by Tom Cain
The men by the canisters were his first targets. When they were downed and unconscious, he went for the one by the car, beating him to his knees, where he doubled over with coughs and dry vomits until Carver laid him out on the ground with a vicious kick to the side of the head.
But where were the car keys? They weren’t in the hands of the unconscious gang member, nor the lock of the car. Now Carver had to fall to the ground and fumble around in the smoke, staring through the clear plastic bubble of his gas mask as his hands scrabbled across the dust and debris on the ground. It seemed an age before his fingers closed around the plastic key ring and he could get back up to his feet and make for the Shogun.
He turned on the ignition and gunned it, accelerating down the drive and then slewing left into the small graveled forecourt in front of the house. Bagrat was waiting there, with the two women. Yoko was still in her bikini, while Linda had fled the bedroom in nothing more than a pair of panties and a blanket, which was draped over her shoulders and clutched tight in front of her breasts. Bagrat was only marginally less exposed. Bare-chested and shoeless, he had nothing on but a pair of jeans. His right hand was clutching a gun. But the good news for Carver was the briefcase chained to Bagrat’s left wrist.
He saw it as he came around the corner and knew at once what had to be done. With his right hand on the wheel, he brought the Shogun to a skidding halt in a shower of gravel. At the same time, his left hand ripped one of the stun grenades from his vest. He pulled out the pin with his teeth and threw the hexagonal perforated-steel tube out of the car window, ducking his head, and closing his eyes tight shut as he did so.
The British Special Forces, for whom stun grenades were originally designed as means of overcoming hostage takers, always called them “flashbangs,” a name that means exactly what it says. The grenade detonated in front of the three Georgians with a scorching dazzle of light, equivalent to the glow from more than 100,000 standard sixty-watt domestic lightbulbs, just a few feet from their unprotected eyeballs. At the same time it emitted a sound blast eight times as loud as a fighter plane’s jet engine. Carver was expecting it and had taken precautions, but even he was stunned for a few seconds. Bagrat and the two women were poleaxed.
The two women were sitting on the ground with vacant, zombielike expressions on their sightless, deaf faces. Linda’s blanket had fallen from her body, but she was completely indifferent to or simply unaware of her exposure.
Bagrat was barely any better. He was on his knees and trying to get to his feet, though his limbs seemed unwilling to obey his instructions. His gun was weaving to and fro in his hand as he swung his torso around from one side to the other, blindly trying to seek out his attacker. Suddenly, the gun went off and a bullet smashed through the Shogun’s rear windows. Carver came to his senses fast, kicking open the door and falling to the ground. He scrambled across the gravel toward Bagrat, keeping as low as he could as the gun fired three more random, aimless shots. One fizzed over Carver’s head. Another ricocheted off the steps that led from the house down to the pool. The third caught Linda full in the throat, ripping through her windpipe and lodging in her spinal cord. She was thrown onto her back by the impact and lay there helplessly as the blood spurted from her gaping, gurgling wound.
She was going to take a while to die, but there was nothing that Carver or anyone else could do to save her. He concentrated on Bagrat, feeling enraged that his attempts to avoid any fatalities had been frustrated, a fury that emerged in the venom with which he whipped the baton back and forth across his head three times in quick succession. Once he’d knocked him out, Carver picked up Bagrat’s gun hand, pointed the pistol at the dying woman, and, keeping the other man’s finger on the trigger, squeezed it once more. The shot hit her in the skull, killing her instantly and putting her out of her misery.
Carver was tempted to turn the gun on Bagrat himself. But he had been sickened enough by the woman’s unnecessary death. He had no desire for more cold-blooded slaughter. Instead he held the gun, still in Bagrat’s right hand, against the chain that connected the briefcase to his left wrist. He fired one last time, breaking the chain, then grabbed the barrel of the gun and threw it into a clump of weeds and scraggly shrubs over by the pool. If the police ever turned up, they would find it there, with Bagrat’s prints all over it, gunshot residue on his hands, and two matching bullets in the dead woman’s corpse.
He reached for the case and got up. Roughly fifteen seconds had passed since the flashbang’s detonation. The grenade’s effects would persist for about a minute more. The other three men would be impaired by the CS gas for up to twenty minutes. But when they all got to their senses, they would be four angry Georgians. In the meantime, there would soon be police cars and fire engines coming up the road from Tourrettes-sur-Loup, attracted by the flames that were now tearing through the whole house, sending dirty black smoke high into the clear blue sky. It was time to get out.
Carver grabbed the grenade launcher from the Shogun and slung it around his back again. He collected the used flashbang casing and ran back around the burning house. The CS gas had cleared, but the three men were still incapable of stopping Carver as he dashed past them. He managed to pick up the grenade that had gone off by the carport, but the other one, by the propane canisters, was too close to the flames, which were now beginning to lick around the two red metal tubes. It would be only seconds before they blew, and that realization hit Carver with a surge of adrenaline that sent him flying up and over the wall and hurtling across the mountainside, away from the house.
He had got about a hundred yards through the trees when the canisters exploded. The deafening blast seemed to turn the air itself into a solid, unstoppable force that hit Carver in the back, picking him up off his feet and throwing him into the trunk of a nearby tree, where he lay, bruised and winded, while a flurry of twigs and leaves blew at him. Then the blast reached the outer extent of its radius and imploded back in again, rushing back over him, sucking the air from his lungs until finally the storm had passed.
Every inch of his body hurt. His brain felt as bruised and battered in his skull as if he’d just fought ten heavyweight rounds. As he got to his feet, watching a fireball that dwarfed all the previous flames ascending over the scorched ruins of the house, he tested his limbs for broken bones and was amazed to find he could still walk and even run, tentatively at first and then with growing confidence.
Carver was just about okay, but he didn’t like to think what had happened to the helpless, incapacitated men who had been caught just a few feet from the explosion, or the dogs lying drugged in their wire cage. There would be no trace of them left upon the earth.
69
Kurt Vermulen had been talking to the mayor of Antibes when his cell phone bleeped loudly and a message appeared on its screen, telling him that he had a text. He apologized to the mayor, who indicated that he was not in the slightest bit offended, certainly not by such a distinguished guest as monsieur le général.
Vermulen jabbed helplessly at the telephone keypad before giving up, with a sigh that conveyed the absolute impossibility for a civilized man of keeping up with all the latest gadgets. The mayor chuckled sympathetically.
Alix took the phone from Vermulen’s hand, with a look of womanly amusement at the failings of helpless men.
“Here, let me,” she said. Her fingers moved expertly over the phone and a message flashed up.
“It’s Wynter,” she said. “He says he’ll be ready for drinks at the hotel at seven.”
Vermulen looked at his watch.
“Well, that’s not a problem for time,” he said. “But I’m still not happy about it. Are you sure you want to go through with it? He can’t complain if I meet him instead. Today, of all days…”
He looked out of the window of the mayor’s office. The town hall, with its sandy pink walls and white shutters, looked down on the Cours Masséna, right in the heart of the oldest part of town. Every day, the square was filled with market
stalls selling freshly caught fish, or fruit and vegetables that had come direct from the farms up in the Provençal hills. The Cathedral of Notre Dame stood across the way. The sea was just a skipping stone’s flight away.
Alix slipped her arm through his and gave a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I can cope. That’s why I’m here, after all…”
Vermulen’s smile lit up his eyes with genuine affection. The mayor, seeing its sincerity, smiled, too.
“Yeah,” said Vermulen, holding Alix to his side, “I know. You can cope with just about anything.”
Then he looked at his watch again.
“Well,” he said, “I guess we better get going…”
“Bien sûr, mon général,” agreed the mayor.
70
The view from the Dauphin helicopter toward Tourrettes-sur-Loup, three miles away, was spectacular: a jumble of rough stone walls and tiled roofs jammed on to a V-shaped promontory. The buildings clung to the very edge of the cliffs like a herd of lemmings, daring one another to make the jump. But sitting in the copilot’s seat, Platon had no interest in the aesthetic appeal of the place. His only concern was correlating the landmarks ahead of him with the map in his hands. He’d been given coordinates for the house where the Georgians were hiding out. Now he just had to find the place.
Then he saw the plume of black smoke halfway up the mountainside, looked down at the map, and that problem was solved. The fire was a beacon, exactly where he’d expected to find their destination. But they’d arrived too late. Unless those peasant scum had somehow set their own house on fire, the American’s hired thief had got there first.
“Aim for the smoke,” he told the pilot. “Fast!”
They’d been flying parallel to the valley at the foot of the Puy de Tourrettes. Now the helicopter banked hard to the right as the pilot changed course and began his descent. They were heading directly for the smoke when it was obliterated by an explosion that launched a fireball into the sky in an eruption of twisting, bubbling, rocketing flame.
Platon spat a string of Russian expletives into his headset microphone, then twisted in his seat so that he was facing the five men in the passenger compartment behind him. They were all wearing bulletproof vests and carrying automatic weapons equipped with bulbous silencers. These were Platon’s best men, hardened veterans who had fought with him in Afghanistan, or served in the savage campaigns against the guerrillas of Chechnya.
“We’ll be there in thirty seconds. You two, out first, find cover, and be ready to lay down covering fire. The rest of you, come with me.”
The pilot slowed down as he approached the house, looking for somewhere to land his machine, nervously skirting the fire and smoke that had engulfed the house. Close up, Platon could see that a gigantic bite had been taken from the rear of the building, where the explosion must have taken place. He could see only three people, two women and a man, scattered across the ground at the front of the house, not far from a four-wheel-drive SUV.
The man was crouched over one of the women, shaking her shoulders. He seemed completely unaware of the helicopter’s approach. Finally, when it was barely two yards above the ground and thirty yards away from him, he turned his head, screwing up his eyes, and jerking his mustachioed face from side to side. He got to his feet, but made no attempt to run away. He looked bemused by everything going on around him.
The Dauphin had come in with its cockpit pointing toward the building and the nose wheel touching the ground. Because the land fell away so steeply, the pilot had kept the rotors turning, half hovering, so that his craft remained completely horizontal, with the rear wheels off the ground.
The first two men jumped down from the sliding passenger door and ran across the ground at a crouch before flinging themselves flat, their guns pointing toward the man. Their three comrades followed, moving forward up the hill to the nose of the helicopter, covering Platon as he got out of the copilot’s door. Then all four walked forward toward the man, the front three holding their guns at their shoulders, ready to fire.
The man up ahead wasn’t carrying a weapon. Yet they could see now that the woman beside him was dead, shot in the throat and head. She was naked but for a pair of panties. The other woman, who seemed as oblivious to their arrival as the man had been, was wearing a bikini. The man had on nothing but a pair of jeans. He looked at them for a few seconds, blearily, as if he could barely focus, and then, quite unexpectedly, he bent forward, put his head in his hands, and began to sob.
“Mother of God…” muttered Platon, whose years of exposure to the effects of combat had not made him any less disgusted by those who fell apart under pressure. Now that he was close to the blubbering wreck he could see that he answered to Bagrat Baladze’s description. So this sniveling wretch was supposed to be a gang leader. No wonder he’d been such an easy target. He’d given up easily, too. Someone had given his head a good beating, but aside from that, there wasn’t a scratch on him.
Platon grabbed him by the throat.
“Are you Baladze?” he asked.
The Georgian gave him a blank stare, then frowned and tried to shrug his shoulders.
Platon slapped him across the face.
“Are… you… Baladze?” he repeated, his voice tensing with anger.
Panic returned to his captive’s eyes. He raised his forefingers to his ears and shook his head.
“Can’t hear…” he whimpered, and then, “I think I killed her. But I don’t know how… I don’t know… oh, God…”
He began weeping again, his face crumpled in Platon’s hands, as tearful and snot-ridden as a little child’s.
When Baladze had raised his hands, Platon had noticed the cuff still attached to his left wrist, with its chain hanging loosely down his arm. He grabbed the chain and yanked it upward, bringing the wrist with it. He had to get it within inches of Baladze’s nose before the Georgian could see it.
Platon gave the chain a shake. His unspoken question was obvious.
“It’s gone,” said Baladze. “Someone took it. Didn’t see him. Couldn’t see… couldn’t hear… so loud…”
Platon gave an order to one of his men.
“Ask the bitch. Maybe she saw what happened.”
The brown-haired woman was no more use than her boss: just as deaf, just as blind. When she realized her blond friend was dead, she started wailing, too.
Next, Platon turned his attention to the four-by-four. It had left a clear trail behind it, showing that it had come downhill at speed, turned hard, and then slewed to a standstill. Whoever had driven it must have taken Baladze by surprise: He would not have expected an attack from uphill, inside his own property.
Platon realized that the attacker must have used a stun grenade to disable Baladze and the two women while he took whatever had been attached to that handcuff: a case of some kind, presumably. If Baladze had cared about it enough to chain it to his body, its contents must have been valuable. That document Zhukovskaya wanted had to have been in there. Platon would get to that in a moment, but not before he had secured the rest of the property. The first two men out of the helicopter were still in position. Platon signaled to them with quick hand movements, indicating that he wanted them to flank around the side of the house and report back what they found. Then he focused on Baladze again.
The effects of the grenade should be wearing off by now. He put his mouth close to the Georgian’s ear and then shouted: “Can you hear me?”
Baladze tried to look blank and uncomprehending, but a flicker in his eyes, an involuntary admission that he’d understood Platon’s words, gave him away.
“Thought so,” said Platon. “So… what was in the case?”
“What case?”
Platon punched him, very hard, in the stomach. Then he pulled his head up by the hair.
“The case on the other end of that chain,” he said.
Baladze was still winded, wheezing and gasping for breath. Platon had not let g
o of his hair. He gave it another hard tug, jerking Baladze’s head up and back.
“Well?”
For the first time, Baladze showed some defiance. He spat at Platon, leaving a dribble of spittle and phlegm on his chest. Platon smiled.
Then he kneed Baladze in the crotch.
Platon had retained his hold on the other man’s head. When Baladze automatically doubled up, his head was held, agonizingly, in place.
The pain was about to get worse. Platon whipped a two-fingered jab into Baladze’s eyes. Three of the most sensitive areas of his body were now all in agony, simultaneously. Baladze howled and writhed, which only increased the tugging on his scalp. His knees gave way, but Platon yanked him back up. He screamed again.
When the noise had died away, Platon repeated his question. “What was in the case?”
“A list…” Baladze whined.
“What kind of list?”
“List of bombs.”
Platon’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward, pulling Baladze’s head toward him until their faces were barely a hand’s breadth apart.
“What kind of bombs?”
Baladze’s shoulders slumped.
“Nuclear bombs, old Soviet ones… all over the world… a hundred of them.”
Platon let go of his grip in sheer astonishment. No wonder that dried-up old witch had been so secretive. They must be shitting on themselves in Moscow. The former rulers of a mighty empire, so humbled that they had to call on gangsters to rescue their dirty secrets: If ever you wanted a sign of how things had changed, that was it. Still, it gave him an opportunity. If he could get the briefcase back, or even destroy it and then bluff that he had it, he would be in a very powerful position.