Chris Ryan Extreme: Hard Target: Mission Four: Fallout

by Chris Ryan

  Aimée nodded. She opened another file and browsed through it. ‘There must be fifty transcripts here,’ she said. ‘Maybe more.’

  ‘All between Ledinsky and Sotov?’

  ‘Some are encrypted. I can’t decode them.’ She smiled apologetically at Gardner. ‘My skills don’t extend to decrypting stuff, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We’ll find someone,’ Gardner said. He ran a hand over his stubble. It felt greasy. ‘From what you’ve just told me, it sounds like Sotov and Ledinsky – the Russian mafya and government – knew.’

  ‘I’d go further than “sounds”. I’d say “one hundred per cent proves”.’

  ‘But Russia’s a close ally of Iran,’ Gardner said. ‘It built their nuclear power station, for fuck’s sake. Screwing them over doesn’t make sense.’

  Aimée gently rested her fingers on the keyboard. ‘You know, these files might be the only evidence of Russia actively taking part in the attack.’ She opened another file and furrowed her brow. ‘Look!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There are some pictures on the drives too.’

  Gardner knelt beside Aimée for a closer look. His hand brushed against her thigh and felt something warm expand and contract in his chest.

  ‘They don’t exactly look like Sotov’s holiday snaps,’ he said, looking at the thumbnails of a dozen pixellated images in the folder. Aimée blew one up to full-screen. Just a mess of colours, kind of thing a five-year-old would bring home from school.

  ‘They don’t look like anything at all,’ Aimée said.

  ‘Whatever they are, someone doesn’t want other people looking.’

  Gardner stood up and dug out his mobile. He hit dial on Land’s contact details.

  Athens was an hour behind London, which made it 23.19 wherever the fuck Land was. Probably still in his office, Gardner guessed from the sound of his voice. ‘Yes?’ He croaked his words. They were strung out like guitar strings.

  ‘You’ll want to hear this,’ Gardner said.

  A pause. ‘Make it quick.’

  Gardner told Land about the factory, about the mafya lying in wait for him and the explosion. When he was finished, Land said simply, ‘Is that it? You’ve got Aimée.’

  ‘There’s one other thing,’ Gardner said. ‘We pulled some files out of the factory right before it turned into a giant fucking firework.’

  ‘Oh yes? What kind of files?’

  ‘Transcripts, mainly. Some of them are encrypted, but the general picture is clear enough. The Russians knew about the Israeli plot. In fact, it seems like they even helped make it happen.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Land chuckled.

  ‘I’m looking at the transcripts right now,’ Gardner told him. If it hadn’t been for Aimée, these would’ve been destroyed back at the factory. They don’t want this information to get out.’

  Land was quiet for a long while. Gardner heard the gaslight crackle of a cigarette end lighting up.

  ‘Right,’ he said finally. ‘Where are you right now?’

  ‘The Palace Hotel.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Land exhaled smoke. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

  5

  0034 hours.

  Fifty-four minutes later Gardner’s phone sparked into life. Land.

  ‘I’ve got you a way out of there,’ he said.

  ‘Go on.’

  Aimée was lying asleep on the bed. Gardner stayed awake. One of them had to. But he wouldn’t have slept anyway. His mind was jumping through hoops, trying to figure out what the Russians’ fucking game was. Tension tied his back muscles into figure-of-eight knots. He paced up and down, intermittently sitting on the desk chair opposite the bed. Red Bull from the mini-bar on the desk, Glock 17 in his lap, eyes on the door.

  ‘There’s an airstrip just outside Malakassa, about forty kilometres north-east of Athens. Be there in an hour. I’ve arranged for one of our private planes to escort you both back to London.’

  Land killed the call. Gardner placed his right hand on Aimée’s shoulder, gently nudged her. She moaned. Her breath tickled the locks of her hair lying across her lips. He rubbed her arm. This time she woke up.

  ‘Time to bug out.’

  ‘If you’re going to wake a girl up at this time, you really should have a cup of hot chocolate ready,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, love, no time. You’ll have to make do with cold water.’

  ‘The attractions of your lifestyle are endless.’

  Aimée carried the MacBook and flash drives, Gardner stuffing the Glock under his shirt. He’d weighed up their exit strategy and decided not to risk leaving through the front door. The same receptionist was likely to be on duty and if anyone came asking questions, he’d have the exact time of Gardner and Aimée’s departure noted on the computer system. So at the end of the corridor they turned right instead of left and down a marble staircase that led into the courtyard. From their room Gardner had spotted at the other end of the courtyard an ornamental gate which led to an alleyway adorned with overhanging vines and murals. At the far end the alley opened onto a busy main street. They headed towards a 24/7 car-rental joint. It was dark in the streets, save for the Parthenon lit up on top of the Acropolis.

  The rental place was a local business. Gardner parted with €90 for a black BMW E46 sedan, 325i model, 2.5-litre engine. He was left with the short end of €60. Aimée kept the laptop and flash drives with her in the front seat. Gardner whacked the air-con on full blast.

  Four kilometres north of the Acropolis, Gardner hit the toll road onto the same E75 motorway he’d driven on from Belgrade to Brezovan. In Serbia the road had been fairly busy, but, in Greece at nearly one in the morning, their BMW was the only vehicle on the road. Aimée checked more files on the second flash drive.

  Gardner chewed up thirty-three kilometres of motorway flanked by half-constructed villas and rundown hotels, cordoned-off ruins and ramshackle farms. He spotted the Malakassa turn-off and felt a band tighten around his core.

  Malakassa was a dot-on-a-map kind of place and had a half-arsed feel to it, as if the builders had given up partway through. They entered from the south, which seemed to be the centre of town. A couple of kilometres north and the bare-knuckle range of Mount Parnitha loomed. Gardner felt the knots on his back begin to loosen. At fucking last. We’ll get home and be done with the Firm. Gardner wasn’t exactly a romantic type of guy, but he imagined spending the night with Aimée in a cottage somewhere in the Cotswolds, wrapped up on a sofa, flames crackling in the fireplace while droplets of rain tap-tapped on the old window panes.

  The airstrip was a ribbon of smoothed-out clay about two kilometres long in the middle of a grassy field. A farmhouse to the east of the airstrip looked abandoned. A Gulfstream 100 private jet was waiting at the strip’s southern edge.

  Gardner switched off the headlights and hit the brakes. The BMW halted a hundred metres from the airstrip.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ Aimée asked.

  ‘Something’s not right.’

  Aimée scrunched her eyes up.

  ‘The soil on the airstrip,’ Gardner said. ‘It’s undisturbed. And the whole place is dead. This look like a plane that just landed to you?’

  ‘Maybe the plane was already waiting here.’

  ‘A luxury jet just happens to be lying dormant a kilometre north of nowheresville in Greece?’ Gardner reached for the Glock he’d dumped in the side pocket of the door. Thirteen rounds left and no spare clips.

  ‘I’m going ahead on foot. Wait here till I signal,’ he said, stepping out into the night. The Glock felt cold in his hand. The full moon cast a thin wash of light over the landscape.

  Sixty metres from the airstrip Gardner checked out the terrain around the Gulfstream. Christ’s-thorn bushes and bundles of rocks were scattered parallel to the airstrip. The farmhouse looked abandoned: black holes for windows and worn car tyres dumped by the front door. A Grand Cherokee Jeep was parked by the farmhouse. Tinted windows, eng
ine off.

  So where the fuck’s everyone?

  He looked back to the BMW. Saw the faint glow of the MacBook screen reflecting Aimée’s face.

  Ca-rack!

  The first shot seemed to come from nowhere, like a quake rolling under the valley floor. Soil burst up a few inches ahead of Gardner. Dirt sprayed his face. He couldn’t place the shot. His first instinct was to hit the ground, but his training told him that he had to reach proper cover, fucking immediately.

  A second shot, this one ripping into the ground an inch from his feet. Now he had a bearing on the sound. He looked to his west. Towards the farmhouse. The Jeep. The headlights pushed out tubes of light, and between the rifle cracks the bass note of its engine revving up.

  A third flash now. The round whizzed past Gardner close enough he could feel the heat coming off the cartridge. There was fifty metres separating him from the BMW. Too far to go back.

  The Gulfstream’s wheels, he thought. At ten metres, that was the closest protection. He broke into a low run, scrambling forward on the rugged surface. White flashes from the Jeep, one after the other.

  Five urgent strides and Gardner was at the wheels, midway down the underside of the jet and directly beneath the wing canopies. Each wheel was about half a metre wide and half as tall. He hunkered behind the wheel. A triple volley of rounds slammed into the rubber. The Jeep picked up speed and headed away from the Gulfstream and towards the BMW. Gardner knew that if he stayed behind cover, Aimée would be exposed. But he didn’t have a choice; if he broke free from cover now, he’d be fucking toast.

  Cursing, he hustled round the side of the wheel to avoid the Jeep’s shifting line of fire. The shots came in a staccato rush which made him think there was more than one shooter in the Jeep. Semi-automatic weapons had a smooth rate of fire, and the space between discharges on a single-shot trigger selector tended to be even. Some of the shots came on top of each other. Definitely more than one shooter, he figured.

  Gardner returned fire, putting four rounds down in quick succession. The maximum effective range for the 9x19mm Luger rounds chambered in his Glock 17 was about a hundred metres. In the hazy blur of daylight he’d halve that number, but on a crisp night like this the rounds travelled clean and they travelled true. Each round lit up the Gulfstream’s bodywork.

  Nine rounds left.

  Sixty metres from the airstrip the Jeep slowed next to the BMW.

  A shadow emerged from the Jeep’s front passenger door and approached the car. He could see Aimée inside the BMW. She was shutting the MacBook and reaching for the door lock selector. Gardner shaped to race out from behind his cover. The shooters inside the Jeep had other ideas. Bullets sounded and pinned him down. He crawled around to the rear of the wheel, his body heavy with sweat and failure.

  A break in the gunfire and the growl of the engine. Gardner rolled out from the wheel and adopted a kneeling firing position, Glock held in a sturdy firing position, his fake left hand bent at a ninety-degree angle at the elbow and across his chest to act as a firing platform beneath the tensile wrist of his right hand. He saw the shadow dragging Aimée back into the Jeep. Now the Jeep was growling again, ready to race away.

  Ninety metres, he reckoned. Nearly a hundred. Nearly out of range.

  He took a deep breath, relaxed his shoulder muscles, tensed his wrist. Put down two rounds at the shadow, who was now trying to shoot up the BMW’s tyres. The bullets cracked both ways through the cold sky. He missed the shadow each time but as he was about to loose a third round, two brilliant-white flashes spat out the rear of the Jeep. The first slapped into the Gulfstream’s wheel, puncturing the rubber. The second hit Gardner’s right arm. He recoiled. The shadow was back inside the Jeep. The Glock fell away from Gardner’s hand.

  When he looked up, the Jeep was gone.

  Gardner dragged himself to the BMW. He slumped in the driver’s seat and felt the searing hot pain screaming on his right arm. Aimée’s scent was still in the air. Then it was overwhelmed by the cordite on his body.

  He put a call in to Land. The line stammered with a series of clicks as it struggled to establish a connection. Then he got a shrill beeping tone. He hung up, waited a minute and dialled again. Still engaged, so he turned his attention to his wound.

  A graze ran the length of Gardner’s good arm. Up close it was worse than he’d first assumed. A five-millimetre-deep trench of necrotic tissue began just below the short head of his bicep, carved up into his rotator cuff and signed off at the clavicle bone at his shoulder. There was blackened skin at the frayed edges of the trench. It looked like he’d grown impatient with a slow-healing wound and ripped out the stitches.

  Still, could’ve been worse, Gardner told himself. If the bullet had penetrated the flesh, you’d be haemorrhaging blood and miles from the nearest doctor.

  Gardner U-turned the BMW and headed back to Athens.

  I need to speak to Land. I need answers.

  And I need to find out who the fuck’s snatched Aimée.

  6

  Hamburg, Germany. 0512 hours.

  The Panthers Gym was located down a nothing backstreet in the fashionable quarter of Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel. Spitting distance from the boutique shops and the free-trade coffee houses and the students in tight jeans and scruffy haircuts, it was open twenty-four hours a day, which indicated that the manager knew his customers well. Specifically, career-minded guys in their mid-thirties to early fifties who needed to cram in forty minutes of stress-busting weights and cardio whenever their schedules permitted. So, 24/7 opening hours. But no staff at the desk at five-fifteen in the morning, to save money.

  So it was easy for Charles Kruger II to enter the place and locate the target.

  Kruger didn’t do gyms any more. He had the overall definition to show for twenty-five years of crunching abs and hacking squats, the classic X-shaped figure. But his chiselled body was offset by his face. Untrimmed beard that looked like a rat had laid down and died on his jaw. Roman nose that lost its way halfway down his face and wound up somewhere approximate to his right cheek. About the only thing that was perfect about Kruger’s face was his teeth.

  The gym was practically empty. He made his way past the rows of dormant treadmills and exercise bikes and hit the weights area. Dumb-bells were lined up on a rack to his right. In front of him several exercise benches and a cable-crossover machine.

  The target was to the left.

  Kruger had spent the past seven days monitoring the guy, looking for a pattern. Like most guys in his position, the target tried to avoid having any semblance of a routine. He took a different route to his workplace each morning, slept in a different hotel every night of the week. He was careful, Kruger conceded.

  But not careful enough.

  The target was grunting his way through a set of wide-grip bench presses. His back was arched against the bench and his feet planted firmly on the floor as he strained to push up the bar. Kruger counted three 20kg weight plates and a 10kg plate on each side. The bar counted for another 20kg by itself. The guy was pressing a total 160 kg, or twice the weight of the average man. That was another thing, Kruger thought: his employers had told him that the target was a big guy and would present a formidable opponent. Big as an ox and twice as fucking dumb, they said.

  Didn’t bother Kruger none.

  After all, the bigger they come… Well, let’s just say you ain’t met the guy who could beat you, Kruger told himself.

  ‘Need a spot?’ he said.

  ‘I got it,’ the target grunted. Then his elbows seemed to lock and his grip on the barbell wavered. The guy shut his eyes and gave it everything he had.

  ‘Here, let me help you out,’ Kruger said. The guy couldn’t talk. His disc-shaped face bloated like a pig’s bladder as he fought to keep the barbell suspended eight inches from his chest.

  Kruger paced around to the back of the bench press. The only other gym user, a wafer-thin strip of a guy busting out 10kg dumb-bell curls in front of the mi
rror, glanced over. Kruger shot him a nod that said, Get the fuck out of here. The guy ditched the weights. Bugged out. Kruger tended to have that effect on people.

  ‘OK, I got it,’ Kruger said to the target.

  The target breathed a sigh of relief as Kruger clasped his hands around the grip.

  Then the target opened his eyes, and the relief washed away.

  ‘What the fuck—?’

  He eyeballed Kruger’s right arm. The entire lower portion of his arm beneath the elbow was prosthetic.

  Kruger released his left hand. He held the barbell’s full weight in his right hand but despite the heavy burden, he displayed no sign of stress. Indeed the opposite was true. Kruger seemed as if he could hold onto that barbell all day long.

  ‘Your name is Stefan Margitz, correct?’ said Kruger, his voice finally betraying his Texan drawl.

  ‘I don’t understand—’

  Kruger eased his grip on the barbell a little. It dropped five centimetres, fifteen from the target’s chest.

  ‘Fuck. OK, I’m Margitz,’ the guy said. He stared at the barbell. His eyes leaked pure, unfiltered fear.

  ‘I have a message from a mutual friend. Dmitri wants his money.’

  ‘I don’t have it with me.’

  Kruger dropped the bar two more inches. Margitz’s lungs filled with terror.

  ‘Choose your words carefully, pal.’

  Snatching at air, the target said, ‘Please, just give me two more days.’

  ‘You got two more seconds.’

  ‘Shit, shit…’

  Kruger shook his head. ‘Last chance.’

  Margitz’s face tightened up like a screw in a hole. He seemed to find courage from somewhere. ‘Fuck it, I don’t have it. I’m warning you, asshole. You’d better lose the fucking weight.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘I’ll grab that hand of yours and shove it so far up your ass you’ll be tickling your fucking tongue.’