by Tom Cain
But there’s a catch. If there’s too little ventilation, the oxidation process is greatly reduced. If there’s too much, the flow of air around the rags simply disperses any heat it creates. It’s just like blowing on a fire. Stifle it and it dies. Blow too hard and you blow it right out. You’ve got to get the balance just right.
The ideal between too much and too little air is to place linseed-soaked rags in an open container. An empty paint can is perfect.
Aquarium pellets have equally potent chemical properties. Their job is to freshen up water by producing oxygen, and their active ingredient is potassium chlorate, an extremely efficient oxidizing agent. Just as with linseed oil, this oxidization produces energy in the form of heat. If the release of energy is sufficiently powerful, it creates an explosion. Potassium chlorate is a very effective oxidizer, which explains why it is also an active ingredient in many homemade explosives, whether formulated by fireworks hobbyists or homicidal terrorists. Carver had ground down the tablets using a pestle and mortar and then mixed the resulting powder with sugar, which would burn to produce a bigger, brighter bang.
He had poured the mix into the bottom of an opened, emptied bag of potato chips, replaced the chips, and glued the bag back together. Then he prepared the bottle of “orange juice,” which actually consisted of acetone—bought from the same hardware store where he’d found the rest of the painter’s supplies—orange food dye, and, once again, sugar. Acetone is an extremely highly flammable liquid whose vapors can explode on exposure to a spark. Among sugar’s properties is that it caramelizes under heat, becoming extremely sticky. So the addition of sugar to this sort of bottle bomb, or Molotov cocktail, causes the flame to adhere to its target, much like napalm.
Carver didn’t have to add anything to the paint thinner or the oil paint. They would be fine just as they were.
His painter’s bag and its contents were, essentially, a self-detonating incendiary bomb. Once they were in place, Carver had ridden back to the village in the baker’s van, checked out of his hotel, and driven back up the mountain, this time by the scenic route. He made a second trek across the mountainside to his observation post, now carrying the equipment that Vermulen’s people had delivered to the poste restante, as per instructions. After that, he’d just waited.
By midday, the air temperature had risen into the high seventies. The women sunned themselves with the gratitude of northern Europeans released at the end of a cold, dark winter. The men went shirtless, revealing torsos covered in the tattoos that are an essential mark of status in Russian gangland culture. The dogs lazed in their cage, their laid-back demeanor caused less by the hot sun on their fur than the large quantities of Valium—fifty milligrams crushed and mixed with the pâté in each of their sandwiches—coursing through their bloodstreams.
The humans lunched late, at around two in the afternoon. They drank heavily with their meal. By half past three, George had taken over sentry duty by the gate. Bagrat and Linda had gone back indoors for sex and a snooze. Everyone else was flopped semicomatose by the pool. That was when Carver saw the first wisps of smoke coming from his canvas bag.
He texted Vermulen’s number: “Delivery 19:00 in bar as planned.” Carver spelled the words in full. He regarded text-speak as infantile twaddle and presumed a retired general would feel the same way. Thinking about it, he doubted whether Vermulen had ever before in his life been obliged to use text at all.
By the time he’d finished, a flame was clearly visible. He’d painted the inside of his bag with linseed, too, just to add to the effect. Once the spark caught, it would quickly spread.
There was a sudden, sharp crack, a shattering of glass, and a whoosh of flame as the bottle of cleanser cracked open and its contents ignited. From there it was a chain reaction. The flame from the cleanser lit the bag of chips, which then went off with an explosive fizz, like a Roman candle. That shattered the drink bottle, releasing a fireball of acetone and sugar, which in turn set the bone-dry logs aflame.
Carver was already wearing his bulletproof vest, with his pistol holstered below it. The loaded grenade launcher was slung around his back. The baton was in his hip pocket. The wax plugs had been stuffed deep into his ears. His hands, encased in tight leather gloves, were holding his gas mask. It would be the last thing to go on.
By now the woodshed was completely ablaze, the flames dancing up the side of the house. A first-floor window was open, and the fire caught on the wooden shutters and window frames and the nylon net curtains rippling in the hot currents of air generated by the fire. The flames slipped into the room beyond as stealthily as a cat burglar. Above them, the massive oak beams under the eaves of the tile roof began to smolder. It would not be long before they, too, added to the conflagration.
68
It was the sentry, down by the gate, who realized what was happening first. Carver watched George’s reaction as he saw the smoke rising over the top of the house and dashed back up the hill, shouting at the top of his voice. By the pool, Paul slowly raised himself to one elbow to see what had caused the commotion, took a few seconds to process what he was seeing, then sprang to his feet and screamed at Ringo to wake up. Yoko started shrieking. The three men raced around the side of the house. They disappeared from Carver’s view for a few seconds, then reappeared on the ground behind the house, where they stood, pointing at the fire, backing away from the flames and shouting at one another.
A window was flung open above the kitchen and Bagrat stuck out his head. Carver could see the look of horror on his face as he saw the blaze and then watched the expression turn to panic as the Georgian looked down at the propane-gas cylinders beneath him. If they exploded, they could take half the building with him. He screamed a series of orders at the three men, threw a set of keys out of the house onto the ground in front of the men, then ducked back inside.
Carver’s entire plan hinged on what Bagrat did next, but he didn’t have time to wait and see what would happen. He had to get moving and hope that his enemy’s logic was the same as his own.
Down below, the men had split into two groups. George and Ringo were frantically trying to disconnect the propane cylinders and drag them away from the fire. This wasn’t good. Carver wanted the men well out of the way. He’d assumed they’d make a dash for the front of the house, away from the threat of the fire. Paul had picked up the keys from the dirt and was moving toward the Shogun. Carver had planned to hit the Georgians when they gathered together in a group in front of the burning house. As any normal people would do.
Time for an instant rethink.
He pulled on his gas mask and scrambled down the hillside, charging through the undergrowth as fast as he could, heedless of the noise he was making. He knew the men’s attention would be fully focused on the fire.
He was making for a point on the boundary wall halfway between the gas tanks and the carport, almost exactly opposite the fire. The wall was about seven feet tall. It felt just like being back on the marines’ assault course as Carver leapt up, grabbed the top of the wall, scrambled for purchase with his feet, then propelled himself, rolling over the top and down the other side.
The moment his feet touched the ground, he reached for the grenade launcher and fired twice: the first round toward the car, the second at the canisters. Two plumes of white gas belched from the grenades, trapping the three men in thick clouds that burned their eyes and rasped their throats. The Georgians staggered, dizzy, disoriented, and retching, as Carver came at them out of the smoke, swinging his steel riot baton at their defenseless skulls and necks with ruthless brutality.
The men by the canisters were his first targets. When they were downed and unconscious, he went for the one by the car, beating him to his knees, where he doubled over with coughs and dry vomits until Carver laid him out on the ground with a vicious kick to the side of the head.
But where were the car keys? They weren’t in the hands of the unconscious gang member, nor the lock of the car. Now Carver had to fall
to the ground and fumble around in the smoke, staring through the clear plastic bubble of his gas mask as his hands scrabbled across the dust and debris on the ground. It seemed an age before his fingers closed around the plastic key ring and he could get back up to his feet and make for the Shogun.
He turned on the ignition and gunned it, accelerating down the drive and then slewing left into the small graveled forecourt in front of the house. Bagrat was waiting there, with the two women. Yoko was still in her bikini, while Linda had fled the bedroom in nothing more than a pair of panties and a blanket, which was draped over her shoulders and clutched tight in front of her breasts. Bagrat was only marginally less exposed. Bare-chested and shoeless, he had nothing on but a pair of jeans. His right hand was clutching a gun. But the good news for Carver was the briefcase chained to Bagrat’s left wrist.
He saw it as he came around the corner and knew at once what had to be done. With his right hand on the wheel, he brought the Shogun to a skidding halt in a shower of gravel. At the same time, his left hand ripped one of the stun grenades from his vest. He pulled out the pin with his teeth and threw the hexagonal perforated-steel tube out of the car window, ducking his head, and closing his eyes tight shut as he did so.
The British Special Forces, for whom stun grenades were originally designed as means of overcoming hostage takers, always called them “flashbangs,” a name that means exactly what it says. The grenade detonated in front of the three Georgians with a scorching dazzle of light, equivalent to the glow from more than 100,000 standard sixty-watt domestic lightbulbs, just a few feet from their unprotected eyeballs. At the same time it emitted a sound blast eight times as loud as a fighter plane’s jet engine. Carver was expecting it and had taken precautions, but even he was stunned for a few seconds. Bagrat and the two women were poleaxed.
The two women were sitting on the ground with vacant, zombielike expressions on their sightless, deaf faces. Linda’s blanket had fallen from her body, but she was completely indifferent to or simply unaware of her exposure.
Bagrat was barely any better. He was on his knees and trying to get to his feet, though his limbs seemed unwilling to obey his instructions. His gun was weaving to and fro in his hand as he swung his torso around from one side to the other, blindly trying to seek out his attacker. Suddenly, the gun went off and a bullet smashed through the Shogun’s rear windows. Carver came to his senses fast, kicking open the door and falling to the ground. He scrambled across the gravel toward Bagrat, keeping as low as he could as the gun fired three more random, aimless shots. One fizzed over Carver’s head. Another ricocheted off the steps that led from the house down to the pool. The third caught Linda full in the throat, ripping through her windpipe and lodging in her spinal cord. She was thrown onto her back by the impact and lay there helplessly as the blood spurted from her gaping, gurgling wound.
She was going to take a while to die, but there was nothing that Carver or anyone else could do to save her. He concentrated on Bagrat, feeling enraged that his attempts to avoid any fatalities had been frustrated, a fury that emerged in the venom with which he whipped the baton back and forth across his head three times in quick succession. Once he’d knocked him out, Carver picked up Bagrat’s gun hand, pointed the pistol at the dying woman, and, keeping the other man’s finger on the trigger, squeezed it once more. The shot hit her in the skull, killing her instantly and putting her out of her misery.
Carver was tempted to turn the gun on Bagrat himself. But he had been sickened enough by the woman’s unnecessary death. He had no desire for more cold-blooded slaughter. Instead he held the gun, still in Bagrat’s right hand, against the chain that connected the briefcase to his left wrist. He fired one last time, breaking the chain, then grabbed the barrel of the gun and threw it into a clump of weeds and scraggly shrubs over by the pool. If the police ever turned up, they would find it there, with Bagrat’s prints all over it, gunshot residue on his hands, and two matching bullets in the dead woman’s corpse.
He reached for the case and got up. Roughly fifteen seconds had passed since the flashbang’s detonation. The grenade’s effects would persist for about a minute more. The other three men would be impaired by the CS gas for up to twenty minutes. But when they all got to their senses, they would be four angry Georgians. In the meantime, there would soon be police cars and fire engines coming up the road from Tourrettes-sur-Loup, attracted by the flames that were now tearing through the whole house, sending dirty black smoke high into the clear blue sky. It was time to get out.
Carver grabbed the grenade launcher from the Shogun and slung it around his back again. He collected the used flashbang casing and ran back around the burning house. The CS gas had cleared, but the three men were still incapable of stopping Carver as he dashed past them. He managed to pick up the grenade that had gone off by the carport, but the other one, by the propane canisters, was too close to the flames, which were now beginning to lick around the two red metal tubes. It would be only seconds before they blew, and that realization hit Carver with a surge of adrenaline that sent him flying up and over the wall and hurtling across the mountainside, away from the house.
He had got about a hundred yards through the trees when the canisters exploded. The deafening blast seemed to turn the air itself into a solid, unstoppable force that hit Carver in the back, picking him up off his feet and throwing him into the trunk of a nearby tree, where he lay, bruised and winded, while a flurry of twigs and leaves blew at him. Then the blast reached the outer extent of its radius and imploded back in again, rushing back over him, sucking the air from his lungs until finally the storm had passed.
Every inch of his body hurt. His brain felt as bruised and battered in his skull as if he’d just fought ten heavyweight rounds. As he got to his feet, watching a fireball that dwarfed all the previous flames ascending over the scorched ruins of the house, he tested his limbs for broken bones and was amazed to find he could still walk and even run, tentatively at first and then with growing confidence.
Carver was just about okay, but he didn’t like to think what had happened to the helpless, incapacitated men who had been caught just a few feet from the explosion, or the dogs lying drugged in their wire cage. There would be no trace of them left upon the earth.
69
Kurt Vermulen had been talking to the mayor of Antibes when his cell phone bleeped loudly and a message appeared on its screen, telling him that he had a text. He apologized to the mayor, who indicated that he was not in the slightest bit offended, certainly not by such a distinguished guest as monsieur le général.
Vermulen jabbed helplessly at the telephone keypad before giving up, with a sigh that conveyed the absolute impossibility for a civilized man of keeping up with all the latest gadgets. The mayor chuckled sympathetically.
Alix took the phone from Vermulen’s hand, with a look of womanly amusement at the failings of helpless men.
“Here, let me,” she said. Her fingers moved expertly over the phone and a message flashed up.
“It’s Wynter,” she said. “He says he’ll be ready for drinks at the hotel at seven.”
Vermulen looked at his watch.
“Well, that’s not a problem for time,” he said. “But I’m still not happy about it. Are you sure you want to go through with it? He can’t complain if I meet him instead. Today, of all days . . .”
He looked out of the window of the mayor’s office. The town hall, with its sandy pink walls and white shutters, looked down on the Cours Masséna, right in the heart of the oldest part of town. Every day, the square was filled with market stalls selling freshly caught fish, or fruit and vegetables that had come direct from the farms up in the Provençal hills. The Cathedral of Notre Dame stood across the way. The sea was just a skipping stone’s flight away.
Alix slipped her arm through his and gave a reassuring squeeze.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I can cope. That’s why I’m here, after all . . .”
Vermulen’s
smile lit up his eyes with genuine affection. The mayor, seeing its sincerity, smiled, too.
“Yeah,” said Vermulen, holding Alix to his side, “I know. You can cope with just about anything.”
Then he looked at his watch again.
“Well,” he said, “I guess we better get going . . .”
“Bien sûr, mon général,” agreed the mayor.
70
The view from the Dauphin helicopter toward Tourrettes-sur-Loup, three miles away, was spectacular: a jumble of rough stone walls and tiled roofs jammed on to a V-shaped promontory. The buildings clung to the very edge of the cliffs like a herd of lemmings, daring one another to make the jump. But sitting in the copilot’s seat, Platon had no interest in the aesthetic appeal of the place. His only concern was correlating the landmarks ahead of him with the map in his hands. He’d been given coordinates for the house where the Georgians were hiding out. Now he just had to find the place.
Then he saw the plume of black smoke halfway up the mountainside, looked down at the map, and that problem was solved. The fire was a beacon, exactly where he’d expected to find their destination. But they’d arrived too late. Unless those peasant scum had somehow set their own house on fire, the American’s hired thief had got there first.
“Aim for the smoke,” he told the pilot. “Fast!”
They’d been flying parallel to the valley at the foot of the Puy de Tourrettes. Now the helicopter banked hard to the right as the pilot changed course and began his descent. They were heading directly for the smoke when it was obliterated by an explosion that launched a fireball into the sky in an eruption of twisting, bubbling, rocketing flame.
Platon spat a string of Russian expletives into his headset microphone, then twisted in his seat so that he was facing the five men in the passenger compartment behind him. They were all wearing bulletproof vests and carrying automatic weapons equipped with bulbous silencers. These were Platon’s best men, hardened veterans who had fought with him in Afghanistan, or served in the savage campaigns against the guerrillas of Chechnya.
