No Survivors

by Tom Cain

  “Major Dave Gretsch,” he said. “Just wanted to introduce myself, let you know my men and I will be securing the area for you tonight. There’s a chance we may be seeing some action, but just do what we ask, and we’ll make sure you’re fine. Meantime, anything you need to know, just ask.”

  “Who are you guys?” Kady asked.

  Gretsch gave an apologetic smile.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. But we’re the best, is all you need to know.”

  “Oh. . . . Well, where are we going, exactly?”

  “Can’t say that, either. They haven’t told me yet. Fact, I was kinda hoping you might know.”

  “So I can ask, but you can’t answer . . .”

  “Sure looks that way, but that’s the army for you.”

  Now it was ten at night and she’d just arrived at the Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia. As the soldiers got to work unloading their weapons and equipment, she’d been greeted by an air-force corporal, a woman, who was leading her toward a waiting Humvee.

  “We call it Rock City ’cause of all the crushed rock everywhere—place was like a sea of mud till they laid that down,” she explained. “Any-ways, they got a room set aside for you in the officers’ quarters, though I don’t guess you’ll be getting much sleep.”

  Kady was led to her room, little more than a cubicle with a camp bed, inside a basic, prefabricated structure. The corporal politely instructed her to get changed and wait for further instructions. On the bed were arranged a set of combat fatigues, a T-shirt, a flak jacket, a pair of boots, and a helmet. Now she knew why they’d wanted to check her size.

  But what kind of battlefield was she heading into?

  90

  In the rest of Yugoslavia, the civil wars had been fought on a large scale: a conflict of armies, air forces, and artillery barrages, with towns besieged, territories conquered, populations deported, raped, and slaughtered. So far, Kosovo had been different. Resistance to the Serbs had been peaceful for so long that most people, on both sides, were taken by surprise when hostilities began. The attacks were random and sporadic: guerrilla assaults on one-off targets, rather than organized military campaigns. As he drove northward, deeper into Kosovo, Carver saw occasional signs of fighting—a burning building in the distance, a truck filled with soldiers almost knocking him off the narrow two-lane road as it thundered by.

  He was miles from anywhere, in open countryside, when the phone rang. It was Grantham.

  “Change of plan,” he said. “Forget Trepca. You’re being rerouted to Pristina airport, which is actually located at a place called Slatina, about twenty kilometers east of Pristina city. We have new information. I’m just going to hand you over to Ted Jaworski. He’s an American colleague, heading up a task force looking at this issue from the Washington end.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Carver . . .”

  Carver did not reply. His headlights had just picked out a roadblock a few hundred yards down the road. A couple of armed Serbian paramilitaries, in the same blue uniforms as the men at the border post, were standing by a crude barrier made of planks and oil drums, lit by spotlights shining down into the road. Their truck was parked behind the barrier, across the road, just to underline the idea that no one was getting by.

  “Mr. Carver . . . ?”

  “Yeah, I can hear you.”

  “Okay, you need to know the way this situation is developing. We believe that Vermulen’s backer, a man named Waylon McCabe—”

  “I know who he is.”

  The men by the roadblock were waving at Carver, indicating that he should stop.

  “Well, McCabe may be planning a double cross.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m saying I agree—that’s what I’d expect him to do. Hold on, I’ve got company. . . .”

  Carver put the phone down on the passenger seat as one of the paramilitaries appeared at his window, rotating his finger in the air to indicate that he should wind it down. As Jaworski’s disembodied voice crackled from the phone, “Carver? Are you there?” and Grantham barked, “Stop pissing around,” the paramilitary started jabbering in Serbian.

  “Sorry,” said Carver, playing the dumb foreigner. “Don’t understand.”

  He was wearing a hunting vest, with external pockets at chest and hip level. Slowly, he reached into one of the chest pockets and pulled out his BBC press card.

  “Journalist,” he said, pointing at himself. “BBC . . . British, yes?”

  The man turned back toward his mate and waved at him to come over. That gave Carver the opportunity to pick up the phone.

  “Sorry about that. I’m at a roadblock. Be right with you.”

  He put the phone down again as the second paramilitary came up and in heavily accented English said, “Road close. You no go. Close. Yes?”

  “I understand, yes,” Carver said. “But I must go. BBC.”

  Before the argument could go any further, the Serbs were distracted by the arrival of another car, a decrepit Škoda, which pulled up behind Carver. It had a big bundle on its roof wrapped in plastic, which made him think it must have crossed the border just behind him.

  One of the Serbs pointed at the pennant fluttering from the radio aerial. It bore a black double-headed eagle against a red background, the national symbol of Albania. He walked up to the car, ripped off the pennant, threw it to the ground, and spat on it before grinding it into the dirt with his boot heel. Then, while his partner pointed his gun at the car, the paramilitary ripped open the driver’s door and dragged out an unshaven black-haired man in his thirties, wearing an Adidas track-suit over a red-and-black-striped AC Milan soccer shirt. The man was pleading, pointing back to the car as he staggered forward a few paces before being thrown to the ground.

  While the first paramilitary aimed a couple of halfhearted kicks at the Albanian, the other peered into the car. He gestured at the passengers to get out. A woman emerged from one side, a second, much older female from the other. Carver assumed they were family: the man’s wife and mother, maybe. The missus was hugging an absurdly big pink teddy bear that looked like a prize from a tatty fairground stall. Ma was wrapped in a fringed, woven shawl. The man guarding them lined them up by the side of the road, then half turned to watch his partner kicking the man curled up in the dirt. Neither of the paramilitaries saw what happened next. As Carver looked on, the younger woman flung her teddy bear to the ground as the older one threw back her shawl. Both were carrying guns. Neither hesitated for a second before firing at the paramilitaries.

  One went down immediately, clutching his belly and screaming out in pain. The other tried to flee the blast of gunfire, but managed only a few strides before a bullet hit the side of his head, splitting his skull like a teaspoon cracking a boiled egg, and throwing him dead to the ground. Several of the shots had missed, the bullets flying straight past the paramilitaries toward Carver’s car, smashing his rear window and punching into the bodywork.

  A voice over the phone cried, “What the hell was that?” but Carver wasn’t around to hear it. He’d already kicked open the car door and rolled out onto the pavement, drawing the Beretta as he went and scrambling into a ditch by the opposite side of the road. A knife had appeared from nowhere in the Albanian’s hand and he was standing over the wounded Serb, grinning at his screams with a look that suggested he was going to enjoy the job of giving him a long, slow, agonizing death. But that could wait. He’d spotted Carver’s dash across the road. As the screams of the wounded man filled the night air, he picked up one of the paramilitaries’ submachine guns and walked toward Carver, peering into the darkness.

  The women followed him, the wife crouching low, her pistol held in both hands in front of her, the old woman stomping forward in absolute defiance of any danger.

  With a shock of disgust, Carver realized that he was going to have to kill all three of them, the women as well as the man.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  Kneel, in the
firing position. Two shots into the man’s head. Roll left. Kneel again. Two each for the women. Three kills.

  The whole thing was over in less than five seconds. Afterward, the only sound came from the wounded Serb, whose howls of fear and pain were gradually subsiding to whimpers. Unconsciousness and death would not be far away.

  Carver walked back to his car, sickened by the pointlessness of it all. He wondered how many other scenes like this there had been across this benighted country over the past few years and how many more would follow in the years to come.

  Ninety minutes ago the people in that car had most likely been standing around in the line by the border crossing, talking and joking like everyone else. They were alive. They had prospects. Now look at them.

  He picked up the phone again. The first voice he heard was Jaworski.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Shut it,” snapped Carver. “Five people just died.”

  “Okay, let’s start again, nice and polite,” said Jaworski, in a patronizing tone of exaggerated conciliation. “Here’s the situation. Waylon McCabe flew into Pristina a couple of hours back. His plane has been adapted to drop a bomb. He’s also made some kind of alliance with a Serbian warlord, Dusan Darko. We think Darko’s going to seize the weapon Vermulen has located—may have done so already—then hand it over to McCabe. And then we believe McCabe wants to use it to trigger Armageddon.”

  Carver gave a snort of disbelief.

  “He thinks he’s fulfilling the prophecies of the Book of Revelation,” said Jaworski, with absolute seriousness.

  “Jesus wept.”

  “That’s kind of an unfortunate choice of words,” said Jaworski.

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Get to the airport, obviously, then locate the plane. We tracked it all the way to Slatina and we know it landed. We’re certain it hasn’t taken off—it’s not on any radar. But the last satellite pass we did, there was no sign of it.”

  “Okay—I find the plane. Then what?”

  “Just observe. Keep us informed. Believe me, you will be playing a major role in resolving this situation by providing the intelligence we need. But I want you to understand, so far as my government is concerned, this is a domestic matter involving U.S. citizens. It will be settled by U.S. agencies, and no one else. Frankly, Mr. Carver, it is none of your business. Your place is in the audience, not on the stage. So do not interfere, and do not, on any account, do anything more than observe and inform.”

  “You got that, Carver?” Grantham cut in. “Observe and inform. None of your fireworks displays this time.”

  “Oh, I got that, all right,” said Carver before he hung up.

  He took his gear out of the shot-up Mercedes and dumped it in the dead Serbs’ truck. Then he went back to the man who’d been killed by the shot to the head. He was still illuminated by the headlights of the Albanians’ car. Carver looked at the back of the man’s uniform, then rolled the body over with his foot and checked the front. Both sides were clear of bloodstains. It was too good a chance to waste. He stripped the body and pulled the Serbian uniform over his own trousers and shirt. The fit wasn’t too bad, though the boots were a size too small: He’d have to put up with aching feet for a night. The dead man didn’t look too much like Carver, and his I.D. card revealed he was more than a decade younger. Carver went to the other body. This one was older and the likeness was better, so Carver took his wallet and papers instead. So now he was Nico Krasnic, age thirty-two.

  He picked up Krasnic’s submachine gun and went back to the truck. As he got in, shoving his discarded vest and fisherman’s bag out of sight in the footwell in front of the passenger seat, he saw a portable CD player perched above the dashboard. Out of curiosity, Carver pressed play and picked up the earphones. A percussive, machine-gun blast of hardcore rap hammered around his brain. Carver turned it off. If that was the last thing the Serb had been listening to, then death must have come as a blessed relief.

  As he started up the truck and set off again on the road to the airport, Carver was already formulating his plan. And it had very little indeed to do with observing and informing.

  EASTER SUNDAY

  91

  In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, midnight had arrived and with it the start of the magnificent Easter celebrations of the Greek Orthodox faith. The building was thronged with worshippers of all Christian denominations as the Patriarch of Jerusalem celebrated Christ’s resurrection, on the very spot of the tomb He so triumphantly vacated. Amid shouts of “Christ is risen . . . He is risen indeed,” the glory of the resurrection and the conquest of death were celebrated in a service of matins that echoed around the 950-year-old building in an act of worship that embodied both the awesome power of faith and the glorious joy of life.

  92

  Kurt Vermulen bore no physical wounds. To his shame, he had been taken without firing a shot. So now he sat in the back of what had been his Land Cruiser, appropriated by the man who had so expertly defeated him, a man who introduced himself as Dusan Darko.

  “We have a meeting,” Darko said, looking up from the front passenger seat and watching Vermulen in the rearview mirror as he spoke. “A friend of yours, Mr. McCabe. He is paying me twenty million, U.S., to deliver the suitcase to him. Perhaps you can pay me more. I am always interested in making a better deal. It is not too late.”

  Vermulen said nothing.

  “I guess not,” said Darko. “In that case, I will have to deliver you to Mr. McCabe. He will decide what to do with you then. I am sorry about your men, that they had to die. Please understand—it is just business. I have no bad feelings against you. I love America, great country. You do not want to talk—I understand. You have much to think about. Cigarette?”

  Darko lit up. His driver was already smoking. Vermulen could see the orange glow of burning cigarettes in the truck ahead of him. No one in Serbia seemed too bothered by the risk of lung cancer or heart attacks. But then, men at war rarely did. They assumed they wouldn’t live long enough to catch a disease.

  Vermulen was trying to work out how he had allowed himself to fall for the trap McCabe had set for him. The old man had played him right from the start, drawing him into plans that seemed insane to him now. Spending months chasing after nuclear bombs, hiring thieves, leading men into mortal danger—what had he been thinking? Maybe they’d been right, back in Washington, the people who’d tried to tell him, as politely as they could, that the grief of losing Amy had driven him off the rails.

  Yet he hadn’t been wrong about the things that really mattered. He still believed, as passionately now as ever before, that his country and its allies were ignoring a terrible danger, refusing to recognize enemies who worshipped death, hated freedom, and happily sacrificed their own lives for the sake of killing others. Next to that malignant insanity, his own actions had seemed entirely rational. He had at least tried to raise the alarm.

  And he’d been right about Natalia, too. Part of him, the old intelligence agent, had always wondered whether her arrival had been too good to be true. Poor Mary Lou had died, then this vision had appeared on his doorstep: Looking back, he knew it was too pat, too convenient. But even accepting that, he had no doubt that Natalia’s love for him was genuine. Countless times he’d asked himself whether he was just an old fool, letting himself be seduced by a beautiful young woman. Perhaps it had been that way at the start. Perhaps she had been pretending then. But not now. With every day that had passed, his certainty had grown. He was, at the very least, right to trust in her.

  Only one aspect of the whole disaster still remained a mystery to him. He couldn’t see why McCabe had double-crossed him. He must have had something in mind all along, a purpose for his treachery. But Vermulen could not comprehend what that might be. And if he found out, what difference did it make? He’d been a professional soldier long enough to know defeat when he tasted it.

  93

  So that was how the plane
had disappeared.

  Carver was crouched in the long grass beside the runway at Pristina airport. It ran north-south, along a narrow valley, with mountains on either side. At the north end all the regular airport buildings were clustered: the control tower, terminal, aircraft hangars, and oil bunkers. But Carver, driving with his lights off, had followed a service road to the very southern end of the runway. There, a taxiway left the main runway and ran due west to a broad tarmac apron at the base of a peak that rose thousands of feet into the darkness. It was only when Carver left his truck parked away from the road, and crawled through the grass to the high wire-mesh fence topped with razor wire that lined the taxiway, that he saw that the mountain’s rock face was actually pierced by a pair of massive, camouflaged steel blast doors. As he watched, a helicopter came in to land on the apron, waited while the doors rolled open to reveal a giant hangar, dug into the hillside, and taxied into the cavernous opening. Once it was inside, the doors rolled shut again, but not before Carver had caught sight of an executive jet, its belly distended by a slight bulge just aft of the wings. That was McCabe’s plane, and it either had its deadly cargo, already sitting like a malignant fetus in its metal womb, or was waiting to receive it.