by Chris Allen
"An investigation has been launched against me. A team is being sent from Lyon to investigate me. It was only a matter of time before they had me, too. What else was I supposed to do?"
"You ask Drago for help,' was the reply. "But you didn't. You didn't tell anybody what you were doing. Instead, you made arrangements to escape Albania. Let me see, what was it? By boat from Durres to Bari in Italy, and then from Italy you were booked on the high-speed train to France; correct?"
The look on Gjoka's face confirmed the allegation.
"Would you like me to talk about these too?" Morgan saw two passports thrown into Gjoka's lap. "Not the actions of a loyal man."
Gjoka looked down at the passports.
"Your bitch told us everything, little Gjoka," Obren-ovic said. "We visited her before you'd even left your office. She told us everything, even handed over your fake passports to save her own miserable skin. What? Didn't she warn you over your sweet little dinner in the village? Of course she didn't, you stupid fuck. Do you know why?"
Gjoka shook his head, numbed by the revelation.
"Because, I offered her a deal: her life for yours. I told her if she breathed a word to you, I'd kill you both. But if she got you back here nice and quietly, I would only take you. The stupid bitch believed me."
Gjoka's face was in his hands now. His head shook in disbelief; blood streamed down his wrists into his shirt sleeves.
"I tell you - I tell you it was the Wolf and his brother. They convinced me that it's what Drago wanted. I was only doing what I thought was part of a plan. I thought Serifovic must have done something to piss Drago off."
"That's not the way my father sees it, Gjoka," Obrenovic said. "For some time, Drago has suspected the Wolf of having designs upon his position as sefa of the Zmajevi. His betrayal of Serifovic, which you made happen, was the final straw. And, despite numerous chances to prove his loyalty to Drago, the Wolf has done little to remove the threat of these fucking judges from The Hague."
"OK. OK," said Gjoka, buying time. "Let me make my case to Drago. I'll come with you, back to Serbia. I'll prove to Drago that I'm not to blame. I'll do whatever he wants me to do."
"Wrong again, little man," Obrenovic replied. "There's nothing you can say that will sway me. My father's orders were clear."
Morgan looked on in silence as the impact of it all seeped into his skin.
General Davenport's instincts all those years ago had been spot on. Nothing much got past the old man.
The Wolf did exist. He was an enforcer for the Serbian leadership, had been since the Balkans War, and his name was Vukasin Petrovic; the brother of the former Interpol informant, Dobrashin Petrovic.
Vukasin, as the Key had said, meant wolf. Not such a coincidence after all.
On top of that, this confirmed there was a management reshuffle underway. The Wolf, a once-trusted apprentice, had grown tired of his position as enforcer. He was older now, ambitious, and being held back by his mentor, Drago, was not what he had in mind for his future. Possibly, his efforts over the years to support the old guard were not being recognized and now, this young Obrenovic was emerging as the one most likely to succeed his father. That would be counter to the Wolf's aspirations. Whatever it was, enough was enough and the Wolf was making his move.
It was a situation as old as time - greed, ambition, the thirst for power - and as far as Gjoka's part was concerned, Morgan felt there was some long overdue karma tied up in it all. That said, Morgan couldn't stand by and watch the young Obrenovic and his crew of muscle-heads kill Gjoka in cold blood. How would he explain that to Davenport?
Morgan decided to move in. He had to do something.
But as he started toward the first step, a pair of hands like clamps gripped his ankles and yanked his legs out from under him.
Chapter 63
Morgan hit the stairs face first. The SIG fell from his hand.
The baldy at the end of his ankles had come in the front entrance. Morgan was so intent on the interrogation of Gjoka that he'd missed it. Baldy had obviously gone out through an exit on the other side of the mezzanine to do a perimeter sweep and then backtracked from the driveway. Fuck!
Morgan's crash against the stairs caused everything around him to stop. The interrogation process froze, replaced by a stunned silence.
"What the fuck?" cried Obrenovic.
But Morgan had fallen from view and Obrenovic and his crew's shocked, undisciplined inaction bought him precious fractions of a second.
Morgan's subconscious instantly triggered what his friend and hand-to-hand combat proponent Tom Rodgers once termed total violence. In the movies they called it kill or be killed; the place where primal instinct and lethal force meet, when your survivability has reached absolute zero. At this point, anything less would result in his death.
Morgan's face became a mask of unrestrained rage.
Baldy was still clasped to the Intrepid agent's right ankle but he'd removed one hand to reach for Mor-gan's dropped gun. It was a fatal mistake. Morgan flipped onto his back and relinquished control. In that split second, his left leg withdrew like a piston and fired into action, kicking relentlessly at the gangster's face. The heel of Morgan's boot connected again and again with flesh and bone. The man cried out, struggling to hang on.
"Fuck!" boomed Obrenovic. "Check it out!" he ordered.
With the gangster still attached, Morgan pulled his right leg back and at the same time spun around to face the threats from the mezzanine. The movement wrenched the gangster forward, positioning his forearm perfectly, elbow and wrist braced on the edges of alternate stairs. Morgan needed only to twist slightly to be standing directly above the exposed forearm, then he slammed his left foot straight down with everything he had. The man howled in agony as both bones snapped like dry driftwood. The other hand let go.
Amid the agonized screams, Alex Morgan looked up and saw two men appear above him on the mezzanine tearing guns from shoulder holsters, confusion written all over their faces.
Morgan dived down the stairs over the screaming gangster with the broken arm back to where he'd been hiding in the darkness watching the interrogation. He spotted his gun, the SIG Sauer P226, and threw himself at it. Landing in a slide, he grabbed the SIG as a barrage of 9mm rounds from the Serbs followed him, hammering the stairway. Most of them struck the howling baldy; caught in the crossfire, he was helpless to stop them. He fell silent.
Under their onslaught Morgan couldn't get a shot at anyone but he had a clear line of sight at a ceiling light up on the mezzanine level that cast a beam like a search light down the stairwell. He fired and got it and everything went black. He kept firing as close as he could to where he knew the other two had been standing. In the midst of the gunfire and darkness he heard nothing but chaos and lots of yelling, underscored by the noise of retreating footfalls on stairs across the room.
Morgan moved fast, driven by survival, knowing they'd be splitting up to circle around, close him in on the stairs and kill him. He launched up to the mezzanine level like a freight train, firing on the move, but the two gunmen had gone. Without missing a beat, he drove himself across the dark room straight for a large oak table. He had it on its side just in time to receive a hail of incoming fire. The rounds boomed as they struck and splintered the heavy table top. He couldn't afford to get bogged down. He had to get clear of this room.
He could hear Gjoka screaming somewhere.
Morgan changed mags then blindly fired off a mad burst to get their heads down. In a bound, he made it to the darkest corner at the back of the room. It was away from the table and there was no cover, but he was flat on the floor, and as the gangsters all fired at once, he caught their muzzle flashes in the darkness.
Right, Morgan thought, there's just two of them: one down in the back stairwell leading to the rear exit, and the other behind a sofa at the top of the same stairs. They were lined up like shooters at a carnival shooting gallery and Morgan's head was the bullseye. But the stupid bastar
ds had missed his move and were still wasting their ammo on the table.
Morgan set his sights on the sofa first. It was low and thin, offering zero protection. Cover from view but not from fire. He unleashed a rapid stream of rounds at the spot where he'd just seen the guy's head duck down. The rounds punched straight through the fabric and wood with the devastating impact of a prize-fighter knocking the shit out a second-rate opponent. Every one of them landed where he needed them to and above the explosions from the SIG, Morgan heard a string of strained expletives as each round found the target. But the swearing lasted only seconds. The last rounds in the stream finished the job. The dull thud on the floor told Morgan a gun had been dropped.
The guy on the stairs opened up again, firing anywhere and everywhere, but Morgan was already moving. Fucking amateur, Morgan thought; he should have been firing to cover his offsider but he was too busy keeping his own head down. Morgan dived back behind the table while rounds from the stairs zinged past, up into the ceiling and into the walls and furniture. Pots and windows and picture frames shattered all around him.
Morgan kept going across the open space of the shooting gallery, heading straight for the sofa he'd just shot the hell out of. He had no idea where the other guy's rounds were going but miraculously, so far none had hit him. Every shot from the other man's gun thundered through the room searching for him. Christ! Heavy caliber revolver, Morgan realized. His intuition, honed by years of training and experience, told him then that the guy was due for a reload any second now. The sofa was near the top of the back
stairs and Morgan made it in two more paces. He threw himself down and launched into a slide across the polished floorboards, firing wildly down the stairs as pure momentum carried him forward. The bark of the SIG was constant as Morgan kept pulling the trigger until the second man was finally down.
The revolver fell silent.
Back on his feet, Morgan checked both men were dead. Habitually, he kicked their weapons far from reach. Then he caught sight of Gjoka, sheltering beside a large bookcase, trembling uncontrollably, hands over his ears. He'd pissed himself.
Morgan didn't have time for Gjoka right now. He had three dead up here. That left Obrenovic and one other still at large, somewhere nearby; both armed and most definitely dangerous.
"Stay here, Gjoka, and you might just stand a chance of surviving:' Morgan said. "I'll be back for you."
With that, he headed for the back stairs.
Chapter 64
Outside, the night was black with the breeze rustling eerily through the trees, and the stars and moon nowhere to be seen.
Morgan got himself away from the doorway quickly, crouched down in shrubs at the back of the house and listened intently, allowing time for his night vision to adjust. He waited a full minute, his senses in overdrive, before moving cautiously around the edge of the graveled area that bordered the entire house. Staying close to where the vegetation started and the gravel stopped, he minimized the sounds of his footsteps upon a strip of soft sand. Every few feet he'd stop and listen again. Still nothing.
Then, diagonally opposite the corner of the building where the cars were parked, he stopped dead in his tracks.
It was barely perceptible, but he could just make out the sound of shoes crunching on gravel less than 10 feet from him.
Morgan got the oxygen going again, filling his lungs to pump blood to his already dog-tired limbs. He slipped easily out of his RM Williams boots with the elasticized sides, moving in silence across the last few feet of gravel separating him from the house. Standing in his socks with his left shoulder hard up against the rough-hewn stone of the century-old wall, Morgan brought the SIG back up to his chest, clasped in both hands, barrel pointing forward and close against his body. He craned his neck forward until his face was as close to the corner of the building as he dared. His breathing was deep, calm.
Around the corner the two remaining Serbs - Obrenovie and the last of the baldies - were in a tight huddle by the side door they'd all gone through earlier. The two of them were mumbling in Serbian, he guessed, but Morgan could tell it was basically an "on three, we're going in" discussion. He braced himself, waiting.
"jedan," came the first muffled count. They were ready to rush inside, find the unexpected intruder and kill him.
"Dva," came the second. Both men's shoes shuffled on the gravel in dark anticipation.
"Tri!"
Before they disappeared inside, Morgan leapt from his corner and faced directly across their flanks. In a fluid movement, he closed one eye to protect his night vision, fired twice, then threw himself back behind the cover of the wall.
In the short, explosive lives of the SIG's muzzle flashes, Morgan knew that both rounds found their target. One went through a shoulder and the second, miraculously, through the side of his head. It was the last of the baldies.
From the doorway, Obrenovic unleashed a shocked burst of obscenities in Serbian, screaming in frustration, no doubt, as what was supposed to have been a simple take down of the little worm Gjoka quickly turned to complete shit. All his men were dead, he alone had survived and only because he was already
through the door and halfway inside when Morgan opened up. Now desperate, Obrenovic fired chaotically in every direction from the doorway.
Then he broke from cover and ran for his life, heading for the van.
Morgan risked his neck beyond the corner of the wall again and fired in the general direction of the fleeing footsteps, but it was impossible to see Obren-ovic as he ran away. Morgan heard the driver's door of the van open and the engine cough to life. The headlights blazed, filling the blackness with football stadium lighting. The suddenness of it was blinding. Morgan clenched his eyes shut tightly and rubbed them with the back of his gun hand.
Behind the wheel, Obrenovic revved the engine and wrenched the gearshift into reverse. The vehicle screamed backward out of the driveway.
Already, Morgan was sprinting.
Chapter 65
In the moments it took Obrenovic to get the van back out onto the road, Alex Morgan was propelling himself forward, desperate to get there before the Serb escaped. As the van skidded to a dusty halt, pointing back down the hillside road toward Petrele, he leapt at it.
Obrenovic struggled at the wheel, full of shock and tension. He fumbled with the gearshift, unable to make the change from reverse into first. The more he forced it, the harder it became, not realizing that due to his nervous energy, he still had one foot planted flat on the accelerator. The engine revs were in the high reds as the gears crunched and whined helplessly.
Meanwhile, his SIG back in the holster, Morgan launched at the van long-jump style from the sprint, catapulting forward from his right leg. Still in his socks, Morgan's feet protested with every painful, jarring impact upon the sharp stones of the graveled driveway, but he pressed on. There was no way he could stop now.
Morgan's left foot found the top of a low-lying stone wall that bracketed the driveway, giving him the extra height and leverage he needed to make the remaining few feet to the top of the van. He hit the roof with a thunderous bang and the metal buckled beneath the impact of his 200 pounds. The Intrepid agent's fingers madly searched for a purchase point.
Down in the engine block, the gears found their groove and the van lunged forward with all the grace of a runaway train hurtling through a station. The gangster heir apparent stamped his foot flat to the floor again and the van sped off down the hill. The sudden momentum nearly saw Morgan slide uselessly off the back but he managed to find the lip of the roof's edge on both sides and grab on tight, his fingertips pressed white against the metal.
Obrenovic surely knew Morgan was up there, but in his rush to escape he'd thrown his gun down on the passenger seat beside him. Panicked but not beaten, Obren-ovic wrenched the steering wheel left and right, over and over again, slewing the van recklessly across the narrow dirt road. With every deliberate pull to the right, the rear wheels skidded across the loose surfa
ce of the road, causing the back of the van to fishtail perilously close to the edge of the road that fell away to nothing.
With deafeningly cold wind racing across his body and his fingers slipping along the metal work, Morgan saw the lights of Tirana and the surrounding villages far off in the distance. The thought of what normal people might be doing right now flashed through his mind.
Obrenovic's driving became even more drastic. He knew this was his only chance to dislodge the madman on the roof. He tore the wheel so hard that he was in danger of toppling the van and himself over the edge.
Morgan struggled to stay on as each swerve threw his legs over the sides of the roof, relentlessly alternating port and starboard like a crazy pendulum. Soon, it was one too many times.
ObrenoviC tore the wheel to the right once more, the back of the van went hard left and Morgan was thrown into the black emptiness of that steep, bottomless hillside.
Chapter 66
Blubbering incoherently, Lorenc Gjoka broke from his petrified stupor on the floor and crawled slowly across the room, past the dead body by the sofa, toward the packed suitcases in the far corner. Tears, snot and blood streamed down his face, accompanied by the pungent stench of urine from his soiled trousers. The debris of the gunfight littered the entire area and he cut his hands and knees on bits of broken pots and light bulbs before he risked standing up to sneak the rest of the way on his feet.
Reaching the cases, not daring to switch on a light, Gjoka fumbled around in the darkness until he found and opened his. A few minutes later he'd wiped himself down with his dirty shirt, extracted a fresh shirt, trousers and underwear, and was dressed, once again ready to go. Lumbering awkwardly with his luggage down the stairs, struggling to avoid the body of Mor-gan's first opponent, Gjoka came across a discarded automatic on the floor near the corpse. He picked it up with a still-shaking hand, heading warily toward the driveway.
