by Ryan, Chris
10
0800 hours.
They drove in silence for several minutes, due west along Route 19, until Gardner indicated for Valon to take a left turn. As they headed south the motorway corkscrewed past an old farm, its overgrown fields populated by mangy goats and starved sheep, an early nineties Nissan Firebird out front. A minute later they came to an abandoned depot west of the Makis freight station. Gardner ordered Valon to stop the car.
They got out, Gardner keeping the Glock on Valon. The earth was reclaiming the train tracks, grass shoots clawing at the old iron path. Three hundred metres to the north-east stood the functioning Lokomotiv depot. Just after eight o’clock in the morning and the mechanical grunts of trains stopping and starting carried on the chill air. Gardner and Valon were too far away for the rail workers to spot them. He led the Albanian towards the carcass of an old train carriage, its rusting frame dumped at the end of the line. Gardner recalled this spot from his operations here as a Blade. They’d settled on the disused depot as an RV point in the event of the op going tits up.
Once they reached the depot, Gardner got down to business.
He brought his pistol hand down hard on to the dip between Valon’s shoulders, heard the crunch of the grip connecting with bone. Valon dropped like shit out of a dog’s arse. His body made unnatural sounds as Gardner smothered him with body blows. The guy writhed this way and that. Gardner booted him in the ribcage, then the gut. Then the balls. He eased off, allowing Valon to catch his breath. The guy was on his hands and knees, scrambling to catch his breath. His mouth open, he sucked at the ground.
‘Where’d you take her?’
‘Fuck—’ Valon angled his head up at Gardner, his voice no more than a cancerous rasp.
‘Wrong answer, mate.’
Gardner raised the Glock level parallel with his elbow – then swung it in an arc. The pistol swept down and smashed into Valon’s face. His hands gave way; his knees buckled. The front of Gardner’s T-shirt was flecked with red dots. Something dark and sticky clung to the end of the Glock’s barrel.
Getting down on one knee, Gardner lifted Valon’s head. He was fucked. A three-inch dent stretched like an oversized leech from his ear to his jaw. His forehead and nose were freckled with blood, and snot around his mouth had mixed with dirt from the ground to form a sort of sandy paste covering his chin.
‘I fucking swear, mate, the next one is a bullet in your head. Do you understand?’ Valon gave a battered nod. ‘Now, where the fuck is Aimée?’
‘Is that her name? Very cute.’ He slurred his words. ‘Forget her, Joe. She’s better off dead. And she soon will be.’
The fury crescendoed from Gardner’s stomach to the small of his throat.
‘So where is she?’
Valon’s silence answered for him.
‘What are you doing working with John Bald?’
‘Fuck your mother.’
‘When’s the exchange happening?’
‘Shit, brother. You kill me and you’ll never see Bald or the girl again.’ Gardner pressed the Glock against Valon’s temple.
Do it, he was thinking. One shot. That’s all it’d take. Put a hole in his noggin that you could drive a cattle rod through.
No. I can’t kill him. Not with Aimée out there, not with Bald on the verge of making his deal.
He pulled the gun away.
‘Give me your hand, brother,’ he said.
Valon obeyed. Stubborn cunt, Gardner thought as he directed the muzzle at Valon’s balls. The Albanian offered up his left hand instead of his right. Gardner fished the red bracelet from his pocket and clicked it around his bony wrist.
‘Hey, what the fuck is this?’
‘This bracelet’s loaded with bang-bang powder,’ Gardner said, making up a spot of bullshit. This guy’s a sly cunt, he thought, but he ain’t exactly clever.
‘It operates on a remote-control detonator. One press of the clicker and you won’t be doing any hand shandies for a long time. Try and take it off, you’ll short the circuit – boom. See, you’re going to lead me to John Bald, mate. And I’m going to put the drop on him.’
Valon eyed the bracelet, his pupils bulging like white poker chips. He’d clearly bought Gardner’s line about the explosives. ‘You’re fucking crazy, brother. Bald will notice this.’
‘Then tell him you’re trying to make poverty history, I don’t give a fuck. But you’d better come clean, or I’ll blow your arm to fucking mush.’
‘Shit. OK, OK.’ Valon snatched at air. Sweat trickled down the sides of his head. ‘The meeting is at a place called the Presevo Valley. It’s about 320 kilometres south of Belgrade, maybe a bit further.’
‘I know it,’ Gardner said. The valley, near the border with Macedonia, had been a hotbed of ethnic violence in the war. In the years since then it had become the site of conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serbian security forces.
‘Where in the valley?’
‘On the E-75. Near the village of Brezovan.’
‘What time?’ Gardner said.
‘Noon today,’ Valon said back.
‘And you’re John’s bodyguard?’
‘Fuck no, man. Don’t insult me, I’m more important than that,’ Valon snorted, bringing up phlegm. ‘I’m here to make the introduction between Bald and the Russian.’
‘The Russian?’
‘A mafya guy, name of Sotov.’ He flashed a look at Gardner. ‘He’s the one who told me to kidnap the bitch. They call him the Grey Wolf.’
‘Some kind of a joke?’
‘Don’t you get it, bro? He’s mafya. He’s got this big diamond company, lots of money, and he’s a stone-cold killer. Fuck, man, you don’t mess with this guy. I’m fucking serious. He’s a real player.’
Daybreak announced itself in harsh, unforgiving rays. We’ll be visible to the depot workers if we stick around much longer, Gardner realized. He watched Valon wipe his nose with the sleeve of his coat, then ordered him to his feet.
‘Tell me about your plan,’ he said.
Valon struggled to stand up upright. His legs wobbled, he remained unsteady. ‘I’m supposed to rendezvous with Bald at nine o’clock on the dot. We run through a checklist, get our shit together and head out to the meet.’
‘At Presevo?’
Valon nodded, eyes on his sleeve.
‘In the car,’ Gardner said. ‘Head to your get-together with Bald. I want you to pretend like nothing’s happened. You go to the drug swap. When the deal’s done and dusted, you pretend you lost the car keys. Search the ground and stay the fuck away from Bald. And if you say a word about me, I’ll blow your bloody arm off.’
‘You’re gonna kill him, aren’t you?’ Valon ran his hands over the ugly wound on the side of his face. The flesh had coloured a kind of oily black, as if his cheeks were made out of rubber.
‘I’m here to bring him in, that’s all.’
‘Nah, brother. I see it in your eyes.’
‘Just get a fucking move on.’
After Valon left in the Land Rover, Gardner handrailed the road north, back to the 19 motorway. He kept fifteen metres between himself and the road, manoeuvring along a parallel path a metre lower than the road and blanketed by trees. He passed dead animals: rotting cats and rats. Took him twelve minutes to reach the same farm he’d passed on the trip down with Valon.
Gardner walked eighty metres beyond the farm, then turned around and retraced his route. His eyes were alert for any sign of movement or activity. The farm seemed to be empty, the road likewise. He unhooked the wooden gate at the front of the property. Goats chewed cud and blinked at him as he approached the old Nissan Firebird. It was a clapped-out motor, but easy to jack. No hi-tech alarms or locking mechanisms to piss about with.
He broke the driver’s window with the Glock and opened the door from the inside. Then he hotwired the engine and reversed out of the drive.
It was now 0840 hours, leaving Gardner barely enough time to hit Presevo Valley. He
estimated the driving time at three hours clean if he kept his foot to the pedal. He’d rock up to the meeting point twenty minutes before the meeting.
But you can’t leave Aimée, he agonized.
Right now, I don’t have a fucking choice. I’m out of time.
His ultimate objective – the termination of John Bald – loomed in his mind. Unlike action heroes in the movies, Regiment operators took the business of killing seriously. Gardner liked to say that no man could understand the power of one man over another, the power to take his life, until he’d held a Glock 9mm in his hands and pointed it at another man’s head. Taking the life of a friend he’d known for fifteen years wasn’t something he relished. He reconciled himself to the fact that Bald had taken a path he himself couldn’t agree with. The drugs, the money, luring Gardner to Rio. He’d betrayed the Regiment code.
When he was about a hundred kilometres from his destination, Gardner put a call in to Land.
‘Christ, man,’ Land said. ‘I’ve been trying to contact you for hours. What the devil is going on down there?’
‘That streak of piss Valon. He ambushed Aimée’s apartment.’
‘Good God.’ A curious pause had followed. ‘What – what the hell were you doing at Aimée’s place all that time?’
Gardner ignored him. ‘Valon took Aimée hostage. Handed her over to some bloke called Sotov. He’s mafya.’
He waited for Land to say something, but the Firm man stayed silent.
‘You stitched me up,’ Gardner said, finally.
‘Nonsense,’ Land snapped. ‘I warned you that he was in with a bad crowd. You went into this mission with your eyes wide open, Joe. Just because it’s getting a bit uncomfortable doesn’t mean you can start bandying accusations about.’
‘Spare me the bollocks,’ Gardner said. ‘There’s more than the ’Ndrangheta and the Serbs involved here. You didn’t say anything about the fucking Russian mafya sticking their hands in the pie.’
Gardner heard people talking near to Land. ‘The Russians were a source,’ Land said. ‘But we couldn’t confirm their attachment to the deal one away or the other. Your work has proved that they are indeed involved.’ He sniffed. ‘You might think you’re one step ahead of the Firm, dear chap. But in truth you’re just another soldier doing exactly what we tell him to do. No more – and no less.’
‘There’s one thing you and your mate Macca definitely called wrong,’ Gardner said. ‘John Bald’s not selling to the Italians. He’s doing business with the Russians.’
‘Yes,’ said Land impatiently. ‘And the ’Ndrangheta are the protection for him, in return for receiving a cut of the profits. We know. The Firm’s been aware of this development since last night. That’s why I tried to call you. But from the sounds of it, you were… preoccupied?’
‘Fuck off!’
‘Now, now, Joe—’
‘I take John down, this cunt’s next on the list.’
‘You will do no such thing.’ Land sighed. ‘If you start taking down Russian mafya – particularly those with links to the government – then you’ll cause a diplomatic incident. And if that happens, you’re on your own.’
Gardner felt something scratch at his throat.
‘I’m not abandoning Aimée.’
‘And I’m not asking you to. Look, bring Valon in alive after you’ve killed Bald. He knows Sotov. I’m certain Valon can lead us to your woman friend, given a little encouragement.’
‘Fuck it,’ Gardner said. ‘I’m on my way to Presevo now. I can just make it ahead of time. Valon gave me the location. I’m going to get there before John—’
And then you’re going to kill him, he thought.
A pause.
‘Stop him, Joe,’ said Land quietly. ‘Whatever it takes.’
11
1133 hours.
The E-75 motorway cut through Europe like a scimitar. It ran from Vardo in Norway down to Sitia at the fag-end of Greece. It coursed like a river through the basin of the Presevo Valley, straddling the five-kilometre buffer zone separating Serbia from Kosovo. The land was harsh and fallow. Grey dew on the tips of the rotten-brown valley grass. The few towns dotted about the spruce-stippled slopes of the valley looked as if the NATO bombing campaign had taken place the previous night. If Belgrade was the modern face of Serbia, Presevo was an ugly reminder of its past.
The past, Gardner wondered. They say history’s written by the victors. Well, I’m going to write John Bald’s history. I’ll write it in fucking bullets and blood.
He noticed a sign indicating a turn-off eight kilometres ahead for the village of Brezovan.
Gardner had raced at 130 kilometres an hour almost the entire distance to Presevo and was arriving in good time. Along the way he’d stopped at a café, gorged himself on a fatty burek filled with hot cheese and spinach, and a generous serving of coffee. The caffeine was working its magic. Energy gushed through his body, like someone had turned on a tap inside him, and he could feel his lungs expand and compress in his chest.
Five kilometres now.
He ran through the plan one more time in his mind. Valon would lead John to the meeting point and the Italians as backup. The deal would take place. Once the Russians had fucked off, he would line Bald up in his sights and pop a round clean through his head. Valon wouldn’t back out of the plan. Mainly because he believed the bracelet attached to his wrist was riddled with explosive det cord.
But that still leaves Aimée, he realized.
The cynical part of his brain figured that she was just another in a long line of women who meant less and less the longer he spent with them. But another part asked, why was he so desperate to rescue her?
Because it’s your fault she got snatched in the first place. If you hadn’t got involved, she would never have been a target. But thinking about her isn’t going to help right now, he decided. I need to focus on the mission. I put Bald six feet under, then I worry about saving Aimée.
He flexed the muscles in his neck. They hardened.
Two kilometres.
Suddenly the valley plateaued. Traffic thinned. He came to the Brezovan turn-off, took the slip road. Gardner went easy on the pedal. Down to eighty, sixty, forty…
Gardner scanned the rest stop two hundred metres down the slip road. The road was vacant. The rest stop was a sixty-metre strip of rocky asphalt. A barbed-wire fence ran parallel to the stop on the valley side, backing on to a tired, weather-beaten field, home to a couple of diseased-looking cows.
The meeting point.
Perfect location, Gardner thought. No secret hiding places, right out in the open and with a quick avenue of escape – the E-75 – if things didn’t go according to plan.
That left him with the problem of where to ditch his wheels and observe unseen. The old banger had one advantage: it came with a worn atlas of Serbia. He studied the arterial roads and turn-offs on the motorway either side of the Brezovan exit and drew up a mental list of possible vantage points.
He took the slip road. There was no traffic in front or behind him. Brezovan wasn’t the kind of place people visited. More like escaped from. It was a village in the loosest possible sense of the word.
A hundred and fifty metres ahead of the rest stop, Gardner spotted a ramshackle petrol station. The map had marked out the station as closed since the Albanian insurgency in 2001. No shit, he thought. The forecourt concrete was split open with weeds, the pumps rusted and the signage AWOL.
Gardner brought the Nissan to a halt next to the station. He glanced in his rear-view mirror. Eleven forty-five and no sign of the Shogun.
Grabbing the TRG-22, Gardner hurried ten metres across the forecourt. He knelt by a crumbling, three-metre-high pillar to the south-west of the rest stop. The pillar, combined with the bank of old pumps, obscured him from passing vehicles. From here he had a good view of the asphalt strip. A horse chestnut tree towered over the scrubland beyond the rest stop, and behind it a bank of spruces helped muffle the noise from the motorway.
A hundred metres west of the chestnut sloped a gentle hill scattered with rocks. Gardner had considered the hill as an alternative vantage point. But, unlike the petrol station, it lacked an easy access road, and eventually he’d decided against it.
Gardner assembled the bipod and rested the TRG-22 on top. He rested on his belly in a prone firing stance beside the pillar. He piled a few stray lumps of concrete around his position, further concealing his body. Then he adjusted the optics. And waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
12
1152 hours.
The Shogun arrived bang on time. Gardner knew Bald would hit the meeting point a few minutes early. He figured that he had probably scouted out this area two or three times ahead of the meeting, assessing threat scenarios. Like the highly trained operator he was. Or once was, he thought.
The two men debussed. Bald scanned the horizon, Valon fighting to light a cigarette, the breeze blowing out the flame like a candle on a birthday cake. To Gardner’s eyes, Bald seemed tetchy. Gardner adjusted his shoulder muscles, and hoped that Valon had kept his fucking piehole shut.
A few minutes later the Italians rocked up.
Valon managed to light his cigarette as the Italians pulled up behind the Shogun at the rest stop. The amber end of his fag oozed smoke.
The ’Ndrangheta fronted in style, three ants disgorging from a silver Bentley Continental Flying Spur. Gardner pressed his eye to the TRG-22 optics and the ants became guys in black trim-cut suits and police shades. A fourth figure took a while longer to emerge. His flaccid cheeks, rotund belly and white hair told Gardner that the guy was the wrong side of seventy. He recalled the photograph Macca had shown him. There was no doubt in his mind that he was looking at the Pallbearer, Gianni Petruzzi.
The capo crimini embraced Bald. Brief handshake with Valon. His three goons scoped out the area. One of them was shaven-headed and his shades sat below the steep hill of his temple. He seemed to be in command of the other two men. Gardner caught his breath in his throat as the goon ran his eyes over the petrol station. Gardner was sure he wasn’t visible, but the human eye is prone to spot sudden or sharp movements, and the slightest twitch of an elbow, he knew, might alert the guy to his presence.
