Aggressor ns-8

by Andy McNab

  Charlie didn’t need the camcorder to remind him how the folder lay; he lifted it straight out and handed it over. A quick sweep of the Maglite revealed about twenty pages of handwritten Paperclip.

  It didn’t look much, but it was obviously worth two hundred thousand US to someone.

  He hardly had time to shrug before the door burst open and the lights came on.

  6

  There were two of them, hollering at us in Russian or Paperclip. They were both carrying suppressed pistols with big, bulky barrels; we raised our hands very slowly, so they couldn’t fail to notice that, unfortunately, we weren’t. I kept my left elbow slightly bent, to try and hold the CO2 canister in place.

  They were in their early thirties; short black hair, jeans and leather jackets, lots of gold rings and bracelets, and both looking confused about the situation.

  Their faces weren’t masked, and that was bad news. They didn’t care about being identified. One was dark with stubble; the other had bloodshot eyes. I wondered if he’d stopped by the Primorski on the way over.

  Their yells increased in volume, and reverberated around the room. Just having our hands up obviously wasn’t enough.

  It looked like the one with the bloodshot eyes was in charge. He glared at me and opened his leather jacket repeatedly with his spare hand. I got the message. Keeping my right hand up, I unzipped my bomber very slowly with my left. My boots dropped onto the carpet. Charlie followed suit.

  They now knew that neither of us was carrying, but that didn’t stop the shouting. I didn’t know what else they wanted, and I wasn’t going to ask. I didn’t want them to know we were Brits. I shrugged my shoulders and twisted my hands.

  They gobbed off at each other, very quickly and aggressively, then Red Eyes moved towards Charlie, pistol steady, while Stubbly covered him. He waved his free hand again, shouted, gesticulated at the floor.

  Charlie got it: the boy was after the folder.

  He reached down and picked it up with his left hand, keeping his right in the air. Red Eyes took a step forward, grabbed it, and jammed his weapon into Charlie’s neck. I could see Chinese characters engraved along the barrel. It was old and really well worn, but that didn’t matter. It would still fuck Charlie up if he pulled that trigger.

  Keeping the muzzle right where it was, Red Eyes bent down and reached into the safe. The jewellery found its way into his jacket pocket with the speed and precision of a conjuring trick. For a finale, he yanked off Charlie’s mask, then gave me the same treatment.

  He took a couple of steps back to survey his handiwork. They both stood there for several seconds, one each side of the doorway. Red Eyes muttered something to his unshaven friend, placed the folder on the desk and started to flick through its contents. Stubbly kept moving the muzzle of his weapon from my head to Charlie’s and back, just in case we hadn’t got the message.

  They barked stuff at each other as Red Eyes turned the pages. I didn’t know what to do next. I had been in the situation enough times myself to recognize the look and sound of uncertainty. Finally he looked up, glowered at the two of us, and pulled out a cell phone.

  I glanced over at Charlie, who was studying the floor so closely he appeared to be trying to memorize every fibre of the carpet. I knew that look. He was wondering how the fuck to get us out of here. I hoped the silly old fucker would come up with something before these boys got permission to top us.

  There was a series of rapid beeps as Red Eyes punched in the number. Whoever was at the other end answered immediately. Red Eyes studied each of us in turn, giving what sounded like a description, then picked up the document and quoted a couple of chunks from it. Then he looked at us again. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I got the drift. Whatever problems they’d expected to have to deal with in the house, they now had two extra ones, and they were less than happy workers. As if I was.

  There was nothing we could do to help ourselves immediately, so I studied Stubbly’s weapon instead so I’d know what to do with it when I got my hands around the pistol grip. The power of positive thinking.

  His finger was on the trigger and the safety was off; the lever on the left-hand side of the grip was down. These kinds of suppressed weapons normally had both a single-shot and semi-automatic capability. With the one, you loaded manually, pulling back the top slide and letting it go forward to pick up a new round from the magazine each time you fired. With the other, the top slide wasn’t locked in position, so you just kept firing until the magazine was empty.

  I didn’t know what setting Stubbly had gone for, but something told me it wasn’t single shot.

  Red Eyes was still waffling into the phone and riffling through the papers when we heard a metallic rattle from the direction of the street. He stopped in mid-sentence. There was a loud creak as the front gates swung open.

  Red Eyes closed down the conversation by running out into the hall.

  He was back in less than ten seconds, and not at all happy. He rolled up the folder, thrust it into his jacket, yelled a couple of instructions at Stubbly and disappeared again.

  Stubbly stood his ground and raised his weapon a few inches.

  There was no time to think.

  I lunged at him, aiming my shoulder at his gut. He tottered backwards under the impact, hit the wall, and before he could recover I dragged him down with me, my hands flailing. I didn’t really care if they made contact, as long as they got in the way of him controlling the weapon. With any luck I’d bang against it myself.

  I felt Charlie’s legs pushing against me, then heard a sound like a watermelon hitting a pavement. He’d given Stubbly’s skull the good news with his CO2 cosh.

  I let go and kicked myself away. It was Charlie’s call; he could climb aboard him if he needed to.

  I scanned the floor for the weapon, but couldn’t see it immediately, and didn’t have time to search.

  I ran out of the room, shoving my right hand into the left sleeve of my bomber jacket as I went. Red Eyes was ahead of me, throwing out the stops. The door swung back and the hall was flooded with light.

  The gates into the street were open.

  Baz’s Audi swept into the courtyard.

  I sprinted along the carpet as Red Eyes half ran, half tumbled down the porch steps.

  There was a shower of glass as he emptied his magazine into the driver’s window and he pirouetted like a matador as the vehicle coasted past him, into the wall.

  I took the steps in one, canister in hand. Leaping up before he had a chance to collect himself, I swung the heavy metal tube down onto the top of his head. The weight of my body coming back down to the ground gave the hit enough force for me to hear his skull crunch.

  He dropped like a cow under a stun gun and I followed suit, brought down by my own momentum. His weapon skidded across the wet concrete. I grabbed it, turned and fired into his skull. The third time I squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. The top slide stayed back, waiting for a fresh mag to reload.

  Fuck closing the gate. I dropped the empty weapon and ran back into the house in case my disco-dancing mate needed a hand.

  There were gunshot wounds in Stubbly’s chest and just below his right cheekbone, and a pool of dark, deoxygenated blood spreading across the carpet. Charlie was as cool as a cucumber. He’d slipped his mask back on, and was hoisting the satchel over his shoulder. ‘Give me five,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and find the CCTV monitors. There might be tapes.’

  I grabbed my own mask off the floor and pulled it over my head as I legged it back to the front door.

  7

  I went straight to the gates. Fuck checking outside, I just slammed them shut and got the bolts down, then carried on struggling to put on the mask. I only had one eye uncovered. I must have looked like the phantom of the fucking opera.

  There was a big drum roll and a clash of cymbals from the Primorski, followed by a round of applause. If I hadn’t been so knackered, I’d have taken a bow.

  Broken glass, sp
ent brass cases, wet concrete and two pools of blood glinted in the courtyard lights. Fighting to get my breath back, I ran over to the car.

  It looked like someone had thrown a bucket of red paint across the car’s interior. The driver’s body was slumped, face sideways, over the central console. It was Baz all right, and he didn’t look good. He’d taken rounds in the head, neck and shoulder, and his once-grey hair was crimson.

  I checked the front end. The bumper had absorbed most of the punishment, and one of the headlamps was cracked, but I reckoned the Technik was still Vorsprung. I pulled the door open, grabbed hold of Baz’s arm and dragged him clear.

  By the time I returned to the house, my throat was as dry as sandpaper.

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘Up here.’ His voice came from the landing.

  ‘Dead body. Bring some bedcovers down, anything. Got to cover the car seats.’

  I ran into the office and grabbed my boots. No time to do them up properly; I shoved the laces under the tongue so I didn’t trip up. Speed was everything; we had to get out of here.

  Back in the yard, I rolled Red Eyes over and pulled the folder from his jacket. Charlie jumped down the steps with two multicoloured bedspreads dragging behind him.

  ‘Any luck with the CCTV?’

  He shook his head. ‘Could be anywhere — on that PC, for all we know. Let’s just fuck off and get on the flight. You OK with that? Or stay and look some more? I’m up for it if you are.’

  I stood by the car. He was right. Why waste time on a blood-filled target, with three dead bodies for company? ‘Let’s go.’

  We threw the bedspreads over the front seats.

  Charlie dumped the satchel in the back and I jumped into the driver’s side. I knocked the remaining shards of glass out of the window frame while Charlie checked the road.

  The moment the gates were open, I hit reverse. Charlie secured the gates as well as he could, and jumped in beside me, lodging his pistol under his thigh. We started uphill, towards the blinking red lights of the telecoms mast.

  As we passed the left to the Primorski, two stretch Mercs were picking up a crowd of very young women and very old men.

  At last we were able to pull off our masks, and Charlie started to giggle. ‘Well, you fucked up there, didn’t you, lad?’

  ‘Heads up, we got police.’

  Ablue-and-white had turned into our road, heading downhill towards us. It was slow, taking its time. I checked Charlie — did he have blood on his face? He checked me — if I had, it was too late. We passed them; they looked over and two red spots of heat between their lips got brighter as they sucked.

  Charlie nodded at them. ‘Evening.’

  They passed Baz’s house without stopping.

  ‘Evening? If they’d heard you they’d’ve stopped us just to investigate that accent.’ I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. It wasn’t the joke, it was pure relief.

  Wind gusted through the driver’s window. I took a hand off the wheel and slid the folder out of my jacket. It was looking a bit the worse for wear but at least there were no bullet holes in it.

  Charlie scanned the streets for blue-and-whites. ‘They must already have been in the house, waiting for Baz to come home, make him open the safe, get whatever it was we’ve got here, then drop him.’

  ‘I thought Whitewall said he was away at some national park or something, till the morning? And since that was bollocks, where does it leave us with everything else?’

  I swung the wheel right and left, weaving between the potholes. ‘Maybe they were waiting for him to turn up in the morning. They’d have seen us coming into the yard. That must have been what we heard — those fuckers in the front room. When we opened the safe for them, they must have thought it was Christmas.’

  I took a left, up towards the cemetery. ‘I knew I should have looked in the larder…’

  ‘If you had, they might have just dropped us.’ He started to laugh again. ‘But hey, we’re still here, aren’t we? A quick trip to the DLB and then it’s bye-bye Georgia.’

  We bounced over the open ground opposite the cemetery. There were still quite a few cars parked around the place, and Charlie pointed under a tree, where the ambient light from the petrol station finally gave up trying to penetrate the darkness.

  I switched the engine off and killed the lights. I sat there, just looking and listening. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine. But the old hands are wobbling a bit. Maybe you should do the drop-off at the DLB. I’m not sure I’m in the slab-moving business any more.’

  ‘Done.’ I smiled. ‘Then it’s back to the hotel for a shit, shave and shower. Thank fuck it’s Sunday. With luck, Baz won’t be missed till tomorrow.’

  8

  Charlie wrapped the batch of paper in a plastic bag. ‘Every page is numbered, mate, there’s a signature block on the last one, and anything that’s been crossed out has been initialled. I reckon it’s a statement.’

  ‘So who were Red Eyes and Stubbly?’

  ‘Fuck it, who cares? Let’s just dump the gear and get out of here.’

  ‘You got any rounds left?’

  He pulled the pistol from under his thigh and pressed the magazine release on the left of the grip. ‘Two in here.’ He pulled back the top slide. ‘One in the chamber.’ He let the slide go again, replaced the mag, set the safety catch and passed it to me. ‘That’s made ready, safety on.’

  I double-checked the safety catch before shoving the pistol down the front of my jeans and the plastic bag into my bomber pocket. As I got out of the Audi I gave myself the once-over. We still had to make it back to the hotel tonight, and pass muster with the night staff. Even in Tbilisi, they didn’t like their guests covered in other people’s blood.

  I pulled out my phone and switched it on. ‘I’ll call when I’m done. If you see any dramas coming in, just give us a call, OK?’

  Charlie nodded as he slid into the driver’s seat. His job was to keep the trigger on the entrance.

  ‘I’ll need your torch as well.’

  He handed it over.

  ‘See you in a bit.’ I headed straight for the open gate. There was no time to lurk about in the shadows. It was just a case of straight in, get it done, and back to the hotel before first light.

  I checked the phone for a signal as I hit the main path between the burial plots. The glow from the petrol station was doing its best to bathe everything — headstones, benches, tree trunks — in BP green. I had no complaints; it meant I could see where I was going.

  Acar drove past the entrance, sounding like its exhaust was bouncing along the road behind it. Apart from that it was quiet. Even the knitting circle had called it a day.

  My marker bin loomed out of the shadows. The four guys on Tengiz’s headstone were still gazing at the heavens. I couldn’t make up my mind whether they were doing it out of sheer admiration, or just waiting for an answer that never came. I shone the beam along the wrought-iron fence to get my bearings, and then picked out the bench. I moved across the plot and tried to slide the top slab away from the base. I only needed a one-inch gap, but this was one chunk of marble that looked as though it wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

  I bent down and gave it a second shove, this time with my shoulder. There was a low, grinding noise as it moved, and a quick flash of the torch confirmed I had the gap I needed. In went the bag of papers, the torch went back in my pocket, and I started to pull back the slab.

  There was a crunch of feet on gravel behind me.

  I spun round. A figure closed in on me, arms raised, blocking out every shred of ambient light. This boy was huge.

  I stepped to my left as the arm came down, trying to check it in mid-stride. I was lucky. Steel clattered against stone as something very unfriendly fell from his hands.

  I grabbed the bottom of my bomber jacket with my left hand and pulled it up, trying to grab the pistol grip with my right. But he was ahead of me. He yelled and lunged, hands the size of grappling irons grippi
ng my arms and trying to wrench them from their sockets. I stumbled backwards over the low fence and we crashed onto the pathway.

  My shoulder hit the kerb and my attacker fell on top of me, crushing the air from my lungs. I arched my back, kicking, bucking, struggling to get my hands down, trying to get him away from me so I could draw down.

  The top of his head pushed hard against my chin. My teeth weren’t clenched and I bit my tongue.

  Eighteen, maybe nineteen stone of him pressed down on me, keeping my arms pinioned above my head.

  ‘Charlie!’

  I could feel the blood spurting from my mouth as I shouted. I bucked and kicked, but his body was still moulded to mine, pressing against the weapon.

  ‘CHARLIE!’

  He let go of my arms and decided to throttle me instead. Massive fingers closed around my throat and I felt his saliva spray across my face as he strained to push my Adam’s apple out through the back of my neck. My head felt like it was going to explode.

  There was nothing I could do but kick and writhe like a madman. I managed to get my hands round his neck as well, but his muscles simply tensed like steel hawsers under my fingers. I shifted them down to grip the lapels of his jacket, using them as leverage to dig my thumbs into the soft, fleshy area between the collar bones, at the base of his throat.

  He was going to have to use his hands to deal with mine. If he didn’t, he’d choke to death. Unless I did first.

  My face swelled to bursting point under the pressure of his grip.

  He pushed down his chin, tensing his neck even more. Fuck, he was big. His stubble took two layers of skin off my hands.

  My head pumped, my eyes blurred.

  I dug harder and he lifted his head.

  His hair flicked against my face. I felt his bristles rasp across my cheek and smelt his sourly alcoholic breath. I knew he was going to try and finish this with his teeth.

  9