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

by PAUL BENNETT

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve hardly touched your food,’ Gus said.

  We were sitting in Gus’s favourite restaurant, a small family-run place on the Leidseplein, all wooden tables, pink tablecloths and subdued lighting. We had a window seat and could see El Dorado across the way. But it wasn’t that which was putting me off my food. I pushed the half-full plate of steak and frites to one side and toyed with my wine glass.

  ‘Tomorrow’s the big day,’ I said.

  ‘Having regrets?’ Gus asked. ‘Wished you’d stayed on that island in the sun?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ I said.

  ‘Good to be decisive,’ he said.

  I managed a passable smile.

  ‘When I think back over that story about the baby at the airport I know that these people have to be stopped and if it falls to me, then so be it. It’s just that about now the nerves start to kick in. Hands sweat, mouth dry, belly churns. I’ve been here before many times and yet it still happens.’

  I took a sip at my glass of red wine.

  ‘Will it work?’ he asked. ‘Your plan?’

  ‘Unless something unexpected happens, yes, it will work.’

  ‘And what are the chances of something unexpected happening?’

  ‘We know that both sides won’t trust each other. So they’ll both do a reconnaissance of the zoo – see the places where they might get ambushed, sort out the best firing positions for an ambush of their own. We just have to hope that they’re not as good as we are, otherwise they’ll work out where we’ll be and be there waiting for us. There will be twenty armed men milling about and we don’t want to get caught in the crossfire. I’m not too worried about Bellini – it’s Garanov who’s the problem. We’ve hurt Garanov twice. He knows our fire power and will plan for us getting involved. He’ll be more watchful than Bellini.’

  ‘What about the police? When the shooting starts, someone will alert the police. How are you going to avoid getting arrested.’

  ‘By being quick on our feet. We have an exit route planned and we just have to make it there before the police arrive.’ I pondered, then frowned. ‘To be honest, it’s going to be tight.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  I took out a slip of paper from my pocket and passed it across the table to him.

  ‘That’s the number of an account I opened. I cashed the rest of the bearer bonds and paid the money into that account – eight million euros. I’ve made you a signatory. If anything happens to me, look after everyone.’

  He nodded and tucked the slip of paper in the top pocket of his jacket.

  ‘You can count on me,’ he said.

  ‘That means a lot,’ I said. ‘If it all goes well, let’s meet back here on Saturday night – all of us.’

  All of us who are still alive.

  30

  We cleaned the guns one last time. This time we had done it with latex gloves on. No fingerprints, nothing to link us to what would happen. Stan checked and rechecked all the equipment while we watched him and filled ashtrays. Scout, Anna and Natasha were fussing about with hair that was already perfect and applying another coat of lipstick to the three that they had put on at intervals earlier. Every minute or so one of us would look at our watches. Finally it was time to leave.

  The girls, neatly dressed in their black outfits with the white aprons and the flat shoes, sat in the middle seats of the people carrier. The glasses, booze and snacks were loaded into the back compartment with the seats folded down. Red drove and Pieter sat beside him – they were the only two of us that either the Bellinis or Garanov hadn’t so far seen. Bull, Stan and I took one of the hire cars, the boot stuffed with all the rest of the equipment – the assault rifles, the sniper rifle, the pump gun, bolt cutters, a rope ladder with grappling hook and two fat reels of gaffer tape, all packed into two long gym bags. We each had a Browning in a shoulder holster. While the people carrier headed for the front entrance to the zoo, our destination was one of the little-used side streets backing on to the perimeter wall.

  We had to make the assumption that both sides would be watching the front entrance – it was what we would have done – so the plan was for Red and Pieter to help with the unpacking and setting up and then exit. That way, as far as anyone watching was concerned, only the three girls would be inside the zoo. No threat from that direction. Meanwhile, the rest of us had some climbing to do.

  The zoo was surrounded on all sides by a brick wall around ten feet tall, its main purpose to stop anyone getting a free look at the animals or pestering them. Inside this outer perimeter wall was a narrow track for the keepers to use and then the wire fences enclosing the animals. Stan threw the grappling hook over the wall, tugged it to test that it was firmly in place, spread out the rope ladder and, when the coast was clear, we climbed over. The tricky part was manhandling the heavy gym bags over the top of the wall and then dragging back the ladder and engaging the grappling iron so that the ladder was ready for the girls to exit. Once we were all over – Pieter puffing a bit – we regrouped at the wire fence outside the camel enclosure. The camels were sound asleep – but wouldn’t remain so – on beds of straw in their indoor area. We started cutting a hole big enough for Bull to get through – if Bull could get through, the rest of us would have no problem. Then we repeated the procedure with the inner fence – from there we had access to the whole zoo. But first we had to deal with the manager and the keeper.

  I picked up the Barrett monster sniper rifle, checked the blob of glue on the sights – still intact – and slung it over my shoulder. I couldn’t handle two rifles so I left the Uzi in one of the gym bags, just in case I needed it later. The others picked up their guns and we made our way to the reptile house and waited for Scout to do her spiel – oh, how she adored snakes and could she just have a peep.

  I heard the sound of the keeper’s heavy boots and pressed myself into the wall. The others took their lead from me and did the same. When they came round the corner they faced five Brownings.

  ‘Do as I say and you won’t be harmed.’ I motioned with the Browning. ‘Unlock the door.’ I turned to Scout. ‘Best be back to the restaurant before someone wonders where you’ve been.’

  ‘Good luck,’ she said.

  The manager, a short, thin man in a dark-grey suit, stared at me, unmoving through shock. The keeper was a big man with muscles honed from lifting bales of straw. He stepped in front of the manager – a hero in the making.

  ‘Don’t do anything foolish. There’s five of us and we’re all crack shots. Now, step aside and let your friend unlock the door.’

  The keeper took one last defiant look at me and wisely did as he was told. The manager took a bunch of keys on a large ring from a loop on his belt and unlocked the door. I opened it and waved them inside with the Browning. Bull and Stan followed them and then I stepped inside. The heat hit me like a sledgehammer. The air was so humid you could have grabbed a handful and squeezed out water. Bull and Stan, out of habit, frisked the keeper and the manager.

  Bull found another bunch of keys in the keeper’s green dungarees and handed them to me – I now had both sets. We stood the manager and keeper with their noses pressed on the glass of one of the display cases.

  ‘Hands behind your backs,’ I said.

  Bull unwound some gaffer tape and wrapped it around the keeper’s hands. Stan did the same with the manager.

  ‘Now sit down,’ I said.

  Bull and Stan bound their feet and then put a large strip of tape around their mouths.

  ‘In an hour you’ll both be free. Just sit tight and ignore any loud bangs – they’re not for you.’

  We came outside and I locked the door. I left the key in the lock and placed the other set of keys on the floor.

  ‘Stage one over,’ I said.

  We took up our guns and made our separate ways to our assigned positions. Mine was at the centre of the restaurant roof with Bull at one corner and Stan at the other
. Red and Pieter took the other two sides of the square opposite the restaurant. Then it was time to keep low and wait.

  There were arc lights shining down from the restaurant so that anyone looking up would be blinded and we would effectively be invisible. I looked down and could see Scout and Anna. Natasha was hidden from view from where I lay. Tables from inside the restaurant had been dragged outside and set up in lines facing each other so that both sides could have a staring contest before their leaders came into the middle to meet, exchange gifts and parlay. On the tables were being placed wine and shot glasses, bottles of red wine and vodka and trays of canapés that our housekeeper at the hotel had prepared. Anybody we missed with bullets would probably die a slow death from food poisoning.

  I checked my watch. Ten minutes to go before the guests would turn up. I wondered which group would arrive first. Was there some etiquette among the mafia and Russian mafia that dictated that, like the bride, one should always be late.

  The girls had finished setting everything up as per the plan. Scout moved towards the entry gate to greet the arrivals, while Natasha and Anna took up their stations by each set of tables. Anna was to be serving Garanov and his mob, while Natasha looked after the Bellinis.

  Garanov and his gorillas showed up first. They were wrapped in long overcoats and raincoats, concealing, I presumed, assault rifles. It was important that Garanov should take the far station, otherwise he wouldn’t be in line with my sight. He cast his eyes round, weighing up the ground. Would he be a good boy and do as he was told?

  Scout went up to Garanov and did the little curtsy that she had practised at the hotel and waved her hand in the direction of the far table. He looked her over, assessing any risk as well as her figure. They stepped across the courtyard and went to where Anna was pouring vodka into shot glasses. Thank God for the Russians love of vodka.

  Garanov was suspicious of the vodka and I could see him take Anna by the arm and lead her to the table. He picked up a shot glass and made her drink it. When she hadn’t protested he reckoned they were safe. He took a glass and his men did the same. I’d never seen so many people drinking with their left hand before. One swig and it was gone. Anna refilled the glasses. Garanov nodded to his men and they spread out, taking up what I assumed were positions decided upon after their reconnoitre. They formed an arc with Garanov in the middle.

  In came the Bellinis. They favoured drovers’ coats to hide their weapons and looked like they had just stepped out of the Wild West, a lawless posse after lawless men. Old Man Bellini, pushing seventy and still holding the reins tightly in his bony hands, walked across to one of tables and examined the bottle of wine. Apparently our Barolo wasn’t good enough since he pushed it away like it was a smelly sock from a teenager’s laundry basket. He walked to the middle of the area outside the restaurant and let his men take a similar formation to Garanov’s. The two crescents waited for someone to do something. I was about to oblige them.

  The plan was that the girls would now retreat and, after giving them a minute to get to safety, I would start firing. My sights would be on Garanov, but I didn’t want to kill him unless absolutely necessary. Others would do that job for me. I was going to shoot him in the shoulder to pay back for the bullets in mine, in the thigh for Bull’s hamstring, the back in the place where the iron had been held, and anywhere else for Stan. Once my bullets started sounding and Garanov was reeling around, the others would open fire. All we had to do was keep everyone penned into the area of the restaurant. Both sides would assume it was the other who was shooting and they’d massacre each other. St Valentine’s Day all over again. That was the plan and the first part was getting the girls to safety. That was the problem I faced now.

  Scout and Natasha had moved to the outside of the square, but Garanov was still talking to Anna. He had hold of her arm and wasn’t letting go. Maybe he recognized her from the casino, or he might just have wanted to progress things with her – she was extremely attractive after all. And then I got it. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. He wasn’t merely talking to her, he was using her as a human shield, placing her in direct line of sight with the Bellinis.

  Shit. If I couldn’t start the shooting, then none of the others would know what to do and when. We could all end up lying there watching the Bellinis and Garanov make peace and carve up Silvers, not to mention take a stronghold of organized crime – the drug-running, prostitution and people trafficking. We would only have made matters worse.

  If Anna had been wearing heels I would have had no option. As it was, her flat shoes meant that she stood about four inches shorter than Garanov. From my vantage point it gave me a target, albeit a pretty small one. But could I take the risk?

  I’d practised with the gun, set the sight, knew it was deadly accurate, but melons are a little different from real people. I saw in my mind’s eye the way that last melon had disintegrated, blown apart from the impact of the huge 12.7mm bullet from that range.

  I lined Garanov up in the sights, then leant upwards. A bead of perspiration was running down my forehead. I wiped it away with my sleeve. Before I lost my conviction, I lined him up again. Took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, squeezed the trigger gently. And fired.

  I saw Garanov’s head explode and his body fall back with the momentum of the bullet. Then Anna looked at what was left of him, clutched her head and screamed. She was covered in blood and bits of brain and wouldn’t stop screaming. The whole scene was like a tableau, no one moved. It wouldn’t last long.

  Scout ran in and grabbed Anna’s hand, pulled her sharply away and ran for the edges of the space around the restaurant and away from the arc lights. It was our signal. We started to open fire, bullets raining down around the perimeter and in front of the two opposing forces. I heard the boom of Red’s pump gun and the thunderous noise woke everyone from their moment’s inactivity. The drovers’ coats and overcoats were swept aside and the guns were pointed in the direction of the opposing side. They opened fire.

  We continued to hem them in with firepower and one by one we began to climb down from our positions on the roofs. With nowhere to go, Garanov’s men and the Bellinis were involved in a bloodbath. We left them to it and made our way back to the camel enclosure and our exit. And all the way there I could hear Anna screaming.

  Before we climbed the wall we put all our guns on the ground. We would need them no more.

  31

  ‘How is Anna?’ I asked Scout.

  It was the only question that had come into my mind since the sound of the gunfire had receded. We’d travelled back to the hotel as quickly as we could without drawing attention to ourselves. The sitting-room was now full of people – the five of us mercenaries, Scout, Arnie and Carlo – all high on adrenaline, yet there was no sign of Anna or Natasha.

  ‘Natasha is with her,’ said Scout. ‘She’s giving Anna a shower – she was covered in stuff I don’t even want to think about.’

  I let out a sigh of relief which Scout was quick to stifle.

  ‘I have to warn you, Johnny,’ Scout said, more serious than I’d ever seen her before, ‘Anna’s in shock. She doesn’t know what she’s doing at the moment, and she might not know what she’s saying. We may need to give her time to get over what happened tonight.’

  I nodded and thought again about what she must be going through. To be that close to death, as I knew from past experience, does something to a person: elation at having survived comes way down a list that begins with the knowledge that you could just as well have been lying on some cold slab someplace dead with a bullet in your heart.

  ‘What a shot!’ Red said, pouring himself a Scotch.

  His hands were shaking and I looked down at mine to see what shape they were in. Not trembling yet, but that could well set in as the magnitude as what we had done sank in.

  Pieter took the bottle from Red and turned his back to us – I guessed that his hands were shaking too and he didn’t want anyone to see it.

  ‘What a shot,’
Red said again and shook his head in disbelief. ‘You are one lucky bastard, Johnny Silver.’

  ‘Luck?’ I snapped back at him. ‘Do you think I would have relied on luck before pulling that trigger with Anna slap bang in the firing line.’

  ‘Easy, Johnny,’ Bull said. ‘Red don’t mean nothing.’

  Bull filled a glass with ice, picked up a bottle of vodka and passed both to me. I poured a very large measure and took a gulp. The fire hit my belly and brought me round.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Red. ‘Sorry, Johnny. Comanche warrior put heap big foot in mouth.’

  ‘No, I’m the one who should say sorry. I’d forgotten just what it was like to complete a mission and come out the other side still in one piece. It takes a while before the nerves stop jangling and your brain returns to functioning properly.’

  ‘Vodka always helps,’ said Stan, raising his glass to me. ‘And this is Polish. Cures all ills.’

  I drained my glass and poured another.

  ‘Reckon so,’ I said, recovering my composure and sense of humour at the same time. I looked at my watch. ‘What’s taking Anna and Natasha so long?’

  ‘Give her time, I said, Johnny,’ Scout said.

  She turned on the television ready for the news. Muted the sound and we all waited expectantly. Bottles were passed around and glasses refilled.

  ‘Tell me all about it,’ said Carlo. ‘What happened, what was it like, what did you feel?’

  ‘You don’t feel nothing,’ Bull said. ‘You function by instinct. There’s no time for it to be any other way.’

  ‘But don’t you get a buzz?’ Carlo asked.

  ‘If we got a buzz from it,’ I said, ‘we’d be no better than cold-bloodied killers like Garanov. We do it because it’s a job that has to be done. That’s all.’

  ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, eh?’ said Carlo.

  ‘Something like that,’ I said, too drained to argue.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Scout. ‘There’s a newsflash coming.’