No Survivors sc-2

by Tom Cain

  She was wearing a bathrobe, and beneath that a swimsuit. The yacht was moored less than two hundred yards from the shore. Alix was a strong swimmer-she felt sure she could cover the distance without any trouble, even allowing for the bag she’d have tied around her waist. She was taking the absolute minimum she would need: her wallet, passport, and phone; a sweatshirt; a pair of jeans; and her lightest pair of flat, slip-on shoes. Aside from the jeans and sweatshirt, each item was individually wrapped in a food bag, and then everything went inside the garbage bag, which she’d sealed with packing tape. She planned to leave around one in the morning, when there’d be only one man keeping watch from the bridge. If she could make it to shore, she’d be long gone by the time the sun came up.

  There was a knock on the door and the steward’s voice. “Mrs. Vermulen?”

  She shoved the bag under her pillows and called back, “Yes?”

  “Message from your husband, ma’am. Captain asked me to hand it to you in person.”

  “Just coming…”

  She walked to the door and opened it. The steward was standing there. But he held no message in his hand. Instead, he was pointing a gun at her, and there was not a trace of his former servility in his voice as he said, “Put some clothes on. You’re going on a trip.”

  She stepped back into the room, opening the door wider to let him in. As far as the steward was concerned, she was just the little blond wifey. He was taken completely by surprise when she slammed the door back in his face, flung it open again and kicked him hard in the crotch. As he bent double in agony, Alix stepped forward and drove her knee into his face. She had no idea why the crew had suddenly turned on her, but there was no time to worry about that now. She ran back to her bed, grabbed the garbage bag, and hurried out into the passageway.

  The master bedroom was on the main deck. Alix raced through the saloon where Vermulen had held his briefing and out into the open air. She had got as far as the stern rail, and was just about to leap over the side when a burst of gunfire exploded just a few feet above her, and a line of bullets tore through the planking at her feet.

  She looked up and saw the captain standing by the rail of the upper deck, looking down at her over the top of an automatic rifle.

  “You better stop right there, Mrs. Vermulen,” he said. “Or the next burst goes through you.”

  88

  Fifteen years earlier, the Zvečan lead smelter had been part of a thriving enterprise that had employed twenty thousand workers and provided wealth for a nation. Now it was just another ramshackle old Communist enterprise, brought even lower by the combined effects of corrupt mismanagement and social anarchy. The whole place, nestled at the floor of a valley between thickly wooded, mineral-laden hills, purveyed an air of irreversible decline: rusting pipes, stationary conveyor belts, office windows broken and unrepaired. A few desultory puffs of bitter smoke emerged from the giant red-and-white-striped chimney that towered over the plant, in feeble acknowledgment that this was, in theory, a round-the-clock operation. Occasional lights overhead shone a weak orange glow over their surroundings. But there was no one to check Vermulen’s team as their Land Cruisers rolled through the main gates, no sign of workers on the roadways between the giant processing sheds.

  The bomb was behind another false wall, this one in the basement office of the maintenance worker in charge of the central-heating boilers. Vermulen was struck by the contrast between the drab banality of the leather case and the astonishing power of its contents. He was accustomed to systems whose capacity was evident in their appearance, be they mighty battle tanks or thunderous artillery pieces. But this was the ultimate stealth weapon. It gave no clue as to its powers of destruction.

  The feeble bulbs in the office lights and the gray-green paint on the walls combined to create a grim, ghostly atmosphere, but Vermulen could see that Frankie Riva’s eyes were glittering with the fever of a treasure-hunting archaeologist who had stumbled into a pharaoh’s tomb.

  “Ammazza!” he muttered, opening the case and seeing the metal gun barrel. “After all these years… incredible!”

  “So it is a nuclear weapon?” Vermulen asked.

  “Oh yes, General, most certainly it is that.”

  “In working order?”

  Riva raised his hands in a classic Italian shrug.

  “Who can say? There is only one way to know for sure, and that is to set a detonator and see what happens. But, just looking at it, I can see no reason why it should not work. Fundamentally, this is a very simple device. One piece of uranium is smashed into another…”

  He spread his arms wide. “Boom!”

  Don Maroni had been a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Rangers, a member of one of the finest light-infantry forces in the world, trained to the highest levels of fitness and competence. But the operative word was “had.” He’d been out of the service five years, working for a civilian security corporation, wearing a suit instead of a uniform. He still went to the boxing gym three times a week and kept his shooting up to standard. By any normal measure, he was not a man you’d want to mess with. But he wasn’t as sharp as he’d once been. He certainly wasn’t as battle-fit as the men who were slipping through the great, rusting hulks of the smelting works all around him, men who had spent a decade fighting hand to hand in conflicts of vile, unfettered ferocity.

  Dusan Darko’s most trusted killers had confronted conventional armies, desperate civilians, and fanatical mujahideen flown in from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, whose total absence of scruple equaled their own. They had battled knowing that death was a mercy, far preferable to the torture and mutilation that inevitably followed capture, and they had dealt out as much agony as they had received. More than that, they came from mountain villages where the culture of knife and gun had ruled for centuries. Murder was in their blood.

  So as good as he was, Donny Maroni was taken by surprise as he patrolled the perimeter of the office block in which the bomb had been hidden. He caught a brief scent of tobacco and garlic from the hand that clamped across his mouth to stifle his screams, and then the knife was drawn across his throat and blood spurted from the gaping mortal wound.

  Reddin’s men were scattered around the immediate vicinity of the office building. They were all well armed, all equipped with radios with which they could summon immediate support. And they all died without a word being spoken.

  The video camera had been set up in the basement office, with a light that shone on Kurt Vermulen and the opened bomb case that he and Frankie Riva had lifted onto the maintenance man’s desk.

  “You ready?” he asked Riva, who was standing behind the camera.

  “Sure,” the Italian replied. “We’re running now. Just speak whenever you want.”

  Vermulen cleared his throat, gave a sharp sniff, then looked directly at the camera.

  “My name is Lieutenant General Kurt Vermulen. I retired from the U.S. Army after twenty-eight years’ service as a commissioned officer, during which I was proud, and honored, to serve the country I love. I am now in the province of Kosovo, Yugoslavia, in the Zvečan industrial plant. Within a few miles of here, units of the Kosovo Liberation Army are operating, assisted by fighters, weapons, and money provided by the forces of international Islamist terrorism. And this”-he pointed to the case on the desk-“is their ultimate weapon. It is a-”

  From the corridor outside there came the crackle of small-arms fire, immediately answered by a blast of firing from the far side of the office door, through which could be heard an animal howl of pain. The door burst open and Marcus Reddin backed into the room. He was unsteady on his feet and his left arm was hanging uselessly beside him, blood pouring from the through-and-through bullet wound that had ripped open his shoulder.

  “Red!” shouted Vermulen. Drawing the pistol that was holstered around his waist, he ran to his friend’s aid.

  “Sorry, man… screwed up,” Reddin gasped.

  Vermulen could hear footsteps scurrying down the ba
sement corridor. Without looking back at Riva, he shouted, “Take cover!” Then he grasped his pistol in both hands, held it up to his face, and stood in the shelter of the door frame, steeling himself for the moment when he would have to step into the corridor and start firing.

  But Vermulen never took that step. Not when there was a gun in his back and an Italian voice in his ear saying, “Drop your weapon, General.”

  One hundred and twenty miles to the west, a helicopter landed on a patch of open ground near the Croatian village of Molunat. A small group of people was waiting for it. While the engines still ran, they hurried toward the chopper, instinctively bending over, even though the rotor blades were well above their heads. In the midst of the men there was a smaller, slighter figure, a woman whose blond hair was whipped around her face by the wind from the rotors. She was in the grip of two men, who had grabbed her upper arms. Her hands had been tied behind her back, and she stumbled as they dragged her up to the helicopter and bundled her through the open side door. After she was in, one of the men reached up toward the open door, holding a thin cardboard file. An unseen figure from within the cabin took the file and slid the door closed, and the helicopter rose again into the cloudy night sky.

  89

  “Welcome to Rock City, ma’am.” Kady Jones had been flown directly from Washington to Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany. She’d been briefed on the way. There was reason to believe that another one of the Russian bombs had been uncovered in Kosovo. She would be making a determination as to whether it was genuine or not. The tone of the briefings had been urgent, but routine: nothing to worry about. After they were over, she’d received another message, requesting details on her height, body measurements, and shoe size. The moment the cabin door had opened, she’d been led straight to a military transport, already laden with a full army explosive-ordnance-disposal team and its equipment. Another dozen men sat silently and impassively in futuristic black uniforms. Before she’d even strapped on her belt, the wheels were already rolling. Once they were in the air, one of the men in black came over.

  “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 emerge
d 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.