PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Cole could see by the look on the fisherman’s face that he was fully intent on administering the last rites to Cole himself and so, still on the ground, he kicked upwards as the man cocked his arm to swing again.

  Cole’s foot caught the man in the groin, and the aggression on his face was replaced instantly with pain. Cole jumped back to his feet and pushed the stunned man backward, his body toppling into the mounds of fish laid out so carefully on his tabletop.

  Cole took off again after Agostini, watching in wonder as other stall owners edged out from behind their tables and made their way toward him, brandishing an assortment of weaponry, from wood and brass cudgels to a variety of wicked-looking blades used for gutting and filleting their catch.

  Cole saw Agostini sprinting further away, and realized what had happened – some of these men would be tied to the Corsican mob, either through family ties or through the payment of protection money; and when Agostini had raced past them, he had issued instructions that they knew they had to follow. They looked like they meant business too, and Cole understood why – if they let Cole go, and he caught Agostini, then the crime family would be sure to make their lives a living hell. And so – no matter what their own personal feelings – they were going to go for Cole for all they were worth.

  The next one swiped at Cole with a curving meat hook, and Cole took him out with a side kick on the run, barely breaking stride yet sending the man reeling backwards.

  A moment later, Cole intercepted the arm of someone holding a fish-gutting knife, locked it up at the shoulder and spun the man into the path of yet another. This fourth attacker, bearded, long-haired and wild, had a wide-bladed cleaver and – as Cole maneuvered the other body toward him – ended up hacking the knife-man’s arm clean off.

  The knife-man fell to the bloody ground in screams of agony while Cole took advantage of the long-haired man’s momentary distraction and knocked him out cold with a straight right to the jaw.

  Cole dodged right now, weaving through one aisle and into the next to throw off his pursuers, keeping Agostini in sight as he went; the man was nearing the Ferris wheel now, even as the first police cars arrived on the scene, back toward the crash site Cole had left behind.

  Cole saw another man running toward him from the far side of a fish stall, and jumped up on top of the table, stamping over the fish to the disgruntled cries of the owner, running across to the man on the other side and burying his foot in his face, sending him flying backward.

  Cole jumped off the table, out of the fish market now and leaving the chaos and mayhem behind him, Agostini just thirty yards ahead. Cole saw him look over his shoulder, identify that Cole was still there, sweep his head toward the arriving cops, and turn back to the direction in which he was headed, right for the Ferris wheel.

  Cole knew what he was up to – if he could get on the wheel before Cole could get there, Cole would be lost; the police would be upon him before the wheel had fully turned and brought Agostini back to ground level. Agostini would know that if he was arrested, he would be safe; he would probably walk within hours, if not minutes. But his pursuer would have been stopped, and he would be safe.

  Cole’s theory was confirmed just moments later as Agostini mounted the steps to the big wheel, pushing past the ticket collector and jumping into one of the cars. Cole could hear him shouting, demanding the man get the ride moving; and when he didn’t move quickly enough, Agostini withdrew a small nickel-plated pistol and shoved it in the guy’s face. Terrified, the ticket collector shouted to the operator who – scared and confused – did exactly as he was told.

  As Cole raced nearer, he saw the look of satisfaction on Agostini’s face as he rose up into the air; saw the satisfaction turn to hatred as he aimed the small pistol at Cole and opened fire.

  Cole sidestepped in a zig-zag across the plaza, the small-caliber rounds echoing off the concrete floor around him; and then, with the police rapidly approaching with their own weapons raised, and content that he was now high enough to no longer have to worry about Cole, Agostini sat back down to enjoy the ride.

  7

  The cops were right behind him, but Cole didn’t care; Agostini wouldn’t get away from him, whatever it took.

  And so, even as the police shouted instructions for him to give himself up, he too pushed past the bewildered ticket collector and leapt aboard one of the Ferris wheel cars. It already contained a young family – a husband and wife who looked shocked and fearful, two little children who looked amazed and excited – but Cole ignored them as he turned back to the operator.

  ‘Ne pas l'arrêter!’ he shouted to the man – Don’t stop it! – as the big wheel slowly turned, taking him airborne.

  He looked up, saw that Agostini was just halfway up to the top, and – with the police still calling to him – he turned to the family whose car he had invaded. ‘I’m very sorry about this,’ he said, ‘but I won’t be here for long.’ He smiled, and gestured upward. ‘Please excuse me.’

  And with that, he pulled himself up onto the railings of the exposed, swinging car, grasping hold of the roof with both hands. Steadying himself, he levered his body up and over until he was sitting on top of the car, the kids below squealing with joy as their parents struggled to calm them.

  And then he was moving again, the wind picking up as he rose higher and threatening to dislodge him; but his fingers held tight as he found the curved metal of the wheel that connected the cars together and pulled himself off the roof altogether.

  Gripping with his knees to either side of the structure, he extended his arms, released his knees, then pulled upward before securing his knees again.

  The metal was cold, and as he climbed higher – past car after car, some empty, some with passengers who reacted with a mixture of screams and laughter – the wind continued to pick up, threatening to blow him off the exposed structure of the big wheel at any moment.

  But still he perservered, until the crowds below – tourists, fishermen and police alike – were mere insects, all but indistinguishable from one another.

  He looked up again, the wind forcing him to close his eyes to narrow slits so that he could see properly, and – his arms and legs aching with the effort of climbing – he was relieved to see that the next car was the one that held his quarry, just feet from the very apex of the wheel’s huge arc.

  But Agostini saw him at the same time, his eyes wide with stunned disbelief.

  The shock didn’t last long though and the man quickly pulled out his pistol and fired it toward Cole.

  Cole instinctively shrunk back behind the curved metal, the shots going wide or ricocheting off the hard surface; but his rapid reaction, combined with a gust of wind, made him lose his grip on the structure with his knees, and then with one of his hands, until his body span out over the hard concrete plaza a hundred feet below, secured to the smooth metal only by the incredible vise-like grip of his remaining hand. His legs flailed in the air as he tried to reestablish his position, but he saw Agostini aiming at his exposed body and did the only thing he could.

  He let go.

  The movement of the wheel pushed the car below him into the right position to receive his fall, and he bounced on the metal surface as Agostini’s shots went wide of the mark again; but the bounce took him over the edge, and he only just managed to hang onto the roof, swinging himself back inside the car to the startled looks of the teenaged friends who sat there, open-mouthed.

  Cole pulled out his FN and – as the teenagers backed away into their seats – Cole leant out of the car and fired upward at Agostini, pinning the man down.

  And then he was out of the car again, pulling himself rapidly up the metal wheel while Agostini searched for his own cover.

  And then finally he was there, balancing on the metal curve and gripping the handrail with one hand as he fired a couple of warning shots into the cab; and with Agostini pinned down once more, Cole heaved himself up and over just as the car started its descent down the other side
, facing the harbor.

  He landed in the cab with the FN aimed, taking in Agostini’s position instantly and kicking out toward him, knocking the nickel-plated pistol from his grasp. He raced forward quickly and pistol-whipped Agostini to the floor, as he had done earlier in the Mercedes; and with his opponent momentarily out of the picture, he leant over the side of the car with the FN, took aim, and opened fire.

  The high-velocity 5.7mm rounds hit the internal mechanism of the wheel, one after the other after the other, and the supersonic cracks were followed by the terrible, enormously loud grinding of heavy metal until the wheel stopped moving altogether and left the cars swinging, stranded in the air.

  He ignored the screams from the other cars and turned to Agostini.

  ‘Alone at last,’ he said, pistol raised. ‘So let’s talk.’

  Agostini was a brave, tough and hate-filled man, but it took Cole only a few minutes to break him.

  He had known that there was no point in beating him, or threatening him with pain – such a man would hardly be cowed by such amateurish theatrics.

  But when Cole showed him the pictures of Michel, Claudette and Amelie, his three grown children – and then more photographs, of his eight grandchildren – the fight had finally gone from his eyes.

  Michiko had sent him the pictures with the intel dump he’s requested after his interrogation of Ortoli, along with details of addresses, schools, and a whole load of other things that gave Agostini cause for concern.

  And when Cole told Agostini that he had people watching them, primed to kill them all if Cole gave them the word, the man had agreed to talk. It was one thing to be fearless in the face of death, but Agostini could never countenance the loss of his progeny; they were, after all, his gift to the world, and would immortalize him when he finally met his maker. Without them, what purpose would his life have had?

  ‘Tell me about Javid Khan,’ Cole said as soon as Agostini was ready to talk.

  ‘Khan?’ Agostini said, nodding his head. ‘I might have known. Son of a bitch.’

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘Didn’t know him at the time, did I?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Didn’t know what he wanted those weapons for.’

  ‘You must have known they’d be used for a terrorist attack of some kind,’ Cole said, not buying Agostini’s line.

  ‘Yeah, of course, we’re not fucking stupid. But there’s terrorism and there’s terrorism, right? Hell, some of our boys back home in Corsica do a similar thing, blow up a government building here, assassinate a lawyer or a mayor there, you know? Who am I to judge? Rag-heads have got beefs just the same as us, don’t they? But children . . .’ The disgust was back on his face, and Cole was suddenly inclined to believe him. ‘Son of a bitch.’

  ‘So you knew the weapons you’d shipped were the same ones?’

  ‘Hey, it was Britain man, not America, okay? How many grenades or rocket launchers have they got over there? Didn’t take a genius to figure it out.’

  ‘Why haven’t you said something, if you’re upset about how the weapons were used?’

  ‘You’re joking, right? I say something, and I single-handedly take down my entire organization, all by myself. You think they’d give me a get-out-of-jail-free card for helping out? Hah!’ He shook his head. ‘No, man, no. I’d be fucked.’

  ‘You could have said something, just to get the authorities off the lone wolf attack line.’

  Agostini looked puzzled. ‘I thought that was just some media shit, for the public. You’re not telling me people over there actually bought that lone wolf shit, did they?’

  Cole knew how Agostini felt; he couldn’t believe that some people were clinging to that story either.

  ‘And talking of people over there,’ Agostini said, ‘who the fuck are you, anyway? Who you working for?’

  ‘Someone you don’t need to know about,’ Cole said. ‘And let’s not forget that I’m the one asking the questions here.’ There were shouts from the plaza down below, but Cole could barely hear them. The wind was picking up again, and – the car swinging disconcertingly from one side to another – Cole had to shout to be heard above the wild howling. ‘Now tell me about Khan.’

  ‘He approached me a few months ago, wanted us to help ship some weapons to England.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Cole asked. ‘Just ship them? He didn’t want you to source them?’

  ‘No,’ Agostini replied. ‘It was unusual, but he already had the weapons ready, he just wanted us to move them for him. Apparently the people he was using to supply the arms didn’t have the resources to ship them to the UK. European mainland fine, but they had problems when it came to shipping over the water.’

  ‘So you know where the weapons came from?’

  ‘Oh sure, they came from suppliers in Serbia through a middleman we’ve worked with before, guy called Radomir Milanović. He’s been dealing since the 1990s, mainly in surplus stuff from the Balkan wars. Good man, reliable.’

  ‘He would have sourced the items?’ Cole asked, making a note of the name.

  ‘Yeah, he would have been given a shopping list and he would have fulfilled it as requested, no problems, no questions asked. So he got everything together, then gave us a call.’

  ‘He mention anyone else? Anyone else dealing with things on Khan’s side?’

  Agostini shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t mention anyone, he’s like a lawyer or a doctor, you know? Client’s privilege and all that. But I don’t think he knew Khan, I think it was a different set of people who ordered the supplies, Khan was just the man they put forward to deal with us, told him to contact us to make arrangements for delivery, set a price, you know the score. I don’t think Khan was that important.’

  Cole felt his heart leap slightly at the mention of other people, people behind Khan, excited by the thought of another potential lead, but quickly got back on track. ‘And delivery was made how?’

  ‘To Khan himself, Southampton docks. Offloaded the gear straight from one of our boats in two crates, one for the weapons, one for something else, paperwork all legitimate, got them into the back of a truck and he drove off.’

  ‘There were two crates?’ Cole asked. ‘What was in the other one?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Agostini said, ‘it was sealed up real tight, we were told not to open it, something Radomir’s friends wanted shipping over with the weapons.’

  Cole was disturbed by this revelation but moved on.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About three weeks ago, must have stockpiled it somewhere.’

  Cole paused, thinking. He was pressed for time, and there was a limit to the amount of information he was going to get out of this man before the police got the ride moving again, or else sent specialist officers up to get them. But there was a clear point of contact in what he’d heard so far, and he decided to pursue it.

  ‘Where can I find Milanović?’ he asked.

  ‘Old Radomir gets around,’ Agostini said with a smile. ‘He has to with the nature of his work, if he’s not off making a deal somewhere then he’ll be off looking for new places to supply him.’

  ‘But he’s got a base of operations?’

  ‘Well, as far as I’m aware, he operates out of his home neighborhood in Mladenovac, a small town just outside Belgrade. He’s got no landline, but I have his cell number on my phone.’

  Agostini gestured to his pocket, asking Cole for permission to withdraw his cell. Cole nodded, keeping the FN aimed at him as his fingers went to the inside pocket of his jacket and gingerly withdrew the phone.

  He offered it to Cole with the resigned smile of one who had put up a good fight but – in the end – been beaten by the better man.

  Cole reached out to receive it, but the moment his hand made contact, Agostini dropped the phone and gripped hold of Cole’s sleeve, his other hand whistling in toward Cole’s neck at lightning speed.

  Cole saw the cut-throat razor in Agostini’s hand, knew that he must have palme
d it when he’d withdrawn the phone; and in the fraction of a second before the blade sliced through Cole’s jugular, he moved.

  Unable to bring the pistol into play in the short space and limited time available, instead Cole dropped the gun and jerked his elbow into the attack, hitting the bicep of Agostini’s knife-arm with the point. As the gang boss reacted to the pain and dropped the knife, Cole gripped hold of the arm that was gripping him, inserted his free arm between Agostini’s legs and hoisted him up and across his shoulders, offloading him at the apex of the movement and flipping the man right over the side of the metal car.

  Cole raced to the railing and watched as Agostini plummeted to the plaza below, his high-pitched screams audible even over the ferocious wind until they were silenced forever by the unforgiving concrete. Cole couldn’t see the details, but knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

  So Agostini was dead, but he’d served his purpose – Cole now had another name, and another location.

  Radomir Milanović, a professional arms broker from Mladenovac, Serbia.

  Cole sighed as he looked down at the police swarming around the plaza below him, then back up as the wind blew his small metal car from side to side.

  Now all he had to do was get out of there.

  8

  As Cole stood in the swaying car of the big wheel, just a few degrees down from the top and facing toward the open harbor beyond, his stomach turned as he ran through what he was about to try and do.

  It wasn’t that he was scared of heights. He might have been once, he supposed, as a boy; but such had been his spirit, even then, that he’d refused to give in to the fear and had instead faced it head-on, climbing trees and buildings until he could merrily run along the top girders of the local bridge, conditioned to ignore the nagging doubts that tried to tell him he could plummet to his death.

  Those same thoughts were back now – they had never really left him, despite the more than one thousand freefall parachute jumps he had done back with the SEALs – but he did what he always did and mentally overrode them, wiped them out entirely as he focused on what he was going to do, not on what if something happened to him when he was doing it.