by Blake Banner
Another thirty or forty seconds passed and I was surprised to see the third set of lights converge suddenly with those that had headed for the gate. For a moment I was disoriented and wondered if they had stayed inside the compound, but then realized, as the shouts reached me through the night, that the mines and the C4 had blown a hole in the wall, and I was seeing the headlamps of the trucks on the far side. My smile deepened and I pressed the number eight.
Another violent explosion slapped the air. The headlamps jumped and rocked and several of them went out. There was a lot of howling and screaming. For a couple of minutes that was all that happened. Then there were more shouts. They sounded somehow more focused, more cautious. Two more sets of headlamps appeared, along with the sound of engines roaring.
I dialed seven and yet another almighty report tore the night in half. I lifted the night-vision goggles from my eyes and looked through the telescopic night-sight on the Heckler and Koch. There was a Wrangler with four guys in it approaching the inside corner of the compound wall in the southwest corner. A large chunk of that wall had collapsed and there was a gaping hole. The Jeep slowed and came to a halt and the men jumped out and took refuge behind it, fearful because of the booby-trap that had cost their pals their lives. They were joined by more men. I counted eight altogether.
Through the gaping hole in the wall I saw two Land Rovers pull up on the outside. Men got out and took up positions behind the vehicles, aiming their weapons out into the trees. I waited. It was hard to judge how close the vehicles were to the tree, but they were close. There were some shouts and the eight men on the inside started to approach the breach in the wall. A few more shouts and four men detached and started to run toward the first breach. I figured it was to guard it.
I looked back at the second breach. Men were picking through the rubble while other men scoured the forest with their scopes. Time for six.
I dialed six. Another violent explosion. I gave myself five seconds to observe what happened. One of the Land Rovers reared up on its front wheels and then crashed to the side. The other rocked sideways and its windows and windshield erupted into glittering spray. The men standing around, maybe eight or ten of them, broke into a strange kind of dance, twisting and writhing, raising their arms over their heads and faces, like they were being attacked by a swarm of wasps.
I pulled the goggles over my eyes again, scrambled to the middle of the branch and lowered myself to the wall where the wire was hanging in shreds. I paused for only a second to scan the lawn and listen. I saw nothing and the only sounds were the lingering cries and moans of the men injured in the explosions.
I dropped the bag with the bow and the C4 in it and lowered myself after it. I dropped, gathered up the bag and ran, crouching, the ten long paces through that strange green and black world to the box hedges that formed the nearest edge of the gardens. There I dropped on my belly and scrambled to the nearest opening in the hedge.
What the situation called for was to proceed slowly and with caution. However many I had killed or maimed in the explosions, I had no intel, and I was almost certainly still seriously outnumbered. But I was also acutely aware that I had to strike hard and fast while I still had the element of surprise in my favor.
So I got on my haunches and ran to the nearest rhododendron. From there I could see that I was in a series of walkways and paths, like a maze, flanked by box hedges among which were set flowerbeds and flowering bushes. From what I could make out there were also arbors draped with flowering vines. I was just thinking that if I was fast, the garden might just give me cover until I could make the house, when two guys stepped out of a set of sliding glass doors, waving a flashlight around, and headed for a shed with a satellite dish on the roof, over on my right, which I had already identified from the photographs as a likely place for the emergency generator.
Working fast, I assembled the takedown bow and fitted one of the carbon hunting arrows. The two guys were standing at the door of the shed. One was shining a glowing green light while the other was fiddling with a key. I could hear frantic shouts from the front of the house. Hazy green flashlight beams danced across the lawn and played along the walls. I went on one knee, drew, aimed instinctively and loosed. I didn’t bother to see if I had hit the mark. I knew I had, and in any case, if I hadn’t, there was nothing I could do about it.
By the time the barb thudded home through the target’s chest, slicing through his heart, I already had the other arrow nocked and drawn.
And loosed. It whispered and vanished.
They were both frowning down at the bloody broadhead that was protruding from the first guy’s chest when the second arrow thudded home through the second guy’s back. Frowning at each other, they both knelt and lay down, like the last scene of a bad amateur production of Swan Lake.
I sprinted, vaulted a couple of hedges and came to the large shed. The key was in the lock. I stepped over the bodies, opened the door and dragged the two dead guys inside. The generator was there in the middle of the floor. I didn’t pause. I slapped a pound of C4 on it, thrust in a detonator, set it as nine and stepped outside again. I locked the door, dropped the key in my pocket and made for the house.
There were a lot of shouts now, some coming closer, and the sound of half-crazy dogs pulling on their leashes, barking and howling. I fitted another arrow to the bow and, staying in the shadows of the house, loped toward the sliding glass doors through which the two guys had emerged.
A green flashlight danced at the corner of the house. I stopped and drew. The light glared right at me. I heard a voice call a name that sounded like “Ivan?” and I loosed the arrow, aiming an inch above the flashlight. A beat and suddenly the flashlight was pointing up at the sky, and beneath it I saw the diabolical form of a huge, black Rottweiler with glowing green eyes hurtling toward me. There was no time to nock another arrow. I grabbed the Maxim and dropped to one knee as it leapt, snarling at me, and as its huge, slavering wet maw closed on my hand I pulled the trigger, blowing the back of its head into spray and gore.
I jumped to my feet and ran, with the bag over my shoulder, and slipped inside the house through the sliding glass doors which stood open a couple of feet. I pulled it closed and dropped behind a large armchair, where I had a view of the shed outside. I gave it thirty seconds or so and was about to blow it, thinking I could not waste any more time, when three men ran past toward the generator shed, shouting instructions. There were also men with dogs running along the lawns, playing flashlights in all directions.
I heard a couple of shouts as the guys reached the door of the shed. There was the report of a gun and they hauled the door open and went inside. I dialed nine. Bright light flashed in the open doorway. The roof of the shed seemed to dance. There would be no light that night. Now I had bare minutes in which to find Yushbaev and the colonel, and get the hell out of there.
Twenty
I holstered the Maxim 9 and put the Heckler and Koch with the grenade launcher to my shoulder. I moved fast across the room, taking care, but fairly sure that everybody was either upstairs locked in secure rooms, or out searching the grounds.
I opened the door and eased out. I was in a vast hall. A huge marble staircase that glowed green because of the night-vision goggles spiraled up from the center of the floor, over my head to a galleried landing above. Directly across from me the main doors to the house stood open and two guys dressed in black, holding flashlights stood at the door, staring out.
I dismissed a philosophical thought about how we always look out when the greatest danger is within, took three silent strides and shot one of them in the back of the head with the Maxim 9, and, while the other was still in shock I sprang forward, got his throat in the crook of my right elbow, gripped my left bicep with my right hand and grabbed the back of his head with my left hand, then squeezed. While he started to suffocate I dragged him into the cover of the spiral staircase, laid him on the floor and knelt on his chest with the Fairbairn and Sykes poised on his t
hroat. He was wheezing hard and panicking, while I wondered whether Russian schools taught their kids English. When he’d caught his breath I asked him.
“You speak English?”
He croaked, “Little.”
“Where is Yushbaev?” He swallowed hard. I sighed. “I have no time. I want to get what I came for, and leave. Fast. No problems. Understand?” He nodded. “So you help me, you go home tonight. You give me problems, I kill you and ask somebody else. Now, you have five seconds. Where is Yushbaev?”
He licked his lips. “Upstairs.”
“Where?”
“Master bedroom, with armed guard. Top of stairs you make…” He hesitated. “Top of stairs you make left…”
I drove the blade through his throat and sliced hard to the side. I knew from that point on he would be lying. Yushbaev’s bedroom would not be to the left. The left would be the southwestern corner and would get the evening sun. The master bedroom would occupy the southeastern corner to get the morning sun with views of the sea.
I stood and moved quickly and silently up the stairs with the rifle at my shoulder. On the sixth step I saw the faint glimmer of green, reflected light from the open front door. I paused half a second and instinct made me duck. A fraction of a second later they opened up and a hail of hot lead rattled down, striking the marble balustrade.
They couldn’t see me. They were spraying the area in steady bursts of sick shots. My heart was pounding and my belly was on fire, but I stayed ice-cold and took careful aim. There were two of them and in the black and green world I could judge where their heads were. I took a full second over it, keeping just out of their line of fire. I double-tapped twice, heard the grunts and cries of pain and ran the rest of the way up to the top of the stairs.
The landing was a gallery that ran in a square all around the stairwell, overlooking the huge hall below. In addition, from where I was standing at the top of the stairs, a corridor branched off to right and left, into the west and east wings respectively. There was nobody there. I figured by now they were either searching the grounds or forming a protective guard around Yushbaev, Marianne and the colonel.
I was disabused of that idea as I saw, framed in the green light that spilled in through the front door, dancing black shadows approaching. They were obviously responding to the gunfire they had heard. It looked like it could be four of them, but it might have been six.
I let them burst through the door, then lobbed two grenades at them and sprayed them with fire, then ran hell-bent for leather toward the east wing. I came to a door. I had no time to think. I put four rounds through the lock, kicked it open and hurled myself to the side. Back at the stairs I heard boots tramping and lobbed two more grenades over the balustrade. They exploded and I heard screams. I dropped to my belly and peered round the door, training the rifle on the inside.
It was a large bedroom with windows looking south and east, bathing the room in that strange green light. There was a cold, marble fireplace at the far end; there were armchairs, a sofa and an elaborate coffee table. There were long drapes open on both windows and a high ceiling. And there were no people.
Except, that was, for the woman lying on the huge bed, sobbing.
I stepped back to the door and looked out. There were no tramping boots, no shouts, nothing. I closed the door and marched to the bed, wondering if it was the colonel. It wasn’t. It was Marianne. She stared up at me from between her clenched fists.
“Please, Harry, don’t kill me. Please, he made me do it. You don’t know what he’s like. Please…”
I snarled, “Where is he?”
She rose from the bed, hugging her arms. She was naked under a translucent negligee. She came around the bed taking hesitant steps.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
“Where is he, Marianne?”
“Please don’t hurt me. He has hurt me so much since Koufonisi.”
“I’ll damned well hurt you if you don’t quit stalling and tell me where he is!”
“He’s downstairs,” she said, and her face collapsed and she started sobbing, reaching for me with both hands. “Harry, he has hurt me so bad.”
I snapped, “I haven’t got time for this!”
“Please!” She grabbed hold of my arms and pressed herself against me. I grabbed her face with my left hand.
“Where is the colonel? Is she with Yushbaev?”
“No.” She shook her head, staring into my face, surprised. “He believes you’ve killed her. He believes I conspired with you. He is going to kill us both, Harry, you have to help me. He hurt me so badly.”
“Where downstairs? Where is he downstairs?”
She had stopped crying and was just staring up into my face.
“He has locked himself in the bunker, with the girls.”
“What girls? What bunker?”
“And his praetorian guard. He knows that you will go there for him, and he will kill us both.”
“What girls? Where is this bunker?”
“Didn’t you know? He has fifty women here at any one time, Harry. He brings them from Russia, Poland, Turkey, from all over the place… I thought you knew.”
Her hands were on my face and on my neck, stroking me, holding me. I gripped her wrist. “What are you doing, for Christ’s sake? Where is the bunker?”
“Harry, he hurt me so much, he left me here, for you to kill me. You won’t hurt me, will you?”
I snapped, slapped her face. “Cut it out! Where is this bunker?”
She turned away, holding her cheek. “He brings the women and teaches them to be whores. At first they don’t want to, but he gives them drugs…”
She stared up into my face, as though examining every feature. She looked strange, like a creature from another planet, luminous green among ink-black shadows, reaching up to touch my cheeks with her fingers.
“He laces their food with cannabis, they live in luxury, Harry, he gives them aphrodisiacs, caviar, all the alcohol they want, luxury all the time, and every day cannabis to smoke or eat or drink. He breaks them down with pleasure. Nobody can fight pleasure, Harry. It’s not natural.”
She smiled and I growled, “What the hell are you talking about, Marianne?”
“He sells them.” It was almost a whisper. “He sells them, the ones who aren’t special, to very exclusive clubs all around the world. They pay very high prices for them. They are for judges, ministers, archbishops.”
There was total silence. Her smile was growing deeper. She was pressing her naked body against me. My belly was on fire.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She whispered, “I am trying to help you. You have to kill him. Only you can kill him, Harry. Then we can have all the girls for ourselves. The very special ones he keeps, or he sends them to the very exclusive clubs, for kings and princes, and presidents. And a few he keeps for himself. They are very skilled, Harry. You know what they are especially skilled at, Harry?”
I waited.
“They are especially skilled at blackmail, at extracting information, at feeding information, and at…,” she pressed her lips to my ear so I could feel her moist breath, “…assassination.”
That was when I felt the prick in my arm and an intense, numb pain. I stepped back and looked down as something that looked like an EpiPen clattered to the floor.
“What did you do? What was that?”
She gave a soft giggle. “Even if I tell you, you won’t know for sure, will you?”
“Goddamn it, what was that?”
I stepped toward her and the room seemed to move too, and when I stopped the walls bulged away from me. She was very erect and translucent. The green of the night-vision goggles suddenly terrified me and I ripped them from my head.
“It might be lysergic acid,” she said from very far away, with no expression in her face or voice. She was just a black silhouette with a glowing, translucent aura, standing against a glowing window that overlooked the Black Sea. Black and white chasing
each other into infinity, good and evil, life and death.
I wrestled to drag my attention back to what was important and focus it where it had to be focused.
“Where,” I said. “Where should I be focusing my attention? Where is Yushbaev?”
“I told you.” She took a step forward that brought her several miles through space and time to stand so close I could feel her breath and her warmth. “He is down, deep down, Harry, all the way down, in the bunker with fifty women. Fifty female assassins. Fifty very dangerous women who love him and adore him. But maybe—” She ran her fingers over my chest, up my neck and face and through my hair. “Maybe they can be yours. I used to love him, Harry. But then I met you, and you own me now.”
I dropped the Heckler and Koch, and the bag with the C4, and gripped her fiercely to me. I bit savagely into her neck and growled in her ear, “I want to own you, I want to consume you.”
“Yes, Harry, and the first step to do that is to confront Gabriel, destroy him and make all his women yours. You are the master of death, Harry. The master of death and destruction. He is weak, he is terrified of you, hiding in the basement like a frightened slug, with his women to protect him. Come with me,” she pressed her lips to my ear again and breathed, “come with me.”
She turned me gently toward the door. The door swelled and somehow we passed through into the black passageway. She led me among the darkness to a wall that was paneled in wood, and that wooden wall opened to reveal two black beings with no face. They inhabited an oval of light and Marianne and I stepped inside the light and began to sink.
Marianne held me all the way, whispering in my ear that she was my slave, and I was the god of destruction, the god of death. The wall in front of me opened again and we stepped out into a vast cavern. There was a turquoise pool and tall columns, and gardens that smelt of neroli and jasmine. There were women, maybe a dozen of them, all beautiful. Most of them were naked, others were partially naked. They were all staring at me.
