No Time for Heroes

by Brian Freemantle

  The Italian returned to the helicopter for its communication facilities. The rest of them wandered about the tiny clearing. There was nothing to say to each other. Danilov went to the lip of the plateau, overlooking the valley. He still couldn’t see a river, or a village called Alimena. The cicadas gossiped on. The sun was growing hotter, making him sweat more. He’d need a shower when he got back to Palermo. He took the Beretta from his waistband, looking at it again. It seemed remarkably small, fragile even, to be able to kill somebody. How many bullets had been fired from this very gun: killed people? Click went the safety catch: click again when he reset it.

  ‘You ever worked partner assault?’

  Danilov turned at Cowley’s question, not understanding it. ‘What?’

  ‘Worked with a partner, as a team? Staying close, watching each other’s back?’

  ‘No.’

  Cowley sighed. ‘We’ll keep together when we get there. You hear me say “go down” you go down, fast as you can. That’s all we’ve got time to work out. OK?’

  Danilov nodded. ‘Listen out for me, too.’

  Cowley smiled, wanly. ‘We should have practised.’

  ‘They turned off the main road!’ shouted Melega, from the helicopter. In his excitement he began in Italian, having to stop and start again, in English.

  Everyone moved back towards the machine. Danilov stowed his unwanted jacket in the rear, where the tail narrowed, but carefully, folding one lapel across the other so neither would crease, and straightening the sleeves side by side.

  ‘You’re right to be careful,’ tried Patton. ‘Lot of thieves around here.’

  None of the others laughed. Danilov forced a smile.

  ‘Let’s get ready,’ urged Melega.

  They took the same seats, like people do in an interrupted journey: there was a lot of noise getting seatbelt buckles engaged. They put on their helmets, plunging their heads into a cacophony of Italian. The pilot depressed switches and buttons: the engine whined and coughed, the whine growing in pitch, and the helicopter lifted off precisely at the moment Melega, hunched over his watch, patted the pilot’s back.

  They didn’t soar, bird-like, into the air as Danilov had expected. Rather the helicopter came cautiously up over the low peak of the mountain and momentarily hovered there, like a player in a grown-up game of hide-and-seek, which Danilov supposed was exactly the game they were playing. Continuing the impression, other helicopters peeped up all around, from neighbouring valleys, like awakening flying things seeking prey. Danilov counted five, then six. A seventh straggled into view. They all abruptly started to move at the same time, in an arrow-head formation. Theirs led at the very tip but they did not go up, like people are supposed to fly. but down to hide again, skimming the valley floors so close Danilov could see the bushes and the scrub and the trees but at the same time not see them, not clearly, everything blurred and rushing in front of him. He clamped his mouth against the stomach retch and closed his eyes, which didn’t help because with his eyes shut he was more aware of the lifts and drops. One climb seemed higher than the rest and when he looked he saw they were going over the island-crossing highway: cars already blocked it, uniformed policemen motioning protesting traffic back the way it had come. One Chinook was already on the closed-off part of the road, disgorging troops in camouflaged fatigues, and another was flying in, following the road line, the soldiers sitting with their legs dangling over the side, ready to jump before it properly landed. Beside him Danilov saw Patton’s mouth forming words no-one could hear: the man’s head was moving slowly from side to side, a shake of resignation.

  Danilov was never able, later, to separate the crossing of the sealed-off road and disgorging soldiers with what happened at Villalba. Helicopters seemed to fill the sky, a swarming insect cloud. There were snatched glimpses of panicked people running from houses and buildings, to look, and then being driven back to cover by the swirling, deafening whirlwind of descending rotors.

  Danilov was aware of running but not knowing where, blinded by the billowing dirt, someone’s hand on his shoulder for contact, not for guidance. There were a lot of popping sounds, like a faulty scooter exhaust, which Danilov did not at once realise were shooting: it didn’t then – or at any time – occur to him to crouch or take cover. The hand wasn’t on his shoulder any longer. Then the dust cleared, and with it his confusion.

  The farmhouse was directly in front of him, two helicopters – one a Chinook – beyond. The village was behind and to his left, his view limited to one or two houses and what appeared to be a shop of some sort. People’s faces were at its window. He could not see Melega, Cowley or Smith, but Patton was directly, ahead and running straight towards the farmhouse. Danilov ran after the American, without thinking of what he was doing. A squad of soldiers in flak jackets, maybe five or six, ran suddenly around from the rear of the building. There was a loud blast, of a shotgun, and Danilov clearly saw a soldier’s head blown entirely from the top of his body: another explosion and the flak jacket of another soldier puckered and he went down.

  And then there was another shotgun blast, right in front of him. Danilov was never able to remember if he actually heard the shot, ahead of everything else. His first conscious awareness was being hit by something very hard, which stopped him in his tracks: of stinging all over his chest and body, and a lot of blood, and then he was falling. But not by himself; with someone on top of him.

  It was Patton, he realised: Patton who had been hurled back into him by the force of the shotgun blast that had completely severed the man’s right arm above the elbow: Patton whose blood was gouting all over him and who was initially too shocked to feel any pain and seemed surprised to find Danilov so close – holding him – and who began: ‘What the fuck …’ before they landed one on top of the other in full, unobstructed view and range of the farmhouse, the American virtually cradled in Danilov’s lap. Stupefied, they both looked at the shattered, gushing stump. Angrily Patton said: ‘My arm! They’ve taken my fucking arm! Where’s my fucking arm?’ And then he shrieked as the agony gripped him, arcing up from Danilov as if they were partners in some odd choregraphed dance.

  The scream broke Danilov’s inertia. He heard someone shouting to get down and, recollecting what Cowley had said, tried to pull Patton back to the ground. Patton did slump, and as he did so Danilov looked beyond, to the farmhouse – and saw the double-barrelled snout of a shotgun emerge, aiming directly at them.

  Danilov felt no fear: rather, there was an almost serene, disembodied calm in which he knew precisely what to do and how to do it: that he could do it. He was unaware of drawing the Beretta or of releasing the safety catch: it was just suddenly in his hand, ready, and he was aiming, unhurriedly, without panic. There was a lot of other firing all around but he was aloof, separate from it, not distracted or worried by the noise. He reviewed his first shot with studied control, sure it was the one that splattered plaster off the window edge, annoyed it was not more accurate. It was still good enough for the barrel of the rifle to be jerked back out of sight, unfired. His next shot entered the window without any deflection, and the one after that, and the one after that: he was shooting without haste, allowing the pause between each trigger pull, cautious against the weapon jamming. Patton was unconscious but still cradled in his lap, his body shuddering in spasm at the blood loss from his massive wound.

  Danilov pumped carefully placed round after carefully placed round into the window space, his mind functioning sufficiently for him to wonder if he was hitting people and making them bleed to death like the man he was holding was bleeding to death. When the Beretta clicked empty he groped for Patton’s gun, but the waist holster was empty too. I suppose I’ll die now, he thought. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much when the bullets or the cartridges tore into him.

  Danilov never saw how the stun and teargas grenades got into the farmhouse: probably through a window on one of the other sides he could not see. There was just the vibrating whump of the stun
bomb, which actually made his ears ring, and then the billowing smoke of the gas making it look as if the house was on fire.

  The shooting stopped abruptly, one minute aching noise, the next echoing silence. Danilov was conscious of a lot of men in various uniforms, their faces masked, pouring into the house, and of other uniforms crowding around him. Patton was eased away from him but only enough for medics immediately to tourniquet the shattered arm and plunge hypodermics and saline drips into the man’s remaining arm. Other soldiers were manhandling Danilov, pushing him to the ground to tear at his saturated shirt. Danilov realised what they were doing – and why – and shouted: ‘I’m all right! It’s his blood.’ And when he became fully aware that it was and how much of it covered him, he vomited, not even able to avert his head when he did so, adding to the foul mess.

  Danilov wasn’t entirely uninjured. When they cut his clothes away the Army medics found his left shoulder and arm pitted with six separate pellet wounds, but none of them deep nor serious. They injected local anaesthetic to remove the lead shot and cleaned the wounds, and from somewhere a camouflage jacket and trousers were found for him to wear: they were too big, and the trouser bottoms had to be rolled up before he could walk.

  Melega broke into the group around him before all the pellets were taken out, urging him towards the medevac helicopter into which the stretchered body of the deeply unconscious and drip-fed Patton was being lifted, with Cowley and Smith attentively on either side. With his unrestrained right arm Danilov waved the Italian away, insisting he was unhurt and didn’t need further treatment: Melega didn’t argue. When the helicopter lifted off, they were buffeted by the updraught.

  Danilov’s arm was being strapped to his side, leaving the left sleeve of his camouflage vest hanging limp, when the matchingly grave-faced Cowley and Smith reached him.

  Cowley said: ‘You all right?’

  ‘Pellet wounds, that’s all.’

  Cowley offered his hand and instinctively Danilov responded, unsure until they were shaking hands why they were doing it. Cowley said: ‘That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire fucking life!’

  ‘Mine too,’ came in Smith, covering their hands with his.

  Danilov flushed hot with embarrassment. Withdrawing his hand from the cluster, he nodded towards the farmhouse. ‘How many are alive?’

  ‘All three Russians,’ reassured Cowley. ‘Palma, too. There were five Sicilians. One’s dead. Another’s shot in the head: probably going to die. The Sicilians are from a known Family, the Liccio. They’re all being flown direct to the mainland, to the maximum security jail in Rome.’

  ‘I saw a soldier’s head blown away?’ said Danilov. The anaesthetic began to wear off from his shoulder and arm: it was not a gentle ache but sharp, jabbing pains.

  ‘Two soldiers were killed, and one of the carabinieri. Four wounded,’ said Cowley. ‘It’ll be murder charges, against all of them.’

  Danilov nodded towards the medevac helicopter, already a distant speck in the sky. ‘What about Patton?’

  ‘Bad,’ said Cowley. ‘Very bad.’

  Seemingly reminded, Smith turned furiously to Melega, who had at that moment returned from the lift-off area. Tight-lipped but yelling, the FBI resident said: ‘Why the fuck didn’t we have flak jackets?’

  ‘I didn’t think of them,’ admitted the Italian. ‘You didn’t think of them …’ He paused, to let the rejection settle. ‘And it was his arm: a flak jacket wouldn’t have saved his arm.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Cowley, coughing against a choke of revulsion.

  There was a moment of confusion, no-one immediately able to understand. Gradually they followed the direction in which the face-screwed American was looking. Very close to where Danilov and Patton had been treated – the ground stained brown from Patton’s blood – the man’s hand lay perfectly intact, severed from the wrist. It still clutched the revolver for which Danilov had groped, when the magazine of his Beretta had run out.

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ said Jones.

  ‘If you want an apology, you’ve got it!’ offered Hartz. ‘It was a brilliant operation, justifying to the last cent whatever it cost, and I’m sorry I ever doubted it.’

  Leonard Ross, a pragmatist never interested in look-back debates, said: ‘There’s the possibility we’ll have a dead DEA agent. I want the bastards to die for that.’

  ‘What about the Russian?’ demanded the Secretary of State.

  ‘You’re the protocol experts,’ shrugged Ross. ‘He deserves an award: according to Cowley, it was like something out of a Rambo movie. If Danilov hadn’t sat there, firing every time the bastards raised their heads, Patton would have been shot to pieces.’

  ‘An award might restore goodwill, after all the squabbles.’

  ‘I hope the Italian publicity hasn’t screwed things in Moscow.’

  Now Hartz shrugged. ‘An international Mafia organisation was smashed. Are you surprised the Italians wanted to shout about it?’

  ‘It hasn’t gotten us one inch closer to understanding the connection between two murders here in Washington and one in Moscow.’

  On the far side of town, in their temporarily allocated FBI office, Rafferty tossed the Washington Post across to his partner and said: ‘So that’s where they’ve been, not in deep shit as we were told. All that bullshit about mistakes and collapses of relationships were just that: bullshit!’

  ‘Just like the shoot-out at the OK Corral,’ reflected Johannsen, reading that morning’s account. Lifting from his desk the piece of paper that had arrived at the same time as the newspaper, he said: ‘And now there’s this!’

  ‘This’ was a cable from the Swiss police, hopeful of finding a photograph of Ilya Nishin.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  There was concerted and government-encouraged publicity, from the moment the manacled mobsters were photographed being led from helicopters at an army base near the capital: there were more photographs as they were led, still manacled, into the high-security Rebibbia jail. In the media release the Italians called the seizures the most severe blow ever to international organised crime: the exaggerated account of Danilov saving the life of David Patton made it seem as if he had protected some of the Italian assault group, as well. It was heightened by the officially expressed gratitude from Washington, describing what he had done as an act of heroic bravery.

  Danilov was unaware of any of this until his helicopter followed the Mafia arrival at the same army base: still wearing the borrowed army fatigues, he climbed out to be greeted by a burst of camera lights and jostled demands for him to take part in a hastily arranged press conference with a government minister and Colonel Melega. Danilov refused, careless of any annoyance, more anxious to assess the damage his identification might cause in Moscow: he’d hoped their part in the operation would remain unknown, so they could still manipulate Kosov to guide them beyond the three they now had in custody, to even more important men in the Chechen Family.

  Danilov wanted to begin the interrogations at once, but Melega said there had to be official government conferences first. He did, however, agree the three Russians be held in separate cells and refused any contact with each other. Cowley said the bastards weren’t going anywhere and his prior concern was David Patton, undergoing emergency surgery.

  Danilov finally presented himself at the Russian embassy, to a hostile reception from diplomats who obviously felt he should have registered with them earlier. He refused to be intimidated, demanding communication facilities to send a full account of the successful arrests to Moscow. He gave his part in the shoot-out in flat, factual detail: had he not known Moscow would demand it because of what was being officially released by the Italians and the Americans, he probably would not have included it at all.

  That night, the Italian resentment at his refusal of the press conference had gone: Melega had clearly received high-level congratulations. And Cowley and Smith returned from the hospital with the assura
nce that although his condition was still serious, Patton was going to survive, although it had been necessary to amputate even more of his arm during the operation. The Liccio clan member wounded during the battle had died.

  There was easy agreement to divide the following day’s interrogation practically between nationalities, Melega to head the Italian team questioning the three surviving Sicilians, Smith to confront Palma, and Danilov and Cowley to examine the Russians.

  Maksim Zimin was a fat, bespectacled man who tried the sort of swaggering unconcern Antipov had carried off more successfully in Moscow. He shrugged aside the guards’ prodding towards the interview table, lounging back in his chair. It was hot, but not sufficiently so to cause the perspiration shining the man’s face, which was dirty from the siege. Cowley, who’d had one psychology assessment confirmed by Quantico, although it had failed in practice, thought he recognised the profile and was pleased. A bully, Cowley guessed: maybe an instigator of violence, but if he were it would always be others who imposed the pain, because men like Zimin were secretly frightened of suffering themselves.

  Cowley spoke hurriedly, ahead of Danilov, wanting to dominate the questioning to test his assessment. ‘You’re going to be in jail for the rest of your life.’

  Zimin gave a dismissive wave. ‘I didn’t shoot at anyone. Didn’t have a gun.’ He didn’t show any surprise at being addressed in Russian by an American.

  ‘What were you doing, in that village?’ asked Cowley.

  ‘Minding my own business.’

  ‘With the Sicilian and American Mafia?’ said Danilov.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Why did you come to Italy?’ said Cowley.

  ‘Holiday,’ said Zimin. He smirked, looking directly at Cowley. ‘I was going to take lots of holiday photographs. You going to have any souvenir photographs from Moscow?’