by Rob Aspinall
“Sorry,” I said. “Ladies first.”
He argued. I clunked him with the rifle butt. He bounced off the side of the car, flat on his fine-dining belly.
“Get in!” I shouted to the girls. The Bentley was only a three door, so Katya and Christina vaulted into the back as Irina scrambled around into the front passenger seat.
We all buckled up. I handed the rifle to Irina. She looked afraid of it. I put the Bentley in sport mode, Philippe taking out one last guard as he approached the car. His body spinning away, chewed up under the grille of a pimped-out white Range Rover.
I planted my foot on the cool aluminium accelerator pedal and we roared out of the driveway. I weaved around the front of the Range Rover and outpaced a couple of other cars along the way to the front gates, opened up wide to let the guests out.
The engine in this thing. Man, it was ferocious. The sheer power through the fat wheels made it feel like wrestling an alligator. I glanced around me. The girls in the back were hanging on for dear life. We sped through the enormous gates and hit the mountain road without braking. I thought I was going the right way, but I couldn’t be sure. The Bentley had a satnav screen with a brand logo and options in Russian. Bright-orange gearshift paddles tucked behind the wheel like ears. Luxury racing seats front to back. And more hand-stitched black leather than an S&M parlour.
I gunned the engine as hard as I could, revving up to the limit before fast-changing using the paddles. We flew past a convoy of supercars on the wrong side of a long stretch of road that ran between a cliff edge and a soaring wall of solid grey rock. The tarmac was black and smooth, the wind whistling up and over the car. I looked down to my left and saw the epic mountain road that lay ahead of us, sweeping and snaking its way down the mountain.
I weaved back onto the correct side, just as a white van came the other way, cutting in front of the supercar convoy with a few feet to spare.
“Woo-hoo!” Christina screamed, hands in the air, kicking her feet against Irina’s seat in excitement, high as a kite on coke.
Irina looked at me like I was mad. “Who the fuck are you?”
“UN Special Intelligence,” I lied. “Sex Traffic Division.”
I jabbed a foot on the brake. The Bentley slowed down like we’d just run into a wall. I steered us around a dropping hairpin bend and floored it to the next turn.
Philippe came on over the radio. “Care to explain what’s going on?”
“Bonus mission,” I said. “A little rescue job.”
“Not our quarrel,” he said.
“If these girls aren’t worth a good quarrelling,” I said, making the next turn, the car rolling to the right, “who the hell is?”
“What are you saying?” asked Irina, not understanding English. “Who are you talking to?”
“Just some old douche I work with,” I said.
“I heard that,” said Philippe.
“Yeah, that was kinda the point.” I slammed on the brakes as we got stuck behind a tractor taking up too much of the road. “Ah, shit, now I’m stuck.”
“The point is, you shouldn’t deviate from the mission parameters,” Philippe said, the high-pitched rev of his Yamaha bike in the background.
“Um, excuse me,” I said blasting on the horn, getting the finger from the farmer driving the tractor. “How’s this any different from your little stunt in the Mobutu compound?
“That was tactical,” Philippe said, lying his arse off. “Berlin airport … now this … You can’t keep acting on impulse.”
“Um, hello? I’m sixteen. Impulses are all I’ve got.”
I found just enough space to swerve around the tractor, running off the road onto a bumpy patch of gravel and then back on again in front of the old pile of tooting junk.
“Where the hell are you, anyway?” I asked.
“I’m back up the mountain,” Philippe said. “Got eyes on you now. Watch your six.”
“Watch my what?”
“Your six. Your tail. I’m taking a shortcut.”
I stole a glance over my shoulder. The girls all did the same.
“Oh, pants,” I said.
“What is it?” asked Katya.
“Antonenko’s men,” said Christina.
21
A Drive In The Country
The time behind the tractor had cost us dearly. Here they came, in three supercars, no doubt jacked from fleeing guests.
We had a black Mercedes coupe, a white Aston Martin convertible and a Porsche in electric blue on our tail. I worked the paddles behind the wheel and picked up the pace, braking harder and later into each tight bend, one mistake away from a thousand-foot drop.
I glanced in the rear view and saw they’d brought guns, with a henchman leaning out of the passenger window of each car, ready to spray our brains over the quilted Bentley leather.
“Fuck!” Irina shouted. “What do we do?”
“Keep your heads down and imagine you’re somewhere else,” I said.
The guy hanging out of the lead car let off a round. He missed. Bullets fizzed all around us, our one saving grace, the rock and roll of the road.
It was harder to hit a moving, swerving target, especially on the twisty blind roads that dropped down the mountain. Unfortunately, the chasing cars were smaller and nimbler than the big-ass Bentley. Fortunately, we were wide and heavy, able to weave and block off the road, keeping the cars behind.
But the Aston Martin eventually found a gap. It pulled up alongside us, one of Nikolai’s boys steadying his aim, I yanked the steering to the left and shunted the thing off through a metal barrier on the tightest part of the bend.
The Aston Martin spun off the edge, the momentum carrying it far from the cliff face. It whirled away as it fell. I slid into the turn, all four of us clinging on. We came onto a long, straight run of road sweeping gently down and up again through a mountain tunnel. More bullets flew, this time peppering the bodywork of the Bentley and making a couple of pretty glass fracture patterns in the top centre of the windscreen. The girls shrieked and kept their heads low. I zigged left and right to avoid the spray. Christina stuck out a telescopic arm and squeezed Irina on the shoulder.
“Give me the gun,” she said.
“What?” me and Irina both said in tandem.
“I know how to shoot. I can do it.”
Irina handed her the rifle. Christina detached her seatbelt, propped the gun on the rear headrest like a pro and gave it hell, laughing insanely as she fired, cocaine cut with revenge pumping through her veins.
“Fuck you, motherfuckers!” she screamed, countless days and nights of bottled-up terror and torment released in the direction of the chasing cars, ignoring the bullets coming the other way. She hit one of them too! The driver of the black Mercedes coupe took one in the head through the windscreen. The car veered sharply to the left as we arrowed into the tunnel. The guy leaning out of the passenger seat got mashed into human pulp against the inside of the tunnel wall. The Mercedes was going so fast, all it needed was the tiniest of clips to flip it over twice in the air, bouncing across the tunnel on its roof.
I watched the whole thing in the rear-view mirror, hoping it would wipe out the Porsche, but the damned thing shot out of the mess and stayed tight on our tail. Christina was fast out of bullets. She let the rifle fall out over the back onto the road, slid down and buckled up, breathing heavy and happy under the orange tunnel lights. The sound of the engines was eardrum-nuking as we blasted our way out into the natural light, a chevron sign ahead flagging up a ridiculous turn down steep and to the right. Nikolai lurched up alongside. In the mad dash to freedom, I’d strayed onto the wrong side of the road. The electric-blue Porsche kept me there, Nikolai glowering at me from behind the wheel.
As we came to the turn, we both hit the brakes, but a tourist coach was coming up the other way. I lifted the handbrake up halfway and cut in mere inches behind Nikolai’s rear bumper. As we came into the turn, suddenly, the Porsche slid sideways and hugged t
ight to the inside of the bend, revealing a slow-moving green Toyota hatch point-blank in front of us. Nikolai turned sharply inside and accelerated past the car, but we were too wide to follow the same line.
That left us with two options:
A) Slam into the back of the Toyota and smash us all into tiny pieces.
B) Fly through the barrier and plunge to our doom over the cliff.
The odds of survival didn’t look good.
I couldn’t slow in time to avoid hitting the Toyota, so I yanked the handbrake up full and drifted the Bentley way out wide, off the road and onto a grass verge. The girls screamed. Irina covered her eyes. There was a small gap between cliff edge and the car in front as the road dropped down to the right. A one-shot chance in a million.
I drifted the Bentley straight though that bad boy, kissing the steel barrier with the near rear bumper and sliding back onto the road behind the Porsche.
Nikolai braked heavy again and slid in between us. We sped along through a series of dipping S-bends. Ahead, a fifty-strong pack of cyclists in full race gear were taking up the whole of the road.
“Oh, come on!” I shouted at the Austrian mountain gods.
I mean, how hard did this have to be? It was like a video game. Playing through the levels, getting tougher and tougher all the time. Except you didn’t get to hit quit or restart. I rammed my fist on the centre of the steering wheel, horn blaring, scaring the back of the pack out of the way.
As the train of cyclists thinned out, I weaved between them, missing each one by a fake eyelash. Irina looked sick in the passenger seat. Nikolai clipped a couple of cyclists off the road in pursuit.
As we broke through the bodies, we flew over the small iron bridge where I’d originally hopped in the limo with the girls. It came and went in a flash, tyres off the tarmac, pedals to the luxurious metals. There was a flyover up ahead between two mountain walls, both of which sat deep off the road, lined by grass verges and dense strips of those prickly, browning bushes. The Porsche had a better flat-out speed and I felt a bump from behind. Another. The Bentley fishtailed once, twice as we hit a patch of shingle fresh off the mountain wall.
And then I lost it.
We were an orange blur. A spinning top on the tarmac. I pulled the wheel hard into the turn and we broke out of the spin, bumped up onto a grass verge and slid backwards into a giant clump of thick bushes. The four of us lurched forward and back again against our seats.
The Porsche slowed and pulled up inches in front of the Bentley, blocking our only route of escape. The last of Antonenko’s men hauled their giant frames out of the low-slung sports car, machine guns by their sides.
Nikolai waved a beckoning hand at us. “Come on, get out.”
Amazingly, the Bentley was still ticking, engine growling like an angry dog who didn’t like the strange men approaching it.
Before we could react, or not react, as the case may have been, Nikolai held up his chunky left hand. “On second thoughts, don’t bother.”
Nikolai and the stooge raised their weapons and clicked off the safeties. They’d massacre us in our seats. Roll us over the nearest cliff face. Easier that way.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the girls.
22
Out Of Control
The first shot barely made a sound. Nikolai’s stooge was up one minute, down the next. On the grass. Half his face missing. His one remaining eye glued open. Nikolai gawped at the damage. He looked up towards the bridge. Confusion. Another shot and he flew back against the Porsche. He bounced off the long, fat bonnet of the Bentley and slumped on top of his stooge.
I suddenly remembered to breathe. I turned in my seat and looked up at the flyover, over my left shoulder. A figure astride a motorbike, wearing a helmet and leathers. A sniper rifle in hand.
My brain was too fried for me to talk over the radio mic. Still shaking with near-death adrenaline. Philippe packed away his rifle in seconds. He revved the engine and zoomed off across the bridge, front wheel lifting off the road.
“Is everyone alright?” I asked, without turning to look, palms welded to the wheel with sticky sweat.
“Uh-uh,” I heard Irina say. “Think so.”
The bike revved to a stop by the side of the road. Philippe propped up the bike, stepped off and removed his helmet. He approached the Bentley, put his gloved hands on the driver’s door and sized up the four of us. He burst into laughter, creasing over like it hurt.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
I turned to the other girls. Irina. Christina. Katya. I flipped open the visor mirror. The four of us looked like an eighties girl band. BIG, big hair. Wilder than a pack of wolves.
Note to self. Next time you engage in a high-speed car chase, put the top down first.
Another day, another remote airfield. Somewhere outside Vienna. We rolled into an open hangar. Big, clean, empty apart from a private jet and a large oak desk with a high-back leather chair and two office chairs for guests. Philippe pulled to the left and stopped the Porsche. I parked alongside in the Bentley. I told the girls to wait in the car and joined Philippe in circling the plane.
“Hello?” Philippe said, his voice echoing around the hangar.
“Mr Vasquez,” a woman said, appearing on the steps down from the plane. “Back so soon.”
She was a tall, elegant woman in her fifties. Beige trouser suit. Short, feathered hair that was growing old gracefully. A guy the size of two guys squeezed through the door of the plane and clomped down the steps behind her. Hawaiian-looking. Black suit and an expressionless face. The stairs shook as he came down.
“Out of bullets already?” she asked, speaking well-educated English in an accent like Philippe’s. Hard to place. Another globetrotter who called nowhere in particular home. “I think we’ve still got some left,” she said.
“Actually, Celine, I’ve got something to sell,” Philippe said.
Celine’s bodyguard stood at her shoulder, arms folded.
“Oh come on, Philippe, you know I buy wholesale,” Celine said. “Direct government contracts only.”
“This time, you might just make an exception,” he said.
I unzipped my handbag and produced the Arina Diamond. I handed it to Philippe, who held it out in front of Celine.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye.
“It is,” said Philippe.
“Mr Antonenko will be most irritated,” Celine said with a wry smile.
“He wasn’t a happy bunny,” I said.
“Well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer man,” said Celine, taking the diamond from Philippe and slipping on a small pair of reading glasses attached to a thin silver chain around her neck. She held the bright-blue diamond up to the light. “It’s quite stunning, isn’t it?”
“Shall we talk numbers?” asked Philippe.
“I haven’t said I’m interested yet,” Celine said, amused. “Shiny things aren’t usually my thing. And, of course, there’s the source to consider. That comes with its own complications.”
“Well, if it’s too hot for you to handle,” Philippe said, reaching out to take the diamond from Celine.
She wrapped her fingers around the diamond and pulled it close to her like a kid with a new toy who didn’t want to share.
“Let’s not be too hasty,” Celine said, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth, weighing the diamond in the palm of her hand. “You know just how to push my buttons, don’t you, Philippe? … Hmm. What number are you looking for?” she asked.
“We can start at thirty,” Philippe said.
Celine chuckled to herself. “Oh, come on, Philippe … Ten is being generous.”
“Twenty-eight is the lowest we can go.”
“It’s not been a bumper year,” Celine said.
“Then this should be a welcome boost,” Philippe said.
“How about thirteen?”
Philippe pulled a Bitch, please face.
“That’s o
ver twenty-five cents in the dollar,” Celine said.
“For a very exclusive piece,” said Philippe.
“Selling to a very exclusive market,” said Celine. “I’ll have to hold on to it for a while. Then find the right buyer …”
Philippe shrugged. “I can always go direct.”
“Come now, Philippe, this isn’t your area … I tell you what. Just this once, I’ll stretch to fifteen.”
“Twenty.”
“Sixteen.”
“Nineteen,” Philippe said. I elbowed Philippe and threw an eyeball over at the girls in the Bentley. “Nineteen and a sweetener,” he said.
Celine arched a wispy eyebrow. “I’m listening …”
“The girls,” I said. “They need a lift back to Ukraine.”
Philippe gave her the Ts & Cs. “New passports, documents, relocation with their families. The full gold package.”
Celine chewed the inside of her mouth. “First diamonds. Now flesh and blood. This is highly irregular.”
“Can you do it?” Philippe asked.
“They were kidnapped from their homes,” I said. “Forced to … you know … They’re only seventeen.”
“Mmm, I do detest that side of the business,” Celine said. “What do you think, Tony?”
Her bodyguard shrugged his enormous shoulders. Nonplussed.
“We’ll throw in one of the cars,” Philippe said. “Take your pick.”
I saw Tony’s eyes wander over to the Porsche. He raised the left corner of his mouth and nodded subtly.
Celine craned her head towards the plane. “Marko?”
Marko was the pilot. Mid-thirties. Lean, dark and angular. He stuck his head through the doorway of the jet. Full white shirt and black tie uniform with wing badges and everything.
“Yes, Mrs Martel?” asked Marko.
“Slight detour,” Celine said.
“The girls are from Odessa,” I said.
“Odessa, Ukraine,” Celine told Marko.
