Hit List

by Chris Ryan

  ‘A more sensible option, in my opinion, would be to pick the lock of one of the buildings next door, which are both five-storey warehouse blocks, and take armed possession of the top-floor. Once up there you could remove some brickwork and go in through the partition wall.’

  ‘Too noisy without special equipment,’ said Slater immediately. ‘And takes for ever. I’ve been involved in jobs like that — you need fibre-optic lenses and all sorts if it’s going to work. Even with the right kit it would take all night to pick our way through. There is another way, though. And that’s straight in through the front door.’

  The others fell silent.

  ‘The main trouble with an assault through a partition or roof is that it’s a kill-em-all option. The only way to get Eve out if we assault the place is to kill or disable all of them. Whatever happened there’d be a bloodbath, and it’s a probability that a fair amount of that blood would be ours. Plus there’s a good chance Eve wouldn’t survive anyway.’

  ‘We’ve got to give it a go,’ said Andreas, although Slater could tell from the tone of his voice that he had the same misgivings. ‘We can’t just leave her there.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting we leave her there,’ said Slater. ‘What I think we ought to do is snatch Branca, and then arrange an exchange of hostages. My suggestion is that someone from the RDB rings Branca, asks for a private meet, and we jump her.’

  The others stared at him.

  ‘Someone from the RDB?’ said Leon, incredulous. ‘How do we arrange that?’

  ‘Ring Ridley,’ said Slater. ‘Tell him to get on to the Balkan desk and find a native Serbian speaker and to go through the files for the names of a couple of senior RDB officers. At a given time, the Serbian guy rings Branca’s mobile from London – I got the number when Pasquale rang her this morning – and says he’s been ordered to contact her. He drops a couple of classified names, just to show he is who he says he is. One of the men with her, he says, is working undercover for the Americans, or the Albanians, or whoever. She must come alone and in secret to such-and-such a place, where she will be told what to do.’

  ‘And once she arrives we grab her, drag her back to where she’s got Eve, and arrange an exchange,’ said Leon. ‘I like it!’

  ‘It avoids a shoot-out.’ Slater shrugged. ‘A shoot-out that we might well lose, as things stand.’

  Terry, who had been listening in silence, helped himself to one of Andreas’s cigarettes. ‘Why don’t we go through it point by point?’ he said.

  FOURTEEN

  At 7.30pm Slater went with Leon to pick up the weapons. Chris had spoken to Manderson several times in the course of the afternoon, and the Cadre chief had approved the plan to kidnap Branca and exchange her for Eve. P4, the head of Balkan operations, had agreed to help Manderson out without insisting on knowing the precise circumstances. This was unconventional, but as Manderson had gently pointed out, it was at P4’s request that the Cadre had become involved in the first place. It had been the Balkan desk, not to put too fine a point on it, who had wanted Fanon-Khayat dead.

  The time agreed for the fake call from Belgrade was midnight French time — any earlier and there would still be people on the streets, any later and there was concern that Branca’s mobile might be switched off.

  A decision had been made in London that a twenty-seven-year-old Serbian-speaking MI6 agent was to make the call. Until recently Pavel Djukic had been a BBC World Service employee, and had only joined M16’s Balkan desk six weeks earlier. His time behind a sound-studio microphone had given him a vocal authority beyond his years, however, and he was confident of his ability to bamboozle Branca Nikolic. The service had amassed a fair volume of information on the Serbian secret service, and Djukic was swotting up the files on individual RDB officers in preparation for a heavy bout of name-dropping.

  Once again, Leon and Slater swiftly threw off their Serbian tails. The weapons contact was an Algerian named Schafa, who fronted a business in used small arms with a bicycle repair shop in Belleville in the twentieth arrondissement. Leon and Schafa had done hard time together at Clairvaux prison, and since joining the Cadre Leon had brought a fair amount of business the Algerian’s way.

  On their arrival in Belleville, Schafa insisted that they join him in a glass of mint tea. The tiny grease-stained office attached to his workshop smelt pleasantly of cycle oil and tyre-rubber, and Slater resolved to buy a bicycle when – and if – he got back to London. He had never owned one as a child; now was the time to put that right.

  As he looked round, fingering chains, wingnuts, spokes and drop-handlebars, Schafa and Leon chattered away in rapid-fire French. As most of the language that they used was underworld slang, Slater could barely understand a word of it but he gathered from their expressions that Schafa had managed to pull something special out of the hat for his old Clairvaux cellmate.

  Eventually the Algerian led them through the workshop and up a grimed and narrow flight of stairs to his stockroom. At the end, beyond a plastic-strip curtain, was the locked entrance to the next-door unit. This, Leon murmured to Slater, was also owned by Schafa, but under the front of a mail-order company selling DIY tools.

  The door swung open to reveal ceiling-to-floor stacks of cheaply finished tyre-jacks, pipe-cutters, screwdriver and spanner sets and adjustable monkey wrenches. The casing indicated that these goods originated in a variety of countries, including China, Slovakia, Romania, Israel and Byelorussia.

  From beneath a bench Schafa slid a metal case with Chinese characters sprayed on to it. Opened, a tray containing a display set of variously sized Maglite-style torches was revealed. Beneath this, however, nestling in a dense black bed of foam-rubber, was a 9mm Uzi submachine gun, and three twenty-five-round magazines. Reaching down, Schafa pulled the weapon out, ran an affectionate hand over its square, riveted, steel-pressed outline, and handed it to Leon.

  ‘Douce!’ said Leon.

  ‘I thought you said he had FAMAS rifles,’ murmured Slater.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Leon. ‘Probably Corsican terrorists – apparently they’re quite good customers.’

  From the fatter-than-normal barrel Slater could tell that the Uzi was one of the suppressed models built for covert and urban use. You could cheerfully blast off 5000 rounds outside a police station with one of these and no one would hear a thing. Given a close-quarters firefight Slater would have preferred the MP5s that the RDB carried, but the Israeli-designed Uzis were an acceptable alternative.

  ‘I’ve got three of these altogether,’ said Schafa reverently. ‘Licence-built by FN in Belgium. They came up from Marseilles this afternoon.’

  Leon nodded and translated for Slater.

  ‘These would be great,’ Slater agreed. ‘Apart from anything else they’re small, which will help when we’re carrying them in the streets. Has he got the subsonic ammunition to go with them?’

  Schafa nodded. ‘I have nine-mil subsonic. I also have this – la pièce de résistance.’ Ducking down, he reached another flat steel case from below the bench, opened it, and removed a layer of plug-spanner sets. Beneath, embedded as the Uzi had been, was a black matt-finished rifle, luminated sniper-scope, compensator, magazine and cleaning kit.

  ‘A Dragunov sniper rifle,’ said Leon thoughtfully. ‘Not bad. Not bad at all.’

  ‘A Romak-3,’ said Schafa. ‘Takes ten rounds of 7.62.’

  ‘And if you need all of those,’ added Slater, ‘then you’re well and truly fucked. This is the Romanian-made model, isn’t it?’

  Schafa nodded.

  Slater drew Leon aside. ‘This could be useful. Who’s the best shot out of the four of us?’

  ‘Hard to say. What about you?’

  ‘Well, I led an SAS sniper team a couple of years ago, but I’m probably the rustiest in terms of recent range-hours. How are Chris and Terry?’

  ‘As good as any of us.’

  ‘Because whatever happens we’re going to need to set up an OP or possibly two OPs on the rooftop
s. If someone could get this Dragunov up there and establish a clear line of fire it could just swing things if it all comes on top.’

  ‘In that case, I should go,’ Leon said. ‘I’m not a better shot than Chris and Terry but I’m pretty sure that I’m a better climber. Anyone firing an unsilenced weapon from the roofs around there is going to have to disappear very fast indeed.’

  ‘So how do you think the rest of us should deploy?’

  ‘Let’s hash that one out later. But we’re agreed we want the three Uzis and the Dragunov?’

  ‘I think so, aren’t we?’

  ‘I also have body-armour,’ said Schafa.

  ‘What do you think?’ Leon asked Slater.

  ‘Nothing bulky,’ said Slater. ‘It’ll show in the street and tell the RDB that we’re ready for trouble. It’ll just escalate things.’

  In the end they settled for ‘second chance’ vests. These, much less bulky and heavy than conventional flak-jackets, incorporated a layer of Kevlar-over-Perspex ‘trauma-packs’. The Kevlar slowed the bullets down, while the Perspex panels dispersed their impact. You’d go down, but with any luck you wouldn’t die.

  Schafa had half a dozen of these in a packing-case. None showed signs of having taken bullets, but all were sweat-marked and had the sour smell of fear and stress about them.

  ‘We’ll take three,’ said Leon.

  On the way back to the hotel, he dropped Slater off at the Rue de Lappe. Pulling on his gloves and undoing Pasquale’s front door with keys stolen from the apartment earlier, Slater checked the drug-dealer’s condition.

  Pasquale was half-awake, and feeling very sorry for himself indeed. His wrists were badly chafed from the plasticuffs and a strong smell of urine rose from his bed. Seeing Slater he narrowed his eyes, as if struggling to remember in what context he had met the former SAS man.

  ‘English, yes?’

  Slater nodded.

  ‘Please, English. Taking off the handcuffs. Je vais . . . I want to vomit, please.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Slater, leaving the room.

  When he returned it was with a tumbler, a carafe of water, and a fresh bottle of malt whisky. Pasquale, who had thrown up on his pillow while Slater was out of the room, groaned at the sight of them.

  ‘It’s called the hair of the dog that bit,’ said Slater, his eyes watering at the ammoniac stench.

  ‘Please,’ said Pasquale. ‘I piss, OK? Toilette?’

  ‘I’m sure you piss OK,’ said Slater grimly. ‘But first you drink OK. It’ll make you feel better.’

  Ignoring Pasquale’s groans, he mixed a half-pint of Islay whisky and water. Casually, he unholstered and checked the Sig Sauer. ‘Drink,’ he ordered.

  Hesitantly, Pasquale drank.

  Watching him, Slater saw the alcohol take immediate effect. Colour returned to the sallow cheeks and the nauseated look was replaced by an expression of tired relief.

  ‘It’s better,’ admitted Pasquale, struggling to a sitting position. ‘Please, English. I need to piss.’

  ‘Another glass,’ ordered Slater.

  ‘Why you do this?’ asked Pasquale miserably.

  ‘Because I don’t like people who sell drugs,’ said Slater. ‘Comprenez?’

  Pasquale shrugged. Ten minutes and a half-bottle later, he slumped into unconsciousness again. As Slater watched, his bladder voided itself copiously into the bed. Short of shooting him, Slater thought, which would lead to more complications than the man was worth, he couldn’t do much more to shut him up.

  Outside, with 40,000 francs’ worth of unlicensed weaponry in the back of the car, Leon was glad to get moving again. Pointing the nose of the Mercedes northwards, he joined the traffic on the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and twenty-five minutes later pulled up in the Rue de la Goutte d’Or in Barbès.

  The area was unlike anywhere else in the city. As the long-time home of Paris’s immigrant community – Arabs and West Africans for the most part – it offered a heady mixture of the tawdry and the exotic. Marabouts, or West African ju-ju men, handed out cards advertising their services. Overfilled immigrant hostels spilled their robed Togolais and Béninois occupants on to garish, neon-lit pavements. Hairdressers’ shops offering elaborate braided coiffures stood cheek by jowl with halal butchers, cous-cous joints and small mosques. From the cafés came the click of dominoes. There was the murmur of many languages.

  Leaving Slater in charge of the car, Leon set off on foot to find a hotel in which the team could base itself.

  A quarter of an hour later he was back. ‘I’ve booked three twin rooms in the Hotel Aissa, a couple of streets away,’ he told Slater. ‘It’s not the Ritz but it’s out of the way and no one’s likely to be asking questions. I played the heavy, paying up front with a fat wad of cash, so they’ll almost certainly assume we’re here on drug-business.’

  When they arrived, Slater saw what Leon had meant. The Aissa was an unprepossessing one-star flop-joint, and as they watched from the car a fat, middle-aged Arab in a leather-jacket stepped on to the pavement, adjusted his trousers, scratched his balls, hoisted himself into the driver’s seat of the taxi parked at the kerb, and drove off. A minute later a bored-looking prostitute strolled out, checked her watch, and took her place on the corner.

  Parking where the taxi had been, the two men made their way into the hotel foyer carrying the anonymously cased weapons, their hiking jackets, and their overnight bags. Of the four men drinking minted tea and playing dominoes behind the counter none looked up, but the oldest slid three keys towards Leon and pointed at the worn and narrow staircase.

  The rooms were small, smelt of spiced food, and were grouped together on the first floor. Slater and Leon moved their kit into the middle of the three. The walls and ceilings were not thick, and from above them came a muffled groaning and the creaking of bedsprings.

  ‘Classy place!’ remarked Slater, lowering the case containing the Dragunov to the greasy carpet and pulling the thin curtains closed.

  Leon laughed. ‘You said you wanted to see the real Paris! Why don’t you get the rest of the Uzis in from the car while I call the others?’

  By 11pm the whole team was assembled except Terry, who was watching the front of the building in the Rue de Coude from a nearby bar. Leon, it had been decided, armed with the Dragunov, would watch the back of the building – there were more windows at the back than at the front. The kidnap and hostage-swap would be carried out by Slater, Andreas and Chris.

  While Slater and Leon had been buying weapons and pacifying Miko Pasquale, Andreas had been carrying out a discreet recce of the Rue de Coude. Slater and Chris had not yet seen the place, and after changing into old clothes they set out with Leon.

  The latest intelligence from Terry was that though Branca had left the building earlier for a couple of hours, she had now returned. Terry’s guess, having followed her as she trailed round the streets, dropped in and out of cafés and newsagents, smoked cigarettes and drank coffee, was that she had wanted a break from her RDB colleagues.

  As they approached the Rue de Coude, Leon left Chris and Slater to recce the target area together and hurried ahead to search for an effective OP and lying-up position. The three agreed to meet thirty minutes later.

  As Leon slipped into the shadows, Chris slipped her arm through Slater’s. She was wearing a polo shirt, jeans and plimsolls, had a sweater knotted round her shoulders, and looked subtly, indefinably French.

  ‘You look as if you were born here,’ he told her. ‘And I look like some dodgy geezer from Catford.’

  Chris smiled. She had, Slater noticed, a really very attractive smile when she cared to deploy it. ‘Disguise is in the mind,’ she said, ‘not in the trousers. Although you might pull your sleeves up your arms a bit, like these funky Frenchy loverboys do. And stick your cigarettes in your shirt-pocket – this is a country with a soft-pack culture. And put your left hand in your pocket rather than letting it swing.’

  ‘Like an ape.’

  ‘You said it,
not me. And for heaven’s sake put your arm round me properly – you’re not my father leading me up to the altar.’

  Obediently, Slater hitched up his sleeves, pushed his left hand into his pocket, and slipped his arm around her slight, steely body. Beneath her cheap sweater he could feel the stomach muscles working as she sauntered slowly along the pavement.

  ‘Now, having put your arm possessively around me to warn anyone else off, you curl your lip and ignore me altogether – yeah! That’s the way! Now we’re a French couple!’

  ‘It was never this complicated in the Regiment,’ Slater observed wryly.

  ‘No snogging during recon exercises, you mean?’

  ‘Very little.’

  They walked in silence for a couple of minutes. The warmth of the day had all but gone.

  ‘We’ll get her out,’ said Chris, reading Slater’s thoughts. ‘One way and another we’ll get her out.’

  ‘It could get very nasty,’ Slater said. ‘Those RDB guys had an all-the-way-to-hell look about them.’

  She nodded. ‘I know. But we’re not exactly pussycats either. This is the place, isn’t it?’

  The Rue de Coude was a narrow street with four- and five-storey warehousing on one side and a series of garment-industry showrooms, all apparently vacant, on the other. The only sign of life among these blank frontages was the dimly lit portal of Chez Fatima, which is where Slater guessed that Terry had established himself. Loitering on the corner for a moment he and Chris scoped out the entrance to the building, some fifty metres away, where they suspected Eve was being held. As the others had reported, a fat little devil with horns and a forked tail had been stencilled in red spray-paint on to the front of the walk-up to the entrance. The door was new, and steel-framed. Slater flicked his eye upwards but the glance told him nothing; the roof was invisible from the corner of the street and the top floor almost invisible.

  ‘Bad guy,’ murmured Chris.

  A distant figure was making its way down the pavement towards them from the direction of the warehouse building. Something about the man’s bearing – some tension or alertness atypical of the time of night – indicated that this was a patrolling RDB man. Casually, Slater swung Chris round to face him and lowered his mouth to hers. As their lips touched he felt her flinch, and clamp her mouth shut. Slater had not intended anything except to hide their faces from the passing RDB man but it was immediately clear to him that Chris was not enjoying herself. As the Serb disappeared and he lifted his face from hers, she gasped for breath and dragged her sleeve across her mouth.