘Right now he does. But once we’ve delivered him that bomb, it’s a different story.’
‘You don’t think the Russians will hold up their end of the deal?’
Bald pursed his lips. ‘You don’t know them, mate. I do. I’ve worked with the Russians before. They’re slippery bastards. I don’t trust any of them further than I can piss.’
‘Me neither,’ Porter replied, clenching his jaws. ‘But our hands are tied. This is the only chance we’ve got of getting Street back.’
‘Let’s hope they stick to their word, then. Because when Vauxhall finds out we’re doing the president’s dirty work, they’re gonna hit the roof.’
‘We’re trying to stop a nuke. They can’t have a problem with that.’
‘That’s not how Six’ll see it. They’ll say we helped the enemy. Got involved with the Russian mafia. They’ll have our heads for this.’
‘Not if we give them Street, they won’t.’
‘Maybe,’ Bald conceded. ‘But they’ll still be mad at us for going against orders. Either way, they won’t be giving us a hero’s welcome when we get back.’
Porter sighed. ‘We can’t worry about that now. All we can do is focus on getting hold of that package. If we fail, Six will definitely have our balls for breakfast.’
‘If we fuck this one up,’ Bald replied, ‘Six will be the least of our worries.’
Zukotka was forty miles due south of Moscow, a short hop from the other major airport at Domodedovo. Which meant having to double back on themselves, making the long journey south again, on the same potholed stretch of road that had led them to the mansion, minus the Russian drivers. At one-thirty in the morning, the roads were empty apart from a few long-haul trucks. Bald and Porter had a clear run all the way to Moscow. The first bit of good luck they’d had on the op.
They drove on in absolute darkness past beaten-down fields, black under the huge grey dome of star-pricked sky above. Moon gleaming faintly behind ribbons of steel grey cloud. All around them was the brooding, hollowed-out emptiness of the Russian countryside. Bald pushed the G-wagon as fast as he dared, which was roughly twenty miles an hour faster than they had averaged on the drive up.
After an hour they stopped to refuel at an all-night petrol station, somewhere south of Sergiev Posad. Bald filled up the tank, giving them enough gas to make it to the dacha, plus whatever they would need for the onward journey to the RV with Tarasov.Then they raced on.
Bald kept the G-wagon needle hovering on the eighty per mark. Forty miles later they reached the Moscow ring road. They took the road south, motoring past Elk Island.
Fifty miles from their destination.
0319 hours.
Seventy minutes to the dacha.
This is gonna be fucking close.
Bald said, ‘What’s the plan once we reach the brother’s place?’
Porter said, ‘There won’t be time to do a proper recce. We’ll do a drive-by of the place before it gets light. Size up the defences.’
‘It’ll have to be a smash-and-grab job. Charge in, grab the package and get the fuck out of there.’
‘Unless those Russians bug out before we rock up.’
‘They won’t, mate.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right. Otherwise, we’re in deep shit.’
‘Like usual, then,’ Bald snorted. ‘One thing’s for sure, I’m gonna need a drink when this is over.’
You and me both, thought Porter. His left hand was beginning to tremble. Drops of cold sweat formed on his brow. Withdrawal symptoms.
Another couple of hours, and he’d be feeling the shakes big- time. Once the shakes took hold, Porter knew, he’d be useless in a firefight. All he could do was pray that they retrieved the nuke before that happened.
‘If we make it out of here alive, I’ll be sticking to the orange juice,’ he said. ‘But I’ll get the first round in. Least I can do, after you saved my bacon at the safe house.’
Bald stared at him. ‘One pint, for saving your arse? Fuck me. And there I was thinking us Scots are tight-fisted.’
They shared a grim smile. Porter looked at his mucker, at the mate he’d known for longer than anyone, apart from his d
aughter. They’d survived some crazy shit together. Drug-fuelled rebel ambushes in Sierra Leone. Serbian hit squads. But none of it compared to facing down a Russian mobster armed with a backpack nuke.
We might be going into the unknown, Porter thought, but I’ve got a mate by my side. Someone I can trust with my life. Jock’s the best bloody soldier I’ve ever known.
The night sky was already beginning to lighten as they took the next exit off the Moscow ring road. Four o’clock in the morning, at the height of the Russian summer. An hour until dawn. Porter was sweating freely now. Nausea clogged his throat. The wound on his left forearm throbbed. He was exhausted and stressed and he needed a drink.
Just hold on for a little longer. Not long to go now.
They arrowed south to Zukotka, on a downward trajectory through mile upon mile of deserted motorway, flanked by corridors of steep pine forest. After twenty-two miles Porter directed Bald to make a right off the main road. They rolled west for three miles, then took the next left.
Twelve minutes later they reached Zukotka.
0417 hours.
The village was basically a road, with about twenty Soviet-era homesteads scattered either side of it. Timber-framed houses built shoulder-to-shoulder on tiny plots of land, the paint on the boards peeled, the sash windows broken or boarded up, the footpaths knotted with overgrown shrubs and weeds. Something that people had aspired to own forty years ago, now reduced to a derelict shack.
‘This is where the brother’s country home is?’ Bald queried as he glanced out of his side window. ‘It’s not exactly the Four Seasons round here, is it?’
‘Keep going,’ Porter said.
They carried on for half a mile, until they reached the new part of the village. The old Soviet shacks were replaced by huge new developments set behind granite walls dotted with security cameras at regular intervals. Even the road was better, smooth and recently relaid. A demand by the new residents, perhaps. The new rich had certain expectations. They couldn’t be expected to drive their shiny cars down rickety old tracks. So the blacktop had been relaid, probably at significant local expense, to stop the elite from upping sticks.