Gun Metal Heart

by Dana Haynes

  The men from the Pentagon exchanged looks. The man in front spoke for the first time. “Is it worth it? For us to even be here?”

  Crace turned into the parking lot. She hesitated longer than protocol allowed.

  The third man said, “Colonel?”

  “Huge risk, sir. Huge reward.”

  “How huge?”

  Crace unbuckled her seat belt. “Sir, American Citadel can’t be trusted. Doing business with them is doing business with the Devil. This wouldn’t be the kind of deal that ends in scandal. It’s the kind of deal that ends with life sentences in Leavenworth, best-case scenario. Worst-case? War crime trials in The Hague.”

  Before she could reach for her door handle, the highest-ranking man said, “Then why are we even here, Colonel?”

  “The finest drone tech on earth. Period.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Daria had a long and productive talk with the silent Serb soldier, Lazarevic.

  He sat on the floor of the warehouse. She threw him a greasy shop towel to bandage his badly bleeding wrist but wouldn’t let him touch the squibs and the round, medical plasters she’d adhered to the crotch of his trousers. The big man’s eyes flickered in a three-part pattern: from the explosives over his dick, to the remote in Daria’s hand, to the pool of blood coagulating in an almost perfect circle around Kostic’s head, shoulders, and torso. Daria’s lightning-fast blow had severed Kostic’s windpipe and his carotid, and it had been a race to see if he’d suffocate or bleed out first.

  Kostic was the toughest son of a bitch Lazarevic had ever served with. Against the dark-skinned, tightly muscled woman, it hadn’t even been a contest.

  The American man tied to the second chair had stopped mumbling. His eyes roved jarringly from Daria to the corpse of Kostic, who lay on his back, arms straight out. He’d waved his arms a few times in his death throes, and the arced pattern on the cement floor looked like he’d tried to make blood angels.

  The ever quiet Lazarevic occasionally spat gobs of blood from his broken nose but otherwise talked a blue streak. He told Daria about Acting Foreign Minister Dragan Petrovic, about the unpredictable and probably insane Major Arcana. He told Daria about the attack on the hotel in Florence and about that evening’s attack on the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Belgrade.

  Daria crouched on her haunches, leaning forward, unmoving, her heels up under her bum, all her weight on the balls of her boots. She didn’t blink, and she didn’t stop smiling, and Lazarevic thought she looked more like a raptor than those damned drones ever did.

  He talked until the blood loss from his wrist caught up to him. His eyelids drooped and he keeled over.

  Daria held the remote detonator carefully and reached down to feel his pulse. Satisfied, she remove the makeshift bandage from the sleeping man’s wrist. She reached into her back pocket and flicked open the cutthroat razor. A snap, and Lazarevic began bleeding from his other wrist.

  She picked up the metal chair and moved it to face the American. His breathing was shallow and wet. His eyes almost glowed. Daria sat opposite him. She reached out and removed the squibs and adhesives from his elbows and knees, scrunching them in her fist.

  “You were waiting for me in Florence. You tracked me to the Tour de France.”

  The American watched her.

  “Thorson? Something-something Thorson. Sorry, I’m not good with names.”

  His lips were cracked and sand-dry. He licked them but appeared to have no spare saliva.

  “Hate you…”

  “Yes. Were you in Milan? In November?”

  With an insane burst of energy and anger, Thorson suddenly thrashed. He yanked violently on his flex-cuffs. He strained, muscles in his neck and shoulders standing in relief. The iron legs of the chair danced a little staccato jig on the cement. The plastic cuffs split the skin at his bound wrists.

  Daria waited.

  He fought until he couldn’t, then seemed to deflate in the chair. His head lolled. He gasped for breath. His head down, he maintained eye contact by looking up from under his brows. Sweat and snot dripped onto his lap.

  Daria stood and went to a window. She peered out. Seeing nothing, she crossed behind Thorson’s chair and checked the opposite window. They were alone. She walked back to him. “Were you with Asher’s people? Were you CIA?”

  She was behind him, so he hung his head and gulped what meager breath his sodden lungs could handle.

  Daria could smell the infection wafting up from his wounds. “I have to stop that blond woman from attacking the Americans. If I let you go, would you stop chasing me?”

  “Fuck you…”

  She stood behind him and rested a cool hand on the nape of his neck. It should have been comforting. Thorson’s long muscles tightened.

  “Mr. Thorson? My life is such that I tend to make enemies. I’m sorry I don’t remember you.”

  She moved away from him and knelt by the Serb mobsters. Lazarevic had bled out. She took his Makarov auto and a magazine. It was the longer, twelve-round mag, not the usual eight. She rose and crossed to Kostic, searching for his weapon and spare clips, working one-handed, holding onto the remote control with the other. She also found a SIG that she assumed was Thorson’s weapon. Running out of hands, she set the automatic on a workbench by her side.

  “Kill you…”

  Daria knelt with her back to him. “You’re obviously not well. The humanitarian in me tells me it would be cruel to kill a man suffering from a fevered mind. Then again, one of my old instructors in Shin Bet used to say: Zol er krenken un gedenken. ‘Let him suffer and remember.’ It’s Yiddish. By Jewish standards, it’s considered cruel.”

  She rose, drew her cutthroat blade, and turned on Thorson. He ground his teeth, but she quickly shredded his plastic bindings. A deft flick of her wrist and the razor closed up into its metal handle.

  He was free.

  “Go your way, Mr. Thorson. Take up a cause. Find God. May we never meet again.”

  She turned away and began shoving the Russian-made guns and magazines into her leather backpack, next to the oversized sunglasses the trio of Australian tourists had given her.

  Behind her, Thorson rose shakily to his feet. His eyes were locked on the SIG-Sauer Daria had left on the worktable.

  Daria slipped the lilac hoody over the Lycra top but didn’t zip it. “Good luck getting out of Serbia, Mr. Thorson.”

  Thorson reached for the gun, whisked it up, and raked back the slide, aimed at Daria’s back, and pulled the trigger.

  Even fevered, he realized two things:

  The gun was empty.

  And he’d felt a skin-tugging adhesive at the nape of his neck.

  “Never let it be said I was cruel.” Daria flicked the switches, firing the four squibs she’d adhered to the base of his skull.

  Beheadings are quick.

  As Viorica had said, it’s the most any of us can hope for.

  Thirty-Nine

  The United States did not currently have an ambassador to Serbia, but it did pay for an opulent ambassador’s residence.

  The first floor was decked out in Victorian furniture and Oriental rugs. The wall art was by contemporary Serbian artists, and each came with a card written in English and Serbian, describing the piece and its creator. Chandeliers hung from the scalloped ceilings.

  There had been a to-do at the front door, twenty minutes earlier, but the Marines on duty had taken care of it so quickly that none of the guests knew quite what to make of it. Protesters, probably. It was quickly forgotten.

  Cathcart carried a cell phone in the left-hand pocket of his suit coat and a second phone in the right-hand pocket. The one on the left vibrated, and he shifted a canapé to the other hand to check it.

  2ND FLOOR BALCONY. 20 MIN. ALONE!

  A television crew was setting up, including a camera operator, an audio operator, and a stout man in an American-style baseball cap adorned with Cyrillic letters. He was on his knees laying cable and using blue painter
s’ tape to lock it down. Cathcart maneuvered himself around the rigger and into an alcove with some privacy. He put away Major Arcana’s phone and dug out his own.

  Cathcart texted Colonel Crace, back in Idaho, and let her know.

  * * *

  The information circuit was circular, as it so often is in war: General Cathcart in Belgrade informed Colonel Olivia Crace in the American Citadel observation lounge. Crace told chief engineer Bryan Snow in the control room, who informed the guys sitting in the truck-and-trailer on the north side of the Danube in Belgrade.

  They released a suite of eight Mercutio spotters and three Hotspur shooter drones. The micro air vehicles shot away from the truck and vectored due south toward the heart of the Serbian government.

  Twenty minutes from sunset, and nobody on the streets of Belgrade noticed the mechanical birds.

  Bryan Snow informed the American Citadel brass, plus the three newcomers from the Pentagon, that the drones were airborne.

  He then switched to the communication frequency known only to himself and informed Major Arcana that everything was a go: he was prepared to hijack his own drones at her command.

  * * *

  John Broom had rarely felt so helpless.

  He’d been spirited to Serbia under the steam of a mysterious international criminal known as the Viking. John’s only contact with the Viking was Diego, who had just sacrificed himself to keep John out of the hands of the U.S. Marines.

  John was in Serbia to assist Daria Gibron. But standing on Avenue Kralja Milana at sunset, John had no earthly idea how to reach Daria. Or if she was even in the country.

  He had information for her, information she badly needed, but in a city of 1.6 million people, John was at a complete loss. What had he suggested to Diego? Just hit the center of government and hope they stumbled on Daria. What the hell had he been thinking? How could—

  Daria Gibron slipped her arm through his and bussed him on the cheek. “Hallo, John!”

  John’s voice climbed about an octave. “You just gave me a freaking heart attack!”

  Daria laughed. “A girl never gets tired of hearing that!”

  She wore sunglasses, a thin lilac hoodie unzipped over a stretchy jog top, and weirdly faded ripped jeans. She carried a small black leather backpack over one shoulder.

  She took John by the arm and led him off the street and into an apoteka, or pharmacy.

  The clerk wore earbuds and was engrossed in a Hollywood magazine. She didn’t look up. Daria pulled John deeper into the shop. As they passed the window, the darkened silhouette of two hummingbirds flicked past.

  They both saw the drones. “Crap. The Flying Monkeys are here.”

  Daria grinned. “Flying Monkeys? I like that.” She led him down an aisle, away from the window.

  “What do we—?”

  The first thing Daria did was to grab John by both lapels of his fine suit and kiss him, hard, on the lips.

  John froze, not kissing back but not pulling away.

  Daria smiled at him. “You’re an absolute love, John Broom. I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Having a little trouble believing it myself.”

  “There’s much to tell and no bloody time to tell it. Sorry.” She dropped to her haunches, unzipped the backpack, and withdrew two matching pistols. She slid the sunglasses up into her hair.

  John knew nothing of the make and model of handguns. She also dug out two magazines. John checked the clerk, who hadn’t looked up. He knelt.

  Daria began fieldstripping one of the guns. “Diego?”

  “Under arrest in the U.S. ambassador’s residence. He made a big play to get me free.”

  “Bollocks.” Her fingers moved deftly, breaking a gun down to its component parts, then reassembling it. She did it while looking at it, but also while looking at John, and her hands didn’t move any slower during the latter bits.

  “Right, then. Briefly: fellow named Petro-something hired a mercenary to steal the Flying Monkeys from the Americans and to blow up the ambassador’s residence. The mercenary is quite good. Named Viorica. Nom de guerre: Major Arcana. Blond girl, silver eyes? Might’ve passed this way. The target is some big thing at the residence. Wish I knew more, but—”

  John said, “Petrovic, Dragan Petrovic, member of Parliament, front man for the White Scorpions. The big thing is a gathering of foreign ministers from the former Yugoslavia. And your mercenary: Tall, ice blonde? Gorgeous?”

  Daria wrinkled her nose. “If you fancy that sort of thing.”

  John gave her a smile. “I wrote the CIA file on you. You fancy that sort of thing.”

  She giggled. “I do, a bit.”

  Daria started in on the other gun. She was disheartened: neither had ever been properly cleaned. She could understand a man’s decision to be a killer, a mercenary, or even a terrorist. But a person who lets their weapons go unmaintained should be keelhauled.

  “I saw blondie at the residence.”

  “Good, then. That’s a start. What have we here?”

  She held up one of the bullets from the magazine, closing one eye and peering through the other. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “Russian overpressure variants. I’ve never used them. I hate using weaponry in a fight I’ve not practiced with.”

  “Who doesn’t? Listen—”

  “Tell me about the drones. They’re using the things so they can lay the blame on the Americans, I assume? Clever. They could kill hundreds.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to do two things. Find Viorica and warn the people in the residence.”

  “Yeah. Listen, we—”

  “You speak Politics. You take the residence. I chatted up a most helpful fellow, one of the White Scorpions. He gave me an idea where to find this Petrovic. We get him to call it all off. Yes?”

  “Fine, but—”

  She jammed magazines into both guns, then returned them to her backpack. She stood, and John did, too. Near the cash register, the clerk languidly turned a page in her periodical and blew a gum bubble.

  “Not much time, John. Shall we?”

  John said, “Hold it!”

  Daria had been about to move out, but paused. “What?”

  “Petrovic isn’t the bad guy!”

  Daria blinked at him. “’Course he is.”

  “Nope. Even he thinks he is. But he’s not. And the ambassador’s residence isn’t the target.”

  Daria stared into his eyes. John stared right back.

  “If that’s not the target, what is?”

  * * *

  The mobile in Dragan Petrovic’s hand lit up a split second before it vibrated. He noticed that and thought it odd; the light happens first, then the vibration. He drained his stiff scotch whiskey and splashed more into his glass. He thumbed the Answer button and lifted the phone to his ear but did not speak.

  Major Arcana said, “It’s now or never,” in a singsong voice that Petrovic recognized vaguely from American pop music.

  Petrovic drank whiskey. His stomach considered rejecting it. He moved to the window. From there the former Chinese embassy was fully limned by the ground-floor floods. Two blocks beyond it was the façade of the U.S. embassy and, behind that, the ambassador’s residence. Both were lit like Christmas trees.

  Major Arcana said, “It’s your call, Acting Foreign Minister.”

  Petrovic looked back at the tidy desk and the constellation of family photos and diplomas on the wall, courtesy of his predecessor in office. He looked at the ones he’d broken. Petrovic’s brilliant plan had included murdering that man.

  God’s judgment is swift, Petrovic thought. He faced the question: Carry out his plans for the sake of all Serbia? Or save Adrijana and their daughters?

  Sacrifice the battle? Sacrifice his family?

  Major Arcana didn’t interrupt him. The silence stretched a full minute.

  Petrovic gulped whiskey. Bile rose in his throat.

  He said, “Proceed.”


  She said, “You’re sure?” And the words were a soft purr.

  He turned to the window, eyes down the avenue at the American buildings. “Do it.”

  “Come what may?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Viorica said, “Very good, Acting Foreign Minister.” She disconnected the line and hit the next speed dial. Bryan Snow, her bought-and-paid-for engineer in Sandpoint, Idaho, answered without speaking.

  Viorica adopted a deep, cartoony baritone. “Release the hounds!”

  * * *

  Before they stepped out of the apoteka, John grabbed Daria’s sleeve. “If I’m right about the drones, the second that one of them locks onto your face or your voice, you’re tagged. We go out there, there’s a good chance we’re screwed.”

  “Can’t stay here.”

  “Okay. But the U.S. Marines and the State Department know I tried to sneak onto the embassy grounds with a fake ID, so they won’t help us. And Petrovic probably knows you’re here and on the loose, so the Serbian military will be looking for us. Plus, he runs the White Scorpions. Plus, there’s the Belgrade police. Plus, there’s this Viorica of yours.”

  Daria adjusted her backpack full of guns. “And your point?”

  “Making small talk.”

  She led him out onto the gloomy street. It was still overly warm and a bit muggy. John wished he’d doffed his suit jacket, although the blackness of it might come in handy in the dark. Street lights had popped on and shop windows cast shadows over the sidewalk. They moved away from the pharmacy. Belgrade is a pedestrian’s city, and the sidewalks were full, mostly with teens and twenty-somethings, but also with working men and women taking their time to stroll home or to a pub on a warm evening.

  Daria frowned. “Does the name Thorson mean anything to you? Owen—”

  “—Cain Thorson? Sure. I know him. We both do.”

  She turned, eyebrows arched.

  “CIA guy. Headed up Pegasus.”

  “The thing in Manhattan?”

  John smiled and studied her eyes to see if she was having him on. “Yes. The thing in Manhattan. When you ash-canned his career. Also the takedown in Milan. The guy aiming his gun at you. Okay, aiming his gun at you through me. Big, blond, good bone structure?”