9 years, 8 months ago
A shot. A heartbeat. A second shot. Smug confidence disappeared from the arms dealer’s face. The Serbian’s eyes flickered to the rooftops behind the two men he faced.
‘Sorry, should we be dead?’ Degen smiled. Scott Macrae had real skills. ‘Um, my sniper taking out your two snipers broke my train of thought.’
The Serbian and his men reached for their weapons.
A shot. A second. A third. Blood spattered across the Serbian, and he froze, mid-draw, as his comrades dropped, all three dead before they hit the ground.
Degen disarmed the now nervous Serbian.
9 years, 5 months ago
Degen straightened the paperclip, inserted it into the keyhole, bent it at ninety degrees, twisted and turned: he was free. Fifteen seconds of regrettably necessary violence later, he stepped over the unconscious German police officers to uncuff Kreshnik Xhepa. Degen relieved the officers of their Walther P99s and handed one to Xhepa. ‘Follow my lead,’ Degen said, ‘if we’re smart there won’t be any need for gunplay.
Fifteen minutes later, they were clear of the police operation at the Russian drug repository and heading out of Cologne’s Raderthal district. As they went their separate ways, Degen planted a seed. ‘Good luck cleaning up your house,’ he called out. Degen waved without looking back, turned into a side street and disappeared from Xhepa’s view.
Degen walked another two hundred metres, checked Xhepa hadn’t followed him, quickly turned into another street, and then strode up a driveway towards a house with an open door. As he reached the doorway he heard a familiar voice. ‘Well done Kai,’ said the Badger.
‘You know we’ve signed Olek Varoshi’s death warrant,’ Degen said.
The Owl blinked.
The Badger shrugged.
Scott Macrae placed a folder in front of Degen. ‘I won’t lose any sleep.’
Degen opened the folder. It contained photographs. The kind people wished they’d never seen. He closed the folder.
‘The Italian girlfriend we framed young Olek with is fictitious,’ said Macrae. ‘If she’d been real, she’d have ended up like that. Olek Varoshi is a loathsome human being. Whatever his clan do to him because they believe he sold them out ... he’ll have gotten off lightly.’
All the pieces necessary to destroy the Varoshi clan were in place, or about to be. Degen’s job was done, and he returned to the Jagdkommando. But Dierk Wald’s shadow lingered. Brooding in the background, behind a door left ajar and slowly creaking increasingly wider. Until, under a star-filled sky in Chad, it swung all the way open.
5 years, 6 months ago
Rolled Homogeneous Armour or RHA (steel rolled into plates) was once a standard component of tanks and other armoured vehicles. Although RHA had been superseded by stronger and lighter Composite Armour (layers of different material: ceramics, plastic, metal), the effectiveness of an anti-tank weapon was still measured by the ability of its projectile to penetrate Rolled Homogeneous Armour.
The Steyr IWS 2000 anti-materiel rifle, with its 15.2mm Special Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilised Discarding Sabot rounds, could penetrate four centimetres of RHA plate at a distance of one kilometre, and it was developed primarily for use in what was termed Hard Target Interdiction (used against targets such as armoured personnel carriers, communications equipment, fuel dumps, radar systems and helicopters). Kai Degen was a fan of the IWS 2000. It was powerful, but its efficient design delivered reduced recoil, and the plastics and polymers used in its construction meant it was (relatively) light, which, together with it disassembling into two packs, made it easier for one man to transport.
In a prone position, on top of a ridge, Degen surveyed the Janjaweed camp through his scope. Next to the tethered camels and horses was a dusty truck, not unlike the aid workers’ vehicle the Janjaweed had attacked and stripped a few days earlier. Degen guessed this truck was resupplying the raiders.
The bulk of the Sudanese force would be armed with Russian AK-47s, or Chinese rip-off versions. Positioned a little over 800 metres from the camp, Degen had a significant ballistic advantage: AK-47s had an effective firing range of just 350 metres. Degen was well out of range of the Janjaweed’s firepower. No need to rush.
First, he denied the gunmen the possibility of escape. The wooden stakes the camels and horses were tied to exploded into splinters. Most of the animals scattered. A few hung around, obviously confused, but a round at their feet sent them out of reach of the shouting Janjaweed.
Degen pulled out the empty magazine, clipped in another and aimed at the truck. He emptied the five-round mag, wrecking the engine.
As Degen reached for another magazine, the Sudanese raiders scrambled for cover. But nothing they hid behind came close to offering even half the protection of four centimetres of Rolled Homogeneous Armour.
31. REUNION
5 years ago
The narrow cobbled arteries of Canterbury’s historic heart were constantly blocked by foreign bodies. Day-tripping overseas students, bound together by some force akin to surface tension, moved en masse around the cathedral, the castle and the countless cafés, their fluid meandering seemingly without purpose, or sense of direction, or spatial awareness. They were only kids, but they were a bloody nuisance. Worse when it rained.
Scott Macrae groaned when he saw the swell of Union Jack and I-heart-London umbrellas washing down the High Street. Rather than risk an eye negotiating the sea of brollies, he turned in the opposite direction, down towards the Westgate towers where he’d pick up the riverside footpath to Chartham. It would take a little longer to get to his cottage that way and with the downpour in its third hour, parts of the route, where poor construction and natural camber colluded to make drainage impossible, would be flooded. But he didn’t mind. In his previous life he’d marched longer distances and waded through worse than a few giant puddles. Plus he’d grown up with Western Isles weather. This was nothing.
It turned out Macrae had the footpath along the Stour to himself, the rain apparently too much even for the habitual cyclists and the diehard joggers whom he would have expected to be nodding hello to on any other day. The birds and beasts were still about, though they too seemed a little weary of the weather. Long horned, shaggy highland cattle hunkered down in their sodden fields. Neighbouring horses sheltered beneath trees. The donkeys, chickens and goats sharing a small island (formed by a past meander of the river) huddled together in a large open shed. On the river, ducks appeared to be taking part in a competition to see which one could most effortlessly maintain their position against the rapid flow of water. And in the middle of a floodplain lake, a family of swans looked a little less serene and a little more sullen than they usually did. Only the sheep seemed unperturbed by the soggy conditions as they maintained their blank-faced relentless grazing.
After an hour, Macrae was almost at the cottage. The converted one-up one-down was officially part of Chartham, but the village was another ten minutes walk further along the riverside path. The cottage’s seclusion was Macrae’s main reason for renting it.
But as he veered off from the official footpath and headed up a (now muddy) desire path towards home, he spotted a vehicle: a dark 4X4, parked on the track connecting the cottage to the main road.
Now Macrae cursed the rain. He was soaked through, and the weight of his sopping clothes might put him at a disadvantage if blows were exchanged.
He sighed. Chastised himself. Whoever it was could be there for any number of reasons: read the gas meter; lost; salesman; survey. Probably perfectly innocent.
The driver stepped out into the rain, and Macrae recognised the far-from-innocent face.
Kai Degen spread one hand on the 4X4’s roof. He held the other, open palmed, up to Macrae. To a casual observer it would have been a friendly waved hello. But it meant: no weapons, no need to shoot/stab/punch me.
Macrae approached the vehicle. Still cautious. ‘You look like you’ve been keeping well,’ he said.
&nbs
p; ‘You look like you’ve been swimming.’
Macrae shrugged.
‘I heard you quit being a contractor,’ said Degen.
‘I heard you quit the Jagdkommando.’
Degen nodded. Then said, ‘You finding life a little dull now?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Then invite me in and ask me why I’m here.’
The sunglasses dangling from the neck of Ernst Ebner’s polo shirt slid forward and clattered on the ground as he bent to chain his golf buggy to the post sunk into the small driveway next to his modest bungalow. He hadn’t relocated to Spain to play golf—in fact he’d never swung a club until he arrived in Villamartin—but the buggy had come with the property. With three golf courses on his doorstep, Ebner had felt compelled to at least give the sport a try. It had become part of his daily routine.
‘Strange seeing you behind the wheel of something so ... leisurely.’
Ebner turned, held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and felt his jaw slacken.
‘Remember me?’
Ebner said, ‘Hard to forget the man who killed me. Twice.’
Ebner had been the Landeskriminalamt officer posing as the KFOR driver responsible for the death of Dierk Wald’s love interest. Degen had also killed Ebner in Greece. Ebner had been one of the fake policemen Degen/Wald had shot blanks at. The other fake cop had been the Badger.
‘I heard about Kaspar Pfaff,’ Degen said. ‘Scott Macrae told me it was a brain aneurysm.’
Ebner nodded.
Degen added, ‘And I’m sorry about Baumgartner.’
Ebner played with the thin sachet of sugar that had come with his coffee. He rolled it between thumb and forefinger as he stared out to sea. They’d driven the few kilometres to the beach at Cabo Roig, and then walked across the long curve of sand to the restaurant/bar next to the marina. ‘You know I was supposed to be driving that day?’ Ebner said. He turned to Degen. ‘But I had flu. Saved by a bug.’
Degen nodded.
Manfred Baumgartner and two other Department One officers had been the victims of a car bombing. No one had claimed responsibility, but Russian mafia involvement was suspected. They had a name, Vasiliy Korikov, but the case remained unsolved. When a reallocation of resources resulted in the investigation being all but put on hold, Ebner had quit the Landeskriminalamt, moved to Spain and bought a set of golf clubs.
‘Ernst,’ Degen said, ‘I watched you play today. You’re a piss-poor golfer.’
Ebner smiled. ‘I know. But what else am I going to do?’
After descending 380 wooden steps they were at level one of the Wieliczka mine. Larissa Němcová never imagined she’d be escorting Russian billionaires on a tour of a salt mine. Actually, only the husband was Russian and a billionaire. The wife was the daughter of a Ukrainian former-billionaire (now mere multi-millionaire—recent times had been hard for Ukraine’s super-rich).
Usually Němcová’s security duties revolved around the wife’s shopping trips, or her long chatty lunches with other trophy wives. But the husband had to be in Krakow for business, and the wife had decided to tag along to see the city. And the salt mine.
The husband had taken pity on his pack of male bodyguards and allowed them to remain up top. The task of accompanying the clients underground had fallen to Němcová. Joy. She took up the rear, smiling at the speed with which the couple’s interests diverged.
The husband was drawn to business-leaning factoids: 900 years of mining had created 200 kilometres of tunnels and excavated in excess of 2000 caverns … medieval miners given the job of burning off pockets of methane gas clinging to the mine’s ceilings received an extra bag of salt as hazard pay … 1.5 million visitors climbed down those wooden steps every year. Němcová could almost hear his mental arithmetic bouncing off the labyrinthine passages.
Meanwhile, the wife was enthralled by the statues of kings, queens, saints, soldiers, statesmen and gnomes (apparently lucky) all carved from rock salt, which, in its natural grey shades, masqueraded as unpolished granite. The salt carvings had been the work of miners-turned-artisans, who, being a deeply religious bunch, had also turned a number of caves and caverns into chapels: they spent days on end underground and needed places to pray. Even the husband had been impressed by Saint Kinga’s Chapel, a breathtaking, large-church-sized cavern with massive yet delicately crafted chandeliers created from reconstituted rock salt, plus side alters and chapels and a number of bas-reliefs—including a reproduction of The Last Supper—all rendered, of course, in rock salt.
For Němcová, the highlight was the eerily still underground lake with its perfectly smooth surface, which she thought so alien, beautiful and pellucid it must have escaped from the imagination of a Jules Verne or a Frank Herbert.
The tour ended in the cavern put aside for souvenirs, where the husband made an effort to feign interest in the carved salt trinkets his wife enthused over, though Němcová judged he’d reached the seen-one-salt-statue-seen-them-all stage a while ago. They appeared to be loved-up at the moment, but Němcová reckoned the pair’s relationship was destined to end in squabbling over who got to keep their holiday home in Crimea.
Thankfully, getting out of the mine didn’t involve steps. In the queue for the lifts back to the surface, the husband nodded politely as the wife cooed over the salt bracelets she’d bought for her nieces. Němcová stood behind, scanning the other tourists, seeing no threat.
They reached the lifts—small metal cages, a little larger than roomy phone booths—which were each normally crammed with nine bodies for the thirty second ride to daylight. Němcová had been prepared for that, and she’d slipped their guide a generous tip to ensure a private ride. The wife was cuddling into the husband as Němcová stepped into the dimly lit cage. She discreetly turned away.
Just as she was expecting the cage door to be clunked shut, she heard a voice say, ‘Plenty room in there.’ A silhouette appeared in front of the door. A man ducked inside, and the door slid shut behind him. Before the lock had clanked, Němcová had a 10mm Sig Mauser M2 subcompact in his ribs.
The silhouette leaned in, putting his lips to her ear. ‘Hello UNMIK chick, fancy a drink later?’
Currency, extradition, economic policy, cucumbers. Of all the many and varied attempts to introduce standardisation across the European Union, no one had tackled the tricky business of kissing when Europeans greeted each other. Greeks and Hungarians: two kisses. Dutch and Serbians: three kisses. Germans: no kissing, just a handshake. Danes: no kissing, but a little hug was okay. Brits: no kissing, except for certain London boroughs. French: they had a special name for it, faire la bise, which could vary between two and four bises depending on the region. Plus, in some countries the kiss was actually a light touching of cheeks, no lips involved. And then there was the lead cheek issue, with mayhem always on the cards when a Spaniard (two kisses, start with the right cheek) met a Belgian (three kisses, left cheek first).
Kai Degen was pretty sure Czechs did one kiss. But he played safe and held out his hand.
Larissa Němcová stared at the offered palm. ‘What, no kiss?’ She stepped in and softly brushed her lips against his cheek.
Just the once.
But he thought she lingered a nano-moment longer than she needed to. Or was that wishful thinking?
Němcová looked around the café-bar. ‘Interesting place.’
They were in the heart of Kraków’s Jewish district, but to step into Café Simone was to be transported from Kazimierz to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Customers could sit at the huge rounded bar or at intimate tables and order French wines, salads and pastries. The walls were adorned with more Serge Gainsbourg posters than you could shake a croissant at, and even the clientele (effete, bohemian) gave the place une atmosphère Parisienne.
Němcová sat. ‘I wasn’t expecting the venue to be so … romantic.’
Degen closed the small white laptop on the table. ‘It’s got free WiFi. Strong signal.’
She grinne
d. ‘Mais bien sûr.’
He caught a waitress’s eye. Her name was Blanka. And she was pleasant and helpful; not everything in Café Simone was authentically French.
They ordered Polish vodka. And Degen spoke of his plans.
Apart from staff, Larissa Němcová had the entire luxury boutique hotel to herself. It was hidden away on a quiet cobbled lane at the foot of Wawel Castle, and Němcová’s Russian employer had booked all of its twenty-nine rooms. Her clients were dining at the home of a business associate, and her male colleagues were either on security detail, or sampling Kraków’s nightlife. Meanwhile, Němcová had discovered that the hotel pool was in a medieval cellar.
She floated on her back, thinking.
Wars, even private ones, changed people. The covert campaign against the Varoshi clan that she and Degen had taken part in had required both of them to smudge lines, to set aside rules. Easy for Němcová—she’d plied her trade in a murky undercover existence and, like all spooks, she’d lived by the rules-are-guidelines trope—but Degen had been a soldier, and his relationship with rules had been different. Their grip had been loosened during the Varoshi operation, and in Chad they had been shrugged off, freeing Degen to declare his own war. A war that would be fought outside the rules. A war requiring recruits.
But did Němcová want to enlist? The mission to undermine the Varoshi clan had been a success, but her part in it had not gone well, and she had quit the BIS. Since then she had carved out a comfortable niche providing personal protection, and there was an appeal in the simplicity of the work: keep the client alive; don’t get killed in the process.
She studied the quivering reflections bouncing off the water onto the brickwork of the arched ceiling above. She splashed with one hand, watching the effect of the ripples. She splashed again, noting the different patterns. The patterns created by a third splash were different again. No way to predict the impact of each splash, Němcová thought. It wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if she could.
The Hunting Command (Grey Areas Triptych Book 1) Page 20
