Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  “Where do I find Skala?”

  “He bought some old manor south of Brno. A mansion with a vineyard. I can show you. He’s retired there to pretend he’s a country gentleman.” He spat into the corner of the van. “Fucking peasant.”

  “Does the name Emil Zajic mean anything to you?” Crane asked.

  “One of Skala’s,” Yermolayev said, nodding. “Used to coordinate drug shipments coming through Russia from Central Asia. Now word is Skala’s trying to work with the narco cartels. I assume he’s got Zajic someplace over there, maybe in the Caribbean.”

  “Puerto Rico,” said Crane. “Except Zajic’s dead now.”

  Yermolayev stopped and gave Crane a long look. “I hadn’t heard that,” he said at last. “Skala won’t be happy.”

  “Is he ever happy?”

  “No,” Yermolayev admitted, “he is not.”

  “I’ve got one more name to try,” said Crane. “Does ‘Team Kilo’ mean anything to you?”

  Yermolayev considered, shook his head. “You have some context?”

  “Not much. A name some of Zajic’s pawns heard him use. Apparently Skala’s terrified of them. So who scares him?”

  Yermolayev let out a whistle. “Nobody I know of. Someone who scares that old bastard I would not want to meet. But they say Skala’s got his own private archive. Keeps notes on everybody—who works for who, who stabs who in the back, where all the bodies are buried. Maybe if you took a look at that…”

  Crane shrugged. Maybe. The idea didn’t seem to get him any closer to his goal, so he discarded it.

  “Can you get me a clean car?” he asked. “For the right price, obviously. The one I drove here…”

  Yermolayev grinned, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune. “I like you, Mr. Crane,” he said. “You’re like the golden days of the Cold War come back again. I can find you something. Nothing flashy.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  “Let me make a call. And while we’re waiting, we must crack open some of the good stuff. I’ve been saving it for a day like this.”

  Yermolayev started toward the front of the van. Then he clapped his hands and turned back and to gesture toward the trunk Crane was sitting on. “You’re going after Skala, yes? You need some hardware? Guns? Ammunition? Explosives? Incendiaries?”

  Crane looked down at the trunk for a moment with a raised eyebrow. Then he looked back up at Yermolayev. “Let’s make it a day to remember.”

  ###

  Branislav Skala was pacing the sterile, museum-like corridors of his mansion when the head of his security force came looking for him.

  “What?” Skala snapped as the man entered the room. What was it called again? A day parlor or something. A woman’s room, he thought. The idea of his underling finding him here suddenly irritated him.

  “Sir. The winery says the man’s still said nothing useful. They’re sure he knows nothing. He’d have told them by now.”

  Skala swore silently. Novak was supposed to tell him where to find the Team Kilo operative, Crane. If he really knew nothing, that avenue was closed.

  And Crane had somehow gotten out of the burned-out wreckage of his car and still managed to kill another of Skala’s men. That was in addition to the two he’d sent to stake out the girl. There’d be no information from them either.

  He stormed out of the room with his security head following.

  “What do you want to do with Novak, sir?” the man asked.

  Skala considered for a moment. “Don’t kill him yet. Keep him there for now. We’ll come back to him later.” He’d have to kill Novak eventually, of course. He could hardly let him go now. Deštnik would be another problem he’d have to deal with at some point.

  But first things first. Crane was still out there. If his soldiers couldn’t find the man, he was damn sure Crane would eventually find him.

  He strode into the main entry hall. Men with automatic weapons lined the doorways. A patrol returning from the grounds called in on radio and gave the day’s password before the doors were unlocked for them. Then they came inside and reported seeing nothing on the perimeter.

  This place was a fortress. It was his best weapon. If Crane came for him here, he’d be walking into a deathtrap. For a moment, he imagined himself carrying Crane’s broken body into the winery, tossing it onto the slab beside Novak, and snarling, “He’s right here! How hard was that?”

  He nodded approval to the men at the front doors. Then he took out his phone and dialed Anton Kucera.

  “Anton,” he said when Kucera picked up, “it’s time to end this. Start calling our people, everyone who pays us tribute. All of them. Tell them to drop whatever they’re doing and start tearing Brno apart. I want every soldier, every runner, every lookout, every accountant, and every hooker tearing the goddamn city apart until they find that man!”

  On the other end, Kucera breathed slowly in and out. “They won’t be happy,” he said. “That will mess up a lot of operations. A lot of money will go away.” Skala heard the nervousness in his voice. Even Kucera was getting spooked. Kucera was used to fighting brutal gang wars. But this was something different, like when Moscow had sent a crack team of operatives to root him out back in those days. It was new and frightening to Kucera, but Skala had done this before. He knew how to weather storms like this.

  “It doesn’t matter if they’re happy,” he said, trying to sound calm, reassuring. “And there’s always more money. We have to stop this first, and then we can fix the damage.”

  “All right,” Kucera said with resignation. “I’ll start making calls.”

  “Good. Then I want you to bring a team of your best men and come out here with me. If they can’t find him in town, he’ll come here, and here’s where we’ll take him.”

  “Is that the best place for me? I can lead the search here.”

  “You’re too important to risk, Anton. This man’s a threat to both of us.”

  Kucera paused. “All right,” he said at last. “I have a short list of men. I’ll bring them out, and we’ll ride this out together. Give me an hour to get everyone moving on this end. Then we’ll come there.”

  “Good. Don’t worry, Anton. I’ve dealt with things like this before. We’ll find him, and we’ll crush him. When we’re done, we’ll still be here. And nobody will ever see this ‘John Crane’ again.”

  Chapter 38

  It was just after midnight when Crane pulled off the road and into the trees near Branislav Skala’s estate. It was a clear night with enough moonlight to let him make his way through the trees. He took another look at the map Yermolayev had provided. Making his way a quarter mile through the woods, he would come to a low stone wall at the property line. Then the vineyards formed an open bowl descending the hillsides to the mansion. The whole property was much too large for Skala’s men to patrol. They’d have a smaller perimeter closer to the house, and he’d have room to move.

  Crane got out of the car. He’d changed into black clothes and boots. Carefully laid out in the trunk was the arsenal he’d bought from Yermolayev. He had the silenced CZ pistol and the HK 417 carbine he’d taken from the man who wrecked the Audi. Next to that was a Russian SV-98 sniper rifle with night vision scope and a 10-round box magazine. There was a backpack full of incendiary grenades and explosives, as well as spare magazines for all the guns. It was a hell of a load, but Crane expected he’d need everything he could carry.

  He took some time getting everything checked and loaded. Finally he fastened the HK to his pack and shrugged it on. He closed the trunk, picked up the sniper rifle, and jogged away into the forest.

  He found the stone wall readily enough. It was waist high, built by hand from stones some farmer had removed from the fields, probably centuries ago. Crane ducked down behind it and listened for a full minute but heard nothing. Finally he decided no one was here, and he climbed over it and onto Skala’s land.

  He found himself on a shallow hillside. In front of him was a great expans
e of grapes, staked out in long, straight lines stretching down the slope. He could make out buildings in the distance: barns, a winery, various outbuildings. Beyond them all, gleaming white in the moonlight, was the house itself. Three stories of white stone with a black roof. There were wings and connecting passages, formal gardens, and a large lawn. Low walls separated the grounds from the farm.

  To his right, the hillside sloped slightly up. Up there would be the highest point on the estate. It would give him the best field of fire into the compound. Crane took five minutes to walk there, his boots crunching softly on turned earth.

  When he found a likely spot, he shrugged off his pack and sat down on the dry dirt between two long rows of grapes. He knew Skala’s men were down there somewhere. He opened up the SV 98’s bipod, lay down, and switched on the night scope. He swept the outbuildings and found two men with rifles standing behind a fence, looking out over the fields. He kept scanning and found another one moving toward the winery. Crane watched him disappear through the building’s large double doors. Then he turned his attention back to the pair by the fence.

  Range to the two men was a little under four hundred meters. The bullet would cross that distance in less than a second. Crane chose one, sighted in, let out half a breath, and held it.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  He heard the crack of the gun but didn’t even see the first man fall as he worked the bolt to reload. He placed his eye to the scope and saw the second man just starting to react. He fired again, and the second man fell. He reloaded and waited. Another man came running from off to the right. Crane’s third shot dropped him.

  He looked for another target, but they’d figured out that running around in the open was a bad idea. He saw the muzzle flash as someone edged around the corner of a shed and fired a wild burst off into the fields. Crane put a round into the corner of the shed where the fire had come from. The shooter appeared again, firing in his direction now. This time he remained in sight long enough for Crane to reload and fire. That was four down.

  Floodlights came on around the outbuildings. Someone started sweeping the fields with a bright spotlight. They must have realized he was using night vision and were hoping to blind him. Crane’s next shot took out the light.

  There was more return fire now, and it was focused in his direction. They had his location now. If he stayed here too long, they’d flank him. It was time to move, but he would leave the men who came out here after him something to remember him by.

  Crane took several bricks of plastic explosive from his pack. He wired in a detonator and placed them in a row beneath the rifle. Then he clipped an audio pickup to the barrel and put its corresponding receiver in his ear. When he was satisfied with his bomb, he picked up the rest of his gear and jogged away. There was still sporadic fire from the outbuildings. Through the earpiece he heard the occasional round impact near his former position.

  Crane carried the HK 417 in both hands and kept up a steady pace. Moving was easier now without the bulk of the sniper rifle and its night vision scope. But he was still carrying a lot of grenades and explosives, and they were heavy. Why not lighten his load a bit more, Crane thought with a grin.

  He veered into the long rows of grapes and started working his way through the trellises, moving from row to row as he headed downhill toward the farm buildings. At each row, he removed one of the incendiary packages from his pack, slaved it to the same detonator channel, and left it among the vines. He kept going until he was out of incendiaries. His pack was considerably lighter now, with only a half-dozen old Russian efka fragmentation grenades and a few other small items remaining.

  Crane peered through the grapes. He could see lights moving up the slope well off to his right. They were closing in on his former position, but he didn’t hear anything through the mic on the rifle yet. After a few more rows, he came to a packed dirt access road for tractors and farm equipment. It ran straight down the hill between the long trellises and into the cluster of garages and outbuildings. He switched the HK 417’s safety off and jogged down the road.

  As he approached the cluster of sheds, he heard voices ahead and took cover behind the large rear tire of a John Deere tractor. Two armed men walked past, talking in low voices. Crane carefully edged around the tractor to keep hidden from them, and then turned and sprinted toward a long, windowless storage building. A pile of crates had been stacked against the rear wall, and Crane used them to launch himself up and catch the edge of the roof. He pulled himself up and lay flat on the metal roof, listening. Nothing suggested he’d been seen.

  He crawled to the other side of the building and looked out over the compound. He counted four men visible. Two were looking out the window of a garage full of tractors, but the other two had resumed walking around outside as if the emergency was over.

  It had been about five minutes since he’d fired his last shot. Already the combat discipline of Skala’s men was starting to fade. It was something Crane was familiar with from his training. With an active threat to point to, their senses focused and adrenaline kept them on edge. But without a threat to direct it toward, that heightened posture turned into a drain on their energy. Eventually it would exhaust them, and they would gradually let their guard fall. And that was when Crane would hit them again.

  He heard a voice through his earpiece, shouting something Crane didn’t understand. Someone had made it to the rifle and seen that he’d abandoned it. It was almost time. He heard more voices, visualized others approaching seeing the rifle positioned on the ground.

  Crane took the detonator from a pocket and flipped open the cover over its small actuator switch. Someone was saying something in his earpiece. The tone of voice suggested a first hint of confusion. Crane took out his earpiece and dropped it on the roof beside him. Then he pressed the switch.

  The explosion was a loud whump behind him. There was a brief flash, and Crane knew there would be a cloud of smoke dispersing in the wind, even though he couldn’t see it in the darkness.

  Shouts erupted all around him. Crane heard doors open. He peered over the edge of the roof and saw a group forming nearby, at a point where they could see between buildings up into the vineyards. They clustered together as they pointed and tried to understand what had happened. Crane took one of the efka grenades from his pack, pulled the pin, and tossed it off the roof. It exploded and spattered the walls with shrapnel and blood.

  Someone started firing up at him, so Crane slid back from the edge. He moved quickly to the back side of the building and leaped off into the night. He rolled into a crouch and readied the HK 417 just in time for someone to come running around the corner of the building toward him. Crane cut him down with a burst and then sprinted in the opposite direction.

  The shadow of the winery was perhaps two hundred feet away. Crane kept low and ran for it. When he reached the shadow, he scurried around the corner and pressed his back flat against the stone wall.

  Crane could hear shouts in Czech from around the compound. They were looking for him, but he didn’t think anyone had seen him come back here.

  The wall felt cold against his back. It felt somehow very old. It was a long building, oriented perpendicular to most of the others, and Crane figured it was probably empty now. If he could get inside, it would give him cover and take him considerably closer to the main house.

  The large double doors at the end of the building were well lit and probably noisy, but Crane could make out a gable farther down, presumably protecting a small side door. He moved that way. There were windows on this side of the building, but Crane saw only blackness inside. He reached the door and forced the lock with his knife. The door swung smoothly open, and Crane slipped inside.

  He was in a small storage room full of wooden hand carts and old barrels. At the other end of the room was another door, with a bar of pale yellow light along the floor. Crane moved quietly across the tiles. He heard a voice and then someone crying out in pain.

  Listening at the
door, he heard someone speaking in Czech and then the unmistakable sound of a hard slap and another short, strangled cry. Someone was getting worked over out there.

  The door was cracked open. Crane knelt down below eye level and looked out. The door opened into the winery’s enormous central corridor. The doorway was flanked by huge wooden casks stacked in tiers and held in place by frames of roughhewn wood. Crane saw more casks in the same kind of racks on the other side of a wide, central aisle. He assumed the casks lined both walls for the length of the building. The voices were coming from somewhere to his right.

  Crane slipped quietly through the door and edged up against the casks, moving slowly toward the main corridor. The rich smell of fermentation and centuries-old wood reached his nose. Peering around the corner, he saw shadows and then figures lit by portable lanterns. There were three of them around a table. There was a fourth man on the table, and Crane made out leather cords around his ankles, securing him to the tabletop.

  Someone said something in Czech and backhanded the man on the table. He grunted in pain and said nothing. The man who slapped him moved a bit, and Crane saw the face of the man on the table. He was bruised and bloody but alive.

  It was Klement Novak.

  Chapter 39

  Crane jerked back around the corner of the casks. His first thought was a rush of relief. Novak was alive. At least that was one less death on his conscience.

  His second thought was that he couldn’t leave Novak there. That was obvious, but it still jarred him. Trying to rescue Novak would compromise his mission. Crane’s goal was simple: to reach Branislav Skala and kill him. Once that was accomplished, he meant to withdraw, fighting where he was forced to, and return to his car in the woods. There was no place for a wounded civilian in that. He didn’t even know if Novak could walk. And he could hardly carry an injured man all the way back out through the vineyards with Skala’s men in pursuit. The operational procedures the Hurricane Group had drilled into him said Novak was a liability.