by Graham Brown
She read on.
Your efforts have not helped us. You plunge us deeper into despair every day. In the name of progress you enslave us, in the name of charity you starve us, in the name of peace you slaughter us. We can no longer wait for your help, we will change the world ourselves.
Normally Claudia took these threats with a grain of salt, but this letter had come to her internally. Whoever sent it had access to things they should not have had access to. She began to feel sick, her face and hands flushed and sweating.
In our pains we have grown. And you have fed off us. You think you have beaten us, but he who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.
We cannot reverse what you have done but we mete out your portion of suffering, we bring you down with us. And it is you who will deliver the master stroke for us. That is correct, Ambassador Gonzales, you are the method of our vengeance. If you have read this far, you are carrying the plague already.
Her heart went cold as she read the words. With her hand shaking lightly, she jabbed at the intercom switch on her phone.
“Security,” a voice said.
“This is—” She stopped midsentence, noticing some type of reddish liquid left behind on the phone key. She glanced at her hand, turning her palm up. The tips of her fingers and her thumb were stained reddish brown.
She noticed a strange smell and heard a quiet sizzling sound. Her left hand, still holding the sheet of paper, felt as if it were burning. She flung the letter to the floor with a shout, pushing her chair backward. She jumped up out of the seat, knocking the latte off her desk.
Her palm and fingers were red and bubbling with the crimson liquid. Her heart was pounding.
“Madam Ambassador?” the voice called over the phone. “Are you okay? Madam Ambassador?”
Unable to speak, she stared at the sheet of paper, watching as a red stain soaked through the page from the corners like blood or dye. Despite this strange effect, the words remained clearly readable. The last sentence, in large bold font, read:
Welcome to Hell.
CHAPTER 2
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Twelve hours later
The sprawling warehouse looked to be buttoned down for the weekend. No activity, no traffic on the inadequate, narrow road that ran in front of it, no noise coming from inside. Even a row of parallel loading docks that stuck out behind it sat empty, their garage-style doors down and locked.
A man wearing dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket hopped up on one of the platforms. Despite the apparent lack of operations, he expected that one pallet of goods would be waiting for him.
He approached the door, briefcase in one hand, a .45-caliber pistol in the other. He looked through a small window that rested at eye level.
At first all he saw was his own reflection: close-cropped dark hair, crow’s feet streaking from eyes now hidden by sunglasses, two days’ worth of stubble coating his face. He noticed the small horizontal scar that ran across one cheek.
He pressed forward, bringing a hand up to block the light. The distorted image vanished, and inside the warehouse he saw four armed men looking bored and impatient. He tapped the window with the barrel of his gun and stepped back.
The men he was meeting would know him as Hawker, a name that had become his persona during ten years spent living on the run. Once he’d been a fast-rising star in the CIA, but an incident he’d pressed too far had spiraled out of control and wound up costing him everything. He’d spent the years since plying his trade as a mercenary, an arms dealer, and a hire of last resort for people who got into situations they had no hope of getting out of.
In a violent world where he could trust precious little to be what it actually seemed, Hawker had learned to hide even from himself. And his real name, like any thoughts of living a normal life, had disappeared like whispers into a swirling wind.
It was a fate he’d come to accept, a self-inflicted wound that had scarred over but would never really heal. And yet, just when he’d thought all hope was lost, a door had opened, a deal had been made with the very government figures who considered him a loose cannon. If he would act on their behalf, he would be taken in and freed from his past.
There was hope now. Hope that one day he’d be able to take up his real name again and that meetings like the one he was about to attend would become the distant, if not forgotten, memory.
Latches clanked as someone released them from the inside. The door began to slide up. As it rose above his head, Hawker took a calming breath and stepped inside.
The four armed men remained where he’d seen them. To his left, a fifth man slammed the door back down and locked it into place.
“This way,” the man said.
Hawker followed as they crossed the warehouse floor. Expensive goods filled the place. Crates of electronic equipment by one wall, fur coats hanging in rows, even a pair of pearl-white, twelve-cylinder, turbocharged Jaguars, still wrapped in protective plastic like they’d just come from the factory.
The guide seemed to notice his stare. “They fell off the back of a truck.”
“You mean rolled,” Hawker said.
The man smiled. “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
They continued on, passing the stolen cars and other items and then stopping near the center of the building. Two different sets of long rectangular crates rested there. NATO designations on the crates had been hastily covered with spray paint but were still partially visible. The alphanumeric code FIM-92 was easily readable.
These were the weapons Hawker had come to see, Stinger surface-to-air missiles. An XR designation that hadn’t been painted over meant these were extended-range variants. Deadly up to five miles.
The weapons had disappeared from a NATO convoy several years before. The CIA figured they’d been taken for a prearranged buyer or that the thief quickly realized they were too hot to move, for until now they’d never cropped up for sale. But the black market never closed, and eventually rumors began to circulate about a shipment of such weapons.
Hawker glanced at the longer, broader crates to the left.
“Reserved for another buyer,” a deep voice said from the shadows.
As Hawker turned, the owner of that voice stepped forward. Bald head polished and shining; jowls, neck, and shoulders forming one great slope. He wasn’t overly fat, just incredibly compact, short and stocky beyond what seemed reasonable. He might have been five foot four and two hundred pounds. A tank, a fire hydrant, a bulldog of a man.
His name was La Bruzca, and the ease with which he’d hidden himself reminded Hawker that the building was essentially a maze and he was a rat in the center of it, with no way of knowing how many men were hidden in the labyrinth. Despite the weapon he carried and his own considerable skills, there would be no fighting his way out of this. He slid the .45 into a shoulder holster.
La Bruzca studied him. “I have heard much about you. They say you are a lost soul, and until you are found, woe unto anyone who gets in your way.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Hawker said.
“If I believed even half of what I’ve been told, you’d be dead,” La Bruzca replied.
Hawker wasn’t sure what to make of the taunt, but there was something ominous in La Bruzca’s words. He wondered if it was a jab at the number of times Hawker had survived near-certain death. Or if there was some greater meaning.
Could La Bruzca know who Hawker was working for? Hawker doubted it. Then again, this meeting had come about suddenly, through a third party that Hawker didn’t know. The middleman was a ghost broker, an unseen player who communicated with both sides for a fee. The possibility of a setup was not beyond reason.
He held his tongue as if the words meant nothing.
“Then again,” La Bruzca added, laughing, “I don’t believe even one-quarter of what is said.”
La Bruzca offered a hand, while the fifth man and another worker began to open one of the crates.
Hawke
r glanced back at the larger crates. Based on the size and dimensions they had to be larger missiles. But what type? Longer-range SAMs or even surface-to-surface missiles. He’d only been given information and authorization to bid on the Stingers, but if he could find out what they were, that might be of value.
“Additional merchandise,” he noted.
La Bruzca nodded. “I carry many things.”
“Care to take a bid?”
“No,” La Bruzca said firmly.
Hawker cocked his head. “You sure?”
“You are jealous,” La Bruzca said, “perhaps because they are bigger than yours.”
La Bruzca laughed so hard at his own joke that he began to cough.
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Hawker said. “But the people I work for might be interested, depending on what type they are.”
“They are sold. But if I become interested in taking additional offers, I know how to reach you.”
Hawker nodded. No more questions. He tried to memorize the dimensions and color of the crates and then stood his briefcase on a table and popped it open.
“That’s a very small case,” La Bruzca said. “I hope you brought large denominations.”
Hawker pulled out a small set of tools and a pair of electronic devices that looked like testing equipment.
“I brought a down payment,” he explained. “And before you get that, I have to inspect the guidance, warheads, and propulsion.”
La Bruzca nodded as if it was standard procedure. “Of course you do,” he said. “Of course.”
Fifteen minutes later, one of the missiles lay on a cradle. A trio of examination ports had been opened. The two ports near the front revealed the guidance system and the battery pack that powered it. The port near the missile’s tail gave access to the propellant stage.
Hawker tinkered for a moment, visually inspecting the circuit board and the status of the chargeable battery pack. Then he turned to the tail end of the rocket. Holding a magnifier against the yellow, claylike substance that made up the solid fuel of the missile, he switched on a UV light. He studied small sections carefully, squinting and looking closely at what the magnifying glass was revealing.
The longer he looked, the closer La Bruzca and the fifth man came.
Finally, Hawker stood back. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” La Bruzca asked.
“How old are these things?”
“Why?” La Bruzca said defensively.
“Because they’re junk,” Hawker said bluntly. “And you know it.”
“These are top-of-the-line American missiles,” La Bruzca said. “Just ask the Iraqis, the Syrians, or the Russians. They’re deadly.”
Hawker stared at La Bruzca. “Were deadly,” he said. “Were.”
“What do you mean?”
The question came from the fifth man, the guard who’d walked him in.
“Someone shafted you,” Hawker said.
“This is a lie,” the fifth man raged, pointing his gun at Hawker.
Hawker glared back at him, wondering how far he could push this without having someone snap. He looked at La Bruzca.
“Did you really get rich by killing all your customers?”
La Bruzca turned to his subordinate. “Put it down,” he said, then turned back to Hawker. “You’d better explain your statement, friend.”
Hawker turned the UV light back on. “See for yourself.”
La Bruzca took the magnifier from Hawker’s hand and held it above the propellant as Hawker angled the light.
“This thing sat in a bunker for years before it disappeared,” Hawker said. “And you and I both know they’ve been hidden for half a decade since then.”
Hawker handed the light to La Bruzca’s associate and then pointed to the section of propellant he’d been studying.
“See those hairline cracks? They’re your problem, or someone’s. The fuel won’t burn evenly. Probably detonate on ignition.”
La Bruzca leaned in closer. He seemed strangely accepting of Hawker’s statement.
“Sorry,” Hawker said. “But the only people this thing’s gonna kill are the ones who launch it.”
As La Bruzca and his man studied the propellant, Hawker turned back to the guidance section. He reached in through the port, using an electrical detector to measure the power supply. He fiddled for a second and then looked at the gauge.
“Guidance looks good. And you seem to have new batteries,” he said. “But those are easy to get. A lot easier than military-grade solid rocket fuel.”
La Bruzca turned back to him, placing the magnifier down as Hawker snapped the power bus back into place and closed the guidance section.
“And if I don’t believe you?”
“Then we disagree,” Hawker said, shrugging. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do business.”
“You have other needs?”
He nodded toward the larger crates. La Bruzca shook his head.
“What about Spiders?” Hawker asked, referencing an Israeli missile.
“I can ask around.”
“You do that,” Hawker said. “The people who hired me will buy anything like that you can get your hands on. British, Israeli, French, even Russian, but nothing Chinese. And the damn things have to work.”
La Bruzca did not appear overly fazed. He nodded, appearing to be calculating something, perhaps considering future profits from sales to Hawker’s friends. He nodded toward the Stinger.
“This should not get out,” he said. A warning to Hawker.
“I’ll give them another reason,” Hawker promised. “But if I was you,” he added, staring hard at La Bruzca, “I’d sell these to someone you don’t want to see again.”
Hawker snapped the briefcase shut. This was the moment of truth. Would they let him leave?
“Till next time,” he said. He was not interested in asking for permission to depart, just in taking it. He turned and began walking across the warehouse floor.
Behind him, La Bruzca and the fifth man discussed something. The words were sharp but whispered, too hard for Hawker to make out.
Hawker kept walking. Trying not to think. Trying not to hope, but silently praying that these men hadn’t noticed his sleight of hand. The door was a long way off.
La Bruzca’s voice rang out. “Wait a minute, friend!” he shouted. “We are not done here.”
Hawker froze. It was not a question. He took a breath and turned.
La Bruzca smiled and rubbed his hands together, then stepped toward Hawker. “Perhaps I can interest you in something else?”
Hawker cocked his head to the side. “Like what?”
La Bruzca smiled generously and for a moment Hawker saw a shopkeeper, a vendor in the market and not an international arms dealer.
“Tell me,” he said. “What exactly are you driving these days?”
CHAPTER 3
A half mile from La Bruzca’s sprawling warehouse, a craggy hill covered in thick trees and exposed gray rock loomed over the valley. Locals called it the Martyr’s Hill, as the dome-shaped rise had been shelled and bombed repeatedly during the Serbo-Croatian War and had been a bloody battleground in the ethnic struggles of this land for a thousand years before that. It stood quietly now, at peace like the rest of this land.
Sitting amid that stillness, huddled under a camouflaged cloak, a man watched from this hill. Pale as bone, with a shaven head, sunken eyes, and the skin on his face stretched and taut, he held up a pair of binoculars, scanning the street in front of the warehouse.
No movement yet, no shooting or shouting. Just as he’d suspected. But no answers, either. And he’d come here in search of answers.
At great expense, this ghost of a man had uncovered the information about La Bruzca and his missiles. He’d leaked it to the right parties and the right parties only. And then he’d come to learn the truth.
With nothing to do but wait, he lowered the binoculars and rubbed at a dark tattoo that marred his neck. It cover
ed a scar where someone had tried to slit his throat eighteen months earlier; a reminder to him that he had enemies on all sides.
Once he’d been a man of power and prestige, carrying a well-known name and a title. Others listened to him, obeyed his orders. But like the man he’d come to watch, the tattooed man had been cast out. Unlike the man below, the world at large would not forgive him his crimes. And that burned the very depths of his soul.
So be it, he thought. To be hated and feared by all was something he could embrace. Far better than a worm begging from the dust. Far better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
Upon leaving the hospital with his neck sewn together, he’d killed the man who cut him. Shot him and then stabbed him with his own knife and left him in the street in front of his house for others to find. It had been a moment of liberation.
During his life the tattooed man had been responsible for dozens of dead. Men, women, even children had died under his watch. Most had been killed collaterally. A few on direct order. But they were distant actions twice removed. At the time he had felt like a king sacrificing pawns. But to avenge himself in person brought a satisfaction and a wave of giddy power.
Now he would bring revenge to those who had wronged him. If he could not be part of the world, then he would destroy it and all that was good in it.
He chose a new name: Draco—Latin for the Serpent. Those who helped him now did not work for him but worshipped him. They were pariahs like he was. Lost souls. He took them in and became their Master, the one who would show them a new way. It complicated things, but it was necessary; a man could not punish the world alone. He needed an army.
When his plan came to fruition the whole world would feel the pain, even those who devoted themselves to him. They would not understand until it was too late; such was the fate of those who followed. But the others would see and they would know who had bested them.
He wanted one group in particular to bear the brunt of his wrath. And to be sure he had the right targets, he had to know the truth, he had to see the face that had answered La Bruzca’s call.
