by Matthew Dunn
Will decided that he had a maximum of thirty seconds to get it done. He pushed himself up and moved silently toward the man who was nearest to him. He expected to have to sprint the last few meters, but the blizzard had grown even stronger and hid the sound of his movements. He came directly up behind the man and placed his right hand on the man’s chin while jamming his left hand hard against the back of the man’s skull. He deliberately fell backward with the man while twisting his head. The man’s arms and legs flailed wildly, but Will held him firmly while screwing the man’s head around until he was satisfied that his neck was broken. He pushed the dead body off him and quickly dragged it away from the track it was on. For a brief moment, Will looked at the body. The man’s build and light-colored clothing were similar to Will’s own frame and attire. An idea came to him, and he grabbed the dead man’s flashlight and nightstick. He continued on the route the man had been taking while moving the beam of his flashlight ahead of him. After walking for fifty meters, he stopped and looked around. He saw the other man coming toward him from his left. Will swept his beam over the ground and stayed still. He wondered how close he could let the man get to him before the man realized that he was not moving toward his colleague.
When the man came to within a few meters of Will’s position, Will swung his flashlight into the man’s face to momentarily blind him. The man uttered something harsh-sounding in Farsi and held the fist that was clutching his nightstick up to his face to shield it from the light. Will ran at him, dropped low, and swept his nightstick against the shinbone of one of the man’s legs. The man fell forward onto his knees, and Will seized the moment to jab the end of his weapon into the man’s gullet. He then struck the side of the man’s head and watched him slump to the ground. Will looked at the man, hesitated, wished that he had a better weapon to do his job cleanly, and then struck him another four times on the head until he was satisfied the Iranian was dead.
Will patted his hands against the corpse’s pockets and waistband. When he found what he was looking for, he dropped the nightstick and flashlight and then proceeded ahead with his newly acquired CZ 75 pistol. It was nearly nighttime now, and Will had to move slowly while navigating his way through the trees. He headed toward the area to the left of his entrance into the forest, as it seemed to him to be the logical place for the other two team members to be searching. He moved several paces forward, stopped, crouched, listened, then moved a few paces more. He continued this routine until he had covered nearly three hundred meters. He had no particular plan, apart from keeping one of the men alive so that he could deliver a message of failure back to Megiddo.
Will was taking another step forward when a bullet struck him in the shoulder and sent searing pain down his arm and over his chest, bringing him to his knees. He saw a flashlight flicker on his left side, and he awkwardly pushed himself back up onto his feet to swing his gun toward the light. But as soon as he did so, the light was turned off and Will was back in blackness. He cursed and moved several steps away from the position where he’d been shot. He heard movement and rotated 360 degrees to try to identify its location. His left arm was now limp by his side, and he grabbed its wrist with his right hand and shoved the limb’s useless hand partway into a pocket to hold his arm still. He knew that the only reason he hadn’t been shot in the head was that the man who fired at him wanted him alive. But he also knew that the man would take no chances: if he had to shoot at Will again, he would shoot to kill.
Will thought rapidly. There was no more element of surprise, and the gunshot wound had significantly reduced his physical ability to hunt down his assailants. His hope lay in the fact that the men wanted to capture him. He decided that his only option was to bring them to him. He chose a random direction in the woods and ran.
Ahead of him the ground sloped down into a dip, and Will followed the route while tucking his gun into his belt. On the other side of the dip, the ground rose sharply, and he used his only capable hand to grab on to anything that would help him get up the slope and continue forward. He stumbled several times as his feet caught snow-hidden roots and bracken, but he managed to stay upright despite how hard his useless arm was making it to keep his balance. Occasional flashes hit the ground before him, and Will knew they came from the lights of the men behind him. He also knew that he needed sufficient distance from those lights as well as open space to do what he had to do.
He reached flat ground and pushed harder, even though he risked injury from running near-blindly toward trees. He broke left and right to make his route odd and unpredictable and then carried on fast, desperately hoping to reach some treeless ground that would give him a little more visibility than he currently had. He ran for what felt like thirty minutes while trying to ignore the pain of his wound and the pain in his lungs from constantly sucking in icy air. He ran even after he no longer saw the telltale signs of flashlights flickering behind him. He ran even as he finally emerged from woods into a tree-ringed meadow of snow. He crossed the meadow toward the tree line on the other side, and only then did he stop and turn to face the direction from which he’d just come. He pulled out his pistol, breathed deeply, and tried to calm his oxygen-starved and agonized body. Almost instantly the two men ran onto the meadow, looking around. They had discarded their batons in favor of their sidearms.
What little light there was from the night sky was casting a blue hue over the area before Will. He waited until the two men were nearly in the center of the meadow before he stepped away from the trees so that he stood exposed. The men stopped and could clearly see him. They were approximately 125 meters away, and as Will raised his pistol, he guessed that they had little to fear from his gun, given the effect his current condition would have on making a meaningful shot, not to mention the distance between them. It was a near-impossible shot, but nevertheless he inhaled three times and then half exhaled before holding his breath. He focused his mind and pulled the trigger. One of the men flipped backward and fell awkwardly as Will’s bullet hit him in the head.
The sole remaining member of the Iranian special operations team fired back at Will three times, but the bullets flew wide of their mark. Will ran toward him and saw the man turn and quickly race back across the snow-covered meadow in the direction of the trees. With all the energy he could muster, Will moved his legs as fast as he was able in order to close down the distance between him and his prey and to stop the man from escaping back into the darkness of the forest.
The Iranian was very fast, but Will still managed to get to within forty meters of him before firing two shots near the man’s feet and shouting, “Stop or I’ll kill you!”
The Iranian slowed and then stopped altogether. Will also slowed to a fast walk while pointing his gun at the man’s head. The Iranian held his arms outward and dropped his weapon to his side. Will moved cautiously up behind him, flicked the discarded gun away with his foot, and thrust the heel of his boot into the small of the man’s back. The Iranian immediately buckled under the impact and fell sideways, then onto his back. Will walked around the man, continuing to direct the muzzle of his pistol at the man’s head. He looked at the man’s face and saw no expression save that his eyes were blinking rapidly. The man had the look of a professional.
Will stomped on the man’s stomach and then dropped his knee onto the same spot, putting his full weight behind the position. He said, “I’m not going to kill you unless I have to. But I need to know why you attacked me.”
The man moaned softly, and Will knew that he was probably exaggerating his discomfort in order to minimize communication.
Will pressed harder with his knee. “Why?”
The man shook his head and spoke in a heavy accent. “I don’t know.”
Will smiled a little after he heard the lie. “You don’t know?” He said it slowly and deliberately. He punched the muzzle of his pistol into the man’s mouth and leaned in closer. The man writhed in agony, and Will knew he was no longer exaggerating his pain. “I want you to live so
that you can take a message back to the man who most certainly does know. Tell him he underestimated me and will have to do much better than this if he wants me captured or dead.” Blood from the man’s broken teeth seeped onto Will’s gun. “One day I’ll meet him on my terms.” Will leaned in closer. “And when we do meet, I’ll kill him and everyone around him.”
Twenty-Four
“You were damn reckless!” Patrick was yelling. “I gave you an instruction not to engage them!”
“And I told you on our second meeting that your instructions may not always be correct.” Will looked at the medical dressing that had been expertly applied to his naked shoulder. Patrick was on the far side of Will’s hotel room in the Sheraton, and the man nearest to him was Ben Reed. Roger had sent over the former Green Beret and specialist in medicine as soon as he’d heard that Will was injured and back in his room. Will looked up at Ben. “Prognosis?”
Ben rose from his seat and started gathering up his battlefield medical kit. The blond Ivy League-looking paramilitary man smiled, exposing his immaculate teeth. “You were quite fortunate. The bullet glanced off the top of your humerus and then exited your body through flesh. There’s no muscle damage and only a minor fracture to your bone. You’ll have yet another scar on your body, but I can see from the rest of your torso that scars don’t bother you. Still, it was a nine-millimeter bullet that hit you, and it must have hurt like hell.”
Will smiled as he pulled on a T-shirt to cover his upper body. “What’s the latest?”
Ben shrugged. “It’s three A.M. Lana’s in her room and is no doubt asleep. I most certainly should be asleep. And Roger, Laith, and Julian are on duty around Lana’s hotel.”
“The Iranians?”
“One man and one woman are on watch at the Regent. The other is not around and so is either on rest or more likely is trying to work out what on earth happened to his colleagues six hours ago.”
Will nodded. “Thanks, Ben. You’d better go get what sleep you can before you’re back on surveillance.”
Retaining his perpetual smile, Ben left. Will knew that Patrick was going to use his departure to launch into a full tirade, so he decided to get his in first. “I told you that we had to make Megiddo desperate and frustrated. I’m confident I have achieved that. And in killing three of his men and sending a taunting message back to him with the fourth, I’m fairly certain that I’ve also now pissed him off.”
Patrick walked across the room and pointed a finger at Will. “Well, you can be dead certain that you’ve pissed me off.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “You know that my course of action was right. You know that we have to get Megiddo’s thinking off kilter. And you know that to achieve such an objective requires me to take extraordinary risks.”
“You always have to take extraordinary risks. God, Alistair and I knew you were like that when you were a kid.” He grunted in frustration. “Even the Foreign Legion wasn’t dangerous enough for you, so you had to volunteer for their special operations unit so that you could be thrown into even more hazardous missions. If Alistair and I hadn’t stepped in when we did, you’d no doubt now be long dead.” Patrick grimaced as soon as he’d uttered that last sentence.
“What do you mean, you and Alistair stepped in?” Will said the words slowly.
Patrick’s face was a mask of regret.
“What do you mean?”
The CIA man rubbed a hand over his chin and inhaled deeply. He then fixed his eyes firmly on Will, with a gaze that once again held steel. “What happened after you finished your five-year career with the Legion?”
Will looked at the man for a moment and then said, “I was approached by a woman representing MI6. She told me that I had to flex my brain and go to university. She told me that after I completed my degree, MI6 would give me a home.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“It made me annoyed, because the woman was the best thing I’d seen in a long time. I wanted to have sex with her.”
“But once she politely explained that that was not going to happen, you went along with what she offered.” Patrick shook his head a little. “Did you not wonder where the financial sponsorship came from to get you through Cambridge?”
Will frowned. “I did, but I assumed it came from MI6.” His voice grew quieter. “There were, however, times when I did ask myself whether it came from some fund my dead father had left for me.”
Patrick stepped forward quickly. “See, this is where Alistair and I disagree.” He brought his face close to Will’s. “We both do share the same amount of guilt about your father’s death, but unlike Alistair I also have an equal ration of anger.”
“Why anger?”
“Because his death led to a wife having to fend for herself and die and a son growing into something even more efficient than his father-but also something far more ruthless.”
Will closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, he looked at Patrick. “Why should that matter to you?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Patrick shook his head. “Alistair and I secretly paid out of our own pockets to put you through college and discreetly introduced you to MI6 in order to direct your talents away from what would inevitably have developed into criminality. We did this because, whether we liked it or not, we had a responsibility for your father’s son. My concern about you goes well beyond what you do as an intelligence officer. If you die, Alistair and I have failed in our pledge to stop more death in your family. This operation is yours because we know you thrive on what it delivers to you. But we also know that the things you thrive on both keep you alive and bring you closer to death. Among many reasons, I’m here to make sure that the one does not become the other.”
Will stepped back and pointed at Patrick. “You have no responsibility for me. You’re here because, while you know that I’m the one man who’ll stop at nothing to capture Megiddo, you also know that I’m the one man who’ll stop at nothing to kill him. And you can’t allow that to happen, because your priority is to keep him alive so that you can discover the details of his plot. You’re here to stop me from seeking my revenge.” He felt the anger raging through him. “You will fail in that task, and I will succeed in my task. When the time is right, I will do to him what he did to my father. I will make Megiddo beg me to kill him. I will ensure that there’s nothing left of the man who destroyed my father and ripped my family apart.”
Twenty-Five
Kljujic was executed by three men. The way he was killed by them clearly shows that they believed he was not working alone. They left a message intended to frighten off Kljujic’s associate or tell him that they were coming for him. Either way, you’ve got to take precautions to protect yourself.” Will looked at Harry to watch for the effect of his words.
“Can’t your organization protect me?” the agent asked.
Will shook his head. “I have people who could do that, but they are invisible.” He looked around the hill-situated tourist restaurant, Kibe. It overlooked Sarajevo and had good views of the city, although Will had chosen to meet Harry here because the route to it enabled excellent antisurveillance capabilities. “I need you to have visible security around you.”
“A deterrent?”
“Precisely.”
Harry nodded slowly but displayed none of his usual jocular or mischievous character. “I can arrange that, but it’s a big inconvenience. My business requires me to travel a lot.”
“Then keep traveling. Just make sure that you always take your men with you.”
“Sure. I’ll do it, but for how long?”
“Until I know that you’re no longer under any potential threat.”
Harry exhaled loudly. “My associate’s death must mean that the man in the HBF building is significant. Why don’t you just attack the place and finish this?”
“We can’t because we’d be attacking blind. If we had the photograph that Kljujic took, things might be different, but even then we can’t be certain
that the man Kljujic spotted was Megiddo.”
The agent rubbed his face with two hands. He looked very weary.
“Is anything else troubling you, Harry?”
“Things could have gone much better for me in Finland.”
“A man like you always bounces back.”
Harry managed a weak smile. “Hey, does Megiddo have a price on his head?”
Will laughed a little. “If he does, I will never see any of the bounty.” He looked around the restaurant again. The place was beginning to fill with the breakfast crowd.
“Yeah, I heard you guys were underpaid and always in need of cash.”
Will shrugged and reached into his pocket. “I went to Kljujic’s house to find his photograph. It wasn’t there, but I came away with something else altogether. This belongs to you now.” He handed Harry the photograph of him and Kljujic.
Harry looked at the image and quickly secreted the photo into one of his own pockets. “Thank you for getting this. But when I’m home, I’ll burn it.”
He exhaled loudly. “Kljujic used to work with me in the war. He was my right-hand man, and he and his crew would do most of the. . heavy work I needed done.”
Will waited silently.
“The photograph needs burning because it was taken just before we went to that village, taken before Kljujic ignored my orders to get his men out of there and instead did something truly unimaginable. . But to my shame I’ve stayed in contact with him ever since.” He shrugged. “Men like him are always useful to men like me.”
Will kept his eyes fixed on his agent. “Harry, you did not kill those women and children.”
Harry looked at him sharply. “No, but I damn well profited out of people thinking I did.”
