Firewall

by Andy McNab

  He was slowing down as a van approached from the opposite direction, but it wasn't to let him pass; he was heading over to where we were, and if he saw me I bet I wouldn't be getting the Russian for, "Hello, nice to meet you."

  I jumped into the back of the car with Eight and made as if to help him pull out the speakers, my knees badly creasing up his newspapers.

  The BMW pulled into the parking lot, its tires crunching louder and louder on the ice the closer it got. I suddenly found the speakers very interesting indeed, and made sure my ass faced very definitely toward the BMW. I was feeling extremely vulnerable, but not as much as I would if he saw me.

  The engine shut down and the driver's door opened.

  Eight was the other side of me and glanced over my shoulder as Carpenter's door slammed, then turned back to his beloved speakers.

  After hearing the wooden door close, I was still pulling out some very risky wiring as I asked, "Who's the English guy?"

  "He's not England, you crazy guy!" He tutted into the air.

  "So why has he got an England car?"

  I'd obviously said something very funny. "Because he can, my man! Some England guy isn't going to St. Petersburgjust to get his car back; that would be crazy, man."

  "Oh, I see."

  In this part of the world it obviously didn't matter if you drove around with a hot car's plates on display. After all, if you had the money to have a BMW stolen to order, why not flaunt it? I could see the dealer's sticker in the rear window; it was a firm in Hanover, Germany, which probably meant that some British grunt had been saving up for ages to buy his tax-free bargain, only to get it lifted so it could rumble around Narva in the snow.

  The first speaker came free. I had no idea how he was going to wire it up again; it looked like a telephone junction box in there. The chain around his neck made a curiously tinny noise as he moved around. The rap bands probably had the real thing, but I was sure his bitches never knew the difference.

  "Who is he, then?"

  "Oh, just one of the guys. Business, you know."

  He must do a lot of business here to have his own set of house keys.

  "Don't say anything about me to anyone, Vorsim," I said. "Especially guys like him. I don't want people to know I'm here, okay?"

  "Oh sure, my man." The way he said it was too blase for my liking, but I didn't want to push the point.

  Once the speakers were out I virtually threw the cassettes at him, wanting to get away before Carpenter reappeared. The hood was still open and I gave the starter motor a crack with thS hammer.

  Eight stood by the door holding an armful of cassettes, with the speakers on the doorstep. "Be careful with the bitch machine, Nikolai."

  Before he'd even turned to unlock the door I had the hood down, the engine in gear and was away, heading back the way I'd come.

  My head was churning over about Carpenter. What if he was still there when I came back to see Eight after I'd done the recce? Or if he arrived while I was in the house? I had fucked up in my attempt to get out of the way so quickly. I should have told Eight I wanted to meet elsewhere.

  I had to control a rage that was brewing inside me as I thought about Carpenter's drugged-up, fucked-up work that night. It had not only cost me money, but nearly got me killed.

  Should I even go back and see Eight again? I had no choice: I was going to need help obtaining explosives or whatever else I needed.

  I drove past the "komfort baars" thinking of my professional options and what I would unprofessionally really like to do about him. Fuck it; I pulled into the border-crossing parking lot. It took about a minute to work out how to secure the Lada, as the driver's door lock was busted.

  With the starter motor persuader in my pocket I turned and began to walk back to the house. As the saying so rightly goes, there's not much you can't sort out with a two-pound ball hammer.

  * * *

  32

  I would have to luck it nut and wait for him to leave the house, setting myself a cut-off of two o'clock the following morning. I still needed time to get on with the recce; lifting Carpenter and keeping him tied up somewhere until the job was finished wasn't an option. There was no time for that.

  Now I'd got my bearings in this part of town I cut between apartment buildings and saw some of the worst conditions yet, sheds burned out to match the cars and buildings that should have fallen down years ago.

  There was still an hour and a half to go before last light at about three thirty, but the overcast sky was making everything darker than it should have been.

  Following the ice tracks in the snow, I turned corners and walked around car wrecks and rusty strollers until the house came into view.

  Carpenter's BMW was no more than ninety feet away. The other three vehicles were also still there, all with a thin layer of ice forming on the windows and top surfaces. One or two people were walking around, but just from block to block, some accompanied by little dogs with knitted coats on.

  It was dark and cold enough for me not to be noticed as I stood inside what was left of one of the sheds, leaning against the wall with my head down, my hands in my jacket pockets, the right one grasping the hammer. I felt no apprehension, no emotion at all about what was coming. Some kill because they have a good reason. Others, like Carpenter, because they just like it. For me it wasn't that deep. I did it only when I had to.

  Flexing my toes in my boots to keep the circulation going, I tried to think of other options, but still couldn't come up with any. There were more important things at stake than this maniac's life; I thought back to the sobs from the man in the elevator in Helsinki as he held his dying wife. Carpenter could fuck everything up if he discovered I was here. I was still pissed with myself for not switching on with Eight and asking for a change of meeting place; because of that fuckup I'd got myself into a position where I could end up dead myself if I messed this up.

  One or two more dull yellow lights came on in the apartments. The noise of a TV hung in the air as a car rattled along the road, then I heard a baby screaming. I continued with my trigger on the door, listening to the occasional bang of pots and pans from behind steamed-up kitchen windows and their sagging, dirty net curtains.

  Somewhere in the neighborhood, dogs barked at each other, probably just out of boredom.

  No sign of movement or light came from the house. Lion King said it was 3:12.

  Still I watched and waited, feeling the cold attacking my ears and nose, wishing I'd made the effort and bought a replacement hat and gloves. I got another four aspirin down me as my body started reminding me that it had taken a good kicking the night before. I spent long minutes trying to get enough saliva in my mouth to swallow them.

  Another check of Lion King 3:58.1 hadn't even been here an hour yet, but it felt like six. I always hated the waiting. Another thirty minutes crawled by, then there was movement at the door, a dull, yellowish glow at the grill.

  Slowly I took my hands from my pockets. Taking a firm hold of the hammerhead in my right hand, I laid the handle along my forearm, on the outside of my jacket.

  Two men were standing there smoking, waiting to come out once they'd opened the grill. In the glow from the cigarettes and the hall light, their breath vapor was indistinguishable from the smoke as it rose above them. I couldn't make out if either of them was Carpenter. I hoped not. Taking on two with a hammer would not make for a good night out, and Carpenter was bound to be armed.

  They continued to talk as the grill squeaked open and one of them came out onto the ice. The grill was then closed, leaving one of them on each side. Maybe it was going to be okay. Whoever was leaving had a quick laugh with his friend, who now looked like a prisoner behind bars. Then, as he walked away, he pushed the wooden door closed, rubbing his hands together against the cold. From this distance I couldn't hear the bolts being thrown.

  I could make out the shape of a baseball cap as he moved to the vehicles. I still couldn't tell if it was Carpenter.

  Th
e man moved toward the 5 Series that was parked side-on to me, facing the house, then there was a jangle of keys.

  I still couldn't identify him. I would have to get closer. He'd be there a while, scraping the ice from the windshield.

  My legs were feeling rubbery after standing still so long. Stretching, I moved out of the darkness, trying to pump a bit of blood around.

  There were only about sixty feet separating us, but as he neared the BM I still couldn't be sure it was him.

  The car door opened and the interior light shone across his back as he leaned in and started up the engine. Exhaust fumes filled the air as he shoved one leg inside and hit the gas. Then he turned the headlights on. They shone brightly away from both of us, but silhouetted his profile. I recognized Carpenter at once.

  I took one last look around me to make sure the area was clear. From this moment on I'd be concentrating solely on the target, who was now ten meters away, hopefully with the engine noise hiding my movement.

  He was focusing on the windshield, his back to me still as he leaned over to clear the ice.

  My eyes never left his head as it moved back and forth in a cloud of breath.

  He must have heard me, and started to turn. I was no more than fifteen feet away but too far to react quickly. I just had to keep walking, but now veering slightly left, as if I was heading for the road. I got my head down, not wanting to look at him as I approached the rear of the car, my hands under my armpits, concealing my weapon. I had to assume that he was checking out the dickhead who thought he could saunter around in this weather without a hat and gloves.

  The focus of my whole world was on this man, waiting to hear the noise of the scraper again. I was nearly past him, just approaching the BM's trunk, when it finally began again.

  Scrape scrape scrape.

  It was time to look up and find his head once again as it bobbed up and down in time with the noise.

  Scrape, scrape, scrape.

  Supporting the hammerhead in my left hand I ran my hand down the handle and gripped it hard.

  At that moment he looked up again, toward the road.

  I, too, saw the four white DTTS Vitaras screech to a halt outside an apartment buildings on the other side of the road. I had no choice but to keep walking past him as black-clad bodies jumped out of the vehicles and ran into the building, leaving the drivers standing outside, nightsticks in hand.

  I got to the road and turned left toward the traffic circle, not once looking behind me. I could hear screams and the sound of smashing glass as the DTTS team did whatever they did in apartment buildings in an afternoon.

  I was cursing to myself, but at the same time feeling lucky they hadn't turned up a few seconds later. What concerned me now was that he could be there when I returned to the house for any kit I might need.

  I took the first opportunity to turn left again, off the road and back into the apartment building as the BM drove past me, heading for the traffic circle.

  I drove cut of town, heading west and following signs along the Tallinn road to a place called Kohtla-Jarve, about twenty miles away. The road didn't hold any surprises for me. The car bumped all over the place, slithering over the different levels of pavement under the ice and slush. I couldn't complain; I was just happy to have got the thing started again.

  I went through a couple of small towns, trying to avoid the bus and truck drivers who wanted me to join their death race. This was supposed to be a two-lane road, but it didn't work out like that; everyone took the center of the road because that was where there was less ice and more pavement. Seeing signs for Voka, I made a mental note of the time since leaving Narva. I'd be wanting that road later.

  The wipers were slapping away ineffectually against the shit that was being sprayed up by trucks and dumped on us smaller vehicles. I had to keep stopping, using the newspaper from the back seat to wipe the windows. At one stage, I even had to piss over the windshield to clear the icy grime, trying to avoid the splash as the wipers did their stuff before it froze once again.

  Kohtla-Jarve, it appeared, was the home of the giant, brooding slag heaps and long conveyor belts I'd seen from the train. Bright white light spilled from factories on either side of the road as I dueled with my trucker friends. They eventually dwindled with the industry, and soon there was complete darkness, apart from kamikaze trucks and bus lights on full beam, mixed with cars with only one light trying to overtake the lot of us.

  I followed the road west for about another twelve miles then turned left, heading south for a place called Pussi. I was in no mood for gags, otherwise I might have passed the time composing a limerick or two.

  In the Lada's headlights I could see that the road was single lane and hadn't been used or cleared for quite a while. There were just two tire rutt worn into the snow. It was going be like riding on rails.

  It was another twelve miles further south to the target. There had to be a quicker way of doing it than driving a right-angled box, west and then south, but I didn't know how accurate the maps were. Besides, I wanted to stay on the main roads as long as possible, and then I could at least be sure of getting there. I was feeling quite pleased with myself, considering I had no map; one of the muggers in Tallinn was probably wiping his ass with it right now.

  The headlights reached about five to thirty feet either side of me, exposing banks of snow and the occasional ice-laden tree waiting to spark up in the spring.

  I drove through Pussi, which looked like a small farming community.

  The buildings were rundown shacks made of bare, unpainted wood and surrounded by wrecked cars. The roofs were bowed in with age or bad construction. Most had two lengths of wood, with strips going across to form a ladder, permanently attached as a means of getting the snow off. Bythelookofitthe timbers would have collapsed without them.

  I reckoned this was the place for Eight, without a doubt. A hand painted Lada would be the ultimate passion wagon in this neck of the woods.

  They had electricity, because there was the occasional glint of light coming through the curtains of very small windows, and a dull bulb shone in the back of a barn. But there obviously wasn't running water because I kept seeing the sort of communal hand pump that Glint Eastwood used to strike a match on to light his panatela. These ones, however, were wrapped up in tarpaulin and bits of rag to stop them freezing. The chimneys were going for it big time. They must have been chopping logs all summer.

  There were no warning signs that I was about to bump over the railway track from Tallinn, and after that I didn't see a single sign of human activity. The road got steadily worse. The Lada slid all over the place and didn't enjoy the potholes one bit now that my own personal snow railway had come to an end. I checked the odometer, counting down to the only intersection, which, if I remembered correctly, was a couple of miles away.

  Once there, I at last got help: a small sign told me it was right to Tudu. I turned left, now knowing that the target would be the first building on the left after one more mile.

  Just after one mile a high concrete wall appeared in my headlights, about thirty feet in on the left-hand side. I drove slowly for another forty yards or so, encountering a pair of large metal gates the same height as the wall. I drove past them, and the wall continued for about another forty yards before it turned at a right angle into the darkness.

  The second building, just a bit further on and maybe thirty yards in length, resembled a large hangar. It was slightly closer to the road and wasn't fenced or walled in. I waited until I'd rounded a bend and was physically out of the line of sight of the target, then I threw the Lada into a little driveway on my left, stopping after a three-foot slide. It was probably an entrance to a field or something, but it wasn't as if people were going to be working on the land for a few more months.

  I closed the door quietly onto its first click, then the second, and used the wipers to secure a sheet of newspaper over the windshield. I started to walk back down the road, trying to keep warm by moving a
s fast as I could, and sucking to the ice that had formed on the road to keep footprints to a minimum.

  I didn't have a clue what I was going to do yet.

  * * *

  33

  After two hours of straining my eyes to see the road through a dirty, smeared windshield, it was taking a while for my night vision to kick in.

  A bird screeched in the distance, but there were no other sounds apart from my own breathing and the crunch of my boots on the ice. I found I had to step quite gingerly. So much for warming up.

  By the time I'd reached the target the rods in my eyes had realized there was no ambient light and they had to get to work. Not that I could miss the first building, just off the road to my right. The gap of fifteen feet or so in between them was knee-deep with snow, covering the fallen brickwork that had spilled out across the verge. It was, or had been, quite a substantial building, though most of the masonry had collapsed, exposing what I supposed was the steel frame; I could see right through it to the field beyond. It was one story, lower than the concrete wall further along, but very wide and with a low-angled pitched roof covered with a thick layer of snow. A very tall chimney, resembling a ship's funnel, soared out of the roof on the right-hand side and disappeared into the darkness.

  Continuing toward the concrete wall, I crossed the thirty feet or so between the hangar and the target compound. As I approached, I began to make out the dark shape of a normal-sized door set in the concrete wall. I'd have loved to have gone and tried it, but I couldn't risk leaving tracks in the deep snow.

  As I walked on toward the gates the front wall towered above me.

  There was no light pushing skyward from the compound, and no noise. I tried looking for CCTV cameras or intruder devices, but it was too dark and the wall was too high and far away. If there were any, I'd soon find out. A depressing thought hit me: I hoped they hadn't changed location already. I moved the forty yards or so it took to reach the point where the compound driveway joined the road.