Reaper

by A P Bateman

  “And the Armenians, but they stand with Russia because of the war crimes. They need their protection from the UN.”

  “I love these fleapit countries,” Ramsay said sardonically.

  Marnie leaned back in her chair and sipped some tepid coffee. She looked at Caroline, who was standing in the window looking out at the Black Sea. She had been uncharacteristically silent until now.

  “If Rashid is that close to an ambiguous area, do you think Helena is holing up in Abkhazia?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the view.

  “It might make sense,” Ramsay replied. “It’s a tricky place to police. Bribes are commonplace, the law more easily corrupted than even this place.”

  “Call him again,” Caroline said. The sun was golden above the sea, working its way west, leaving everything in its wake vulnerable to darkness. Caroline shivered. She did not like the thought of darkness and night. “Tell him you’ve found me. Tell him we need to find Alex for his own safety. There’s no pressure on him anymore. He can pull back, regroup with us and we can start anew. The hunt for Helena can now be methodical and well-planned.”

  Ramsay hesitated. He looked at his phone. He had no missed calls.

  Marnie looked up at him from the desk. “It makes sense, Sir,” she said. “I know I’m not a field agent, but the pressure is off. If King is doing what he is solely to find Caroline, then he no longer needs to. If Rashid is close to him, then he can be the messenger.”

  Ramsay looked agitated. MI5 protocols dictated that communications were concise. Text messages were no more than a recall system. Nothing was ever discussed. It made for clear deniability. But Rashid was not answering his phone.

  “We don’t know where Helena is, and we have no idea as to the locations of Alex or Rashid. But Alex has clearly been in contact with her, and Rashid has been in contact with Alex. If Rashid disappeared so suddenly like he did, it was because he knew Alex was close. This is it, Neil,” Caroline said looking at him earnestly. “It’s all going down soon. And right here in Georgia. And that is too bloody close to that border.”

  “She’s right, Sir,” Marnie said. “And Caroline is safe, after all. We need to pull back. Abkhazia is a militarised zone. If anything happens on that border, then the world will soon know. And Russia will be playing the propaganda card, just like those bio-weapon attacks on the former KGB agents back home, and just like in Syria.”

  “Shit!” Ramsay looked at his phone hopefully, willing it to ring.

  He unlocked it, selected his messages and started to type.

  65

  King was used to operating alone. He’d spent a lifetime that way. From fending for himself as a child, to working menial tasks or even stealing to feed his younger siblings, he had always done what was necessary to survive. His mother had been a crack whore, his father unknown. When his mother had arranged for a client to be alone with his ten-year-old sister, a neighbour had thankfully intervened in time. The family had been put into care. King, being older and unruly, had gone through a succession of foster families, and when they eventually proved unable to tame him, children’s homes had been his shelter. Open to bullying, abuse and neglect, King had fled and grown up on the streets. His mother had died of an overdose and his brothers and sister had been successfully adopted. But King was too old, too ruined by fate and circumstance. Nobody wanted a fifteen-year-old who had already reached a shade under six-foot and looked like a twenty-five-year-old man. Prison followed, as did release and more trouble, and prison again. Nobody had ever been there for him, and he had grown to accept it. Eventually, thrive from it. Although he never saw his siblings again.

  When his wife had died from ovarian cancer, King had vowed to return to his lone wolf existence. To count on and care for nobody. He did not need baggage or responsibilities. He had spent five years alone, but Caroline had changed that, had shown him there was more to life than merely surviving, and in turn, working with a team in MI5, he had grown used to the support. But he knew he had softened because of it. He had found himself giving the enemy options, relying on back-up, as he had done in the forest in France, waiting for Rashid to make his move. But no more. King was in control now. Win or lose, live or die. He was alone, and he knew the consequence. He could accept it.

  No quarter given; none asked.

  It was time to do what he did best.

  He had parked the car, much like in Tuscany, lower down the mountain slope. Hidden from the road in a narrow track, he had cut branches and layered them over the roof and bonnet to hide it from view from oncoming headlights. He had then broken a branch on the edge of the road and folded it over so that it hung at a right-angle. It would act as a marker for him in the darkness but would hopefully be ignored by anyone else. With the car secured and more easily accessible in the event of a hasty retreat, King swung the rucksack he had bought over his shoulder, leaving the car unlocked and the keys under the driver’s wheel arch.

  The hike up the mountainside was difficult; the rocky terrain was loose and jagged. He found smoother progress made following the deeper culverts which had been carved out by torrents of running rainwater. The light had faded and there was no moon at present. King estimated it would poke above the horizon ahead of him in another two hours, but he knew it would be no more than a slither, added to which, there was noctilucent cloud cover, which acted like a lace blanket, shutting out most of the stars and only letting the merest of opaque light through.

  The temperature had dropped, but his exertion up the steep gradient stopped him from becoming chilled, and by the time he had worked his way over a mile, and at least two-thousand feet in elevation, he was perspiring and wishing he’d packed more water.

  At approximately four-thousand-feet above sea level and at least two miles from where he had parked the car, King removed the rucksack and dropped it onto the dry earth. He finished his litre bottle of water and wedged it between two rocks rather than risk it making a noise in his rucksack. He then removed another plastic bottle, but this one had been wrapped in tape. He had earlier drilled two-dozen equally-spaced holes into some plastic tubing he had bought from the builder’s merchants. He had then marked a hole of the same diameter into the bottom of a one-litre plastic water bottle, cut it out carefully and wedged the tube in place so that it ran all the way through the bottle and out of the neck. He wedged cotton wool inside the neck and poked it towards the bottom until it was heavily packed, and the tube was even. He had then cut the length of tube and tested it against the muzzle of the Makarov pistol. Now that King had reached his insertion point, he carefully taped the bottle in place. He tested it for straightness, then applied more plumbing tape as he made fine corrections by eye. The moving action of the pistol would make this silencer a one-shot deal, but in King’s experience it would be utterly soundless. The bullet would travel out of the muzzle of the pistol and through the tube without touching the sides and the gasses that carried the sound would vent through the holes and become absorbed by the cotton wool. He had used one before to significant effect on a Ruger .22 rifle, and although the 9x18mm Makarov round was louder, it carried less velocity than a .22 round from a longer barrel. King estimated the result would be about the same. A short-range, silent first kill.

  King put the rucksack back on and stood up slowly, mindful to keep his movements slow and his profile low. There were five things to remember when moving in on an enemy’s position. They were known as the Five S’s. Shine, shape, sound, silhouette and shadow. King had one thing that could shine in the moonlight, and that was his vintage Rolex Submariner watch and he made sure his sleeve was pulled down covering the stainless-steel bracelet. He kept his shape profile low and fluid, using cover when available. He would stand next to a tree, rather than away from it, or squat down and use a rock to break up his shape. Sound was a no-brainer and he watched his footsteps, choosing to backtrack a pace rather than step on dry twigs or loose gravel, and he had emptied his pockets of coins and checked the rattle of the rucksack be
fore setting off. Silhouette was most prominent on top of gradients, and he always avoided the skyline, choosing to traverse slopes and keep the high ground above him. The shadow element shouldn’t be a problem tonight, but a bright moon or backlight could cast shadows every bit as noticeable as on the brightest of days.

  Below him he knew that Romanovitch’s property would be quiet and inactive. It was one AM and as he reached the edge of the slope he could see that there was only one light on within the house, and a faint blue hue emitted from the security hub. He watched, using the binoculars, which were assisted for low-light conditions by a lithium battery and passive infrared beam. They struggled at this distance for night capability, but he could pick out the buildings and the two cars still parked on the driveway. King checked the perimeter, tracking the fence and using his own mantra of the five S’s to see if he could spot anybody in the darkness. To look past the form of a person and turn his attention to the visible tell-tale signs they could emit. His eyes slowly tuned in. Before long, he was seeing what he had clearly not been meant to. Throughout the grounds, there were dozens of men. He could make out the DPM, or disruptive pattern material of the camouflage clothing by looking for just the lighter patterns at first, and he could see the dead-straight lines - the shapes and angles at odds with nature - of long guns. Shotguns and rifles. Under the magnification of the binoculars some rifles even looked modified and customised with scopes, lights, laser dot pointers and underslung shotguns.

  They knew he was coming.

  66

  A diversion wasn’t going to cut it. It would bring the men running. And they would be shooting. King had seen the focus of men were placed on both sides of the eastern gable of the house. This made the driveway a column with the attack at both sides at the end. As if he were going to come up the driveway as bold as brass. Highly unlikely. The pincer movement was a fine idea, but the men had deployed parallel to the drive, directly opposite each other and not at acute angles. This would mean that in a firefight, they would inflict casualties on each other, rather than merely obliterate their intended target. It was an idea from somebody without combat experience. Which was encouraging. King had assumed most of Romanovitch’s men would be ex-military. Maybe they were, but unlike the US, UK and NATO troops, there was a generation of Russian soldiers who had served their country with no combat deployment.

  King had worked his way down the mountainside and made out more men flanking the house. Each man was placed at intervals of fifty-feet. If King couldn’t make his way between two men at fifty-feet, he wouldn’t be doing this. He had trained as a sniper and could use his surroundings to remain invisible. He had lain in wait for a target for four days, not thirty-feet from a manned Taliban observation post in Afghanistan. When the target had finally presented himself, King had taken the shot, waited another day and exfiltrated without being seen. But that was then, and this was now. He had had time on his side back then. With these men of Romanovitch’s waiting for him, King knew it was now or never. He either got Catherine Milankovitch out as a bargaining chip, or he killed Romanovitch to appease Helena.

  There was no turning back.

  King could see that the men had assumed that any attack would be coming from the front, with the men at the sides of the house being a backup to any attack, or perhaps a security cordon for Romanovitch inside. King neared the perimeter where the scrub met shrubs. In this case, a belt of privet. He shuffled forward on his belly, raised the binoculars and breathed steadily as he scanned the ground ahead of him. The binoculars gave him the low-light illumination, so he wound down the magnification to increase his field of view. The men were closer now, and he could see the slight movements which had alerted him further up the mountainside. The men were fidgeting. Weapons were moving. Eyes were on the driveway. King was sure that with this amount of men within the grounds, there couldn’t have been any motion sensors, and nor would the cameras be much use, unless they were all focused on the perimeter. He felt in the bag for the first IED and planted one of the electrical timer charges on the ground behind the belt of privet. He set the timer for fifteen-minutes and crawled steadily down the line of the perimeter, towing the bag behind him on a length of paracord. When he was opposite the largest group of men, he took out another electrical charge, checked the luminous dials of his watch, then set the second IED for ten-minutes. Against his normal SOP, or standard operating procedure, he made his way back along the line and crossed past the first IED with eight-minutes showing on his watch. He used his elbows and toes, keeping lizard-low as he reached the end of the garden and where the mountain slope extended upwards at ninety-degrees. The ground was difficult to cross quietly here, gravel had washed down, and the area was patchy grass and scrub, along with planted shrubs that hadn’t quite had the tending they needed. A buffer between the manicured ground and the wild mountainside. King took advantage of the cover and untied the rucksack, slipping it quietly over his shoulders. He tucked up into a crouch, his eyes on the last man in the line, who was watching the garden ahead. King tucked the pistol and its bulky silencer under his left armpit, then slipped the knife out of its sheath and held it down by his side as he made his way silently across the edge of exposed ground. He got within two paces of the first guard, checked his breathing to steady himself, then hesitated as a second guard stepped away from the edge of the house and came into view three-paces in front of the first guard. King slipped the knife silently back into its sheaf. The second guard turned to say something to his colleague, but King already had the Makarov in his hand and took the shot before the man could mutter a warning. The man took the shot in the forehead and dropped in a heap. King ripped the modified silencer off the pistol and stepped in close, the hot muzzle burning the man’s throat, his left hand clutching his mouth and nose closed. He whispered in Russian, “Don’t move. Don’t resist…” He removed his left hand and took the machine carbine out of the man’s hands, then walked the man backwards and around the side of the house and pushed him face-first against the wall. He said, “Show me the staff entrance.” He slung the weapon over his left shoulder and let it hang loosely from its strap.

  “He knows you’re coming,” the man drawled quietly in English. “You don’t have a chance…”

  King pressed the pistol in hard, stifling the man’s artery. It was enough to get his attention, the blood pounding up his neck, but going no further. He released it and the man sagged. “Do you have a key to the staff entrance?”

  “There is no staff entrance,” he croaked.

  “The kitchen then. Romanovitch doesn’t cook his own meals. He has people to do that. Show me.”

  “The key is in my pocket,” he said.

  He slipped his hand inside and before King could say anything, he snapped his head backwards, catching King on the bridge of the nose. King recoiled, dropping the pistol, his eyes watering, not yet feeling the pain that went along with the light-headedness. The man spun around, a spring-loaded knife in his hand. He shouted a warning to his comrades but was drowned out by the first of the IEDs.

  The night sky lit up and the noise was deafening. King darted forwards and jabbed his knife at the man’s throat, but he blocked the attack, taking the length of King’s blade across his wrist. Blood spurted a long way and the man stared at the wound, grimacing as King’s second strike plunged deep into his liver. King switched his left hand, cupping the blunt top edge of the knife’s blade, and in a powerful downward motion, he yanked both hands and engaged his core for extra strength, driving his legs down into a squat. The man dropped onto his knees, his torso opened-up and spilling his steaming bowels onto the ground. King stood back up and turned away, taking the man’s machine carbine off his back. He could hear the screaming of the group of men caught in the IED’s blast. He knew how it would have gone down – the heat of the blast, the thud in their chests from the shockwave, the ringing in their ears as they tried to make sense of what had just happened, the pain from the shrapnel – the fear and indignity
at having been felled by an unseen enemy. There were shouts of instruction and King envisioned braver men going to their comrade’s aid. He was in too deep. Too personal. More committed than he had ever been in what felt like a lifetime in these situations. Which was why he didn’t feel the same level of guilt when the second IED lit up the sky and it happened all over again for the men in front of the house.

  67

  There were shouts and commotion and King knew what would be happening. Most of the men would have hunkered down, not chancing being caught in a third explosion. Weapons would be trained impotently on unseen threats, shadows playing eerily across the scorched earth as stubborn flames licked the grass. Ringing ears and shouts of both fear and concern was enough opportunity for King to place a single 5.45x39mm round through the door lock. He shoulder-barged the door open, then closed it behind him and took off the rucksack. He could hear multiple gunshots outside, the men taking no chances and firing into the treeline at would-be attackers. He used two wooden wedges tapering from two inches to a thin tip, both carved from a piece of wood bought from the builder’s merchants. He dropped them down on the floor, positioned them away from the hinges and kicked them in place with his size-twelve boot. He kicked again for good measure, then slung the rucksack back over his shoulders and picked up the AKU machine carbine – essentially a smaller version of the infamous AK47 but chambered for a lighter, faster bullet. The result was a weapon which effectively took down the enemy, its bullets creating a more devastating wound than the old AK47’s 7.62x39mm rounds, but not over-penetrating walls and chancing collateral damage. The short design was both light to handle and easy to use in close quarter combat scenarios.

  The kitchen was dark, but light emitted from the next room, which King could already see was a large hall. He shouldered the rifle and stepped cautiously out. Lights were flicking on upstairs. King saw the first guard, a tall man carrying a semi-automatic pistol. King dispatched him with a double tap, moved onwards and up the stairs. He assumed Romanovitch would be inside and leave the dirty work to his men. King was going in blind and had no plans of the building, nor information regarding its occupants. He knew that Romanovitch was married, but he did not know if there were children in the house. He hoped not, but he wouldn’t let that affect him now. Caroline was his priority. Romanovitch was a ruthless mafia boss who had lived his life, built his riches on other people’s defeat and misery. He didn’t care if the man was a father or not. He had already decided that Catherine was his best chance of seeing Caroline again, but it would cover all his bases if Romanovitch was taken out of the picture.