Hit List

by Chris Ryan

  ‘Sorry,’ said Slater. ‘It wasn’t that bad, was it?’

  She avoided his gaze. ‘No, sorry, I . . . I just wasn’t expecting it. I know you weren’t, um . . .’ She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Did he stop and look at us?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Slater. ‘No.’

  Two streets further down Leon stepped from the shadows. He too had identified the patrolling Serb. He had also identified a potential OP and lying-up position.

  ‘It’s a long shot,’ he told them, indicating the multi-storey car-park on his right, ‘but it’s easy to access, easy to escape and evade from, and I couldn’t ask for a clearer field of fire. I’m going to take the Romak up there in the Mercedes.’

  ‘What about Terry?’ asked Slater. ‘Where’s he going to go at chucking out time?’

  ‘Oh, he picked the lock into one of those showrooms opposite that building with the devil-stencil where they’ve got Eve. Did it this morning – so he just has to slip in and go upstairs.’

  Slater nodded. He was beginning to get nervous about the part he himself was expected to play. The first traces of adrenaline were beginning to seep into his bloodstream. ‘Shall we get back?’ he asked. ‘We must be coming up to the moment when Branca gets an unexpected phone-call.’

  ‘We’ve got time yet,’ said Leon grimly, glancing at his watch. ‘Let’s go into the car-park and see if we can see into that flat. I’ve brought the binoculars.’

  Five minutes later, concealed behind the parapet, they were looking across at the rear of the Rue de Coude. They were on the almost empty fifth level of the car-park, and the top-floor flat was a little over 100 metres away. Chris held the binoculars, and together they identified the half-dozen windows of the flat, most of which were illuminated but hung with industrial blinds. As they watched, a small frosted window lit up, the upper half of a torso showed for a minute, and then the light went out again.

  ‘That’s the toilet,’ said Chris. ‘And that was an adult male. My guess would be that the other rooms are just open warehouse space. If those old seventies blinds are still up there, the interior won’t have been converted.’

  Slater nodded. ‘The RDB guys probably doss down on the floor in gonk-bags.’

  Leon took the bincoculars from Chris and searched the windows. ‘If you have any problems,’ he said, ‘try and get the blinds open.’

  He turned to Chris. ‘No disrespect, but now that there’s no heavy roof-climbing involved on this side, would you rather lie up here and let me go in with Neil and Andreas?’

  Chris considered. ‘I thought about that, and my feeling is that when we go in with Branca, the fact that there’s another woman there might defuse things a little. We want them to feel that they’ve been outmanoeuvred, not challenged.’

  Leon frowned.

  ‘And the other thing,’ Chris continued, ‘is that you’re certainly a faster runner than me. If you fire that unsilenced Dragunov you’re going to have to move very quickly indeed.’

  He nodded. ‘I suppose so. I guess we should get back and get ready.’

  They returned to the hotel as they had come: Leon alone, Slater and Chris arm in arm.

  As they walked, Slater thought how differently this operation would have been carried out by the Regiment. The police would have been on-side, for one thing, and fibre-optic surveillance would have been under way for twelve hours. The building’s architectural specifications would have been consulted, there would have been rehearsals in a mock-up of the warehouse, and an assault-team in gasmasks and full protective gear would be standing by with stun-grenades ready to blow the entrances and storm the place. Every detail, every eventuality, every possible outcome would have been considered and evaluated.

  Instead, it was just the five of them and a stash of untried and quite possibly dodgy gear. Planning had been done on the run and the arrangements were – to say the least – sketchy. Everything was reactive, last-minute and makeshift.

  But perhaps, Slater mused, he had simply been spoilt during his years with the SAS. Makeshift arrangements or no, the Cadre had done pretty well so far, and created an impressive amount of havoc for its size. Allowing the Serbian bodyguard to get the jump on him in Fanon-Khayat’s apartment had been a bad mistake, and being bumped by the RDB in the forest had been another, but one way and another they had managed to keep going.

  And several things greatly impressed him. Their streetcraft and surveillance skills – in particular those of Chris and Terry – were superior to any he had ever encountered. Their professional discipline was watertight, and perhaps because there was nowhere for them to be promoted to, there was none of the competitiveness, jockeying for position and general macho bollocks that had been such a prominent feature of Regimental life. In M19, whoever was best situated to take charge of a particular task at a particular time did so, and everyone else fell into line. They were good people, he decided, and there was much to be learnt from the way they operated.

  By 11.30 Slater, Leon, Andreas and Chris were reassembled at the Hotel Aissa. Terry had just called in to say that he had counted five males out of number 30 Rue de Coude at various times during the evening, and that all had now returned. Branca Nikolic was also on the premises.

  A call to Manderson had confirmed that the call would be going through to Branca’s phone in thirty minutes. Its content would be that one of the RDB men with her was an MI6 spy, and planned to steal the disc as soon as it was in her hands. She was to find an excuse to leave the flat immediately and make her way to the all-night Bar Suez in Rue de Laghouat, where she would be briefed by a controller from Belgrade.

  Outside, the nearby church of St Bernard de la Chapelle struck the half hour.

  On the bed, cigarette in hand, Andreas stretched and grinned.

  At the table, Leon stared with unseeing eyes at an old copy of Pariscope.

  At the window, his heart pounding at his chest, Slater forced himself to breathe normally.

  Against the wall, Chris uncoiled herself from the lotus position in which, motionless, she had spent the last ten minutes.

  It was time to stand by.

  FIFTEEN

  The plan was to allow Branca to get well clear of the Passage de Coude and any patrolling RDB sentries, and take her a couple of streets away on the corner of the Rue de Laghouat and the Passage des Ouled-Nail.

  From where he and Chris lounged in an unlit doorway, Slater looked across towards Andreas, invisible in a covered entrance-way where vegetables were sold during the day. There were street lights and a waning moon, but neither reached the Passage des Ouled-Nail. A Moorish archway marked the entrance to the alleyway, and the star-shaped windows of a mosque showed half-way down its length. From some nearby source came the muted rise and fall of North African rai music played on a transistor. There was a smell of cloves, cardamom, trodden vegetables and fried merguez sausages. They could have been in the outskirts of a city in Morocco or Tunisia rather than in Paris.

  Slater was wearing hiking boots, jeans and a loose green windshirt over his flak-vest. His Uzi and two spare clips of ammunition were slung in a black nylon satchel over his shoulder and the Sig Sauer was stuck into the waistband of his trousers. Next to him Chris was in black, with her weapon and ammunition similarly stowed. As far as Slater could tell, they were the only people on the street.

  Slater checked his watch. It was midnight, and the call should be coming through right now. All being well, they could expect her within three or four minutes.

  ‘All stations. Stand-by . . . Go!’

  Without anything being said, it had been agreed that Slater should lead the operation. In part this was because of his extensive CQB experience with the SAS, but in part, Slater sensed, it was because Eve was the hostage.

  When Andreas had questioned him about the night in the Inter-Lux, Slater had shrugged his shoulders and grumbled about sleeping the night wrapped in a duvet on the floor. He doubted that Andreas completely believed him, though, because in the short
time that he had been with the department he had clearly hit it off with Eve in a way that the others hadn’t. The fact that she had saved his life was part of it, but there was something else too. An affinity. An unlikely affinity given their very different backgrounds, but an affinity no less.

  Chris sensed it, he knew, and so almost certainly did Leon. A group as tightly interdependent as theirs could not fail to be aware of the subtle dynamic shifts that took place within it. Did it lock him into the group, Slater wondered, or did it serve to distance him from the others? Time would tell.

  ‘Terry to all players. Target has left the building. ETA you one minute, repeat one minute. Over.’

  ‘Neil to Terry. Understood. Over.’

  As he pulled the Uzi from its satchel, Slater felt the familiar adrenaline rush that preceded action. At his side he felt Chris tauten. The seconds thudded past, and then Slater heard the fast clip of heels on the pavement.

  Branca Nikolic would have walked straight past them had not Slater reached out and grabbed her. She half-gasped in shock, and in less than a second Slater’s hand was clamped tight across her mouth. Branca writhed furiously and tried to bite, but with a hissed ‘Shut up, cunt!’ Chris drew back the heavy butt of her Uzi and slammed it into the other woman’s ribs.

  Dragging the groaning Branca into the doorway where Andreas was waiting, Chris grabbed her hard by the windpipe. Branca’s face contorted in agony as she struggled to breathe – the writhing defiance continued for a few more seconds, and then sensing the racing approach of death, she went limp.

  Quickly, Chris released the Serbian to the ground and felt inside her shirt for a wire or throat mike. There was none, but she was carrying a Mini-Glock 26 in the inside pocket of her jacket, which Chris pushed into her own waistband.

  As Chris backed away, Slater took over. Defeated but furious tear-streaked eyes looked up at him. Next to him, Andreas levelled his Uzi at Branca’s face.

  ‘No noise,’ Slater whispered. ‘Silence. OK?’

  Branca nodded sullenly. Fear, pain and fury at having been deceived battled it out behind her eyes.

  ‘We want the woman. You understand?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Any noise,’ Slater continued, ‘and we . . .’ Taking the Uzi from Andreas, he mimed bringing it down hard on her face.

  Again, closing her eyes, Branca nodded.

  ‘How many men have you got there?’

  She held up the fingers of one hand.

  ‘And where is the woman?’

  They questioned her intensively for five minutes, until all of them were certain that they were familiar with the layout of number 30 Rue de Coude. From her satchel, when they had finished, Chris took a precut section of zinc-oxide tape and pressed it over Branca’s mouth. Over her face, so that they would look like party-goers if they encountered anyone on their return journey, she slipped a child’s elasticated rabbit mask. Re-packing their weapons, the three of them then turned Branca around, linked arms so that the two men were on either side of her, and marched her back in the direction she had come.

  As they approached the Rue de Coude, Chris darted ahead to recce. A minute later she returned. The RDB sentry was in front of the building.

  Slater nodded to Andreas, who quietly detached himself. As he did so, Slater and Chris sat Branca down on a flight of steps.

  Andreas returned five minutes later and they continued on their way. When they passed the sentry he was barely visible, lying in a shadowed entranceway as if drunk. To hide the zinc-oxide tape over his mouth, Andreas had pulled the man’s leather jacket around his head, as tramps often did to provide themselves with a makeshift pillow.

  ‘Alive?’ whispered Slater.

  ‘Yeah, but shouldn’t wake for half an hour or so,’ replied Andreas. ‘And I took his keys in case he does. He had a comms-set but it was switched to receive when I bumped him — from the fat grin on his face I think one of his mates was telling him a dirty joke.’

  ‘Does that mean to say they’re expecting an answer from him?’

  ‘Well, I switched it on and off a couple of times after I whacked him and then left it on transmit. Hopefully they’ll just think he’s fucked up his procedure.’

  ‘OK. We’d better move it though, in case they send someone down to check.’

  Andreas nodded, and all but lifting Branca off her feet, he and Slater ran her to the walk-up entrance above the stencilled red demon. Chris had Branca’s keys ready, and a moment later the four of them were inside the small foyer.

  Quickly, Slater plasticuffed Branca and they prepared their weapons, extending the Uzis’ telescopic butts. ‘Neil to players, we have our bunny and are entering building. Over.’

  ‘Understood, Neil. Over.’

  ‘Terry, do you copy? Over.’

  ‘Seen and copied. Over.’

  The building was probably built in the late forties. There was a lift, but it looked old and wheezy and Slater did not want to risk the advantage that surprise would give them. Instead, they went up on foot. A steel-banistered staircase climbed between walls of yellowing marble composite, with warehouse units extending to right and left at each level. From the street no lights had been visible in any of these units, and judging by the rubbish accumulated outside them, most were untenanted.

  ‘Neil to players, we are entering hostage-location with Flopsy. Starting ten-second countdown now. Over.’

  Andreas pulled off Branca’s rabbit-mask but left the zinc-oxide tape in place.

  Chris unlocked the heavy armour-plated door.

  Slater and Andreas marched Branca into the unit, each with an Uzi to her head.

  They were in a long, low loft-unit containing three steel desks, a couple of battered filing cabinets, and a half-dozen stackable chairs. There were three RDB men visible.

  Two of these were lounging twenty feet away on the threadbare carpet with an ashtray and a bottle of Orangina between them and their MP5 submachine guns at their sides, and a third sat a little further away with his feet on one of the desks and his weapon in his lap, suspended in the act of paging through a copy of Gros Lolos. They were fit-looking military types with cropped hair and hard, watchful faces. For a moment all three remained frozen in shock.

  Slater digested the scene at a glance, noting the state-of-the-art laptops, cyber-phones and zip-files which lay around on the desk. Where was Eve? According to Branca, she was in a ‘sleeping-room’ at the far end of the unit.

  There was the sound of a flushing toilet, and a fourth RDB man entered the tableau, wiping his hands on his trousers. After two paces he stopped dead, looking from his colleagues to Branca and her escorts. In his mind, Slater knew, was the knowledge that he had committed the special forces operative’s cardinal sin: he had separated himself from his personal weapon. It was lying half a dozen paces away in the middle of the carpet, next to a smoking ashtray, a packet of Bastos, and a bottle of Chimay beer.

  Slater shook his head and the standing RDB man froze like his colleagues.

  Stepping forward, Chris ripped the tape from Branca’s face.

  ‘Tell them what I said,’ he ordered her. ‘Tell them that if any of them makes a move for his weapon, he will be shot. And so will you.’ The adrenaline had fully kicked in now, and he felt the familiar light-headedness and slow-motion clarity.

  Branca spoke in Serbian. The men didn’t move but Slater saw that the shock in their faces had been replaced by alertness. He would have liked to have ordered them to hand the weapons over, but he didn’t want them even touching them. The Cadre team had had the advantage of surprise, but that advantage was fading with every moment. Beside him, he was aware of Chris thumbing the selector of her Uzi to single-shot.

  ‘Tell them to get their fucking hands up,’ Slater snapped.

  Branca spoke, and the RDB men slowly obeyed. Looking from face to face, however, Slater saw only wariness and battle-readiness. Beyond them, less than twenty yards away, was Eve. His heart pounded against his chest
.

  ‘Do you want one of them to get the woman?’ Branca asked.

  ‘No, one of us will go. Is she still where you said?’

  Branca nodded.

  At that moment, to his left, Chris threw her Uzi to her shoulder and fired a fast double-tap. On the other side of the room the head of the man at the desk seemed to twitch before exploding in a spray of scarlet. A wet blast of brain and bone spattered the vertical blinds, and the MP5 that the dead man was about to fire hit the threadbare carpet with a thump.

  As Slater kicked down the desk in front of him and dragged Branca to the floor, he saw a flurry of movement as the RDB team scrambled for their weapons. He just made it behind the cover of the desk when, with a rapid-fire staccato coughing, three silenced MP5s opened up straight at them.

  From a crouching position Andreas snapped off a pair of fast shots with his Uzi and then crammed in behind the desk next to Slater. To his left Chris acted identically, but finding Branca there bundled the handcuffed woman out into the open where a fast-reaction shot from one of the Serbs smacked into her thigh, tumbled through six inches of gym-toned tissue, and exited gapingly and bloodily beside the copper buttons of her Levi 501 jeans. Gasping in disbelief, shaking as if electrocuted, Branca Nikolic went into immediate and massive shock.

  Another volley of rounds hammered into the steel desk. For the three of them to stay there, Slater knew, would be suicide. They had to split up and divide the RDB fire.