Chris Ryan Extreme: Hard Target: Mission Four: Fallout

by Chris Ryan

  All of them.

  13

  1111 hours.

  Van Brakelstraat was a narrow street off the arterial road snaking its way alongside Rotterdam’s docks. The turning was signposted by a Russian Orthodox church on the left, a crucifix planted like a flag atop the cupola, its golden surface turned a muddy bronze by the clouds.

  They walked down the street, sticking to the shadows cast by the three-storey buildings, hunched and Gothic. After two hundred metres they came to a residential block with a brown façade like someone had coated it in old carpet. It had rusting gates and neo-Nazi graffiti sprayed over the walls. Some kind of shop occupied the ground floor. There was no sign, just a paper notice taped to the reverse of the glass upper part of the door that read: ‘DISCREET SHOP. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.’

  Stokes finished reading the notice and said, ‘Weird.’

  ‘No,’ Gardner said. ‘It’s a porn store.’

  Stokes lifted his hand to his forehead and peered through the grime-coated glass. ‘Well, whatever it is, there’s nobody home. Maybe those GPS coordinates weren’t spot-on.’

  ‘No, it’s definitely here,’ Salvago said, irritated.

  Gardner settled the lovers’ tiff with a boot to the door. The glass pane shattered. Then he raked away the remaining shards with his prosthetic hand. At least there’s one use for this fucking thing, he thought, reaching through the hole with his left hand and unhooking the latch. He twisted the doorknob and gestured to Salvago and Stokes.

  The shop was dingy and dark. A musty, stale aroma hung in the air. There were rows of ancient DVDs, porn titles ranging from softcore to extreme. Most of the covers were coated with greying dust. Gardner clocked security cameras fixed to each corner of the ceiling. He headed past a rack of sex dolls and plastic vaginas towards the counter, to the top of which were taped faded posters advertising local prostitutes and massage parlours. There was no cash register. Behind the counter was an unlocked door, and Gardner opened it. Fluorescent tubes mounted on the ceiling flashed on like paparazzi. They lit up a staircase leading into a basement. Gardner started down the stairs, trying to get a bearing on the room below. Stokes and Salvago followed close behind. Gardner felt the temperature drop with every step. It was cooler and felt damp in the basement. By the time he’d reached the bottom step, the bristles on his right forearm were standing on end.

  His first thought was that it didn’t look like a standard basement. The walls were lined with metal sheets, the floor tiled. The ceiling was divided into solid-looking panels. Overall it resembled an underground bunker.

  The space was also a lot bigger than he expected. It stretched for forty metres, was roughly the same width and seemed to be divided into three distinct areas. This place is fucking huge, Gardner thought. It must stretch underneath several buildings. He’d seen smaller underground car parks back home.

  In the nearest section stood a group of metal drums marked with hazard labels and giving off a toxic smell.

  ‘Piperonyl methyl ketone,’ Salvago said at his shoulder. ‘PMK. It’s synthesized from sassafras tree. They use it in perfumes.’

  ‘In porn-shop basements?’

  ‘They also use it to make something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Take a look,’ Salvago said, nodding towards the next section.

  Four benches almost filled the basement’s middle area. They were cluttered with portable heaters, fans, distillation flasks and funnels, packets of surgical gloves and breathing masks, plus a large waste pipe that ran the length of the place. A tablet-pressing machine was connected to a mobile power generator to the left. The machine had a wide metal base shaped like a tree trunk with a sequence of punches aligned above and below the die plate that chemical compounds were fed into. Rotating turrets were screwed like shoulders to each side of the unit and at the top a piston connected the turrets along its horizontal plane. A solid-metal punch was suspended above the die at the top of the machine. The head of the punch was about ten centimetres across and the sharp tip about a centimetre. At the bottom of the machine a silver slide collected the pills as the die spat them out. A few lay in the bottom of the tray and Gardner picked one up. They were eggshell white with a blue smiley face on them.

  Gardner looked to the far end of the room, where a third area had been established. Clear plastic bin liners were filled with tens of thousands of the same small white pills. A ladder on the back wall led up to a metal cellar hatch that opened upwards in the middle, like horizontal double doors. Gardner figured they fed the pills up the ladder and into the street, where they were loaded into a disguised lorry.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Stokes said.

  ‘There must be fifty thousand pills in those bags,’ Gardner said.

  Salvago examined the table apparatus. ‘At least. And it’s not surprising. The Russian mafya play a major role in ecstasy production. The chemicals are smuggled in from China to Russia, then shipped here where they make the pills and then put them into lorry containers to ship via the North Sea to England.’

  ‘I thought Amsterdam was where the drug action is?’ Stokes said.

  ‘Amsterdam has the rep, but Rotterdam is the real drug capital of Europe. About six thousand people are employed by the drugs industry round here.’

  ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Gardner said. ‘The mafya don’t use big developments like this to produce drugs. It’s too clunky. Nowadays they have mobile vans for that kind of stuff. And you can practically turn a toilet cubicle into an ecstasy factory. Why go to the risk of having such a large processing plant – and then have no kind of security on the door? It makes no sense.’

  ‘And I don’t see Sotov anywhere,’ Salvago said.

  Gardner was drawn to a light coming from the far end of the basement. It glowed green and bright, like a cathode ray. As he neared it, Gardner realized the light was coming from a separate room, a laboratory of some kind. He signalled for Salvago and Stokes to stay back. He stepped inside and ran his eyes over the equipment. Computer servers, scales, navigation charts, what appeared to be a radar monitor, and a pile of chunky old mobiles with aerials sticking out of them. Cables snaked from the devices along the ground to the generator.

  Gardner didn’t see anyone. But he heard rapid, shallow breathing. At his four o’clock.

  He stilled.

  ‘Joe? Is that you?’

  She was hiding the other side of the doorway. She held a spanner in both hands. She had a look in her eyes – not fear, Gardner thought. More like anger. But that look drained from her face as she dropped the spanner and pounced on Gardner and hugged him and held him tight.

  ‘You’re warm,’ Aimée said. ‘Your hands are warm.’

  Gardner felt a bubble rise in his stomach and burst in his chest.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  Aimée sighed into his shoulder. ‘They put a bag over my head. We were in a car, then on a plane. Then they took me here.’ She paused. ‘I heard other voices with you—’

  Salvago and Stokes stood in the doorway. He introduced them to Aimée and said, ‘They believe Land is involved in the nuke plot.’

  Aimée said nothing. She peeled away from Gardner and made her way to the computers. ‘They trashed the MacBook, but they weren’t clever enough to find the flash drives.’

  She tapped away at the keyboard. Gardner noticed that one of the memory sticks was plugged into the front of the computer tower. Aimée drew up several Word files on the screen.

  ‘I still can’t break the encryptions,’ she said.

  Salvago stepped forward. ‘Mind if I have a go?’

  Aimée waved a hand at the screen, as if to say, Be my guest. Salvago took Aimée’s place and typed ultra-fast while she looked on beside her. Gardner left them to it. He went to check on the basement. He was mindful that the owners of the ecstasy plant might return at any moment. The presser drew his attention. It was a large-scale industrial machine and Gardner reckoned the mafya must be pumping out a mi
llion pills a day using it. Enough to keep London happy for a weekend. Fresh chemical dust covered the floor around the presser. It’s been used recently, Gardner thought. So where the hell did the mafya fuckers go? He was no closer to answering that question when Salvago announced that she had cracked the encryptions.

  ‘Already?’ Gardner asked, returning to the lab.

  ‘Told you she was good,’ Stokes said, crossing his arms and nodding at the computer.

  Gardner, Aimée and Stokes drew close to the screen. Gardner read the transcript. Aleksandr Sotov was explicitly talking about and the plan to blow it up in Istanbul.

  Except Sotov wasn’t shooting the shit with some FSB bigwig.

  He was talking to Leo Land.

  Stokes flashed an I-told-you-so look at Gardner. Salvago gave him a slight nod and said, ‘We need to get these files public.’

  The pressure behind Gardner’s eyes was red-hot. From the neck down his body tightened up, like a rope bearing a heavy load. Land had betrayed the Firm. He’d participated in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. And he’d betrayed Gardner too.

  No, he corrected himself. He played me like a fucking drum kit.

  ‘Land is going to fucking pay,’ Gardner said.

  ‘Pay how?’ Salvago asked.

  ‘The old-fashioned way. With a bullet.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Aimée.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We gather the media at Parliament Square and tell them the truth.’

  ‘And Israel will have to call off its attack,’ said Salvago.

  ‘Then we’ll need to act quickly,’ said Stokes. ‘Yalom was saying the bombings would start in twenty-four hours.’

  If that happens, Gardner thought, there won’t be any going back. He made a silent promise to himself. Once the truth is exposed, Land is mine. And I won’t show that cunt a grain of mercy.

  ‘OK, let’s get a move on,’ he said.

  Aimée unplugged the flash drives from the computer and tucked them into her knickers. So that’s her secret place, Gardner told himself. Aimée gave him a dirty look as they followed Salvago and Stokes up the stairs and out of the basement. They lingered at the shop door, Stokes scoping out the street.

  Salvago glanced at her Nokia. ‘We’re in a black spot. OK, let’s go.’

  Gardner was first outside. He glanced across his shoulders in both directions. Force of habit. He could see no movement to his right. A white-diamond Chevrolet Avalanche was parked up eighty metres to the left. Gardner noticed the windows weren’t tinted. He had a clear view of the interior. He saw the leather seats and the dark cashmere dash. No one behind the wheel.

  Satisfied the coast was clear, Gardner began pacing down the street. Movement the other side of the road. He glanced over his left shoulder, saw a figure standing opposite. The guy was built like a tank and dressed like a wrestler. He wore a threadbare army-green vest beneath a mid-length trench coat and black combats. The guy’s right arm was tucked into his coat pocket. And he was wearing heavily tinted shades. But Gardner sensed the guy was eyeballing him.

  Then the guy called out to him. ‘Hey, buddy.’ His accent was thick and slow as roofing tar. American, Gardner figured. From the South.

  Gardner walked on.

  ‘I fucking said, hey buddy.’

  Gardner stopped.

  ‘Come get some,’ the guy said.

  Gardner stood by the side of the road and asked himself who the fuck this guy was. But then he countered that it didn’t matter. The chances of some random guy heckling them in the street were low. This guy has something to do with the basement, Gardner thought. He was of a mind to ask the Yank a few questions.

  ‘Yo, I’ll fuck you up,’ the guy said.

  Gardner was quiet. But he began to pace across the street.

  The guy opened his mouth again, lips like a knife-slit beneath the thickness of his beard. A sound came out like a swarm of angry bees.

  Then Gardner realized the sound was coming from up the street. A motor being gunned. He angled his head and saw the Avalanche bombing forward.

  Heading straight for him.

  14

  1203 hours.

  The car hit him like a fist, and he felt ribs crack as the front bumper knuckled his midriff. His entire front was a wall of pain. His arm thumped against the bonnet and dented the aluminium base. Then the Avalanche braked, the chassis rocked on its wheelbase and Gardner fell to the ground, face smacking against the tarmac. Between the bulbs of pain behind his eyes, a distant voice in his head asked, Who the fuck is driving the thing? Because he hadn’t seen a driver behind the wheel.

  His thought was interrupted by the growl of the Avalanche revving for round two.

  It had reversed twenty metres back from Gardner’s position, building itself up for another run at him. He tried to pick himself up off the floor. It hurt like fuck but he willed himself to raise himself to a knee. Couldn’t stand. He spat blood and heard a kind of garbled laugh from his three o’clock. The Yank.

  ‘Fucking idiot,’ the guy said.

  The Avalanche thundered towards Gardner.

  He was bang in the middle of the road. The Avalanche was almost on him.

  At five metres, the car suddenly swerved to his left. Stokes was making a run for it down the street. Salvago was in tow, Aimée further behind, her outline shaded by the interior of the porn shop. Gardner realized the Avalanche was beating a direct route towards Stokes. It slammed into him and crushed his body beneath the tyres. Gardner heard something snap, like an axe splitting hardwood. He glimpsed arms and legs beneath the tyres’ grinding weight.

  Salvago shrieked. The Avalanche continued on up the street. Gardner was sure it was going to turn round up ahead and hurtle back down the street to finish them off. But Salvago seemed oblivious. She was rushing over to Stokes.

  Gardner couldn’t see Aimée. He sprinted after the Avalanche.

  The car slowed as it came to the end of the street, then skidded into a U-turn. As it cleared the apex of the turn, Gardner reached the driver’s door. He flung it open as the vehicle completed the turn and began to pick up speed again. Gardner had a clear view of the street. He couldn’t see the Yank anywhere.

  With the door open and his feet off the ground, Gardner planted his left foot on the driver’s seat. The sudden forward motion acted like a wind against the open door and began to swing it shut. Gardner grabbed hold of the doorframe and felt the door bang against his back.

  The impact pushed him inside head-first. Gardner landed on his front, the gear-shift winding him, but he looked up and saw Salvago six metres from the windscreen, her face bewitched by the onrushing Avalanche.

  It was heading straight for her.

  Gardner clasped his right hand on the wheel. It didn’t roll easy, not like a steering wheel ought to. There was a counterforce working to keep the wheel straight. But Gardner had strength and muscle mass to burn. He broke the pressure and the wheel loosened like a defeated contestant in an arm-wrestle. Gardner yanked it all the way to the right.

  He saw Salvago’s face sweep past the driver-side window, and relief washed down his back. The Avalanche had narrowly avoided her.

  And crashed straight into a parked VW Passat.

  Gardner jolted in his seat. His wrist muscles absorbed the shock of the crash, stayed clamped around the wheel, but he reeled and banged the back of his head against the headrest. The pain echoed around his skull, mixing with the Passat’s alarm, its scream blotting out every other sound. The Passat went through a symphony of alarm sounds, each one more annoying than the last.

  A banging sound on the Avalanche’s roof. Its body rocked, as if it was caught up in the middle of a real fucking avalanche. What the fuck’s that? Gardner wondered. He moved a hand to the door…

  The roof above his head was ripped open, the metal torn apart like wet paper. Gardner’s eyes flicked up. He saw the downward plunge of a balled fist, knuckles forming a jagged line that was on a tra
jectory straight for his face, fast and deadly.

  Gardner was faster. His reactions engaged in a split second. He dodged the hand and shifted all his weight to his left and forward, reached across and shunted the shift into reverse. Then he accelerated and jerked the wheel clockwise, the Avalanche quickly gaining speed. But now the hand gripped Gardner’s neck. The fingers seemed unnatural. Cold and plastic.

  Like my own.

  When he’d reversed about twenty metres, Gardner stamped on the brakes. Now he shifted into first gear and trod down, making the Avalanche lurch forward. Gardner watched the arm shoot up through the hole in the roof like an upside-down periscope. Next thing he knew, a figure was tumbling down the windscreen and rolling across the bonnet before disappearing behind the front bumper.

  The Yank.

  Gardner scrambled out after him.

  The guy was already up and charged at him.

  Gardner was knocked off his feet and landed on his back. The guy was on top of him and shaped to punch with his right hand. Gardner clenched both his hands around the guy’s wrists. They were locked in a stalemate on the ground. That fucking arm.

  The Yank’s strength overwhelmed Gardner. His forearms burned. The guy was halfway to pinning him down when Gardner got a second wind. He headbutted the guy on the slope of his nose. The guy winced and the force on Gardner lessened. Now Gardner slammed his left hand against the Avalanche’s open door, sandwiching the Yank’s head between the door and the frame. He felt the head being pulped, and the Yank dropped. Gardner shot to his feet and called to Salvago.

  ‘Where’s Aimée?’

  ‘I… I don’t…’

  Salvago’s big, moist eyes glanced towards the porn shop. Aimée was back inside.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Gardner said, offering Salvago his hand. She looked at it, then back at Stokes.

  Fuck this, Gardner thought. He hauled Salvago with him back into the shop, and found Aimée crouched behind the counter.