Live Fire

by Stephen Leather

  ‘That’s the plan,’ said Mickey.

  The heavy nodded, took them outside and opened the rear door of a stretch Mercedes. Mickey looked inside. There was a driver in the front seat but the rear of the car was empty. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Mr Kleintank is at the warehouse.’ He waited until Mickey, Mark and Shepherd were seated before closing the door and getting into the front passenger seat.

  Shepherd looked out of the window as the limousine drove through the city. He had been in Sarajevo once before, spending two months in the city soon after he’d joined the SAS. That had been in 1995, during the last few months of the siege, when Serbian forces had been launching sniper and mortar attacks daily from the surrounding mountains. More than twelve thousand men, women and children had been killed during the four-year siege, and fifty thousand were injured, the vast majority of casualties being civilians. Shepherd had been one of an eight-man SAS team tasked with taking out a particularly vicious sniper, who had made a point of shooting his victims in the legs to disable them, then killing anyone who went to their aid. The Serb and his Dragunov sniper rifle had been responsible for a dozen such killings. The SAS had spent a month watching him work, and a further three weeks in hides up in the hills, waiting. Shepherd hadn’t been the one to kill him, but he had been close enough to see a colleague’s bullet take a big chunk out of the man’s skull. Shepherd had felt no remorse for the way in which they had tracked and killed him. He had no respect for snipers because they killed at a distance. It wasn’t how real men fought. Real men fought face to face, man to man, and put their own lives on the line. Snipers hid in the shadows, and the Serbian snipers who had set siege to Sarajevo were the worst of the worst because they had targeted civilians.

  The city had changed a lot since Shepherd had left. The streets were full of shoppers, students sat at outdoor cafés and there were a lot of new buildings. There were still reminders of the siege, though: the crosses on the graves in the city-centre park, masonry chipped by gunfire, and indentations in the roads showing where mortars had once wreaked death and destruction.

  The limousine drove to an area of the city he wasn’t familiar with, but his near-photographic memory kicked in and he was constantly aware of where he was in relation to his hotel. They drove down a narrow road lined with apartment blocks, and then through an industrial area. Shepherd realised that the driver wasn’t taking a direct route to the warehouse, probably hoping to keep them in the dark as to its location.

  Eventually they pulled up in front of a metal-sided warehouse. Across the street Shepherd saw a man with a broken nose sitting in a nondescript Toyota who, he thought, was a lookout. The man put his mobile to his ear and began to talk.

  The heavy took them in through a side door to where Kleintank was pacing up and down and barking in Dutch into a phone. He was in his early thirties with a crewcut and sharp features, about five feet eight inches tall. He was wearing a black cashmere overcoat and gleaming patent leather shoes.

  He snapped his mobile shut and put it away. ‘I’m sorry about the formalities,’ he said, ‘but Sarajevo is a dangerous city.’

  ‘Yeah, well, south London’s no bed of roses, mate,’ said Mickey.

  Kleintank smiled. ‘I’m sure that’s so,’ he said. ‘So, to business. I’m afraid I’ve got good news and bad news.’

  ‘I don’t want bad news,’ said Mickey. ‘I just want to buy a couple of RPGs.’

  Kleintank grimaced. ‘That’s the bad news,’ he said. ‘I sold the last ones two days ago. A cash buyer turned up and I never turn down cash.’

  Mickey scowled at the Dutchman. ‘You told my man you had RPGs for sale.’

  ‘And when I talked to him that was the case. But things change. Some guys from the Tamils needed them at short notice and they paid over the odds.’ He held up his hands, palms out. ‘What can I say?’

  Mark pointed a finger at him. ‘We’ve flown all the way over to this shit-hole and now you’re telling us you don’t even have an RPG?’

  Kleintank was unabashed. ‘It’s a fluid business. Stock comes and stock goes. I’ve got more coming from China. As soon as they arrive I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Screw that,’ said Mark. ‘You said you had RPGs and now you haven’t.’ He turned to his brother. ‘Can you believe this shit? Townsend’s fucked us over.’

  ‘What’s the good news?’ Mickey asked the Dutchman.

  ‘I’ve got a Grail missile and launcher. Better than an RPG.’ He folded his arms ‘Much better,’ he said.

  Mickey turned to Shepherd. ‘What do you think?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘The Grail’s a ground-to-air missile. More for shooting planes than anything else.’

  ‘A missile is a missile,’ said Kleintank.

  Shepherd didn’t reply. He doubted that Kleintank was too stupid to know the difference between an RPG and a Grail. He was just a salesman who wanted to offload the product he had.

  ‘Okay, let’s see it,’ Mickey snapped.

  Kleintank went to a wooden crate and pulled open the lid. ‘It is in perfect condition,’ he said.

  Shepherd looked at it. ‘It’s a practice model,’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ said Kleintank. ‘That’s why it’s blue.’

  ‘What does that mean, practice model?’ asked Mickey.

  ‘There’s no infrared guidance,’ said Shepherd. ‘You just point and fire, and hopefully the missile goes in a straight line.’

  ‘That’s fine, then,’ said Mickey. ‘We don’t need it to jump through hoops, do we?’

  ‘How many do you have?’ Shepherd asked Kleintank.

  ‘Just the one,’ said the Dutchman. ‘I did have two but I sold the other to some English guys last month. I can let you have that one for forty thousand euros.’

  Mickey put a hand on Shepherd’s shoulder and whispered, ‘This one’ll do, Ricky. Let’s not look a gift horse.’

  ‘The practice models aren’t built to the same standard as the ones meant for the field,’ said Shepherd. ‘If a practice launcher fails, you just get another. If it fails to launch in the field your operation’s blown.’

  ‘This will fire,’ said Kleintank.

  ‘You can’t know that for sure,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’d be a lot happier with a back-up, or a field model.’ He turned to Kleintank. ‘This English guy, what was he planning to shoot at? The practice models are no good against moving targets.’

  ‘They didn’t say. They just said they wanted one with an IR guidance system,’ said Kleintank, ‘but they took one of mine anyway.’

  ‘They? There was more than one?’

  ‘Ricky, this is what we need,’ said Mickey. ‘We need to take out a wall, that’s all.’

  ‘I get that, but what’s going to happen if on the day I pull the trigger and nothing happens?’

  ‘It will fire,’ said Kleintank, but Shepherd ignored him.

  ‘We need more than one,’ he told Mickey. ‘Three or four to be on the safe side.’ He turned to the Dutchman. ‘The guys you sold the other to, have they taken delivery already? Maybe we could buy theirs.’

  ‘I flew it to Nice for them.’

  ‘But they’re English, you said.’

  ‘One was as English as you, but his friends were Asians. Pakistanis, I think.’

  ‘What did they say they wanted it for?’

  ‘I didn’t ask, same as I’m not asking you what you’re planning to do with RPGs.’

  ‘But they’re still looking to buy one with a guidance system?’

  ‘I managed to get them a Stinger,’ said Kleintank, ‘but it was a lot more expensive than this.’

  ‘The guy that sold them the Stinger, does he have RPGs?’

  Kleintank shook his head. ‘The Tamils have been buying everything,’ he said, ‘and there’s a lot going into Iraq at the moment. Iranian money, but the weapons get shipped direct to Iraq.’

  ‘Who is this guy, the other dealer?’

  Kleintank’s eyes hardened. ‘You�
��re asking a lot of questions.’

  ‘Just pursuing all our options.’

  ‘Well, the only option you have is in this crate, and it’s going to cost you forty thousand euros.’

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘Mickey …’ said Shepherd.

  Mickey held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’m making an executive decision, Ricky.’

  ‘Then we need to talk now,’ said Shepherd. ‘You want me on the team for my expertise, and right now you’re not listening to a bloody thing I’m saying. We either have a quiet word now or I’m out of here.’

  ‘Ricky—’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Relax, mate,’ Mickey said. ‘If you want a chinwag, you’ve got it.’ He led him to the far corner of the warehouse, away from Kleintank and Mark. When they were out of earshot, his face darkened. ‘Don’t you fucking make me lose face like that again, Ricky, you hear? This is my crew, right, and you’re just a hired hand.’ His fingers dug deep into the muscles of Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘Do you get my drift?’

  ‘It’s not about face, Mickey,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s about getting the right tools for the job. Kleintank just wants to offload what he’s got in stock – he doesn’t care whether it’ll work or not.’

  ‘It’s a missile and we need a missile.’

  ‘There’s missiles and there’s missiles, Mickey. And stop squeezing my shoulder, will you? You’re nowhere near the nerve.’

  Mickey took away his hand. ‘If you weren’t interested then why the Q and A?’

  ‘I wanted to see how much he knows,’ said Shepherd. ‘He said he sold a practice Grail to British Asians who want to shoot down a moving target. He’s talking about terrorists, Mickey. Why else would Asians want a surface-to-air missile? They want to shoot a plane, but you can’t hit a plane without infrared capability or some sort of tracking facility.’

  Mickey frowned. ‘Speak English, will you?’

  ‘Even when it’s taking off or landing, a plane is moving too fast to shoot down without some way of moving the missile in flight,’ said Shepherd, patiently. ‘You have to fire the missile, then tell it which way to go once it’s launched. It can chase the heat of the plane’s engines or it can be radar-guided, but what you can’t do is fire the thing and forget about it, which is all you can do with a practice model.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I think he sold it to them knowing it wouldn’t do the job and now he’s trying to do the same thing to us. That’s why I’m quizzing him, to see if he’s just stupid or if he’s deliberately trying to pull the wool over our eyes.’

  ‘But we don’t need IR whatsit because we’re not chasing anything,’ said Mickey.

  ‘No, but we need a decent explosive charge. The Grail has a warhead weighing just over a kilo. An RPG has a two-kilo warhead. If you’re shooting at a plane or a helicopter then a kilo of high explosive is fine, but we want to blast through a high-security wall and I don’t think a single one-kilo warhead is going to do it.’ He cocked his head at Kleintank. ‘He’s trying to sell us a pig in a poke, Mickey, and even if it pisses you off to hear that I still have to tell you.’

  Mickey nodded slowly. ‘All right, mate. So, it’s an RPG or nothing?’

  ‘Mickey, I think we’re going to need at least three. You saw how it went in Cambodia. We might be lucky and the first one does the job, but we might need more. RPGs are tank killers – that’s what they were designed to do – but metal and concrete are totally different materials. They can blast walls apart, but if we’re talking about a high-security wall it might take two or three goes. I’d be happier with four, to be honest.’

  ‘The Professor said one should do it.’

  ‘And he’s probably right. But what if the RPG is a dud? Or what if we fire it and the hole’s only a couple of feet across? We’re going to look pretty stupid either way.’

  ‘Okay, Ricky, you’ve talked me into it.’ He slapped Shepherd on the back. ‘You did the right thing.’

  He and Shepherd went back to where the Dutchman was standing. ‘We’re going to pass, Alex,’ said Mickey. ‘Sorry to have wasted your time.’

  ‘What?’ said Mark. ‘We’ve come all this way for nothing?’

  ‘We need RPGs, and that’s the end of it,’ said Mickey. ‘Let’s go.’

  Chaudhry backed the van into the storage area – Bradshaw had rented the space for a year, paying in cash and showing his fake driving licence as identification. It had a yellow metal pull-down door and a bare concrete floor. The company that ran the facility offered twenty-four-hour access and was used to people coming and going at all hours. There was a large building containing small units, but Bradshaw had rented one of the largest, double height with space enough to park a dozen cars. It was in a line of units behind the main building, and while there was CCTV coverage of the entrance and the fence around the facility, there was none of individual units. It was a ten-minute drive to Heathrow airport.

  Bradshaw was standing behind the van, guiding Chaudhry in, then banged on the side to tell him to stop. He applied the handbrake and killed the engine. Bradshaw switched on the lights and pulled down the door. Chaudhry climbed out of the van. ‘I can’t believe it was that easy,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bradshaw.

  ‘We drove missiles into the country and no one looked twice at us.’

  ‘There’s just too much traffic between England and the Continent,’ said Bradshaw. ‘They don’t have the time or the resources to check even one per cent of what comes in.’ He began to pull out the cases of wine and lager and piled them on the concrete floor. Chaudhry helped him. Once they had removed a dozen, they were able to take out the two missiles. They placed the two large crates carefully on the floor, then put the wine and beer back into the van.

  ‘Now what do we do?’ asked Chaudhry.

  ‘We get the vehicle we need,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Something like an old furniture van, something where we can remove a section of the roof so that we can fire the missile, and big enough to allow the backblast out. I know of a car auction where they sell commercial vehicles. I’ll see what they have.’

  ‘And then we’re ready?’

  ‘The van will have to be modified but, yes, then we’ll be ready.’

  Chaudhry’s eyes blazed with enthusiasm. ‘It’s going to be bigger than anything anyone’s ever done here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Far bigger,’ said Bradshaw. ‘It’ll change this country for ever. It’ll change the world. Once we show what we can do, we’ll have the power to make changes. They’ll have to listen to us.’

  Chaudhry grabbed Bradshaw impulsively and hugged him so hard that the air was squeezed from his lungs. ‘We will be heroes, brother. Our names will be remembered for all time.’

  Bradshaw released himself gently from Chaudhry’s grasp. ‘For all time,’ he repeated.

  Shepherd rubbed his belly as he got into the lift with Mickey and Mark. ‘My guts are playing me up,’ he said. ‘I feel like shit.’ He winced and leaned against the lift’s mirrored wall.

  ‘Come on, Ricky, we’re heading out later,’ said Mickey. ‘There’s a brothel on the outskirts of the city that’s got great Latvian hookers.’

  ‘How the hell would you know that?’ asked Shepherd. ‘You said it was your first time here.’

  ‘The power of Google,’ said Mark.

  ‘I can’t go,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m gonna have the runs real bad – I can feel it.’

  Mickey grimaced. ‘More information than we need,’ he said. ‘You stay in bed, sleep it off.’

  The lift stopped at Shepherd’s floor and he got out. ‘Sorry to be a wet blanket,’ he said. As soon as the lift doors closed behind him, he straightened and went to his room. He opened the door and hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the outside, then went back along the corridor and waited for the next lift down. He walked through Reception and headed outside to the nearby taxi rank.

  The first driver was a man in his fifties w
ith a sweeping handlebar moustache. ‘I hope you speak English,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘I speak Canadian,’ said the man, ‘which is almost the same.’

  Shepherd laughed and climbed into the front passenger seat. He explained to the driver that he didn’t know the name of the road he wanted to go to, but he did know how to get there. The driver switched on the meter and followed Shepherd’s directions while he told him his life story. He and his wife had fled the city six months after the siege began, paying a Serbian people-trafficker twenty thousand dollars to get them out of Sarajevo and into Canada, where they claimed asylum. They were given residency and eventually citizenship, but had returned to Sarajevo. After fifteen minutes the driver pointed out that they had doubled back but Shepherd told him not to worry and just to keep the meter running. The driver tossed him a street map but it was no help, and Shepherd had no choice other than to retrace the circuitous route that Kleintank’s driver had taken.

  He had the taxi driver drop him a couple of hundred yards from Kleintank’s warehouse, paid him and walked the rest of the way, keeping an eye out for any surveillance. The Toyota that had been parked outside had gone, and so had the stretch Mercedes. A coach drove by and Shepherd lowered his head so that no one could see his face. Once it was out of sight, he walked up to the warehouse and along to the side entrance. The Toyota was there, parked next to a black Porsche Cayenne SUV with Croatian plates. Shepherd heard voices inside. He hesitated, wondering if he was doing the sensible thing. He wanted to talk to Kleintank, to find out what else, if anything, the Dutchman knew about the three Brits who had bought the Grail missile, and he wanted to do it without arousing his suspicions. It was going to be a difficult line to tread but Shepherd knew he had to try. In an ideal world he’d be going in with a gun but he wasn’t armed. He smiled at the thought that there were thousands of weapons just a few yards from where he was standing.

  His best chance of getting information from Kleintank was to ask him about the arms dealer in France. He would spin Kleintank a line that it would be easier for them to take delivery in France and offer him a commission on any arms he bought from the second dealer. He’d just have to hope that word didn’t get back to the Moores, but if it did he could claim he had been trying to help by coming up with an alternative supplier. He took a deep breath, knowing he was over-thinking the situation. He was always at his best when he thought on his feet, when he allowed his natural instincts to kick in. He eased open the door and walked inside.