PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Milanović’s smile widened, and Cole wondered if this was just for show, a way of showing who was boss before the business negotiations got underway.

  And then Milanović nodded once, and Cole heard the muffled thump of a silenced pistol, felt Thompson’s blood and brain tissue exploding over his face and neck, saw the dead body dropping to the floor with his peripheral vision, and cursed inwardly.

  He’d been wrong.

  This was no business meeting.

  This was an extermination, and Cole knew that he would be lucky to leave this room alive.

  15

  Cole’s mind processed the information before him in fractions of a second, his subconscious doing a job that his conscious brain could never have managed.

  How had Milanović known? Was the infiltration of the Paradigm Group even worse then they’d feared, was Force One itself compromised?

  And what could he do now?

  Thompson was down, there were four men armed with handguns behind him and Mitchell, and four more across the room with submachine guns. Even if Cole managed to disarm one of the guards behind him, there was no way that he’d be able to take out the four men opposite before they could open fire; and in a room this size, four MP7s on full-auto would cut him and Mitchell to pieces in the blink of an eye.

  Only Thompson had been killed so far, which indicated that Milanović wanted them alive; or at least he wanted Cole alive, as Mitchell would presumably be as expendable as Thompson. So he had questions, and wouldn’t want Cole killed until they had been answered.

  Cole knew that this gave him a tiny window of opportunity; the Serbian gunmen would have orders not to shoot Cole unless absolutely necessary. It would cause hesitation if Cole suddenly did something, they would want to react but their brains would remember their orders, they would hesitate as they struggled to make a decision.

  But even as he calculated the angles, the men opposite him spread out, making it ever more unlikely that – even if he managed to get a gun in the first place – he would be able to take them all out in time.

  And then the decision-making was taken out of his hands altogether as he sensed movement behind him, and then felt the heavy impact of a pistol butt behind his ear, and then everything went dark and he felt nothing at all.

  Cole’s head ached as he came around, careful not to open his eyes and let whoever might be watching him know that he was awake.

  His arms were strung up high above him, his shoulders aching as his feet barely touched the dirt floor below. There was a damp cold, as if he was in a basement of some sort, and he could feel his back touching a cold, wet stone wall. He could also hear the sound of dripping, like a tap that hadn’t been turned off properly, coming from nearby.

  Head still hanging on his chest, he opened his eyes partially, saw the damp concrete of the floor ahead of him, several pairs of feet just a couple of yards away. Most were standing – military boots or rubber-soled shoes – and one pair belonged to someone sitting on a wooden chair. This pair was expensive, leather Oxfords; and as Cole let his eyes come up, still not fully opening them, he saw the vague outline of the man who’d been sitting on the couch back at the Crown Plaza.

  Radomir Milanović.

  It was then that Cole sensed another body hanging next to him, and his peripheral vision informed him that it was Mitchell. The next thing he saw was the blood pooled around the Pro-Tec man’s feet, and – unable to help it – his eyes snapped fully open, taking in the devastating scene.

  Frank Mitchell’s dead body hung from the wrists just a few feet away from him, completely naked. He’d been beaten black and blue, and there were cigarette burns and knife wounds on his chest and abdomen; his mouth was a bloody mess from where Milanović’s men had obviously pulled some teeth out, probably with pliers; and the top of one ear had been neatly sliced off.

  But that was nothing compared to what had happened lower down, the source of the dripping sound, like water from a tap; the sound came from the blood which pitter-pattered onto the concrete floor from the place where Mitchell’s penis had once been. But it was not there now, had been cut off completely, along with the testicles, leaving just a grotesque, bloody gash.

  Cole was almost sick at the sight of it, felt an enormous, revolting sense of guilt for having brought the man into this; then turned away, eyes locked onto Milanović.

  ‘You son of a bitch,’ Cole muttered through clenched teeth.

  ‘You like my work?’ Milanović said with a smile. ‘It is nothing that this place has not seen before, my friend.’

  Cole looked around the room now, saw that it was indeed a basement, no natural daylight at all, the only illumination provided by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

  There were two armed guards in the room, a pair of the same men with the MP7s from the hotel; and there was also a man standing alone, off to one side with a blood-stained butcher’s apron wrapped around him. And as his face came into the light, Cole saw it was the older Serb, the man who had first spoken to him in the hotel lobby.

  He wondered how long he had been unconscious for, surprised that they’d had so long to work on Mitchell. They must have hit him harder than he’d thought, and he hoped he hadn’t suffered a concussion or – even worse – a cracked skull. If he was going to have a chance of getting out of this hellhole, he’d need his every mental and physical faculty in full working order.

  ‘What is this place?’ Cole asked, stalling for time as he tried to decide what to do.

  ‘Sajmište,’ Milanović said, ‘a Nazi concentration and extermination camp used during World War Two. Not so far from the Crown Plaza actually, we’re less than a mile away, although it might as well be another world.

  ‘The camp became operational in 1941,’ he continued, ‘and by the time it was closed down in 1944, over twenty thousand people had been killed here. Most of the compound is being used by the Belgrade authorities to house the poor. Pretty squalid conditions here, but better than nothing.’

  The man smiled that terrible smile once again. ‘Used to be an exhibition center originally, something of a fairground. Funny isn’t it, what became of it? We’re underneath the central tower of those fairgrounds now, the only real building left over – although it, too, has seen rather better days.’

  Milanović gestured to the body of Mitchell. ‘Unfortunate, what happened to your friend there. Didn’t really have anything to tell me, except that you are not Anders Gunvaldsson. American covert operator he guessed, though apparently he knew nothing more.’

  Cole wasn’t surprised that Mitchell had talked. Why wouldn’t he, considering what they had done to him? There weren’t many people on earth who could have remained silent under such duress.

  ‘Now, I won’t bullshit you,’ the arms broker said. ‘You will never leave here alive. But I need information, and I will get it one way or another. Your death could be simple and pain-free, or it could be gruesome and very, very messy. Personally, I prefer simple and pain-free, because it is quicker and I can then get about my own business. But the decision is entirely up to you, my friend. So what is it going to be? The easy way or the hard way?’

  ‘Call me a masochist,’ said Cole, ‘but I’ve always been a fan of the hard way. So bring your boy over, and let’s get started.’

  Milanović looked at him, his expression unreadable. ‘So be it,’ he said, gesturing the apron-clad butcher forward with a flick of an open hand. ‘Goran, get to work.’

  ‘It will be my pleasure,’ Goran said as he moved toward Cole with a set of heavy-duty pliers, a glint in the eyes of his lined, weather-beaten face.

  As the man approached him, Cole centered himself. The antagonizing of his captors hadn’t been bravado, but a calculated ploy; he needed Goran close to him, if what he was planning was going to work.

  As the big man approached, Cole watched as Milanović settled back in his chair for the show; the two armed guards relaxed too, their hands on the weapons, but leaving them hanging loose o
n their slings, barrels pointed at the floor. They obviously didn’t expect to be needing them.

  Goran didn’t smile as he approached, and Cole got the impression that – despite his words – he was not a man who actually enjoyed this work; he was merely a very practical man who knew how to do what he was told, no matter what it was. Goran would, Cole decided, have made a perfect Nazi, the exact type of person who would have had no problem working here back when it was in full flow as an extermination camp.

  The man wasted no time in preamble, no time in talking – he just reached forward for Cole’s face with one hand, pliers primed at the ready in the other.

  At the last possible instant, his mind so brilliantly clear that everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, Cole pulled down on the ropes which secured him, lifted his feet up from the cold floor and kicked out as hard as he could.

  He struck the big Serb straight in the chest, the massive impact making the man fly backwards into one of the armed guards, sending both of them sprawling across the concrete.

  Cole didn’t have time to look at the second gunman, could only hope that he had been sufficiently distracted, because he was already in motion once again, jumping up and pushing his legs back against the stone wall behind him, allowing them to compress before immediately thrusting them straight, sending him flying out from the wall. Using the rope above him, Cole swung out in an arc, at full stretch to attain maximum reach – and then he saw the gunman’s face turning toward him, eyes wide, the MP7 coming up fast.

  But Cole’s extended foot connected first, cracking hard across the man’s jaw in a flying roundhouse kick that dropped him to the ground, out cold.

  In the confusion that followed, as Goran and the first gunman sought to untangle themselves and get to their feet, and Milanović looked on in sheer disbelief, Cole leapt up high again, legs wrapping themselves around the rope so that he could lift his bound arms from the hook.

  He tumbled hard to the floor, the air knocked out of him, but already he was racing forward on all fours, making a diving tackle of the first gunman, who had just got back to his feet. Cole knocked him straight back down and – with his hands still tied – did the only thing he could and planted a nose-breaking head-butt right onto the man’s upturned face. The back of the gunman’s head cracked against the concrete, and Cole knew he would be out for the count.

  But then Goran was on him, pliers snapping closed around his ear, the pain racing through the side of his head incredible, sickening, Goran’s other hand clamping tight around his throat, squeezing hard.

  And still the man remained cold, unemotional, simply an automaton doing what it had been told. Cole could smell the cabbage stew and stale cigarettes on the man’s breath, felt the sweat of his hands on his skin.

  Cole might have screamed from the pain in his ear as the pliers refused to let go, biting ever deeper, but his mind was so focused that he couldn’t hear it anyway; instead, he reached up and pulled the man’s face down toward him. Goran resisted, but Cole kneed him in the crotch and he gave slightly, and Cole used to opportunity to snatch his head down, and snapped his teeth closed around the man’s nose.

  With his head held immobile by Goran’s strangling hand, Cole couldn’t whip his head back and forth to make the bite more effective, but it seemed to be working anyway – Goran’s hand was relaxing from around Cole’s throat, and the pliers were lessening their agonizing grip on his ear.

  Cole could feel blood from Goran’s nose leaking unpleasantly into his mouth, but still he held tight, tried to bite even deeper. Goran never made a sound, but Cole saw the pain in his eyes. There was no emotion, no hatred, just the look of a man who might finally have met his match.

  Cole heard Milanović shouting in Serbian, and he guessed that he was calling for back-up, presumably from the other armed men who had been at the hotel. If they’d all come over here, then there’d be at least five of them – the three Goran had been with, and the other pair of men with submachine guns.

  If they made it into the room, guns blazing, then things wouldn’t end well.

  Cole knew he had to speed things up, and so raised his knee hard up into Goran’s groin a second time, looking for the opening he needed; but it didn’t come, and so Cole bit harder and kneed again, and this time he saw what he was after – a small gap at the side of the man’s neck, a target available for just a second as Goran’s huge shoulder dropped reflexively.

  In that second, Cole struck out with the bent second knuckle of his index finger, jamming the hard point into a nerve cluster in the big man’s neck – a Marma Adi pressure point strike which sent a shockwave of energy through Goran’s nervous system, shutting it down entirely and rendering the man immediately unconscious.

  The door to the basement cell was being opened already, and Cole noticed Milanović reaching down for one of his men’s fallen MP7s. But Cole was faster, whipping out a kick that knocked the arms broker’s hands from the weapon; and as he recoiled, Cole grabbed the gun himself and sprang to his feet, lashing out with another kick, this time into Milanović’s leg – and as the man stumbled, Cole wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him back upright just as the heavy door opened to reveal a group of armed men straining to get inside. There seemed to be more than the five that Cole had anticipated, but he couldn’t tell how many for sure.

  But a narrow doorway wasn’t an ideal entry for a mass of people, and Cole opened fire into the area with the MP7, taking out the first three men with well-aimed bursts.

  The men behind were more sensible and stayed back, moving to the sides of the door, their backs to the other side of the thick concrete walls.

  Cole scanned the room, looking for other ways out. However, there seemed to be just the one – right out of the front door, past an unknown amount of gunmen.

  ‘How many?’ Cole whispered in Milanović’s ear.

  ‘Fuck . . .you . . .’ the man gasped, barely able to breathe from the pressure of Cole’s forearm against his throat, a pressure that increased immediately after his unhelpful answer.

  ‘I’ve got your boss here!’ Cole shouted to the men outside, above the sounds of Milanović choking for air. ‘Get in here and drop those weapons! Do it, or I’ll shoot him!’

  Cole didn’t know if the men even understood English, but waited a few seconds to see what happened.

  Cole noticed that Milanović was trying to speak, and he released the pressure on the man’s neck. As soon as he got air into his lungs, Milanović let out a stream of rapid Serbian, obviously orders to his men. Without knowing what he was saying, Cole was loathe to let it continue and shut it off again within a few seconds, re-securing his hold around the man’s neck.

  ‘Come on!’ Cole shouted. ‘I’m going to count to three!’ Cole paused for a moment before starting the countdown. ‘One!’ he began. Seconds ticked by, and nothing happened, just tentative, furtive movements from beyond the doorway. ‘Two!’

  At almost the same moment as his count, Cole saw two objects flying into the room, recognized them instantly as flashbangs – special grenades designed to emit a deafening noise and a blinding flash of light and smoke, to disorientate people before attacking a room – and immediately closed his eyes, released Milanović and rendered him unconscious by smashing the butt of his MP7 into the side of his head.

  The flashbangs went off, and the light was intense even with his eyes closed; the noise, too, was awesome – but not quite as effective when used on someone who was expecting it, and Cole decided that the only way he was going to win this was by doing the exact opposite of what the enemy expected.

  They thought the flashbangs would lead to disorientation, maybe even capitulation – but instead, Cole charged through the smoke toward the doorway, just as the first two gunmen were entering.

  Amazed to see him there in front of them, they had no time to react as Cole pumped two rounds into each of the men’s chests, dropping them on the spot.

  And then he was through the doorw
ay, noting targets and engaging them almost simultaneously, as thousands of hours of training had programmed him to do.

  Target left, shoot; target left, shoot; target right, shoot; target after target, shot after shot, six men down in under four seconds, the bare concrete corridor empty now except for dead bodies, the warm air of their bullet-riddled corpses rising ominously up out of them as it met the cold of the basement corridor.

  Cole breathed deeply, getting his heart rate back down, and noted the dark staircase over to the left. He bent down and picked up a new MP7 from one of the dead men, discarding his used one; checked that it was loaded and made ready, then stalked toward the stairs.

  He crept up them carefully, not knowing what he would find at the top.

  It angled to the right at a corner, and Cole made the turn quickly, weapon aimed forward – but it was clear, and Cole made his way to the top, which was closed off by a steel door.

  Cole took a deep breath, reached for the handle and turned, bursting out of the doorway with the MP7 at the ready.

  But it was just a decrepit building, the crumbling ruins of the camp’s central tower. There was nobody else to be seen, but Cole took a quick look around to double-check, then peered through the broken windows to see what was outside.

  It was a rough, broken-down, weed-covered area, with some other old, half-ruined buildings scattered across a small compound. Some looked quasi-residential, and a couple even had washing lines suspended outside. There were a few old wrecks of cars near the houses, but no sign of any people.

  A grassy area immediately outside the tower had three black sedans parked up. All new, and therefore almost certainly belonging to Milanović and his men. Like in Marseille, Mercedes was the manufacturer of choice, and Cole couldn’t help but wonder what it was about the three-pointed star that criminals loved so much.

  He reasoned that the presence of the cars might very well be why there were no other people around – they probably knew to vacate the area when Milanović and his boys brought ‘guests’ here, unless they wanted to be invited downstairs themselves.