Rope on Fire (John Crane Series Book 1)

by Mark Parragh

  Crane gunned the Audi forward, jarring over potholes. He took the left to follow them and saw them racing down another country road, this one headed back away from the lights of Brno.

  This road was straight and empty, passing through forest that gave way to marshy flood plain along one of the rivers. The Svratka and the Svitava converged at Brno. Crane was lost now. He had no idea which river that was off to his left. But he knew the road was straight and empty. It was time to stop this.

  He took the Audi up over one hundred, closing rapidly on the sedan and easing into the far lane. He caught a glimpse of a battered hatchback parked far over on the shoulder as it flashed past. Then a running figure ahead of him, throwing something. Then the narrow black line that fell across the road.

  He jammed the brake hard into the floor, but he knew it was too late. The Audi hit the spike strip at more than eighty, and all four tires shredded into a cloud of rubber and steel. The wheel wrenched out of his hands. Crane’s training cut in, and he instinctively crossed his hands over his chest and braced for impact.

  For a brief moment, the Audi was airborne. Its engine whined so loud, it almost sounded like it might take off and fly. Then the car slammed into the mud flat. The airbags exploded into Crane’s face and chest, and he rode it out as the Audi was flung around to one side and rolled.

  He was alive when the car stopped moving and the bags deflated. He’d been slammed around, but the airbags and driver’s harness had done their job. Nothing was broken. The car was upright, canted over to Crane’s right. Mud was oozing through the passenger side door.

  He took a moment to clear his head and realized the CZ pistol had ended up in his lap. He grabbed it and tried his door. It opened with a protest of metal, and Crane slid out into the muck.

  The car was finished. Crane staggered a few yards away and found a clump of scrub bushes on a dry hummock. He knelt behind them and took an inventory. He hurt, but he could function. He was in the middle of nowhere. He stood out like a sore thumb in his torn suit. He’d need different clothes.

  A burst of gunfire interrupted his thoughts. Bullets slammed into the back of the Audi and shattered the rear window. Crane went prone and moved around the clump of bushes. A few moments later, there was another burst; the muzzle flashes were like a flare. He made out a figure running awkwardly over the marshy ground. The figure stopped again a few yards farther on, fired another burst, and started running again.

  He didn’t seem to think Crane had made it out of the car. Good.

  Crane let him come closer and fire another burst. Then he checked the CZ, knelt beside the bushes, and shot him three times. The man fell and didn’t move.

  Crane made his way to the body. The gun was an HK 417. Whoever he was, he’d gotten his hands on what was most likely a stolen military assault rifle. He checked the pockets and found what he assumed were the keys to the hatchback. He took those and the gun.

  Either the crash or the gunfire had punctured the Audi’s fuel tank. The smell of gasoline was strong. He found a cigarette lighter on the body and, regretfully, started a fire in a small pool of leaking gas. He was halfway back to the road when the Audi went up in a loud fireball.

  Josh wouldn’t be happy about that.

  When he got back to the road, Crane took a moment to clear the spike strip. Then he walked back to the hatchback and started it up. He could see distant police lights coming closer as he drove away.

  Chapter 36

  The river, as it turned out, was the Svitava. Not the Svratka. Crane had learned that from the old woman who ran the second-hand shop where he’d bought the clothes he was wearing. Natalya was dead. Most likely Novak as well by now. But at least Crane knew which river he’d been driving alongside all night. That was something, he supposed.

  He’d reached the little town called Blansko not long after sunrise and stopped, drained and exhausted. He didn’t know if the hatchback had been reported stolen, but the safe move was to get it off the street. Crane found a gloomy side street and parked in an alley behind a boarded-up shop. In the back, he found an oil-stained coverall that made him a little less conspicuous. There wasn’t much he could do about the Bemer shoes. They were worth more than the car, but they were already scuffed and muddy enough to pass if nobody looked too closely.

  He’d found the second-hand shop, bought some more appropriate clothes, and gotten the lay of the land from the owner in broken Russian. He’d gone back to the car long enough to change in the alley and collect the things he needed. The last thing he’d done was remove the plates and hide them under the back seat so some passing cop wouldn’t run them. An abandoned car wouldn’t look out of place here at all. Once that was done, he’d walked several blocks over to a decent-looking coffee shop, gotten a cup, and sat down at a small table in the back.

  Then he couldn’t think of another damn thing to do to put off thinking about it. He sat with his coffee and closed his eyes and let the despair wash over him. It was mid-afternoon now, and he was still there in the back of the coffee shop. He didn’t know how to get past it. He’d seen people die before. He’d killed them himself and slept like a baby. Killing Emil Zajic and that team of drug runners in Puerto Rico hadn’t bothered him at all.

  But, of course, this was different. They’d all chosen to play the game. They all knew the stakes, and the world was better off without them. Natalya and Novak never made that choice. They were pawns he’d used for his own ends, and they’d both died for it; they’d died badly.

  Crane hadn’t just failed. He’d been reckless and irresponsible. He’d gone into a situation without the right skills or support because he thought his training would let him operate alone. He’d been in freefall when Josh found him and threw him a rope. But Crane had ruined that. He’d set that rope aflame, and now it was turning to ash in his hands as he dangled over the abyss. If he’d taken the damn consulting job when they fired him, Novak and Natalya would still be alive.

  But then he realized something didn’t sit right with him about that idea. He ran it back and forth in his mind, unpacking all its little pieces. It wasn’t just that he used two people and got them killed. There was more to it than that. He’d always lied to people, used them to find information, to smoke out a target. It was part of the job.

  The job. That gave him a finger on it. In the Hurricane Group, he was a field agent following orders that filtered down from God knew where. From shadowy figures with their own agendas stalking the corridors of power. He was as much a tool as the people he used. But now there was no government above him. There was no command authority to shoulder the responsibility. If this was a Hurricane operation, he’d have been under orders to use Novak and Natalya to achieve his mission goals, and he could lay their deaths squarely at the invisible feet of invisible figures in Washington. It was all on him this time.

  Strangely, the realization helped a little. Crane always felt better when he had a defined problem to face. He bore the responsibility. Responsibility was something that came with power. He had the power to decide how to respond to the situation he found himself in. Natalya was dead, and probably Novak too. They’d died in terror and agony. That was past, and he couldn’t change it. But from this moment, he would decide what to do about it. Not mysterious figures in Washington, not a detached mission commander. If there was something that could be done to balance out what had happened, no one would tell him he couldn’t do it.

  And he knew what he had to do to balance it out. He drew Novak and Natalya into this, it was true. But it was the man he’d taken to calling “Ivan” who had them killed. Ivan had put all of this into motion. Crane still didn’t know why Ivan wanted to take down Melissa Simon’s research project halfway around the world. He didn’t care anymore. What mattered was that he was brutal and ruthless and was crushing anybody who crossed his path. The best thing Crane could do for the future was stop Ivan cold. The best thing he could do for the dead was to make him pay.

  But how?

&nbs
p; Crane grimaced as he took a swallow of cold coffee. That was a sign it was past time to leave. He’d processed it enough, and he’d been stationary for too long. A basic principle they’d drilled into him in Hurricane for situations like this was to make a choice and commit to it. To make things happen, he had to be moving.

  He left a handful of coins on the table and walked out to the streets. He pretended to window shop as he wandered the town’s small, struggling commercial district. But his mind was turning over his options, discarding them one at a time. Eventually, he would be left with the best move available to him.

  He began with where he was now—at a dead end. Josh’s research had led to the CEO of BioKapital, Dalibor Cermak. But Cermak meant nothing. He was just a smokescreen. Knowing who Cermak was got him no closer to Ivan. He supposed he could go after Cermak and beat Ivan’s identity out of him, but he knew that was a bad move.

  Next mystery: who or what was “Team Kilo,” and why was Ivan so terrified of them? If he knew that, perhaps he could use it. But he didn’t.

  A mission briefing would be helpful about now. A bland-looking briefing room with a file on the table. The whole mission planned with all the Hurricane Group’s resources and expertise laid out for him. But, of course, there was no briefing to consult. No orders, no backup. He was on his own. In a place where he could barely operate because he couldn’t blend in. He didn’t even speak the language. He could get by well enough in English or Russian, but there was no way he could infiltrate the Czech underworld because he couldn’t pass as anything but an outsider.

  He needed help. There was no way around it any longer. He’d exhausted all his options, and all the help Josh could offer. But there was someone he could call. Crane didn’t want to call him, but he had run out of other choices.

  With that, there was no more hesitation. His training again. If there was only one way forward, no matter how unpleasant, then move immediately. Hesitation would only make things worse.

  Crane took out his phone. What time was it in the States right now? It would be early on the West Coast, but he’d be up. Crane punched in a number from memory.

  There were several seconds of silence, and then a few electronic clicks and a fuzzy ringtone.

  On the third ring, it picked up, and through the static, Crane heard a familiar voice.

  “Stoppard.”

  “Malcolm, it’s John Crane. I’m sorry to bother you so early.”

  “John! Hell, you know I’m up. Almost got breakfast ready. How’re things in the Beltway?”

  “Couldn’t say. I’m in the Czech Republic at the moment.”

  There was a long silence, and when Stoppard came back, the jovial tone of an old friend catching up was gone. “Well, that explains it. Getting a lot of line noise, John. You want to hang up and call back in?”

  Crane sighed. Malcolm Stoppard had been a field agent back in the day, and then an instructor for new Hurricane Group agents. He’d retired when Hurricane was shut down. But he was still connected and too important to be ignored. The reference to line noise was meant to tell him that Stoppard’s phone was probably still scanned by NSA and perhaps other even less friendly groups. He was suggesting that Crane call back using a secure phone that could encrypt its signal. Which would have been a fine idea if Crane was still a government agent and had anything like that.

  “Don’t think that will help, Malcolm,” he said at last. “The phones are the phones over here.”

  There was another pause. Then, “I’m eager to hear why you’re over there, John.”

  “Just a vacation. I’d never been before. It was kind of an impulse thing.”

  “That’s the best kind of vacation,” Malcolm said, his voice carefully neutral.

  “Yeah. Thing is, I didn’t really prepare, and I don’t know my way around. I could sure use a local guide. And I remembered you spent some time over here. I was wondering if you know anybody who could help me.”

  “Where are you again?”

  “Little town outside Brno.”

  There was another long silence. Then, finally, “I know someone in Prague.”

  “Prague is fine. I can get there in a few hours.”

  “They won’t be cheap,” Malcolm warned.

  “Money’s no object.”

  “Really? Well, you’ve piqued my interest. Can you write down an address?”

  “Go.”

  Malcolm gave him a street number. Crane dropped the phone in his pocket long enough to scrawl the number on the back of his receipt from the coffee shop. When he fished the phone back out of his pocket, he heard a dog barking loudly in the background.

  “Hey, is that Molly?”

  “She says hello,” said Malcolm. “We’re both happy to hear from you. But you’ve got us worried now. Is this something you can walk away from?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve paid in full already. I’m going to finish the tour.”

  “All right, John. If your mind’s made up, maybe my friend can help you.”

  “Thank you, Malcolm. I appreciate it.”

  “It’s nothing. But come see me when you’re back in the States. We’ll take Molly on a long walk up the beach, and you can tell me all about it.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “Until then.”

  “Take care, John.”

  Crane hung up. He checked the street ahead and behind and then walked briskly around the next corner he came to, and the next. Checking for tails. Standard tradecraft. You lost control, he thought, but you’re back in charge now. Build it back up, step by step.

  With the decisions made, Crane’s mind was clear and focused again. There was a path forward once more, and Crane was ready to walk it.

  Chapter 37

  Crane put the plates back on his stolen hatchback and drove into Prague just before sunset. He pulled up outside the address Malcolm Stoppard had given him and found a place to park. The building turned out to be the Alphonse Mucha Museum. Crane shrugged and went inside. He bought a ticket and a guidebook and began immersing himself in the Czech art nouveau tradition. He was admiring a series of theatrical posters of Sarah Bernhardt when a man shuffled up beside him. He was old, grizzled, dressed like a panhandler, and he smelled horrible.

  “Your name is Crane?” he said in a thick Russian accent. “Sorry it took me a while. Malcolm said you were a better dresser.”

  Crane laughed. “I’m making concessions to circumstance.”

  “Hah. My name is Yermolayev. Alexei. Good to meet you. You have something for me?”

  Crane passed him a thick envelope. It vanished into the many layers of greasy wool and cotton shrouding the man.

  “And now even better to meet you, Mr. Crane. I have a blue van around the corner. We can talk there. Five minutes.”

  Then he turned and shuffled away, the museum guard watching him go with distaste.

  Crane didn’t let himself think about whether Yermolayev’s van would really be there when he left. He was in no position to dictate terms. He had to trust Malcolm’s judgement.

  Crane made his way slowly to the exit, stopping every so often to admire a painting. Outside, night was falling. Young couples walked the street arm in arm. A bike messenger flew by and disappeared around a corner. People leading ordinary lives. Crane had had a taste of that in Key West. It was all right, as far as it went.

  The van was there.

  So much for ordinary life.

  As Crane approached, the side door opened with an indignant shriek and Yermolayev swore at it in Russian.

  “Come in, come in,” he said. “Pull up a trunk.”

  The back of the van was strewn with papers and junk. Empty beer cans drifted around. The paint was almost stripped from the metal, leaving only bare gray with an occasional reminder of the original blue. A weak dome light cast barely enough light to see by.

  Crane sat on one of two large Russian army trunks as Yermolayev dragged the protesting door shut again. He sat down across from Crane.

&nb
sp; “So your money is good. What do you need?”

  “I have some pictures of a man,” he said. “I’m hoping you can tell me who he is.”

  Yermolayev shook his head. “Why do you think I would know this man?”

  “I think he’s big in the criminal scene in Brno.”

  “Well, that narrows it down a little. Not much, but a little. What have you got?”

  Crane took out the SD card he’d gotten from the party photographer. Yermolayev nodded and made his way forward, through a curtain that blocked the back of the van off from the front seats. He came back with a battered laptop and booted it up.

  “If there’s anyone in these pictures you recognize…” said Crane.

  Yermolayev took the card from him and inserted it into the laptop. A few moments later, the pictures came up, and Yermolaev flipped idly through them.

  “Fancy party,” he muttered. “Very nice. Nobody, nobody. Now she’s a looker—but too young for him. He thinks she makes him look like a big man. But he just looks like a fool. Who else? Waiter with tray of drinks. Boring man, boring man, Chinese boring man. Oh…” He paused and looked over the top of the screen at Crane. “You have very good taste in enemies, Mr. Crane.”

  He turned the laptop around and Crane looked into the eyes of Ivan glaring at the photographer as Cermak stood beside him, trying to make some point.

  “That’s the one. Who is he?” Crane asked.

  “That, my friend, is Branislav Skala. He isn’t ‘big in the criminal scene in Brno.’ He owns Brno.”

  “I thought Kucera ran Brno.”

  Yermolayev laughed, a deep belly laugh that echoed in the small van. “Oh, look who knows all about the Czech underworld all of a sudden! Yes, that’s the official story. Skala was the old bull, and finally the young upstart fought him and drove him off. But the truth is a little different. The end of the war wasn’t so much surrender as negotiated truce. Kucera gets to be the big boss man, but Skala still pulls his strings.”

  He pulled out a phone and tapped the screen several times. “Here’s Kucera,” he said, showing Crane another photo. Kucera was a young man with short blond hair, compact but muscled, wearing a bomber jacket. “In case you run into him in your travels,” Yermolayev said. “Another dangerous man.”