Gun Metal Heart

by Dana Haynes

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

  “Which again…”

  She patted his arm. “Now, now. Be nice, John.” Her eyes darted as she put together the pieces. “So Thorson was CIA. Then he was freelance…”

  John shrugged. “Guess so. I lost track of … Wait. Was freelance?”

  Daria turned raven-black eyes on him.

  John said, “If he was freelance, what is he now?”

  “Room temperature.”

  John took a second to get there. “Ah, God. Dee. You didn’t. The CIA’s deal was to leave you alone so long as you left them alone. Killing even an ex-agent is—”

  “Tomorrow’s problem. Tell me about this Petrovic. He’s today’s problem.”

  John opted to leave the lecture for later. “So my guess is: Petrovic thinks he hired Viorica. And Skorpjo thinks they work for Petrovic through Viorica. But she’s playing a different game.”

  “We agree on that part.” Daria tucked into John suddenly, as lovers might, turning him and pointing at the display of cashmere sweaters in a store window. A camouflaged jeep rolled past them. “I got away just now because I had a blade in my boot. There’s no way Viorica didn’t frisk me and find it. She knew I was armed and didn’t warn the White Scorpions. She’s definitely playing a different game.”

  The jeep didn’t stop. Daria and John started moving again.

  “Diego and I met this guy in Sarajevo, a member of the Bosnian Parliament. Zoran Antic. I ran into Antic tonight, going into the U.S. ambassador’s residence for the event.”

  “You couldn’t talk him out of it?” She scanned the skies for drones and the street for police and soldiers.

  “Tried. He wouldn’t budge. He also knew you’d been captured.”

  Daria stopped in her tracks and turned to him.

  “Yeah. He told me you’d been captured. He also said I was ‘searching the skies and fearful of the words Made in America.’ Which means he knows about the drones. Which means he’s been in contact with this Viorica. Who, by the way, I saw tonight. She stopped and talked to Antic outside the residence. They’re in cahoots.”

  She blinked at him. “Ca-Hoots?”

  “Cahoots. It means to work together. Nineteenth-century western slang.”

  She nodded. “Thank you. So: Viorica and … a Bosnian?”

  “A Bosnian who first pointed us in the direction of Dragan Petrovic, couple days ago in Sarajevo. This guy Antic survived the siege of Sarajevo. Petrovic was a general in the war. Antic’s got plenty of reason to hate him. So Antic sets up a Serb strongman with ties to organized crime because, hey, when are those guys not good villains? And the ambassador’s residence isn’t the target, because Antic insisted on going in there. Your tall blonde? After she talked to Antic, I saw her talking to a media crew outside the cocktail party. My guess: Antic controls Viorica, and Viorica controls the Flying Monkeys. Which, by the way, probably are the creation of a company called American Citadel that’s manufacturing and marketing drones without the okay of State, or Defense, or the Federal Trade Commission.”

  Daria said, “Good lord. You have been busy.”

  “Yeah.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “God. When I was tied up, Viorica asked me if the CIA was watching the ambassador’s residence. She asked this, knowing I had a blade in my boot. She practically drew me a map.”

  “Misdirection.”

  She sighed. “Must be nice, being the clever one once in a while.”

  “Okay. So Viorica let slip the ambassador’s residence to lure you there. Zoran Antic’s plan calls for him to be inside the ambassador’s residence. We agree that something’s getting blown up, but it ain’t Petrovic’s target, the residence. Which means…”

  He let her get there.

  “It’s Petrovic.”

  “Sure.”

  Daria said, “Fuck.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  Forty

  Allison Duffy, U.S. deputy chief of mission, had switched to a simple black dress. She wore kitten heels. She looked both professional and elegant, a tough tightrope to walk.

  She had transferred her daunting to-do list to her smartphone, which she carried in lieu of a clutch. She had winnowed the list down considerably but had not tamed it. Not completely. The roughhouse at the front entrance to the ambassador’s residence had complicated matters, but only for a minute. The Marine contingent had dealt quickly with the party crasher, who now was in handcuffs and secured in the residence’s wine cellar under armed guard. He’d stay there until the soiree ended.

  Duffy checked with the caterers to make sure the hors d’oeuvres and champagne were flowing. One of her aides had already checked. Twice. Duffy recognized the symptoms of micromanagement, even in herself, but couldn’t help it.

  She ticked an item off the to-do list on her phone and checked with the camera crew: a cameraman, an audio man, and a technician, plus the ubiquitous talking-head bottle blonde. They had set up an alcove with a neutral background for interviews and had been given permission to roam the party with a steady cam, so long as they didn’t record any conversations. They could use audio only in the alcove. Allison Duffy had insisted.

  She watched the rigger kneel and hook his camera and audio equipment into the residence’s communications array. The residence was, for all intents and purposes, part of the U.S. embassy, which meant they were on U.S. soil and had to obey all State Department rules. One of the things the Qatari-based film crew had negotiated was permission to use the residence’s satellite dish and transmitters to bounce a high-res signal back home.

  A signal that strong might screw with Serbia’s RTS 1 station or the Kopernikus Cable Network, but the news directors for both stations had never shown the West much love. Allison Duffy could live with that.

  The camera and audio crew spoke mostly Arabic. Her own Arabic was fairly good, but she listened to them for a minute and realized the technical specifics of a TV setup were way beyond her.

  The presenter held a cordless mic and stepped forward, sweeping perfectly coiffed hair away from her face. She had that stereotypical Hollywood look that Allison Duffy had come to associate with almost all TV news reporters around the globe: perfect in a bland, Botox-and-Pilates sort of way. The California Every-Girl look.

  “Hello. I’m Allison Duffy. Deputy chief of mission.” She spoke in high Arabic. “So, is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Is splendid.” The presenter chose English but with a Russian accent.

  Allison went with English, too. “So far six people have agreed to be interviewed. I’ve asked them to come to you. You understand? They will come here; you can’t record in the rest of the mansion.”

  The presenter waved Allison off as if she were a waitress asking if she needed a refill.

  “Yes, yes.”

  The rigger, on his knees, spat an insult at the presenter, who was standing with her stilettos on either side of a power cord. She stepped around the cord with an eye roll that Allison sometimes got from her own teenage daughters.

  Allison stepped fully in the Russian’s way and bobbed her head to force eye contact. “We are clear on that?”

  The presenter offered a contrite nod. “Of course. Hospitality is greatly and also appreciated. You are … super helpful.” She seemed proud to have mastered the lexicon of Los Angeles.

  Mollified, Allison walked away. She nodded at the embassy’s public affairs liaison, Jay Kent, who’d been tasked with keeping an eye on the news crew.

  Allison’s agile mind drifted for a second to the likelihood of a Russian aerobics instructor somehow becoming a presenter for an Arabic cable channel. She had wanted to say, How’s the silicone holding up, dear? But a career in diplomacy turned the snarky aside into a fun but finely tucked-away thought.

  Allison also found her academic upbringing interfering with her snarkiness. The word Caucasian came from the Caucasus mountain range, which was the seat of a very large Islamic communi
ty.

  Which would explain the presenter’s ice blond hair and silvery blue eyes.

  * * *

  You cannot easily slip a covert comms unit into a U.S. embassy building. Ask any spy. It’s difficult.

  Viorica slipped her microphone into the U.S. ambassador’s residence by disguising it as a microphone.

  Got your Purloined Letter right here, sweetie, she thought, as the officious DCM marched away from her.

  Viorica lifted the wireless mic to her pink lips and said, “We are clear.”

  * * *

  In the silver van, Viorica’s tech guru, Winslow, saw that their equipment now was lashed into the embassy’s rooftop transceiver array. He adjusted his head set. “Ah. Got it. Lovely.”

  He heard Viorica switch to her Russian accent and say, “Testing … testing…” One of the partygoers must have passed close to her and the team of mercenaries posing as a film crew.

  “Where are my drones?” Winslow asked.

  “Patience. We’ll have them in two minutes.”

  Winslow sat in the fixed chair before the array of flat-screen monitors laid out before him. He didn’t have the room that Bryan Snow and his pilots luxuriated in back in Sandpoint, but he had all the technology at his fingers. Anything Snow could do with his micro air vehicles, Winslow could do as well once Snow passed the baton to them by disabling the American Citadel system in Idaho.

  And that would be fine, so long as nobody reactivated the American Citadel controls.

  Winslow heard her voice over his comms. “Has Danziger checked in?”

  “He’s on patrol,” the Englishman said. “I assume we are expecting opposition?”

  “Could be.”

  One by one, his monitors began to come alive. Each screen showed a different bird’s-eye view of Belgrade.

  “Mr. Snow came through,” he drawled. “We have ourselves an air force.”

  Viorica said, “Well done. I called Petrovic. I asked him if he was sure—absolutely sure—that he wanted to go through with this.”

  Winslow adjusted his controls and smiled at the thought. “His grand plan for the attack on the residence? Even though his wife and children are inside?”

  “I’m looking at them right now.”

  “And our beloved acting foreign minister said yes, didn’t he?”

  “He most certainly did.”

  “Bloody wanker.”

  Viorica laughed. “We gave him his out. What happens next is on him.”

  Winslow reached for his joysticks.

  Sandpoint, Idaho

  Colonel Olivia Crace entered the control room, but not alone. She brought one of the three military men, the redhead with hazel eyes. And a Colt .45.

  Bryan Snow stood behind his two pilots, who sat at their workstations. They were attempting to run a diagnostic to find the problem in the command-and-control of the drone suite in Serbia.

  Snow adjusted his black plastic frames and looked annoyed at the disturbance. “Can you give us a minute?”

  The black woman ignored him. She held a small, rectangular device that Snow, at first, mistook for a cell phone. Only when she stepped closer did he notice the short, blunt antenna.

  That’s when he noticed the Colt .45 as well.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Snow felt panic rise. “What’s this? You two have to leave. Right now.”

  Crace studied her handheld device. “If he speaks again, kneecap him.”

  The redhead didn’t bother responding.

  Snow’s pilots sat frozen.

  Olivia Crace finally looked up. “You lost control of the drones for sixty seconds in Florence. Since then you’ve run every test you can dream up to explain the glitch. Every test but one.”

  The pilots looked from the newcomers and the massive Colt to Snow.

  Snow said, “Hey. I don’t know—”

  “I had the NSA bring us this device so I could see if any unauthorized radio transmissions were leaving this building. Your offshore bank accounts also were flagged, Snow.”

  One of the pilots said, “Offshore accounts? Bryan?”

  Snow tried to gut it out. “You need to leave. This is my—”

  Crace said, “Kneecap only.”

  The redhead stepped forward.

  Snow said, “Okayokayokay! Fine, yes! C’mon, please!”

  Crace said, “Thank you. Please put us back in control of the drones. Do it now.”

  Belgrade

  Dragan Petrovic gulped whiskey, his vision blurring with tears. He stared out the window, past the ruined Chinese embassy, at the American buildings two blocks away. He pictured his beloved Adrijana and their three daughters in their festive frocks, laughing, the girls with bows in their hair and flutes of sparkling pear cider. Adrijana, his beautiful butterfly, in her element.

  Petrovic offered a silent prayer to St. Siva to accept the terrible blood offering he made on behalf of all …

  He squinted. He wiped tears away from his eyes.

  A hawk arced into view.

  Heading directly toward him.

  Petrovic saw a splinter of light flash beneath the mechanical bird.

  His window shattered.

  * * *

  Despite the gloom of dust and the penumbra of the street lights, both Daria and John glimpsed the Hotspur drone. Both saw the flicker of light from the belly of the hawk. A second later they heard the tinkle of breaking glass coming from the Parliament building.

  Daria said, “It’s started.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “The fellow I interrogated said … Hold on.”

  She deftly hopped up on an iron garbage can that was welded to the sidewalk. Passersby gasped as she straddled the can, balanced on both boots. Teenage boys hooted.

  John had a working understanding of the term undercover and thought probably this wasn’t that.

  She pointed. “There!” She faced the graffiti-laden security wall around the remains of the old Chinese embassy. The wall featured a padlocked gate beyond which lay a corrugated maintenance outbuilding. Parked next to the shed was a newish silver van featuring a small but advanced telecommunications transceiver on the roof.

  She hopped down. “The van. That’s them.”

  John checked his watch. “I’ll get to Parliament, tell the guards they’re under attack.”

  “No.” She turned to him and smiled. “You’re much smarter than I. I need you to go find Zoran Antic. He’s been ten steps ahead of everyone, me, the Serbs, Skorpjo. I need you to check him. Go.”

  John blanched. “Go? Into the ambassador’s residence? With the armed Marines who already know I tried to sneak in before?”

  Daria pulled a Makarov out of her backpack. “Yes.”

  “The fuck am I supposed to do that?”

  She grinned. “That’s where the smarter than I part comes in. Good luck.”

  She sprinted for the bombed-out Chinese embassy and the silver van.

  * * *

  Winslow squinted at the centermost plasma monitors. The .22 had made only a modest hole in the window of Dragan Petrovic’s office but a more sizable hole in Petrovic himself. The man had fallen fast, but the blood spatter on the window was most gratifying.

  The hawk drone was not firing incendiary rounds, he noted. Unlike the attack in Florence. Otherwise, Petrovic’s corpse would be smoldering.

  Winslow made a gun of his forefinger and blew on it, gunslinger style. He reached for his controls and toggled the suite of hawk drones, two of which were equipped with American Citadel’s miniature pyrophoric rockets.

  He targeted the Parliament building.

  A red warning light flickered on a screen. He almost missed it.

  First his hummingbird watcher drones began vectoring away from Parliament. Then the hawks followed.

  “Hold on…” Winslow muttered, trying to determine the problem. Had Sandpoint reacquired control of the MAVs?

  A new screen popped up. It took Winslow a moment to realize it was an audio monitor.
He peered at the time stamp and GPS location. The search parameters had been fed into the Mercutio drones days earlier. And in Italy.

  One of his speakers crackled:

  “No. You’re much smarter than I. I need you to go find Zoran Antic. He’s been ten steps ahead of everyone, me, the Serbs, Skorpjo. I need you to check him. Go.”

  A head-and-shoulders mug shot appeared on the screen. The woman with a heart-shaped face and straight black hair.

  “Ah, we are holding,” Winslow spoke into his mic.

  Viorica’s voice came back quickly. “Problem?”

  “The Mercutios were tasked to find your Miss Gibron. I think they just did.”

  A second audio signature appeared on the monitor. The words Target 2 blinked to life next to it.

  “Go? Into the ambassador’s residence? With the armed Marines who already know I tried to sneak in before?”

  “Yes.”

  “The fuck am I supposed to do that?”

  Winslow said, “Gibron’s here. And she has a friend.”

  Viorica said, “Where’s ‘here’? Be specific.”

  But it was the dour Afrikaaner, Danziger, who broke into their comms first. “Here is here,” he said. “She’s at the fence.”

  Forty-One

  The Chinese embassy had been seven or eight stories tall, a brick-fronted slab of bureaucratic and Communist sobriety and efficiency. The grounds originally had been paved over with cement, but waxy grasses had reasserted themselves, pushing up here and there, displacing entire ten-foot-by-ten-foot pavers, raising the corners of some to create a tilted, cracked public area. The grounds were littered with fast-food bags and cigarette packs and hypodermic needles and random bits of clothing. Government officials may have thought the cadaver of the building was mute testament to Western aggression. Belgrade citizens were using the grounds as a blockwide trash bin.

  The corrugated-tin maintenance shed on the grounds was dilapidated and rusted-out and the frame so warped that the double doors were as crooked as a snaggled tooth.

  Only the silver van was new. That, and the telecommunications array on its roof.