Retribution

by Adrian Magson

  They moved on and checked the washroom, where they found an armed MP on guard, and alongside him, a supply of fresh towels and soap. ‘For the big man,’ he explained in a thick Glasgow accent, a faint hint of disgust at being given such a menial task. ‘The rest of the minnows have to cross their legs.’

  They left him to it. As they drew level with the basement door, guarded by a solitary soldier, Harry stopped. Something about their last visit down there still bothered him. But what was it?

  ‘Anyone been in or out?’ he asked the soldier.

  ‘No, sir.’ The man had a French accent. ‘No one is permitted.’

  Harry nodded. Must be his imagination, looking to find clues where none existed. Even so, as he turned away a series of images flickered through his mind: the stairs down to the basement, the coats on the wall, the coal across the floor; the puddle of damp. And the skittering lump of coal he’d kicked accidentally, and the ensuing swirl of dust around his feet.

  The coal . . .!

  ‘He’s inside!’ Harry swore and stepped back to the basement door, surprising the soldier. ‘Call Captain Rekker,’ he told the man. ‘Tell him Kassim’s inside the building. But don’t let the press get wind of it, or there’ll be a stampede. That’s just what Kassim wants.’

  As the soldier keyed his radio, Harry pushed the basement door open and stepped cautiously down the stairs into the boiler room, Rik behind, covering his back. The air rose to meet them, damp and pungent. They scanned the area around the base of the stairs, then in a series of overlapping moves covered the entire basement, checking every corner.

  Harry toed the coal. Nothing moved in the air.

  ‘When I kicked it earlier,’ he said softly, ‘the dust rose in the air. Damp coal doesn’t do that – I know from when I was a kid; I had to fetch coal in from the shed every day.’

  Rik nodded. ‘Could be a maintenance worker or a security guy knocked a bag over. The bagged coal would have been drier.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ Harry agreed.

  ‘What about a local, got down here for a look-see while the place was open?’

  ‘No. It’s been locked tight. If anyone else had got down here and found there was fuel to burn, do you think they’d have left it here?’

  ‘I guess not.’ Rik bent to peer into a bucket of water standing against the wall. He prodded the surface with a tentative finger. ‘You’re right – someone’s been here. There’s dust everywhere else but on this.’ A clatter of footsteps came down the stairs and both men turned as one, the barrels of their MP5s swivelling to cover the entrance. It was Captain Rekker and two of his men. He looked grim.

  ‘I’ve persuaded them to cut things short. They agreed. Lift-off in five minutes. What have you found?’

  Harry explained, indicating the coal. He moved some of the lumps aside with his foot. The outline of an inspection hatch appeared. ‘This is where he came in.’ He indicated the bucket of clear water and the wet coal sack. ‘He used the water to wash off the dust.’

  Rekker frowned. ‘But I thought he stole a rifle from some black-market dealers. Why would he bother if he planned on getting inside all along?’

  ‘He didn’t. There was a rifle box; we just jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

  The three members of the CP team moved back to give covering fire while Harry and Rik cleared away the rest of the coal. The captain took out his radio and issued instructions to his men to check for an exit point outside the building.

  Rik slung his weapon to the rear and grasped the lift-ring, then counted to three and threw open the hatch.

  ‘You could get a small army in there,’ Rekker muttered. His expression was one of disgust at the failure to spot the obvious. ‘This does not appear on the plans we were given – but I should have thought of it.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Harry told him. ‘It’s too late – he’s already here.’ He looked across to where the line of grey coats hung on the wall, another image coming to his mind. There had been an unbroken line of them.

  Now one was missing.

  ‘The side room,’ he said to Rik. ‘The old man putting books on shelves.’

  ‘Old man?’ Rekker queried.

  ‘He looked like a member of staff.’

  Rekker shook his head with a growing look of concern. ‘But we gave specific instructions. There are no staff working today.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  Kassim sensed his time was nearly up.

  He was stuck in a side room of the library, away from where the meeting was being held. He now realized that he had an impossible task. He’d been waiting for an opportunity to move along the corridor towards the main hall, but there were too many guards around. All he needed was access to the entrance and a clear field of fire, and his job would be complete. Not as telling or shocking as he had managed with the others, but that was a matter of fate. The one thing he’d been counting on was that none of the guards would dare open fire among such a crowd; the carnage among the press and government officials would never be lived down.

  But instinct told him his presence had been discovered.

  He moved towards the door and heard the clatter of footsteps in the distance, and closer to, the cold click-clack of weapons being cocked. The sound bounced along the walls of the corridor, making his already stretched nerves jump alarmingly. There was no shouting, no sound of panic. But they knew he was here.

  Word had gone out.

  Kassim slipped out of the room with an armful of books. This could work to his advantage. He ventured along the corridor and peered round the corner just as two armed guards stationed themselves at the doorway to the basement. He ducked back and hurried to the washroom, where he stopped and listened outside the door. He could just pick out the echo of heavy footsteps pacing up and down inside.

  Taking a deep breath, Kassim opened the door – and found himself face to face with a uniformed military policeman.

  ‘Who’re you?’ the MP asked, just as Kassim dropped the books he was carrying and thrust the Browning into the man’s stomach below his body armour. He pulled the trigger and felt the gun jump in his hand, the suppressed shot muffled further against the other’s body.

  The MP staggered backwards and fell, blood spreading across his stomach. Kassim stuffed the gun in his pocket, locked the door, then bent and dragged the body across to the furthermost cubicle, where he heaved it on to the seat. Then he knelt between the dead man’s legs and ripped away the zebra-tape on the floor sealing the rim of an inspection hatch. He could already hear shouts coming from out in the corridor, and commands for the building to be evacuated and sealed off.

  The hatch cover came away, revealing a narrow concrete shaft carrying waste and oil pipes for the heating system, with just enough space for a man to crawl along. It ran off in two directions, one to the rest of the building, the other towards the basement.

  Someone banged on the washroom door and called out a name. Kassim cursed and dropped into the hole head first. He’d been intending to take the guard’s clothes, but it was too late. He began to pull himself along the shaft, scraping the skin of his elbows and knees as he brushed over the coarse cement bottom. He muttered a prayer, scrabbling desperately to propel himself to safety and ignoring the confines of the shaft, reliving nightmares of childhood in a small cave, hiding from his friends in a boyish game gone wrong.

  But this was no game.

  He heard a crash follow him down the shaft as the washroom door was kicked in, and redoubled his efforts. Already he could imagine a gun being poked down the shaft, a hail of bullets burning towards him.

  He felt the shaft tilt downwards, and let gravity help his progress until he reached a dead end and the touch of soft, damp fabric on the floor of the shaft. It was the blanket he’d dried himself with earlier. He stopped and took a deep breath, then reached backwards and took the Browning from his pocket. One opportunity was all he had. If they were ready for him, he would die right here, in this suffocating little hole
with barely room to curl up and meet his maker.

  In the basement, the soldier who had earlier been guarding the door stood over the open hatch leading to the outside, where the man named Kassim had come in. He heard a faint sound behind him, and walked back through the connecting chambers. Probably one of the others, come to relieve him—

  The grey uniform coats on the wall seemed to explode outwards, and a small metal door appeared, revealing a black hole where there should have been none. A figure tumbled into the basement, the dull glint of metal in his hand, and the guard felt a sick helplessness as he realized his own weapon was pointing away and it was too late to do anything but watch.

  Kassim smashed the guard across the side of the face with the Browning. The man fell in a heap and Kassim leapt on him and dragged him out of sight of the stairs towards the open hatch in the floor. He quickly stripped him of his clothes and armoured vest, then took off his own clothes and dressed in the guard’s uniform. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but good enough. He dumped the unconscious guard down the hatch and threw the cover in on top of him.

  At the top of the stairs he checked the mechanism of the guard’s submachine gun. It was loaded and ready. He placed his ear to the door. Heard shouted orders echoing along the corridor, and beyond that, the noise of a helicopter’s engines gathering power.

  Kleeman was leaving!

  ‘He’s gone down the shaft!’ The MP who had broken down the washroom door levered himself up from the hatch in the toilet cubicle. Two of his colleagues had pulled the other soldier out and were checking for signs of life, but to no avail.

  Harry walked in and looked at the hole. ‘Where does it lead?’

  The MP pointed off towards the rear of the building. ‘Back that way. But it may change direction . . . it’s too dark to see.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Dump something heavy in there to seal it off.’ He beckoned to Rik. ‘Come on – I want to stick close to Kleeman.’

  They could already hear a helicopter’s engines winding up to maximum pitch, and shouts as the CP team began to hustle Kleeman through the mass of journalists towards the main entrance.

  Suddenly more cries echoed along the corridor, followed by the sound of a shot.

  ‘He’s down in the basement . . . heading for the outside!’

  Harry ran along the passageway and saw two soldiers disappearing down the stairs. Another was running towards the front, presumably to cut round the outside to where the tunnel came out.

  ‘Kleeman’s on board.’ Captain Rekker appeared, signalling to Harry. ‘We’re lifting off any – who the hell was that?’ He was staring at the soldier disappearing through the entrance. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘He’s not one of ours!’

  A volley of shots rang out, flat and puny against the thudding noise of the helicopter’s engines. Harry ran towards the main doors and barged aside a group of journalists, his MP5 held aloft. A sick feeling was already building in the pit of his stomach.

  Kassim had outwitted them after all.

  A windstorm of noise and movement hit them in the face as the rotors of a French military Super Cougar 725 blasted them with dust and debris. A UN policeman lay sprawled a few yards from the front entrance, and three of the CP team were bunched in a heap close by the helicopter’s main door, their weapons scattered. Elsewhere other soldiers and police had all dived for cover.

  ‘Where’s Kleeman?’ Harry asked a stunned guard.

  The man pointed towards the helicopter. ‘In there. A guy started firing as he came out the door. They didn’t stand a chance!’

  As if to confirm the guard’s words, two men appeared in the opening to the helicopter’s fuselage. One was Kleeman, looking stunned; the other, standing behind him, wore combat gear and an armoured vest. It was Kassim, calmly staring out at the dramatic scene.

  Kassim ducked back and pointed his submachine gun at the loadmaster. He was holding Anton Kleeman by the throat and felt unnerved by what he’d just seen. Two more men in combat uniform had emerged from the library entrance, and he recognized Tate and, alongside him, the younger man he’d seen with him in the airport hotel near Fort Benning.

  They’d been following him all along!

  He felt a ripple of anger and was tempted to open fire. But he decided against it; he might need to conserve ammunition. Instead, he tapped the loadmaster on the head with the tip of the gun barrel and pointed upwards. The man swallowed hard, then flicked his intercom mouthpiece into place and gave instructions to the pilot.

  The lumbering craft, capable of carrying up to thirty people, seemed to sink on its haunches for a moment, before gathering itself and lifting off the ground with a renewed down-blast of air, leaving the security guards on the ground staring helplessly into the sky.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Harry turned to Captain Rekker, who was busy on his radio, his face taut with frustration at the disaster which had overtaken his team.

  ‘We need another helo,’ Harry shouted above the noise. ‘We have to follow him.’

  Rekker nodded and held up two fingers. ‘Coming in now . . . a Black Hawk. The Super Cougar’s being tracked by ground navigation.’ The Dutchman walked away, his jaw clenched, and Harry let him go. There was little he could say to assuage his feelings, and he guessed the captain was now facing the prospect of a foreshortened military career.

  The Super Cougar was already a dot on the grey afternoon horizon by the time another engine noise heralded the approach of a second helicopter. They turned to see a Sikorsky Black Hawk thudding down towards them, a crew member leaning out of the door to assist the pursuers’ entry.

  The Black Hawk was slower than the Super Cougar, but not by much. They were already far behind and the weather was closing in. Harry knew there was every possibility Kassim might complete his murderous mission by simply throwing Kleeman out of the door, then forcing the pilot to ditch somewhere in the hills where he would be impossible to find.

  But why hadn’t he already done that?

  They leapt aboard and fastened themselves in. Apart from Harry, Rik and Captain Rekker, there were two other members of the CP team and an army paramedic. Two journalists trying to get on the flight were dumped unceremoniously out of the door.

  The Black Hawk rose in the air like an express lift and heeled over to follow the distant Super Cougar, throwing the passengers about in their seats. The pilot had been briefed on what was expected of him and was responding with relish.

  The centre of Pristina rushed by through the open door. Within minutes they were out over open countryside, dotted with houses and farm buildings and lots of empty space in between.

  ‘He’s heading north towards the hills.’ It was Rekker, holding an intercom earpiece, from which he could hear the exchange of conversation between the pilot and the ground-control operator following the flight of the other craft. ‘Where the hell’s he going? There’s nothing up there but open country.’

  Harry shook his head. He doubted Kassim himself knew which way to go, only that he had a mission to complete. Even sitting on his tail rotor, there would be precious little they could do to stop him without putting the lives of Kleeman and the crew at risk.

  North? Harry pulled a map out of a bracket by the door and found Pristina. He stabbed his finger on it so Rekker and the others could see. North of here was Mitrovica.

  Kassim was taking Kleeman back to the compound.

  It meant he had no walk-out plan; this was the end of the line for both of them.

  The Black Hawk began to buck around as it hit wind turbulence coming off the hills and funnelling down the jagged valleys. The CP team members looked unconcerned, accustomed to such uncomfortable transport and bleak conditions, intent only, as Harry knew they would be, on retrieving their man.

  ‘We’re catching up!’ Rekker shouted, and pointed through the open door as the Black Hawk swung round a tree-covered hill. Ahead of them, about two miles away, the Super Cougar was dropping down into a valley with a river running along the botto
m, a sliver of white against the grey-green landscape. Slopes rose sharply on either side, seeming to close in deliberately on the two aircraft, the engine noise hammering back at them.

  ‘He’s losing speed deliberately,’ Rekker commented. ‘Bleeding off gradually so Kassim doesn’t notice.’

  Harry was impressed by the pilot’s courage. If he did it carefully enough, there should be insufficient change in engine noise to alert their captor. As long as Kassim didn’t think to take a look at the air speed indicator.

  They followed the craft down, skimming in low over the river. Below them, white water foamed over gleaming rocks and coursed swiftly down a series of rugged falls, fed by incessant rain high in the hills. It was a cold and brutal scene, but possessed a coarse, natural beauty at odds with the wretched villages and towns nearby.

  ‘He’s going in!’ the crew chief shouted. The Super Cougar had dropped abruptly as if a string holding it aloft had been cut. It seemed about to hit the trees. Something must have happened on board. The machine’s rear rotor seemed to brush over the top of a giant pine tree as it crested a ridge, and there was a collective intake of breath. Then, at the last moment it dipped, and the rotor exploded with a flash and a puff of smoke.

  Inside the lead helicopter, Kleeman and the loadmaster were huddled together under Kassim’s gun, desperately hanging on as the pilot tried to regain control of his craft. A trickle of blood was running down from inside his flying helmet, after Kassim had noticed the decrease in speed and fired a shot close to his head. He’d intended it as a warning, but the movement in the helicopter’s flight had thrown his aim off, the bullet ripping through his helmet and grazing his skull.

  Kassim locked his arm through a section of cargo webbing and stared through the open door at the wildly undulating picture below. In the distance he caught fleeting glimpses of the following Black Hawk, which had gradually drawn closer.