2016 - Takedown

by Stephen Leather

  Mark stuck his fork into a steak and slapped it onto a plate. Harper took it, helped himself to potato salad and a roasted ear of corn, then went to sit down at a long table where Terry was already tucking in. ‘I keep forgetting how large you guys live,’ said Harper, as he cut into his steak. Blood oozed out over his plate, which was just how he liked it.

  ‘Dunno how long it’ll last,’ said Terry. ‘The Russians are going to spoil it for everyone.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You know how so,’ said Terry. ‘You’ve been here long enough. We have a string of genuine businesses, property, restaurants, a couple of diving companies. We all have work permits and pay tax.’ He waved his knife at the ground around them. ‘We can’t own this place because only Thais can own land, but it’s in a company we control so all good. The Thais let us live here and we respect that by not shitting on our doorstep. But you know as well as I do that the Russians are a whole different ball game. They run prostitution here, all sorts of scams, ATM fraud, protection rackets, and they’ve started trading Thai girls into Russia. You’ve seen what they’ve done to Walking Street. Wall-to-wall Russian hookers, these days. There’ll be a backlash before long, and when it comes all foreigners will be hit, not just the Russians.’

  Davie Black sat down with a plate of steak and chicken. Harper grinned. ‘No veg?’

  ‘Like my South African mates say, chicken is a fucking vegetable,’ said Davie. ‘You guys talking about the Russians?’

  ‘I was just telling Lex, the shit is gonna hit the fan sooner rather than later.’

  Davie started hacking at his steak. ‘What about you, Lex? Have you got a plan B?’

  ‘I’ve always got a plan B,’ said Harper. ‘But I’m happy enough here.’

  ‘Cambodia, that’s where we’ll be going,’ said Davie. ‘If there is a clamp-down, we’ve already got a spot picked out. Fifteen acres, our own lake. We’ve had a place designed and it could be up and running in six months if we need it.’ He waved a chunk of steak in front of Harper’s face. ‘Tell you what, we’ll fix you up with a villa. What do you think, Tel? Lex is one of the guys, right?’

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ said Terry.

  ‘I appreciate the offer, seriously. But I don’t live well with others.’

  ‘Lone fucking wolf, is Lex,’ said Davie.

  Harper grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s my Red Indian name. But, seriously, thanks for the offer. If ever I turn gay I’ll take you up on it.’

  The two men laughed, and despite the banter, Harper was genuinely touched. The crew was the closest thing he had to family and he knew they felt the same.

  One of the compound’s estate managers, a middle-aged Thai who had worked for the Moores for more than a decade, hurried over to the cabana where Mickey was lounging with two dark-skinned Thai girls in matching stars-and-stripes bikinis. The man had a whispered conversation with him, then hurried away. Mickey got to his feet, kissed one of the girls, then went over to Harper’s table.

  ‘The gear’s arrived,’ said Mickey. ‘We need to give it the once-over so that the guy can get on his way.’

  Harper stood up and followed him to the main building, then out to the car park. There was a minivan with the name of a Thai tourist company on the side, along with the logo of a smiling elephant wearing a floppy hat and holding a cocktail glass with an umbrella in it. There were no passengers in the van, just a driver, who was wearing sunglasses even though it was ten o’clock at night, and a woman who might have been his wife. Mickey opened the side door, pushed back the middle row of seats, then pulled up the grey carpet. There was a metal door set into the floor and four holes with hexagonal screw heads. The woman twisted in her seat and handed him an Allen key, which he used it to remove the screws before he pulled up the panel. Underneath a compartment contained three cloth-wrapped packages. Mickey took out the largest and unwrapped it. It was a block of C4 explosive, sealed in plastic. On top of it were two detonators, each with twin wires. Mickey laughed. ‘You’d have thought they’d wrap them separately,’ he said.

  ‘No need,’ said Harper. ‘Without a power source it’s as safe as Plasticine.’

  Mickey rewrapped the package and handed it to Harper. The second contained a gun, and the last a silencer, with two eight-cartridge magazines.

  Harper nodded his approval and Mickey rewrapped them, handed them to him, then screwed the panel into place and put the carpet back. He gave the Allen key to the woman, along with a couple of thousand baht, which earned him a respectful wai from her and her husband. Mickey slammed the door and the minivan drove off to the main entrance, where the gate was already rattling open. Two police officers clicked their heels and saluted as it drove onto the road.

  ‘Drop the gear in your villa and we’ll get stuck into our steaks,’ said Mickey. ‘Mark and I will give you a hand tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t have to, really. This is my fight.’

  Mickey put his arm around Harper’s shoulders. ‘It’s our fight, mate. You’re one of us. They fuck with you, they fuck with the whole crew.’

  CHAPTER 76

  The limousine spent all morning parked inside the Valentin compound. Mickey had arranged for a team of motorcycle taxi riders to take turns following the vehicle and to stay in touch on their mobile phones. The driver was Russian, but from his height and build, he wasn’t a bodyguard. He didn’t seem to be especially well trained either, and apparently wasn’t aware that he was being tailed. The motorcycle riders stayed in touch with Mickey through mobile phones. The Moore brothers had more than a dozen riders on retainer. They ran errands and were often a useful source of intelligence about what was going on around the city.

  At just after two o’clock in the afternoon, Mickey took a call from one of his spies that the limousine had left the compound. He went out to the pool where Harper was sitting in one of the cabanas with Mark. ‘The limo’s on the move,’ he said. ‘Heading to Pattaya City. Do you want to check it out?’

  Harper nodded.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Mark, grabbing a shirt.

  ‘I can do it myself,’ said Harper.

  ‘Fuck that,’ said Mark. ‘All for one and one for all.’

  Harper headed back to his villa. The device was in a teak cupboard in the hall. It was a simple enough build: the two detonators were embedded in the plastic explosive, which was connected to the circuit that Hansfree had built for him in London. It was sitting in a grey plastic Tupperware box to which Harper had superglued several powerful magnets. The whole thing was about nine inches long, six inches wide and three inches deep. He placed it in a black nylon kitbag and carried it over to the main building, where Mickey and Mark were waiting for him. They walked together to the parking area. ‘We’ll take one of the pick-ups,’ said Mickey, grabbing a set of keys from a line of hooks by the front door. ‘The Hummers and the Range Rovers attract attention.’

  ‘Yeah, funny that,’ said Harper.

  They went out of the main building and over to a white four-door Toyota pick-up truck with tinted windows. Mickey and Mark sat in the front and Harper climbed into the back.

  Mickey took another call while they were driving down the road towards the coast. ‘He’s in the Central Festival Department Store,’ said Mickey, as he shoved the phone back into his pocket. ‘This should work.’

  ‘That thing isn’t going to go off accidentally, is it?’ asked Mark, twisting around in his seat and pointing at the holdall.

  ‘It’s phone-activated,’ said Harper. ‘All sorts of fail-safes built into the circuit. It was done by an expert.’

  ‘Yeah, and experts said the Titanic was unsinkable,’ said Mark. ‘What happens if someone calls a wrong number?’

  ‘You don’t just make a call. You enter a three-digit number and then it goes bang. No code, no explosion. And C4 is pretty much inert without a detonator. You can set fire to it and use it to boil water if you want to.’

  ‘Fuck me, mate, that’s what electric kettles are for,�
� said Mickey.

  ‘Yeah, well, sometimes when you’re in the desert in Afghanistan and feel like a brew, there isn’t an electric kettle to hand, and that’s when a little block of C4 comes in handy.’

  ‘Did they ever give you a medal for what you did in Afghanistan?’ asked Mark.

  Harper shook his head. ‘Sand up my arse. That’s all I took home with me.’

  It took twenty minutes to drive to the Central Festival Department Store. It was midway down Beach Road, a seven-storey shopping complex that advertised itself as the largest in Asia. Above it towered the Hilton Hotel.

  One of Mickey’s motorbike spies was waiting at the entrance to the car park and slid into the back of the pick-up next to Harper. Mickey drove into the multi-storey car park under the complex and the motorbike guy gave him directions for finding the limousine. Because of its length the limo had been parked across two spaces at the far corner of the car park, next to the wall.

  ‘Driver shopping in Big C,’ said the motorbike guy.

  ‘We’ve got a few minutes at least,’ said Mickey. ‘How do you want to handle it, Lex?’

  Harper looked around. Two security guards were standing by the entrance to the complex, and another was sitting at a table next to a VIP parking section. The structure was busy with shoppers heading to and from their vehicles. ‘A diversion would be nice,’ he said.

  Mickey grinned. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Just give me the nod when you’re ready.’

  Harper climbed out of the pick-up. So did the motorcycle taxi driver, who hurried off. Harper walked casually over to the limo, then past it. He turned and nodded at the pick-up, though the heavily tinted windows meant he couldn’t see Mickey or Mark. Almost immediately Mickey revved the engine, put the truck in gear and drove into a parked Honda. There was a sickening crunch, followed by the Honda’s alarm going off. Immediately all of the security guards ran towards the pick-up. All heads turned to see what was going on and Harper stepped between the limo and the wall, then dropped down. He unzipped the holdall and took out the Tupperware container, lay on his back and slid under the vehicle. He placed the container midway between the rear seats, choosing a spot that wasn’t too close to the exhaust. He pushed it against the metal and heard a reassuring click as the magnets bit. He gave it a tug and it wouldn’t budge. Even if it hit a pothole or two, the powerful magnets would hold it in place. He shuffled out from under the vehicle, zipped up the holdall and stood up.

  Several dozen shoppers were now staring at the pick-up and the Honda’s alarm was still blaring. Mickey was out of the truck, apologising loudly and profusely. A middle-aged Thai lady had appeared, pushing a shopping-laden trolley, and from the way she started shouting it appeared that it was her Honda Mickey had rammed. He went to her, still apologising.

  Harper walked away and waited at the car-park exit. Five minutes later the pick-up appeared, a small dent and a slight scrape on the bumper the only physical signs of the collision. Harper climbed into the back. ‘You owe me twenty-five thousand baht,’ said Mickey.

  ‘No problem,’ said Harper. ‘Was she okay?’

  ‘Mate, I barely touched her car. A bit of panel-beating, a touch of paint, and she’s good to go. It was a five-year-old Honda, for fuck’s sake. She’s quids in and she knows it. She went away as happy as Larry. I gave all the security guards five hundred baht and they saluted me as I drove off. I love this country.’ He headed away from the beach, making for the compound. ‘And you? Your gizmo’s all hooked up.’

  ‘Good to go,’ said Harper.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘The trap’s set. I just need the bait. I’ll do that tonight.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Lex,’ said Mark, ‘I sure hope you never get pissed off at me.’ He turned in his seat to punch Harper’s shoulder. ‘Underneath that happy-go-lucky exterior, you’re one mean son of a bitch.’

  Harper grinned and settled back. ‘They started it, mate. But I’ll sure as hell finish it.’

  CHAPTER 77

  Lex Harper had never been a fan of hospitals and tried to avoid them as much as possible. He didn’t like the smells, or the sounds, or that so many people died in them. He had on a white coat with ‘DOCTOR’ above the chest pocket, a stethoscope hanging around his neck, horn-rimmed spectacles and a medical mask over his mouth and nose. He kept his face away from any CCTV cameras as he walked through the hospital, but was confident he wouldn’t be recognised if anyone looked through the footage later.

  It was just before midnight, and while the emergency centre was as busy as ever, dealing with road-traffic accidents, drug overdoses and the aftermath of drunken brawls, much of the rest of the hospital was quiet. He was wearing black trainers that made barely any noise as he walked along the tiled corridor and along to the emergency stairs.

  He took the stairs up to the ICU floor. Two nurses were sitting in the station at the other end of the corridor but they were deep in conversation. One glanced up, saw the white coat, smiled, and went back to her chat. There was a long window in the side corridor that looked onto four intensive-care suites, each with a patient lying in a bed surrounded by a battery of monitoring equipment. To the left of each doorway, the name of the patient was written on white card. One of the names was Thai, one was Japanese and the other two were in English: HELEN FIELDS and GRIGORY LUKIN. There were two nurses in the ICU to the far left, the one occupied by the Japanese patient. They were leaning over him and had their backs to the window. There were no medical staff in the other three units.

  Another window to the right overlooked four more units. Two were Arabic names, one was Thai and another Japanese. Harper figured that Valentin Rostov must have recovered enough to be moved to a general ward. Not that it mattered: it was Lukin he had come for.

  Harper went back to the first window and along to the glass door that led to the units. He pushed it open and immediately heard the electronic beeping of the various monitoring devices used to track the vital signs of the patients. He tiptoed to Lukin’s unit, taking a syringe from his pocket and sliding the protective plastic cover from the needle. The syringe contained the rest of the gelsemium he had bought from Dr Li. Only if a forensic expert went looking for gelsemium would the true cause of the Russian’s death be identified, and Harper was pretty sure that the Thais wouldn’t be doing that.

  Lukin’s eyes were closed and his mouth was open, revealing broken and cracked teeth. The Russian’s right arm was in plaster, hanging in a sling, as were both his legs. Harper smiled to himself. At least the Russian’s last few days would have been painful. He’d earned it, after what he’d done to Pear.

  Harper padded over to the intravenous drip and held the tube with his left hand, about six inches from where it went into Lukin’s arm. He pushed the needle into the tube and slowly pressed down the plunger. In a matter of seconds the contents of the syringe had been injected into the tube. Harper replaced the cap on the needle, put the syringe into his pocket and went to the door. As he left the room he heard Lukin’s bed begin to shake as the Russian went into spasm, but he didn’t look back. He kept his head down as he walked along the corridor to the emergency stairs. When he reached the ground floor and walked across the hospital car park, Grigory Lukin was already dead.

  CHAPTER 78

  Less than twenty-four hours after Grigory Lukin was declared dead of a heart attack, his father’s Gulfstream jet landed at Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport. Yuri Lukin insisted that the door be opened before the immigration officers arrived and paced up and down as he waited for them. His passport was examined, the cash bribe was pocketed, and he got into the back of the stretch limousine. Two white 4x4s bracketed the vehicle, each with three men inside. Lukin recognised Volkov and Myshkin but it was the first time he’d seen the others. Mirov picked up on Lukin’s unease. ‘They’re good men.’

  ‘They’d better be,’ snarled Lukin. ‘I’m fed up with you hiring fuckwits. Why was no one guarding Grigory in the hospital?’

  ‘He
was in the ICU and they wouldn’t let us post guards. And there were always people about.’

  ‘And what the fuck happened?’ growled Lukin. He grabbed a bottle of vodka and poured himself a shot, which he downed in one.

  ‘A heart attack, the doctors say. Grigory was overweight, he used drugs, and that plus the attack―’

  ‘Grigory was as strong as a fucking horse,’ said Lukin, pouring himself another shot. ‘What about that fucker Valentin?’

  ‘Valentin’s still in the hospital.’

  ‘Did he have protection? Were his fucking guards protecting him?’

  Mirov shook his head. ‘Boss, I keep telling you, we weren’t allowed guards in the hospital. They said they’d call the cops.’

  ‘We own the fucking cops,’ said Lukin. ‘You should have had fucking cops in there sitting by his bed. That shit Harper attacked my son, and now he’s fucking well killed him.’

  ‘Boss, I’m not convinced it was anything other than a heart attack.’

  Lukin’s eyes hardened. ‘Harper killed my son. And you, you fucker, you let it happen.’

  ‘Boss, really, he had a heart attack.’

  Lukin smashed the vodka glass against the side of Mirov’s head. It shattered and Mirov yelped and fell backwards, blood streaming from his cheek. Lukin had cut himself and he held his bleeding hand out in front of Mirov’s nose. ‘Now look what you made me do,’ he said. He shoved Mirov in the face, pushing him against the window, smearing blood across his nose. ‘Look what you made me fucking do!’

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Mirov.

  Lukin growled, shoved him in the face again, then grabbed a napkin from a stack on the bar and held it to his bleeding hand. Mirov took a handful and pressed them against the cut in his cheek. They went red immediately.

  ‘You get blood on the leather and you’ll pay to have it cleaned.’ Lukin stared out of the window as he dabbed his cut hand. Mirov took more napkins and held them tightly to his wound.