MERCENARY a gripping, action-packed thriller (Johnny Silver Thriller Book 1)

by PAUL BENNETT

  And we had a party to arrange.

  28

  ‘Make a list, Stan,’ I said.

  ‘Already started,’ he replied.

  We were gathered again in the sitting-room. Carlo and Natasha were perched on a battered sofa, Anna was on a cushion on the floor with her long legs tucked under her and Scout sat watching the rest of us in our armchairs as we stripped down the guns, cleaned them and reassembled them with practised dexterity. Irina we’d sent home that morning – our crew was getting passenger heavy.

  ‘We pick up the uniforms in the morning,’ Stan said.

  ‘Flat shoes,’ I said to the girls.

  Natasha and Anna looked at me as if I had suggested they wear mail bags. There was no support from Scout either.

  ‘I was looking forward to wearing some high heels with the outfit,’ Scout said. ‘Short black dress, white pinafore, frilly cap – you need the heels or it won’t look right.’

  ‘We don’t want the Russians recognizing Natasha or Anna. And these are waitresses’ costumes, not French maids.’

  ‘Spoilsport,’ she said.

  I imagined that Arnie would have a treat in store if we got out of this alive.

  ‘You have to be able to run,’ I reminded them. ‘The three of you go out shopping this afternoon and buy something you can sprint in.’ A thought occurred to me. ‘We’ll need gloves,’ I said to Stan.

  He gave me a withering look. Was there nothing he hadn’t thought of?

  ‘What about one of those elasticated things to hold Red’s glasses in place.

  He uttered what I took as a swear word in Polish.

  ‘Dammit,’ he said, for the benefit of all of us, before reluctantly picking up his pen and adding the item to his list.

  I didn’t know if I felt good or bad about catching him out. Good, as long as that was the only thing he had overlooked. Bad didn’t warrant thinking about.

  ‘How many people from the zoo will be there?’ I asked Scout. She’d been the one to book the venue and sort out all the details.

  ‘Just two,’ she said. ‘The manager and the night keeper in case one of the animals gets sick.’

  ‘We’ll need somewhere we can lock them away and keep them safe. Once the shooting starts all hell will break loose. I don’t want any innocent bystanders hurt.’

  ‘The reptile house is tucked away in the far corner,’ Scout said. ‘The manager will have all the keys, until we take them, that is.’

  She was used to thinking like one of us now.

  ‘You know where the exit route is?’ I said to Scout. She was the one I was relying on to look after Natasha and Anna.

  ‘You must have told us three times by now,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘And I’ll probably tell you three times more. There’s going to be a lot of bullets flying around. Plus it will be dark. When we start firing you have to be able to find the exit route by instinct.’

  She nodded. ‘We’ll be fine. You stick to your task and I’ll get the three of us out to safety.’

  ‘Don’t forget to give us the signal when the main gate is locked so that we’re sure everyone is shut in. And no silencers,’ I reminded everyone. ‘I want as much noise as possible.’

  We sat there for a while, listening to the clicking of the parts of the guns as they snapped back into place. There was something therapeutic about the exercise as if everything would fit into place and that would be an omen for Friday.

  ‘We can get access from six o’clock,’ Scout said. ‘That should give us plenty of time to set up the tables and load them with the drinks and food.’

  ‘Make sure the tables are far apart and directly opposite each other. I don’t want Garanov and the Bellinis mingling. Eye contact, yes, but only that close.’

  ‘I’m sure now,’ Bull said. ‘Garanov is the one from Angola.’

  The weapon cleaning stopped for a moment. All eyes fell on Bull.

  ‘No doubt in my mind,’ he said.

  ‘Then we need some special treatment for him,’ I said. ‘It’s payback time.’

  I walked for about half a mile from the hotel until I found an internet café. Most of the people sitting at the terminals were young men and women who looked like they were students on gap years and this month it was the turn of Amsterdam. I booked a two-hour session. What I had to do had to be very precise, the wording exactly right.

  I’d been writing the Cyclops column for nearly four years now and this was the first time I had missed a copy date. It had started off as a bit of light-hearted fun. Even the name was a bit of a joke – the quotation, ‘In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king’. It was just a game, a challenge – could I beat the full-time professionals in the prediction of shares to sell or buy? It gave me something to do when there were no customers at the bar. I could sit in the shade and trawl through all the company news on the internet. I had to sift out all the fluff – the PR releases that were more about image than information – and concentrate on the detail of the balance sheets of companies and the way their share prices would be affected by seemingly unrelated events – raw material prices, the vagaries of the weather and so on. Then I found I was good at it. Unfortunately I was playing the game with other people’s money – I never had enough myself to invest in the stock market. Maybe when all this was over I could play on my own account, handle the others’ money even. Turn over a profit that could act like a pension: that much was certain, this job would really be our last in the mercenary business. Pieter getting flabby, Red with his dwindling eyesight, Bull with a family: none of us was getting any younger and this was a young man’s game.

  It took me the full two hours to get the column exactly right and I emailed it to Gus with explicit instructions to forward it on to the editor at nine o’clock in the evening on Friday. Allowing for the time difference it would arrive on time to make the Saturday issue and give a lot of people time to sweat over the weekend.

  On the way back I stopped off at the market and bought three large watermelons and one small cantaloupe and a tube of glue from the stationers. I went back to the hotel, collected the Barrett monster sniper rifle and a pair of binoculars and placed them, the melons and the glue in one of Stan’s gym bags. I picked up the hire car and drove to the woods to the south of Amsterdam. I was going to use the rifle on Friday and would need a direct hit. The Barrett had been credited with a kill at 1800 metres during the Iraq war. The manufacturers claim was for 1000 metres and that it could pierce body armour and do a lot of damage to an armoured vehicle at that distance. I was going to shoot from a hundred metres – the Barrett could hit a pinhead from there. I had to set the telescopic sight for the precise distance between rifle and target at the zoo.

  I found an old tree stump lying on the ground covered in moss. I dragged it in front of a tree. I put the four melons on top of the horizontal stump, the cantaloupe being the last on the left. I paced out the distance, around a hundred yards, and got down on the ground. I took the sniper rifle from the gym bag and checked the magazine. Plenty enough bullets for the test run.

  I lay and tucked the rifle firmly into my shoulder – one of the drawbacks of the Barrett was that it has a mighty kick and could break a man’s shoulder if it wasn’t tucked in properly. I got the first watermelon in the sight and let off one round. Through the greater magnification of the binoculars I could see that the shot had hit at the seven o’clock position on the outer edge of the melon. I adjusted the sight and moved on to the second. Closer this time, but still to the left and down of the centre. Another adjustment, another shot. Very close to the centre this time. I made the slightest adjustment and moved on from the big watermelons to the small cantaloupe. Dead centre and the melon blown apart. Perfect. As long as I could keep my cool on Friday I should be able to replicate the shot as many times as were possible in the time limit. If I could get in four, then I would be very happy. Anything else would be a bonus. I put a large blob of glue over the adjusting screw of the sight – whe
n hard it would mean that it wouldn’t get changed accidentally.

  I trudged back through the woods to the car and drove back to the hotel. There were still days to kill, days to go over and over the plan, to do a further recce on the zoo and then just sit and wait. None of us was good at waiting. Those guns would be the cleanest in history by the time Friday night came around. And nothing wrong with that. None of us wanted to take a bullet just because our gun was dirty. None of us wanted to take a bullet full stop. If I had been a religious man I would have prayed. I settled for crossing my fingers and hoping for good luck.

  Anna sensed that I had a lot on my mind. When I arrived back at the hotel she immediately poured me a large vodka with lots of ice and settled down next to me on the sofa. She put her head on my shoulder and wrapped one arm around my waist. I took a big slug of my vodka and the frown I was wearing turned into a smile.

  ‘Will it be all right, Johnny?’ she asked.

  ‘If it goes wrong, it won’t be for lack of planning. Stan and I have pretty much covered all the angles. But you never know with these things – a random event can happen that destroys all your planning.’ I took a sip of the vodka this time and thought for a while. ‘If things do go wrong, I want you to go to Gus. He’ll give you money and set you up somewhere.’

  ‘And what if you do come back? What about us?’

  ‘Let’s not think of that for the moment. Best not to count your chickens.’

  She managed a laugh. ‘You talk funny,’ she said. ‘Counting chickens. What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that it’s best not to tempt fate. If we all get out of this alive, then that will be the time to talk about the future.’

  ‘Then let’s talk about the present. Do you want another vodka, or to come upstairs with me?’

  I got up from the sofa, walked across the room and picked up the vodka bottle. Then I opened the door and stood by it.

  ‘Greedy boy,’ she said. ‘Let’s live each day as if it were our last.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ I said.

  29

  I met Arnie after work at the botanical gardens. It was just across a couple of streets from the zoo and I wanted to be around at nine o’clock to check out the light exactly as it would be on Friday evening, weather permitting. And that was one big hole in the plan – if it rained we’d be sunk.

  We found a secluded spot on a bench surrounded by giant palms – it reminded me a bit of my home on the island, except about ten degrees chillier. Arnie was wearing sand-coloured chinos and a navy-blue bomber jacket; he still wore the steel-framed glasses, but out of his suit he looked less like a geek and more like Clark Kent. I didn’t need him to have super powers, but there were a couple of things I wanted him to do.

  ‘Ms Oakley has left,’ he said.

  ‘I was hoping she would,’ I replied. ‘So no one to supervise you, what with Oakley gone and Carlo out of the picture?’

  ‘With Ms Oakley it wasn’t supervising, it was breathing down your neck. I’m not used to that. Carlo let me get on with running the day-to-day business.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘How would you like to do some overtime on Friday night? There’s some things I need you to do.’

  ‘I suppose you’re as near to a boss that I’ve got now. What is it you want me to do?’

  ‘There are three tasks,’ I said. ‘The first is the missing bearer bonds. I want you to go back and change the entries regarding them so that they came from Almas and not Silvers. Almas must be the loser from the theft.’

  ‘Is that strictly legal?’

  ‘Not in terms of the letter of the law,’ I said, ‘but when you’ve heard what I have to tell you, you’ll come down on the side of the spirit of the law.’

  I told him all that we had learned about Almas and their operations, medical and otherwise. At the end he gave a big whistle.

  ‘Should we be messing around with these guys?’ he asked.

  ‘After what we’ve been doing to them in the last week, and what we have in store, a few book entries is hardly on their radar.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he said, sounding unconvinced. ‘You said three things?’

  ‘The second task is to create a suspense account.’

  He let out a groan. A suspense account is usually a pain in the neck. It is used when there are items you can’t reconcile in the accounts – a temporary hiding place until you find out what is happening and what to do with the money. A suspense account involves a lot of back-checking and time-consuming detective work.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what is going to happen to the money in this suspense account. I want you to parcel together all the accounts that Almas have for their individual businesses and their holding company and put them in a new suspense account. We’ll sort out on Monday where it is going.’

  ‘Why do I have to wait till Friday? It’s going to take some time. Why can’t I do it now?’

  ‘Because if you do it now Almas may spot it. Carlo gave them remote access to their accounts so they could see what the position was day by day. It has to be Friday after closing hours.’

  ‘OK, boss,’ he said. ‘What’s the third thing?’

  ‘Helping Scout,’ I said.

  ‘Scout?’ he said, a wistful tone in his voice. Then it changed to concern. ‘What have you got her involved in? Is she in some sort of danger? If she is, I’ll … I’ll … I don’t know what, but I’ll do something to you that you won’t like.’

  ‘Relax, Arnie. We’ve got all the bases covered. We’re very thorough when we plan an operation, and that’s what we have on Friday night. Scout and two Russian girls are going to act as waitresses at a gathering we’re holding at the zoo. At nine o’clock the guests will arrive. Scout and her friends will make sure they have something to drink and something to nibble on. As soon as they’ve done that they are going to make a quick exit. I want you nearby with a car so that you can ferry them back to the safety of our hotel.’

  ‘I haven’t got a car,’ he said.

  That was a base we didn’t have covered. Did no one in this city drive a car?

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll park a dark-blue people carrier outside the Portuguese synagogue. We’ll put the keys in the exhaust pipe. When Scout and the girls come out of the zoo, you get them as quick as you can to the car and away.’

  ‘I don’t drive,’ he said.

  ‘Arnie,’ I said. ‘What are you doing to me? It seemed like a simple enough task when I’d thought of it. You’re just going to have to get Scout to drive and you sit in the back with your eyes closed. That’s the biggest danger you’ll be in.’

  ‘Are you saying Scout is a bad driver?’ he said threateningly.

  ‘No,’ I said. Atrocious was the word I was thinking of. Time to change the subject. ‘You and Scout – how long have you been going out together?’

  ‘Around a year now. Strange really. She was doing what she called a “fishing expedition”. Trying to get a contact within Silvers who would feed her information if ever it was needed. Apparently, she’d watched some of the staff and settled for me. We met first over dinner and it developed from there. She’s a great woman. I know she comes across sometimes as, well—’

  ‘Feisty?’ I said.

  ‘I was thinking more of single-minded.’

  ‘Ah, stubborn,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t hear a word said against her.’

  ‘Calm down, Arnie, I’m only teasing. Let’s take a walk. I need to show you where Scout and the girls will be coming out of the zoo.’

  ‘But I know where the exit is.’

  ‘But they won’t be coming out of the exit,’ I said with a sigh. ‘What would a bunch of jittery guys think if they see their waitresses heading for the exit. Trouble, that’s what they’d think. No, they’ll be coming through the fence and over the wall behind the camel enclosure – I’ll mark it with a chalk cross so that you know the exact spot.’

  ‘I should have asked before. Who
is coming to this gathering?’

  ‘Almas and the Bellinis.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  He had destroyed my illusions with the swear word, but summed up pretty accurately what the position was.

  ‘Yeah, Arnie,’ I said. ‘Shit. And we don’t want it to hit us.’

  I waited till nine to check the light and the number of people still on the street at that time, then went back to the hotel. Bull was alone in the lounge. He had a beer in his hand and a sad look on his face. I poured myself a vodka and joined him.

  ‘A penny for them,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Seems like you’re in another world. I reckon you’re having second thoughts as to what side to be on. Would you be better off with us, or a bunch of crooks who could get you a donor for Michael?’

  ‘Hell,’ he said. ‘I talked to Mai Ling and there’s still no news. They’re just sitting around waiting and hoping someone will die. Ain’t that terrible?’

  I nodded. He didn’t need me to talk; he needed to get it all off his chest.

  ‘It don’t seem right, hoping someone will die. But it would be worse with Almas. I’ve killed people before. Plenty, you know that. But never have I let someone die who didn’t need it to make the world a better place.’

  ‘It’s a good philosophy,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the only way you can justify the actions of the past and live with what you’ve done.’

  ‘And then there’s maybe more killing on Friday.’

  He nodded his head and took a long pull from the beer bottle.

  ‘Jeez, Johnny, there’s a lot that can go wrong.’

  ‘We’ll cope,’ I said. ‘We’re good at thinking on our feet.’

  ‘We’re older and probably no wiser.’

  ‘But still good enough to take on Almas and the Bellinis.’

  He looked at me sideways and shook his head. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘They won’t know what hit them.’